Catholicism believes in ecumenicalism. That such Christian charity is often unreciprocated is mildly disappointing. And while we would love to see our protestant brothers and sisters return home to Rome, we understand that God's judgement is ultimately God's judgment, and not ours to render. And so even though many of us have concerns with parts of protestant theology, we comfortably rest knowing that God will ultimately sort it out in the end and I personally don't spend too much time getting worked up about the excesses I see in protestant denominations (the new woke branch of Methodists comes to mind, right away).
My priest is the Pastoral Administrator of something that could be thought of as akin to a Catholic mega church. Many of you would recognize the administration and ministry set up in our parish as not too dissimilar from what you find in your own churches. Having spent 4 years at Baylor, I see the similarities, but new families lacking exposure to protestant churches are often "wowed" at the differences between our church from other Catholic parishes. Our priest is in a loose informal council with mega church pastors throughout our area. They meet regularly to bounce ideas off each other, tackle common problems, etc...
A new mega pastor gets brought into the group. The new guy's mega church is known to have a great ministry in addressing a certain societal ill and our priest asks if he can borrow their materials until our parish can develop its own programming. New guy gets uncomfortable and tells our priest something like, "don't get me wrong, I believe it is theoretically possible for Catholics to get to Heaven...." Our priest responds jokingly, "don't worry, I too believe it is theoretically possible for Protestants to get to Heaven...." Apparently this turns into a record scratch moment, the rest of the meeting is extremely tense and the new guy leaves the group.
So my only sincere criticism of protestants is this: they can dish it out but they can't take it. They will cavalierly throw out that your salvation is in jeopardy, gleefully condemn you to hell, and generally act belligerently. But the moment you mirror their accusations and behavior back at them they are brutally offended, at minimum. Many of them lack the spiritual toughness and confidence to respond in a cool manner.
In this thread we have a poster who when confronted with his own belligerent behavior blithely added more accusations to the list, and concluded with "but am I right?". The implication being that the Christian virtues of charity and prudence have no meaning to this poster. Yet the moment he is confronted with his very own posting style and bad-faith tactics, he completely crashes out and can't take the very medicine he dishes he out. We all saw it.
Protestants' second greatest sin was their enthusiastic embrace of the French Revolution. For many years I thought they genuinely miscalculated and bought into the liberalism the Jacobins were pushing (and have since unleashed on the rest of the world) because French protestants thought liberalism would protect them from persecution by the Catholic state. I've come to understand my conclusion was incorrect. I now think the meanness, judgement and condemnation of the Jacobins was the point, and that is why the French protestants embraced it. And so it is with our dear friend in this thread who we can all see crashes out the moment you mirror his style back at him. He can dish it out but he certainly can't take it. He escalates his meanness and engages in name calling moments after whining about being called much tamer names. You see, the meanness, judgement and condemnation are the point and his insecurities make him crash out when he faces what he dishes out. And we all have seen it with our own eyes.
