Just a quick response to Candy Brauer’s latest anti-Catholic ralings:
My heart cries over Roman Catholics. Few Roman Catholics are actually saved.
In Catholicism, we do not presume to know who is saved and who isn’t. Thankfully that is God’s job and I trust that He does it well.
How do I know this?
You don’t.
Because I have the Spirit of God indwelling me, and I know that I want to do what’s pleasing to God.
Well so do I. I think probably most of St. Blog’s does as well. We aren’t perfect. We don’t claim to be. But we try to learn and grown on this pilgrimage towards heaven as we “work out our salvation with fear and trepidation.” Phil: 2:12
By reading the Bible, praying, and being guided by the Holy Spirit, God leads me to what is right.
Absolutely! And Catholics read their bibles, we pray and we try to be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I believe that it was bible reading, prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit that lead me deeper into my Catholic Faith.
It is not right to deify Mary by praying to her.
I agree. We do not deify Mary. We honor as the mother of God. Honoring the Queen Mother of the King is very biblical.
She said herself in the book of Luke that Jesus is HER Saviour.
Absolutely. NO disagreement there.!
Hence, Mary too was a sinner in need of saving, by her own admission.
Mary doesn’t say she is a sinner any more than Sam Gipp said that the prophet in his first chapter was a Street Preacher! There certainly seems to be a disconnect between what Candy reads, and how it gets interpreted.
Jesus is indeed Mary’s Savior. It was because Jesus needed his mother to be pure and perfect that God created Mary without sin. Mary is saved, but her salvation was different than it was for the rest of mankind.
Of course, Romans 3:23 makes it clear that she was a sinner as well.
Not to be interpreted as all have literally sinned. Of course babies have never sinned. Mentally retarded people who cannot reason and choose freely between right and wrong have not sinned either.
The Roman Catholic church claims that there are no saints, except whom they canonize as saints.
Well that will be news to the Magesterium! It actually says that there are many saints who have died quietly and their holiness unknown but to God. Which is why we have the Feast of All Saints! Saints that are officially canonized have special recognition, but that does not mean that they are the only saints to have existed.
Yet the Bible says differently.
Chuckle… so does the catechism!
Did you know that the word “Christian” is only in the Bible a few times? Christians are mostly referred to under the name “Saints” in the Bible. Sadly, most, if not all sainted Catholics are not saints according to God, and are not living on high. They are in what Catholicism teaches is purgatory.
That’s incorrect too. If you aren’t perfected yet, you aren’t a saint. Thus a saint is not in purgatory, but in heaven.
However, what Catholicism doesn’t tell you, is that their “purgatory” is the outer darkness of hell.
It doesn’t tell you that because it’s not true. Purgatory is the last stop for some before heaven. It has nothing to do with hell.
It is a type of limbo, and you do stay there until the time is fulfilled.
Limbo is a tropical dance!
Purgatory is a time of purification. Nothing more, nothing less.
The time will be fulfilled at the judgment, and all those found in the Catholic “purgatory”, or what the Bible calls outer darkness, will then be cast into the lake of fire. The Roman Catholic purgatory has only one exit, and that exit always leads to hell.
Well that may be what they teach in Candyland. The catechism of the Catholic Church however says this:
1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:
As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.
1472 To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.
1475 In the communion of saints, “a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins in purgatory and those who are still pilgrims on earth. between them there is, too, an abundant exchange of all good things.” In this wonderful exchange, the holiness of one profits others, well beyond the harm that the sin of one could cause others. Thus recourse to the communion of saints lets the contrite sinner be more promptly and efficaciously purified of the punishments for sin
In your other ear the enemy is shouting. You have doubts assailing you. Maybe you’re Roman Catholic, and the enemy is filling your mouth with bitter vile and anger at what I’ve said here.
I’m not filled with anger or hate. I am just perplexed as to how and where you learned these falsehoods, and the best approach to correcting them.
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