Quote From Today's Watchman/Witness Wednesday

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!

. . . But then the system of Catholicism came in for a thousand years. Are y-all trying to say that the system we have now (which in many places is akin to the pastor as CEO) hasn't taken ANY "leaven" from the Romish system?

The problem with your statement is that you merely provide a broad-brush reference to a "system" that is Catholicism and thereby say that even what already was true is tainted because you can find it in that "system."

Surely a system that has no checks and safeguards can go awry. And the RCC proved that it lacked those safeguards when it just reassigned pedophile priests for years and even brought certain ones out from wherever they were and into Vatican City to avoid the embarrassment of prosecution of their stonewalling.

As for Mary worship and the "immaculate conception," that is actually a fairly recent happening, not something going back to the beginnings of the group.

But Jesus indicated that there would be leaders. And the person that he sought out to be specially trained (14 years off-the-grid) to evangelize the Gentiles talked openly about the tasks that those leaders would undertake that was not simply what everyone would be doing. Read 1 Cor 3 again and understand that in the context of this passage, the builders were the teachers, not the whole of the church. And the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers were for the benefit of the church, not simply the church itself.

So broad-brushing the actual errors of the RCC into the whole of all clergy is to undermine the benefit that they actually bring to all of us. Without them, you wouldn't even have a teaching team of six in Scottsdale. You would simply have everyone bringing their private interpretation and you would be hoping that there would be a modern-day Paul to write a letter to your assembly in Scottsdale that was a lot like the one the original Paul wrote to Corinth.