So what how many alleged numbers?
Belonging to the body of Christ has nothing to do with denominational affiliation.
And that number, aside from being fictitious as has been pointed out several times, does not mean different interpretations of Scripture.
The Catholic church is hardly in a position to point f9ingers anyway. Their doctrine has changed over the years and much of it is up to the individual interpretation anyway.
Catholics can take or leave large parts of their own teachings and they do as is evidenced on these threads.
Our unity is in Christ, not an organization. Nobody has to agree lock step with every single last point of doctrine of any church leadership or they get damned to hell, like the Catholic church loves to do to force compliance to itself.
The problem with Protestantism is those who have researched it, taught, and preached it for a lifetime have admitted it is false in all its forms. Having drive-by internet “theologians” cut and paste semi-literate stuff from notoriously anti—Catholic websites are of little use.
Famed English writer Hillaire Belloc put it best when he said that unlike other heresies “Protestantism spawned a cluster of heresies.” In short, they were like cancer cells that divides themselves.
2000 years of unbroken Church tradition dating back to the teachings and practice of the early disciples of Christ cannot be swept aside by puerile interpretations of scriptural text as if one were reading a book by Dr. Seuss on green eggs and ham.
These were written and translated from Aramaic, Hebrew to Greek, and underwent years of interpretation. One cannot make the serious claim that any Tom, Dick, and Harry can crack open the pages of the Bible and offer us “his” or “her” definitive integration of God’s Word. Christ gave an “authority” to Peter and his his successor to teach ONE truth. They wrote, believed and practiced “Eucharist” belief as the true Body and Blood of Chirst. This goes back to nearly 2000 years.
BEFORE, scripture the Catholic Church existed. This is what the theologians and scholars tells us. Even Luther himself acknowledged that weren’t it for the Catholic Church there would be no Bible.
This is emphatically not about belonging to ANY “denominational affiliation.”
You are either a Catholic or you are not.
This is about One Church with One truth. You can’t say it doesn’t matter if you affiliate with the vapid nonsense of Billy Graham or Joel Osteen or David Koresh or Jim Jones.
This is all about “authority” given to Peter and his successors to teach ONE truth. This is why there is a galaxy of minds from different constellations from atheists to Buddhists to Hindus to scientists from every denomination of Protestantism who have now come to embrace the Catholic Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Catholicism
All the rest of the stuff put out by Protestant writers and blogs makes for useless and irrelevant reading. Try doing some serious reading on the books by Benedict XVI that TIME called the “greatest living theologian” or Augustine or Aquinas. We have a litany of saints and martyrs.
Why would any sensible Catholic spend so much as a second on reading Protestant drivel that has been called so by leading Protestant theologians to Catholicism.
I agree, no one has to be in lock step on every doctrine.
I will say, however, that there is ONE doctrine EVERYONE needs to agree on totally and completely. That would be the plan of salvation. That is the one issue, where no one dare make any mistakes. It has eternal ramifications. I'll see you in the rapture. 😇