Hi, Ariel7 and Everyone. Sometimes I as a protestant visit with and rather enjoy a very nearby Catholic church, too, for a change. Can find nothing unscriptural in the actual worship service. Don't know about doctrines they've added to the Word, such as praying to Mary and departed saints, since Bible says pray to God in Christ's name. Seems like more authorization in scriptures would be needed to justify that. Protestants supposedly go strictly by the Book, to the best of their ability, and don't teach that the church can change that. The church is only the bride of Christ.
Restricting communion to just members seems inconsistent with accepting protestants' donations, but what the heck, it's just an ecumenical visit. If you're not feeling well and prefer to be anonymous once in a while, you can put something in the Poor Box that I assume will go to the proper disaster victims and nobody gets a big head that you're endorsing them, everything.
Editing to add, to Nova, rights violations happen to all of us. Just "Don't ask, Don't tell"! Confessions should be to God alone, protestants teach, which reminds me, in one of those movies about the Nazi's, one of them was impersonating a priest in the confessional, and this woman who blurted out the whole truth about whatever resistance she'd been involved in got killed. There's a "tribulation" period predicted in the Bible when we're to trust nobody. It's not due to Hitler but someone mixing in, pretending to be one of the messengers of light, temporarily causing a great falling away of the church from strict scripturalit, doing unto others only what you'd want done unto you. He's to be known by opposing/accusing the saints in religion circles, will be revealed playing God, 2nd Thess. 2, before the Second Coming. We're all victims together.
I'm still trying to find out what the arrogant and very unscriptural coalitions by Falwell and others were doing to cause them to have to change their name. Any idea? There were some lawsuits about university grading frauds, and they began to call themselves "Dr." for one thing I guess. Ancient Daniel says they think to establish the vision by elevating themselves, and ancient Jeremiah says they'll be replaced, those that tried to hide this from a Christian woman victim who's somehow violated a lot.
Yesterday, channel surfing, I heard some new speaker claiming "Come boldly to the throne for grace to help in time of need" said no justice, so I googled Promises of Justice in the Bible and there were more than 11,000 PAGES, not verses, of results assuring us every secret thing will be made known, and the woman will become wealthy, a DOVE with wings of silver and gold. I don't know if that means a Nobel Peace Prize or something for figuring out this situation. Seems like she'd need a lot of other opinions in addition to a lot of Biblical research.
We're like God's ant farm, you know, not entitled to make our own laws if they conflict with ones our Maker instituted for us which are not prejudiced but for our own good, healthwise and otherwise. Any ants who rebel wouldn't make the cut, even if we were the ones in charge. We owe Him our very existence, so conforming to His basic rules isn't hard.
"My yoke is easy and my burden is light," we have to accept by faith, I think. I'm awfully vague about clergy's arguments since it wasn't my problem, so that's as far as I go about that. Why try to make God and the world conform to how you'd like things to be, or try to heap guilt on everyone else, standard defense mechanisms, if we really don't feel subconsciously guilty? I dunno, just a thought in case it helps anyone.
We all have to conform. Non-gays have to give up things too.
