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I was raised Catholic and I still am, but I just can’t get over 2 things: 1. Their treatment of pedophile priests. Shuffling them between church’s instead of complete banishment from the faith. Absolutely disgusting. 2. The pope’s word is infallible (if I followed this Catholic doctrine, then I would have gotten the Covid jab).

Well from personal observation, the non denomination Christian churches in my town are filled with young families and the one catholic church is old folks. As for me, someone who grew up catholic and when to a catholic school, I have been digging deep into the Holy Bible lately and I believe faith in Christ Jesus is the way to eternal life with God the Father not good works.

> 1. I don’t know the details about the disciplinary measures the Church took to remedy that scandal, but I trust the Holy Spirit will guide the Church and help it endure until the end even if we have difficult times. >2. That’s a common misunderstanding. The Pope is only infallible when he speaks Ex-Cathedra. This rarely happens. The Pope can be wrong on a lot of things not pertaining the Faith such as vaccination. Check out Catholic Answers or ask ChatGPT for more details on when the Pope is deemed infallible

I have no hard proof, but I believe that Catholics that convert to Protestantism are people that read and studied the bible for themselves. Specially students of Daniel and Revelation. I have no hard proof for this either, but I believe that Protestants converting to Catholicism are drawn by the solemnity of the liturgy, the rituals, and the beauty of the great cathedrals.

I hear you brother, I too grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic School. During college I fell away from Christianity as a whole and was an atheist for some time. A few years ago I came back to the faith and attended a typical non denominational church with the rock music and hip looking pastor. As I grew closer to God, I started going to a more traditional reformed church that had a verse by verse approach. Eventually, I found Catholic Apologists on social media and all these things I believed about Catholicism that were supposed to be “unbiblical” were misrepresentations of what the Catholic Church actually teaches and on the subjects that Catholics and Calvinist Protestants disagree I found the Catholic position to be more persuasive. We all read Scripture through a set of glasses that were haded to us by someone. Because the different glasses have contradictory views such as on baptism and the Eucharist, only one interpretation can be correct. The idea that we can read the bible without bias and come to the true understanding of it sounds good, but it’s not reality. The bible has to be interpreted. The question becomes, on what authority can you or anyone interpret the message in the Holy Scripture? I encourage you to read the writings from the Church Fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, to see what they believed. Here is a video that I think you may find helpful. https://youtu.be/A5iYh86HEOk

I’m sure there is some truth to that. I haven’t found any videos of Catholics converting to Protestantism, but surely some exist who did so because they decided to adopt Sola Scripture despite it’s obvious flaws. That’s part of it. I also think they also came to the understanding that Catholicism is true academically if you will

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LETvVezBXio&pp=ygUWd2FsdGVyIHZlaXRoIHRlc3RpbW9ueQ%3D%3D I found a video, I have seen this many years ago. It’s long, but if you start watching it, it’s difficult not to view it all.

There is the place I have not dug deep and that's the early church father. Been listening to a lot of orthodoxy priests and they have been referring the early church farther aswell.

Walter was raised Catholic by his father. Then turned away from the faith to evolutionism, then went back to Catholicism, then converted to biblical Protestantism.

Tells you something it’s 14 years old with comments turned off 😅 I’ll check it out, thanks for sharing

Hope you find that video useful

I believe it’s even older, saw the turned off comments too, bad look I admit, but give it a try.

Wonder if he did any debates. I prefer debates because you get to see both sides and cross examination. I’m grateful for Catholic Apologists like Trent Horn, Jimmy Akin, and Joe Heschmeyer. Check them out if you want to understand the Catholic position.

Not to mention indulgences, deification of Mary, purgatory, work-based salvation, using a priest as a mediator between God and man, prayers to the dead, vain repetition, and as you point out, the infallibility of the pope. Charles Spurgeon said the Catholic church is Satan's greatest masterpiece, and I tend to agree with him.

But why the great schism of 1054? Rome departed from the "faith once delivered to the saints" after the addition of the filioque in the Nicene creed. The Pope, in this context, was the first "Protestant".

Great question I would contend that the Filioque was NOT a corruption but a clarification. The papacy was not the first rebellion but the safeguard against future ones. The Schism of 1054 was tragic of course, but from what I can see it was rooted in cultural, political, and linguistic divides, not a fundamental departure from the “faith once delivered to the saints”

St. Gregory Palamas wrote a treatise on this topic that is incredible, it is worth an investigation.

Thanks for sharing 👍🏼 I started studying church history not long ago, so there’s a lot that I don’t know. From what I can see the biggest obstacle people have with Eastern Orthodoxy is the lack of unity and divide along national lines, which is influenced by politics and can lead to fragmentation. Doctrinally there really aren’t many disagreements, at least with Catholics from what I can see. But I’m not church historian or theologian.

A common critique for sure 🤝. I am a neophyte (my family and I were baptized last February) and, like you, started familiarizing myself with Church History fairly recently (the COVID era allowed for a deep dive into money and Christianity for me). I was a blank slate too, as I did not grow up in any sort of church so Orthodoxy seemed so obvious to me. A few years back I read "The Life of Moses" by St. Gregory of Nyssa and "Hymns on Paradise" by St. Ephraim the Syrian and they blew my mind and sent me in a direction I never thought I'd go and it made me wonder why we didn't hear more about these Holy men here in the West and how they've defended the faith for millenia. I really enjoy all of the dialogue going on between Rome, Protestants, and the Orthodox though my immaturity in the faith often leads to an over zealous stance on things that I am far too retarded to defend.