Many Catholics along with others have the wrong impression about “THEIR” faith. It is not their faith; the Catholic faith or religion is Christ’s deposit of faith to the Human Race. Anglicans have their religion and Episcopalians have their religion but Catholics have the deposit of faith left by Jesus Christ which has been the mission of the Catholic Church (Mark 16:15) to spread and by implication clarify. Dogmatic clarifications by the church have been the same from the time they were declared, unchanging, until the present, the great majority of which have been acknowledged by Christians for almost 1500 years (the millennium and a half from Jesus Christ’s death to the start of the protestant reformation) and which have been changed by purportedly Christian denominations for reasons of the comfort of their adherents or disagreement on the nature of spiritual reality by the progenitors of these separate religions, not because Christ did not mean what He said when He said it. One who intentionally distorts Jesus Christ’s original message is called a heretic not a Christian. Present day heretics in the Catholic Church are famously called cafeteria Catholics. They choose the dogmas they like, unfortunately they unknowingly also choose hell if they do not change their ways and choose to follow all of Jesus Christ’s precepts. This may seem an indictment of just protestants, but this distorting of church teaching has, since the 1960s and Vatican Council II, been occurring even at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church to include not only bishops and cardinals but possibly even up to the Bishop of Rome.
We were given the promise by Christ that we would always have the guidance of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit, the third person of the blessed trinity (i.e. God) to not fall into error dogmatically (John 14:15-31). In these passages we also see that a Christian’s destiny lies in the imitation of Christ or Transformation in Christ. All men, know it or not, yearn to be in union with God and they do this by following Jesus’ example as closely as possible. We cannot knowingly distort Jesus’ message and hope to follow his example as closely as humanly possible as in the case of the saints. If we do not try to follow Christ’s example and commandments as closely as possible (not necessarily as we want to selecting only what we like or interpreting it only as we’d like) we cannot hope to enjoy the most happiness possible in this world or any happiness at all in the next. True Christians believe Jesus Christ is God and is the Word through which the universe was created and his words are the words of life, reflecting his knowledge as the creator of all things and we must believe what he says exactly, and cannot discount even one word of what He said if we are to understand (as much as humanly possible) the spiritual world and how to attain temporal and eternal happiness. Remember, it is always God, ultimately the Father (Mathew 23:9), but since He is part of one in the same Godhead (john 10:30), Jesus Christ, that we must listen to (Galatians 1:6-9).
There have been some mis-steps with regard to doctrine not dogma, the biggest case in point is, raised by the monk Martin Luther, the abuses with regard to indulgences. This problem was long ago corrected, and let’s be honest, largely because of Martin Luther’s complaints. The sad thing is, instead of working to correct the problems within Christianity, he decided to start his own church in which he re-selected books of the Old Testament based on the rabbinical Judaic canon which was revised in 100 AD instead of the Septuagint first composed in the 3rd century BC, a cosmic view which more closely supported the new theology or spiritual reality he postulated (i.e. the dogma that purgatory did not exist is well as being able to achieve salvation by scripture alone, or faith alone etc. instead of needing all these things in addition to tradition and positive action). The Gutenberg Bible which was produced before the protestant reformation, of which copies still exist, show that Christians before the reformation used a different set of Old Testament books. Does it make sense that Christianity flourished (a great many people joining in spite of the fact that to follow its tenants could result in death) for a millennium and a half on one set of scriptures and the early Christian church (which is synonymous with the present day Catholic church) had been allowed by the Holy Spirit to be misled on the validity of several biblical texts yet protestants argue that each individual without the guidance of the church can glean an inerrant interpretation of God’s revelation through scripture alone (sola scriptura) without the help of tradition? If so why does 2 Thessalonians 3:6 say “Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.”?
The rejection of tradition and the need for an institution like the church to guide one in the execution of a process as complex as learning to live and living a happy satisfying life is ludicrous even from a secular perspective. Take the case of a nuclear submarine. Learning to operate and then operating a nuclear sub is something one would never consider doing by giving the crew a bunch of manuals (i.e. just giving Christians/Catholics a bible) and expecting them to learn how to operate and actually effectively and efficiently operate a sub. First of all most people would only skim the manuals. You need a mentor who was himself trained by a mentor, this line stretching back to when the sub was first commissioned and the words of wisdom the designers and the engineers that did the first shakedown cruise, had for the first crew. Experience piled on experience as to what works and what does not. With this logic would it not be best for the same thing to happen? The designer of the human race, Jesus Christ, passed on how to be happy to the apostles who took their experience on how to implement and pass on Christ’s teachings and passed it to their successors. And Jesus Christ being God would know that there would always need to be a final authority, unity of “command” a single “executive” to insure the efficient and effective operation of the church such as the pope? Clausewitz in his classic text on modern warfare called “On War” states one of the tenants of war (the war we are concerned with is the war Catholics fight is against the devil and the forces of evil) is unity of command.
The aspiration of anyone calling himself or herself a Christian must be to devote their entire life to molding themselves into, as close as is possible, an exact copy, with regards to beliefs and goals and actions which would be the direct result of those, as Jesus Christ thus the description Christian. The most important of the few things Christ specifically changed or clarified from the Old Testament law (In Matthew 5:17-45 Jesus clearly states He has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill every bit of it down to the smallest part) was when acting in remembrance of him you could bring him to the faithful body, blood, soul, and divinity (Matthew 26:26, John 6:53) that working on the Sabbath was ok in support of quality of life issues for others (e.g. helping the elderly, curing the sick, feeding the starving – as David even in the Old Testament 1 Samuel 21:2-7 in other bibles 1 Kings 21:2-7 remembered in Luke 6:3-4 etc. because the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath, Mark 2:27), the fact that marriage is permanent (Mark 10:6-9), ordained priests can forgive sin (John 20:23), there is a heaven and hell (John 3:36) and that the best way to live is a celibate person with no property (Matthew 19:21, Luke 18:22, Mark 10:21). Finally, the change most non-Catholic people who follow Christ’s philosophy have a problem with, which Christ changed, is that the newest person God chooses to lead his people through will not be a judge like Deborah, Gideon or Samson; a prophet like Isaiah, Jeremiah or Daniel; or a king like Saul, David or Solomon but through a pope like Peter, Pius X or Benedict XVI (Matthew 16:17-19). The Catholic faith has been known for 2 millennia, that is 20 centuries, and has never changed in that time and can never change (Hebrews 13:8). Since we believe the Latin adage the law of worship/prayer is the law of belief (and belief can never change), as was demonstrated in how Martin Luther in Germany and Cramer in England corrupted the mass to corrupt the belief of the faithful in their countries to produce Lutheranism and Anglicanism, we must not change the mass (i.e. the Latin mass that has been almost the same since 400 years after Christ’s death) that has produced so many saints, cannot be changed in any substantial way, as a byproduct of what Vatican Council II tried to do, since that will change the way we have been asked to believe by Christ.
Traditional Thomistic Catholic 