Right, of course you think that. If you admit that Catholicism is ambiguous, there is no reason to be a Catholic as opposed to a Protestant or Orthodox Christian in your mind. I understand now that the strong resistance to my given that Catholicism is ambiguous is a result of the necessity of Catholicism’s absolute clarity and perfect continuity in the argument against Protestantism. You can’t engage with my idea without undermining your arguments against protestants. I understand the resistance now, it makes sense.
I forgot that before beginning this thread. I completely overlooked this problem, because it’s been a while since I cared about Catholic vs. Protestant arguments.
I live in a backwater of Catholicism, about as far away both geographically and culturally as you can get from Rome. It’s Utah! Where the culture is neither Catholic or Protestant, and the Protestant vs Catholic history and current state is largely lost on our state’s majority inhabitants. For the majority of our population, both are lost to truth.
But we have a relatively decent state university that attracts students from all over, and so we have non-backwater Catholics pass through for a few years while they attend the state university.
One such student, was brought to mind by your post here. He was working on a masters thesis that was based on the question: why be Catholic and not mainline Protestant? He asked how I would answer and I said the usual answer that you will hear Catholics give: The Sacraments. He shot that down! Not in a pro Protestant argumentive kind of way, but in that he wanted to flesh out a deeper answer for his thesis. He since left to finish his masters degree at a better school, so I’ll never know how his thesis turned out.
Bummer, but this question is not new. I asked it myself, when I was studying Chtistianity, with no intention of converting. I was not raised a Chistian, and was raised to believe certain things about Christianity, that are not favorable towards it (and us), and so wanted to discover what Christians really believed. As opposed to what I had been taught.
Believe me, from my non Christian background, looking at the difference between mainline Protestantism and Catholicism was like trying to discern very close shades of the same color. I had to put aside what I had been taught about Christianity, in order to try to understand it. That was difficult, but not impossible. I started with the premise that I knew nothing. I looked up every single word and phrase for over a year. I put aside any assumptions that I knew anything at all about Christian words or terms. Including the word “God”.
I was going to Mass, as a part of my study, again no intention of converting. I also went to a nearby Episcopalian church for a while. They have their differences, but from a non Christian POV they appear to be nuanced, not readily apparent. So, I had no idea the history of the various Protestant denominations, it all just being Catholic or derived therefrom to me. At that point I started studying up on where the Episcopalian church came from, and was dissuaded from using it as my study of “original” Christianity. I have this strong aversion to religions that are just fired up, by some guy, and that is how I perceived the history that I read.
But, I never stop studying and I continue to read. Christian history is messy, no doubt. And I understand the Anglican argument better than I could have ten years ago. It’s the perennial struggle, of Christianity since its beginning. Where does the truth of Christ exist? From a Catholic POV, the Protestant temptation is one of, believing Jesus Christ has abandoned his Church and if you believe that, of course you must go look for where He has gone.
But, to me, that defies what Jesus taught, that is, that God does not abandon us in our sins. I would have to believe that God abandoned me, a sinner, to be Protestant. That is my view.
In relationship to the Old Covenant, it is a constant thread throughout, mankinds abandonment of God, while God is ever merciful and faithful to Israel. Human history, including that of the OT is ambiguous. While history can inform our reason, such as, rejecting Mormonism for dubious historical claims, history isn’t the sole variable in our search for truth.
Historical Catholics lived in their time and their place. They expressed their faith as how they were. How they understood the world in which they lived. This is not a bad thing. It is no different in the OT. You’d have to be really filtering out OT historical events. But, you celebrate divine retribution of the OT, even to believing you can threaten your contemporary humans with the same. But others claiming the same for themselves, who aren’t you, are monsters? What argument do you think ISIS is using!
It is all wonderful, IMO, that you are seeking, studying and forming opinions of your own, but you are not consistent. God cannot be used for your personal retribution against others. You are not a one-person Israel. Just as God cannot be used by political leaders, as their excuse for their unjust actions.
Keep journeying. Pray always.
