Don’t allow anyone or any church tell you that you need to do good works to win your way to Heaven. It is a lie. Scripture screams that we are saved by our faith in Christ and that works are the results of our faith, not the saving mechanism.
No wonder you are an ex-Catholic, you sure didn’t learn much about what the Church teaches. In Matt 25:31-46; and 16:27, Jesus will determine our eternal destiny based upon what we have done with our lives, not how much faith we had. Unless Jesus got it wrong, that is. The Church teaches that we are saved by a free gift of Grace, BUT, as James says,* Faith without works is dead.* It’s not either/or, it is BOTH.
Jesus said to accept Heaven like a child accepts a gift. That doesn’t mean going to mass everyday and going to confession once a week is going to buy your ticket to Heaven because it won’t.
Jesus taught His disciples to pray,
“Give us this day our DAILY bread.” He later said in John 6:35
"I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger: and he that believeth in me shall never thirst. "
Read the rest of John Chapter 6 and ask yourself why it is that Catholics take the Bible literally while non-Catholics pick and choose what “hard sayings” they can accept and what they can’t accept.
After the Resurrection, what was the first thing Jesus did when He appeared to the Apostles in the Upper Room?
John 20: 21-23 *He said therefore to them again: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. **Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. ***
How could they retain someone’s sins if they did not know them. Confession has been a part of the Church since the time of the Apostles. Read the Apostolic & Early Church Fathers.
You won’t find Jesus through the mazes of the Roman Catholic church.
It is Protestant denominations where you will find a maze, not in the clarity of the Catholic Faith that comes to us from the Apostles.
You will find him by reading and studying Scripture and praying to him and seeking him in all that you do.
Amen. In the collection of books known as the Bible that was decided on and given to the world by Catholics, taught by the Catholic Church and preserved by the Catholic Church down the ages.
The church can’t save you, Mary can’t save you, only faith in jesus Christ can save you no matter how much of a sinner or how little of a sinner you are!
The Church is not the author of salvation. This comes from God alone. The Church teaches that Jesus is “the source of eternal salvation” and “merited justification for us”.
It might help if you put your misconceptions aside and read the Catechism of the Catholic Church to see just what it is that the Church really teaches before you come here and tell us things that simply are untrue.
How can one be so uninformed and boast his ignorance??