Religion
Related: About this forumIs The Future Of Catholicism Protestantism? I Hope So
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/inebriateme/2014/05/is-the-future-of-catholicism-protestantism-i-hope-so/Let me say it: Protestant Catholicism is true Catholicism. Its a common dig against Protestants to say that they define themselves as being anti- (my friend Sam Rochas line: Protestants protest at being called Protestants), but in many ways so did Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Protestants think salvation is all about faith and not good works? Then it must be all about good works! Protestants think the Eucharist is a meal and not a sacrifice? Then it must be only a sacrifice! Protestants dont like Mary-talk? Lets never stop talking about Mary. This is a caricature, of course.
Many of the major Protestant sects have made far more progress on the social front than Catholicism, so let's hope this can be a force to steer the RCC away from bringing so much suffering to others.
rug
(82,333 posts)I do think you missed the point though. It suggests far more about doctrine than it does than it does about the "social front". Aside from its sexual doctrine, which is significant, the RCC has generally ben far more progressive on social justice issues, especially economic issues.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)Being Christian is about how you live, not ritual.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Luther believed in salvation through faith alone, and that good works were the fruit of good faith. In other words, it isn't what you do that makes you a good Christian, but what you believe. The good things you do are an emergent property of that faith.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)Don't forget indulgences and the absurdity knows as "Transubstantiation" (which the bread and wine given during communion turn into the body of Christ .
These items of nonsense were added by the Emperor Constantine and his successors.
These were inventions of the early Roman Catholic Church.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)okasha
(11,573 posts)as well as many current ones.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)Not too surprising since Wesley was COE first.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)...but he didn't eliminate ritual, and he certainly didn't emphasize good behavior.
And, as an aside, Luther subscribed to the idea of consubstantiation. Instead of believing in the literal transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, he believed that the bread and wine became body and blood while remaining bread and wine, that they existed alongside each other. I find this only minutely less absurd than transubstantiation.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)The concept behind communion is taking God within, through ingestion of the body and blood, symbolically . Additional symbolism is the table where all share in the experience of being in God together, and where community is nurtured.
Both concepts are excellent.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Across the history of Christianity and the myriad extant sects of the religion, YMMV.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)In the Catholic church, and the Episcopal church, and the more diffused versions of this in different Protestant churches.
Re-enactment of Jesus at the Last Supper, a Jewish seder.
Historically, this is the origin, and the central spiritual practice.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)And a lot of Protestant denominations from my neck of woods aren't enlightened. Just a few are.