There is ONE Church, is there not? Scripture says it. Christ founded ONE Church, not many.
That being said, those groups who are Christian, but not Catholic, still possess ‘some’ Christian truth, some to a greater degree and some to a lesser degree. We cannot all be correct, you know. How could divorce be both forbidden–and permitted? How can homosexual acts be both sinful and not sinful? How can the bread and wine be simultaneously transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and ‘symbolic’? How can there be ‘God’s vicar’ and ‘no vicar’?
Thus, it is obvious that there has to be one group, above all, which contains all truth. One group which has stood, as Scripture says, since the time when Christ Himself founded His Church and said the gates of hell would not prevail.
That Church is the Catholic church. All other groups have separated themselves from it, to a lesser degree (Orthodox) or a greater degree (Protestants, running the gamut from Lutheran to the newest non-denom which started in somebody’s kitchen this evening). All Christian groups contain some truth. Even non Christian groups can contain some understanding of truth but without knowledge of Christ lack even the connection that our separated brethren have.
And before you begin to huff and puff about the Catholic Church daring to find you ‘not a church’–please call to mind that it was not we who pushed you from the fullness of truth, but you who chose to deny that truth in favor of whatever group you thought was better. IOW, all Protestant groups have, by definition, rejected the Catholic Church as being the true church, some so violently as to call it the Whore of Babylon itself, others less violently as either antiquated, or medieval and just not ‘with it’.
And now when the Church reasserts its truth (Yes, ‘re-asserts’–meaning that it was denied by Protestants so in essence is defending itself), some find this offensive? Yet it is not offensive for various Protestant groups to proclaim themselves as the true church? How is this?
Sillier still are those who think that nobody really has fullness, that ‘anybody’ can ‘get into heaven’, and that claiming to be ‘above’ any other group is bigoted and discriminatory. In heavens name, what good is a group which does not claim to have anything more than ‘relative’ truth for any given individual at any time, and to maunder that “I may not agree with your truth but hey, to each his own”. That is not Christianity–it’s garbage. False ecumenism which makes Christianity the least common denominator in a laissez-faire, anything goes ‘ecumenism’ where anybody can claim anything is ‘right for them’ and there is no such thing as ‘truth’.
Pilate himself would spin in his grave. He at least asked Jesus “what is truth” though he would not listen. Some do not even bother to consult Jesus because either they’re sure they know His thoughts better than He does, or because Jesus–God though He was–was ‘constrained by His times’ and “couldn’t do the real things like ordain women and celebrate homosexuality because of the TIMES”.
