Wait a minute, what choice? There is no protestant church. The Church has stood 2000 years against heresy after heresy, heretic after heretic, and there is nothing new here. The Church recites the same creed and the same bible since the fourth century. The incarnation of God as the man Jesus, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, salvation through faith, the sacraments by the grace of God. Heaven, hell, purgatory. Veneration of Mary the Bless’d Mother of God and all the saints its all there, and hasn’t changed.
Variations of the Christian faith rise and decline with the spirit of the age but the one true faith be always be in this world as promised by our Lord until he returns.
But still, I don’t understand what “choice” has to do with it. This is the truth. I know I am free to avoid the truth, but that choice would mean eternal separation from all that is good, all that is love, all that is God. For me that is no choice. If one is truly ignorant of the one true faith, a native of a secluded jungle area as of yet uncharted or unevangelized, or perhaps a good buddist or muslim who has never heard the gospel preached and lives according to what knowledge he does possess. Or even a Catholic who falls into the easy-believism of modern day so-called protestantism (so-called on the account of the lack of the thing specified tp be protested against) a person can claim ignorance based on the fact of an honest mis-understanding of the Catholic faith, I understand salvation to be a real possibility for them through Gods great mercy. To those much is given much is expected to those the whom little is given little will be expected.
But this does not apply to me. I know this Church to be the one true faith and I will be held accountable. I do not have the luxury of “choice.”
But neither did countless martyrs who gave the lives to remain consistant with the gift of this eternal faith. It is currently very unlikely I will be called to leave this world for the faith but I will not be released from standing up for the truth as taught by the magistrium. I, we Catholics, are called to be signs of contradiction against abortion
catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=30665 and homosexuality
catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=30758 and so many other issues the spirit of this world hits us with. As Cardinal Giacomo Biffi states in that second article Christians are not “allowed, if we want to be faithful to the word of God, the pusillanimity of passing over it in silence out of concern of appearing ‘politically incorrect.’” No, there is no choice and I am free; it is worth giving my life
