The Two Pillars of Anti-Catholic Protestant Rhetoric: Modernism and Freemasonry

An anti-Catholic Protestant, who tried arguing he was a “true and original Catholic,” tried taking me to task on Instagram regarding the teachings of the Catholic Faith, aka the Christian Religion, the Church founded by Jesus Christ. He was being obviously deceptive, as he kept trying to claim he was a Catholic while posting anti-Catholic Protestant rhetoric. I post the dialogue here for your edification, for the cause of Truth. His comments will be proceeded by “CL” and mine by “JM.”

It is always good to utilize discernment in knowing when to correct error, and also to know when to not cast pearls before swine. The ironic thing is this guy claims to be against Freemasonry, not even realizing how his own foundation is built by the principles of Freemasonry and Modernism, as I pointed out. Pray for the conversion of all heretics to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which speaks with the voice of Christ.

CL: Salvation doesn’t come from Roman Catholicism. It comes from faith in Christ through the power of hearing the gospel. That is the true and original Catholic faith. To claim we are only saved through the Romans and the pope has authority. Is to claim faith in man and physical institutions. That’s not faith in Christ Jesus. It’s idolatry and blasphemy.

JM: Salvation comes by Christ. He is the Head, the Church is His Body. Can’t decapitate the head from the body.

CL: Correct, but everything in my post was historically accurate, based on the flatness of humanity. The point of the post was to show people that we are all flawed and thus must all look to Christ for salvation and not towards humanity or institutions of man for salvation.My post pointed to glorifying Christ alone. All else is idolatry and blasphemy.

JM: According to you, we must only look to His Head alone, not His Body. Jesus and His Body are one flesh. He is the Groom, the Church is His Bride, the two become one. You want salvation to belong to a part of that equation, but you can’t separate what God has joined together. Saying salvation comes by Christ is identical to saying salvation comes by the Church, because they are one. At least according to St. Paul. And your post assumes ideas that belong to 16th century traditions, such as Sola Scriptura and Private Interpretation. These are not Christian ideas, they were thought up by heretics like Luther who left the Body and decided to marry an ex nun, and who was influenced by Humanism which was sweeping through Germany at the time, encouraging the authority of man’s reason against divine revelation.

CL: I know what Luther did. I am Catholic.Also. I know the head and body are one in Christ. But, that body is not contained by a physical institution or by the pope. That body is all those who believe the gospel, and love Christ above all, doing all things to glorify Christ. Not just members of the Roman physical church. You do not have to be under the authority of the pope to be saved, but only the authority of Christ. I want people to be united in the true Catholic faith, with Christ as their head, working in love to glorify God above all things. You know what I mean? I know you know because you also are Catholic. But we must not teach people that they must honor a mere sinful man and be under that sinful mans authority in order to be saved by Christ. That is blasphemy.

JM: That’s not the Catholic position. Unless you prefer to change the definition of “Catholic” the way Mormons try to change the definition of “Trinity,” which is a tactic from Modernism and Progressivism. Taking traditional words and placing new definitions on them. Similar to liberals saying they are “Pro Life” even though they support abortion. The Body of Christ has an invisible element and a visible hierarchical component. The invisible element consists of all Christians who believe everything Christ revealed and are united to Him sacramentally. The visible element consists of the those following apostolic succession from the Apostles, charged with governance and teaching. Saying “I want people united in faith with Christ as the head working in love” is fine if we are talking about the faith once for all delivered to the saints, “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism.” Jesus didn’t drop Bibles on everyone and say, “Do your best to figure out its teaching, and to each his own.”

CL: The faith passed down is the Catholic faith that I preach which is that Salvation is in Christ and not gained or loss based on following a pope or being respecters of men. I am not changing the faith. Roman Catholics changed it and proclaimed the pope as Christ on earth and that salvation is gained under them through the papacy. That is a fact. Claiming salvation under the Roman Catholics alone and through the authority of the pope is a different gospel then what was passed down by the apostles.

JM: Sorry, I know you don’t think what you’re doing is influenced by Modernism, but it is. And it is influenced by Private Interpretation, which came from secular Humanism.

CL: So you are saying that salvation is given only under the papacy? You don’t think that is blasphemy? To rely on salvation according to if we are under the papacy authority or not. Do you have sources that I can look at for this?

JM: Sources for truth for Christians are Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium. Salvation is through Christ alone. He doesn’t have 40,000 bodies, which is blasphemy. And His Body is not comprised of everyone disagreeing about what He taught with faith and morals, which is also blasphemy. His Body is one, and traces back through apostolic succession. This idea of the Church consisting of anyone who professes to follow Jesus but having interpretations on faith and morals which disagree from others is a Modernist definition, and even worse, comes straight out of the Freemasonic handbook. That is not the Church. The Church consists of all believers who hold to one Lord, one faith, one Baptism. The one faith is all the teachings of faith and morals revealed by God so we can know the truth and be holy. Not one guy thinking one thing about Baptism and another thinking something different. Or about abortion or artificial contraception. Christ can not be divided that way. If people truly profess to follow Him alone, they will maintain the bond of peace in His Body, which traces back to the Apostles via succession. So much of what passes for “Christianity” today in the mainstream is just the fruit of Modernism and Freemasonry. And it has deceived so many good intentioned people. But until people can repent of the demonic idea of Private interpretation, and humble themselves to realize our Lord only founded one Church which is unbroken and exists in every generation, then the goals of Modernism and Freemasonry will continue to grow. You can do a poll on your Stories and ask your followers if they believe artificial contraception is a sin, or if the 5 points of Calvinism are correct, or if Baptism should happen to babies or not. If you see any divergence in the numbers, like 51% to 49%, you already know that is not the Church that Jesus founded. Christ can not be divided. The devil is the author of confusion and division.

CL: I agree with you on all of that, but the church has been infiltrated since Constantine. And each denomination is not a different body. The different bodies are those that preach a different gospel. Like Mormons, Jehovah witness, etc. the gospel is not what physical organization we are part of or whether we abide by the authority of sinful men or not. The gospel is that Jesus is Christ, the son of God the word made flesh for salvation unto all who believe in him. And do his will, because he that does the will of the Lord is also he that loves the Lord. “The church” is not an institution created by man to worship God. It is all who believe the gospel of Christ unto salvation. Most denominations proclaim the same gospel. Their organization in which they go to on Sunday does not make them the body of Christ or not. That is putting faith in fallible man. Which the pope is also fallible, he is not Christ. To say you cannot be saved unless you follow the pope is saying that salvation is through the pope. Which is blasphemy. Period, no exception. To say one cannot be saved unless under the authority of the pope is the same as above. You are claiming salvation comes from man and not God.The different denominations and the claim each has their own doctrine is a false claim. Because they don’t. The ones that do are heretics. But the doctrine that most Protestants use is the same doctrine Catholics canonized except some less books in the Old Testament, which are not the gospel. One does not need to believe in Fatima to be saved, or need to go through Mary to get to Jesus to be saved. That is not the gospel. But we also cannot disrespect Mary and must honor her as the mother of our Lord full of grace. If not, if you disrespect Mary, you lack love and deny the gospel.

JM: Nope. Church was not infiltrated during Constantine. Go ahead and show which doctrines allegedly appeared after Constantine that did not appear in some fashion prior to Constantine. Also, if you say that is the era of infiltration, then that creates a problem because that is the same era when Christians were defining the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union against heretics, and also when they were deciding which books belonged in the Bible. If it was infiltrated, that assumes that they were compromised in their decisions. But the reality is that the Holy Spirit was with them just as He was in Acts 15. The only infiltration or massive apostasy predicted by Jesus occurs in conjunction with the Antichrist. Thus, we see it happening today, not the 4th century. And part of that deception includes the Modernists and the Freemasons. If someone holds to Private Interpretation, or thinks Christians can disagree with each other on Baptism or contraception, then they have fallen prey to those two. And yes, the Gospel includes doing His Will. Which means being holy. Which means combating vice and sin, and growing in virtue and truth. So we need to know what is truth and what is sin. Two people disagreeing on Baptism or Mary as Theotokos or abortion or artificial contraception is not doing His Will, and thus not following the Gospel. The Modernist and Freemasonic brand of faith is rooted in relativism. “Whatever you believe is good and whatever I believe is good, as long as we follow Jesus, as long as we each think we have the Holy Spirit, as long as we keep debating Bible passages (which Catholic Bishops had to determine in the first place).” That’s not Christianity. You need to repent of the influence of Modernism and Freemasonry. Be humble and come home to the only Church which traces back to Jesus.

CL: Okay Joe… if you think incorporation of Babylonian pagan god worship isn’t infiltration, then that’s fine.

Honestly, I have seen many people being manipulated by the Will of fleshly desires, which looking for some sort of physical confirmation of salvation is fleshly desire meant to satisfy self. Pre Vatican II Catholics glorify man in the papacy and look for salvation in the institutions of man.

They have been deceived to look for salvation in other means besides Christ. You can claim everyone else is not saved. All the people who love Christ and live every day to glorify him through their works. Go ahead, claim they are not saved because they do not answer to the papacy.

That’s not the gospel though.

Peter himself said that the people who believe in Christ are building for themselves a spiritual house. Also we are the temple of the Lord. The body of Christ is spiritual and given to all those who believe Christ and follow Christ.

Also, you keep saying Protestant beliefs in your messages, kind of like it is scripted out.I told you, I don’t believe those things I am Catholic.Yet you keep saying them, that’s a manipulation tactic by the way. It seems like you repeat them as a way to get into someone’s mind and change the way they view things.Which doesn’t surprise me. Most people who seek to deceive and satisfy the flesh with physical confirmations and worship of institutions of man to make them feel saved, do just that.I proclaim the true faith, which is salvation is in Christ, not sinful man. And the pope is not Christ. I do not believe in divorce or any other thing you keep bringing up. I was clearly having a conversation based on salvation being in Christ and not in the papacy, yet you can’t help but bring up the other stuff because that’s the means that you know to convince people to search for salvation outside of the grace of Christ through the gospel of Christ.

Yet you condemn me for proclaiming Christ. “He who is not against us is for us.”You condemn based on faith in institutions of man and authority of the papacy as Christ on earth, someone who proclaims the gospel of Christ unto salvation.You don’t see your error because you have been manipulated to believe that one can only be saved through human means and faith in the papacy. You may need to examine yourself.

JM: If you are Catholic, then you accept the infallible canons and decrees of Florence, Trent, and Vatican Council of 1870. All of which contradict your opinions here. “Babylonian pagan god worship.” Show me which Christians in the 4th or 5th centuries wrote about Babylonian pagan god worship. Keep in mind, these are the same men who were debating Arians regarding the Trinity and Monophysites regarding the Hypostatic Union. And also the same men who met in successive Councils to pray and discern which books were divinely inspired and which ones were not.

CL: What contradicts what I am saying?

JM: Go back and read the canons and decrees of Florence, Trent, and Vatican Council.

CL: I have. Which part contradicts that salvation is in Christ and that the body of Christ, the Church is all who believe and live accordance with the gospel? You cannot tell me. Because there is no contradiction.

JM: And I’d love to see where any of the Councils accused the saints of the 4th and 5th century of promoting babylon pagan god worship.

CL: Nah, you are arguing with me because I said salvation is in Christ. And claim I am wrong. If you really love the Lord you might want to examine yourself. The Babylonian integration is a completely separate topic.

JM: So you believe the saints on the 4th and 5th century promoted the Nicene Creed, the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, the Canon of Scripture, and also babylonian pagan god worship?

CL: No, I do not believe that the saints or Catholic Church promotes pagan God worship. I do know that some integrated Babylonian god idols, statue symbolism to convince the pagans in Rome to convert after Constantine. That is a historical fact. Not saying you worship Babylonian gods or idols, just that the symbolism is there from that time because of that.

JM: Here is the Council of Florence:

It firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the catholic church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives; that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only for those who abide in it do the church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia produce eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed his blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and the unity of the catholic church.

CL: Yes, because the Catholic Church was the church and if you were christian you were Catholic, and if you were not Christian you were not Catholic.

JM: Here is the Vatican Council of 1870: Therefore whoever succeeds to the chair of Peter obtains by the institution of Christ himself, the primacy of Peter over the whole church. So what the truth has ordained stands firm, and blessed Peter perseveres in the rock-like strength he was granted, and does not abandon that guidance of the church which he once received. For this reason it has always been necessary for every church–that is to say the faithful throughout the world–to be in agreement with the Roman church because of its more effective leadership. In consequence of being joined, as members to head, with that see, from which the rights of sacred communion flow to all, they will grow together into the structure of a single body. Therefore,if anyone says thatit is not by the institution of Christ the lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole church; or that the Roman pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema.

We promulgate anew the definition of the ecumenical council of Florence, which must be believed by all faithful Christians, namely that the apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold a world-wide primacy, and that the Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, true vicar of Christ, head of the whole church and father and teacher of all christian people. To him, in blessed Peter, full power has been given by our lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule and govern the universal church.

Here is the 2nd Council Nicaea: If anyone does not confess that Christ our God can be represented in his humanity, let him be anathema.

If anyone does not accept representation in art of evangelical scenes, let him be anathema.

If anyone does not salute such representations as standing for the Lord and his saints, let him be anathema.

If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church, let him be anathema.

CL: None of that says salvation through the pope.

JM: Just double checking you agree with all of it. Now let’s check this one. “It is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Boniface VIII, infallible decree Unam Sanctam.

CL: That right there that you just sent is not gospelIn fact claiming it as an infallible decree is changing the gospel, in which Christ never changes.Never before did the gospel ever say that in order to be saved you have to be subject to Roman pontiff.

JM: So then you aren’t Catholic? These are all official teachings of the Catholic Church.

CL: What I am saying is that statement is not Catholic.

JM: Impossible. It is infallible. On par with Nicaea, Florence, Trent, etc. Protected from any possibility of error.

CL: Lie.

JM: The Church isn’t led by you as Pope, you can’t pick and choose which teachings you like and don’t like. Again, that is what Modernists and Freemasons promote. Which is why we have “Catholics” who support abortion.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We love you. Save souls. Amen.