Erica Orchard Considered Catholicism as Having Heresies

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Erica Orchard Considered Catholicism as Having Heresies · Great Bishop of Geneva!: Answering the Allegations of Erica Orchard on Twenty Catholic Heresies

Her list of 20 heresies will be answered, not to her, since she die not like to answer me, but on my Catholic blog.

Q

https://qr.ae/pv28dE expands to:
What were the heretical beliefs of Catholicism?
https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-heretical-beliefs-of-Catholicism/answer/Erica-Orchard-2

Erica Orchard

I've been a Christian all my life.

Updated Jun 8, 2021

Heresies in the Roman Catholic Church.

1. Justification by faith PLUS WORKS
2. The selling of indulgences to get time off purgatory
3. Purgatory
4. The veneration of Mary
5. The immaculate conception of Mary
6. The assumption of Mary
7. Praying to Mary
8. The veneration of the saints
9. Praying to the saints
10. The Pope is the head of the church
11. The Pope is infallible
12. The Pontifical Magisterium has as much authority as the Word of God
13. Only the RC church has the authority to interpret the Bible
14. Tradition has as much authority as the Word of God
15. That there is no imputed righteousness of Christ to us at the moment of salvation
16. That the Catholic Church is the only true church worldwide
17. The bread embodies Jesus and can therefore be prayed to
18. Doing penance to gain forgiveness
19. Celibacy of the priesthood
20. Holy water

John Leach

10mo

So you know more than Jesus who set up this Church and gave it His authority?

Erica Orchard

10mo

I don't know more than Jesus, but I do know what he taught. He gave the church the authority to forgive sins in his name. He never gave his authority to change the message of salvation, or have other gods, or pray to the dead. The Church was given the opportunity to get back on line at the Reformation (and several times before that too) but refused and stayed apostate. The True Church teaches Jesus's message given in the Bible. The Roman Catholic church decided to keep its heresies and is no longer the True Church.

Answered twice

first by John Leach, then by me.

I

John Leach

10mo

Erica there is not a single doctrinal contradiction taught by the Catholic Church since Christ instituted it. Look at the man made churches of the reformation and you will not find a single doctrine taught by one that is not contradicted by another yet they all claim the same source of truth - personal subjective interpretation of mainly the NT a collection of writings selected and deemed sacred and inspired by God by the Catholic Church as compliant to its teachings. May I suggest you have been led astray by just another false teacher as what the Catholic Church teaches comes directly from that deposit of Faith once delivered to the saints. Those that rely on personal opinion though in good will presuming to know Gods revelation by personal derived opinion cannot have investigated what was taught by the Apostles in that era just relying on “insights” and end up with conflicting heresy. The One Holy Catholic Church was instituted by Christ so why put your opinion against God?

Erica Orchard

10mo

I’m not the one being led astray here, John. It wasn’t because they were right doctrinally that the church that became the Roman Catholic church suppressed translations of the Bible into the vernacular: they didn’t want anyone to understand what the Bible said, so that they could tell them what to believe.

Luther’s interpretation or Scripture wasn’t personal and subjective. Lutherans emphasise the objective truth of Scripture. It’s the RC church that decided that their own man-made traditions and the Pope had more authority than God’s Word.

John Leach

10mo

The first printed Bible in the vernacular was a Catholic one by the way. Prior to a printing press copies were made in Latin by hand to preserve its purity. Few people had access to a hand copied Bible so relied on the Church to provide Christ’s teachings. It is impossible to conclude doctrinally objective truth using Scripture alone and that is simply proven by observing the thousands of conflicting religions spawned by this method having rejected The Word of God embedded in Apostolic teachings. If you do a word search through the NT you will find more than 50 instances where The Word of God, The Word, The Gospel etc was taken by the Apostles across the known world through the Church. A NT constructed by the Catholic Church was not completed until early fifth Century and a criteria of selection included compliance to Church teaching. People who consider Scripture Alone as Gods plan for the unity Christ prayed for must see God as incompetent as individuals working it out for themselves has proven disastrous causing division upon division making Gods truth impossible to find.

Erica Orchard

10mo

The Bible was translated into Latin because that was the language spoken in most of the Roman Empire. Bible's were hand copied because that's how everything was copied, not to preserve its purity. Whatever that has got to do with this.

And how could the common people rely on the churches teachings when that church was reading sermons, reading scripture, and saying services in a language none of them spoke? How could they be taught Christian morality by a church whose priests had become so immoral at every level?

Scripture alone doesn't mean each individual decides for himself. We have pastors and teachers to explain it to us, as the Bible tells us to. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means.

John, we are not going to agree about this. I will never be persuaded that the sin Jesus condemned the Pharisees for - adding their own traditions to the scriptures, and then making them out to be more important - he would commend the church for. I will never be persuaded that Jesus is happy that his human mother, who is dead, is being treated as equal to him.

I'm pretty certain that you won't be convinced unless God repents you.

So we should leave this conversation here.

John Leach

10mo

Erica the NT is a constructed tradition of the Catholic Church that took centuries to compile and set. Doctrines such as the Trinity could be classed as man made. There is no, none, zip support for the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in Scripture. The fact that priests etc are sinful men like the Apostles is irrelevant as are pastors and those that preached to you. It is a fact that all Christian Religions are in one way or another offshoots of Catholicism the original Church instituted by Christ. If it is corrupt as you claim how can you trust the NT it constructed with the main criteria compliance to its teachings? There remains not a single contradiction in Catholicism from 33AD until now yet outside this Church we find every wind of doctrines even with the very means of salvation. There is but one Faith, one Baptism as there is but one Lord and He has only one bride- His Church.

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

If you don’t mind me taking this up again, as I am not John Leach, I’ll answer each item.

“He gave the church the authority to forgive sins in his name.”

Which the Church (the one that is true and has His authority) does by Baptism, Confession, Last Anointing and also (if a sin without deliberate avoidance of above is still there, even a mortal one) by the Eucharist, or rather in that case it is Christ Himself who forgives.

“He never gave his authority to change the message of salvation,”

Prove there was a change?

“or have other gods,”

Prove we have other gods?

“or pray to the dead.”

It doesn’t seem this kind of community with the dead was specifically mentioned with a prohibition in the relevant chapter prohibiting necromancy.

“The Church was given the opportunity to get back on line at the Reformation (and several times before that too) but refused and stayed apostate.”

Is this in line with Christ’s promises in Matthew 28? I mean “the Church” and not just staying apostate, but even becoming so in the first place, except perhaps shorter than for 24 hours (if the Church were reduced to very few persons).

“The True Church teaches Jesus's message given in the Bible.”

If there is one. If there isn’t, or if it was removed and recovered after removal, so that at one time (longer than 24 hours, or even as long as an entire date at the time zone where a remnant of very few might be located) there wasn’t, that promise is broken.

“The Roman Catholic church decided to keep its heresies and is no longer the True Church.”

That makes it difficult to imagine that another Church was the True Church all the time. There are options for reconciling Matthew 28 with Roman Catholicism not being the true Church, but do not include it “no longer” being so.

• If Eastern Orthodoxy
• or some of the other Eastern Churches, like Miaphysites (in two different communions) or Nestorians / Assyrians were so
• or if Baptist Continuity were true and it was preserved along the Roman Catholic Church, not within it.

I have Christological reasons to reject number 2. I have some solid ecclesiological reasons to reject number 1. And for number 3, a knowledge of the history of the relevant ceturies would be sufficient. Hence, RCC is my pick.