Having said this, I must add that Lutheranism (when it is faithful to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions) is "catholicism the way it oughta be." It is what reformed Catholicism would be; Catholicism purged of teachings and elements that contradict the Gospel of justification by faith alone. It is for this reason that we Lutherans, from Luther on, describe ourselves as "catholics" but not ROMAN Catholics.
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Roman Catholicism and Bibical Christianity.
Often, when Protestants criticize Roman Catholic doctrine, apologists will claim that the Catholic Church has changed its position in recent years. Defenders of Catholicism contend, for example, that the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-63) are no longer relevant. For that reason, the following citations of Catholic teaching are drawn from the most recent official summary of Catholic belief, the Catechismus Ecclesiae Catholicae (Catechism of the Catholic Church). The numbers given in parentheses after each citation refer to paragraph numbers in the English version of that work: Catechism of the Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1994).
Since the media has called so much attention to the differences between Bible-believing Christians and Roman Catholicism, perhaps it would serve a good purpose to list a few of those differences in belief.
Scripture and Tradition .
Catholic Teaching .
The Bible and Tradition are equally authoritative channels of God's revelation. "Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence" (82). "'Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God,' in which, as in a mirror, the pilgrim Church contemplates God, the source of all her riches" (97). "We believe all 'that which is contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church proposes for belief as divinely revealed'" (182).