Pope: Only Catholics are Christians

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Whoever the Pope is can say whatever they want but when the great tribulation begins, and the world empire of false religion, Babylon the Great, is destroyed then they will have their answer.

Well, Im confused.
We all are supposed to buy into the hysteria about how the Muslims are gonna take over Europe and vote in Sharia Law.

So that means we all have to return to the 12th centurey to refight the Crusades.

But now the Pope is ordering us to get all sectarian about Christianity itsself.
Maybe he's a crypto Muslim out to "divide and conquer" Christendom!

But if we take him at his word then that means we all have to go back to the 16th and 17th centuries to refight the wars of the reformation/counterreformation within Christianity - and restage the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War, the Massacres of the Hugonauts, and the like.

Twelth Centurey? Or Seventeenth Centurey? Which one are we supposed to return to?

Since I could not find anywhere the years back poster actually pointed to the pontiffs acrtual words, as opposed to a possibly not even-handed and truncated summation, I looked around - never having heard of this - to see could I find is there behind this for some unknown reason now resurrected thread a kernel of reality.

In a few minutes - in the midst of a statement that was not exactly enthusiastic about Pope Benedict - I found this paragraph:

"These separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation," the document read. "In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church."

Reading not even between the lines, what it looks like is:

This pope is reiterating what the Roman church has held for quite a long time,

A. That the Roman Church is where it's at, the unexpurgated edition with all the sacraments and the red phone to heaven and the most correct doctrines to be had.

B. That other churches in one way or another fall short, so you are buying your clothes from WalMart and not the Paris designer.

C. That you can [God being what he is] get saved and the other churches are better than nothing, but you would be better off in Catholicism.

Now, I can see that the leadership of other churches would have views on this. Especially the ones who say [and I do not say it would necessarily be a bad thing] let's put all the colors in one pot and use just one paint.

But it is not new. It is not radical. It does not even say - AS I HAVE HEARD THE PASTOR OF A CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST CHURCH SAY WITH MY OWN EARS - "If you are not in the club you are damned, nyah nyah nyah" Which is what some seem to choose to heasr it saying.

I do not know [any of you guys?] whether Pope Benedict's sexier, more media-friendly [fine prelates both, but you cannot wink at that diffderence] ever commented on this issue. But he would pretty well have had to say essentially the same thing.

I'm a Lutheran. I think you can figure how I voted.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

So, since Catholics are the minority and mostly foreign so they are much more radical than other Christians!

I mean, the pope supposedly said in 2007 that only Catholics are Christians! Such a proof of intolerance that is only repeated in similar ways by just about any other Christian sect. Every sect seems to believe they are the chosen one. The Baptists do. Jehova witnesses do. Mormons do, Lutherans, Orthodox.... May the inclusive Christian sect that thinks the other ones "are also pretty right" please stand up?

I have not been able to find the article the OP is talking about. The official position of the Catholic Church is that other Christian Denominations are separated brethren. Pope Benedict has always said that other world religions certainly contain truth, he has however clarified this by stating that only within Christianity does one get the full truth and only within Catholicism does one get all the sacraments.

There are, however, the Wisconsin Synod types, of whom I am reliably informed [from an incident perhaps ten years back] that a Wisconsin Synod pastor [though he apparently wanted to] could not join other clergy in town praying for the dying wife of one of them.

However, the Lutherans I have known personally, colleagues, friends, family, have not been so, and Number 1 Son was for a few years comfortable in a Lutheran school.

The Catholics like to claim that they are the first and the best but it just isn't true.

Jesus' followers headed off in all directions to spread the "good news"

So the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Egyptian Coptic church are just as old and just as legitimate as the Church of Rome.

Forget not the hanging in there St Thomas Christians in India.