Understanding The Protestant /Catholic Divide

NONE in hell can EVER get out of there!

 

With God anything is possible.

 

None in Hell ever escape, as their destiny is forever sealed!

 

Who is more powerful? God or that Seal?

 

God decreed that none in hell shall ever escape there, as no second chances after death!

 

Who is more powerful? God or that Seal?

 

Catechism of the Catholic Church
1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47
1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.

 

ustin

 

I have a couple of questions. Honestly, parts of the RCC catechism above don't look all that bad. But then I looked it up and it's really recent. Is the RCC we're seeing above a recent development they can use as an argument that "they're not that different"? I know in my lifetime they have started small group bible studies and things that seem to mimic Protestant church methods.

Also, I'm not really into this but occasionally I will read some of the discussions that occur with Catholic apologists and Protestants who are open to getting back together. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I have never yet seen the Catholic do either of these:
1.. Be willing to repudiate the Council of Trent curses that they put on Protestant theology.
2. Be willing to discuss eliminating the idea of a Pope and modifying the idea that salvation is dispensed by a priesthood.

 

1: Well condemnation of a theology isn’t that big of a deal, Protestants do that at least ten times before breakfast. The difference is that Protestantism rejected the idea of infallibility, so their condemnations carry no weight.
Only an infallible Authority can declare and condemn a heresy, otherwise it’s just another opinion among many.

2: Catholics only have one Pope to define theology, Protestants have millions of Popes that perform the same role.

Protestantism rejected the ministry of reconciliation and told people go directly to God. But scripture says differently.
The priesthood is the ministry of reconciliation, they are Christ’s ambassadors.

“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. ” Cor 5

This is one of the great losses of Protestantism, losing the ministry of reconciliation, one of ancient Sacramental pillars of Christianity.

Catholics use the ministry of reconciliation all the time, but it’s found nowhere in Protestantism.

 

Didn't mean to offend you Cathode but you just illustrated the divide better than I could have. The idea of infallibility came much later by the way and that's the problem with the Roman Catholic Church. They keep changing but because they know their authority all depends on the notion of succession they can't fix anything. It's like one of those old copiers where if you make a copy of a copy of a copy eventually it's a mess. And Protestants don't have popes, that's one of the big differences. And giving us a ministry of reconciliation does not mean a priesthood as Roman Catholics do it. Now I don't intend to argue theology on this thread with you. But you illustrate perfectly why there is a divide. I started out by saying I thought some of the RCC someone listed above didn't look all that bad. I have Kempis "The Imitation of Christ" and I value it. I read some of then Cardinal Ratzinger's work on the trinity and thought it was excellent. But for you, like all Roman Catholics, submission to your system is imperative. What Protestant literature have you bothered to look into?

 

Well submission to the truth is no submission at all, truth only adds to a man it takes nothing away.

One of my problems with Protestantism is its rejection of infallibility, without it they can’t teach the truth of scripture.
If one Protestant church claimed to teach an infallible interpretation of Scripture I would look into it. But infallibility was roundly rejected by Protestantism from the beginning, so none claim to teach the truth of scripture inerrantly.

And with all the conflicting interpretations and doctrines in Protestantism, it’s impossible to find the truth in all that, and none claim to be any better than human opinion.

I see a church guided in “all truth “ in scripture, so that church would be infallible or at least claim infallibility.
So by a process of elimination Protestant Churches could be eliminated right off the bat, I mean they disagree with each other on scriptures meaning from the same scriptures, which is a red flag right there.

Truth is really, really important to Catholics, that is why the serious need for infallible interpretation of scripture, not the conflicted private interpretations Catholics see in Protestantism, we find that very frightening.

Private interpretations of scripture are totally banned in Catholicism, because you can only twist scripture to your destruction if you privately interpret it.
So that’s the real worry. We know the Bible is the inerrant, Infallible Word of God, but if it isn’t interpreted infallibly, then people aren’t believing it or following it. In fact it could lead to people’s destruction.

I’ve never met a Protestant who was worried that his fallible interpretations of scripture could lead to his destruction, without infallibility, some or all of his interpretations of scripture could be in error.

I haven’t read as much Protestant literature as I should I admit, but I believe we could all benefit in greater understanding of the others positions on things if we did more reading.
There are giants of the spiritual life on both sides, Kempis being one, Therese of Lisieux “ The story of a soul “ in more modern times, Gertrude the Great, John Wimber.

 

How did you arrive at this incredible view of Trent mate?

 

Cathode. I have enough Catholic friends that I seriously hope there is enough truth in the system that people might be saved. More than a few Protestant theologians and pastors think the same thing. I have read enough Calvinist literature to know that theology does indeed develop and become more refined over time. I think the constantly splitting and changing of Protestant denominations is a testimony our tendency for problems as humans. I should point out that Catholicism did the same thing. They did not start out with a pope, he did not become "infallible" until much later, they split with the Eastern church and mutually excommunicated each other, they said salvation was only found in their church then later said other groups could be viewed as "lesser brothers". And more recently, your current pope is all over the place politically and doctrinally and you can read about plenty of disagreement among Catholics about what is going on. We are all human and I think that a system where we only view scripture as infallible and are willing to go and challenge the clergy in power when error is found is far better than pretending that a man is infallible and then having to deal with that. With Roman Catholicism you have to depend on a succession of infallible leaders which history proves to be false and so you keep getting worse and worse in doctrine and church practice. Now it looks to me from other threads that go in this direction this will get shut down quick but at least it illustrates the OP's point that the divide is huge and and will never be closed.

 

Well from an outsiders perspective it doesn’t look like Protestantism is getting more refined, it looks like it’s getting more fractured and divided.
What Protestantism needs is a Pope to be the final arbiter of Scriptures interpretation to settle all the conflicted interpretations and doctrines.

There seems to be an incredible amount of fear of having these kinds discussions, I don’t know.