The Gospel According to Rome

Rating:
Summary: Did the negative reviewers read the book?
Review: After reading the reviews by the Catholics here, which is an assumption on my part because of the negative reviews, I have to ask the question: Did they read the book? I have serious doubts because I have read the book. I also have a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is the offical teachings of the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II says of the Catechism "A sure norm for teaching the Faith". So don't take my word on it, the Catechism is the offical doctine of Catholicism. That being said, I still have to ask the question again. Did the Catholic reviewers read the book, The Gospel According to Rome? Because if they did, they will see that McCarthy backs up all of his conclusions with references to the Catechism and the Bible (comparing the two). I have checked his sources with the offical Catechism, and he quotes truely. And upon examining the quotes FROM THE CATECHISM, I must state that Christianity and Catholicism have very little in common and that Roman Catholicism is a cult that rivals the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Biblical Christianity does not teach most of the Catholic dotrine (I will agree that Catholics have some of it right but...). I challenge any Catholic with the guts to do so to e-mail me, point out the errors in McCarthy's work, and tell me what the truth of the matter is according to Roman Catholicism. My e-mail is [e-mail] and I welcome the challenge. Please, if Catholicism is true, convince me. If it is false, then turn from your evil ways, confess your sins to the Lord Jesus (not Mary), trust in Him as the Source of your salvation (and your ONLY source), and follow Him with the honor, praise, and glory that is His forever and forever. I apologize if I have offended anyone or came across as being too harsh and unloving but I am not going to idlely sit by and let heresy againest my Lord and Savior Jesus to be preached because there are being searching for truth and they need the facts before they can make a decision. E-mail me and help me correct my wrongs if I am indeed wrong.

Rating:
Summary: The Bible is a Catholic publication.
Review: Claiming that the Catholic Church doesn't believe in and misinterprets the Bible is like saying that the founding fathers of the United States didn't believe in the Bill of Rights and, in their later writings, misinterpreted it. That's just nuts. The Bible is a collection of books ("biblia" is Greek for "the books") written over a 1500 year span (Genesis to Revelations) and was compiled by the Church: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

McCarthy is a well known and virulent anti-Catholic. Reading this book to gain a better understanding of Catholicism is like attending a Klan rally to gain a better understanding of race relations. If you're looking for an academic and unbiased understanding of the Catholic faith, look elsewhere.


Rating:
Summary: Right on Target!!
Review: Finally a book written by a well informed former Catholic which compares the doctrines of The Roman Catholic Church with the Bible. He debunks most of the false arguments forwarded by Roman Catholic Apologists like Keatring or Madrid.He does an excellent job at both quoting the sorces correctlty, and not misrepresenting the Roman Catholic Church as is often times done by many Protestant apologists.

Now a word for the reviewer above who endorces Kearing. Yes his book was extremly persuasive, and I thoughht he was right.

THEN CAME THE REAL BOMSHELL!!!

I read the rebutal to that book by Robert Zins called "Romanism". All Kreatings theological arguments were knoked down. Then using Webster's book on church history "Church of Rome at the Bar of History " I saw the false appeal to the church fathers for support his [Keatings] Catholicism.

If your thinking of leaving the Roman Catholic church you own it to yourself to read not only this book, but also Keatings book + it's rebutal. Keep on searching, you'll see Rome is wrong after all.

Rating:
Summary: "Keatring", "Kreatings", "Kearing"???
Review: Hope the reviewer, "Giovanni", can read better than he can spell... not once, not twice but three times he misspelled Karl Keating's name.

I've been reading the Protestant's arguments to see if they've come up with anything new, because they just keep getting knocked down to the mat by the Catholic apologists. And it never fails to amaze me how much ignorance they can spew. After reading the review I commented on though, I'm starting to wonder if they're even literate. There just has to be some excuse for ignorance this widespread.

Rating:
Summary: more anti-catholic claptrap
Review: I can't believe that I spent two nights reading this book. He fails to mention the apostolic tradition, fails to cite historical precidence, fails to mention the various councils, fails to mention the tenants of faith and did not accurately identify the eastern rites of the Catholic Church. All the author did was elaborate on the popular sound bites that are directed against the Catholic Church. In short this is just another hate book aimed at the Catholic Church.

I only wish that I could have rated it below one star

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the best set of 1/2 truths I have ever seen written!
Review: I found this book to be incredible! Never have I read a work that took such time to quote from the Catholic church's writings and to have the quotes arranged in such a clever way as to make one think of a theology completely different than the one intended by the authors! McCarthy did his homework!!! He is clever and witty and for this he deserves much credit! But for his taking the Church's documents out of context, I only feel sorrow for him. With my heart I hope that he somehow completed his work with unintentional ignorance instead of what appears to be deliberate 1/2 truth distortions of what Scripture and the Catholic Church really teaches. My heartfelt prayers for anyone who takes McCarthy's word as authoritative on what Catholics really believe and why they believe this.

If a person is interested in what the Catholic church really teaches please read the Church documents first hand or even through the lens of devout, practicing Catholics such as: Karl Keating, Patrick Madrid, David Currie, and Scott Hahn. But if you are interested in 1/2 truths and seeing just how distorted a teaching can look, then there is no finer book than this one!!!

And as all good Catholic and Protestant believers should - Please pray continuosly and read the Bible!!!

Catechism #2653 says "The Church 'forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful ...to learn 'the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ' (Phil 3:8) by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures ... Let them remember, however, that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that dialogue takes place between God and man. For 'we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles.'

Catechism #2654 says " The spritual writers, paraphrasing Mathew 7:7 summarize in this way the dispositions of the heart nourished by the Word of God in prayer: "Seek in reading and you will find in meditating; knock in mental prayer and it will be opend to you by contemplation"

and finally, Catechism of the Catholic Church #127 says "The fourfold Gospel holds a unique place in the Church, as is evident both in the veneration which the liturgy accords it and in the surpassing attraction it has excercised on the saints at all times: there is no doctrine which could be better, more precious and more splendid than the text of the Gospel. Behold and retain what our Lord and Master, Christ, has taught by his words and accomplished by his deeds.

But above all it's the Gospel's that occupy my mind when I'm at prayer; my poor soul has so many needs, and yet this is the one thing needful. I'm always finding fresh lights there, hidden and enthralling meanings."

Rating:
Summary: Thinking about leaving the Catholic Church?
Review: I gave this book 5 stars because of its lucid and heart-felt style written in a respectful and caring way. This book dives deep into some of the core teachings of Rome, and explains how MANY of the doctrines handed down are not only absent from Holy Writ, but in direct violation of them.

Written from a perspective of a former Roman Catholic, and endorsed by those who have been involved with the church (priests,nuns, ect.), McCarthy leaves few stones unturned. Though many Catholics today are trying to change things, the fact remains that the Pope is still the boss, vicar, and head of a false church. Martin Luther tried to change it in the sixteenth century, but as he found, the only way for a true Christian to respond to the Papacy is to GET OUT, and find a Bible Beliveing church.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good and Informative
Review: I was surprised at the things that I had learned, This book is an excellent source for refuting the claims and teachings of the RCC. Mr. McCarthy is Christian in his spirit uppon offering some of his pointers concerning the teachings of Scripture, and how they differ from the modern day Catholic Movement.

Rating:
Summary: Author is sadly uninformed--full of misinterpretations
Review: If I could have given it a lower rating than 1 I would have. This is another twisted tale that claims to know all about the "Roman" Catholic Church. Something that has amused and comfused me since becoming Catholic in 1987 is why do those outside the Catholic Church insist on calling it the "Roman" Catholic Church? First of all, the Catholic Church has about 20 or so liturgical rites of the Mass, including both Eastern Catholic (not the same as the Orthodox faith) and Western Catholic. The Roman rite is only one of these rites. While the Roman rite's priests take vows of celibacy, the Eastern Catholic rites' priests do not and are allowed to marry. This is all very historic and Biblical, provided you have proper interpretation of scripture. It seems to me that this author did not really write this book from "inside" the Catholic faith, where he would have been expected to have a Catholic source or Catholic theologian as his guide. Even though he claims to use the Catholic Catechism as a guide, it is quite apparent that he does not have the background to properly interpret it. If he needs help, have him call me and my friends at my Catholic prayer group. We'll make sure that he gets the true interpretation. It just saddens me but doesn't surprise me, that this author, like so many others, has come to the false conclusions and misrepresentations that he has in this book. Usually they start with the wrong, biased conclusions, and seek to take scripture out of context to support their beliefs, rather than honestly trying to look for the truth.
As our favorite, the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said, "There are not 100 people in the world who hate the Catholic Church; but there are MILLIONS who hate WHAT THEY MISTAKENLY THINK that the Catholic Church is." How true. One thing that impressed me about the Catholic church is that we can trace any Catholic priest's or bishop's ordinations straight back to Christ. What other denomination can do that? None. The Catholic Mass is VERY Biblical as well as the rest of Catholic beliefs and practices. What is funny is that anti-Catholic diatribes such as this one seek to destroy the teaching authority of the magisterium by only listening to the Bible as sole rule of faith and authority, and then they go about and interpret the Bible their way, thus becoming another so-called "teacher" who claims authority. It's quite ironic. Especially since the Bible itself says it is not the entire authority. To attempt to destroy the authority of the Catholic church's magisterium is to attempt to destroy Jesus, for it was He who established it in the first place. If the author's intention was to bring people closer to Christ, then he has failed miserably, because Christ is in His Catholic Church. I cannot recommend this book at all, unless you want fiction. This book is just plainly not based on any facts.


Rating:
Summary: Thinking about leaving the Catholic Church?
Review: If you are thinking about leaving the Catholic Church, you owe it to yourself to read Jim McCarthy's book. He is very articulate and presents his case in an easy to understand format. You might want to read the work of other similar authors who hold the same position about this "false church". After reading McCarthy's work and listening to his radio shows, I left the Catholic Church, that everyone knows is a cult for "real" christianity and joined a "bible teaching" church. I grew up spiritually and was born again. Life was good!

THEN CAME THE BOMBSHELL:
I picked up a book called "Catholicism & Fundamentalism" by Karl Keating. Keating's work exposed serious flaws in almost all of the "anti-catholic" fundamentalist arguments including the accusations false teaching, false gospel, paganism, Anti-Christ, "Whore of Babylon" stuff and idolatry. The Inquisition was horrible and is clearly an embarrassment to the Church, but the details and number of victims have become very distorted over time. An objective study of that time in history is warranted. The Catholic Church is far from perfect but it is certainly NOT the monster that some make it out to be. Shocking still was the discovery that the Protestants had an Inquisition (albeit smaller) of their own! I was surprised to discover that well meaning, highly educated and very sincere Christian writers like Jim McCarthy really do not understand what Rome actually teaches and as a result, give a mistaken representation of catholic doctrine....then attack the misrepresentation. Catholics who are not well grounded in the fundamentals of Catholicism are vulnerable to being misled by sincere but misinformed people like Mr.McCarthy. Fundamentalists sincerely want you to be "saved" but their arguments are unfortunately based upon 400 year old myths and misrepresentations, and Keating proves it beyond any doubt. Go ahead and Buy Jim McCarthy's book.....But, before you leave the Catholic Church,you owe it to yourself to read Keating's work also. Keating debunks the myths about the Catholic Church and might just keep you from making a fool of yourself like I did. Sorry Jim, Rome is right after all....I am now in the process of being humbly reunited with the Catholic Church.