Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences - This topic has 7 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 26 years ago by
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What are the religious differences between Protestant Christians and Roman Catholics? Also, what does the making of the sign of the cross signify? My guess is for protection, or giving thanks?
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Name : A.P., Age : 17, City : N/A, State : N/, Country : United States,Remembering some of the Protestant religions split from the Catholic religion for political rather than religious reasons, there are few real fundamental differences between the Christian religions. The differences appear to be in the observance and rituals associated with the religions, rather than their faith. Some contentious religious issues are: The significance of Holy Communion, the Virgin birth, the act of confession, the infallibility of the Pope. Other more secular differences include: Female spiritual leaders, divorce, contraception, homosexuality, etc. Sorry – as for the origins of the sign of the cross, I am not sure.
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Name : BM, City : Jakarta, State : N/, Country : Indonesia,From what I know, the reason Martin Luther was kind of kicked out of the Roman Catholic Church was that he believed in “sola scriptura” – that means, scripture only. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Pope can hand down doctrine (ex cathedra) that is equal to the Bible in its accuracy and import. Martin Luther believed that we should only look to the Bible, since it is unchanging and men are fallible. Also, I think Roman Catholics also believe that you can get to heaven from doing good works, while Luther and the other men of the Reformation thought that we are saved by grace alone.
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Name : Sara28367, Gender : F, City : Oakland, State : CA, Country : United States,I can only answer part of your question since I know nothing of the Protestant faith. In making the sign of the cross, we are honoring the Trinity: The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. I never thought of it as a sign of protection, but it is possibly for thanks for all that God has done for us.
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Name : Jen31000, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 28, City : Detroit, State : MI, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Five hundred years ago, a Catholic monk named Martin Luther nailed his ’95 Theses’ on the door of a Catholic church in Germany. Back then, among other things, the priests were selling slips of paper to people that declared the forgiveness of all their sins. Those people would then go out and do whatever they pleased, because they had this “ticket” into Heaven. Martin Luther did not think this was right. He felt that you could not buy your way into God’s Kingdom. You only need to have faith in God. Luther did not want to start a new denomination of Christianity, but wanted instead to change the Catholic Church. He felt that people needed to live by the rules in the Bible, not what was made up by people, like those “tickets.” The Catholic Church didn’t like this much, and Luther got into a bunch of trouble. I won’t go into that, but that’s how Protestant denominations started, including, of course, Lutheran!
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Name : Shari28090, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Lutheran, Age : 28, City : Canton, State : MI, Country : United States, Occupation : Teacher, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I was once told the sign of the cross was a way for Christians in ancient times to identify one another. Catholics and Protestants have much more in common than many would like to believe. I say that having been raised Catholic and now also attending a Protestant church because my husband isn’t Catholic. Worship services vary, even among the different Protestant denominations. One main difference between the two is the Holy Eucharist. Catholics believe in transubstantiation- that Jesus’ words at the Last Supper were very literal, not figurative, and that Communion (bread/wafer and wine) is the actual Body & Blood of Jesus. Contrary to the belief of many Protestants, most of the Mass is Biblically-based.
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Name : Janette20971, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 38, City : Glendora, State : CA, Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,About 100 yrs before Luther, John Hus made many of the same declarations. John Hus was a Catholic priest in Moravia. He stated that mass should be held in the language of the people, that indulgences (buying your way into heaven) were wrong, and that the Bible, not the Pope was the final authority on religious matters. For his trouble, he was branded as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1415. His flock became the Moravian Church, the first protestent sect. Luther may have borrowed from him, John Wesley did borrow from John Hus when he established the Methodist Church.
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Name : Ron29666, Gender : M, Religion : Moravian, Age : 51, City : Westland, State : MI, Country : United States,I am not an expert by any means but it seems to me that Protestants and Catholics aren’t so different as people think concerning the doctrine of salvation. The question of being saved by grace through faith plus works versus by grace through faith alone can be overdone. If somebody who does lots of bad things and doesn’t care about other people tries to be saved just by believing, I think that even a Protestant would say that that person was in the wrong. And if somebody thought that they didn’t need God’s mercy as long as they did enough prayers or good works to buy themselves into heaven, a Catholic theologian wouldn’t go for that either. The key is ‘grace,’ a sort of relationship with God given by God. May we all have it! So I think that the main theological difference would be that Catholics place more emphasis on participating in a human society (the Catholic church in particular) as a big part of being part of Jesus’s project of salvation (the Christian church in general). That doesn’t mean that other Christians aren’t Christians, but that theoretically all the Christians should be part of the same organization, which is led by bishops and a pope and is considered to have evolved more or less directly from the original communities formed by the apostles of Jesus, with Simon Peter, the head apostle, sort of a proto-pope. There are also Eastern Orthodox Christians, who are in between. They have bishops but no pope. Also they very much stress tradition and customary worship. Lastly, there are Eastern or ‘Greek’ Catholics (from Eastern Europe or the Middle East) who follow some of the traditional practices of the Eastern Orthodox but also follow the teachings of the Pope; the differences are just in style of worship, not in faith. I am one of this group. It is kind of difficult being different from the other Catholics, but I stick with it. What all Christians agree on is that it really stinks that different groups of Christians sometimes fail to get along. We are all supposed to support and love each other as different parts of the same ‘body.’ This doesn’t mean that we’re all supposed to be the same (not all the parts of a regular physical body are the same). But we are making progress towards at least respecting each other. P.S. The sign of the cross is a sort of blessing or physical prayer. Some people make it when they are saying their prayers; some people may also make it reflexively when they are frightened.
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Name : John J. D., Gender : M, Religion : Catholic, Age : 22, City : Washington, State : DC, Country : United States, Occupation : Student, Education level : 4 Years of College,
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