Liturgical Longings

Protestantism leads to the disintegration of the Church

Authority and Authoritativeness

Lack of interpretational authority

Lack of guide to scripture

Scriptures lack of relation to Church

The Role of Tradition

A few important factors is the apostolic succession and to the antiquity of the Roman Catholic Church. However, Scripture was never intended to be the believer's sole guide for all of faith and practice; for all that he believes and does. Scripture and Tradition belong together as well.

Christ left a church, not a book, and that the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura (by scripture alone) is illogical because the formation of the canon (i.e. what we recognise as Scripture) was itself a monumental act of the church. Thus, the Bible requires an infallible church.

The church is a necessary guide to the meaning of Scripture. If the Constitution, as a relatively simple human text, needs the Supreme Court as its interpretive guide, then all the more does Scripture need the Catholic Church as its interpretive guide.

The Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura leads to an "incipient subjectivism" since without Tradition, each man becomes his own authority and interpreter of Scripture. This has resulted in competing interpretations in the Protestant marketplace resulting in various directions of Protestantism.

Authority, in all of our daily experiences, means a person or institution empowered to enforce a rule. Sola scriptura is in a sense a philosophical sleight of hand. A book by its nature can only be authoritative, not an authority.

Ironically, it was the first pope, the apostle Peter, who pointed out the rather obvious fact that Scripture is not necessarily self-explanatory; it can be twisted by the unscrupulous to support any theological position (2 Peter 3:16).

A liberal Protestant church with little or no authority results in chaos and therefore indirectly contributes to spawn a multitude of sects/denominations. There are now more than 25 000 Protestant sects and the number is growing![1]

High church liturgy (much more dignified rituals known to Protestants as “service/communion”), is a common feature of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The Reformed and Evangelical Protestant churches are missing out on an essential part, the fullness and richness of high church liturgy. The traditional Christian components such as the Mass and the Eucharist are essential.

To quote a Catholic:

“The splendour of Roman Catholic liturgy or the “vision” of the Roman Catholic Church is immense. It is full of glory and dignity. It is un-supportedly bright. But not only this: it is present in the Mass.... But it is only in the liturgy...that the whole drama is unfurled and the scrim of temporality is pierced, and we begin to see both the abyss and the Sapphire Throne. It is very hard to keep this vision alive in non-liturgical worship.”

Liturgy, for the most part, is the same no matter which Catholic Church a parishioner attends. The Catholic can worship at any Catholic Church and discover there is basically the same order of worship, the same symbolism, and the same ritual.

Protestant churches have communion only a few times each year while Catholics has it on a weekly basis.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-31