re: Ecumenism - Is it happening??

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What is your basis for your interpretations of the Holy Scriptures?

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The "analogy of faith", namely that Scripture interprets Scripture. That which is clear informs that which is unclear, for instance.

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More pointedly, from what sources preceding you do you believe had the full deposit of the Faith and provided right dogma?

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The whole Church, when in possession of the Scriptures, has the full deposit of the Faith which provides right doctrine.

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Do you believe St. Ignatius of Antioch knew of what he was teaching? After all, he was one of the children who sat on the lap of Christ as he preached and went to his death proclaiming Christ as lions tore him apart.

How about St. Athanasius? After all, he was responsible for collating what we know as the New Testament and fought against the Arians.

St. Iranaeus? St. Seraphim of Sarov? St. Nicholas? St. Nina of Georgia? And on and on…

It’s the teachings of the Fathers and the Lives of the Saints that passed down the full deposit of the Faith and kept heresies such as Arianism, Nestorianism, Gnosticism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and other “isms” out of the one true Church.

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Catholics absolutely butcher the church Fathers, cherry-picking quotes, interpreting them in light of later developed dogma and then re-impose those beliefs back into those texts to say that they believed what Rome teaches today. It's anachronistic and absolutely deceptive. I'll just pick one from your list, probably the most "problematic" given its age in Ignatius.

Ignatius is quoted due to his early attestation, being a contemporary of the Apostles. He is quoted from chapters 6 and 7 from his letter to the Smyrnians as being a proponent of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Here are his words that are often quoted:

Let no man deceive himself. Both the things which are in heaven, and the glorious angels, and rulers, both visible and invisible, if they believe not in the blood of Christ, shall, in consequence, incur condemnation. (Ch. 6)

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They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. (Ch. 7)

What Catholics ignore is the first 5 chapters, where Ignatius is clearly defending the biblical teaching of Christ's physical birth, death, and resurrection against the heresy of the Docetists, who believed that Jesus didn't have a real body but only seemed to have one. Ignatius spends most of his letter defending the real body of Christ, saying he was of the physical line of David and had true body and blood. Then in chapters 6 and 7, he speaks to Christ's blood as being really shed and that you can tell who these false teachers are because they refuse to partake in the Eucharist, because they did not believe Jesus actually died in His body and therefore they deny His body and blood.

Here Ignatius isn't speaking of transubstantiation but of the reality of Christ's physical body and blood being broken and shed on the cross, which the Docetists deny and which is represented in the Eucharist, itself.

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The only difference in papal infallibility (another 19th century RC heresy) and Protestantism is that Protestants makes themselves “everyman a pope” so that they can personally interpret Scriptures as they are so “led”.

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While the Reformers recognized the privilege and obligation for each Christian to interpret the Bible, they did not claim that each person can interpret the Bible however they wish, as if the Scriptures were a relativistic bowl of alphabet soup that each person can rearrange int whatever they want. They taught that God had given us His revelation in the Bible and that we are free to read it and understand it ourselves rather than being subordinated to the teachings of fallible priests, cardinals, or popes. Catholics wrongfully think that means Protestants are allowed to believe whatever they want, but the reality is that we are to interpret the Bible according to God's own words and seek to understand the meaning God has given us rather than creating our own meaning.

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There is no teaching by St. Paul or any of the other Apostles who would chide one for “not being Biblical”. They preached the Christ they knew and walked with and met on the road to Emmaus and the Fathers the Traditions as were handed down to them by apostolic succession.[/quote[Not quite. You added some of your Catholic doctrine to what was actually in the Scriptures in this statement, assuming that what was authoritatively passed down was something other than or in addition to the Scriptures and that apostolic succession was what they taught.

[quote]As a former Protestant (what exactly were we protesting 500 years later?), I was sick and tired of the constant splintering due to heresies throughout all of the denominations (LGBT, aborttion, abuse, false gospel, ad nauseam).

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In this thread, I'm still protesting the tyranny of Rome that has led so many souls astray down the road of damnation with a false gospel. However, "Protestant" has developed into a moniker to distinguish between Roman Catholics and those Christians which have a non-Catholic history that developed from the Protestant Reformation. Just like Catholics are still called Catholics though they don't represent the catholic (universal) Church of Jesus Christ.

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Thank GOD for technology and Youtube and podcasts…like so many thousands in America, we are returning to the FULLNESS of the Church in Holy Orthodoxy. It’s never changed and the only place where the Holy Scriptures and Holy Traditions are celebrated as they were from the beginning.

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More anachronism. Catholics are fond of taking their current beliefs and imposing them back in history on the writings of the Patristics and early Christians/Theologians while claiming the Church has always believed in things like Papal infallibly or the Marian dogmas that were codified ~1900 years after Christ and had no mention in the earliest writings.

The Reformation was a blessing from God because it provided the only infallible rule for faith and life back to the people of God in the Scriptures. We have the fulness of God's revelation to Christ's Church located in that which is God-breathed.