From: SEANNA@bnr.ca (S.M.)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: src post re: Billy Graham and the RC Church
Date: 11 Apr 92 06:44:59 GMT

{my apologies for sending previous posts to the wrong address; my
machine that has news access is completely decoupled from the one
with email access}

Subject: Re: Billy Graham carrying message from the Pope

dlhanson@nap.amoco.com (David L. Hanson) writes:
>
> I absolutely detest the horrible Roman Catholic Church which
> leads so many to hell.

and bernard@tourng.enet.dec.com (Dave Bernard) writes:
>
>  It's interesting that between the time Jesus died, and the first
>  Protestant (and we have to admit that Evangelical churches are
>  part of the Protestant tradition) churches were established, some
>  1500 years passed.  It seems like a cruel joke that the churches
>  that existed during that 1500 year period were only those of
>  the Catholic tradition, and that the Holy Spirit allowed this
>  travesty!
>
>  Incidentally, the Bible did come through the Catholic Church-
>  who else was there during that period?

I absolutely deplore the attitude that says that Catholics are not
Christians, or that if they are it is in spite of rather than
because of the Roman Catholic Church.

Interestingly, though, I have heard it maintained that there has
always been a small number of non-Catholic Christians, even
before there were Protestants.  (I have generally heard this
maintained by members of "New Testament" or "Restoration"
churches.)  Does anyone know any more about this?

Seanna Watson   Bell-Northern Research,
                Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Opinions, what opinions?  Oh *these* opinions. | It's hard to seize the
No, they're not BNR's, they're mine.           | day when you must first
I knew I'd left them somewhere.                | grapple with the morning.


[There's already a discussion on this, due to claims that there were
Baptists before there were Catholics.  Certainly there's no question
that there were plenty of Christians outside the Catholic Church,
including groups such as Gnostics, Donatists, Arians, Monophysites,
Albigensians, Husites, Waldensians, etc.  Many of them are of course
regarded as "heretics" in orthodox Church history, though the
Waldensians seem fairly similar to current Protestants (and I believe
they still survive as a denomination).  Some people claim that there
is a continuous non-Roman tradition, going back to NT times.  I don't
know of any evidence like that (aside from the Eastern church, of
course).  The groups I named (surely not a complete list) are a sort
of grab-bag of groups that disagreed on doctrinal grounds, on
political grounds, and groups that are more like what you are probably
thinking of: groups that tried to restore the NT church.  I should
warn you that many of the latter combined views you would probably
approve of with those you probably would not.  They tended to have
Gnostic views, considering the body and marriage evil, etc.  Probably
the most consistent non-Roman tradition was Gnostic.  I'm not sure it
was entirely continuous, but there seems to have been mutual
influences among Cathars, Albigensians, and at least some of the
Waldensians (though in the latter case I think the influence was not
major).  Unfortunately most of our evidence on some of these groups
comes from the Inquisition, and I'm not sure we can depend upon them
for unbiases reporting. --clh]