Ifyou born again christians say its wrong to have a pope likethaCatholocs do?

Question

Why do you flock around your so-called prophets and faith healers like Jimmy swaggert and benny Hinn. Isn't that the same thing you are condemning the catholics for?

By the way, people, I'm not Catholic, but definitely not a "born again' fundamentalist christian either.

Answer 1

Good question I am a Catholic but I am waiting to see this answer.

Answer 2

Protestant Christians don't rely on those individuals the way Catholics do with the pope. For the most part these are just religious people who are good leaders to listen to. The pope is like the end all in Catholicism. What he says goes. I don't hold Jimmy or Benny up as more than a human. Catholics seem to hold the priest up as something more than just a person.

Answer 3

Some Catholics believe the Pope is infallible, that he cannot make a mistake. Although I myself am not a huge fan of either Swaggert or Benny Hinn, we are aware that they are just men and they sin too. As long as the Catholics don't worship the Pope like a God I have no problem with them having a leader like the Pope.

Answer 4

Do you assume all Protestants "flock" around these "faith healers"? Tells me alot about YOU. Learn SOMETHING about the people you are gogin to attack before you do so and maybe you can come up with an adequate argument. This certainly is NOT. Those guys are nutjobs and are only surpassed by your HOLY SEE who won't pull his head out of hisass long enough to fix the problems in his own back yard before attacking everyone else for not being Catholic so shut the hell up.

Answer 5

Those are your two examples of prophets? They're horrible examples of Christians and I sincerely believe they're only after people's money. Since popes take the Bible out of context I could group all these people together as godless. True Christians do not "flock around" anyone except Jesus.

Answer 6

I dont know where you get your information but most born again believers dont "flock" around any of them. I dont like any of them personally, and if someone does like them, most likely they dont call them "Holy" or "Father" or bow to them like Catholics do to the Pope. They have a lot of people in their congregations because the services are flashy and emotional but hardly anyone (if anyone at all) believe them to be "Spokesperson of God" like the Catholics do of the Pope.

Answer 7

You might enjoy the Yahoo discussion group "Catholics vs. Protestants". We are an interdenominational debate board, and kind of small. We talk about all kinds of things that we agree/disagree on.

You can find our group under the " Yahoo Groups -Religion -Debates" forum.

Prepare for a learning experience. It has really been interesting for me. Quiet lately, but nice.

Answer 8

Actually the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox were the first to dispute the supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome.

You seem to have made the assumption that just because Protestants reject the legitimacy of the Pope's claim to be the sole head of all of the church, then we do not believe in leadership, period.

How do I respond to this? You are assigning to us a belief that we do not have, and you are asking us to defend it?

What nonsense!

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It might help if you actually did some research before you asked your question. I don't think that you understand the nature of the dispute between the Protestants and the Roman Church.

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Some non-Roman-Catholic Christian communities, such as the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Old Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Independent Catholic Churches, and even some Lutherans, accept the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and therefore accept (to varying extents) the papal claims to a primacy of honour. However, these churches generally reject that the Pope is the successor to St. Peter in any unique sense not true of any other bishop, or raise questions about whether St. Peter was ever bishop of Rome at all. The primacy is therefore regarded primarily as a consequence of the pope's position as bishop of the original capital city of the Roman Empire, a definition explicitly spelled out in the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon. In any event, these churches see no foundation at all to papal claims of universal immediate jurisdiction, nor to claims of Papal Infallibility. Because none of them recognize the First Vatican Council as truly ecumenical, they regard its definitions concerning jurisdiction and Infallibility (and anathematization of those who do not accept them) as invalid. Several of these communities refer to such claims as "Ultramontanism".

Other non-Catholic Christian denominations do not accept the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, or do not understand it in hierarchical terms, and therefore do not accept the claim that the pope is heir either to Petrine primacy of honor or to Petrine primacy of jurisdiction, or they reject both claims of honor or jurisdiction, as well as claims of Papal Infallibility, as unscriptural. The Papacy's complex relationship with the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and other secular states, and the Papacy's territorial claims in Italy, are another focal point of these objections; as is the monarchical character of the office of pope. In Western Christianity these objections — and the vehement rhetoric they have at times been cast in — both contributed to and are products of the Protestant Reformation. These denominations vary from simply not accepting the pope's authority as legitimate and valid, to believing that the pope is the Antichrist or the False Prophet spoken in the Book of Revelation. These denominations tend to be more heterogeneous amongst themselves than the aforementioned hierarchical churches, and their views regarding the Papacy and its institutional legitimacy (or lack thereof) vary considerably.

Some objectors to the Papacy use empirical arguments, pointing to the corrupt characters of some of the holders of that office. For instance, some argue that claimed successors to St. Peter, like Alexander VI and Callixtus III from the Borgia family, were so corrupt as to be unfit to wield power to bind and loose on Earth or in Heaven. An omniscient and omnibenevolent God, some argue, would not have given those people the powers claimed for them by the Catholic Church. Defenders of the papacy argue that the Bible shows God as willingly giving privileges even to corrupt men (citing examples like some of the kings of Israel, the apostle Judas Iscariot, and even St. Peter after he denied Jesus). They also argue that not even the worst of the corrupt popes used the office to try to rip the doctrine of the Church from its apostolic roots, and that their failure to achieve that goal is evidence that the office is divinely protected.

Some objectors to the papacy habitually refer to the Catholic Church and its members by the pejorative term papist to point up what they believe to be an inappropriate focus of attention on the office and an improper attribution of certain divine favors ex officio.