If anyone is to blame for the fracturing of Christianity it's the the Catholic Church.
Case in point... Pope Francis. He's piece of garbage and unfortunately for you if you are a Catholic, he is the one that tells you how to interpret the Bible.
I always laugh when some Protestants bring up indulgences.
Oh no, 500 years ago there was a bishop out their selling/grifting the Grace of God? How horrible! Good thing we solved that with a schism - now there's no one out there abusing God's word to grift money out of people.
Now please ignore how all the biggest grifters (Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen etc.) are a bunch of Protestants; who make many millions by lying about "faith healing" and "tickets to heaven" etc. Protestantism has created bigger grifters than ever imagined possible 500 years ago.
For better or worse, the Church is the Church created by Christ. There have been good popes and bad popes. Through it all, it remains Christ's Church. We could really use your help in the congregation - come home if you want to help Christ restore His Church. Or you can keep running away, and continuing to schism into chaos. It's your choice.
We need a separate forum for arguing about religion because everyone on all sides is too amateur to speak authoritatively on this. I'm an FSSP partisan and agree 100% with what you said, but this isn't going to help him. If people want to engage respectfully about religion then that deserves to be handled elsewhere. Shooting back and forth half baked apologetical devices buried seven layers deep in a thread strikes me as approaching taking the Lord's name in vain. Not that that's what y'all are meaning to do, but this method does not do your discussion justice. Take it to general, maybe, or PM.
Edit: actually I read your comment about "Latin/Mary worshippers" which sounds barely different from the left's "Easter worshippers." I rescind what I said, I don't think you know what you're talking about. You say you assist at the Latin Mass on occasion but are calling devout people "Mary worshippers" presumably for praying the Rosary or kneeling in front of statues and praying to saints. You are ignorant of far too much to be claiming to be an authority on the history of the Church. You are doing more harm than good.
No, that is a losing strategy. That is what we've been doing for far too long. We have allowed Christ to be jettisoned from normal conversation and that is a mistake.
The devil would prefer we continue to retreat into our safe, contained little side conversations. Like the schisms, this has been a trap fallen for over the last few hundred years. If only the people of previous generations had not retreated. If only they had not started reserving conversations of theology to only those who are intellectually curious.
Let us talk about Christ, anytime, always. Do not turn Christ away when He arrives naturally in conversation.
As for Mary, I fully understood what I said - I fully understand the difference between worship and veneration. There are those that venerate Mary and there are those that worship her. I'm not worried about those that venerate Mary or any saint.
Schisms and reformations don't fall out of the sky randomly.
The Church is still offering indulgences till this day for stupid stuff like following the Pope on twitter. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/16/vatican-indulgences-pope-francis-tweets
If anyone is to blame for the fracturing of Christianity it's the the Catholic Church.
Case in point... Pope Francis. He's piece of garbage and unfortunately for you if you are a Catholic, he is the one that tells you how to interpret the Bible.
Does that sound ok to you?
I always laugh when some Protestants bring up indulgences.
Oh no, 500 years ago there was a bishop out their selling/grifting the Grace of God? How horrible! Good thing we solved that with a schism - now there's no one out there abusing God's word to grift money out of people.
Now please ignore how all the biggest grifters (Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen etc.) are a bunch of Protestants; who make many millions by lying about "faith healing" and "tickets to heaven" etc. Protestantism has created bigger grifters than ever imagined possible 500 years ago.
For better or worse, the Church is the Church created by Christ. There have been good popes and bad popes. Through it all, it remains Christ's Church. We could really use your help in the congregation - come home if you want to help Christ restore His Church. Or you can keep running away, and continuing to schism into chaos. It's your choice.
We need a separate forum for arguing about religion because everyone on all sides is too amateur to speak authoritatively on this. I'm an FSSP partisan and agree 100% with what you said, but this isn't going to help him. If people want to engage respectfully about religion then that deserves to be handled elsewhere. Shooting back and forth half baked apologetical devices buried seven layers deep in a thread strikes me as approaching taking the Lord's name in vain. Not that that's what y'all are meaning to do, but this method does not do your discussion justice. Take it to general, maybe, or PM.
Edit: actually I read your comment about "Latin/Mary worshippers" which sounds barely different from the left's "Easter worshippers." I rescind what I said, I don't think you know what you're talking about. You say you assist at the Latin Mass on occasion but are calling devout people "Mary worshippers" presumably for praying the Rosary or kneeling in front of statues and praying to saints. You are ignorant of far too much to be claiming to be an authority on the history of the Church. You are doing more harm than good.
No, that is a losing strategy. That is what we've been doing for far too long. We have allowed Christ to be jettisoned from normal conversation and that is a mistake.
The devil would prefer we continue to retreat into our safe, contained little side conversations. Like the schisms, this has been a trap fallen for over the last few hundred years. If only the people of previous generations had not retreated. If only they had not started reserving conversations of theology to only those who are intellectually curious.
Let us talk about Christ, anytime, always. Do not turn Christ away when He arrives naturally in conversation.
As for Mary, I fully understood what I said - I fully understand the difference between worship and veneration. There are those that venerate Mary and there are those that worship her. I'm not worried about those that venerate Mary or any saint.