Re: Purgatory?

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 16:14:08 +0000, brachypodium
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Mike I wrote:
>> 
>> Doc Watson wrote:
>> > On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 22:35:34 -0500, Joseph Geloso
>> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> done went and wrote as Gospel Truth in these
>> > here little old Usenet News'FROUPS:
>> >
>> >
>> >>As I said, and as you have now confirmed, you were not seeking the
>> >>truth of the Catholic Faith.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > There is none to SEEK.
>> >
>> > I already HAVE true faith. That's why I am a Christian -- and I'm
>> > quite content to REMAIN with the Baptist faith, as it teaches
>> > biblically.
>> >
>> Let's see Doc, which Baptist Faith are you talking about? 1st Baptist,
>> Free Will, Missionary or maybe Southern Baptist, so on and so forth. All
>> things being equal, the reason there are so many Baptist Churchs is
>> because the members can't decided on how to decided on which biblical
>> teachings they are going to follow or how scripture is to be understood.
>> Each Church and even it members decides what Scriptures means and how it
>> should be followed.<
>
>Things are not so simple. This is a matter of the credibility of Western
>denominations, and since the Reformation the credibility of all formal
>organisations known as Christian in the West has been questioned again
>and again. Originally a tool of European monarchs to assist them in
>population control, by the Reformation the medieval 'Church' had become
>too obviously a monster with a life of its own, which served the
>purposes of fewer and fewer. It could hardly have been more
>hierarchical, more secretive, more politically involved. Neither could
>it have been much more obviously corrupt without dissolving altogether.
>These extremes were reached just as learning was increasing, and those
>outside the hierarchy could read Scripture for themselves; and they
>noted enormous disparities, as they saw them, between precept and
>practice. Wyclif, the Lollards and Hus were early and cogent protesters,
>though there was much protest, of varied scholarship, even before them.
>
>Eventually the 'Church' made limited changes in the hope of satisfying
>the increasing desire for change, and Lutheranism and Calvinism in its
>political form were the first examples of these. Anabaptists, whose
>belief that only believers should be baptised struck right at the heart
>of medieval religion, were persecuted brutally. But the re-formed
>religions did not satisfy demand; Lutheranism became moribund, and
>Calvinism became impossible to operate. Pietism grew out of the Lutheran
>cadaver, which in turn gave way to evangelicalism, which adopted
>anabaptist ideas now expressed in some form in baptist and other
>denominations. 
>
>The present multiplicity of these denominations is due to their
>fundamentally heretical nature; they are the result of split after
>split, as their false character became evident, just as the Roman church
>was seen to be false. These denominations all have some distinctive
>truth to attract religious seekers, but they mix it with some basic
>disobedience of Scripture, thereby rendering ineffective the whole. This
>choice is somewhat like being in a supermarket in which all the
>foodstuffs have an unhealthy additive to produce long term sickness;
>some look healthier than others, may contain less additive than others,
>but it may make little difference in practice what is taken to the
>check-out. The tendency to secretive hierarchy able to introduce
>legalism, liberalism or other false ideas into the churches remains, and
>of course these are applied with the greatest zeal and care to those
>denominations that are nearest the truth. So it is very possible to be a
>member of the most apparently evangelical denomination but be no nearer
>to Christianity than a 14th C. Catholic.
>
>The RCC, though very far from these churches theologically, is not
>unaffected, because, just as at the Counter-Reformation, it has
>reluctantly had to imitate evangelicalism in the attempt to stay within
>distance of it. This has produced much more internal strain than at the
>previous reformation, as many RCs see that to alter teachings that are
>supposed to be eternal ultimately undermines the single claim that the
>RCC has for its credibility, which is its claim to infallible authority.

The whole mess cannot possibly be straightened out by human effort,
either. Only God can do that, and He will, in His Perfect Timing. His
Church is His Church, and although there is not a little, but much,
corruption within her, she remains Beloved to Him, and He Himself will
chastise her and purify her. After that, she will shine resplendently,
like the sun, and will draw all men of good will to herself, because
of her surpassing virtue and purity. And that, is almost the opposite
of what you see today. But nonetheless, it will come to pass.