The Incredible Irony Behind Religious Roman Catholics and Their Sinful Lifestyles!

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Whenever I try to update on any Roman Catholic website like its official page or any Roman Catholic faith apologetics blog, I always find one accusation over the other against eternal security. Eternal security as a doctrine has been muddled up by both Arminians (its doctrine is nothing more than diet Roman Catholicism and to Augustus Toplady, the road back to Rome) and by Antinomians as a license to sin. For Arminians, the teaching of eternal security drives people to sin and some circles claiming to be born again Christians are stuck with its heresies making them nothing more than a diet Catholic religion where you teach works salvation minus the magisterium, ritualism and the Vatican. For the Antinomians they tend to sing, "Oh joy that I am free from the law, I can sin freely forevermore." The heresy is really no different than Roman Catholics with their salvation that is first by faith (initially) but you must keep it by works if you expect to make it into Heaven. That kind of teaching is still salvation by good works.

Reading through Bro. Gerry Soliman's blog and his arguments for a Biblical view of eternal security (which John Calvin calls as the Perseverance of the Saints) against Roman Catholic apologists, I still cannot help but laugh at the arguments of people against it believing it to teach a license to sin without seeing the full context. Maybe they only heard the Antinomian's view and ignores the Christian view. Calvinist or not, any sound-minded Christian would reject Antinomianism. Non-Calvinists like David W. Cloud, Vernon McGee and Harry Allen Ironside still believed in the Perseverance of the Saints minus election. Although they rejected the Calvinist view of Unconditional Election as its basis, they still believed that a true convert will endure to the end. The whole idea of the Perseverance of the Saints is not that the saints should persevere but the will persevere and though they may stumble and fall, they do not permanently fall away.

As a former Roman Catholic who became a born again Christian and now, I'm embracing Reformed Theology in my Christian growth, I have observed how Roman Catholics tend to contradict themselves. If at one point they say that Protestants and Baptists were just cashed out but they don't hesitate to dole out lots of money for prayers that will never send their loved ones to Heaven. Some of them even complain that the Protestant and Baptist schools tend to have that "stricter than thou" conservative attitude and they send their children to Jesuit schools because they want to look good or because such schools are a lot more lenient. What I just mentioned are just severely bad cases of double standard. They can also say, "Well you always go to church and you are always scolding others like there's no tomorrow." but they are also exactly doing the same thing. Double standard which is applying a standard to another while having one standard for one's own convenience.

When I think of how do Roman Catholics define repentance, it says, "Voluntary sorrow because it offends God, for having done something wrong, together with the resolve to amend one's conduct by taking the necessary means to avoid the occasions of sin. To repent is to be sorry for sin with self-condemnation." Now let's take a look at Biblical repentance vs. Catholic repentance. Biblical repentance is rooted from metanoneia meaning "a change of mind which begets a change in purpose" which unfortunately the Roman Catholic definition confuses repentance with penance. While I could agree repentance has voluntary sorrow in seeing God was offended but also says, "taking the necessary means to avoid the occasion of sin." More often than not, the Roman Catholic's repentance has always been about doing good works to outweigh bad works and by good works, then these end up becoming show business than genuine good works. The great Reformed Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon said of good works,"It is not enough to do the correct thing, it must be done in a right spirit, and with a pure motive. A good action is not wholly good unless it be done for the glory of God, and because of the greatness and goodness of His holy name." They end up doing acts of goodness not because they want to give glory to God but only for the sake of self-preservation which there is a difference between doing works because God saved vs. doing of works trying to get God to keep you saved.

How Roman Catholics tend to define a good person, it's all about show business. I can hear something like that he or she is such a good person because he or she prays the Rosary a lot, attends every feast day possible, faithful in attending Mass, goes to confession regularly and donates lots of money for their local Roman Catholic parish. However what can be ignored is how a good number of Roman Catholics tend to be living so sinfully while they are religious at the same time. You can have somebody who prays the Rosary, prays as many Roman Catholic prayers as he would, goes to Mass every Sunday, attends every procession he could, goes to confession regularly, donates money for the Roman Catholic parish, he gives to charity (but it's only for show) and he accommodates the priest for the fiesta but he also lives a very sinful lifestyle such as sexual immorality, cheating others, gambling and the like. He may be "repentant" during the Lenten season but when it's over, he goes back to his worldly lifestyle. Besides, I've observed how Roman Catholics end up receiving communion on Sunday if they confessed on a Saturday, never mind they kept sinning from Monday to Friday and the cycle repeats itself proving there's no real repentance at all based on actions! When I think about it, the whole idea of as long as your good works outweigh your bad works theology is nothing more than a subtle license to sin. James 2:10-11 warns deeply that it only takes one sin to fall short of God's standard. Ironic that they preach from James 2 without understanding the context of it.

Taking a look at the news, visit the prisons or read biographies of certain dictators and criminals. Did you know that Adolph Hitler was a very religious Roman Catholic? I would even assume he goes to confession after every person he's murdered, the priest tells him to do penance then the whole cycle repeats itself again. Did you know many criminals are very religious Roman Catholics? When I look at the prison cells based on pictures from prison outreach, a lot of the criminals are in fact, very religious. You can see a lot of these crooks praying the Rosary and having their idols inside the prison cells. When you take a look at many corrupt figures of authority many of them are also very religious. You can see how many of these Jesuit agents are not only a huge bunch of hypocrites but also very sinful. I'm not too surprised considering that I'm seeing one Jesuit parish after the other are full of people who live like they have a license of sin.

Now do I believe that a truly saved Christian is already free from sin and that flesh is 100% nailed to the cross? I don't teach such a heresy that a Christian can already achieve sinless perfection. A Christian can fall into sin and will sin (because of the old nature) but that sin will not drive him or her to pleasure but to the loving discipline of the Father bringing forth continued repentance. Examples in the Bible are like how Lot was vexed in Sodom, Samson was still a believer, David was convicted by Nathan of his son and repented, Solomon backslid so horribly and God appeared to him more than once, and Peter wept after he lied he was not a Christian as proof such people are indeed saved. 1 Corinthians 6:11 says that when you are saved, you also get sanctified into a new life but there is still sin. Romans 7:14-25 tells us that Christians will still struggle with sin because of the old nature. When I just mentioned about why so many Roman Catholics have that wayward lifestyle, it's simple, it's because they are enslaved to any form of sin whether it would be the obvious or self-righteousness. Any unsaved person who is morally good is enslaved by the sin of self-righteousness just as any body who lives like a devil is enslaved by the sin of wantonness. Self-righteousness is no different than living wantonly in sin as both lead to Hellfire.

I also rethink of why Matthew 7:21-23 also includes the words "ye doers of iniquity" in the verse. Whether you like it or it, Isaiah 64:6 calls all the human righteousness as just filthy rags before the eyes of God. When I look at verse 22, these people brag about their good works. It's just like how a Roman Catholic who is living in so much sin can say, "Nothing is wrong with me. I am fine. I am a good person. I go to church every Sunday, I give to the poor and I do all I can as a good person. I go to confession. My good works outweigh by bad works." Their wickedness will soon be exposed on Judgment Day and without a substitute sacrifice for their sins, they are certainly headed for doom. Instead, Jesus will tell them, "I never knew you. Depart from me ye that worketh iniquity." When Jesus said, "I never knew you.", remember salvation cannot be lost, they never had it in the first place and the fact they were workers of iniquity proved that they were never of Christ. It reminded me of what Pastor Ruben L. Lumagbas Jr. said during one of the Sunday services about somebody might plead to God about accommodating the priest, frequently praying to the saints, having a habit of walking while kneeling and even crucifying himself (a practice that is also condemned by the official Vatican law) but their evil is exposed proving they were charlatans indeed.

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