Evangelical Convert: Renée Lin: Protestants Distort Catholic beliefs

“We distort Catholic beliefs when we presented them so that they would be easier to refute. The classic examples of course, are the Protestant arguments against ‘Mary Worship’ or ‘works-righteousness.’ By raging against two Catholic doctrines which do not exist, Protestant apologists are able to turn their readers against a hypothetical evil, rather than addressing and refuting actual Catholic teachings.” –Renèe Lin (Catholic convert, former Evangelical Protestant)

Equally guilty are the Iglesia ni Cristo Church founded by Felix Manalo in the Philippines always presenting distorted Catholic beliefs to its listeners which afterwards they can easily refute.

Simple Quiz: Alin ang TUNAY?

Alin ang TUNAY na RATAN? Yung may tatak o yung wala?

Alin naman ang TUNAY na IGLESIA? Yung may tatak o yung wala?

CNA/EWTN News: Virgin Mary 'crosses the finish line' with Olympic gold runner

London, England, (CNA/EWTN News).- Ethiopian athlete Meseret Defar provided one of the most emotional moments of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games when she crossed the finish line in the 5000 meter race to win the gold.

She then pulled a picture of the Virgin Mary out from under her jersey, showed it to the cameras and held it up to her face in deep prayer.

An Orthodox Christian, Defar entrusted her race to God with the sign of the cross and reached the finish line in 15:04:24, beating her fellow Ethiopian rival Tirunesh Dibaba, who was the favorite to win.

A teary-eyed Defar proudly showed the picture of the Virgin Mary with the Baby Jesus that she carried with her for the entire race.

Throughout the event, Defar kept pace with three other Ethiopian runners and three from Kenya, until speeding past them on the homestretch to win gold.

The silver medal went to Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya and the bronze to Dibaba.

Defar is also a two-time world champion in the 3000 meters. In Athens in 2004 she won the gold in the 5000 meters and in Beijing in 2008 she won the bronze.

On June 3, 2006 she broke the world record for the 5000 meters set previously by Turkish runner Elvan Abeylegesse, with a time of 14:24:53.

TIMELINE of the CATHOLIC CHURCH: In response to the Fabricated Mormon-copied Total Apostacy Doctrine of the Iglesia ni Cristo-1914

PASUGO Abril 1966, p. 46: “Ang Iglesia Katolika na sa pasimula ay siyang Iglesia ni Cristo. [The Catholic Church which from the beginning was the Church of Christ.]" (Pasugo is the Iglesia ni Cristo's Official Magazine.  The Iglesia ni Cristo cult was founded by Felix Manalo in the Philippines in 1914 and they are claiming to be the "original" church Christ founded-- without any sense of shame!

The CATHOLIC CHURCH is the CHURCH of CHRIST from the beginning till the end! [Ang Iglesia Katolika ang Iglesia ni Cristo mula sa simula hanggang sa wakas.-CD2000]

SOURCE: For Links/Historical Source please see WIKIPEDIA (Other links are additional from the blog owner)

As the oldest branch of Christianity, along with Eastern Orthodoxy, the history of the Catholic Church plays an integral part of the History of Christianity as a whole. This article covers a period of just under 2,000 years.

Over time, schisms have disrupted the unity of Christianity. The major divisions occurred in c.144 with Marcionism, 318 with Arianism, in 1054 the East–West Schism of the Catholic Church with the Eastern Orthodox churches and in 1517 with the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church has been the moving force in some of the major events of world history including the evangelization of Europe and Latin America, the spreading of literacy and the foundation of the universities, hospitals, Western monasticism, the development of art, music, literature, architecture, the scientific method, and trial by jury. Also playing a role in world affairs including, the Inquisition, the Crusades, an analytical philosophical method, and the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 20th century.

Ministry of Jesus and founding

• c. 4 BC: Nativity of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Luke, his birth occurred in the town of Bethlehem during the reigns of King Herod the Great of Judaea and the Roman Emperor Augustus, and he was the son of the Virgin Mary, who conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Christians see Him as the Divine Son of God incarnate or God the Son.

Although the calculations of Dionysius Exiguus put the birth of Jesus in the year that in consequence is called AD 1, history places his birth more likely some time between 6 and 4 BC.

IGLESIA NI CRISTO: EXAMINED by CATHOLIC ETERNAL TRUTH

Source: Bro. Isahel N. Alfonso's Catholic Eternal Truth - Iglesia ni Cristo is an indigenous cult founded on July 27, 1914 in the Philippines, this religious cult was founded by Felix Manalo y Sagun born May 10, 1886 in Barrio Calzada Taguig Rizal. He was born from of Catholic parents and was baptized in a Catholic Church.

Felix Manalo did not understand the Catholic faith, from then on he keep on hopping from one church to another, later on he become a Colorumism, Methodist, Presbyterian, Alliance of Christian Missionaries and lastly Adventist.

Discontented by what he learned from these churches he later on founded his own Church and named it Iglesia ni Cristo. In 1919 Felix Manalo went to America to study theology at Pacific School of Religion however his name does not appear in the list of student who enrolled in the said University, it is also odd that a messenger of God an angel (according to their doctrine) got his theology from a protestant university not from God himself.

In 1920 Felix Manalo’s moral integrity was questioned both in public and in court, a certain member of INC named Rosita Trillanes made a letter that exposed the abuses of Felix Manalo to her and other women. Here is the letter of Rosita Trillanes made public in the Official Gazette of July 1942;

“Brother: Because of my love for the Church and for your welfare, I wrote you to confess what really happened to me and those things that I witnesses and knew during my two years stay in the central. I am a maiden who became a member of the Church of Chris in Batangas. My parents and brothers hated and disowned me. In my belief that I will find protection, I agreed that I be brought to our central office by Brother Jacinto Tories. When I was already there, I experienced the most bitter and painful thing in the life of a maiden like me when Manalo, whom I considered as a father, abused me. At first, he courted me but when I refuse to accede to his wishes he struck and beat me which rendered me unconscious; and when I was already unconscious he raped me. There I suffered much because of the ill treatment, beating and threat that I received whenever I protested against his lewd designs. I also witnessed many who have been raped by Felix Manalo; others are maidens; others are wives of members while the other one is a wife of a minister. Manalo himself told me about the others who were his victims when he was persuading me to accede to his wishes. He told me about fifty women whom he took advantage of. I could not reveal their names to cover their dishonor, but they frequently went to the central office. In my presence he attempted to violate a maiden who was pregnant and who happened to live in the central office also at the special insistence of Manalo. Probably the reason why Liloy resigned was because of Manalo attempted to rape Amanda. All those who have been his victims were afraid to speak because they were threatened that they will be killed if they speak, like he did with Basiha Santos of Paco who pointed Manalo as the father of her two children. This was current in Paco.

The Mega Mosques Boom

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." - Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan

AINA - Murfreesboro, a city in the heart of Tennessee, and, Marseille, France's second-largest city and its largest city on the Mediterranean coast, have few things in common. The two cities are separated by nearly 5,000 miles, and by equally wide divisions of language and culture. And yet Murfreesboro and Marseille are connected by a common challenge. Both cities have struggled against the creeping rise of the mega mosques.

The mega mosque in Marseille has been the subject of an extended legal fight going back a decade. The one in Murfreesboro had a briefer history of being on the wrong side of the law. But in both cases elected officials did their best to aid the mega mosques while ignoring local residents and the law.

The mega mosque business is booming around the world. The Marseille mega mosque has a proposed capacity of 7,000 seats which would make it the largest mosque in France, overshadowing the Ervy mosque which has a mere 5,000 seats. Both of these French mega mosques would have been dwarfed by a proposed London mega mosque with 12,000 seats and usability targets as high as 40,000. If the London mosque is ever built, it will dominate the Mosque of Rome, currently the most mega of all the mega mosques of Western Europe.

The Ground Zero Mosque, located near the site of the most brutal Muslim atrocity inflicted on the West in centuries, had a more modest 2,000 seating capacity plan, but would be vertically taller than most of the mega-mosques with a proposed 100,000 square feet of space. This would make it larger than the Marseille mega mosque, the Murfreesboro mega mosque and the London mega mosque. But despite their differences in size, all four mega mosque projects have followed the same pattern of lawsuits, public protests, exposures of shady mosque backers and public officials eager to look the other way.

The Cologne mega mosque in Germany has also followed the same pattern and is set to become the biggest mosque in Germany. But big is never big enough. The Stockholm mega mosque was finished in the year 2000 and has a capacity of 2,000, but a decade later there was already a proposal to replace it with an even larger mega mosque. At its current size the Stockholm mega mosque had already managed to feature sermons in support of Islamic terrorism and serve as a recruitment center for Al-Qaeda. At several times the size the situation could only get worse.

In yet another common pattern of mega mosques, the Stockholm mega mosque was funded primarily by Sheikh Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates. The Cologne mega mosque was primarily funded by Turkey's Islamist government. The Marseille mega mosque is being funded by a number of foreign Muslim governments.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has said, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." The foreign funding of mega mosques has raised the question of whether Muslim governments aren't constructing their own barracks and armies in the middle of European cities.

In some cases the militarization of the mega mosque is so overt that it might as well be a bayonet. One of the most blatant examples may be the Copenhagen mega mosque with a capacity of 3,000 which is being financed by Iran. Iran has already constructed another mega mosque in Helsinki and has similar plans all across Europe and the world.

The Copenhagen mega mosque's Imam is Mohammed Mahdi Khademi who ran the ideology department of the Revolutionary Guard militia, an arm of the theocratic regime, which was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. It would be hard to imagine a more explicit example of mega mosque militarization than a regime that sponsors acts of worldwide terror funding a mega mosque headed by the former Islamist political commissar of its terrorist wing.

Not to be left out the Sunnis are getting their own Copenhagen mega mosque funded by Saudi Arabia. This will involve an architectural "mountain" across from the University of Copenhagen topped by two minarets, transforming the Sunni-Shiite rivalry into a competition to create the biggest Islamist eyesores in a city generally known for a quieter brand of architecture.

It's not only in the West that the mega mosques are rising. In Moscow, Muslims have taken over entire streets to call for the construction of new mosques. And the Saudis have already offered to cover the cost.

In China, Saudi money has been transforming mosque designs from the Chinese pagoda to the dome and minaret favored by their new patrons. The more traditional Chinese look of the Great Mosque of Xi'an is making way for the Xiguan Mosque, a monstrous 3,000 capacity mega mosque which looks as if a chunk of Saudi Arabia had been dropped into the middle of Lanzhou.

In Argentina, a year after the bombing of the Jewish center by Muslim terrorists, President Carlos Menem, who has been accused of complicity in the attack, allotted 7.5 acres of public land to build the King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center, the largest mosque in Latin America. It overshadows the Caracas mega mosque in Venezuela which has a capacity of 3,500. Both mega mosques were built by the Saudi royal family.

For now the Islamic Center of America, located in sunny Dearborn, Michigan where Christians can expect to be stoned if they get too close, is the largest mega mosque in the United States. The Shiite mega mosque was already the target of a Sunni Islamic terrorist plot. Nearby is the Sunni Dearborn Mosque which claims the same capacity in an extension of the Sunni-Shiite rivalry. But so long as there's oil money fueling the projects then the mega mosques will keep on growing.

From Markham in Canada down to New York City, and from the West Midlands in the United Kingdom to Sydney, Australia; cities around the world are facing the same threats to their communities. For Muslim states the mega mosque is a tool of power giving them the ability to centralize control of overseas Muslims with a single facility in a single city. For non-Muslim countries, the mega mosque is a center of subversion and terrorism.

As the mega mosque projects grow explosively across the country and the world, so does the resistance to the long shadows that they cast.

AINA: Aleppo's Christians Arm Against Islamists

Gate of the Greek Catholic Church in Aleppo

By Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand

ALEPPO, Syria and BEIRUT, Lebanon (AINA) -- As evidence mounts that foreign Islamists are fighting alongside Syria's increasingly radicalized rebels, Christians in Aleppo and elsewhere are taking up arms, often supplied by the regime.

"We saw what happened to the Christians in Iraq," Abu George, a Christian resident of Aleppo's Aziza district told GlobalPost. "What is going on in Aleppo is not a popular revolution for democracy and freedom. The fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army are radical Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state."

While the 30-year-old shopkeeper said he had not received any direct threats from Syria's Sunni Muslim rebels, he fears a repeat of Iraq's sectarian bloodletting.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the UN Human Rights Council estimates around half of Iraq's 1.4 million Christians have fled the country, driven out by nearly a decade of church bombings, kidnappings and sectarian murder.

Blessed Pope John Paul II in Guinness Book of Records!

When was the Church first called "Catholic"?

(Source: School of Faith) When did the term “Catholic” come into play? How did we become “Catholic” from our Jewish roots?

The first recorded use of the word “catholic” (from the Greek word for “universal”) in reference to the Church is found in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop and disciple of St. John who was martyred by the Emperor Trajan in 107. Shortly before his martyrdom, he wrote several letters to various Church communities. These letters have been preserved by the Church ever since. One such letter was the Letter to the Smyrneans, where he wrote in chapter 8:

"See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

Interestingly, Antioch is also the place where the followers of Christ were called “Christians” for the first time (Acts 11:26).

As for the second question, really the goal of all of salvation history, from the time of the fall and surely from the scattering of the nations at Babel, has been to reunite the divided, sinful family of man into the Family of God, the Church. The Church indeed is universal, as it’s the means of salvation for the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike. Surely the Jewish people played a unique role as God’s chosen people, from whom would come Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. In a real sense the Church became “Catholic” at Pentecost, when God reversed the scattering of peoples at Babel (see Catechism, no. 830).

The covenants made to the patriarchs, to Moses, and to King David all find their fulfillment in the salvation Christ brings to the world. As was promised way back in Genesis, through Abraham and his descendants all the families of the earth will find blessing (Gen. 12:3). This blessing is universal. This blessing is Catholic.

Also published at No Place Like Home, the official blog of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. http://archkckblog.wordpress.com