The catholic church is not the church, Christs followers are, those who preach the truth and obery Him. They come from all denominations and not your church which is not even in unity among itself. This shameless promotion is really tiresome especially since noone is buying it
I agree, Bill.
Christians are
not an IT, Christians are US. The church is one, holy, catholic community of believers - ALL the children of God, ALL the brothers and sisters in Christ, ALL who have the divine gift of faith, ALL who have faith in Christ as Savior, ALL.... spread out over all the centuries and all the continents. And Jesus is STILL the head and lord of His church - He never resigned and never gave this to any bishop in any city (in perpetuity or otherwise), He cannot be displaced as the head of the church no matter how much some man or denomination desires the power.
So why do some denominations (the RCC and LDS for example) so loudly and passionately insist that IT is the church (at least at its fullness)? Simple:
POWER. The ability to lord it over others as the Gentiles do (remember what Jesus said about that?). The ability to exempt itself from accountability. The ability to demand that all docilicly submit to it itself alone as onto Christ Himself.
I have nothing against denominations,
per se. Just as Christians often associate together into congregations for the purpose of mutual fellowship, edification, worship, ministry and accountability... so congregations often associate together into denominations for the same (valid, good) reasons. It's fine. It's not required (and there were none until the 4th Century) - it's okay to be non-denom, but it's okay and IMO good to bind together into denominations, too. But NO individual person, congregation or denomination IS the church, the whole corpus of all believers, and none of them displaces Christ and is the Mouth of God, the Vicar of God, the Infallible/Unaccountable One; none of them displaces the church. And obvously, the only "UNITY" the RCC enjoys is exactly the same "UNITY" every denomination has: with itself alone (the RCC is in no way unique or better in this regard).
Thank you!
Pax Christi
- Josiah
