It literally depends on which type of non-Catholic you are speaking with, but in general, Protestants will say that the Church promised by Christ (cf. Mt. 16:18-19) is not a visible Church but an invisible communion of all believers regardless of denomination, doctrine or creed.
Don’t think they do.
Don’t think this is accurate either.
There are not 30,000 denominations today. This is propaganda like P’s who say C’s killed millions during inquisition and other moves.
I agree, but actually I think it is even worse than that. While Protestants cannot agree on what is the correct doctrine on many, many “essential” issues, in reality they cannot agree even on which issues are ‘essential’ and which are not. If you would like to see this demonstrated just ask a few different Protestants for an actual list of the issues they think are ‘essential’ to the faith.
Yes and no. How can a “communion” of believers and as some say , those on earth (as opposed to heavenly) be invisible ? Even the CC could be said says the same thing. She is guided (invisibly) by the Holy Spirit. Have not seen of any visible doves or cloves of fire or heavenly voices attending prophesying leaders since Acts (hence His invisible workings).
It is interesting the CC on one hand says she is fullness of truth yet admits she does not have "all’’ the answers. Not all things are “set” in CC, and some things are still open to different interpretations. The Church has always had some things as "essential’’ and unmoveable, but not all. The Pope is only one step ahead of consensus when speaking ex cathedra.
Yes, special prayers are cast for ___ and ______. I erased some names (nothing Catholic) so as not to offend.
Choose your own stumbling block. Of course it would be nice for all to be perfect catechists.
Amen. The second vatican finally recognized these other 30,000 churches as containing “salvation and grace”. Of course CC takes credit for this, yet the fact is saints across full spectrum of denominations, including CC, will gain entrance into heaven with rewards, based according to His good graces to the individual saint, and not "affiliation’’. It is in the pudding as you correctly say. Some Catholic pudding is better than P pudding and vice versa. It is an individual thing for we are all His workmanship. He be the cook. So which “church” might be important, and it might not be. The Lord definitely has more choices now on where to water His sheep. May the world recognize our good works not as C or P but as His followers.
All churches, even CC, has criteria for not communing with others.
The argument is that “only God knows” who is in the Church and who isn’t. Consequently, because it has no one visible organizational structure and no single visible head (as in Catholicism) the Church is “invisible”.
But in this case, the Church IS visible; it is the Spirit who is invisible.
When we say that Catholicism is the fullness of truth, we mean that there is no revealed truth that Catholicism has - not that we have ALL the answers. All truth found is Protestant churches, for example, is a subset of the truth of Catholicism. The only thing that Protestants have that Catholics don’t have is doctrines that the believe to be true but are actually false.
Why do ya’ll have to exaggerate everything?
Then how many are there? And please cite your source.
I quite agree with your diagram.
Ben-
The number of 30,000 (which I just heard is now closer to 35,000) is pretty accurate because every single “non-denominational” church is counted as it’s own denomination. They are a denomination of one community.
There is no such church as “The Protestant Church”. The term protestant comes from the 1529 2nd Diet at Speyer, where, briefly, the practice of religious activities which was approved at the first Diet of Speyer were being rescinded. The non-Catholics there offered a formal “protest”, hence the term protestant.