IS CATHOLICISM HOLY?

One of the marks of the true Church is that it must be holy. Obviously, if God starts a Church he would want it to be righteous and honest. The other marks are that the religion of God will be united, Catholic - ie have all truth, and be apostolic - authorised by the apostles as shown by the scriptures they wrote and authorised.

Roman Catholicism tells us, “The Catholic Church is holy in doctrine and is marked by the remarkable holiness of many of her children. The miracles of God show her to be true for they wouldn’t be done for an unholy religion.”

This is no use for many religions claim to be holy and miraculous and to make people holy and to have plenty of holy people in them. Everybody has a talent for faking goodness.

Miracles cannot be accepted as proofs for a religion being from God because devils can pose as angels of light and fake miracles that seem good but which are for a bad direct or indirect purpose are feasible if there are devils. The miracles support false doctrines so they are unholy and a mark of unholiness in so far as they support these doctrines. For example, at Lourdes the Virgin did miracles but did nothing to correct the errors of the Church.  Jesus said that fakes will come with signs and wonders that would fool the very elect or those who are fit for Heaven.

Individual Catholics could be holy but their creed cannot be regarded as holy. They say they are sinners. “The Council of Trent has defined that ‘after his justification a man cannot avoid, during the whole course of his life, every venial sin, without a special privilege such as the Church recognises was conferred on the Blessed Virgin’. The soul in the state of grace can therefore avoid any venial sin considered separately, but cannot avoid all venial sins taken together by keeping itself always free from them” (page 63, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). The relevant decree was made in Session 6, Canon 23, of the infallible Council of Trent. So, you can avoid venial sins like white lies but you cannot avoid the attitude that venial sins expresses – rebellion against God. This is a venial sin but is different from venially sinning by telling lies so you always sin venially in your attitude. That is what the quotation means by saying that there are separate venial sins and ones which are not separate in their way. But if you sin then you will remember that you are a sinner when you pray or serve your God. Piety is a mockery because you are letting God know that you will do good on your own terms not his. A sinner cannot do good when he or she is aware of sin. Catholic saints cheated a bit when they didn’t combat the Church’s teaching on sin.

The holier you are the less you will be likely to sin or so you would expect. It is far more vicious to commit an easy sin than a harder one. The Church says that even the saints sinned – it might have been slight but it was still sin. Therefore the saints are the worst of the lot even if you deny that all sin is equally malicious. If a saint tells a tiny lie, even if the lie is a tiny sin the fact that they so didn’t need to commit the sin and showed contempt to the grace of God which protects against sin is by no means minor. They have insulted all the exceptional graces they received so sin-wise or intention-wise it makes no difference if they were holy or unholy for they cannot win. External goodness is not enough according to the Church. The Church says that if your conscience tells you to burn heretics you have to do it so it is intention that counts.

Roman Catholicism says that you cannot do good that deserves a reward from God unless you have his help. You can do good without it, it says. But surely this good deserves a reward? What a sectarian and ungrateful and slanderous religion this is.

The mark of holiness principally refers to the doctrine being holy, true and from God. Rome is able to say that even if the whole Church were sinful it would still be holy as it is the means of holiness and the pillar of the holy truth. She has to teach this for there are many sinners and insincere people in the Church. But her doctrine is not holy for it is wrong. There is more. Everybody complains about having doubts. One doubt puts faith out of you. You do not believe in authority if you query so much as one thing it says. Also, if you had no doubts but did not know all Catholic doctrine you could not really believe. You are only guessing that it is plausible. So there is no Church. You cannot really be a member of a Church you don’t believe in. There is no Church. There is no point in saying that holiness is the mark of the true Church when there is no Church.

One disturbing thing about the holiness of the Church is that the holiness has to come from each individual member and the Church interprets that holiness as supernatural without knowing if it really is or not. In other words, if a Catholic person does good the Church says that that person does it by the supernatural grace of God so that it is not a natural goodness and this supernatural goodness helps show that that Church bears the mark of holiness and approval by God.  This is actually stealing much of the commendation due to the person and stealing it for herself because it is using the person’s goodness for unjustifiable reasons and taking illegitimate advantage of it.
 
The mark of holiness implies that the Catholic Church must have a holier membership and a holier doctrine than any other religion otherwise it is not a mark at all. Claiming that holiness among Catholics shows that the Catholic Church has the mark of holiness essential to being the true Church is strange considering the fact that the Church now says that the reason members of other religions and even pagans show real signs of holiness is because they follow Jesus unknowingly and through their sincerity they are counted as members of the true Church.  If Buddhists are as holy as Catholics then how can the holiness mark prove the Catholic Church to be the true Church? If Buddhists are regarded as less holy then isn’t that going to encourage insulting of Buddhists and make the Catholics proud? If pride would have to come from teaching that your Church is the true Church then it follows that God cannot found a true Church or at least one that can claim to be the true Church.
 
Buddhists could say that Catholics are holy through their grasp of the truth learned from Buddha though they reject him. The point is once you start saying holiness is the mark of the true Church you have to say that outside visible membership of that Church there is no holiness for the argument is worthless if you start saying sincere outsiders can be holy and only look as if they are outsiders. However, it is clear that Catholics claim to have more holiness for they are fully in communion with the true Church but this still makes no difference to the point I am making for nobody can see holiness or measure which religion has the holiest members. So the Church adds to the arrogance by claiming to have the most holiness. The Church has lost the mark of holiness by abandoning it in any meaningful sense that would allow it to be a mark of the only true Church so the corporation headed by the Vatican can by no means be considered to be the true Church.

The Church has no right to the name Catholic for when it opposes the mark of holiness despite paying lip-service to it for the true Church has to have the four marks of unity, catholicity, sanctity and apostolicity and each one depends on the others. The Church cannot be apostolic if it rejects sanctity for that is against the apostles so it is not united with the Church of the apostles and is therefore not Catholic for only the apostolic Church can bear the mark of Catholicity in the sense that the mark shows it to be the true Church.

If the Catholic Church is one Church it is because it excludes anyone who is considered to be a heretic. Any group then could claim to be one Church on that basis so Jesus and his Church don’t know what they are talking about. The Church was once almost entirely Arian, that is, it denied the deity of Jesus Christ (page 98, Reason and Belief). Using the four marks argument then often involves dishonesty or blindness.

Rome says that Jesus founded one Church and that she is that Church. It is pride to say that for even if Jesus said his Church would never fail he never said the same of the Vatican.  If Jesus thought he did then if he started a so-called Church this result could not possibly be from God or holy and he would be marked as a phoney.

Unless you have adequate evidence that Catholicism with its doctrines is not a man-made system you should not be going forward to the priesthood or giving money to the Church to promote itself. How can you say you believe in one holy Catholic Church when there are heroes of goodness in other religions and even among agnostics? There is nothing special about Catholic holiness.

Catholicism says that it is the one true faith community. It claims to be the only united, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. It says that if the Protestants suspect/believe/know their religion is wrong and Catholicism is right then they will go to Hell forever unless they join her. Outside the Church there is no salvation. The reason they will be damned is because by staying outside of the Church they are complicit in false religion, error or sin or both. To be in a religion God does not want you to be in is sinful. They are saying they are okay with error or sin or both. The only excuse is if they are forced to stay out of the Church by dangerous psycho relatives or whatever. So if they are complicit and indirectly responsible for error or sin by refusing to join Catholicism, then it follows that if you are Catholic and you find out that the Church is not the religion set up by God to alone teach authorised doctrine and truth and stay in it you are guilty of grave evil. Religion encourages society to imagine it is not complicit in evil when it fails to divorce itself from that evil or any implied and wilful tolerance of it. It does that for its own ends. It is no wonder that people who let others look at child porn tell themselves they are not part of the evil of child porn. They make a market for it merely by standing by and thereby permitting the evil. In the same way, the Catholic who won't dump the Church though free to do so, is to blame for the problems caused by and the lies told by the Church.
 
The view that Catholicism provides the best way to God forces believers to feel superior to non-Roman Catholics. It is not right.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
A GREAT LEGACY, Rev RJ Coates, Irish Church Mission, Dublin
A PATH FROM ROME, Anthony Kenny Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1985
A ROMAN CATECHISM WITH A REPLY THERETO, John Wesley Protestant Truth Society, London
A WOMAN RIDES THE BEAST, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1994
ALL ONE BODY – WHY DON’T WE AGREE? Erwin W Lutzer, Tyndale, Illinois, 1989
AN ACCOUNT OF ARCHBISHOP JAMES USHER 1581-1656, ND Emerson MA PhD, Townsend Street, Dublin
Apologia, Catholic Answers to Today’s Questions, Fr Marcus Holden and Fr Andrew Pinsent, CTS, London, 2010
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION, James Heron, Outlook Press, Belfast
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND CHURCH DOCTRINE, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985
BUT THE BIBLE DOES NOT SAY SO, Rev Roberto Nisbet, Church Book Room Press, London 1966
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
CATHOLICISM, Richard P McBrien, HarperSanFrancisco, New York, 1994
CATHOLICISM AND CHRISTIANITY, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928
CATHOLICISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
CHRISTIANS GUIDE TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Bill Jackson, Colonial Baptist Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1988
CITY OF GOD, St Augustine, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1986
DAWN OR TWILIGHT? HM Carson, IVP, Leicester, 1976
DEAR CATHOLIC FRIEND, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1989
DIFFICULTIES, Mgr Ronald Knox and Sir Arnold Lunn, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1958
DOCUMENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979
ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM ET DEFINITIONUM, Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Edited by A Schonmetzer, Barcelona, 1963
EVANGELICAL CATHOLICS A NEW PHENOMENON, Stanley Mawhinney, Christian Ministries Incorporated, Dundrum, Dublin, 1992
FUTURIST OR HISTORICIST? Basil C Mowll, Protestant Truth Society, London
HANDBOOK TO THE CONTROVERSY WITH ROME, Karl Von Hase, Vols 1 and 2, The Religious Tract Society, London, 1906
HOW SURE ARE THE FOUNDATIONS? Colin Badger, Wayside Press, Canada
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR VOCATION IN LIFE, Thomas Artz C.SS.R, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1976
INFALLIBILITY IN THE CHURCH, Patrick Crowley, CTS, London, 1982
IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A BIBLE CHURCH? John Hamrogue, C.SS.R, Liguori, Missouri, 1983
IS THERE SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH? Fr J Bainvel SJ, TAN, Illiniois, 1979
JESUS HYPOTHESES, V Messori, St Paul Publications, England, 1975
LETTERS TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, H A Ironside, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1982
LION CONCISE BOOK OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, Tony Lane, Lion, Herts, 1984
LIVING IN CHRIST, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne 1969  
LOOK! THE DOUAY BIBLE AGAINST ROME, Connellan Mission, Dublin
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1912
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
ON BEING A CHRISTIAN, Hans Kung, Translated by Edward Quinn, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, Glasgow, 1978
OUGHT I TO SEND MY CHILD TO A CONVENT SCHOOL? Rev Walter H Denbow, Protestant Truth Society, London, 1969
ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS, Charles Gore MA, Longmans, London, 1894
ROMAN CATHOLIC OBJECTIONS ANSWERED, Rev H O Lindsay, John T Drought Ltd, Dublin
ROMAN CATHOLIC TEACHING CONTRASTED WITH BIBLE TEACHING, Bernard Burt, The Bible Student Press, Coventry
ROMAN CATHOLICISM TESTED BY THE SCRIPTURES, John A Coleman, New Litho Pty. Ltd, Victoria, 1987
ROMAN CATHOLICISM WHAT IS FINAL AUTHORITY? Harold J Berry, Back to the Bible, Nebraska, 1974
ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Lorraine Boettner, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ, 1962
ROMANISM AT VARIANCE WITH THE BIBLE, Rev James Gardner, Protestant Truth Society, London, 1987
ROME HAS SPOKEN, A GUIDE TO FORGOTTEN PAPAL STATEMENTS AND HOW THEY HAVE CHANGED THROUGH THE CENTURIES, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad Publishing, New York, 1998
ROME THE GREAT PRIVATE INTERPRETATOR, Peter S Ruckman Penascola Bible Press, Palatka, Florida, 1969
SALVATION, THE BIBLE AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM, William Webster, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1990
SECRETS OF ROMANISM, Joseph Zacchello, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
THE ADVANCE OF ROMANISM, S M Houghton, Cotswold Bible Witness, 1964
THE BIBLE OR THE CHURCH? Ken Camplin, Printland Publishers, India, 1996
THE BIBLE REFUTES ROMANISM Philip H Rand Protestant Truth Society, London
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS THE ANSWER, Paul Whitcomb TAN, Illinois, 1986
THE CHURCH AND INFALLIBILITY, BC Butler, The Catholic Book Club, London, undated
THE CHURCH OF ROME AND THE WORD OF GOD, Rev Eric C Last, Protestant Truth Society, London
THE DEVELOPMENTS OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM, John A Bain MA, Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, Edinburgh and London, undated
THE EARLY CHURCH, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE MOTHER OF GOD AND OUR INTERIOR LIFE, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, TAN, Illinois, 1993
THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg BD, APCK, Dublin, 1928
THE RICHES OF ROME AND THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF CHRIST Robert D Browne, Protestant Truth Society, London
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
THE TRUE CHURCH AND THE FALSE, The National Union of Protestants, Suffolk
THE VATICAN PAPERS, Nino Lo Bello, New English Library, Kent, 1982
TRADITIONAL DOCTRINES OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH EXAMINED, Rev CCJ Butlin, Protestant Truth Society, London
TREASURES FROM GOD’S STOREHOUSE, Dr Bill Jackson, Colonial Baptist Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1991
VICARS OF CHRIST, Peter De Rosa, Corgi Books, London, 1993
WHAT HAPPENED! Francisco Lacueva, Evangelical Protestant Society, Belfast
WHY BE A CATHOLIC? Fr David Jones OP, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1996
WHY I AM NOT A ROMAN CATHOLIC, Rev Canon McCormick DD, Protestant Truth Society, London, 1968
YOU CAN LEAD ROMAN CATHOLICS TO CHRIST, Wilson Ewin, New England Mission, Nashua 1980

BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible
 
THE WWW

The Anti-Catholic Bible
www.catholic.com/library/The_Anti_Catholic_Bible.asp
 
Christians versus the Lies of Catholicism
www.cephasministry.com