Amos

Excerpt from a post by Ron Garrett
<strong>A shame that the church did not share your liberality during the various inqusitions and witch burnings. I am glad that you are respectful of and open to beliefs that differ from your own. </strong>

The Catholic Church is and always was able to overshadow, incorporate or live in harmony with any and every minor mythology. What it cannot deal with is wolves in sheep clothing that destroy the flock from within and drag them off into never never land with empty promises.

Understand well here that wolves from another cloth are welcome to hunt and convert Catholics. It is when they are of the same cloth and mislead them that they must object. Yes, nothing has changed and in Christendom heaven is still available to Catholics only.

Amos

sullster

Amos, It is horse manure that the catholic church lived in peace with every other mythology. To quote the Monty Pythons,"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition".

What on earth do you think the Holy Office of Inquisition was for? Do you think they were for saying nice things to groups who didn't follow the catholic church? Ask a Jew in 15th century Spain how happy the catholics were with his religion. Go to Prague and see how Huys was burned at the stake.

The medieval church was a reign of terror and demanded absolute conformity. All the "truth and heaven" that you extol as the rewards of being a catholic are insignificant dust compared to the moral outrages committed by the catholic church.
That the protestants eventually committed equal terror does not absolve them but it does show where they learned how to hate and kill.

As for Vatican 2, all that was resolved there would have outraged the Inquisition. They would have purged the church then and there. Good thing the past is gone.

hinduwoman

Unfortunately, the Catholic church takes it on itself to decide what is true and holy in other religions. Whatever they find coincides with their own theology, they keep, the rest is discarded.
A hindu who becomes a Catholic Christian is actively discouraged from retaining any hindu rites or culture. Even today a big fight is going on between Catholic South Indian priests and Vatican because the some of the Indians insist on wearing saffron robes, while the hq. apparently feels that sanctity resides only in black coats. And they are doing their best to stamp out the dancing nuns of kerala.

PopeInTheWoods

Welcome, Katie. Please register and stick around, thoughtful and polite discourse is always valued here.

I almost agree with your statement above, but what about those people whose values compel them to crash passenger planes into skyscrapers, or shoot abortion doctors, or hang or burn those who have different values? I think an even more overriding concern should be to treat others as you would like to be treated. I think it's generally believed that your religion's alleged founder said something similar, as have many prior and subsequent thinkers.

Andy (PITW)

-DM-

Even that concept becomes problematic in the case of people who are willing or even anxious to get to "heaven" in a hurry and take you and others along with them.

--Don--

PopeInTheWoods

Doh! Or if the "you" is just a masochist!

How about "treat others as THEY would like to be treated"? Sigh, sorry for all this, as I'm sure it's been done 1.5 billion times previously. But &lt;Katie&gt; looks like she had some potential....

Andy (PITW)

moon

I may be wrong, but I think that the above statement would be considered heretical by the Catholic hierarchy.

daemon

From my experience as a former American Roman Catholic, I would say that the vast majority of Catholics do not follow official Catholic teachings, and many of them would be surprised at quite a few. Most cannot even adequately explain transubstantiation, much less the convoluted wordings of the myriad documents the Church puts out. I find Vatican II to be a fascinating change in the Church, but the hierarchy is shifting back to more traditional clergy, and I believe the accepting attitude of the Church is no more than a momentary aberration in its policies. The Church has yet to declare that Americanism is not a heresy, and so it remains one, at least in the minds of "traditionalist" Catholics.

Frankly, I hope the majority remain ignorant of Catholic doctrine, and continue in their increasing embrace of humanistic values.

brighid

Salvation outside the Church
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, following historic Christian theology since the time of the early Church Fathers, refers to the Catholic Church as "the universal sacrament of salvation" (CCC 774–776), and states: "The Church in this world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and men" (CCC 780).

Many people misunderstand the nature of this teaching.

Indifferentists, going to one extreme, claim that it makes no difference what church one belongs to and that salvation can be attained through any of them. Certain radical traditionalists, going to the other extreme, claim that unless one is a full-fledged, baptized member of the Catholic Church, one will be damned.

The following quotations from the Church Fathers give the straight story. They show that the early Church held the same position on this as the contemporary Church does—that is, while it is normatively necessary to be a Catholic to be saved (see CCC 846; Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 14), there are exceptions, and it is possible in some circumstances for people to be saved who have not been fully initiated into the Catholic Church (CCC 847).

Notice that the same Fathers who declare the normative necessity of being Catholic also declare the possibility of salvation for some who are not Catholics.

These can be saved by what later came to be known as "baptism of blood" or " baptism of desire" (for more on this subject, see the Fathers Know Best tract, "The Necessity of Baptism").

The Fathers likewise affirm the possibility of salvation for those who lived before Christ and who were not part of Israel, the Old Testament Church.

However, for those who knowingly and deliberately (that is, not out of innocent ignorance) commit the sins of heresy (rejecting divinely revealed doctrine) or schism (separating from the Catholic Church and/or joining a schismatic church), no salvation would be possible until they repented and returned to live in Catholic unity.
However, for those who knowingly and deliberately (that is, not out of innocent ignorance) commit the sins of heresy (rejecting divinely revealed doctrine) or schism (separating from the Catholic Church and/or joining a schismatic church), no salvation would be possible until they repented and returned to live in Catholic unity.

<a href="http://www.catholic.com/library/salvation_outside_the_church.asp" target="_blank">http://www.catholic.com/library/salvation_outside_the_church.asp</a>

Brighid

Throbert McGee

Which brings us to the question: Who gets to define "Catholicism"? Ideally, of course, it should be God, seeing as He's omnipotent and all and thus couldn't possibly get the definition wrong. But unless and until the Big Guy decides to beam down to Earth and do some 'splaining, the next best thing, surely, is that each individual Catholic gets to define Catholicism.

Only... there's this dude in Rome with a ridiculous pointy hat, and other men around him with red caps, and they all claim to know God's mind better than most of humanity. And, remarkably, hundreds of millions of Catholics let them get away with this unearned grabbing of moral authotrity, as though the Pope really had a closer connection to the Ineffable Infinite than any random janitor.