Thanks James:

It is also very hard to make a blanket statement regarding all Lutherans, Episcopalian/Anglicans/Methodists etc.

I have a friend from Childhood who is a Methodist. Inbetween ages 14 and 16 I would sometimes stay with him while my parents took a trip out of town. I went to the Methodist Church with them. (I was raised jewish, so I was not missing Mass.) The Church was constructed in a “typical ” Protestant style. Pulpit on a stage with choir behind the pulpit, table with four legs, and the words “Do this in Rememberence of Me” two urns with flowers and an open bible on it. When they had a communion service the minister and a married couple from the congregation would kneel in front of the table say the prayers for the communion service and then the little plastic cups with grape juice and squares of bread would be passed by the ushers to the people in the pews, who would serve themselves from the trays.

I visited him last year for a big wedding anniversary, the old Church was there, but is now a hall for banquets, tag sales etc. The new Church has a proper altar, with the pulpit off to the side, altar rail the Minister rather than wearing a suit, wears vestments purcahsed from a Catholic Liturgical goods dealer, they use a chalice, ciborium and hosts, I don’t know if they use wine or still use grape juice in the chalice, but the little plastic cups are gone. Everyone who went up for communion knelt at the communion rail. The Service was patterned after a Catholic Mass, and I’m told that while the sermon takes more precidence there than in a Catholic Church still, the Minister and acolytes are vested every Sunday, the Processional Cross and candles are used and the Curcifix in the Sanctuary that replaced the barren cross was a gift of my friend when his grand-daughter was baptized in the new Church. There are other Methodist Churches that retain the Pulpit as the focus model today.

There are Methodists who will say horrible things about Catholic Superstition, but there was also a Methodist Minister who wrote a book, “Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy” on how the Rosary is Biblically sound, and all Protestants should pray it. He has quite a following among Methodists who now recite the Rosary.

There are some among our Protestant brothers who have investigated history and decided that there were areas where the Reformers went overboard, they see what the Early Church did, and said, and now confess that some of what they stipped away from the faithful was a knee jerk reaction. So too Some Catholic Theologians have realized that not everything Reformers said was heretical, or schismatic. It was sadly rejected along with those things that the Catholic Church does hold to be heretical. Both sides are guilty of tossing out the Baby with the Bathwater.

Now as a Catholic, having investigated the claims and doctrines of Buddhist, Protestant, Orthdox, and my own jewish heritage, I have found the fullness of the truth to reside only in the Catholic Church. However that does not mean that I can’t discuss the similarities and differences without trying to condemn someone for their beliefs.