We began by searching for a Pope. We never found one.
Really? There are lots of fathers mentioned in the Bible. And somehow you missed finding Peter? He’s in there. . . Did you look for the words “Trinity” and the coequality of the Father, Son, and Spirit? Did you find the word “Bible”?
We let the words of Jesus guide us unto salvation. Everything we need to know is written for us in the New Testament. You see after Christ died,he left us with the inspired words of God to accept him,or reject him.
Those inspired words were not available in written form for nearly 400 years after Christ’s resurrection and ascension. BTW, just how did you all know which words of God were inspired or not? There were an awful lot of “words” written in, say, the Gospel of Thomas and the Protoevangelium of James. . .but those aren’t in the Bible. Not only that, John himself said that Christ had done more and spoken more, so much that <were they to be written down, there would not be enough books in the world to hold them>. Some of the words that Jesus spoke to His apostles might have been preserved via word-of-mouth–yes, we call that “Sacred Tradition” and THAT is how we know of things like the coequality of the Trinity. And don’t you use the Old Testament? Jesus did. In fact, much of what is in our Old Testament is what JESUS called “Scripture”.
We do not read of a Pope. We still can’t find him. Come to think of it,we can’t find the word Catholic in the Bible. Gosh, Peter is too big to miss in MY bible. Once again, did you find the word “bible” in the Bible either?
By adding to the word of God you are not pleasing to him. No, it was Martin Luther who added “alone” to “faith” and it was not the Catholics who removed books from the word of God. . .that doesn’t “please Him” either.
( There is no place for a Pope on earth. The Pope is a man. A man on TV. (And there’s no TV in the Bible. . .so, just what does “You are Peter and upon this Rock I shall build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. . .” mean to you, eh?
Also we learned that you become a Christian after you hear,beleive,repent,confess and are baptized. You are added to the Church. How can an infant hear and beleive? Oh, and after becoming a Christian you stay exactly the same in size, weight, occupation, etc.? You don’t grow or change or develop physically or mentally? And you might want to argue with St. Peter and St. Paul, both of whom baptized “whole households”. . .which by definition included infants, (who can hear, my friend, even in utero after the 7th month of pregnancy) otherwise it would say, “men”, or “men and women” or “free and slave men/ women”. . .the scriptures are very specific about who in a household receives things. Look at the description of Abraham’s “household” in Genesis, for example. And are you saying that a person who can’t believe–say, a person in a coma or suffering from catastrophic brain injury–can’t be Christian? How do you know what constitutes “belief”? Haven’t you seen the new scientific findings which indicate that our brains are “hotwired” for religions belief? How do you understand the verse in the Psalms, that “before I knitted you in the womb, I knew you”?
It’s no wonder that some Protestants have such a distorted view of Catholics and Christianity. Somehow, innocently (we hope) or not, they aren’t taught the TRUTH.
