re: TIL the Roman Catholic basilica and shrine is the tallest building in Washington DC

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But this is perhaps the most grossly MISREPRESENTED of all Catholic doctrine. No where does the Catholic faith teach that "we can work our way to Heaven". It teaches that "faith without works is dead" which is what Matthew 25:31-46 is clearly about.

A follower of Christ cannot deny the hungry, the thirsty, etc. without denying Christ Himself.

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The Catholic position asserts that good works are a necessary component of justification while the Protestant position is that good works are not a necessary component of justification but rather are a fruit of said justification. In other words, Protestants believe that justification (salvation) is obtained 100% through the gift of grace from God (monergism) while Catholics believe that justification is the result of both the gift of grace from God and the continued good works of man (synergism).

Where the Catholics seem to be confused is how the Bible treats works. They are a "fruit", not the tree. They are the result of salvation, not the means of it. When James talks about faith being dead without works, he's talking about proof of faith. He's saying that since true, saving faith naturally produces good works (because such a faith is the result of the Spirit's work of regeneration in a person, and said regeneration will always produce good works) and that if good works are not evident, that is an evidence of a lack of true faith. The Catholic position is that works in addition to faith are necessary for salvation because without doing good works, faith alone is not enough. A tree is not made alive by the fruit it bears but the fruit is an evidence that the tree is alive, for a tree that is dead cannot bear any fruit.

Good works from a Protestant point of view are a good and necessary result of saving faith in the life of a Christian and that Jesus paid the price once and for all to wipe away sin and make us righteous before God. The Catholic view is that Jesus only made it possible for a person to save himself through his faith and his good works. The Protestant belives the whole of salvation--from regeneration to glorification--is the free gift of God. Because of this, the Protestant can rest assured that if he trusts in Jesus Christ alone through faith, he will be saved from the penalty his sins deserve, and he can look to his own good works as an evidence of his faith, not the means of his salvation.

The Catholic, on the other hand, has no assurance of salvation at all, and can't, because since good works are a necessary component of salvation in their view, they can never know if they've ever done enough to merit salvation. It's why the concept of purgatory was invented. It gives Catholics a holding place to pay off the rest of their debts of sin after they die because they could never have assurance of salvation on earth. Instead of Christ paying their debt, they have to pay it themselves.

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The Catholic Church is (I'm not certain) but perhaps the only Christian denomination that publishes and defends it's beliefs. You can go to any Barns & Nobles (etc.) and buy The Catechism of the Catholic Church. That book heavily references Scripture in defending it's teachings.

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There are countless books defending the Protestant views. My own denomination has an entire book detailing its beliefs and teachings and many more supplemental books going into all the nuances of them. There are thousands upon thousands of books that anyone can access that defend the Protestant doctrinal beliefs. Most orthodox churches have statements of faith that explain what they believe. Confessional churches like mine have a lengthy confession of faith that outlines in great detail what we believe. Catholics aren't alone there.

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Nowhere will you find that the Church teaches that works without faith can get you to Heaven. But at the same time, it vehemently teaches that professing Faith yet ignoring works is no faith at all. In short, Faith is as much a verb as a noun.

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Faith as a verb isn't a faith at all, but a work. It ceases to be a gift, as it says in Ephesians 2, and becomes a reward that you can boast in. It all comes down to who gets the glory in salvation. If faith is truly a gift from God, then God gets all the glory in salvation. If faith is a work whereby in conjunction with other good works the believer earns salvation, God is obliged to share the glory with the believer, who is a co-worker in salvation rather than a recipient of it.

There's a reason why "the doctrines of grace" (Calvinism) is systematic. It addresses all of those points of salvation step-by-step.

There is no "initial salvation", only salvation. Either Christ saved us or He didn't. We are either saved (justified) or we are not. The "system" says this:

We are born with original sin from Adam and are thus guilty before God and unable to repent and believe in Jesus with true, saving faith due to our natural conditional (total depravity).

Because of this condition, we will never choose God so He must "choose" us, and elect us to salvation based on His own good purpose and not because of anything we can or will do because we can't, due to our depraved condition (unconditional election).

Since those who are saved are so because God chose them to be saved from eternity past, God had to save those people through the atoning work of Jesus Christ, which had to be sufficient to save and efficient to actually save, since due to our sinful state we cannot repent and believe on our own (limited atonement/particular redemption).

In order to overcome our natural depraved state to apply salvation to us, we have to have a spiritual rebirth (be born again) by the Holy Spirit, which removes our hearts of stone and gives us a heart of flesh so that we will hear the shepherds voice and follow Him as the natural result; Jesus calls us forth from the tomb and we rise and come forth (irresistible grace).

Finally, because the entirety of our salvation is dependent on the grace of God--from start to finish--God not only makes us alive but He keeps us alive. He doesn't leave us or forsake us but ensures that the Spirit that He has given us to regenerate us and make us capable and willing to receive the gift of saving faith will continue that good work in us until the end, where we inevitably will finish the race being upheld by the hand of God where no one can snatch us out of it (perseverance/preservation of the saints).

And that's why faith is a gift of God, because it is unmerited. It's why salvation is by grace, not works, because if we could earn our own salvation, we could literally boast in it, saying we contributed something other than our need for it. Instead, God gets all of the glory because He has saved us by Himself. We weren't flailing in the water looking for a life preserver that God graciously throws out to us, hoping we grab on to it; we were dead at the bottom of the ocean when Jesus jumped in, brought us on to dry land, and brought us back to life. It's why He gets the glory, not us.

Well said, Foo.

Mary had multiple children. What religion believes that she never had sex?

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I imagine that money could have helped a lot of needy people.

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It has helped countless people come to God. What greater need could be filled than that?

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FooManChoo

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well said, and so true, my brother

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we have not been saved by works

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Exactly. Good works are the manifestation of faith.

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Is the Biggest False doctrine in "Christianity"

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Know how I know you don’t know what the Immaculate Conception is?