What is not debatable, ie, what is essential

I do argue from a position of strength, and confidence. Ironically, perhaps, other posters have objected that I come off as too sure of myself, in fact. But I know the gospel and the Catholic and eastern church version is far more sound, and in line with Scripture. I said that sometimes I overreact, perceiving someone to be overly aggressive when they’re not, as the poster I was responding to maintained that he wasn’t on the offensive. As often as not, however, they are on the offensive as Catholicism offers a big and common target. But it has more to do with ignorance over original Christian teachings than anything else. The ECFs wrote prolifically. There are literally millions of words penned by them and would take a lifetime to digest. But it’s not difficult to get a general idea about the overall consensus on basic theology, what early Christians believed and practiced. Anyway my sensitivity consists only in  that, and I was apologizing for any presumption it may have caused.

And there’s no difference between the gospel of Jesus, Paul, James, John, et al, incidentally. They’re all easily reconciled.

Catholicism is simply Christianity, no more, no less. At one time it was virtually the only way the faith was known in the west, which also aligned in its basic teachings with the church in the east-and still does. And those teachings are its treasure, whether they're being observed mechanically or legalistically or otherwise. Those teachings are the body of beliefs she holds, based on what the early church received at the beginning, whether written or unwritten, just as you have basic beliefs that you hold to, based primarily on the written word but probably influenced more than you know by both the ancient church as well as more recent theologians and teachers.

Now, according to church teachings a person can be forgiven for serious sin, sin that leads to death- and I went over the background of this teaching in another post on this forum- but it comes only with godly-sorrow over our sin: a changed and contrite and repentant heart together with real faith. But in "cultural Catholicism" this repentance can be practiced quite mechanically, externally, with no heart-change at all. It all depends how devoted to God a person really is-and on how serious the church is at ensuring that her teachings are truly known and lived out authentically-and that lukewarmness doesn't prevail. But it's mainly up to the individual, and some will take the message and run with it-producing much fruit- while others won't. Maybe the church should remove the poor soil altogether, leaders and laity alike, or at least make it less comfortable for them to persist. As it is the wheat and tares coexist-and God will do the final separting. That's happening more now as I see it-and the church teaches that renewal and reform is a constantly necessary process in any case. But my semi-peasant grandmother from the foothills of the Italian Alps had one of the simplest and most beautiful faiths I've encountered, based on the teachings of the church.

Others down through the centuries did awesome things, inspired by the message put forth by the church. The world was darker, harsher, more chaotic, with little hope, while the church held a message that meant that order and meaning and goodness and love were foundational to this universe: offering true light in a dark world. The world seems to be growing darker again now, however, as I'm sure you're aware of. But inspired by the gospel message, countless hours of charity work and amounts of money have been performed and given to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Altruism was virtually placed on the map by the church. Orphanages and hospitals were built extensively.

The church, originally through monasteries, preserved what learning existed through the dark ages, eventually developing our educational systems in the west, lower and upper/university, as Christianity became accepted, widespread, and then increasingly influential in society. In fact, the church and its faith became the bond that held a fragmented and often warring society together after the fall of the Roman empire and into and through the middle ages. The betterment of living conditions, the promotion of the arts and sciences, the pursuit of excellence in general, was all part of the church’s legacy, beginning in a world very different in many ways from the one we take for granted now.

I returned to the Catholic Church after many decades of absence and after being Protestant for many of those years, and quite anti-Catholic. There were a series of circumstances that contributed, but, through a Catholic bible study that I attended while secretly trying to convert them away, I naturally ended up rubbing elbows with Catholics and, while they lacked some of the head knowledge, bible knowledge, of my Protestant compatriots, I become impressed with the simple and humble and truly genuine faith of those people. And also by virtue of this closer contact I occasionally encountered some of the wisdom of some of the ancient writers, and there’s an absolute boundless wealth of literature produced, reams and reams of paper penned with thoughts from the past. Some very cool stuff.

I studied my way back into the church in a way, becoming interested in what actually happened and what the ECFs believed, etc. but that’s a long story. I studied ancient church history and catechisms and the councils and there was a flavor in it all which consisted of a taste consistent with the church I know today. I ended up finding that I agreed with the basic teachings on justification, to my own surprise, and that I had already believed the same for quite some time but didn’t yet know it-because I really didn’t know what the church taught. And I found that those same teachings also “happened” to line upon with the Eastern Orthodox as well even after centuries of isolation from each other. With that it dawned on me that maybe God didn’t abandon His church for 1500 years until the Reformers came along after all, which really doesn’t make much sense anyway, does it? Simultaneous to this I was losing much of the priggishness of youth, and finding it more difficult to see myself as holy as I once preferred to think I was -and then the scandals of the church no longer offended me in the same way-I knew I wasn’t so much better and I knew that we are all weak vessels, that the church is a place for sinners even though one should certainly hope that there are fewer there than outside, at least.

So, despite their funny hats and generally unentertaining services (they’re not meant to be) and sometimes crazy, and sinful, history, I couldn’t, em, justify my not being part of what I by then considered to simply be the original game in town-there just wasn’t any reason to stray anymore.

As for Arminianism, which I’m no expert on by any means, I’ve viewed it as a reaction to the error found in Calvinism and probably to a lesser extent in other denominations regarding the human will, and an unconscious bow to the original old-time religion that always included the role of man’s will in his salvation, even if only in his ability to say no, to resist grace.

Ok, so the Catholic church teaches that God has an overall ultimate purpose in this endeavor called creation, which is to produce something, something grand, something of much greater value than he began with, bringing a greater good out of the evil that occurred as a result of the abuse of the creature’s free will, evil which He allows, for a time, for a season, for His purposes. He’s producing little gods, like Himself, those who finally and fully reject the evil and embrace the good, embrace love, embracing Him, first above all else.

It begins, from our perspective, with faith. Faith is more than the rote act of believing; it’s to recognize God as our God again, to enter union with Him. And that union, itself, is the essence of man’s justice; it’s what we were made for. From there righteousness springs, from the Font of all true righteousness. But just as we can turn to God, we can also turn back away from Him; our justified state can be compromised and lost by turning to serious sin, sin listed in Gal 5, for example, sin that opposes and destroys love in us, and therefore destroys our relationship with God. Man can still say no; he can shut the door he once opened.

But to say yes, man needs grace; he cannot possibly move himself towards God. The first grace of faith is a gift, as all grace is but also a choice; we must accept and embrace and express that gift.

Now I’ve laid out plenty of Scripture on all this in these forums, where righteousness is presented not only as declared, but also as given, such that justification means more than the forgiveness and remission of sins but also the creation of a new being with a new heart. And I’ve laid out plenty of Scripture that shows that that status can also be compromised and lost. And I’ve also shown where our justice can and should grow-and that we’re still obligated under the new covenant to be personally righteous and to act accordingly, to walk in the light albeit by the Spirit now, under grace.

At justification (formally at baptism, the “sacrament of faith” since all ancient churches without exception held/hold to baptismal regeneration) we are washed, cleansed given new life; we would be heaven-bound if we were to die right then, as long as our faith was genuine. We’ll all be judged on what we did with whatever we’ve been given: time, opportunity, background, age, knowledge, revelation, and, especially, grace-with more demanded of those given more, ref Luke 12:48.

So, in Catholicism, once freely justified we must work out our salvation together with He who works in us, salvation being characterized as past: Eph 2:5, present: Phil 2:12, 1 Cor 1:18, 1 Pet 1:8-9, and future: Act 2:47, Romans 5:9-10

So… plausible Scripture-based arguments can easily be presented to support the Catholic position on these basic beliefs, and the church uses Scripture constantly to do so. And yet her beliefs also descended from the beginning, whether written or unwritten, or whether written so as to present the truth clearly and explicitly or not, such that, while sola Scriptura adherents debate each other over, say, baptismal regeneration, for the ancient churches it was never even controversial; there’s no guessing or scrupulous exegesis necessary; that was simply the belief and practice held always and everywhere from the beginning.

Now, I can repost prooftexts if you desire, but we'll probaly just go round and round chasing that dog anyway. I'm assuming you already know the various postions and the verses used to affirm them. But I assume you already have your mind made up anyway? Sorry- if you got this far you only have yourself to blame   .

Well, keep reading the bible with mainly yourself sprinkled in. I don't recall reading about you being there, however, in those early days, but you sure seem to know everything, what was taught, including the unwritten teachings and apparently including everything Jesus said and did as well. Every single early church with direct ties to antiquity, not only the Catholic church by any means, has sacraments. They're just theology in action for the simple man-and we're all simple until our pride messes things up. You are quite ignorant-and quite confident nonethelss. It's easier to be confident, in fact, when one is ignorant. Keep the blinders on. They'll keep you in your safe place.

I`m going to give your remarks some thought before I react to them. Thanks for sharing your story with me.

Thx again for sharing your story. I always enjoy reading these and it`s my practice to tell people they should go to churches where they feel comfortable and blessed. You found the church with the best library and you liked the people you met. It`s not easy to beat that. I am tempted to throw out some criticism of your view of justification but at this juncture I`m not going to do that because in my opinion we are collectively being too critical.
I think there are too many Catholics to just write them off and so my prayer for the Catholic Christian is that they be found acceptable for the kingdom of God.