[Vernon]

The Roman Catholic church is Christian, and most of its adherents are Christian. Having said that with all sincerity, it is then necessary to ask what is meant by the word Christian.

Christian can mean, firstly, "believing or professing the religion of Christ".

If someone says that they believe or that they profess the religion of Christ, then surely their belief or profession that they are Christian must be accepted. It must be accepted as being a legitimate use of what Christian can mean in the English language.

Furthermore, it their belief that they are Christian is not accepted at face-value, then there is a failure to understand what Christ was saying in the Parable of the Tares {1}.

Christian can mean, secondly, "pertaining to Christ or Christianity".

This means that a person is a Christian if they live their life with reference to Christ, as opposed to Mohammed, Confucius, atheism, secularism, Buddha or Hinduism, for examples. And this still applies even if their understanding of Christ and of what he taught is seriously defective.

Christian can mean, thirdly, "following the precepts & example of Christ".

This is not really dissimilar to the first two but, perhaps, it is more practical and less to do with ideas and beliefs than the others. Such a person might consider that they are Christian because they are carrying out some of the things which Christ did and taught. Again, this is regardless of the inadequacy of their understanding of Christianity.

They might think that Christ majored on relieving poverty or healing sickness or giving hope to the dying or living a life separate from society. And they do this or a number of such things in some way conscious that Christ did such things. On this basis, they believe that they are Christian even if they know little or nothing of what Christ taught and believed.

Christian can mean, fourthly & finally, "a civilized human being who lives a decent, respectable and presentable life".

Since Christianity has been and, in my opinion, still is by far and away the most powerful force for good, for civilization, in any human society on the face of the earth, it is not hard to see how someone can perceive himself as Christian on the basis of being a civilized, law-abiding and respectable human being.

Now I might very well be of the opinion that all or most of these definitions of Christian are seriously defective, that they are a gross misunderstanding of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and his teaching, both from his own mouth and from the apostles whom he appointed.

However, that does not entitle me to throw out these definitions, which human society has grown to use and to understand over the centuries since Christ first taught in Palestine. However wrong I may know they are, I must not reject them, because they are full of meaning to many, many other people.

Consequently, to say that the Roman Catholic church is not Christian is not only to rubbish these serious definitions of what Christian means, but also to begin to reject English as a language of communication.

Since spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the best definition of Christian, such as Bible Christian, necessarily requires the use of language, in this case English, it does mean that we should not only understand how others understand the word Christian, but also respect these different understandings.

By all means seek to move someone from their definition of Christian to your own, but do so whilst respecting where they are at the beginning of your conversation with them.




As a Protestant, I am profoundly and deeply grateful to the Catholic church which, up to about 500AD, was so successful in fighting for the Deity of Christ, for the Trinity in which Jesus is also God as is the Holy Spirit, and for the genuine humanness of Jesus Christ, ie that he was a real human being.

At that time, there were at least a half-a-dozen other views of Christ, any one of which could have reigned supreme instead of Catholicism. Arianism denied the deity of Christ so that, if Arianism had won the hearts of the majority of Christians during the 5th century AD and then that of the Emperor Constantine, we would be living in a totally different world now, with a view of Christ similar to that of Islam.

This means that it is not true to say that "practically all the precepts of the Roman Catholic church contradict the Bible". The precepts of this church regarding the person of Christ, his deity & humanity, and his relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, do not contradict the Bible.

These few precepts may be small in number to the many precepts by which the Roman Catholic church does contradict the Bible, but they are, nevertheless, central, axiomatic, fundamental and crucial to Christianity. And they were won by the Roman Catholic church's predecessor, the Catholic church.




Let's look at the suggestion that the Roman Catholic church is a cult. Cults are new faiths within the context of the relevant society {2}. Therefore, Jesus Christ founded a cult because it was a new faith within the Roman Empire.

Cults start small; they violate previous religious norms (such as the dominant pagan polytheism of the Roman Empire); and they are usually targets of considerable hostility {2}. Clearly then, the Christianity, which lifted the Roman Empire off its feet within three centuries, and which is the most influential world religion of today, started as a cult.

However, by the time the Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into the Empire, Christianity was not new and, therefore, it was no longer a cult by then, if not before. Since the Roman Catholic church is one of the two continuations of the Catholic church, which itself was not a cult in Constantine's time, then the Roman Catholic church is not now a cult.

It does not matter how much one may dislike the Roman Catholic church, it is not a new faith and is, therefore, by definition, not a cult. It this is not accepted, then we are back with the problem of not using the English language as the majority of people use it.




Of course, we should debate and talk with Roman Catholics and, maybe, we can persuade some to come over to our view of what is Christian.

However, I would respectfully suggest that we should not even begin to do this by saying, at the outset, that the Roman Catholic church is not Christian.




1 Matthew 13:24-30

2 The Rise of Christianity - How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Relgious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries 1997 p33 Rodney Stark; HarperCollins ISBN 0-06-067701-5