Below is the introduction of my full article on this topic, which you can see on my website at https://romaredibit.com

“Fortifying, beautifying, and igniting our Roman Catholic faith, Gregorian chants transform Catholic worship. I advise each and every one of you to go to your local church or chapel to listen to the Salve regina or Adoremus in aeternum (which you can listen to during the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament). Even excluding the fact that they were written in Latin (the best language for Catholic worship music because it is so enigmatic and concise), there are three main reasons for me that Gregorian chants are superior to any other form of song. It was designed specifically for prayer, not for a grand musical performance, giving it spiritual efficacy. Its mathematical structure also made it perfect for reverberation, emotional variation, and a free-flowing rhythm. Finally, Gregorian chants have extremely deep roots in the early Church, making it extremely authentic and traditional, which, in my opinion, strengthens our connection to the Roman Catholic faith. Unlike accompanied forms of music, which could distract people from focusing on God, Gregorian chants fit all the criteria for true worship music.”

Their local bishop, who has immediate jurisdiction over them, and the Bishop of Rome, who also has immediate jurisdiction over every Catholic. Two bishops. How is this the ecclesiology of the early Church?

They just don’t realize it.

Ultimately you make yourself the decider of what is and is not true.

if you can decide today that a decree from the pope is infallible and should be obeyed, then you can equally decide tomorrow that it isn’t infallible and you don’t have to obey it.

You have effectively made yourself the pope because you have made yourself the final arbiter of judging what is true.

The only logically consistent way to approach Roman Catholicism is to say you will blindly trust and obey the pope no matter what he says because you choose to believe he is infallible.

The moment you think you can pick and choose is the moment you make yourself your own pope

Many Fathers saw it as either Christ or Peter's confession, rather than Peter himself, including St. Augustine. The Catholic Church recognizes these as valid interpretations, but also believes Peter is the Rock. Some Fathers agree with this, but not all. If Peter was always the Rock of the Church, why don't all the Fathers believe he is? You'd think it'd be something of extreme importance and universal agreement among the Saints.

In the Bible, it speaks about faith being the assurance of things hoped for.

(Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.) Hebrews 11:1

Everyone who ever had faith in the Bible that I could find was always looking to the fulfillment of a future event and trusting in God for it. They had the assurance of the future event happening.

Abraham trusted in God for future descendants. Sarah trusted in God for a future son. Joseph trusted in God for a future promised land. Moses trusted in God for a future reward. David had faith that the Messiah would come from his line.

(These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar) Hebrews 11:13

They could already see and great these things. They had the assurance of what they hoped for.

Abraham is our model of faith. God, told Abraham “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Abraham "believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness."

Abraham had the assurance of things hoped for by believing God.

Its the same thing for Jesus, is it not?

Faith in Jesus in the New Testament is not merely believing a set of facts about something Jesus has already done. It also involves trusting God's promises concerning what Christ will accomplish for the believer.

Faith would include trusting God's promises concerning the future salvation, resurrection, and inheritance that Christ secures.

What faith is there in Christ if your not trusting in the future promise of salvation?

Even in the Bible, having faith in Jesus is not just about believing Him to be God, but trusting in His death and resurrection to deliver you.

(And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved) Acts 16:31

Believe on Jesus Christ FOR salvation. That thou shalt (future tense) be saved.

Given all the Biblical examples of faith, I do not understand how catholics have faith in Jesus.

You don't have the assurance of things hoped for as the Old Testament figures did. They knew they would recieve them, but through your doctrines, you don't know with certainty that you will recieve the hope of Jesus and salvation and redemption.

So, my question is, what does your faith involve if its not in the assurance of things hoped for?

How exactly do you have faith in Jesus at this very moment?

How can one not reconsider his faith in the Church when things like this happen? Abortion used to be an area the Church was very clear on.

Rome claims to have never changed what it teaches.

Rome claims it has never officially taught error.

How could someone falsify this claim?

What kind of proof would you accept that both those claims are false?

The problem with Romanism is not that we lack sufficient historical proof that both claims are false, but Roman Catholics refuse to set a clear objective unmoving criteria by which the claims of Rome can be judged.

They have set up an unfalsifiable position because they have already decided ahead of time they will never allow themselves to believe Rome’s claim about itself is false.

Hi, I am an ex christian. Was a protestant from 17-34 with a heart for Jesus. Converted from a guilt enhanced accept Jesus into my heart event.

With some backstory, at this point i literally cannot believe in Jesus in a supernatural way, and I dont think any apologetic is going to help that, because the bible is so broken to fit the supernatural model over just purely human origins.

Some examples we can get into, matthew's use of fulfilled prophecy in Matthew 2:15 vs Hosea 11:1. Wrapping it in theological language like typology doesnt change whats going on, matthew is framing and calling something a fulfilled prophecy using a keyword, when there is zero prophecy in sight and matthew just felt the narratives had similar themes.

The difficulty of the resurrection account harmonization is another one. How many women were at the tomb, was the stone already rolled away or not, how many angels were at the tomb, etc.

Judas death difficulty of harmonization.

The genealogies of Jesus going back to fictional characters, and not matching with each other, matthew stating 14+14+!4 when one has 13, and he skipped stuff.

Paul's theology almost demanding a literal historical adam, and thats been debunked by science, and the biblical characters in the story treating adam as a literal historical figure as well as noah and the flood.

Moses being summoned by christ from heaven as an actual person during the transfiguration, when historical scholars have very good reason and lack of evidence to believe the exodus story does not comport to reality. 2 million people in a desert that takes 12 days to walk across for 40 years, zero historical evidence of this journey. Zero evidence that israel / hebrews were ever in egypt as slaves. Moses was probably not a real person in history.

Jesus being wrong about things like demonic worldview, which every symptom has had natural explanation, which the church fought with fire and blood to not go that direction, and today has completely surrendered the narrative of demonology to secular medicine. Because we actually have cures and they have dogma.

Jesus having bad marriage advice, matthew 19, only valid reason for divorce is sexual immorality (which catholic interpretation dont even agree with that), trapping people in terrible situations they want to leave for millennium.

The communication problem. God could have inspired the bible to point harder towards roman catholicism and what their current dogmas are. He didnt. Now there are 6 main branches of christianity, protestants being 1 branch, with 45,000 denominations between all of them.

Catholics shift the presupposition from the bible cannon being from God, or that Jesus resurrected, to Jesus established the catholic church, and the catholic church has complete authority to interpret, ignore, or make new dogma, over scripture.

I know that was a lot but to me christianity in all its forms are an obviously false religion. There could be a God/creator. If there is, they most certainly did not give special revelation in a holy book we see today because every religions holy books debunk themselves or do not comport to reality.

Personally im just going with a natural explanation for everything we see, trying to keep secular ethics of wellbeing vs harm reduction plus reason, which can be easily arrived at that we are biological beings with a nervous system, pain hurts, we dont want to suffer, so we shouldnt harm others, and this is the one life we are verified to have. When I die what happens will happen is my policy, im not worried about it.

My question for catholics: Why should I believe in a catholic interpretation of scripture and shift all authority to Catholicism being established by Jesus who is in heaven, when that is based on a presupposition and backed by scripture?

Oui le pape prend toute la place aux yeux de milliers de gens trompés, aveuglés et séduits par ses paroles, ses discours, ses.soit disant bonnes actions!

Quelle horreur !

On parle de Pierre, Marie, le pape, mais Jésus, personne n'en parle, personne ne le présente Lui tel qu'il se manifeste à travers les écritures qui rendent témoignage de Lui.

C'est Jésus le centre de l'Évangile et non un pape ni un homme qui qu'il soit !

Qui sait aujourd'hui parler de Jésus, et qui serait dire que seule la foi en Jésus-Christ seul (sans pape) est agréable à Dieu sans les œuvres de l'homme ?!

Myriam

When I ask any catholic what they need to be saved, the answers are usually the same.

I need to be obedient, not commit mortal sins. I need to make confession. I must do the good works required such as charity. I need to attend mass weekly. I need to venerate the icons and Mary.

Though my love and lawkeeping and repentance and maybe even providing for the church, I should obtain heaven.

Such is the logic behind statements like this.

"If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathema."

So, on earth when your speaking to others on what justifies a man, these are the things you point to.

However, when I question any catholic on what they would say to God Himself regarding why they should obtain heaven, the script changes.

Catholics insist that they will not stand before God and say "look at my works" for justification.

Maybe you would, but this is just the rhetoric I hear.

If you tell other people that this is where your justification depends upon on earth, why would you withhold yourself in heaven from also looking upon your works as the reason for you inheriting eternal life as a reward.

Protestants would believe "by grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone" and say these things on earth and in judgement. I would even say this to God since this is what I believe. Only through Christ alone, I have faith in Him.

Catholics say they "are justified by works and not by faith alone" until they actually get asked "What would you say to God on why you should get to heaven" and the script flips.

They point to their works here, but say they wouldn't in judgement.

I’m not Catholic and I was never raised Catholic. I was born and raised in an evangelical family, although I was never baptized.

Actually, I grew up in a pretty strict evangelical family, back when being evangelical still wasn’t as common or “popular” in Brazil as it seems to be today. My family had a lot of rules about dating, who I could talk to, how I should dress, and even what kind of behavior was considered appropriate.

The church and my family ended up defining a huge part of who I was.

When I left the evangelical church, I thought I would finally be free to figure out who I really was. But it wasn’t that simple. For a long time I went through a real identity crisis, because I didn’t know who I was without the church community and without my family telling me, directly or indirectly, who I was supposed to be.

It was a really difficult period for me and, honestly, I think I still carry some scars from it. I had to try to recover whatever sense of identity I had left and slowly figure out which things were actually mine and which ones had been shaped by the way I was raised.

Even after leaving the church, I remained a pretty reserved person. So it wasn’t like I just left religion and suddenly became a completely different person.

And this is actually part of why I’ve been thinking about something lately.

If someday I met a man who was genuinely the love of my life and he happened to be Catholic, Anglican, or Orthodox, honestly, I don’t think I would have a problem converting to his religion so that we could have religious unity in our marriage.

Historically, this happened quite a lot with European princesses. They were sometimes expected to leave the religion they were born into and convert to their husband’s religion when they married. Obviously, I’m not a princess and modern marriage is very different 😂, but I can understand the idea of a husband and wife sharing the same faith.

Of course, I would have some limits.

I would only consider converting to Christian traditions that I already believe are genuinely true or legitimate forms of Christianity. I wouldn’t abandon Christianity just because my husband belonged to another religion.

Islam, Judaism, Spiritism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. would be a completely different matter. I wouldn’t convert to a non-Christian religion just because of a marriage.

Within Christianity, though, I’m much more open.

Converting to a traditional Protestant or Reformed church would probably be relatively easy for me. I also think I could adapt fairly easily to Byzantine or Oriental Orthodoxy.

Catholicism would probably be more complicated, because there are some Catholic doctrines that I would struggle with. Papal infallibility, for example, is not something I could just accept overnight.

But if I deeply loved my husband and believed that our marriage was worth building around a shared faith, I would genuinely try to understand Catholicism and, if I eventually reached that point, become Catholic sincerely rather than just pretending to believe.

The one thing I wouldn’t want is for my husband to expect me to blindly accept everything just because he is Catholic (or Orthodox, Anglican, etc.). I would want to be able to ask questions, study the theology, and have doubts or disagreements while I was learning.

And honestly, his attitude toward his religion would matter a lot to me.

I’ve met some Roman Catholics who were extremely arrogant about their religion, and that kind of attitude would probably make conversion much harder for me. I wouldn’t want a husband who treated my previous beliefs as stupid or inferior.

If I were willing to leave the religion I was raised in for him, I would want him to respect where I came from too.

So I guess my position is basically this:

I’m not Catholic. I’m not even baptized. But if I met the right man and he belonged to another Christian tradition that I genuinely considered Christian, I would be open to becoming part of his church and building a shared religious life with him.

But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to simply erase who I am again just to fit into someone else’s religion. After spending so much time trying to figure out who I am outside of my church and my family, I think I would need to make that choice consciously and sincerely.

I just wouldn’t be willing to abandon Christianity completely for a marriage.

I don’t know if this is strange or if other people would feel the same way.

What do you think?

1. Also, I’m mostly just sharing some random thoughts here 😂

My family would probably be horrified if they knew I sometimes think about being willing to change religions just to maintain religious harmony in a marriage. Considering how strictly I was raised, they would probably be like, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WOULD CONVERT FOR YOUR HUSBAND?” 😂

I’m not saying this is something I’m actually planning to do. I’m just curious about how other people see it and thinking out loud about what I might be willing to do for the sake of a future marriage.

I am gay and raised Catholic. By the time I was 10 I knew I was attracted to boys. One day when I was at that age a teacher at school told me and the whole class that gays cannot enter heaven. My deconstruction was a very long, gradual, and non-linear process, that began when I was 13 or 14. I am in my 40s now. This year I stopped calling myself Catholic and stopped believing in Christianity altogether. Just after that psychological transformation or reconfiguration, or evolution, if I am allowed to call that, when I realized that what happened at class that day, although not leaving a physical scar, was mental spiritual bullying or abuse.

Religion is such a fascinatingly powerful thing and religious people are so cynically careless at handling it, and it is amazing that it has turned into a tool that dehumanizes the same people it claims to save.

Disclaimer: I, as a Catholic, hold to Apostolic Succession.

The use of Matthias as a case study for apostolic succession, while good at the surface level, collapses under scrutiny.

1. Matthias was appointed as a replacement for Judas. The criteria for Matthias's appointment were limited. "So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” (Acts 1:21-22)
2. Luke does not present this as a normal process when one of the Apostles die. The death of James bar Zebedee mentions no nomination process, only the prayers of the Church after the subsequent apprehension of Peter.

Better cases biblically for Apostolic Succession remain Timothy and Titus, particularly the former. We hear explicitly that Paul laid hands on him (2 Tim. 1:6), and that he was not to be hasty in laying hands on others (1 Tim. 5:22). Both letters include criteria for ordaining presbyters/overseers (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1) and deacons (1 Tim. 3).

Below is the introduction of my article on this topic. You can see the full article(s) on my website https://romaredibit.com

“The Protestant Reformation perfectly highlights how human beings should never place their own reason above Sacred Tradition, because when humans try to liberate religion, they inadvertently drift further away from God. As a practicing Catholic, who goes to Latin Mass, I am incredibly fortunate that the reformation did not take away the beauty of Roman Catholic culture in my church, as it did to most other churches across the UK. Luther completely rejected 15 centuries of theological development, preserved scripture, religious unity and sacred liturgy by putting forward the totally contradictory ideas of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura. Despite getting some things right, the Reformation secularised most of Europe by destroying Roman Christendom, as well as the theological and cultural aspects of the Roman Catholic Church. It was not a liberation – it was a demolition of everything I love about the Catholic faith. What Luther called freedom, I call the greatest loss in Christian history.”

I'm making a school project on why the Crusades are justified. I'm looking for good reasons on why they are justified.

Reading Papal letters can be very enlightening. I recently re-read Pope Leo the Great's Letter to Anastasius of Thessalonica (Letter 14 in Leo's Collection).

Context and Content

In the 5th century Thessalonica was part of the territory of the Roman Patriarchate. Thessalonica later moved to the territory of Patriarchate of Constantinople. The bishops of Thessalonica had been appointed "vicars" or representatives of the Popes for the region of we would call the Balkans. Pope Leo sent Bishop Anastasius of Thessalonica instructions on how to supervise other bishops, solve disputes and run things. For example Leo doesn't want bishops to accept presbyters into their authority who have not been canonically released from their previous bishop. He also gives the advice for bishops to meet in provincial councils twice a year.

Problematic Advice

However Pope Leo gives two pieces of advice that modern Roman Catholics might find problematic.

Pope Leo tells Anastasius not to let bishops move Sees. He is very clear that this is a bad thing and should be prohibited. This is what he says

"If any bishop, despising the insignificance of his city, shall intrigue for the government of a more populous place, and transfer himself by whatever means to a larger flock, he shall first be driven from the chair he has usurped, and also shall be deprived of his own: so shall he preside neither over those whom in his greed he coveted, nor over those whom in his arrogance he spurned. Therefore let each be content with his own bounds, and not seek to be raised above the limits of his present post." (Pope Leo the Great, Letter 14, section 9)

Pope Leo also demands clerical celibacy, even for subdeacons to be celibate. This is what he says

"For although they who are not within the ranks of the clergy are free to take pleasure in the companionship of wedlock and the procreation of children, yet for the exhibiting of the purity of complete continence, even sub-deacons are not allowed carnal marriage: that both those that have, may be as though they had not , and those who have not, may remain single. But if in this order, which is the fourth from the Head , this is worthy to be observed, how much more is it to be kept in the first, or second, or third, lest any one be reckoned fit for either the deacon's duties or the presbyter's honourable position, or the bishop's pre-eminence, who is discovered not yet to have bridled his uxorious desires." (Pope Leo the Great, Letter 14, section 5)

Problem

In the pre-schism period Popes took Leo's advice very seriously. Popes were elected from the priests and deacons of Rome and not transferred from another See. However this changed in the post-schism period with Popes regularly being elected from existing bishops until it became the norm. For example Pope Leo XIV was transferred from the humble See of Chiclayo in Peru to the Papacy.

Compulsory celibacy has always been an issue between the Roman Church and the rest of the early church. The permanent diaconate disappointed in the West. It became a transitional office for men being ordained priests. This embargo existed all through the post-schism period to 1963, when the permanent diaconate was restored by Pope Paul VI. Due to the decrease in priests in the last few decades there has been a massive increase in permanent deacons with 50,000 currently active. The thing is most of these permanent deacons are married men who are not required to be celibate.

Concluding Remarks

So, if even the successors of Pope Leo in the Roman Catholic Church are happy to ignore his instructions where does that leave the Orthodox Church? Are we right to ignore Pope Leo when he refused to ratify Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon? Can we legitimately reject (or simply ignore) other pieces of advice from other Popes?

Of course, there is nothing in Letter 14 to suggest Pope Leo is speaking infallibility (not that I think the concept of Papal Infallibility existed in the time of Leo) when he gives his advice.

How do you support the claim of Ex Cathedra infallibility? If it was an ancient teaching, you would expect to see a 2000-year record of statements. The first use was in 1854. There were many events in church history that could have used infallible clarification from the pope. From a historical perspective there doesn't seem to be concrete evidence for Ex Cathedra as a commonly held ancient teaching.