Protestants were anathamized at the Council of Trent.

-- Joel (big_college_man@jaymathes.com), January 06, 2003

Answers

I'm boint out too, Christine.

Ecummenicals are being asked to come back to the True Faith, Joel. The Church appeals to their love for God, and Christ's commandments. If they search their consciences and investigate the claims of the Church to their loyalty, the worthy ones will come back. Gail can testify to that.

-- eugene c. chavez (chavezec@pacbell.net), January 06, 2003.

Also remember that ALL of the Protestants in existence at the time of the Council of Trent had started their lives as Catholics - they were really fallen-away Catholics. Most of the Protestants who exist today were born and raised as Protestants, and therefore can't be held responsible for the sin of rejecting Catholicism.

It's exactly the same situation as the Jews who rejected Christ in the 1st Century - only a bigot would hold that all Jews from that point on shared that same guilt.

-- Christine L. :-) (christine_lehman@hotmail.com), January 06, 2003.

Good points Christine and Eugene. 700 years have passed since the Reformation. The Reformers acted out of complete rebellion toward Christ's church. That is typically not so today. Most Protestants have NO CLUE, believe I know, about the church prior to the Reformation. I know that's hard to believe, but it is true. I cannot tell you how shocked I was when I realized that the root word of Protestant is Protest. I really was -- shocked! And yet I had been a Protestant for 20 years!!

But Praise God, He doesn't hold us accountable for our ignormance, only willful rebellion. What peace I now have. I can't tell you how SWEET it is!

Love,

Gail

-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), January 06, 2003.

For those with true interest, there is a wonderful program on the Catholic cable TV network EWTN every Monday evening at 7PM (Central Time), called the Journey Home..in another post, I said it was called "coming home"..sigh..anyway, it is an hour long program where folks from other faiths, or no faith at all share how they came to love and join the Catholic Church. If you are not a Catholic,this program has excellent insights into how people came to see the truths of the Churches' teachings......BTW, due to my illness, I often mis- state dates and names..so please do not hesitate to correct me should you see me post in error. I would consider it to be a kindness.At the time I type something, it "looks right" to me..LOL

-- lesley (martchas@hotmail.com), January 06, 2003.

The Journey Home is on EWTN,, 8pm Monday, Repeated 10am tuesday, and 11pm saturday, these are Eastern standard time

-- ed Richards (loztra@yahoo.com), January 07, 2003.

I remember in the Bible a rebuke by Paul to the Church, he said "some claim to follow Paul and others Peter, but do not say that instead we are all followers of Christ." (paraphrase) This seems to be the condition of the Church today. People say "I follow Catholicism" and "I follow Protestantism" but not enough people are simply saying "I follow Christ." God did not ask us to follow a denomination he said " Take up your cross and follow me."

-- Laura H. (laurempear@yahoo.com), October 25, 2004.

Laura, you are comparing apples and oranges here. In Apostolic times there was ONE Church, just as Jesus intended. Paul's rebuke concerned the attention people were giving to an individual minister of the Church rather than to the Church itself, in which Christ had place full authority, and from which individual ministers of the Church receive their authority. No, this is not the condition of "the Church" today. It is the ungodly condition within Christianity, where hundreds of thousands of people have LEFT the Church and founded unauthorized churches of their own, in direct violation of the stated will of God - that they all may be ONE. Indeed, God did not ask us to "follow a denomination". Rather, He specifically FORBAD the existence of denominations, because denominations necessarily mean departure from truth, and He promised that the Holy Spirit would guide His Church to 'all truth". He founded one Church for all mankind, and commanded that all people become disciples of that one Church. There is a world of difference between favoring one minister of Christ's Church over another, which is what Paul was talking about, vs. following the true Church founded by Jesus Christ over mere institutions of men teaching watered-down truth and plain untruth.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), October 25, 2004.