Is that the best you can do? An answer like that just shows how you don’t know why you are not in the church Jesus Christ established, or perhaps you have a more broader answer that you cannot say here. This question has nothing to do with an argument, but you will make it seem this way…typical…
Not at all. I simply don’t believe that going any further with you on this topic will be at all useful to me, to you, or to anyone else who might be reading along. You clearly have a problem with the concept of concatenation, otherwise you would have noticed in my historical sketch that I tied the UMC into the Religion which Jesus started and
through the institutional Church of which you are member. Like most other United Methodists, I view the UMC as being very much
a part of the greater-church catholic, which Jesus founded and of which Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are principle branches … with Anglicanism flowing from Roman Catholicism and Methodism flowing from Anglicanism. Essentially, we think of ourselves as Protestant Catholics. As such, the UMC owes a
huge debt of gratitude to our Roman Catholic heritage for our ecclesial, theological, and practical identity. Part of this inheritance, received through our Anglican roots, is the wearing of clericals and vestments. Wether or not you can agree with our understanding is beside the point; it would appear that you refuse to at least recognize that this is how we view ourselves … and that, because we view ourselves this way, your question is fairly meaningless to us.
That being said … I’ll offer this much of a response. I am not a Roman Catholic for several cultural, theological, and circumstantial reasons … and I know what those reasons are. My theological differences with the Roman Catholic Church are not great, but they do exist and I would have to reconcile myself regarding them. Similarly, I would have to accept certain of its social positions with which I currently differ. While do-able, I haven’t had substantial reasoning presented to me to convince me that I
need to do it. In other words, it’s not that I haven’t given great thought to transferring; I have. But, in order to do that, I would need to be convinced that it was
necessary both for my salvation and for the furthering of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I would also need to be assured that my calling to the ordained ministry could be welcomed and fulfilled within the RCC. And, quite frankly, thus far your caustic, combative, arrogant posturing isn’t helping your case any.