The Only True Church is Catholic
By Kevin Roeten (07/22/07)
Just recently anti-Catholicism peaked. 'AP' seemed to fan the flames with a by-line in an article "Pope: Other churches defective". They seemed to only stress the information that Pope Benedict VXI said that Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation. Just that statement brought swift criticism from a number of different Protestant churches.
At face value, how could any church maintain superiority over any Christian denomination? How could they say that even though one believes in the true God, Jesus Christ, that they may be barred from true salvation despite the belief and following the ways of Jesus Christ? This, on the surface, seemed not only ostentatious but even sublime. Jesus said He came down to save all, so naturally we’re all saved, right? So the only real question is to what extent our pleasure will be in heaven. But wait. All of a sudden, common sense seems to kick in.
Sure, the AP wants to generate controversy, and the Catholic Church is the best whipping boy in town. It even brought up quotes about the Catholic Church and doubts about how it even wanted to have Christian unity.
Then it became apparent that when Christ lived on earth, He intentionally instituted a ‘Church’ in which humans could worship. Not 2000 different Christian churches---but one Church. He made leaders(e.g., Peter), and told Peter that He would give him all the keys—even for forgiveness of sins. For 1500 years the Catholic Church was the ONLY Christian Church that existed.
But around 1517 the Protestant Revolution came along, called the “Reformation”. Some didn’t like certain Catholics beliefs, so they figured that they could remove something they didn’t like about the Catholic faith, but still be Christians. Many dictionaries even define a Protestant as those that split off from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation of the 1500’s(i.e. Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians, Quakers, Calvinist, or other dissenters from Catholicism).
The biggest item removed by all dissenters was the transubstantiation of mere bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ Himself. Even though it was literally stated in ‘John’ six times, how could it be really true? Then came accusations of cannibalism, misinterpretation, and the ‘out-of-touch-with-reality’ claims. But Christ, after He said this, did not run after those who left(and many did), and tell them that His whole pronouncement was only figurative. If Christ was GOD, He would have made clear ANY ‘interpretation’ 5 minutes or 50,000 years from then. But everyone had the option to believe Why was everything so crystal clear for his disciples?
The bottom line is, either Christ was a bold face Liar, or He was in fact the true God. There’s no in-between. So Christ instituted the Church in 33 AD, He gave the apostles the power to continue his Church during his temporary exit, He claimed that Peter was in charge, and specifically said “upon this Church, the gates of hell shall not prevail”.
And over the past two thousand years, a lot of “hell” was thrown at the Catholic Church. Dissenters, wars, atheism, agnosticism, selling of indulgences, the Crusades, bad popes, Inquisitions, homosexual acts and marriages, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, abortions, contraception, Islamic domination, cleric sexual abuse, pretend Catholics--you name it. One could say that Satan is having a literal field day with the true Religion in which humans could supposedly find their way to God, and achieve everlasting peace and joy. It seems the gates of hell have undoubtedly unleashed their fury, but has NOT prevailed. Why didn’t other religions have these problems with evil, come back fighting, live to tell about it, and be stronger than ever? And with all this evil, one has to know that the devil does exist(as the bible says). And anyone who knows that the devil exists knows that God exists by simple default.
The bottom line is that the pope and every true Catholic hope that all peoples join together with one true religion. That sounds like true unity, but over 2000 different Christian churches does not. If Catholicism IS the one true church, before the world ends one can bet that everyone will likely see a lot more ‘hell’. Knowing all these facts, why would any true Christian not believe in Catholicism? Why would any Christian willingly believe a lie? Certainly it could not be simply because they want to ‘personalize’ their own religion. Any god would not look very kindly on that.
Kevin Roeten
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