from my point of view, i am a small c catholic, meaning i believe in the basic doctrine, not so much in the structure of the roman catholic church. greek, russian, or some of the others i am much closer too.
but what really makes me chuckle is people on here quoting scripture from the KING JAMES version of the bible, written how many years after the time of Christ?
Then there are the transcription issue of the documents themselves many written after the time of Christ and translated into a number of languages before they even got to english.
Yeah, right.
And as one pointed, out how many different protestant groups are there today, all saying it's my way or the highway, Jack?
Bible thumpers give me indigestion.
Fair enough, but the implication that the Roman Catholic Church is monolithic is a false one. There are many, many factions within that institution which render that argument null & void.
By the way... historic Protestants are truly little-c catholic. We believe in the catholicity or universality of the invisible church... all those who are truly saved.
I for one believe that there is a whole host of people in that group; some there because of the faithful message of the tradition (or anti-tradition) in which they participate on this side of the grave, others in spite of it. It is God who saves; His message of salvation in Christ goes forth in spite of mans best efforts.
to me you are basically repeating what i said, that there are many different versions of catholicism, roman is only one.
and i also call myself a small c catholic for another reason, that is the meaning universal.
which covers a lot of the protestant groups.
few years ago i attended services for a jewish friend of mine, first time ever in a temple. They said kaddish, which i had heard in hebrew many times. This time i heard it in english. I was going wait a minute, that is the same as the catholic prayer for the dead. Then i realized who stole what from whom.
I don't put much into somebody trying to tell me the right way. You are either christian in some form or you are not. The not's are mostly shown by that dog cult called islam.
I know pretty much from a young age all the sins of the roman catholic church. I also knew a lot of really good people, like the nuns who mostly educated me.
but all groups have their issues, it's called humanity.
I think the pope only declared himself infallable on church doctrine in the 1800's. I don't believe in that either.
