I'm so glad we don't vote on the direction of the church.

Is it your assertion that Catholic doctrine does not follow the Bible?

Is it your assertion that it does?

I'm not sure we're supposed to be attending SSPX masses if we have a good alternative, although it sounds like they are in negotiations towards full communion with Rome and have already taken steps in that direction.

It was a breath of fresh air for me at my parish, which is why I stayed there instead of sticking with my geographic parish (which is in a different diocese).  Pretty much every parish with a Latin mass option (or which only does the Latin mass) is going to be decent.  The issue is how few there can be in a given area.

FSSP, which does the Latin mass, is a rapidly growing order last I heard, and very young compared to many of the more liberal orders, some of which are dying out.

Of course we follow the Bible.  The scriptures are central to Catholic doctrine.  Are you suggesting otherwise?

They passed plans to allow dissenting churches to leave with their property and clergy retirement won’t be an issue. It opens the door for both progressive and conservative churches to leave without as big a mess as it has been in the past. We’ll see what happens.

#2 could've happened decades ago. To their mindset it is not optional. They won't stop until they get their way. Then they walk away from it after they screw it up. This is the modus operandi for the LGBTWTFBBQ movement. Destroy tradition/morale/decorum/principles and then move on to the next host body. They just haven't quite been able to put ole John Wesley out to pasture yet.

There are quite a few people that are shifting from "hate the sin but love the sinner" because they have finally figured out that with this particular cause the sinner hates you and wants to destroy your organization.

Start with something easy. Praying to saints. Not only is it unbiblical, but it's necromancy by definition. Even if the saints could hear you, which they can't, they would not participate in a forbidden act by bringing your petitions to God. Saul tried this very thing with Samuel, trying to use Samuel as an intermediary, and Samuel rebuked him.

Jesus said no man comes to the Father except through Him. He didn't say have your people call my people. He said call Him, and only Him, directly.

That's just one example of faulty doctrine.

Let's do another. Purgatory. Not only is it unbiblical that Christians spend any time whatsoever in the underworld, it's unbiblical to teach that we can do penance for the remittance of sins. The Bible says that paradise, Abraham's bosom, was removed by Christ from the underworld and is now in Heaven with Him. No righteous soul sets foot in the underworld anymore. And even if you did want to argue that paradise was still in Hades, which is baseless, paradise and limbo share no commonalities. Paradise did not include punishment for sins.

But the core of Catholic doctrine is the rejection of Christ's forgiveness. Jesus did the penance for our since past, present, and future; and the Bible says that He and He alone can forgive our sins. It even says that the Father Himself has remitted all judgement unto the Son, and that He judges no man. So if God Himself cannot forgive our sins, how can some priest? And if all have fallen short of the glory of God, how can we as fallen men receive forgiveness for our sins by doing penance on earth?

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. That means a spiritual death, meaning damnation. There is no room for good works when it comes to forgiveness for sins. Any path that claims you can redeem yourself through your own actions is a blatant rejection of Christ. It's the equivalent of a lawyer claiming that you can get out of a murder charge by doing community service. In a heavenly sense, the pope and the priests are nothing but conmen. They're claiming to have the authority that is Christ's alone.

Catholic doctrine literally runs off the rails on the first page of the Bible. The sabbath (day of rest) is the seventh day not the first. God set that precedent in the creation story. Jesus observed the seventh day. You know who observed the first day? Sun worshippers which were the majority religion in the Roman Empire at the time Constantine converted. They already used Sunday as a holy day so they just wrote it into church doctrine after over 300 years (since the resurrection) of observing the seventh day sabbath.

Oh snap.  Now y’all done did it...

GD =  

You have not read the end of the story

First of all, you mischaracterize the idea of prayers of intercession.  Secondly, they are not opposed by the scriptures and do not conflict with what Jesus said.

If you believe as you do, though, I hope that you don't ever ask anyone to pray for you.  That would be a violation right there.

Purgatory is not unbiblical, but much of the support for it in the scriptures comes from books that Protestants conveniently removed from the Bible (such as the two books of Maccabees).

The concept of penance for the remittance of sins is also not unbiblical, it's just in conflict with Protestant theology.

The church also does not reject Christ's forgiveness.  Our understanding of the scriptures in that regard seems to conflict with those which Protestants came up with over a millennia later.

The idea that a priest can act as an agent for Christ in this regard comes from the scriptures where Christ tells the Apostles that what they bind on earth is bound in heaven.  We believe in apostolic succession and as such believes the priests to be the successors of the Apostles, and commissioned thusly to do the same.

That what we do, for good and bad, matters in the hereafter is also not non-scriptural, although it is certainly non-Protestant (and I suspect this is why Luther wasn't all too fond of the epistle of St. James).  Ultimately, we believe that what makes forgiveness possible is Christ's sacrifice on the cross.  That sacrifice, though, is not licence to do whatever we please so long as we believe in Christ and we don't believe that doctrines to the contrary have any real scriptural basis.

I really should bring my notebook to mass so I can take notes.  Our priests have basically addressed all of your points and cited scripture to support the Church's position, as well as provided context for passages sometimes cited by Protestants in oppositon (such as Ephesians, "For by grace...") which help to show that they do not mean what the Protestants assert them to mean.  A lot of the homilies at my parish are like being in a university-level theology class.

LOL.

Easy, they followed the Episcopal model.
At one convention there were more votes cast than there were delegates to cast them.

This is the EXACT thing that happened to the Episcopal Church! For some reason, the congregations trusted the Mother Church, and vested the titles for the parishes in the Mother Church. When the Mother Church went left, the congregations tried to keep their buildings; the bishops literally locked the doors and turned the congregations away. And the bishops would NOT sell the land back to the congregations! (Are we seeing a pattern here?)
An enormous part of the law deals with "Who Owns What." And those laws have been written long, long ago, and have lots of precedent to support them. Add a liberal judge to the mix and guess what: You no longer get to attend the church you have gone to for decades.

That is the LEAST like scenario. They will continue to belittle and sideline the conservatives, make them look like an inconsequential number of members, etc. etc. They WANT the power, the land, and most especially the MONEY, that the UMC church possesses! They aren't happy with "going their own way." If they were, they'd have done so decades ago. They want to legitimize their way of life in the eyes of the world. They want that which other people have created; they are unwilling or unable to create it for themselves. This is the Leftist Way, remember!

Catholic here.
The Catholic Church does a better job of following the Bible than any other organized religion.
But they miss the mark by a mile and the leadership will be the least in heaven.
IMHO.

So there’s some wiggle room on the butt sex thing?

Well they could just let their CFO dick little kids, I suppose

That's different from the living asking the living for prayer, which is massively biblical in every way. The living asking the dead for prayer is necromancy. There is exactly one place in the bible where a living individual asked a dead person to intercede for them, and he was soundly rebuked. There is no biblical support for saintly intercession, which is specifically and vigorously denounced. It's one of the very few things in the Bible that carries a death penalty.

But why, you ask?

A close study of the interaction between Saul and the Witch of Endor explains that. There's a good reason why that story was included in Scripture!

When the medium calls up Samuel, she immediately knew that it was Saul who she was dealing with, and she was afraid it was a sting operation and that she was about to be put to death. But how did she know it was Saul?

Because it surprised her and caught her off guard that Samuel actually came up. The way mediums work, in biblical terms, is they work with familiar spirits, i.e. demons, who impersonate the dead person. Only the medium is capable of seeing or hearing the demon, and the demon provides them with information that only the deceased would know, convincing the customer that they are in fact speaking to their deceased loved one.

So when Samuel actually came up for all to see, and her familiar spirit was nowhere to be found, she knew the jig was up.

That interaction is in Scripture to teach us why necromancy is verboten. Because when you try to communicate with the dead you're actually communicating with a familiar spirit who impersonates them. When you pray to saints for intercession, you're praying to demons.

Just for argument's sake, let's say you could communicate with the saints. How exactly, biblically, would they be able to secure your salvation? It's your personal relationship with Jesus Christ that secures your salvation. It's your choice, and yours alone. Not even Jesus Himself can save you if you won't be saved, and there's absolutely nothing that any of the so-called saints can do to change that. Salvation is a personal choice, not a group effort. You pray to Mary to intercede at the time of your death. What can she possibly do? Seriously, how does this conversation between Mary and Jesus work?

"Hey, Jesus, I know this guy rejected you, but he keeps bugging me. Can you just go ahead and force yourself on him even though he doesn't want to accept your forgiveness?"

"Oh, sure, mom, I'll go ahead and make an exception this time and be a predatory god by forcing myself on that guy, but only because you asked."

Regarding succession, Catholics are mischaracterizing what Jesus told them. He never gave them the power to forgive sin. He gave them the power to discern whether a person was saved. And He certainly didn't say that a cabal of corrupt priests could get together and decide which of them was going to receive this magical ability to decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

Catholics claim that the pope can unilaterally damn someone to hell for failure to conform to Catholic doctrine that is not only unbiblical, but has nothing whatsoever to do with salvation. All that is required for salvation is acceptance of Jesus Christ's forgiveness, period. You do not need the pope's approval, and neither does He. Jesus does not need the pope to sign off on you before He can forgive you. He does not answer to the pope. When it comes to judgement and forgiveness, He answers to no one, not even God the Father, and certainly not to some corrupt old hypocrite in a funny white costume.

Think of the first person in history who was saved, the thief on the cross. All he had to do was ask Jesus to save him, and He responded by telling the man he would be in paradise with Him that very day. Despite the apostles being present, the man was able to go directly to the source, without apostolic approval, penance, confession, communion, baptism, last rites, etc. And NO limbo! He went STRAIGHT to paradise with Jesus and no stops along the way.

That right there is the biblical model for salvation. The sinner on the cross. Nothing has changed. We have the exact same direct access to Jesus that he did. The pope, the cardinals, the priests, and the saints are all fraudulent, every last one of them.

Moreover, they're all sinners. According to the Bible, Jesus was able to forgive our sins because He was perfect, and because He willingly sacrificed Himself in our place. Under heaven's law, sin must be paid for with blood. If a substitute is to be used, i.e. a sacrifice, it must be perfect. The pope is not offering himself as a sacrifice, and he couldn't even if he wanted to. That would be selling the devil something that already belongs to him by right.

ETA: Regarding penance, there is no penance for sin in biblical terms. In heaven's legal system, there is no such thing as a minor crime. All crimes carry the same punishment, and that is eternal damnation. You CANNOT do penance for any sin. Like I said, that would be the equivalent of a murderer going to a jury and saying, Find me not guilty because I did some community service. You saying some hail marys and going to God with that nonsense as if that makes everything all good again is outrageous. God will receive that in the same way that a jury here would receive your community service. It would anger them, and they would count your "penance," and the fact you thought it made up for your crime, against you.

Not only is penance worthless, but it's incredibly insulting to Jesus and God the Father both. It's insulting that you think you, as a miserable human, can do anything to make up for your crimes. It shows you have no respect for God's laws that you think such trivial efforts on your part can save you from His just wrath.

Compare your trivial penance with what Jesus did. The man conquered hell itself. He suffered in ways we can't even imagine, and for those of us who are saved, we won't ever know what He actually endured because we will never truly taste death. Can you even imagine how angry and hurt you would be if you endured that level of suffering on someone's behalf, and they not only rejected you but tried to replace your gift to them with their own trivial, meaningless, hypocritical bullshit?

Penance is completely removed from salvation. Trying to make good the things you've hurt is certainly a righteous effort, but it will not buy you salvation. It's something you do because it's in your heart to try and right wrongs you've committed.

What wrongs are righted by saying hail marys? Who are you helping? It's no different than flogging yourself. Penance is NOT about punishment. It's about righting wrongs. For example, let's say you stole something. Penance would be replacing what you stole.

Most things can't be righted. For example, let's say you hurt someone. Let's say you had an affair with a friend's wife. There is no penance you can do for that. Most of the sins we commit are like breaking priceless, irreplaceable objects. Once the deed is done, it cannot be undone. There is, in the end, only forgiveness. That's why we're commanded to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us, unconditionally. It's the only way wrongs can be truly righted in this world and this life.

Self punishment, besides being insulting, also breaks Christ's heart. He sacrificed Himself because of His infinite love for you, and it breaks His heart to see you suffer. He wants you to accept His forgiveness and forgive yourself. He wants you free of guilt and shame.

The Catholic church on the other hand wants you to be a slave to guilt and shame because it keeps you in a vicious cycle of sin, which brings on ever mounting guilt and shame, which keeps you coming back for more. The more the guilt and shame pile up, the harder it is for you to let go and surrender yourself to Christ. With every cycle, the devil takes you further and further away from God. Don't let him shame you out of what is rightfully yours. Unconditional forgiveness is your birthright as a human being.

God loves those guys too.  

https://www.umnews.org/en/news/effort-to-delay-traditional-plan-debate-defeated

If I'm reading this right, sounds like good news for the traditional plan.  Looks like Africa really did win, this time.

You'll see the racism of the left come out now.

It happened after the Catholic synod on marriage. German Cardinal Marx, major leftist and basically not a Christian, said to a reporter that the Church shouldn't be listening to Africans. After it was reported, Cardinal Marx accused the reporter of lying, and then the recording came out.

The bone of contention seems to be gay pastors & weddings.  
The "Traditional" plan bans those.  For example, it says that pastors caught performing a gay wedding will be suspended for year without pay.

All the plans encourage LGBTQ membership and participation in the church.  Some of the news articles incorrectly imply that gays will be banned from the church.

So this isn't accurate, or is it solely referring to clergy?

"The Traditional Plan aims to strengthen the denomination’s prohibitions against clergy officiating at same-sex unions or being “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” The plan also encourages those who will not obey church prohibitions to find another church home."

I think it solely refers to clergy

The Church has been in continual schism all the way back to the first temple.

Much of the NT is just this sort of thing, Essenes criticizing Pharisees and Sadducees.

I've been part of congregations that left a denomination, and all the assets they built for it, twice. The presbyterians have essentially stolen about $500K from my parents over the years.

If God didn't want people doing butt stuff He shouldn't have put the prostate where He did.

We are watching the session on livestream today. Should be a shitshow. I have a feeling the clown car is going to show up. I'm praying that I won't have to leave my Church.

I don't think it's accurate.

I've heard this, but in the last decade, as a person who has attended Mass in two forms on 5 continents in more languages than I can recall, to include cities, military bases, rural towns, major national Cathedrals, etc...

I'm still amazed how pretty much consistent it is, anywhere you go.

Finally something good, now if we could get rid of those killer bees.

They are trying to over turn the traditional plan vote yesterday and proceed with the one church plan.

The LGBTQ members want to leave?

except if they do, they lose their physical church because Big UMC owns it.

The LBGTQ community does not want to leave. They want to change our traditions and take over. They want me to leave if I don't agree with them.

This.  Any threat by them to leave is a mix of desperation, tantrum, attempted shaming, and virtue signaling.

The vote just occurred. The attempted flip has failed. The Traditional plan is on. So far, so good.
ETA My bad. The vote was to substitute the traditional plan with the one church plan. NEXT they will be voting on whether to accept the traditional plan.

The LGBTQ community doesn't want to hear the truth: homosexuality is sin.

I can't wait to hear what Hillary has to say about this vote.  

An abomination, even.  Mentioned alongside incest and bestiality, should some comparable behaviors be helpful for perspective.

Yeah, I would have to agree with you on the Restoration Movement Churches being the most conservative.  We have been around for 160 years as a Christian Church.  We "Do Bible things in Bible ways".  I chair the board and serve as a Deacon.  We have no women leadership, but they comprise other roles including some of the accounting (decisions still controlled by the board), and outreach.  All of it is centered on New Testament teachings and Jesus' Great Commission.

We have seen several new faces of late, a good bit looking for new church homes from Methodist congregations.  We had a discussion last meeting about the new faces and I reminded everyone that trading churches isn't kingdom growth.  We still need to focus on the unchurched while we lovingly accept the new membership from other congregations.

I would caution against playing sin olympics.

Ultimately, I don't oppose open homosexuality in churches because it's a worse sin than others. What I oppose is the unrepentance and acceptance of a homosexual leader.

I'm fine with non-practicing homosexuals seeking relief from their affliction in church, same as I'd be for an alcoholic for example.  What I have an issue with are open practitioners of it attempting to reinterpret God's word to suit themselves.  Even worse is church leadership attempting to openly engage in apostasy to further that agenda.

YMMV.

That's where I'm at, too.

The scriptures are not central that I can tell, but the the ability for current leadership to supercede the scriptures is paramount to the catholic church's function.

I mean, its clear that all Christians are saints according to the scriptures and all are part of the Royal Priesthood, yet that is not what the Catholic church teaches.  And the Mary worship is scriptural how?

Watching it live. The SJW's are going nuts.