Yesterday, I had a talk with a friend of mine about our protestant friends. One thing we noticed was the strong Calvinist streak which is absolutely moving protestants farther and farther from the Gospel. Coupled with this is the opposite tendency, the tendency to be uber-liberal.
Protestants we know cannot get past contraception as a serious sin. They cannot work out that this sin of stopping conception, God's plan, is evil.
They cannot get, at least in America, beyond the confusion of gross nationalism, (my country right or wrong), and religion. They see Catholics are less American, which we are, because we place the laws and customs of Rome above those of America. As members of the one, true, holy, apostolic and Catholic Church, our loyalties are first with her.
Protestants judge people constantly here in the States. If one is poor, one has sinned, which is odd, as we have all sinned, as St. Paul notes, and fallen short of the glory of God. But, here, charity is not real, is not from the heart, but something one does. Sadly, our protestant brethren are becoming less charitable and more judgmental, seeing the poor among them as suspicious, less worthy of care, and non-persons.
How did these changes in attitude happen? Partly, the false idea of "once saved, always saved" creates a clique, a group which identifies only with that one-time grace and forgets about sin.
Sin is not in the vocabulary of most protestants I meet. Their goal has been reached. They are going to heaven according to their false presumption, and, therefore, they do not have to examine their lives.
It is ironic that the strict Calvinists hold hands with the uber-liberals at Sunday worship. Although they refuse to judge themselves, they lack the discernment to see that holding positions on divorce and remarriage, abortion, contraception, hyper-captitalism, nationalism, ssm, and prejudice against Catholics are serious sins.
To protest is to lack an obedient spirit. Pray, as the protestants in America are becoming so secular that they cannot see their own apostasy from even basic Christianity. Disobedience in one area leads to another.
And, they do not accept the concept of the sacraments, which are the ways to sanctifying grace, so most would be in mortal sin.
I am afraid most protestants have moved beyond even their own original ideals taken from the Gospel. One man said to me yesterday, that he wondered if Martin Luther could have foreseen how far away from the Gospel his Lutherans would have fallen, would he have insisted on splitting from Rome?
The Catholic Church is our safety net.
