The Gospel of Matthew is pure
Jewish Christianity and urges obedience to the Jewish Law that Paul falsely
claimed was only temporary. It opposes the Jews (Matthew 21:33-43) because
it teaches what it would understand as true Judaism.
There is no evidence that St
Paul got full acceptance from the apostles in Jerusalem and even the New
Testament says there was disagreement.
So there is no evidence that they were one Church. Paul spoke of schisms in Corinth.
The faction that said it was for Kephas could
have been the true Church for all we know.
At the time of St Justin Martyr about 160 AD, the Church was divided
between those who held that if a Christian kept the Law of Moses he was damned
and if he didn’t he was fine (page 23, The Early Church).
Origen about 250 AD wrote that the
Jewish Christians comprised about 150,000 members and was seemingly referring to
new converts only (page 37, Jesus Hypotheses). The Jewish Christians were
the religion the apostles founded. They claimed to have been established
by the apostles with the help of Jesus' family who like Jesus were all Jews.
Roman Catholicism is not the true Church because it is not Jewish Christianity.
Catholic scholar Raymond E Brown in Chapter 7 of his book, Biblical
Exegesis and Church Doctrine, traced at least six different communities
with different beliefs in the early Church.
The early Church, if it was one Church at all, was just an
umbrella. It was not a real Church but a
federation of different and contradictory and sometimes sectarian Churches just
like the Anglican Communion today.
Anyway the early Church being one is not important. What is important is did it preserve Christ’s
teaching intact? The Church has to err
to some extent.
How
unity can be broken
The unity of the Church, she says, can be broken by wilfully
contradicting her required teaching or by simply considering oneself to be
one’s own Church by breaking away from her.
Top of the Document
A real Church cannot extend membership to doubters
Everybody, according to Catholicism, has their doubts. But doubting your religion puts you out of
it. To doubt one doctrine is to doubt
the rest for all doctrines come from the same source. For example, if the source is the Bible then
to question one biblical doctrine is to hold that none of the others can be
trusted. This is all true and any
religions that dispute it are lying for it is undeniable. The Catholic Church is not a church for its
members are not in unity of faith and each one is her or his own Church. Secret doubters are taken for true members so
how could the Church be united?
No unity in religion that admits heretics
Many religions regard at least some known heretics as true members. The Catholic Church is no exception. It accepts Protestants who are sincere as
united with the Church. It calls them
the separated brethren. A person who
disagrees on an essential matter with their religion cannot be a true member of
it no matter what it says. When it is
belief that makes a Church a Church you cannot belong to your Church anymore
once you question or disbelieve anything it says for then you automatically
question anything else it says. The
religion that regards you as being in communion with it is not a unity for it
has fake union with heretics. If the
Catholic Church sincerely accepts heretics as true members it ceases to be the
true Church for it stops being a Church.
If it insincerely accepts them it is not in true unity with them but it
loses its unity for another reason. The
Church cannot be one if it practices mortal sin. More of this later.
When the Church sticks the Catholic badge on people and is oblivious of
their heretical sympathies and considers them to be true brethren it is
impossible for her to be really one Church.
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What about inadvertent heretics?
Nearly all Catholics believe things they don’t know are heretical. This is undeniable. If you claimed to be a believer and had no
doubts but did not know all Catholic doctrine you could not really
believe. You are only guessing that it
is plausible. You cannot really be a
member of a Church you don’t believe in.
There is no Church.
Suppose a faction separated from the Catholic Church over
something minor compared to the other Catholic doctrines, namely that the pope
should be obeyed to the letter even in non-infallible teaching. They would be claiming to be the true
Catholic Church. Any Roman Catholic who
did not know he was supposed to believe that the pope was to be obeyed all the
time and who did not know of this Church could hardly be said to be in
communion with the pope for it is the other Church he would incline
towards.
Can’t belong to a religion you are ignorant of
You can’t be a Catholic if you know little about Catholic teaching. You cannot sincerely or properly want to
belong to a religion then because it has the truth for you don’t know. Wanting to belong to the Church for another
reason is just wanting to please yourself, not to be a Catholic. The Catholic Church recognises people in this
situation as true Catholics so it has no right to be called a Church.
Top of the Document
Desire not enough for membership
If you can’t believe your Catholic Church and want to believe or be
Catholic does that mean you are a Catholic?
But you should be wanting to find the truth and believe it. You should not be wanting to believe in
Catholicism just because it is Catholicism.
Wanting to be a Catholic can’t make you a Catholic for it is sinful and
if God is truth then to be anti-truth is to be anti-God. If wanting to be a Catholic were enough to
make you a Catholic then what are you if you want to be a Mormon as well? If belief determines membership then that
means the desire for truth is the basic drive behind it and a part of it therefore
without it there is no true faith.
When I expressed my unbelief to my spiritual father as a seminarian he
asked me if I wanted to be a Catholic. I
lied, replying in the affirmative and then he informed me that this meant I was
a Catholic. This is a common response to
such an answer but it is a trick. How
can you want to be a Catholic when you don’t even think that the cult is
true? You only imagine you want things
you don’t understand. It is like people
saying they want the right religion and somebody telling them this makes them
Muslims for Islam is the true religion.
You can’t want to be so you are not.
That stops any Catholic from teaching that since the Catholic Church
feels it wants to be one that it is one.
No unity for nobody knows who is expelled
The Catholic Church likes to teach that Jesus gave her the power to admit
members and to excommunicate, put people out of the Church, in Matthew
18:18. Her excommunications prove that
she is a false religion or religions to be more exact.
Rome excommunicates individuals and groups. There is excommunication which is pronounced
by the bishop in a decree and then there is automatic excommunication which
happens even if nobody but the excommunicated person knows about it. It is just committing a sin so bad, like
heresy or sacrilege or blasphemy, that it puts you out of the Church.
The Catholic never knows when whoever claims to be a Catholic is really a
Catholic. They might be hiding some
heresy or not want to be part of the Church. This proves that Catholic unity is
superficial.
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Unjust excommunications destroy visible unity
If an excommunication is unjust then the expulsion from Church membership
is null and void and in the eyes of the Lord the victims are still members of
the true Church. The Church is still
visibly torn apart and no longer a Church - and it is those who have taken out
their bell, book and candle who have divided themselves from them - so it is
nonsense to say that she is one.
Rome has acted as if her excommunicating is valid
even when she was wrong to have decreed it.
The pope excommunicated the Eastern Church over a misunderstanding in
1054. That was the end of the Catholic
Church and the beginning of the Catholic Churches. The decree wasn’t abolished until the sixties
by Paul VI which solves nothing.
All excommunications are unjust when the excommunicated think they are
right.
If anybody knowingly or unknowingly excommunicates unjustly then he is a
schismatic. He is breaking away from a
member of the Church so he is breaking away from the Church himself for you
can’t divorce yourself from a part of the Church without breaking from all of
it. He is excommunicating himself. He is leaving the true Church and making his
victim become a false one.
The Church’s excommunication laws prove that she is no unity whether
visible or invisible. The Church says
that God founded one infallible Church, a Church that cannot err in matters of
faith and morals. God gave infallibility
to keep the Church one and in the truth.
The Church cannot ever pretend that she is infallible when she
excommunicates though it is the only way she can put a veneer of credibility
over her claim to be the one true Church.
It is odd that Jesus gave the Church infallibility to guide its doctrine
and not to keep its unity which is just as important if not a more important
issue. What use is true doctrine if the
Church is broken up? What use is
infallibility?
Top of the Document
A sinful Church cannot be one
Another reason that Catholic unity is nothing more than nominal is that
if mortal sin exists then the Church is disunited for she regards mortal
sinners as still being Catholics. Mortal
sin is the complete turning of one’s back on God and by implication, one’s
neighbour, for love of God and love of neighbour are mutually dependent
(teaching of the First Epistle of John in the Bible). In particular, mortal rejects proper intimate
and spiritual unity with the Church. How
could a mortal sinner possibly be a Catholic or in union with the Church in any
proper way? The sinner might call
himself a Catholic and go to Mass but his unity with the Church is purely
outward.
God is infinitely perfect and so he hates sin infinitely meaning it is
intending to offer infinite disrespect to God.
If sin exists all sin is mortal which means there are no Catholics. The mortal sinner turns away from truth for
God is truth therefore his faith has been renounced and replaced by artificial
faith.
The Catholic Church has often produced a very dangerous morality. The doctrines of St Alphonsus
Liguouri were luridly evil though the Church of his
day had no problem with him spreading it.
The Church agrees with Kant’s malevolent and pharisaic Categorical
Imperative that you should not do anything that you would not will the whole
world to do like lying for example but adds the reason the rule is valid is
because to break it is a sin in the sight of God (page 116, Moral Philosophy).
The Church says that the end never justifies the means because the means
are willed more strongly than the end because the means are closer to you than
the end. They are more immediately willed
than the end and so if you do evil that good may come your will is more
strongly into the evil means than the good end.
The Church pushes it as far as the idea that a lie is wrong no matter
what good will result from it (page 32, Moral Philosophy). So if you lie to do some good you have to
commit the lie first and therefore you are surer that the lie will happen than
that the good will happen for you will commit the sin of lying and the lie is
nearer to you in time. You are more sure
of what is closer, you know better what will happen in ten seconds and less
better what will happen in five.
If the Church is right then it follows that it is always wrong to care
about consequences. The stress Jesus
made on living for today and treating the world as something that might not be
here tomorrow would support this attitude for why do harm even for a justified
purpose when the purpose might never get the chance to be fulfilled? It would make the means evil.
Humanism believes that even if you have to hurt somebody to help them you
will the end and not the means.
The Church teaches much hypocrisy.
The Church says that anger is allowed concerning public outrages but
must be avoided with private ones (page 64, Moral Philosophy). This makes no sense for the law is a mixture
of private and public stuff and private evil affects the public. The Church could not possibly be moral for
the pope acts like a spiritual king and claims to be the monarch of the Church
(page 327, Moral Philosophy) which gives a divine sanction to the
snobbery and injustice and arrogance of monarchy. Jesus too is guilty of this crime. The Church also says that a thief has no
obligation to turn himself into the police for it is their business to prove he
committed the crime. Would it not be
hypocrisy to report somebody to the police for harming you when you have
committed crime yourself? Why should
other people pay and not you? What is so
special about you? Is it upholding the
law to hide your crimes? No for hidden
crimes that are not redressed and dealt with by the law mock the law. The law is meant to protect by bringing pain
on criminals and would it be upholding the law to advise most criminals to
avoid detection? That is telling them
the law cannot protect society from their crime. I can’t believe that a Church with doctrines
like this can claim to be relevant today!
The Church and Christianity in general believe that the virtuous or
humble man despises an undeserved insult and still takes it as his due (page
101, Moral Philosophy). It has to
teach all this silliness because insults would be right if they were deserved
and it cannot allow the man to think he does not deserve it for all are sinners
and are guilty of sin even if they are cleansed from it now. It should get rid of the problem by getting
rid of free will. The doctrine of free
will prevents Catholic believers from ever formulating a practical and safe
code of right and wrong. The morality of
the Church is incoherent delusion.
Unity with the Church of yesterday
It is not enough for the Church to be one with and in the membership
alive now but it also has to be in communion of mind and heart with the Church
that has gone before. If it creates new
teaching it ceases to be the same as that same Church and unity is broken. The Catholic Church has invented new
infallible teachings so it has broken with the Catholic Church of old leaving
two Churches.
Some believe that when the Church of Rome added twelve new dogmas in
addition to the old creeds in 1564 without the consent of a proper council and
even added articles of faith to the body of the old creeds that it broke away
from real Catholicism (page 7, Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic, PTS).
Top of the Document
No true visible Church
If the Roman Catholic Church is not the true Church, and we have proved
this to be so, then some say there is no true visible Church and Jesus Christ
was a false prophet for his prediction that the gates of Hell would never
prevail against his Church failed (Matthew 16:18). This prophecy uses the expression gates of Sheol and Sheol meant death in
the Bible. The prophecy may just mean
that the Church could die but death will not triumph over it for it could be
raised up to life again in the resurrection of the dead. Also, Jesus could be with false Christians to
guide them back to the truth or closer to it so his promise that he would abide
with us forever would not be annulled by full and total apostasy. God says that the prophet who makes a mistake
and gives a revelation that is not from the Lord is a fraud that should be
ignored and killed (Deuteronomy 18).
When most Christians think the Bible says the true Church will never
leave the earth, it follows that God does not approve of their faith in Jesus
for they impute false revelation to him and are following what they see as a
false prophet but refuse to admit it.
This is true even if he is the Son of God for they don’t know. We are talking subjective, not objective,
here.
The sacraments of the Church only work if the
minister intends to be a channel of grace.
A priest can pour water on a baby and say the magic words that are used
for the sacrament and be merely faking.
If he refuses to give grace then the baby is not validly baptised. It is the same with sacraments such as
ordination. The Church must have many
members who only think they have been baptised be the one visible true Church. The Church must have many priests and bishops
who only think they are ordained right.
They have no evidence. They are
really only hoping that they are baptised and ordained! What a precarious unity! This unity is so weak that it doesn’t
deserve to be called unity.
The Church must be claiming to be the visible
true Church just to attract members.
Why? Because the claim doesn’t
make sense but people are discouraged from thinking about religion so the
Church gets away with it too much. The
Roman Church must in its heart agree with the Protestant concept that the true
Church is invisible to us for we don’t know who belongs to it even if they say
they do so only God sees the true Church and knows who is a member.
The Church agrees with the ancient dogma that
outside the Church there is no salvation.
This doctrine was
was traditional teaching from the time of Cyprian in particular. St
Augustine's disciple, Fulgentius wrote, "The holy Roman Church with firmness
believes, confesses and teaches that none of the people who are outside the
Catholic Church, not only the pagans, but also the Jews, and heretics and
schismatics, can receive eternal life and they will go into the eternal fire
prepared for the Devil and those angels of his. They will be saved only if
they are gathered into the Church before they die." The Council of
Florence in 1442 used this formula to proclaim this to be a dogma of the Church.
To get around this dangerous and divisive and
fanatical teaching, some Catholic theologians say that if you are a sincere
believer even in atheism and mean well and do good you are a Catholic without
knowing it. So one is not a formal Catholic but a Catholic in reality who
does not know it yet.
This is really an attempt to force sincere people
into the Church. It actually demolishes the Church. The Church then
becomes a label. It becomes humanity not a religion. It makes the
Church a mere religious and spiritual luxury. It diminishes the importance
of having a formal Christian ethos. It discourages prospective converts.
Why bother becoming Catholic if you are Catholic anyway?
And if I form a silly religious sect tomorrow
called the Only True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with two formal
members would it not be ridiculous to say that all sincere people are members of
this Church though they are not formal members? Would it not be arrogant?
Am I saying that all unrepentant sinners are Satanists and united to the Church
of Satan though they are not formal Satanists?
Today the Church says that those who are invincibly ignorant of the
Roman Catholic Church and follow the best light they have will be saved. Those who can investigate if the Roman
Catholic Church is the true Church and don’t will be damned for their negligence.
But the question then arises, why the Roman Catholic Church? Why not the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and
the countless other sects of Christianity that boast that they have the
truth? What is so special about Roman
Catholicism that it should get special consideration? Yet the Church cannot deny any of this for to
say those who can investigate the Roman Church and don’t can be saved is to
deny, “Outside the Church, there is no salvation”, in every sense. It is denied in the most liberal interpretation
possible and in the most rigid interpretation possible as well.
The Church says that it is a very serious sin to
decline the opportunity for membership in the Roman Church if you see that it is
the one right religion. That is going very far and our instincts tell us
that it is bigotry. When you see that, you get sceptical about attempts to
stretch the meaning of the word Church to mean all sincere people religious or
not and whether they are formal Catholics or not. Why would a God who is
so vicious be merciful to sincere people who are not formal Catholics and
consider them to be informal Catholics?
Top of the Document
Not one in faith or government
The Catholic Church is not one in faith or in government. Therefore it is not a Church but a pretend
Church. The proofs for this prove the same
about any other group that claims to be the true Church like the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If
Jesus was the Son of God he did not establish a visible true Church for he
could not. It is nonsense to say that a
Church that is not a Church could have the marks of universality, holiness and
apostolicity. The other three marks of
the true Church depend on the universality or Catholicity one. Yet the infallible Nicene Creed speaks of
one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.
Many accuse the Catholics of arrogance when they claim to constitute the
true Church. They counter that Jesus
said it not them and he is God so God said it.
So they are telling us that they are not saying it but they are only
saying that God says it. But even if
Jesus said his true Church would never leave the earth there is no guarantee
that the Roman Catholic Church is the same Church that he founded. A fake pope could be elected one way or
another. You cannot see if the Church is
run by real believers which would be necessary for preserving the authenticity
of the Church for example, many men in the college of Cardinals could be fakes
and not Catholics in their hearts.
Therefore to believe in the Catholic Church headed by Rome is really to put faith in man not
God. The Church does not have the right
government to be from God because we are supposed to believe God not man. Therefore the Church is divorced from God. Jesus never said that his apostles would
remain true to the faith he taught forever.
Even if Roman Catholicism is the apostolic Church it is still no
guarantee of authenticity. The Church is
advocating arrogance with its claim that Catholics are part of the true Church
for only a handful of Catholics are able to give well-thought out reasons why
the Church is true and they still manage to be wrong and flout logic. You evidently need an encyclopaedic knowledge
of history, canon law, logic, ecclesiology (theology of the Church) and
scripture to be able to properly defend the authenticity of the Church and
nobody can have that amount of knowledge.
You would need to know the minute by minute history of the popes and the
Councils of the Church and their participants to be sure that there was no
chance they could have ridden the Church into inauthenticity
for it only takes one second for that to happen. It takes only one secret thought to destroy
the work of God to make a pope lose his legitimacy and make the Church
illegitimate. What claims God made are
irrelevant. The Church says that God
promised that the Church would never lose the faith as if that settles it! You would need to check it out first to be
sure that it happened so then you could conclude that God maybe did make the
promise. The claim to be the true Church is incompatible with humility. Anybody who does not claim to be in the true
Church but who claims to have the only true saviour Jesus is really no
better. How do they know that he is the
only plausible candidate?
A unity between deceived people who have many cheating leaders is
artificial because relationships need to be based on trust and honesty to be
real. They are based on open-mindedness
and helping each other to find their own path even if it means going out of the
Church. The deceptions of the Church
will lead to sectarianism and cannot lead to much else despite the work for
unity. Those Catholics who say that the
evidence for their religion is sufficient but not very convincing and then to
claim to be the true Church must ask themselves if they possess the sin of arrogance
in their hearts. The true Church then
would have to be the most convincing one and pass logical tests. You need a miraculous pile of knowledge to
claim to be the most convincing sect and it is vulgar to claim to be the true
Church without it.
Top of the Document
A serious problem
It is incorrect to say it is enough for the Church to be one. You have to prove that it SHOULD be one. Unity cannot impress or be a mark of divine
favour if the seeming unity is gained by compromising your conscience which
must happen in the Roman Church to a huge extent. The Roman Church says that if she issues an
unjust decree of excommunication the excommunication is null and void which
should lead to chaos. The law of the
Church then does not promote unity and if the Church were really Catholic and
one God would make sure it does. The
Bible itself commands that causing a schism may sometimes be necessary to
preserve the true religion. The Jews had
to break with the Samaritans over the latter altering doctrine. It is unfair to use the argument from oneness
without first proving that there has been no departure from the deposit of
revealed doctrine. The Roman Church has
been altering doctrines these days which implies that it is time that the
Reorganised Roman Catholic Church be set up to continue the old faith. The pope cannot preserve unity for the
validity of his authority depends on his intentions and orthodoxy. A heretical pope is not a pope at all.
ROMAN NOT CATHOLICISM
Catholicity is held by Catholics to be a mark that designates them as the
true Church of God.
The word Catholic means universal.
To grasp what the word Catholic means we should do what Father Richard P McBrien
recommended on page 3 of his tome, Catholicism. We should look for
the word that is opposite to Catholic and that word is sectarian. The
Catholic Church can be considered sectarian in doctrine and in practice.
And especially in the darker implications of its teaching that it prefers to say
little about. For example, most Catholics believe women should be ordained
as priests. These Catholics should be excluded from the Church for wanting
to be more inclusive to women. Why? Because, and only if, the Church
is right to say that if women are ordained their ordination won't be valid and
the power to give the sacraments will be lost so desiring women priests is to
desire to destroy the Church.
Catholic means not that all are in the Church but that the Church belongs to
all, that all ought to join it.
Outsiders must abandon their former faith and turn to the Catholic
Church and believe what it says.
The Catholic Church proclaims that it is the true Church for it is in
every nation on earth and is meant to be joined by every nation and race. Jesus told his people to preach to all
creatures.
But if it were really Catholic then how could it be for people who do not
even realise that it exists? God must
not want them to join. He has had plenty
of time to make the whole world know and understand Roman Catholicism.
This is just typical of the Catholic tendency to live in fantasy.
Roman Catholics are really Roman “Catholics”.
Universality alone proves nothing.
Hundreds of religions claim to be for all nations and people. Being the largest Church in the world would
seem to make the claims of Catholicism worthy of consideration for it seems to
make it more Catholic than other religions.
But any one of the world’s religions could end up huge some day. The Catholic Church was once a handful of
people.
What was the Church in the days not long ago when it said that sincerity
could not save and that heretics and schismatics
would all be damned? Later it began to
say that sincere Christians who were not Roman Catholics could be saved in so
far as they were sincere and holy. But
the first teaching if incorrect would put the Church outside the boundaries of
Catholicity.
The Church says that being Catholic means that it is the true
Church. So, Catholic means being
universally right and that it is the only ark of truth for all.
Roman Catholicism is not Catholic because it is for those who are wrong
and not for those who are right. The
idea of a wrong religion being Catholic is a contradiction. Catholicism claims that Protestants are
members of the Catholic Church but who just don’t know it. That proves that it is not Catholic. For a religion to be Catholic it has to claim
that outside of it there is no salvation at all. Your religious association and membership is
caused by your faith – faith is religion meaning that absolute doctrinal
accuracy is required. A single error or
doubt means you are your own religion.
Catholicism is not a religion for it isn’t really one in faith which is
enough to expose the fact that it doesn’t bear the mark of Catholicity and has
no right to the name Catholic. And Jesus
did say that only a few would have the true doctrine in its purity and apostasy
was predicted for most Christians. The
errors of the Church are so serious that high-level Catholics could not
possibly have a sincere faith.
The Church of Rome is not Catholic for it and its God excommunicate
people unjustly. It is not for all
people when it does that. If you
sincerely believe that the Church is wrong like all heretics do then you have
done nothing to deserve expulsion and being barred from her sacraments which
express unity with the Church. People
who deny the shamelessly absurd dogma that doubt is a sin have to go, for
example. She exclaims that she cannot
have them in her fold until they retract and mean it.
Even if the excommunication is invalid the fact remains that a division
has occurred and is being upheld.
The Church of Rome is not Catholic for though she will baptise babies
that will not be raised as Catholics she bars Protestants from that other
lesser sacrament of unity, Holy Communion.
The Church has always denied that women can be validly ordained which
means that though they are equals to men they must not be treated as such. No matter how great the need the Church will
not ordain women proving that the stuff about women having different roles to
men is sexist prejudice for roles have to be dispensed with when the need is
great enough. A religion that abuses is
not Catholic. It does not really want
the persons it is hostile towards. They
don’t get a proper welcome.
The Church of Rome’s Catholicity would be more important than her money,
altars or Church buildings or anything else.
She has to continue it to be the true Church. Yet she raises mountains of money while the
poor die of hunger and the lack of medical attention. She is not here for those people so she is
not Catholic. How could she be for all
people when her actions kill them before they have a chance to even hear about
the Church? If we believe in Jesus’ Sermon
on the Mount which hates people displaying their virtue we can be sure that
claiming to be Catholic is unchristian.
For anybody to call themselves Catholic is to boast that they know it
all.
Lots of people reason that when a religion is very big that it must be
true. The Catholic Church is no
exception. Many of its teachings were
made binding because the majority in the Church believed them. This attitude that might means right is
fallacious for a few simple reasons.
One, the majority is not always right.
Phone-poll results prove it. Most
of the people who have ever walked the earth have never been believers in the
Catholic Church. Paganism which had many
different forms but which agreed on essentials has been the world’s largest
religion.
There are certainly more Buddhists than Catholics.
The argument supposes that people devote themselves to religion because
it is true which is completely wrong. We
all like to trick ourselves. We do it in
the love of fitting into society and for the love of success. Just imagine how much more likely we would be
to do it for religion.
Two, the majority is not always the majority. Religion would be happy to say that there are
a lot of insincere religionists about.
Many of the people who support Catholic policy are only Catholics on a
Sunday and put Devil-worshippers to shame the rest of the week. Many like to feel Catholic though they do not
sincerely think Catholic. Many times I
have forgotten that I am not a Catholic and stood up for the pope and the
teaching of the Church. I feel a
temptation to pretend to myself to be a Catholic. All who are born into religion are
conditioned to enjoy it to some extent.
According to a 1989 American poll a quarter of the American Catholic
Church denies life after death and 46 % asserted that they have no Christian
faith or belief in the resurrection of Christ when they said that no one could
avoid being agnostic on life after death.
Nearly half of all French and Italian Catholics reject the resurrection
of Christ and 77% reject the dogma of eternal punishment. This means that most Catholics do not believe
in the Church. If the poll asked about
other awkward doctrines would we find that only a handful claim to be
submissive to Rome’s
“unerring” decrees.
Roman Catholicism is quite a small religion. The counterfeit variety prevails. When you are talking about Roman Catholicism
you mean the teaching system that is loyal to what it says is divine
revelation. But only a miniscule number
who are mainly clergy really understand and could possibly claim to support
that system entirely. It is foolish to
argue then that Roman Catholicism’s size has anything to do with verifying its
claims.
Think of the total number of people who followed the old-style paganism
with gods of rain and goddess of this and that and their sacrifices and
oracles. The names and myths – which
were not literally true anyway - might have been different but the main
religious principles were the same. Your
are talking about nearly the whole world being pagan.
If the Catholic Church is the true religion the Catholicism of Rome is
certainly not the true Catholic Church.
One of the marks of the true Church is that it must be holy. Obviously, if God starts a Church he would
want it to be righteous and honest.
Roman Catholicism tells us, “The Catholic Church is holy in doctrine and
is marked by the remarkable holiness of many of her children. The miracles of God show her to be true for
they wouldn’t be done for an unholy religion.”
This is no use for many religions claim to be holy and miraculous and to
make people holy and to have plenty of holy people in them. Everybody has a talent for faking goodness.
Miracles cannot be accepted as proofs for a religion being from God
because devils can pose as angels of light and fake miracles that seem good but
which are for a bad direct or indirect purpose are feasible if there are
devils. The miracles support false
doctrines so they are unholy and a mark of unholiness
in so far as they support these doctrines.
For example, at Lourdes
the Virgin did miracles but did nothing to correct the errors of the
Church.
Individual Catholics could be holy but their creed cannot be regarded as
holy. They say they are sinners. “The Council of Trent has defined that ‘after
his justification a man cannot avoid, during the whole course of his life, every
venial sin, without a special privilege such as the Church recognises was
conferred on the Blessed Virgin’. The
soul in the state of grace can therefore avoid any venial sin considered
separately, but cannot avoid all venial sins taken together by keeping itself
always free from them” (page 63, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). The relevant decree was made in Session 6,
Canon 23, of the infallible Council of Trent.
So, you can avoid venial sins like white lies but you cannot avoid the
attitude that venial sins expresses – rebellion against God. This is a venial sin but is different from
venially sinning by telling lies so you always sin venially in your
attitude. That is what the quotation
means by saying that there are separate venial sins and ones which are not
separate in their way. But if you sin
then you will remember that you are a sinner when you pray or serve your
God. Piety is a mockery because you are
letting God know that you will do good on your own terms not his. A sinner cannot do good when he or she is
aware of sin. Catholic saints cheated a
bit when they didn’t combat the Church’s teaching on sin.
The holier you are the less you will be
likely to sin or so you would expect. It
is far more vicious to commit an easy sin than a harder one. The Church says that even the saints sinned –
it might have been slight but it was still sin.
Therefore the saints are the worst of the lot even if you deny that all
sin is equally malicious. If a saint
tells a tiny lie, even if the lie is a tiny sin the fact that they so didn’t
need to commit the sin and showed contempt to the grace of God which protects
against sin is by no means minor. They
have insulted all the exceptional graces they received so sin-wise or
intention-wise it makes no difference if they were holy or unholy for they
cannot win. External goodness is not
enough according to the Church. The
Church says that if your conscience tells you to burn heretics you have to do
it so it is intention that counts.
Roman Catholicism says that you cannot do good that deserves a reward
from God unless you have his help. You
can do good without it, it says. But
surely this good deserves a reward? What
a sectarian and ungrateful and slanderous religion this is.
The mark of holiness principally refers to the doctrine being holy, true
and from God. Rome is able to say that even if the whole
Church were sinful it would still be holy as it is the means of holiness and
the pillar of the holy truth. She has to
teach this for there are many sinners and insincere people in the Church. But her doctrine is not holy for it is
wrong. There is more. Everybody complains about having doubts. One doubt puts faith out of you. You do not believe in authority if you query
so much as one thing it says. Also, if
you had no doubts but did not know all Catholic doctrine you could not really
believe. You are only guessing that it
is plausible. So there is no
Church. You cannot really be a member of
a Church you don’t believe in. There is
no Church. There is no point in saying
that holiness is the mark of the true Church when there is no Church.
One disturbing thing about the holiness of the Church is that the
holiness has to come from each individual member and the Church interprets that
holiness as supernatural without knowing if it really is or not. In other words, if a Catholic person does
good the Church says that that person does it by the supernatural grace of God
so that it is not a natural goodness and this supernatural goodness helps show
that that Church bears the mark of holiness and approval by God. This is actually stealing much of the
commendation due to the person and stealing it for herself because it is using
the person’s goodness for unjustifiable reasons and taking illegitimate
advantage of it.
The mark of holiness implies that the Catholic Church must have a holier
membership and a holier doctrine than any other religion otherwise it is not a
mark at all. Claiming that holiness
among Catholics shows that the Catholic Church has the mark of holiness essential
to being the true Church is strange considering the fact that the Church now
says that the reason members of other religions and even pagans show real signs
of holiness is because they follow Jesus unknowingly and through their
sincerity they are counted as members of the true Church. If Buddhists are as holy as Catholics then how
can the holiness mark prove the Catholic Church to be the true Church? If Buddhists are regarded as less holy then
isn’t that going to encourage insulting of Buddhists and make the Catholics
proud? If pride would have to come from
teaching that your Church is the true Church then it follows that God cannot
found a true Church or at least one that can claim to be the true Church.
Buddhists could say that Catholics are holy through their grasp of the
truth learned from Buddha though they reject him. The point is once you start saying holiness
is the mark of the true Church you have to say that outside visible membership
of that Church there is no holiness for the argument is worthless if you start
saying sincere outsiders can be holy and only look as if they are
outsiders. However, it is clear that
Catholics claim to have more holiness for they are fully in communion with the
true Church but this still makes no difference to the point I am making for
nobody can see holiness or measure which religion has the holiest members. So the Church adds to the arrogance by
claiming to have the most holiness. The
Church has lost the mark of holiness by abandoning it in any meaningful sense
that would allow it to be a mark of the only true Church so the corporation
headed by the Vatican
can by no means be considered to be the true Church. The Church has no right to the name Catholic
for when it opposes the mark of holiness despite paying lip-service to it for
the true Church has to have the four marks of unity, catholicity, sanctity and
apostolicity and each one depends on the others. The Church cannot be apostolic if it rejects
sanctity for that is against the apostles so it is not united with the Church
of the apostles and is therefore not Catholic for only the apostolic Church can
bear the mark of Catholicity in the sense that the mark shows it to be the true
Church.
If the Catholic Church is one Church it is because it excludes anyone who
is considered to be a heretic. Any group
then could claim to be one Church on that basis so Jesus and his Church don’t
know what they are talking about. The
Church was once almost entirely Arian, that is, it denied the deity of Jesus
Christ (page 98, Reason and Belief).
Using the four marks argument then often involves dishonesty or
blindness.
Rome says that Jesus founded one Church and that
she is that Church. It is pride to say
that for even if Jesus said his Church would never fail he never said the same
of the Vatican.
If Jesus thought he did then if he
started a so-called Church this result could not possibly be from God or holy
and he would be marked as a phoney.
The creed Catholics say at Mass tells them that there is one apostolic
Church. Jesus left his gospel and
religion in the hands of the apostles meaning that if a Church claims to be the
true Church then it must claim to be everything that the apostles would want it
to be. It must claim to be true to the
apostles’ doctrine and to have been founded upon them (Ephesians 2:20). It must be able to prove it.
But even if the Church agrees with the apostles in most things there is
no evidence that she agrees with them in all so the claim to be apostolic is
just a guess. Most of Rome’s dogmas cannot be traced back to the
apostles. This proof is no good. Bible-only religions are a safer bet.
And there is plenty of evidence and proof that Roman Catholicism is a religion made up after the
apostles. There is no proof that much of
the New Testament itself is true to the apostles for they had nothing to do
with writing many of the books in it.
The Church would have to deny the stance of the scholars who say that
most of the books were not written by who they say they were and would have to
say they are all totally apostolic to have more hope of seeming to be the
apostolic Church.
When some of Rome’s
doctrines are provably false and hypocritical she cannot tell people to believe
that “she is faithful to apostolic doctrine and that demonstrates her loyalty
to the revelation of God.” If apostolic
doctrine is right then she is wrong and if it is wrong she is still wrong.
Rome claims to have derived its sacramental
powers from the apostles but there is no evidence for that serious claim. Sacraments aren’t mentioned in the Bible at
all. It never says that certain rites
have the power to give grace from God.
The Catholic Church does not take the word of the apostles that it is the
true Church but the word of the bishops and priests. Therefore it is really hostile to the
apostles. There is a contradiction
between the Church saying it is the true Church because it was founded by and
wholly devoted to Christ and it saying that it is also apostolic for the
apostles were authorised to preserve the doctrine of Christ. To follow what apostles say about Jesus is
not the same as following Jesus. It is following
their portrayal and as for their claim that Jesus authorised them plenty of
others who contradicted them have made that claim. This is why Christians in Corinth said they
were for Christ and not the apostles (1 Corinthians 1:12) – Corinth had an
inadequate understanding of Pauline Christianity so don’t think that they were
going directly to the historical records about Jesus instead of listening to
the apostles and if they had Paul would have proved that Jesus authorised the
apostles to rule the Church in his stead - and were shot down by the wily St
Paul who evilly knew that they had a point and still wanted to slap them
down.
If proof or evidence that the apostles and Rome are of one mind in religious teaching
existed it would prove that the doctrines of Rome are as hateful as theirs was. The apostles preached lies and blasphemy in
the name of God. And if Rome wants to be called apostolic then she is
making herself as bad as they were.
Conclusion
The Catholic
Church regards its claim to be the true Church to be its biggest credential for
it argues from this that it is the only visible Church that can trace its
origin back to Christ. But this claim is
bogus and making it is sufficient proof that the Church is bogus.
BOOKS CONSULTED
A GREAT LEGACY, Rev RJ Coates, Irish
Church Mission, Dublin
A ROMAN CATECHISM WITH A REPLY THERETO, John Wesley Protestant Truth
Society, London
A WOMAN RIDES THE BEAST, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon,
1994
ALL ONE BODY – WHY DON’T WE AGREE? Erwin W Lutzer, Tyndale, Illinois, 1989
AN ACCOUNT OF ARCHBISHOP JAMES USHER 1581-1656, ND
Emerson MA PhD, Townsend Street,
Dublin
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION, James Heron, Outlook Press, Belfast
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND CHURCH DOCTRINE, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New
York, 1985
BUT THE BIBLE DOES NOT SAY SO, Rev Roberto Nisbet,
Church Book Room Press, London
1966
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, Dublin,
1995
CATHOLICISM, Richard P McBrien, HarperSanFrancisco, New York, 1994
CATHOLICISM AND CHRISTIANITY, Cecil John Cadoux,
George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928
CATHOLICISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
CHRISTIANS GUIDE TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Bill Jackson, Colonial Baptist
Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1988
CITY OF GOD,
St Augustine,
Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1986
DAWN OR TWILIGHT? HM Carson, IVP, Leicester,
1976
DEAR CATHOLIC FRIEND, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
1989
DIFFICULTIES, Mgr Ronald Knox and Sir Arnold Lunn,
Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1958
DOCUMENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, edited by Henry Bettenson,
Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1979
ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM ET DEFINITIONUM,
Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Edited by A Schonmetzer, Barcelona,
1963
EVANGELICAL CATHOLICS A NEW PHENOMENON, Stanley Mawhinney, Christian Ministries Incorporated, Dundrum, Dublin,
1992
HOW SURE ARE THE FOUNDATIONS?
Colin Badger, Wayside Press,
Canada
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR VOCATION IN LIFE, Thomas Artz
C.SS.R, Liguori
Publications, Missouri,
1976
INFALLIBILITY IN THE CHURCH, Patrick Crowley, CTS, London, 1982
IS THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH A BIBLE CHURCH? John Hamrogue, C.SS.R, Liguori, Missouri,
1983
IS THERE SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH? Fr J Bainvel SJ, TAN, Illiniois, 1979
JESUS HYPOTHESES, V Messori, St Paul Publications, England, 1975
LETTERS TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, H A Ironside,
Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1982
LION CONCISE BOOK OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, Tony Lane, Lion, Herts,
1984
LIVING IN CHRIST, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne 1969
LOOK! THE DOUAY BIBLE AGAINST ROME, Connellan
Mission, Dublin
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series,
Longmans, Green and Co, London,
1912
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, The Catholic
University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington,
District of Columbia, 1967
ON BEING A CHRISTIAN, Hans Kung,
Translated by Edward Quinn, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, Glasgow, 1978
OUGHT I TO SEND MY CHILD TO A CONVENT
SCHOOL? Rev Walter H Denbow, Protestant Truth Society, London, 1969
ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS, Charles Gore MA, Longmans, London, 1894
ROMAN CATHOLIC OBJECTIONS ANSWERED, Rev H O Lindsay, John T Drought Ltd, Dublin
ROMAN CATHOLIC TEACHING CONTRASTED WITH BIBLE TEACHING, Bernard Burt, The
Bible Student Press, Coventry
ROMAN CATHOLICISM TESTED BY THE SCRIPTURES, John A Coleman, New Litho
Pty. Ltd, Victoria,
1987
ROMAN CATHOLICISM WHAT IS FINAL AUTHORITY? Harold J Berry, Back to the Bible, Nebraska, 1974
ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Lorraine
Boettner, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Company, Phillipsburg, NJ, 1962
ROMANISM AT VARIANCE WITH THE BIBLE, Rev James Gardner, Protestant Truth
Society, London,
1987
ROME HAS SPOKEN, A GUIDE TO FORGOTTEN PAPAL STATEMENTS
AND HOW THEY HAVE CHANGED THROUGH THE CENTURIES, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad Publishing, New York, 1998
ROME THE GREAT PRIVATE INTERPRETATOR,
Peter S Ruckman Penascola
Bible Press, Palatka, Florida, 1969
SALVATION, THE BIBLE AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM, William Webster, Banner of
Truth, Edinburgh,
1990
SECRETS OF ROMANISM, Joseph Zacchello, Loizeaux Brothers, New
Jersey, 1984
THE ADVANCE OF ROMANISM, S M Houghton, Cotswold Bible Witness, 1964
THE BIBLE OR THE CHURCH? Ken Camplin, Printland Publishers, India, 1996
THE BIBLE REFUTES ROMANISM Philip H Rand Protestant Truth Society, London
THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH HAS THE ANSWER,
Paul Whitcomb TAN, Illinois,
1986
THE CHURCH AND INFALLIBILITY, BC Butler,
The Catholic Book Club, London,
undated
THE CHURCH OF ROME AND THE WORD OF GOD, Rev Eric C Last, Protestant Truth
Society, London
THE DEVELOPMENTS OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM, John A Bain MA, Oliphant Anderson
& Ferrier, Edinburgh
and London,
undated
THE EARLY CHURCH, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus
De Ligouri, Redemptorist
Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE MOTHER OF GOD AND OUR INTERIOR LIFE, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange,
OP, TAN, Illinois,
1993
THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg
BD, APCK, Dublin,
1928
THE RICHES OF ROME
AND THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF CHRIST Robert D Browne, Protestant Truth
Society, London
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
THE TRUE CHURCH AND THE FALSE, The National Union of Protestants, Suffolk
THE VATICAN PAPERS, Nino Lo Bello,
New English Library, Kent, 1982
TRADITIONAL DOCTRINES OF THE ROMAN
CATHOLIC CHURCH
EXAMINED, Rev CCJ Butlin,
Protestant Truth Society, London
TREASURES FROM GOD’S STOREHOUSE, Dr Bill Jackson, Colonial Baptist Press,
Louisville, Kentucky, 1991
VICARS OF CHRIST, Peter De Rosa, Corgi Books, London, 1993
WHAT HAPPENED! Francisco Lacueva, Evangelical Protestant Society, Belfast
WHY BE A CATHOLIC? Fr David Jones
OP, Catholic Truth Society, London,
1996
WHY I AM NOT A ROMAN CATHOLIC, Rev Canon McCormick DD, Protestant Truth
Society, London,
1968
YOU CAN LEAD ROMAN CATHOLICS TO CHRIST, Wilson Ewin,
New England Mission, Nashua 1980
www.catholic.com/library/The_Anti_Catholic_Bible.asp
Christians versus the Lies of Catholicism
www.cephasministry.com
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