Tablet Thoughts: The Need for Truth in Assessment

Doing a search in Catholic for kindle books, I noticed there were a few titles written with the intent of "saving" us from the Catholic Church. One of these books claimed to be able to teach us how only Jesus saves, not the Church.

The problem is, any educated Catholic already knows this. While the Church was established by Christ and carries out His mission on Earth, we don't think that the actions of the Church which are for the salvation of mankind come from the ipse dixit declaration of the Church.

Instead we believe that the Church can perform these actions only because Christ has given her the task and the authority to carry out that task (see Matt 28:19 for example).  Faith in Christ is a prerequisite to being a Catholic.

Now I appreciate the fact that these individuals are doing what they do because they believe that we Catholics are in spiritual danger (though I disagree with their identified source of this danger).

But, if these people want to save us from dangers, you'd think they'd know what the actual dangers were.  This is like warning us to get off the roof before we fall, when in fact we're standing on the ground floor... their warnings are completely misdirected.

If their opposition to Catholicism was valid, they should at least know what we actually teach... otherwise,  how do they actually know we are teaching error?

To use another analogy, can you imagine someone trying to practice medicine with no knowledge of the condition of the patient? How could he or she hope to make a correct diagnosis or prescribe the right treatment?

That's what it's like for a Catholic to be told about the so-called errors we "believe."

Catholics don't worship Mary.  We don't believe we can earn salvation. We don't think the Pope is sinless. We don't deny the authority of Scripture. We don't worship statues.

We believe the Church has her authority from Christ, and we recognize that without Him, there could be no salvation.

However, we reject sola scriptura as man made tradition which cannot be found in the Bible -- making them self contradictory.  Because we believe that the Catholic Church is the Church established by Christ,  we must reject whatever is contrary to the consistent teaching of the Church.  We have faith that Christ keeps His promise to protect His Church and remain with her always.

Those who would dialogue with us need to throw out whatever was learned from Lorraine Bottner or Dave Hunt or Jack Chick or Harvest House.  Instead, they need to learn what we believe and why. Whether they speak from ignorance or from malice, they do speak falsely about us.

If they would "save" us, let them learn what we need to be saved from...

...they might learn that we're not in error to begin with.