Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Catholic View of Protestant Christians

It has scrolled off the main page, but Turretinfan has engaged my post on formal vs. material heresy, in which I argue (contrary to what he seems to think) that the Church's teaching obliges the faithful Catholic to consider Protestants to be his brothers in Christ, on the basis of their valid baptism. That post was inspired by an earlier post by him on his own blog in which (if I understood him correctly) he suggested that the opposite is true: that we are obliged to consider them to be under the anathemas of Trent. I argue that on the contrary the average Protestant today certainly cannot be held to be guilty of formal heresy, and therefore cannot be held to be under those anathemas.

I'm not entirely certain we haven't strayed a bit off course, but I thought I might mention the ongoing conversation on the off-chance that my few readers might be interested.

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