protestants & catholics

[crazy_girl]

Could you give me any facts about protestants and catholics?

[maxximus]

As for the the difference between Catholics and Protestants, here are
a few:

(1) Rule of faith: Protestants accept the Bible alone as their main rule
of faith. Roman Catholic place the Bible as one among several
authorities. and they don't like each other.

(2) Head of the Church: Protestants do not accept any man on earth
as being head of the Church. Catholics look to the Pope as having that
role.

(3) Mary: Protestants do not accept Mary or the saints as having a
special intercessory role for believers. Catholic believe just opposite
and place great value upon the intercessions of Mary and the saints.

(4) Communion: Protestants believe that the Lord's Supper is primarily
a memorial meal. Catholics believe the bread and wine actually turn
into the body and blood of Jesus.

(5) Sacraments: Catholics have a number of sacraments that will not
be found in Protestant Churches. Protestants generally hold to two
rituals to be observed, which are water baptism for believers, and the
Lord's Supper

(6) Auricular Confession: Catholics believe that priests have the power
to remit sins through the priestly confessions. As a rule Protestants
believe in the priesthood of all believers.

(7) Church: Roman Catholicism teaches that they alone are the true
Church. Protestants believe that all Christian believers make up the
true Church.

(8) Purgatory: Catholics believe the soul enters purgatory upon death,
for a time of purging or cleansing. Protestants believe the soul goes
directly to heaven at death.

(9) Immaculate Conception: Catholics teach that Mary was born
without sin. Protestants do not believe this.

(10)

[maxximus]

(10) Infallibility of the Pope: Catholics believe that when the Pope
speaks ex-Cathedra (Officially, or 'from the chair.') that his words are
infallible, or the same as God speaking. Protestants allow this for no man.

plus they really don't like each other. cheers! my fist cut and paste.

[bigmalc]

There is one, huge, glaring problem with the notion that Mary was born without sin. A central tenet of the Catholic faith is that nobody is born without sin because the sex act is, in itself, a sin. Had Mary's parents had sex in order to produce her, the belief that she was born without sin is incongruous with that idea. Otherwise she would have to be the product of another immaculate conception which rather spoils the effect of her sons' distinguishing feature!

[curiosity]

The Immaculate Conception does refer to Mary's conception not that of Jesus, therefore invalidating your point bigmalc, but I can see why people think it refers to jesus's conception.

[curiosity]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Concep tion I only know a bit about this because December the *th is my birthday and we either were off school or got special treats. It's the biggest feast day in Italy also.

[Whickerman]

Curiosity - I was brought up in a staunchly Catholic household, and that's a new one on me, but it seems you're absolutely right!

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

That's my thing learned for the day - I can go to bed now.

[maxximus]

i'm with wickerman, i just assumed bigmalc was right. thanks curiousity, that is quite an important distinction.

[jofish]

But surely for Mary to be completely free from sin, she must have avoided sex with Joseph also. Are we saying here that there were two cases of immaculate conception, that for both Mary and Jesus's birth?