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    Anonymous
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    Striking differences between Salvation Protestant and Catholic can be found in this little meditation.

    Last night as I walked God’s little fuzzy creatures put into my charge, it seemed a usual night. We finished the rosary we pray during our evening walk, (Yes they pray it in latin with me.) As we finished the bell tower of the local Community College tolled six PM, we began the Angelus. One of the things I have mentioned to those who decry the rosary or Angelus or (insert devotion here) as being boring and repetitive, mind numbing and a good way to put them to sleep is that with frequent, even daily (or more frequent) recitation, and properly if only for a moment at first meditating on the mysteries, you can come into your own epiphanies, your own personal moments with God in which He fills you with understanding of something you read or heard possibly years ago, that stops being simply scholarly and academic, and becomes real in your life and soul. Yesterdays meditation during the Angelus was thus.

    In the Mass the priest (and the people following the missal pray) as the priest puts a drop or two of water in the chalicethe Deus qui humane, in it he recalls our Lord taking on humanity so that we may share in His dignity. Elevating us.

    In this season of the Nativity, the Theophany, we recall how our Lord, the second person of the Blessed Trinity by the Will of the Father, and the action of the Holy Ghost became man. But it did not stop there. What struck me was how God, having no need for us, being complete and whole in and of Himself, did not simply come to us for the redemption of humanity, but He involved all of creation in the process, something He did not have to do. He used the angels, in the person of Gabriel the Archangel, humanity in the person of our Lady little fuzzy creatures by the fact that they with our Lady and St. Joseph where the first to adore God made man. the plant kingdom by the straw and hay that was to be feed and a bed for the animals. As the original manger was probably stone carved out to hold that feed, He used rocks and minerals. He allowed for a moment in time for all of His creation to participate in His great deed of redemption. Just as he not simply allows but desires us to cooperate with Him daily in our own sanctification. He offers us the means of working with and following His will, however he leaves it up to us, (with the help of His grace) to participate with Him in our redemption. It is also why and how He uses us to announce the Good News of Salvation, it is not simply our right, but also are responsibility to participate in Salvation.

    As Roman Catholics we believe that our Nature is fallen. However we also believe that a creations of God, we have a dignity (each and everyone of us) because our ulitmate source is God. Tarnished as it is, God in His mercy calls us back to him. (Religion, from the latin Re Lingo, or to tie or bind back to) is a binding ourselves back to God and His will. God offers redemption because His creation deserves redemption, not based on itself, but because it is His creation.

    Protestant Theology teaches the total depravity of Man, it does not depend or believe in the cooperation of man with God but depends on One’s Faith which in turn forces the hand of God to save us. Our momentary acceptance of Jesus, requires Him to look the other way from our depravity, and disregard our sins. God wipes the slate clean despite our sinfulness, and unworthiness.

    Counter to this in the Catholic world, we assent to God’s law, and we meet in a mutual embrace. God does not ignore our blemishes, but looks deeper into the beauty of His Creation, offering us the assistance we need to cooperate with our return to the Order He intended for us. That Order is that one day we like Adam and Eve before the fall can walk with Him and share with Him all the Glory of Eternal life and an intimate knowledge and Love of Him. In the Catholic Faith God sees our unworthiness, but looks deeper as what He first intended for us, with our cooperation, He helps us to restore that.

    There (as I see it) is the difference

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