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To: RitaOK
One thing about it, there are upward of 30,000 choices for Christian non-Catholics to drop in on, when things don’t go their way....The Catholic Church, from which all other formations scattered, left, departed, hence divided and divided infinitum exponentially, on and on, always finding a home somewhere for their own opinion or their own interpretation of the faith. By and large Catholics won’t do that...

Catholics would like to think so, anyway. There's a dirty little secret that Catholics choose to ignore about that 30,000 number - the very same source that Catholics cite to claim "30,000 choices" also says that there are nearly 3,000 divisions within Catholicism.

Which, quite frankly, explains a lot of things.

28 posted on 11/26/2012 8:12:02 PM PST by Alex Murphy ("If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all" - Isaiah 7:9)
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To: Alex Murphy

I can agree with the number of divisions among Catholic opinion. Like noses, we each have one. But though division among Catholics are lamentable they generally will not leave behind the Sacrament of Holy Orders (the priesthood) who brings to them daily, Jesus in the Eucharistic, to join another Christian expression who lack both, or either. That was more my point, and I thought maybe the article could not measure Catholic dis-satisfactions the same way as protestants. In other words Catholics may leave the Church, due to some dis-satisfaction, but not the faith, nor very often to become Protestant.


30 posted on 11/26/2012 8:43:14 PM PST by RitaOK ( VIVA CHRISTO REY / Public education is the farm team for more Marxists coming.)
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To: Alex Murphy; RitaOK
I think we get into the thickets of competing definitions here.

For instance, Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia lists every Catholic diocese as a separate denomination (the Catholic Church worldwide has 2,700+ dioceses) and likewise counts the sui iuris Churches as separate denominations (Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean, Coptic, etc.)

Catholics will find this wrong-headed, since all these dioceses, and all these sui iuris churches, have the same faith and morals, the same Apostolic Succession, the samew Liturgy (although different rites), the same Sacraments, and are in communion with the Pope, the successor of Peter: which is to say, they are "one" ("holy," "Catholic," and "apostolic") Church.

This is not just special pleading for the Catholics, as the same problem applies to non-Catholic Christians. All the many non-denoms and Bible Fellowships and so forth with the same faith & morals get listed as separate denominations, independent Baptists, Congregational churches in loose federations, etc.

And of course different church groups have different polities, different ecclesiasical forms of government, which makes it all very hard to compare and, especially, to compute.

31 posted on 11/27/2012 12:43:39 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o (May the Lord bless you, may the Lord keep you, May He turn to you His countenance and give you peace)
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