Home Forums All Things Catholic If I’m not Catholic, am I going to hell? Reply To: If I’m not Catholic, am I going to hell?

#7684
Anonymous
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Don’t any of you guys read Scriptures?

Ron:

Not only do Catholics read the scriptures, Catholic life is nourished, enriched, and completly embued by the Scriptures. I myself have taught Sacred Scripture in Catholic Colleges, and two Seminaries, and while they are filled with such wisdom and depth that they take a lifetime of study, such that I would not call myself an expert, I think I may be a little familiar with not only the Scriptures themselves, but the history and context they where written in, the original languages, (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic) The interpretation, and heretical interpretations that existed in the early Church, as well as the major divergence from the early Church use and interpretation of the Scriptures by Early Protestants and Dispensationalists (Dispensationalism having only been around for little more than one hundred years. I find it hard to rely on the credibility of Dispensationalism when it claims to have the truth of the Early Church, yet was only invented recently, unless of course you are willing to state that Christ Jesus was a liar, when He told us that He would send the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete to comfort and guide the Church, and that He would not abandon us, but rather would remain with us, and then let the Church fall into error, lapse from the earth and await Protestantism and the invention of an Invisible Church made up of true believers, who cannot be defined, but hover somewhere within “Bible” denominations, or personal interptetations, for those who claim not to be followers of anyone or anything but the bible. These Ideas are truly the ideas of men. These Men are men who rebelled against God and the Church He founded and gave authority to.)

I’ve read your website, and think it would be helpful to read this link , http://www.catholic.com/library/The_Ant … _Bible.asp
You may also benefit from finding a copy of the late Louis Bouyer’s book, [u:fi7atn0j]Spirit and the Forms of Protestantism[/u:fi7atn0j] Bouyer you may be interested to know was a hardline Evangelical Protestant minister. He preached more purulent hatred for all things Roman and Catholic than most. When he sat down to do an investigation of the Roman Catholic Church, he found that most of the rot he had been taught in his “Bible based” Evangelical Seminary regarding the Catholic Church was fabricated by early Protestants, and eventually not only converted to the Catholic Faith, but was ordained a priest, and became one of the staunchest defenders of the Church, along with (although later than) John Henry Cardinal Newman, an especially anti-Catholic Evangelical Anglican who converted, Msgr. Ronald Knox, who later translated one of the better English language translations of the Bible, so well translated it became the standard translation read from Catholic Pulpits at Mass in England and Scotland. Msgr. Philip Hughes who likewise was a rabid anti-Catholic with a doctorate in Theology, (Protestant Theology) and History, who when he studied early texts of Church History became convinced that to deny the authority of the Catholic Faith was to deny Christ, and His message of Salvation. Many of the accusations you seem to make against Catholics or the Church have nothing to do with the authentic teachings of the Catholic Faith but are the fallacious arguments of Anti-Catholic writers, I would be remiss in pointing out that aside from being imbued with Scripture in all the Ritual life of the Catholic Church, (Eastern and Western Rites) The Sacred Scriptures (New Testament) did not exist during the first generations after Christ founded the Church, and once written by the inspiration of God, it was the Catholic Church that guarded them, and gave us the canon of both OT and NT books that where accepted. One has to either ignore or deny history, if one cannot see that the Canon of the Sacred Scriptures was compiled and codified by the same Church, founded by Christ Jesus that you condemn.

While the Sacred Writ does tell us that all scripture is profitable for the teaching and edification of the faithful, it does nowhere say it is required for all to read it. If that was the case the first couple of generations of Christians would be lost, as they did not have many of the NT books until thirty and some sixty years after the Death and Resurrection of our precious Savior.

With regard to sacraments saving us. Anyone who has studied the actual teachings of the Catholic Church rather than the spin put on the teachings by Protestants who misquote, or pick selective quotes from Catholic Sources that reflect not the entire theology, but only one aspect would know that the Sacraments are effective because they are as the Council of Trent put it, “Since they are the signs of sacred things in so far as by these sacred things men are sanctified (ST III:60:2); since the external rite (matter and form) of itself cannot give grace, [b:fi7atn0j]it is evident that all sacraments properly so called must originate in Divine appointment.[/b:fi7atn0j] [b:fi7atn0j]”Since the sanctification of man is in the power of God who sanctifies”, [/b:fi7atn0j]writes St. Thomas (ST III:60:2), “it is not in the competency of man to choose the things by which he is to be sanctified, but this must be determined by Divine institution”.

So it is not the rite itself, which can be changed by the Church, as long as we follow what Christ Jesus told us to do, ie in baptism, use water, and baptize in the form he told us we must do. But by God’s will that He made manifest to us (yup, among other places even if one refuses to accept it,
[b:fi7atn0j]in the Bible[/b:fi7atn0j], and elsewhere in the writings of the Apostles and the Early Church.) We do it because he told us to. We know it to be so, not simply because the Bible, an inspired source of revealed truth tells us so, but because the Bible confirms what the Church has always and everywhere taught until those who wished to rebel against what was passed down from the Apostles, (the latin for to pass down is traditio) and invent their own man made rules about what the Church was, and toss out anything that was contrary to or too hard for them to believe.

While these things may be hard for you to read, and accept, (Just as it was hard for the Jews listening to Christ Jesus to accept that unless they ate His body and drank His blood they would have no life within them.) I write this because I too am worried about your soul, and your misrepresentations of the Church and Sacred Scripture.

Most importantly, you (most assuredly) remain in the prayers of those on this board, .[/b]