There are 2,942 Catholic Denominations, Maybe more

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The Catholic Church excludes no one. You or anyone else can come into a Catholic Church any time you please. Come to Mass, see a baptism, watch groups getting confirmed, see a wedding, talk with a brother, Deacon, priest, or any lay person.we Catholics deny no-one. All races, countries, and yes no matter where you go from Spain to Mexico and from Poland to America they all have one thing in common and that is no matter what language, accent, or a catherdal in Rome to a hut in Africa the Mass and all the Sacraments given are the same. So all can paticipate. One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The bible readings are the same being taught for any paticular day. We all say the roasary, the stations of the cross, and celebrate being a family in Christ.

Today one can not go into a Baptist or and other Protestant Church without all being different. Different rules and yes the protesting church is fracturing/dividing so badly now it is about to callapse upon itself. Remember Christ did not come to change the law but to allow us salvation while practicing it.

There is certain truths that are taught such as Abortion is wrong we do not change it because times are different it is wrong anytime.

What teachings are these non denominational churches teaching except accept Christ do what makes you feel good and leave your money in the basket.

Yes following the Catholic Church teaching is not easy and at times frustrating but Jesus said pick up your cross and follow me.
 
lak611 said:
When I said that we all need to pray for Christian unity, I meant that for ALL Christians: Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. I really do not see unity happening without God’s intervention. Man is just too selfish and prideful.
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So true, so true, so true…
 
JoeyWarren said:
50 minus the 15 denominations. the remaining 35 are non-denoms. the 35 are additive to the others non-denoms in other towns.

You miss the point. If there were only 15 denominations, that is 15 too many. God has only one truth not 16. That is the underlying argument.

I will use my dad as an example of non-denoms. He is protestant. He has been a member of every hard-core fundamentalist church in the neighboring town. His personal interpretation did not jive with the current pastors. So what did he do? He started his own denominational church. He hired and fired pastors at will based on his personal belief. He finally found a pastor he would not have to fire. Who? His own son. Since then his son (my half brother) has moved the church from non-denominational to the “Church of God” denomination and has become a bishop. My dad now has a pastor of his own choosing and molding.

non-denominations are a denomination of one.

To hazard an estimate of the non-denoms in the USA alone using my town as a model? Nearly over a million exist. Barrett’s 30,000 is an understatement to say the least.

Like I said before, he never accounted for the non-denominational explosion. His book was outdated even before it went to the press.

I don’t know if the 2000 edition even addresses the non-denomination issue.

As for wallowing, you can participate in this thread or ignore it. You chose to participate. So let’s wallow.

As for Salvation and how to achieve that ultimate state of experiencing the Beatific Vision, that alone will keep us separated. There is only truth, that one truth has stood the test of time for nearly 2000 years. How many supposedly new truths have been put out there and have failed. How many of these supposedly new truths have resulted in new splintering new truths.

There can only be One Absolute Truth.

One Mind, One Body, One Faith, One Belief, One Truth, One Church, not many…😦

Experiencing the Beatific Vision…there is only way to that goal, not many…and that one way is via the narrow gate.
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PatienceAndLove said:
One question-
Lets say Member X is attending a Christian Church. He disagrees with the pastor, so Member X starts attending another church, but he disagrees with the pastor there. Etc… until Member X decides to start his own church with people he has met along the way who think like him. Wouldn’t Member X’s new church be it’s own denomination, being as it teaches different doctrine than other Christian churches?

Ok, two questions-
What about people who have home/basement churches? Being those that worship in their home instead of attending a local church, because they disagree with them, dislike the worship styles, etc… Would these be their own denomination as well?
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Based on the questions you poised and my dad’s own stint as reflected in post #37 and your first question combined with the second question, the number of non-catholic denominations exceeds One Million easily.
 
ASimpleSinner said:
Funny you should mention that. A buddy of mine who is a convert to the Catholic Church had been - as an adolescent and teenager - a member of one of the mega-churches in this city. On the face of it - the two largest - were near identical in their theology, worship and tone. Both of them have, in the past two decades, successfully planted “Daughter churches” throughtout the state and the rest of the midwest… And while both congregations call themselves “non-denominational” the daughter churches are heavily reliant (almost exclusively) on pastors who go to the mother church for training and follow the general theological predilections of the founding pastors of each respective mother church.

I asked my convert friend “was their ever any fellowship or cooperation between the two mega-churches?” Decidedly not. There was, at time, a perception of intense rivalry over minor things that the “other ones got wrong”. Not enough to claim that the other was “not a Christian” but just enough to offer a little denominational rivalry between supposed “non-denominations”.

Would they count as seperate denominations? They certainly act like it.
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We could narrow it down to whether or not they contribute a portion of their tithing to the mother church. If they don’t then they are their own entity with the pastor as it’s own pope.
 
JoeyWarren said:
:rotfl: And I am a Programmer/Analyst…I can count very high as well:D
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Well… I have 7 sons producing lots of grandchildren… so I can count high too!!!

oops, another son just told us they are having an 8 or 8.5 pound “turkey” around Thanksgiving time… gotta change the bio… again
 
eliasaph99 said:
The split between the Catholics and the Orthodox is unfortunate. In some sources I have seen have an earlier split as well, that of the Assyrian Churches and the Oriental Orthodox churces around 700+. I don’t know all that much about the various schisms throughout history (probably more than your average layman, but definitely not well read.)

That being said, I will venture to say that the earlier schisms are of a different character than the more recent Protestant Reformation. After these earlier splits, one did not see the rise of multitudes of Orthodox churches, or Assyrian churches. To my knowledge, there are not thousands of Orthodox denominations with widely varying theology. At the most, there are Orthodox churches associated with specific countries. I believe that they all gather under one umbrella, however. Still, even if we count them as if they did not, there are somewhat less than 200 of them after almost 1000 years.

Whether you accept the figure of 33,000 or not, I have not seen a figure less than several thousand for Protestant denominations and, to be honest, don’t think that the low end numbers were arrived at using a very realistic definition of denomination.

I guess what I’m getting at is that the number of Protestant Churches is, to me, a witness against the general ideas of Protestantism. There simply is no question that Protestant theology comes nowhere near the realization of the unity Christ desired for His Church. Judging by the number of denominations which have arisen in only 500 years, it seems to do the exact opposite. By comparison, the older churches, which are much closer in theology, have not splintered into thousands of parts. They are regretably separate, but stable and lasting, slowly working towards reunion.
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Good point.
 
MrS said:
Well… I have 7 sons producing lots of grandchildren… so I can count high too!!!

oops, another son just told us they are having an 8 or 8.5 pound “turkey” around Thanksgiving time… gotta change the bio… again
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I was born on Thanksgiving Day at 1 pm.
 
The Church does not have denominations. You are working with a misunderstanding.
 
Syele said:
ok, despite it being pointed out many times before, 30,000 protestant denominations is misleading, unfair, and downright false. The figure in my thread title is from EXACTLY the same source as the 30,000 denominations number people here keep referring to. If your point is to show protestants are divided, just say so and avoid making yourself look dumb.
  • The figure comes from a study by David A Barrett
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             the first figure was 20,780             denominations with some figure about how many there would be in the future coming *from a different source*.
  • All the denominations listed are not protestant.
  • 8,196 were protestant
  • 2,942** of this number were Catholics, 194 Latin-rite,**** 580 are Orthodox and other Catholic (non-Roman) 504**
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             According to Barrett, a "distinct denomination" is ANY division, including style of music, location of church, and other things that really are NOT divisions associated with the standard "denomination".
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             Barrett uses the standard definition of denomination but calls it "traditions."
  • **He says there are 21 Protestant “traditions”, 6 marginal Protestant, 4 Catholic (non-Roman), 6 Anglican, 20 mixed pagan and Christian (two of which he deems Catholic), 19 Orthodox, 16 (Roman) Catholic
    **
  • Barrett also lists Roman Catholicism and Protestantism on the same level each considered a SINGLE ecclesial tradition.
    I’m not denying that there are divisions among protestants. I’m simply asking you to be honest in your discussions here. If you want to say Protestantism is bad cause it’s divided, fine But stop throwing around meaningless numbers.
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Strange. I always heard there were 70,000 Protestant denominations.
 
I don’t think we should squabble to the exact number of protestant denomination because there is no way to know exactly and for sure the number is in the thousands and for sure that is scandelous to the lord as he demanded one faith, one lord and one baptism and founded one church.

The Catholic Church is a monolyth and has certain rules that all her churchs must abide by albeit some churchs do have different traditions but most of the central beleifs whcih the councils and popes have deemed necessary must be agreed upon and all to a certain degree defer to the pope on matters of faith and morals.
Now one can dissent and we do admittedly have that as the early church had dissenters in Corinth and Galatia etc but as the Church in the Bible had one set of rules and disputes were settled by Church Councils see Acts 15. We don’t see the level of authority that Peter has spoken and that settles the issues as in the Council of Chalcedon and Acts 15 in protestantism and thus dispute after dispute is settled by church splite after church split we are witnesssing another church split before our eyes in Anglicanism with its american counterpart Episcopalian rejecting the non binding advice of Archbishop Rowan WIlliams of Canteberry. And that is the problem with protestantism they have no one speaking for God de facto and thus settlting the issues. They have a guy making a suggestion and nother rejeecting the suggestion as no one had any authority other than I have my opinion and interpretation and you have your opinon and your interpratation. This is the weakness of protestantism and you don’t have to buy a book telling you how many protestant denominations to know its a scandal if you live in a big city like LA, NY or Chicago just go under the section of churchs and see how many Protestant denominations there are and it screams scandal. One cannot reconcile the plurality of churchs, doctrines, head of churchs and the worst recent invention the non-denom which every pastor is pope and answerable to no one except himself. Jesus prayed that the Church be One that we would be an example for the confustion in the world. Surely he did not have the thousands of protestant denominations in the world as part of his plan. It is a great barrier in evangelism for the unchurched as they ask me which is the right church among many? Why are there so many differnt opinions on one books that is supposedly infalliable? How many differnt truths are possible when all are claiming ot have the truth? The problem of protestantism among many others is why the WEstern World has gone from Christendom to ChristenDummy. Protetsantism has created religious relativism in Christiantiy as know one is quite sure what is true and everyone has their interpretation and the world can rightly point out Christian that is just your interpreation among many!
 
Wisdom said:
I don’t think we should squabble … Protetsantism has created religious relativism in Christiantiy as know one is quite sure what is true and everyone has their interpretation and the world can rightly point out Christian that is just your interpreation among many!
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Great post!👍
 
Eileen_T said:
Where in the Bible does it say that the Church has to have, or not have, a particular name?

It is from the Bible that we know the Church that Jesus founded is One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic.

Are you disputing Holy Scripture?
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One, holy,catholic and apostolic is not the name of the church that jesus founded only the identifying characteristics of the true church!
 
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