Catholics and Protestants are blessed to agree: “Each of us has an immortal soul that is going to Judgment.” Catholics and Protestants disagree about how to get a favorable ruling from The Judge.
Protestants say: “I am a good person. I am going to Heaven.” They often join with one of 45,000 like-minded Protestant outfits. All agree: “We are going to Heaven!”
Catholics don’t think things are that simple. “Jesus said that we need “keys” to open the gates to Heaven. He was very clear: ‘Verily, verily I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.’”
Some are blessed to take Jesus’ Teaching seriously enough to realize: “He only gave ‘the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven’ to one man! There are over forty thousand different denominations. Jesus did not give ‘the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven’ to a single one of them. Only Peter was given ‘the keys’!”
Smarter Protestants realize: “We must have some sort of believable claim to ‘the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven’. We can tell them ‘I, Pastor Bob, can get your soul into The Kingdom of Heaven without those pesky ‘keys’! We must make them believe that Jesus gave ‘the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven’ to us, too, even though He didn’t.”
Catholics simply obey. They respectfully do what is necessary to receive The Catholic Sacraments, the real “keys to The Kingdom of Heaven”.
Not Protestants! “We don’t need Jesus to tell US what to do! We can get to Heaven on our own!”
Some Protestants invent “look-alike” ceremonies that resemble Catholic Sacraments. Pastor Bob’s Church of The Perfect Baptism promises, “We baptize fourteen year-olds upside down by total submersion in running water from The River Jordan!”
Anything to avoid doing what’s necessary to have access to The Only Keys to Heaven that Jesus did not give to them! That’s where Catholics and Protestants disagree.
