Looks Like Catholics Are Catching On

[Doubting Thomas]

Perhaps this is the reason for all the "Catholics come home" commercials I've been seeing on TV lately. I think they know that their numbers are dwindling so are trying to recruit lapsed Catholics to come back to church.

Oh and who in the world would argue that good works are meaningless in the face of faith. What terrible little bastard would like to claim that no amount of good can make one good, and that no amount of evil can overcome faith. Any takers?

Rapture Ready. If you read their forum, and especially the forum rules, one of their rules is that faith alone gets you to heaven, and works alone is not enough to get you to heaven, and they way they talk there that it's almost blasphemy to suggest that Christians should also do good works.

Actually -a recent article in the NY Daily News quoted a study that said that MOST young "catholics" do not actually believe the religion - they go through the motions for family reasons. THey have n o intention of being religious later in life.

I've mentioned this before, but the few times I've been to church lately I've noticed that there are very few 18-30 year olds attending Catholic mass. I think we're going to see an even bigger decline in church attendance over the next 10-20 years as the older members die off and the younger ones don't bother attending. Of course I think this goes hand-in-hand with the fact that the younger generation is less religious than any other generation.

[Rev. Rye]

http://ncronline.org/news/catholics-amer...and-change

ST. PAUL, Minn. - While one in every four American considers themselves Catholic, a new survey finds "Catholic" may be more of a brand label than a religious identity.

Of the 1,442 Catholics surveyed by the National Catholic Reporter, 88 percent said how a person lives is more important than whether they are Catholic.

I remember reading an article that said that half of French Catholics don't believe in God a couple years back. It's nice to see that that's not just a French thing.

[Doubting Thomas]

Ah, I found Rapture Ready's "Doctrinal Beliefs Statement" located at http://rr-bb.com/showthread.php?9-Doctri...789366cca3

That mankind is hopelessly lost due to sin and, destined for destruction, can only be saved by the completed work of the Lord on the cross through the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit. No amount of human effort or good work will suffice in lieu of this and none is required or necessary to supplement it.

So they believe that the only way to get to heaven is believing in Jesus, period. No matter how much you feed the poor, heal the sick, or anything else Jesus wanted people to do will get you to heaven if you don't believe in him. Further, once you have accepted Jesus as your personal buddy, you don't need to feed the poor, heal the sick, or any of that liberal hippy crap.

[Rev. Rye]

So they believe that the only way to get to heaven is believing in Jesus, period. No matter how much you feed the poor, heal the sick, or anything else Jesus wanted people to do will get you to heaven if you don't believe in him. Further, once you have accepted Jesus as your personal buddy, you don't need to feed the poor, heal the sick, or any of that liberal hippy crap.

Are you really that surprised? These are people who are eagerly looking forward to the end of days. Would you feed the poor and sick if you believed that they will only be sick and poor for a couple more years before Jesus kills everyone?

[Minimalist]

By doing good works, you are following in the footsteps of Christ whether you believe in him or not. It's what the Catholic church taught me, anyway.

The problem there, Alei, is that they think the 'goodest' of good works is to give money to the fucking church.

It's a corrupt enterprise. In a normal world it would be investigated under the RICO statutes.

[Doubting Thomas]

Surprised? Hell no. Most Christians don't give a shit about the poor, anyway. The only time they care about the poor or imprisoned is if they think they can get a few more converts.

[Faith No More]

The signatures on Rapture Ready are both hilarious and scary as hell. That whole site is fucked. I remember reading through a thread whose subject was what special piece of clothing or jewelry do you wear, so after you're raptured and those behind find your chlothes, they will know it was you who was raptured. Another scary thing is how many people are not only looking forward to armageddon, but are praying so it will come any day now.

[Anomalocaris]

Surprised? Hell no. Most Christians don't give a shit about the poor, anyway. The only time they care about the poor or imprisoned is if they think they can get a few more converts.

For most christians, christianity is the excuse to not give a shit about the poor.

[Doubting Thomas]

If someone is poor it's probably because they didn't pray hard enough.

[phurgawtin]

I imagine Catholicism's worship of Mary must be humorous to Protestants.
Just picture Mary in heaven talking at Jesus being like "Look look, they're worshipping me again!"