To whomever just e-mailed me, I never said Roman Catholics are evil. I said parts of Roman Catholicism are evil. I've mentioned this a bunch of times before on my weblog. If you'd like to have a rational discussion I'd be happy to, rather just telling me how good I must feel about myself insulting Roman Catholics.
I want to start a series of "Why I'm Not a" lists. Back in the day, I had an "opinions" section of my website where I had stuff about Roman Catholicism, Christian Science, etc. explaining why I disagreed with them. Unfortunately, they were pretty poor, and I never worked on them, so I removed them after a little while.
Then recently I had a short discussion with a Roman Catholic who e-mailed me about a comment I had on my Christianity page about Roman Catholicism. I challenged him to explain some of the strange doctrines of Roman Catholicism, but I had to remember the many many issues I had off the top of my head (there are so many I never remember them all at the same time). Furthermore, since I came of with the list on the spot, I couldn't document everything.
So, I'd like to start keeping a list of my gripes with various religions, issues, etc. The lists will focus on "negative" comments, negative meaning that my points will be criticisms of the belief system, rather than "positive" statements about Christianity. You'll get an idea from the list I'm about to start in this post, but basically I'm unashamedly coming from within the Christian worldview in my comments. A "positive" statement, "Why I am a Christian", is a separate document to create another day 
So, without further adieu, here's my preliminary list of reasons Why I'm Not a Roman Catholic:
- I don't believe the Pope can speak infallibly
- The apocrypha isn't Scripture
- Purgatory is not a Scriptural concept - it's taught nowhere in Scripture, and in fact it's precluded by Scripture
- The transubstantiation is a very weird doctrine, for a whole bunch of reasons. It turns Christians into cannibals, it seems to obviously misunderstand Christ's symbolism, and it's just plain against the laws of nature.
- Mary wasn't a virgin her whole life, neither was she born through an immaculate conception.
- We're saved by faith, not by works. Roman Catholicism is a works based religion. To be fair, it's only "partially" a works based religion - they do believe faith matters of course, but Scripture says we're saved by faith, and not by works. Once you make any works the basis of your salvation, you're screwed.
- No one is to be called "father" but our father in Heaven.
- It's against the teaching of Scripture for priests to have to be celibate. In fact, you can make a strong case that priests should be married, according to Scripture.
- I believe the Roman Catholic Church commits idolatry through prayer to Mary and the saints. Mary is a human, she's dead, she doesn't intercede at all for us, etc.
- The Church's view of what a "saint" is is warped. The Bible considers any believer a saint. The Roman Catholic Church turns it into some kind of title to be earned.
- We are not obligated to confess our sins to a priest, only to God.
- A priest, furthermore, has no power to forgive, only God can.
- A Christian cannot lose his salvation. The Church teaches that you can and you have to "earn" it back if you do.
- The Church confuses sanctification and justification. It teaches that we are finally saved by our own inherent righteousness, not the righteousness of Christ. "Infused" vs. "Inputed", etc.
See, I've run out of things already, but I'm sure I have lots more. Ideally, I'll later document every one of these statements with a reference in the Catholic encyclopedia or other Catholic reference source, and provide a corresponding counter point from the Bible or one of the reformed catechisms.
Monday, December 19, 2005
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