Does anyone really believe Catholics are Christians?

Now, that's something I've always wondered about. The RCC told us the parts we don't like (the heresies), so we consider those reports unreliable. But didn't the RCC tell us the parts we do like, i.e., the baptistic elements in these persecuted groups? Why do we consider those reports reliable?

 

Some of you need to actually read the Cathechism of the Catholic Church and then talk to some Catholics who devoutly practice their faith and study their Bibles.

There are many regenerate Christians in the Catholic Church. How do I know. By the fruit manifested in their lives based on the confession that Jesus is Lord.

 

The rediculous nature of the question posed in this thread is revealed in the following question.

Does anyone really believe Fundamental Baptists are Christians?

 

Soulman, it would seriously help the coherence of your post if you would learn to use the quote feature.

I agree. But where does it say that adding works nullifies the faith?

Some truth, many lies. Until Constantine, the Church was often underground due to various persecutions from different emperors. Thus, there wasn't a whole lot of unity between the different parts of the empire. Constantine allowed the churches to come out of hiding and meet together to become unified. To say he was the first Pope is an utter lie. The "Pope" is really simply the Bishop of Rome. The office eventually became the Papacy, merely because it was the most influential Bishop in the Church.

The Catholic Church were the heirs of the original early Church. They didn't protest against anyone, they simply came out into the open.

Do you honestly believe this? Wow. Sorry to break it to you, but Baptists are heirs of the Reformation, just like the Mennonites, Lutherans, Methodists, ect.

They were both. Now I will freely admit that I have slightly overstated the case, sure there were Christians outside the RCC. However they was not some unified Church that survived through the first 13 centuries of Christianity.

Protestants have killed many Catholics as well. Yes, the Catholic church killed many it considered heretical, but it wasn't doing some mass extermination of the true Christians like you seem to suggest.

I asked for reputable source.

I am right, and it does pertain to us as we are Protestants. If you would do some honest research you would know that.

So who was it? Please don't regurgitate a list of heretics and Catholic sects, we've been through that.

Hmmm, yes, after reading some of this I see your point. I especially am horrified by this:
"God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life."

Seriously, I'm missing the anti-christ part, would you mind quoting it for me?

Let's see specific doctrine. Anyone can throw out random accusations without backing them up.

 

To be fair, I should note that there were non-Catholic Churches in existence during the time period between the early Fathers and Reformation. However, I didn't include them in this argument because I have assumed they would be unacceptable to such hardcore Baptists as represent the opposite view. For example, the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

mandeans are not the same as the christians who at first followed John,the article you quoted says they were MISNAMED Christian of St John not that they acutally were. the trail of blood by Carroll will clear this up.

 

Indeed.
The term Christians is a misapplied when it comes to the Mandeans. That's a label stuck on them by Portuguese monks in the 16th century.
They are however followers of John the Baptist.
At least that's how they perceive themselves.

The Trail of Blood is a work of pseudo-scholarship motivated by misplaced envy.

 

well i guess trail, won't

 

For starters There is the infamous false cardinal Hosius quote in 'The Trail of Blood' .
Or Carroll's list of 10 fundamental doctrines and the fact that most if not all groups listed as true Christian churches in 'The Trail of Blood' don't follow all of them.

 

Soulman i hate to have my mind changed but after going over the bibligraphy of the trail of blood, it has lot of errors.

but mioque i didn't find anything to refute long (early) history for ana-baptists (which, before i read the trail of blood, is where i was told the modern baptist doctrine came from. would like any info you might have.....

thankyou and God Bless

 

some catholic "truth" from http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/ccc_cont.html


958 Communion with the dead. "In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and 'because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins' she offers her suffrages for them."[498] Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.


1238 The baptismal water is consecrated by a prayer of epiclesis (either at this moment or at the Easter Vigil). The Church asks God that through his Son the power of the Holy Spirit may be sent upon the water, so that those who will be baptized in it may be "born of water and the Spirit."[40]


1250 Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.[50] The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.[51]


1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.[59] He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them.[60] Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.[61] The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are "reborn of water and the Spirit." God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.


1263 By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.[65] In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam's sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.

1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it RE-PRESENTS(makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:
[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.[187]


here's just a few thing that don't add up.

thankyou and God Bless

 

yeshua4me2
The 4 links below take maybe 15 minutes to read combined and give a good overview of Ana-Baptist history complete with different theories of it.
http://cat.xula.edu/tpr/timelines/radical/
http://www.fresno.edu/affiliation/hc/simons.htm
http://www.eldrbarry.net/heidel/anabrsc.htm
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Anabaptist

 

thank you

 

No problem.

 

There is no doubt that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Communions hold to many false teachings among these that Tradition and the Teaching Magisterium trump Scripture. However, if one believes in election we must believe that there are true believers within these communions in spite of their false teachings. Also if one gets to know some of these people personally I believe they may change their mind about their salvation.

It is worth noting that these communions did not develop their false doctrines overnight. Error creeps into the churches slowly, eventually developing into full blown heresy. This can be seen in some Southern Baptist Churches which have recognized homosexual marriage, which support abortion, which have ordained women as preachers, which have denied the inerrancy of Scripture, which have endorsed evolution, which accept as members those who have not been Baptized, and so on.

Perhaps one of the worst errors in the Southern Baptist churches is the acceptance of the music of the world with the excuse that it draws young people. Also in some churches the worship service has become a side show, all with the excuse that it brings people into the church.