Listen, if the Protestants want to go around throwing stones here on FR, they shouldn't go unchallenged. I agree there are larger threats here, but if they're willing to stop posting their anti-Catholic venom, I'll respond in kind and stop posting anti-Protestant polemics.
thank you for admitting that your posts are "Anti-Protestant polemics." I do hope you continue to post them. They should be more fun now that we know your motives.
Since you started this thread by bashing Mormons in order try to get the goats of the protestants, perhaps you could post an Anti-Mormon polemic once in a while as well. Those always make for interesting threads.
Carry on.
However, when a retread does it, it cannot end well. Bye.
But you started this, Joseph.
It is fine to post what you posted on a Protestant Catholic-bash thread (to the extent there are any).
Even then, you represent Rome, so you should be temperate.
You started this thread not just to teach, but to provoke and to bash.
There are times to bash. I just bashed Pope Leo X and Luther both, in another post, because they both ordered men's torture and death - murderous bigots, the lot of them.
But to START a thread to bash Protestants...well...that may not be against the rules, but it's certainly not the sort of thing that will bring Protestants and Catholics closer. And as Romans, we are obliged to do that. We have the Truth, entrusted to us. We have to persuade, FIRST by what we DO - our fruits, then by how we act, and then by what we say.
If there are Catholic bashers, go hammer and tongs after them, in THEIR lair, of THEIR making. But WE should not be starting wars.
Sola Scriptura is wrong?
Well, maybe.
The Scripture is the inspired Word of God, and Catholic teaching is all in there.
The problem with Sola Scriptura is that every man reads text a little differently, and the unity of Christendom for which Christ prayed is lost...
...or IS IT?
Would Christendom really have fallen apart? Would Luther have LEFT the Church? had the response of the papacy and the cardinals been to argue and persuade, instead of to command, to threaten, to sadistically torture and to commit mass murder? The acts of the Church made the Church evil, and made Luther right to separate from it.
Good doctrine is not enough if the fruit is poison.
That was then.
This is now.
Now, nobody in the West is torturing and killing anybody else over Christian doctrine. So, inflaming passions and dividing Christians over ancient arguments of very bad people is itself a bad thing.
Truth is, it doesn't matter. Sola Scriptura or Ave Maria does not matter. Do they love God with all their heart, soul and mind? Do they feed the hungry, care for the poor, care for the ill? Are they peacemakers? Then that is enough, at least from the perspective of a Catholic.
Moreover, nobody is ever convinced by the sort of attack you sent along.
As I said and will repeat: it is well to defend, point by point, Catholic doctrine using Scripture. It is well to prove the point.
It is not well to START the fight.
The fight accomplishes nothing but bitterness.
Catholics have to love Calvinists, and vice versa, even if each is sure the other is cracked in the head.
Do otherwise, and Jesus will crack both heads soon enough in Gehenna.