Do you think the priest has turned the wine into Jesus actual blood and the wager into His actual flesh and that you are eating His actual flesh and drinking His actual blood? Because you know that it was a metaphor..right?
Matthew 24:24
For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.
Lisa, respectfully, I admire your passion and fervor to witness to the Gospel, and I respect you as a fellow human being. However, you really do not know what you're talking about when it comes to the Catholic Church. Also, your fundamentalist,
sola scriptura, "my authority comes from the Bible " approach is wrought with contradiction. Why do
you have authority to interpret Sacred Scripture and go against the teachings of the those people who were taught by the Apostles - the Church Fathers, and latter supported by the greatest minds in Christianity - St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and G.K. Chesterton to name a few? Really, Lisa? Why? Where does that authority come from? That seems a little arrogant to me. Especially when it was those people who put together the very "book" that you use to condemn them. There is a disconnect here.
Just because you say that Catholics worship Mary doesn't make it so. You're not Catholic. Your interpretation of the Eucharist and what happens at Mass has no foundation. Again, you don't
really know what your talking about. You must base your beliefs on what you have heard and not personal experience, which is so very typical of Fundamentalists. Cutting and pasting scripture is rather futile and I suspect most people don't read all the verses. Sorry.
Again, respectfully, your approach to Christianity lacks any kind of soul, and it has been stripped bare so you can't see anything beyond the written word. The real Word is Jesus, the Living Word. You believe that by throwing out passages that you're evangelizing, you're not. You're having the opposite affect, but sadly you don't see it. That gives me pain...so much wasted energy.
You don't answer my questions, so I will not answer yours. I asked you where the concept of "false gospel" came from - that phrase - where did it come from? Where did the concept of "only the Bible" come from? You see, if you answer these, truthfully, then you fall into the same "heresy" that you aim at Catholics, so you avoid it. We can't have that now, can we? The answer is that someone just made it up. At least everything we in the Catholic Church do is based on Scripture. For instance, the pope doesn't wake up and say, "I'm infallible, what I say goes. Red is Green, Green is Yellow." The last time the pope spoke infallibly was 1950. This is done after much prayer and consideration and consultation. This gift is based on Scripture that I shared in the original post, which you obviously didn't read, so I will not bother to rewrite it.
Anyway, I mean no disrespect to who you are as a human being. But you are very wrong about your assessment of the Catholic Church, and you are a little sanctimonious.
Again, take up my challenge, Lisa. I suspect that you, and other of your ilk, will not because you are really afraid that all of your assumptions will be wiped clean, and you could not handle that. You have too much invested and too much pride to admit that sola scriptura is an empty dogma. Oh, and if you claim that you have no dogma, that's your dogma.
How can science be a false sign and wonder? Is electricity a false sign and wonder? That machine your typing on that can store information, is that a false sign and wonder? Science does not lie. Scientific studies have proven miracles, Catholic miracles, you can't get around this. But if your belief system is based on the written word only, then you miss out on all of the "wonderful" things God is doing. Have there been false miracles? Yes, of course, and they've discovered and discarded.
Here's a challenge, spend one year and study, truly study the Catholic Church and its teachings, hang out with Catholics, go to RCIA classes near you and really learn about the Catholic Church. Go to Mass every day. After that, unless you are afraid, then we'll "talk" because then you would have some real exposure to our teachings, not just what some disaffected, wounded, rebellious teenager said, who went to seminary and claims to be a preacher and passes along misinformation.
Again, I respect your humanity. We are fellow believers, despite what you say. We follow the same Bible. Your personal interpretation does not stand up to two-thousand years of the greatest minds in Christianity. Be blessed. Jesus loves you and so do I.