Mr Bombastic wrote:
Not true. Of all the Christian denominations, just about every one of them agrees with the basic doctrine. That Jesus is the Son of God and that He died and rose again to save us from our sin. The differences are minor and are not related to how to be saved or live as God would want us to live. And before you cast any stones, perhaps you could explain why the Catholic Church once made it a crime, punishable by death, for someone to own a Bible. Then there was the Inquisition. There is also all of the many 'Church Doctrines' that are contrary to Scripture. Catholicism is a Pagan religion. I've seen them bowing to graven images. That is something that God forbids and no Christian would ever do.
Not true. Of all the Christian denominations, just... (
show quote)
If you recall Christ was emphatic that he came to fulfill the old testament and gave the message of the new testament to replace it. While all of the bible is important, it must be remembered that the injunctions of the old testament are not necessarily replicated in the new. Further, your interpretation of what is occuring in Catholic worship is at odds with the reality ---
No Catholic Worships a Graven Image. Anyone who does that is an idolater, not a Catholic. Whatever you saw was witnessed without comprehension and your interpretations of a reigion, of which you are ignorant, are worthless.
As far as what was once a crime, consider that early man made a practice of killing any stranger that entered their area. The Mayans engaged in bloody wars solely for the purpose of taking captives to be sacrificed to their gods and they ritually slew thousands of these at a time. After Martin Luther, the schismatic, defied the Pope and established his own religion, horny Henry VIII proceded with the English Reformation, in order to divorce and remarry, multiple times. From the beginning, the Catholic Church faced general persecution, regimentation and oppression in formerly Catholic countries. All of this is illustrative of what man does, in his ignorance and propensity to do evil.
You will note, it is man who does the evil not the church or the religion. You could, with equal irrelevance, ask me to justify the slaughters of Tammerlane or Enver Pasha who was responsible for the Armenian genocide in which he killed 1.5 million Christians. Enver was doing this for the sake of his god which if you believe moslems is the God of Abraham. These are acts of man, not God Mandated and not mandated by Catholicism. No one in those times was playing with a full deck.
To blame all the evil acts in history on Catholicism is to deny the sinful, evil nature of man, who performs these evil acts, while cloaking himself in Religion. It was done by Catholics and Protestants of all sects, none have clean hands.
Biblical exigesis is a difficult thing, anyone not capable of reading Aramaic, Hebrew, Classical Greek and Latin and who is not an expert historian on society of two thousand years ago is at a complete disadvantage as to what is actually written and how it was to be understood. The Jews have Talmudic Scholars and the Torah; they also had brilliant interpreters of the law who produced the Mishnas and the Gemara elucidations. The nearest equivalent in Christianity is Catholicism which is based on Biblical-Scriptural precepts and oral tradition for guidance in interpretation. The Apostles' Creed is based on Christian theological understanding of the Canonical gospels, the letters of the New Testament and to a lesser extent the Old Testament. It covers the basics but not all of Catholicism.