Just to be different.
Do you consider Catholics to be Christians?
I was raised in a very Catholic family and while watching a series on Martin Luther during the lock-down I was reminded of something I believed, what Catholics believe.
Now like most Catholics I was never taught this in detail, so it was interesting to hear. It is about "The Treasury of Merit".
Merit is something people earn. There are three types:
- Condign merit – this is merit so virtuous it imposes an obligation on God to reward it. Yep, you're so good God HAS to take notice. Jesus earned heaps of this. So did Mary and Joseph and the original Apostles.
- Congruous merit – this is merit suitable to make it fitting for God to reward it. Anyone can earn this merit by doing the appropriate "stuff".
- Supererogation merit – this is merits for works above and beyond what God requires of us. e.g. God doesn't require us to be martyrs, so martyrdom gets you some supererogation merit.
"And ..." you might ask.
Well according to Catholic theology to get to heaven you have to be inherently righteous. Now bad people go to hell, the inherently righteous go to heaven, but the rest, they have blemishes and so they have to go to Purgatory (which is a place of suffering like hell) where those blemishes are purged. People can be there from days to millions of years depending on how blemished they are.
In comes our merit. Jesus, and lots of other people, had more merit then they needed to get to heaven, so any excess is put in the treasury. From there is can be withdrawn and applied to others to reduce their time in Purgatory. Neat eh!
Now you got this merit through Indulgences. You can get them for yourself by doing things; saying thing; seeing things, so making the Sign of the Cross apparently got you an Indulgence and so effective would reduce how long you'd have to spend in Purgatory after you died.
But would you have enough when you died? Who knows? Well in 1300, and authorised as Catholic Doctrine in 1343, the Pope decided that he had the authority to sell merit from the treasury and it would be applied to the dead. Yep, pay the Pope and your Mum and Dad would no longer have to suffer.
What is you Mum thinking now, in a place of unbearable suffering, knowing you're delaying her release into heaven? Give me your money and she goes free. That is the Catholic way of thinking.
I believed that.
Do you consider Catholics to be Christians?