Someone from one of the schisms has provided us a short list of “errors” found within The Only Church Jesus Founded. Let’s take a look at these popular reasons, including distortions, that many Protestants use to justify not being Catholic. Then, we must answer for ourselves: can Protestants be right?
1. Catholics pray to the Mother of Jesus and believe she was sinless. This is a very popular among Protestants. It is often accompanied by a hushed, urgent, “You do know that Catholics worship idols!” It is utter hogwash. Not one Catholic on earth worships Mary. Catholics are smart enough to realize “The Blessed Mother of our Lord is in Heaven. Jesus does love His Mother. If we ask His Mother to request His assistance, He is likely to grant it.” Who could deny that? People whose mothers didn’t love them? People who don’t think about the Miracle of Cana and that Jesus is “the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow“?
2. Many Protestants condemn The Rosary. “Those Catholics ask Mary to intercede for them. Each Rosary has the Apostle’s Creed, several “Glory Be to The Fathers”, a half dozen Lord’s Prayers, and some other recognitions of God and His Blessed Mother. If the Rosary works, Catholics have an unfair advantage in getting God to help. That is not fair to us Protestants.
3. Salvation by works is a bad thing that Catholics believe. Most Protestants prefer to believe in Salvation by Faith. Everyone who is dominated by the demons of Sloth just hates the idea of “Salvation by works” because they are too lazy and selfish to actually do good works.
4. Catholics believe that, when they die, some of them will go to a place where their souls may be purged of sins. We Protestants protest Purgatory. We are saved by faith, so when we die we are just as pure as we need to be to get to Heaven. It is wrong to believe in different levels of sin. All sins are forgiven as soon as we ask God to forgive them, even for the ten thousandth time. The Catholic Church thinks that’s ridiculous.
5. Protestants believe they get “Direct Forgiveness”. They say, “Forgive me, Lord!”, and “Whoosh! Total forgiveness! Nothing more is necessary. Those Catholics are wrong to think Bible passages like Matthew 16: 18-20 “Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail agianst it. I give you The Keys to The Kingdom of Heaven. Whose sins you bind on earth are bound in Heaven. . “ should be taken literally. Such passages are only a guideline, and we Protestant clergy understand what God really meant. He probably said the same thing about “on this rock I build My Church” to our founder,Pastor Bob, himself, only no one heard Him. Catholics also misinterpret John 20:23, and take Christ’s words to His Apostles “Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.” a little too seriously. We know we only need to deal directly with God to have our sins forgiven. The need to confess sins to a priest is mentioned in the Bible, but we don’t take such things seriously.
6. Catholics think that the Catholic Church wrote the Bible. That’s another distortion, sometimes willful, of what can only be called Protestant ignorance. After The Last Supper, Crucifixion and Ascension, Jews began comparing the prophecies with Jesus. Many of them became Catholics. So, scribes soon began producing re-writes of Old Testament Books, removing the specific references made about Jesus by the Prophets. It took The Church until 367 AD to replace fraudulent writings with the correct documents, dug up in small synagogues that could not afford the expensive, hand-written “theologically correct” updates. The Catholic selections were verified when The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and had the correct Books.
7. Many professional Protestants believe that only Catholics possess the Holy Spirit and are able to discern Scripture. That is a big, fat lie. Many Protestants are led by The Holy Spirit to understand Scripture so well that they become Catholics!
8. It’s not uncommon for Professional Protestants to think Catholics believe Communion is necessary for salvation. That’s also untrue. Many who, through no fault of their own, are not Catholic still get to Heaven.
9. Professional Protestants don’t like the idea of The priest being our mediator. It sort of cuts out the Protestant middle-man (or, clergypersonette) and has a negative effect on their cash flows. There is a difference between Catholic priests and other clergy: Every Catholic priest is ordained as a living link in a chain that reaches back to the Ordination of The Apostles by Jesus. Protestant clergy are not a part of that, and don’t like the comparison. The question they dread, “Isn’t it better to support a Church whose priests are Ordained in a living link with Jesus’ ordination of The Apostles?”
10. Protestants object to the Pope being infallible. They also object to Jesus saying about The Only Church He Founded “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The gates of hell shall not prevail against it because The Pope, only when speaking Ex Cathedra, is guided by The Holy Spirit and so cannot be wrong. Their silly little schisms, on the other hand, have caved in on artificial birth control, fornication, rampant remarriage, and, sometimes, the more obvious forms of abortion.
11. Professional Protestants also make a big thing out of The Inquisition. It lasted 350 years. About 3,000 people were put to death, usually by civil authorities who taken control. While Protestants complain about that, they NEVER admit: “Because we Protestants have fragmented the Pro-Life Christians among 43,000 competing groups, abortion has become legal, killing 3,500 unborn babies every day. We don’t want to talk about that, we’d rather tell lies about how bad the Inquisition was!
12. The Church has, of course, made changes over the past 2,000 years. The Blessed Mother’s importance has become clearer over time and has been more formalized in Doctrine. The Catholic Church has not changed any important teaching handed down from The Apostles. When changing doctrines to keep donors, can Protestants be right?
