You Said What?

[Friend_Of_Rome]

I was wondering why the Wars of the Reformation were so violent and hate-filled. How could it be that two groups of Christians could go about wiping eachother out?

And also, how could these wars have stopped so completely in most parts of Europe? The various edicts from the renaissance etc. brought about peace, but how real was it?

How real is it?

Why do some Protestants utterly hate Catholics, and some Catholics utterly hate Protestants? Does not “Love your enemies” hold true for us?

 

[Steadfast]

Religious hatred is so powerful that it has its own Latin name:

*Odium Theologicum
*
Satan does it. He sows it in the hearts of Christians in an effort to ruin their souls and send them to hell.

 

[ALLFORHIM]

Hi,

I was just talking to my brother and was talking about the fact that when each of us discuss our differences(scriptual) it upsets the other persons way of believing.

We have to be so utterly right in what we believe that we dont want to see the other person’s point of view on the matter.

Each of us has a set of beliefs and when someone comes and tells us that we are not right in what we believe our beliefs then become shaken. Who wants to become shaken–so then what happens is that people(protestant/catholics) start vehemently defending their belief system without any possibility that the other side may have some things right.
Am I making sense?

 

[nichjake]

Hi,

I was just talking to my brother and was talking about the fact that when each of us discuss our differences(scriptual) it upsets the other persons way of believing.

We have to be so utterly right in what we believe that we dont want to see the other person’s point of view on the matter.

Each of us has a set of beliefs and when someone comes and tells us that we are not right in what we believe our beliefs then become shaken. Who wants to become shaken–so then what happens is that people(protestant/catholics) start vehemently defending their belief system without any possibility that the other side may have some things right.
Am I making sense?

Makes perfect sense to me

 

[First_of_9]

I was wondering why the Wars of the Reformation were so violent and hate-filled. How could it be that two groups of Christians could go about wiping eachother out?

And also, how could these wars have stopped so completely in most parts of Europe? The various edicts from the renaissance etc. brought about peace, but how real was it?

How real is it?

Why do some Protestants utterly hate Catholics, and some Catholics utterly hate Protestants? Does not “Love your enemies” hold true for us?

Because we’re human. Some of the most vicious wars have been civil wars and religious wars because each side has been persuded that it has a monoploy on “truth.” There is nothing more bloothirsty than a righteouse fanatic–see John Brown, Osama Bin Laden, Jim Jones and their followers

 

[Friend_Of_Rome]

Here’s a thought: When we block out Protestant ideas, we block out what started as a heresy. Though it is no longer a heresy, it does not co-incide with Church teaching. However, how does one gently tell people that they simply are “misinformed?” If you use common sense, they are typically the ones who act more on emotion, aren’t they? There are some who i have stumbled upon who treat me veryu kindly, necause they don’t see Catholicism as another sect of christianity-they see it as a seperate thing altogether like Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism etc.

Do we simply allow some falsity to enter our lives by embracing different denominations, or do we work to bring them back to Rome?