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This is a serious question that I hope Roman Catholics reading this blog will solemnly consider.

I am an ex-Roman Catholic who knows what life was like as a Roman Catholic. I know what their beliefs are, and their history. That knowledge compelled me to leave the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, I believe I am well qualified to write this article.

What I don’t know and fail to understand is how anyone can continue to remain in the Roman Catholic Church. If you are a Roman Catholic, do you not know your church’s history? Consider …

The Inquisitions

The Inquisitions were Roman Catholic tribunals that were set up to search for, try and sentence people who the Roman Catholic Church believed were heretics. There were four main inquisitions that took place at different times; The Medieval Inquisition, The Spanish Inquisition, The Portuguese Inquisition, and the Roman Inquisition.

There is much disagreement and disinformation concerning these inquisitions. Their dates vary, the death tolls vary and the descriptions of what took place varies depending on the source. Catholic sources down play the inquisitions and accuse non-Catholic sources of exaggerating the death toll and non-Catholic sources accuse the Catholics of not owning up to their atrocities.

I have read death toll figures ranging from 1,500 – 75 million and dates ranging from several hundred years to 1200 years.

Since there is so much variance in the details, I will not get into all that. Suffice it to say that even using the minimum numbers of deaths via burning at the stake and other tortures, they are totally unacceptable, totally unjustifiable, and totally contrary to Yeshua’s (Jesus’) teaching and the New Testament examples of how true believers should live.

Yeshua said;

For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. (Luke 9:56a)

Our Savior never killed anyone and taught his followers to love their enemies and pray for them (Matthew 5:44). He also said;

You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. (Matthew 7:16-20)

The fruit produced by the Roman Catholic Church during the years encompassing the inquisitions was rotten fruit. Their leaders were corrupt, evil men who either had innocent people tortured and put to death or who stood by idly instead of putting a stop to it. The laity knew what was going on. They knew of the witch hunts that were taking place and of the gross sexual perversions that were forced upon women by threatening them with being turned over to the inquisition if they didn’t give in to their sexual demands. They were too frightened to oppose the inquisitions or to flee such a wicked church as this.

Where were the popes during these inquisitions? Did they not know what was going on under their noses? Of course they did. They were the driving force behind these murderous inquisitions. And then the Roman Catholic Church has the audacity to say their church is built upon the Apostle Peter and that each successive pope right up to today is built upon Peter. Peter would be rolling over and groaning in his grave if he knew how the Roman Catholic Church was murdering innocent people. Even if the murdered people were truly guilty of the heresies the RCC accused them of, the New Testament teaching is to put such heretics out of the church, not to put them to death. 

Catholics today are either ignorant of the inquisitions or they dismiss them as the fruit of isolated deviants within the church. Now they look upon the Roman Catholic Church as having undergone a great change for the better. The past is forgotten and forgiven and now they can hold their heads up proudly without shame. Is this true? Has the RCC really changed?

Modern Sex Scandals

In recent years, sex scandals involving Roman Catholic priests and workers have reached epic proportions around the world. They have only recently begun to surface, but they have been going on for many, many years. In the United States alone, 4,392 priests were accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002.

The abuse is far worse than the relatively small amount of sex abuse cases being reported. Such abuse has been taking place since the days of the inquisitions and probably even earlier.

One cause of such deviant sexual behavior by priests is the Roman Catholic false doctrine of priestly celibacy, something Yahweh did not even require of the priests of Israel.  Another cause may be the failure of the RCC to forcefully teach against homosexuality, adultery and fornication. Of course, a third cause of such rotten fruit may be that the perpetrators of such crimes are not, and never were, true believers. (see Matthew 7:16-20)

The RCC leadership dealt with many of these crimes by relocating the guilty person as if that would help the situation! All that did was give those criminal priests new flesh to prey upon. The Apostle Paul dealt with sexual sins in the Corinthian assembly by commanding the fornicator to be put out of the assembly (1 Corinthians 5), not to relocate him to another assembly. Is the Roman Catholic Church leadership void of such discernment as to know what to do with sexual deviants in their church?

The above is only the tip of the iceberg. I will not go into detail about all the illicit sex and sexual abuse that takes place in convents between priests and nuns and nuns with nuns. You can do your own research on that aspect of Roman Catholic sexual perversions. There are many firsthand accounts of such perversions readily accessible in public documents.

Again, where were the popes as these perverts were abusing the parishioners right under their noses? Well, they were busy covering up the abuse and protecting the pedophile priests as was the case with Pope Benedict XVI, aka Cardinal Ratzinger. If you do a little research yourself, you will find a long list of atrocities committed by other popes. These were not “men of God”, but “sons of Satan”.

False Doctrine

We can look upon the sex scandals and the inquisitions as isolated sins committed by rogue Catholics, but doctrine is another matter. RCC doctrine is a representation of the true character and mind of this so-called “church”. I will list several points of doctrine that I believe are absolutely contrary to Scripture proving that the RCC could care less about doing the will of Yahweh. They exalt their own traditions and disregard Yahweh’s commandments.

1)      Graven images – The second commandment of the Ten Commandments says;

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I Yahweh thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)

Here are the Catholic Ten Commandments as stated on beginningcatholic.com:

  1)  I am the LORD your God. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.

  2) You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

  3) Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.

  4) Honor your father and your mother.

  5) You shall not kill.

  6) You shall not commit adultery.

  7) You shall not steal.

 8) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

  9) You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

      10) You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

Notice Exodus 20:4-6 is not there? It is absorbed into the first commandment, but is rarely ever written out. Why? Because Roman Catholic churches are loaded with graven images of things that Catholics bow down to. Statues of Mary, Joseph, and a host of other “saints” are prayed to and bowed down to daily.

2)     Transubstantiation – This false doctrine states that the communion bread/wafer that Catholics eat is changed from the substance it is made from into the literal body of Christ and the contents of the cup of communion is literally transformed into the blood of Christ. If true, that means the partakers of this ritual are committing cannibalism every time they eat it. The Scriptures forbid cannibalism. In reality, the cup and the bread are merely symbols to remind true believers of the Master’s death until he comes again.

3)     Indulgences – This false doctrine , as stated in the Catholic Encyclopedia, reads;

“An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God’s justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive.”

Of course, this presumes that the sinner will receive a “temporal punishment” after he has been forgiven by “God”. However, no one knows whether a sinner will receive such a punishment by Yahweh. Therefore, it is like paying for insurance “just in case” you might be punished. It is obviously a racket invented by the RCC to squeeze more money out of their parishioners. It is nowhere found in Scripture.

Indulgences can also be paid for the dead. The Catholic Encyclopedia states;

“over the dead she has no jurisdiction and therefore makes the indulgence available for them by way of suffrage (per modum suffragii), i.e. she petitions God to accept these works of satisfaction and in consideration thereof to mitigate or shorten the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory.”

The RCC invented this fictitious place called “purgatory” which is supposedly a holding place for departed souls who are “not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.”  This invention is just another way the RCC scares people into giving more money.

There is no such place mentioned in Scripture. However, if a sinner confesses his sins (to Yahweh, not to a priest), “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)  At that point the sinner is totally cleansed and forgiven. There is no further suffering for sin, especially after death. The dead know nothing while they are in the grave awaiting Messiah’s return to resurrect them unto eternal life (Ecclesiastes 9:5).

4)     Confession – The RCC teaches that confessions must be made to a priest. Scripture teaches that Yeshua Messiah is the mediator between Yahweh and man, not a carnal priest who can use our confessed sins against us if he so chooses via blackmail or extortion.

5)     Infant baptism – This is another false teaching. Scripture clearly teaches that repentance must precede baptism (Acts 2:38). Infants cannot repent. Therefore, there is no need for any type of infant baptism for any reason. 

There are many more doctrines that Roman Catholics believe that are not found in Scripture, but this short blog is not the place for it. I have only mentioned RCC doctrines that they teach that are not found in Scripture. I have not even mentioned the teachings of Scripture that the Roman Catholic Church do not do or teach like keeping the seventh day Sabbath holy, observing Yahweh’s holy feast days which have not been fulfilled, or abstaining from eating unclean animal flesh.

The minimal info provided here should speak volumes to sincere Roman Catholics that desire to walk according to their Creator’s will and in accordance with His Word. You cannot do that while you are under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. However, even if the RCC repented and changed their doctrines to align with Scripture, that would not change the fact that many of their leaders, including their popes, have proven themselves to be untrustworthy, depraved sinners that cannot control their fleshly lusts.

There are sincere people in the RCC, including some leaders, who are doing their best to serve their Creator according to the light that they have. If you are one of those people, I admonish you in the name of Yeshua the Messiah to look into these things and to “come out of her” and “not partake of her sins” as it is written.