The Huge Cost of Division

"Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste

and house will fall against house."

Take a single strand of dry spaghetti out of its box. It takes very little effort to break the piece of pasta into many fragments.  It is a bit harder when you take two pieces, harder still with four, but still possible to take what was whole and to fragment it into many disjointed pieces.  If, on the other hand, you take the whole pound out of the box and try to break it up that way it is much harder to do and depending on your strength may, in fact, be impossible for you to do. 

It is said by some that Martin Luther did not want to fall away from the Catholic Church. His behavior and actions and his pride all belie this statement.  Before the "great reformer" came onto the scene, there was for over fifteen hundred years one faith, one belief, and one kingdom. Marty did have a number of good points, not the least of which was the sale of indulgences which was never what indulgences were intended for.  But his prideful action and failure to look at himself as the least of all, has had a cost that is still owing and accumulating interest some five-hundred years since the schism was created.  But, it is not about Luther and his actions that I want to write about today, I want to talk about the cost of that which divides us.  The cost is huge and people are dying because of our divisions. 

Since the Protestant Revolt, God's church has been suffering from the disease of denominationalism.  Once Luther broke from the Church it was not long before another of the great "reformers" broke with Luther and set up his own community.  All over the world brother went against brother and father against son as the rust and rot of the reformation penetrated deeply into the Christian world.  Today there are approximately thirty and some say forty thousand different denominations, each claiming to own the truth, many of them condemning the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon and consigning members of the Church to the deepest pit of hell.  They also disagree with the other sects out in the world and First Baptist would never think that they were related to First Presbyterian Church.  In reality, every denomination can be traced only as far back as Luther.  The church founded by Luther was founded by a man, the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the present leader of the Church can trace his office back to Peter who was appointed as the prime minister of God's kingdom on earth. It is for this reason that I know I could never become a Protestant. 

But what about the cost of all of this division?  For many years mainstream Protestants stood side by side with Catholics on many issues.  But over the years, the Protestant denominations, very often by democratic vote, decided to water down their beliefs to make things more convenient for the believers.  For example, let's take abortion.  At one time Christians stood together on this subject, it was wrong, it was immoral, it was murder.  Then one by one, denominations voted at yearly meetings and abortion was taken off of the list of things that they stood against. Today, the Catholic Church is almost alone when it comes to the Right to Life issue.  Take for example as well marriage.  Marriage has traditionally been seen as to between one man and one woman.  This is how God wants it to be.  The Catholic Church, to this day, preaches this doctrine.  There can be no marriage between people of the same sex. One denomination after another is coming to the conclusion that marriage is marriage just so the two people love each other, it is okay if the couple is John and Jake or John and Jane just so there is love between the two people, their sexual identities should not be allowed to get in the way of their love.  Again, God's law is discounted and rewritten for the convenience of the people.  The denominations that allow same-sex marriage for the convenience of their congregations, are leading them into sinful behavior.  This is exactly opposite of what a church is supposed to do. 

So what?  So some Christians have gone off on another path if it makes them happy, life is short, why not?  True, Life is Short, but Eternity is Forever. One of the things we Christians are to do is to be a beacon, illuminating the way to the Kingdom of God.  Disjointed as we are, we are showing the world many different examples, many of them sinful, many of them unworthy of a person who calls themselves a Christian. These sinful examples are the ones that people like to see, they are the ones that they remember.  This is giving power to the pagans, the atheists, the LGBT community and even the satanists.  Our leaders in Washington (such as they are, God help us) are seeing that true Christian morals and values are becoming less and less important to the people of their communities and they are behaving in accordance with what they see!  So the cost of not being unified into one Church and one Kingdom are staggering.  The situation is costing lives.  Besides the millions of babies murdered in the abortion mills under the guise of woman's health, a right to die law allowing assisted suicide is on the books in some countries and even in some states.  Right now, the patient is the one who decides to end things but, I can see that there will come a day when a committee meets and decides for you the date and time when your life is no longer worth living and they, without your consent, will send you on your way by giving you a lethal injection right after you finish your hearty breakfast.  This has happened in other countries where "mercy killing" is permitted.  In one case, a man was put into the hospital for a mild case of depression.  The man's wife had to go on a trip.  When she came back just a week later she was handed her husbands ashes.  In his depression, the husband asked for assistance in ending his life and it was given to him.

We can thank Martin Luther and all of the other reformers that he spawned for where we are today.  Our Lord prayed that we be one as He and the Father are one. Due to human error and human pride, we have failed in this request.  What can be done about this sad situation we find ourselves in?  To hope for all the denominations to realize that they are in schism with the Church is too much to hope for on a human level.  We need to pray for one another and ask God to release the Holy Spirit because the job of bringing us all back together is too big to do without His help.  You know, Jesus did say that there would be one flock and one shepherd so maybe our prayer today will bring a unified, revived, strong, loving, and obedient Church back into reality tomorrow. 

Do you know somebody in Purgatory?  Please, pray for the poor souls today. They will remember those who help them and it pleases God when we share our spiritual wealth with those who need it most.  

   

Are Protestants Really Christians?

©1985 by Jack T. Chick LLC
Used in this blog under the fair use clause

Okay, buckle your seatbelts, helmets and eye protection is recommended because we are about to descend into the murky anti-Catholic world of Jack Chick.  Don't worry, we are not going to hang with him long because quite honestly both your and my time is too valuable to listen for long to the nonsense he prints in his tracts. In this gem, he patiently goes through the life of a Catholic girl and comes up with reasons that although she is a Catholic, she is not a Christian. Here is a brief summary of what he says:

• She is not a Christian because she was baptized as a baby.
• She is a citizen of two countries, the USA and the Vatican.
• She goes to confession which he says is not Biblical.
• He casts doubt on priests, nuns, monks and says that these are not mentioned in the Bible.  Then again, neither is the Trinity nor is there any mention of a pastor. 
• He rejects the Real Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament in spite of the Biblical evidence in the Gospel of John. 
• Jack then condemns the Sacrament of Confirmation, the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and says that the Catholic girl is hell bound because she was never "saved." 
• Next, he accuses Catholics of worshipping Mary. He states that our affection for Mary is caused by a devilish plot to take our eyes off of Jesus. 
• Finally, he says that what we should do is to pray his version of the sinner's prayer, can't find that in the Bible, but he is okay with that and we should reject the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon. 

Good Grief!  Let's rise up out of this muck and mire and get back to the clean world!  Jack and his poison pen are tools of the devil.  It is very sad but some Catholics can be pulled away from the Church because they are not well-grounded in the truths of the faith.  It is a sad thing in this day and age that otherwise intelligent men and women do not take an interest in learning about their faith. But that is a subject for another post.  I want to tackle the question that forms the title of this post, "Are Protestants Really Christian?"

In the Bible, we are granted something amazing.  We are privy to a conversation between Jesus and God the Father.  Jesus pours his heart out to God. In this prayer, he prays that all be unified even as He and the Father are unified. At this very meal, he made it possible for us to be one with Him when He instituted the Holy Eucharist.  For over fifteen-hundred years there was no doubt about what the Eucharist was. It was believed by all Christians that it was the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. It is this sacred meal that makes us one.  Most Protestant denominations do not believe in the True Presence, they see the bread and wine (they use crackers and grape juice) as mere symbols that have no meaning outside of a memorial to Christ. The unity conferred by the Eucharist is therefore broken between the Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations.  But does this take away their birthright to be called Christian? 

Martin Luther did have a good reason for being upset at some of the practices that were going around in the sixteenth century.  The sale of indulgences by a minority of clergy was abhorrent and took something that is good, holy, and part of the treasury of faith administered by the Church and put it into a bad light. Protest against this was a righteous act and Martin Luther was right to condemn it.  However, Martin strayed into sin when he decided that it was his way or the highway.  He did no favors for the world by striking out and forming a new church. He was culpable for the sin of schism. Those that followed him away from the church also sinned by association. Once broken the unity of the Church started to run like an old sock. Today we have thousands and thousands of denominations of Christians that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church, the Church founded by Christ which is the vehicle that will help us attain salvation. 

Are the people that meet in the Baptist Church down the street or the Presbyterian Church on the next block, are they Christians?  After all, they worship outside of the unity that Christ prayed for and their forefathers sinfully split the Church asunder so can they be considered Christians?  Without a validly ordained clergy can these thousands of offshoots have any claim on being Christian? 

The answer, of course, is yes.  Those of us that call Jesus, Lord, are brothers and sisters in the Lord.  Unlike the dreary world of Jack Chick, the Catholic Church does not impute guilt to those, through no fault of their own, are born into a different Christian tradition.ey are in fact our brothers and sisters in the Lord.  They do not carry the burden of the sin of schism on their souls.  The fact is, many of our separated brothers and sisters love the Lord more than we do.  Many of them model their lives more directly akin to that of Christ than some of those born into the Catholic faith.  So, we must pray that someday, and that day may not be until the return of Jesus, that all will be one again.  The fact is simple, there will be one flock and one Shepherd.  

What about Catholics that are ripped from union with the Church by fundamentalist evangelists?  I, for one, cannot fathom why one would leave the Eucharist for the Book. The Bible is an important way to meet Christ and it is said that ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ. The fact is that people who leave the Catholic Church do so because they are not well grounded in their faith.  Every Monday night I watch a show on EWTN called "The Journey Home."  This show features former Protestants, former atheists, reverted Catholics all sharing their testimony and prove that all spiritual roads lead to the Catholic Church.  I am not qualified to say whether or not these poor people have sinned in leaving the Chruch. Perhaps it is a situation similar to the act of suicide.  In old days the souls of a suicide were consigned to hell. Today we have a better appreciation for the complexities of the human mind and very often the person doing away with himself is not able to fully consent to the act because of mental disturbance and therefore has not committed a mortal sin.  A Catholic kidnapped by the honey-laced words of an evangelical is in a similar situation.  He is unable to defend his faith because he does not have the requisite knowledge. I do not believe that our God who knows what is in our hearts would reject the hijacked should because of the soul's ignorance of Catholic doctrine.  

Finally, I do believe that there are people out there that would do anything to bring down the Catholic Church. I do not fear them because their mission is doomed to fail.  The Jack Chick's of the world base their teaching on hate and discord and it shall never, ever, prevail.  We as Catholics have a duty to remember that all that profess the name of Jesus as savior are brothers and sisters in the Lord.  We as Catholics have a duty to be willing to defend the Church from those who wish it ill.  We as Catholics have a duty to work towards the unity and brotherhood of all in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We as Catholics have a duty to learn about our faith and safeguard it as the treasure it really is.  We have the duty to evangelize our separated brothers and sister while respecting them as kindred spirits. 

Live Truth - Live Catholic.