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Over the centuries, Roman Catholicism has changed many life-and-death doctrines, including redefinition of the "mortal sin" of eating meat on Fridays and its teaching on the abode of infants who die un-baptized. What does the Bible say?
October 22, 2024 - Last week we reported that Pope Francis now teaches that all religions are ways to God. We also saw that the Roman Catholic church teaches that the salvation of any soul is uncertain, that some people are more saved than others - and, Rome says, salvation can be lost.
But major changes to Roman Catholic doctrine are not new. Roman Catholicism makes sinful, fallible man the primary authority in the establishment of doctrine. The Vatican teaches that the Roman Church itself, not Jesus Christ through His Word, is the infallible arbiter of truth. Romanism relegates Holy Scripture to secondary status at best.
Over the centuries, Rome has built a complex web of arbitrary, changeable regulations that are foreign to Scripture, which Catholics must observe in order to remain in good standing with the Church.
Like the apostate priests of ancient Israel, Rome's leaders over the centuries "have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant" - Isaiah chapter 24 verse 5.
Until the 1960s the Vatican said that eating meat - even a piece of bologna - on Friday was a mortal sin, and the person who died without confessing such a sin to a priest would go straight to Hell. But today, Rome says it is all right to eat meat unless the church proclaims a meatless Friday.
Even then, the church now says, eating a piece of bologna on a meatless Friday is only a venial sin, which can be cleansed by performing penance now, or by time spent in Purgatory after death. Such arbitrary, man-made regulations are foreign to the Law of God, and utterly contrary to the Gospel. The doctrine of Purgatory has absolutely no basis in Scripture.
When I was growing up, one of our neighbors, a lady who was a devout Roman Catholic, lost two children who died soon after they were born. She took great comfort when her priest told her that her dead children were in Limbo, the abiding place of infants who died un-baptized.
But in April 2007 Pope Benedict the 16th authorized publication of a document stating that the doctrine of Limbo is only a theological theory, and that Limbo probably does not exist. Thus, with the stroke of a pen, Rome removed the comfort it had given to countless thousands of parents over many centuries, who were told with certainty that their dead infant children were in a place called Limbo.
Dear friends, authentic Biblical Christianity does not rely on the changing theories and regulations of fallen men. Our unchanging authority is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" - Hebrews 13, verse 8. Jesus declared that "the Scripture cannot be broken" - John chapter 10, verse 35 - it cannot be contravened.
The work of TeachingTheWord Ministries and the Authentic Scripture Foundation is founded on these vital truths. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, "we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants" (2 Corinthians 4:5).
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