“Why is it that they love each other so, and those without real personal understanding of Christ’s love for His own can be so quick to say something negative?”
I posted according to the Religion Moderator guidelines for this Thread Designation.
It is impossible to answer your question/statement and stay within the [perceived] guidelines of the designation.
I will note that salvation doesn’t come from loving Christ alone. Without faith in the total sufficiency of His sacrifice apart from our own efforts, there is no salvation.
There are true believers in every denomination and there are “tares” growing up in every denomination. I criticize no Catholic. God can handle that for those who are His. I do criticize teachings that are unBiblical wherever found - Catholic, Orthodox or Other.
Best.
As I said above, I don’t typically post “conversion” threads around here. I think that this is the first one I’ve posted in over 2 years. No matter how delicately they’re written, I find that posting them is utterly toxic. However, I believed that Stanley’s writing was such that perhaps this one could be a source of encouragement for Catholics. Keep in mind that, as I said in post#1, I was actually addressing it to my fellow Catholics. I was absolutely not posting it as an effort to denigrate anybody else.
Because I was posting it to my fellow Catholics, I logically should have made it a “caucus” thread. However, since Stanley mentioned his intermediate stops on the way to Catholicism, I was faced with a choice: either delete the references to those intermediate stops or not make it “caucus.” Had I snipped out the paragraphs where he talks about his intermediate stops on the way, I believe that far too much would have been lost out of his story; thus that was not an option.
I decided that it would be better to make it “Ecumenical” rather than “Open” because, while I never object to respectful discussion, even if that discussion is candid, even forthright, I really don’t see where ad hominems really do anything but to add to dissension. I believe that is the purpose of the “ecumenical” designator.
Just to re-emphasize, as I posted in #1, above, the specific group I posted this TO was my fellow Catholics.