Radio Replies Volume One: Protestantism Erroneous

icatholicism.net ^ | 1938 | Fathers Rumble & Carty

[GonzoII]

Protestantism Erroneous

244. Do you say that the Protestant faith is false?

There is no such thing as the Protestant faith. There are hundreds of varieties of Protestantism, each variety containing some true things mixed up with its own particular errors.   As religious systems I say that all Protestant sects are wrong.


245.    How does Protestantism in general disobey Christ?

In general it says that Scripture is a sufficient guide to salvation, although Scripture says that it is not; it denies the authority of the Church established by Christ; it has no sacrifice of the Mass; it does not believe in confession; it denies Christian teaching on marriage; it rejects Purgatory, and very often its advocates refuse to believe in Hell. But I could go on almost forever. Meantime, if you give me any doctrine taught by one Protestant Church, I will produce another Protestant Church which denies it, save perhaps the one doctrine that there is a God of some sort.


246.    Would you call Protestants heathens?

Christ said, "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen." Matt. XVIII, 17. He referred, of course, to a deliberate and willful refusal of a known obligation. If a man knows that the Catholic Church is the true Church, yet refuses to obey it, he will certainly be as the heathen before God. But Protestants who are ignorant of the truth of the Catholic claims, and who believe in Christ, trying to serve Him as best they can, would not be regarded as heathens. An exception is made in their case because of their lack of knowledge and because of their good dispositions.


247.    Protestantism is not a protest against Christ, but against the Roman Church.

Christ promised that His Church would not fail. The Protestant Reformers said that it did fail. Instead of protesting merely against the bad lives of some Catholics, and even of some Priests, they went too far, and protested against the Church as such, asserting that Christ had failed to keep His promise concerning it. This was a protest against Christ, who had promised to be with His Church till the end of the world. Protest as much as you like against individual abuses in the Church, but no man has the right to set up a new Church.


248.    But a re-formed Church is not a new Church.

Protestantism was not a true reformation of the Church. The identity of the Church is indissolubly linked with a continuous identity of doctrine, worship, and discipline. The so-called Reformation involved the abolition of essential doctrines, worship, and discipline, substituting completely different and humanly invented alternatives.


249.    The Protestant Churches have as much right to say they have the truth as the Churches of the Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, etc., in early times.

You are supposing that the Protestant Churches have the same doctrine, worship, and discipline as those early Churches. But this is an unwarranted supposition. Those early branch foundations of the one true Church had the true doctrine, and were in communion with St. Peter, Bishop of Rome, who addressed his first Epistle to the Galatians and several other Churches. Protestant Churches do not hold the same doctrine as those early Churches, nor do they acknowledge the same obedience. Also, in all the countries where Protestant Churches exist, there exists also the Catholic Church which corresponds exactly with the Churches of the Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, etc.


250.    According to you, Christ was a Catholic. All followers of Christ, therefore, belong to the Catholic Church.

Christ, as the Founder of the Catholic Church, was of course a Catholic. But your conclusion does not follow. Many profess to believe in Christ, but do not accept the whole of His teaching. They are mistaken. Certainly the Anglican does not believe in the correct doctrines of Christ if the Baptist does. The Catholic Church alone teaches the complete doctrine of Christ, and the only way to become a Catholic is to submit to her teaching authority and disciplinary directions.


251.    Since Christ forbade divisions in the Church, you must admit that every Christian Church is a branch of the true Church. The Protestant Churches are but offshoots from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Protestant sects constitute a breakaway from the Catholic Church. That is their condemnation, for there could never have been a valid reason for leaving the Church established and guaranteed by Christ. In any case, branches of the Church must be living branches still retaining their union with the parent tree. The Catholic Church as established in England, or in America, or in Australia, fits in with the idea of living branches. But at best, the Protestant sects are branches sawn off, and without the true life of the tree. Protestant Churches are divisions from the Church, not co-ordinated parts within the Church, and making up one complete body.

252.    You have no right to deny our claims.   Christ meant Protestantism to be, or it would not exist,

On the same reasoning you would argue that because sin exists Christ meant it to be! Christ predicted that heresies would arise, but distinctly forbade men to abandon the Church and originate them.


253.    God sends all for our good, and it is our fault if we do not make good use of Protestantism.

Not everything is sent by God. He permits some things which the perverse will of men causes, and He permitted the evil of heresy. However, He never permits any evil without drawing some good from it. There are many good Protestants despite the sin of those who began Protestantism. And it is undeniable that Protestantism occasioned the reform of many abuses among the members of the Catholic Church.


254.    What right has the Catholic Church to arrogate to herself powers given by Christ, rather than any other body of believers?

None whatever. No body of believers has any right to arrogate to itself any powers at all in this matter, just as no ordinary citizen has the right to enter a court and declare himself to be judge. Yet a lawfully appointed judge has the right to act in virtue of his commission. The Catholic Church takes nothing upon herself, but she does endeavor to fulfill the commission given her by Christ. Historically she alone can possibly inherit the jurisdiction given by Christ to the Apostles, and handed down through tiie ages. All other churches exist because men arrogated to themselves the right to coin new doctrines and set up churches of their own.
 

255.    We have the Creeds, Saints' Days, Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion.   These things guarantee that we are true Christians.

Some Protestants have those things, at least theoretically. Others have some of them. Others have none of them. But in any case they would not prove Protestants to be true Christians. At most they prove that some Protestants are attempting to do some Christian things. But a true Christian accepts the complete teaching of Christ, and does all that He commands. And all is accepted on the authority of Christ, not on the authority of one's own human judgment. A self-made religion built upon a personally approved selection from the teaching of Christ does not give us the Christian religion.


256.    Anyway, there are Protestants as good as Catholics, and the Protestant Church is as good as the Catholic Church.

The idea that there are Protestants as good as Catholics has no bearing on the question. There are very good and sincere Mahometans, but that does not make Mahometanism true. And again, there is not a Protestant Church, there are dozens of different brands of Protestantism. Tell me which brand of Protestantism is as good as the Catholic Church, and I shall tell you when it started and who started it. Christ certainly did not begin it.


257.    Protestants at least are allowed to think for themselves.

And when they do they end in chaos, or with no religion at all! However, the chief characteristic of the majority of Protestants is absence of thinking on matters of religion.

258.    If Protestantism continues because Protestants do not think, is not the same true of Catholicism?

No. There is no really rational foundation for Protestantism, and if Protestants did reflect soundly upon the subject they would discover this. But there is a rational foundation for Catholicism. All Catholics at least know that their Church would not be so vast and united, not to speak of its mere existence, after centuries of misrepresentation, hatred, and attack, were it not for the protection of God. And if they give deeper thought to the matter they find many other solid reasons for their conviction. Impartial study leads a man out of Protestantism. It never leads a man out of Catholicism.


259.    Just the opposite is true. Catholics remain Catholics because they have never developed any reasoning powers on the subject of religion.

You show complete ignorance of Catholic theological works, written by the cleverest men of the centuries. St. Thomas Aquinas had the Catholic Faith very deeply, yet wrote probably the greatest masterpiece of religious thinking the world has ever seen.


260.    You are most ungrateful, for your own change from Protestantism to Catholicism was due to the very freedom of thinking given you by Protestantism.

You are in a quandary. Catholics remain Catholics because they do not think, yet thinking led me to become a Catholic! However, Catholics are free to think as much as they like about religion, and the more the better. The Catholic Church merely keeps them from thinking wrongly. Protestants are free to think whatever they like, apparently, with no safeguard against error at all.
 

261.   If all that you say is true, why is the British Empire Protestant?

Because the ancestors of its present members rejected and left the Catholic Church, setting up Churches of their own. But must the religion of the British Empire be the true religion? Is that the infallible test? If Anglicanism is true because it is British, we may as well add, "and because it is not French, or Spanish, or Italian, or German, or Austrian, etc." In other words, because it is not the religion for all nations established by Christ.


262.    But surely the majority of the millions of Protestants would realise their mistake, if indeed they are mistaken. They would on any other important subject.

It is not certain that men would realize their mistakes on other subjects. In political and national affairs men differ hopelessly, and absurd political policies seem ever to find followers. Yet, even granted that men would realize their mistakes in other matters, they would not therefore realize the falsity of Protestantism. In the first place, religion is very different from other matters. It is not here a question of a merely intellectual admission. The acceptance of Catholicism is a complex matter demanding adherence of mind, heart, and will, under the influence of God's grace. The absence of one or other necessary condition can mean a dimming of one's powers of comprehension. And until a man sees the truth of Catholicism, he is liable to rest more or less content with the religion he has. Again, Protestant prejudice is a real, if unrealized, force in those educated under the influence of Protestantism, a force blinding people to the defects of Protestantism, and to the merits of Catholicism. I remember a man who went through many forms of Protestantism, ending in Agnosticism, and who replied to my question as to whether he had ever studied Catholicism, "No. But Catholicism can't be right!" Protestantism had ceased to grip him positively, yet still left the negative poison in his system, "Rome must be wrong—I would not even consider it." Finally, and especially with Englishmen, the Protestant religion has been so blended with nationalism that it has become a matter of sentiment and patriotism. Its adherents go far more by feeling and emotion than by reason and true faith. Indeed it has been said strongly, yet not without a degree of truth, that when an Englishman enters his Church, he leaves his brains on the doormat. In other words, the average Protestant gives little real thought to his religious position at all.


263.    That Protestantism commends itself more to men is evident from the fact that it is not attacked as is Catholicism.

The world is not afraid of Protestantism, which has always been ready to water down Christian obligations to suit it. But instinctively the world hates and fears the Catholic Church, which will make no compromise, but insists upon the fullness of Christian doctrine, comfortable or uncomfortable. She insists upon the intellectual obedience of faith; disciplinary submission of the will; the impossibility of divorce and re-marriage; the iniquity of birth-control by evil means; the inadequacy of a merely secular education. Her repetition of Christ's axiom, "Deny thyself; take up thy cross; and follow Me," interferes too much with the comfort of men. If Christianity demanded merely the admission of a few religious doctrines, men would not object to it. But since it imposes moral obligations difficult for human nature, I am not surprised that men refuse it in its original and austere form when they are offered a less exacting substitute with the assurance that it is just as good.


264.    Are not the Protestant Churches at least working for reunion?

Not for reunion with the Catholic Church. Meantime, if they were to unite among themselves, the union would not last a generation.   As long as men refuse to submit to the Catholic Church, they will insist upon the right to think for themselves and build up systems accordingly. If Protestantism grants the right of private judgment, it may secure the cry, "Good. I think Catholicism wrong." But it must be prepared to hear the words, "And I think Protestantism wrong also." Already-established Protestantism can say nothing, and the man sets up for himself. So it will go on. The Catholic Church alone can preserve true unity. Every year finds Protestantism splitting up into still further sects, and in the end it will fall, as must every house divided against itself.

Copyright © 2005-2006 iCatholicism.net. All Rights Reserved.

[GonzoII]

"You gotta love Salza - concise, accurate and to the point. I enjoyed The Biblical Basis for the Eucharist."

He sure makes things easy.

[SoConPubbie]

1Tm:3:15: "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth., "

Once again, the Church of God is not an organization of men, regulated, organized, and managed by men. The Church of God are those whose hearts and lives have been redeemed by the Blood of Christ.

[SoConPubbie]

Nothing is personal, we are discussing truths.

I think most rational reasoning men and women would disagree with you on that.

The scripture support for the positions stated by the author are weak or non-existant or taken out of context.

Furthermore, the reliance on the traditions of men as the edicts of God without any clear scriptural support are the main contention of Protestants.

The deification of Mary

The praying to Mary as if she had any power with Jesus above any other redemeed sinner

The deification of Saints and prayers to the them when Jesus should be the sole receiver of our prayers and the sole receiver of our faith.

Purgatory, for which there is no clear, in context support for.

The ability to pray somebody out of purgatory for which ther is no scripture support.

The lack of power and victory over sin in Catholic Teaching and the need to come regularly and confess your sins to a Priest when Christ died once and for all for your sins, not only to forgive you but to change your very heart and give you power over the sin in your life.

It is as if the Catholic church backslid into the Old Testament ceremonial continual sacrificial law which Christ came to deliver not only the Jews, but all of Mankind from.

It would seem that when Paul confronted Peter and the other apostles for dissassembling with the Jews after Jesus had gone back to Heaven that instead of heading Paul's advice, some of those people decided that the practices and traditions of men were more important than the freedom from Sin that came from relying solely on the Blood of Christ. It would appear that these same group of people became the Catholic Church.

Christ came to free men from unnecessary and non-production reliance on the traditions of fallible men.

The Catholic Church has retained all of the form of Godliness, without the Power. The Catholic Church has retained a reliance on all of the traditions of the church without the SOLE reliance on a Christ who died for them on Calvary. As a result, much like the Jews and the heathens (as Paul explained in his books) God has removed his blessing from the Catholic Church and given it to whomsoever will obey his word and rely solely on the merits of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary for their salvation.

[Terabitten]

Here we go again. More Christians using the whole armor of God to attack each other.

[nightwalker]

I’m not sure where the true church, founded by Christ and the desciples exists today. One thing is clear to me, it is not located in the vatican.

[narses]

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[MHGinTN]

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[annalex]

Very good catechisis, thanks for posting.

[GonzoII]

I have complied.

[GonzoII]

"I’m not sure where the true church, founded by Christ and the desciples exists today. One thing is clear to me, it is not located in the vatican."

What is the History of Your Church?

Church	Year Established	Founder	Where Established
Catholic	33	Jesus Christ	Jerusalem
Orthodox	1054	Schismatic Catholic Bishops	Constantinople
Lutheran	1517	Martin Luther	Germany
Anabaptist	1521	Nicholas Storch & Thomas Munzer	Germany
Anglican	1534	Henry VIII	England
Mennonites	1536	Menno Simons	Switzerland
Calvinist	1555	John Calvin	Switzerland
Presbyterian	1560	John Knox	Scotland
Congregational	1582	Robert Brown	Holland
Baptist	1609	John Smyth	Amsterdam
Dutch Reformed	1628	Michaelis Jones	New York
Congregationalist	1648	Pilgrims and Puritans	Massachusetts
Quakers	1649	George Fox	England
Amish	1693	Jacob Amman	France
Freemasons	1717	Masons from four lodges	London
Methodist	1739	John & Charles Wesley	England
Unitarian	1774	Theophilus Lindey	London
Methodist Episcopal	1784	60 Preachers	Baltimore, MD
Episcopalian	1789	Samuel Seabury	American Colonies
United Brethren	1800	Philip Otterbein & Martin Boehn	Maryland
Disciples of Christ	1827	Thomas & Alexander Campbell	Kentucky
Mormon	1830	Joseph Smith	New York
Methodist Protestant	1830	Methodist	United States
Church of Christ	1836	Warren Stone & Alexander Campbell	Kentucky
Seventh Day Adventist	1844	Ellen White	Washington, NH
Christadelphian (Brethren of Christ	1844	John Thomas	Richmond, VA
Salvation Army	1865	William Booth	London
Holiness	1867	Methodist	United States
Jehovah's Witnesses	1874	Charles Taze Russell	Pennsylvania
Christian Science	1879	Mary Baker Eddy	Boston
Church of God in Christ	1895	Various churches of God	Arkansas
Church of Nazarene	c. 1850-1900	Various religious bodies	Pilot Point, TX
Pentecstal	1901	Charles F. Parkham	Topeka, KS
Aglipayan	1902	Gregorio Aglipay	Philippines
Assemblies of God	1914	Pentecostalism	Hot Springs, AZ
Iglesia ni Christo	1914	Felix Manalo	Philippines
Four-square Gospel	1917	Aimee Semple McPherson	Los Angeles, CA
United Church of Christ	1961	Reformed and Congregationalist	Philadelphia, PA
Calvary Chapel	1965	Chuck Smith	Costa Mesa, CA
United Methodist	1968	Methodist and United Brethren	Dallas, TX
Born-again	c. 1970s	Various religious bodies	United States
Harvest Christian	1972	Greg Laurie	Riverside, CA
Saddleback	1982	Rick Warren	California
Non-denominational	c. 1990s	various	United States

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Copyright 2001 - 2004 © by John Salza. All Rights Reserved.
johnsalza@scripturecatholic.com

[GonzoII]

My pleasure.

[bdeaner]

Where is mass described in the scriptures?

SEE HERE FOR SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES TO THE MASS

Also, the entire Book of Revelations is a description of the Heavenly Liturgy which is mirrored by the Catholic Mass, which has the same liturgical structure. See Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper.