Catholic bashing is not Christian

As a convert to Catholicism, my education and belief would be challenged by the statement that “the only true path to salvation is Catholicism.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says otherwise.

Christians have no argument with the Word of our Lord that salvation is through Him alone, do they? Your column (“Which one true church,” Pastor Huck Kusner, July 18, 2007) is hurtful.

Perhaps you would quote scholarly sources on the history of the Inquisition. Pope Innocent III died over 300 years before the acts you accuse him of perpetrating.

No church is free of sin; its pews are populated with hypocrites. That is either true, or we have no need of churches.

Single‑source scholarship may be spiritually obtuse. Perhaps this is reason there is more than one Gospel author, more than one prophet, more that a single Genesis story in the OT and more than a single parable in the NT.

You wrote the resurrected Lord “met with His apostles for a fish fry.” John: 21 says it with superior authority, benefitting not at all from your editing, which is inaccurate (KJV). Why did you not include the conversations Jesus had then with Peter, and the instruction our Lord gave Peter alone?

Once I thought the Bible alone was all I needed for reference. It was years before I learned that the Bible instructs no such thing.

John’s Gospel reference to the sacraments Jesus institutes in His own words cannot be ignored or rejected without calling all Scripture suspect of error, can it? To embrace those words of Jesus is to find your feet set on the path home.

Does Protestantism compel no authority but that which each denomination or independent minister accretes from the Bible from individual study? Can each of these thousands of pastors be rightly interpreting Scripture unique to them?

The authority Jesus passed to Peter as the first pope is presented clearly in Matthew 16:18, in the Words of Him who ordained them.

Globally, there are 1.1 billion or so Catholics. Bashing Catholicism is not a scholarly critique of the Catholic Church. It is not Christian. It is sad. A lot of attack material is out there, very little of it true. Still, the Church is managed by men, and all men are guilty of sin.

God Himself gave us free choice, with the admonition to love and to forgive one another. Don’t you suppose that is what a fit discussion should embrace?

David A. Strongin
Anthem