I think a lot of your points are dead on, but I also think that most of your points are also beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. I know this isn?t the place for religious argument, but the post takes quite a few thinly veiled swipes at the Catholic Church that are common misperceptions about the Church.

First, the Catholic Church wrote the bible as we know it (though various denominations will tweak it here and there) there were no other Christians other than the Catholic Church for the first 1200 years or so. The modern bible is most commonly traced to St. Jerome?s translation into the Latin Vulgate sometime in the 400?s. The Catholic Church has never taught against the bible, though many have come along and reinterpreted the bible to mean slightly different things. But consider if you passed this diary onto your son and he passed it on to his and so on for 700 years, each time carefully explaining the meaning you intended ? then suddenly someone decides your diary doesn?t mean what your heirs say it means, and that people shouldn?t listen to your heirs anyway.

Second, the Catholic Church (though in need of reform in some areas) did not stifle the reading of the bible or education. The fact that priests were among the most educated of the time merely indicates that the church did in fact provide more education than any other institution. The lack of a printing press (and economical paper) and the economy of the day is what kept us in the dark ages. The ability to produce a bible in less than a month was a leap in technology that enabled the masses to read the bible ? which the Catholic Church encouraged. It?s like coming down 1000 years from now when every car can fly and saying that in the 1900?s ?Pilots? suppressed the majority of people?s ability to fly so that they could be lords of the air. When in fact the problem was that airplanes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Pre-protestant revolution Christians (i.e. Catholics) were the most martyred peoples in all of history. Yet the Popes never condoned any physical abuse of non-believers. The Catholic Church has always favored religious freedom, but it has also demanded those who call themselves believers actually follow Church teaching (more in the past than now obviously). After the reformation, the Protestants were just as great of persecutors of Catholics as vice versa. Consider for example Henry VIII who decided to marry Ann Bolin against the Church?s refusal to give him an annulment. So he embraced the protestant reformation, made himself head of the Church of England, and killed any Catholics who refused to renounce their faith. This famously included his former best friend Sir Thomas More. Remember the Puritans came to America for religious freedom ? not from the Catholic Church, but from the Protestant Church of England. Mostly the persecutions that occurred by both Catholics and Protestants occurred not because the clergy in either group supported them, but because the leaders of a particular country supported them and they were violent times.

Also I would add, that the crusades along with the printing press are often credited for bringing us out of the dark ages because the crusades allowed people exposure to the much more of the world and ignited the combining of ideas from different towns, countries and cultures. I would also say that the crusades are another source of false accusation against the Catholic Church, who sought not to conquer in the first instance, but to re-take those lands captured by Muslims from the Christians, and not to ?own? more land, but because the Muslims refused religious freedom to those in their lands, where the Catholics had allowed religious freedom to others when they ruled those same lands.

I am not saying people in the Catholic Church are free from all sorts of wrong-doing, because they have been, they are, and they will be in the future ? but Church teaching as opposed to individual action has rarely gone astray, and Church teaching in the only area that it claims perfection ?faith and morals? has not gone astray at all to my belief. I also don?t undermine the contributions of Calvin. I just can?t agree with blaming the Catholics for what they didn?t do, when it was hundreds of thousands of Catholics who died for their faith so that Calvin could even have the opportunity to speak freely of Christ.

“Luther and the other magisterial reformers of the 1st generation, all went to their deaths seeing themselves aligned not only with the Apostles, but also with the Fathers,”

That was one of my points. There are several key differences between the early protestant denominations and Catholic teaching, but on many many issues they were the same. Far more than people believe thery were becuase the protestant denominations continue to change and diverge their beliefs away from their founders whereas the Catholic teaching remains constant.

Sorry for the thread jack – but it is not wholly off topic.

The corruption of the Christian faith is VERY political and can certainly be credited with nothing less than electing BO to the presidency. This is not soley an evangelical problem either. It is a very severe Catholic problem, and from what little I know it affects a large % of of the thousands of protestant denominations, and I would suspect it affects the Jews too.

I can’t speak for the last 200+ years, but I see in the evangelical and Catholic church one such movement known as “social justice” that has many valid accomplisments, but also has roots in Marxist thought and tends to greatly distort relative moralaity and the natural law. For instance you could easily find a Catholic arguing that the death penalty is as bad as abortion, or that protecting the environment and government welfare programs outweigh a candidates profound pro-abortion stances. It is a disordered way of thinking that ignores clear Church teaching and the natural moral law in favor of a secular viewpoint, while allowing the individual to believe they are maintaining their faith. In the US Catholic Church this movement has its early roots in the 60′s which corrupted many seminaries, colleges, and k-12 Catholic schools, in the same way that secular universities were corrupted.

For many personality driven denominations it is even worse because it is not just individual churches or parishes that are affected and may some day come back in line, but entire faiths that used to be Christian are now Christian in name only. For instance, I grew up in the United Church of Christ (BO’s denomination) over the last 20 years I have watched this church become essentially a non-Christian organization that still professes to be Christian becuase its governing body was taken over by the far left. I see this through my Mothers eyes who watched the church of her family for generations slowly dismantle its history and dogma in favor of an anything goes abortion, gay marriage, gender neutral, don’t really have to take the bible literally church that stands for nothing, if not the lefts adgenda.

In terms of form of government this movement is extremely dangerous becuase it twists charity into the Marxist ideal.

In my opinion this problem of the new marxist bias in religion is just as severe as the bias in the media and education.

And expressed very well.

This quote I think almost says it all…

“elevating personal experience over the sovereignty of God?not only in the affairs of nations but also over the eternal lives of individual men.”

Ties into another discussion I was having about the definition of conservatism and Kirk’s leaning heavily on the classical liberalism / classical humanist principle of respect for history, tradition, and our forefathers and the lessons learned – which all go out the window in todays progressive liberal movement based on “personal” morality and change for change sake.

I’m all over the place here – but if one darn politician embraced both the soverignty of God over personal experience and embraced a reverence for those who went before as discussed here by Mike and by Kirk – they would be able to shut down the Dem talking point of Republicans being “The Party of No.” As it stands we have a hard time even defending the Constitution. Its genius and the freedom and prosperity it has generated for over 200 years fail to impress becuase it suffers that fatal flaw of being old and even worse, not being new.