The Catholic must be particularly frustrating for you. The non-Catholic perception is that Catholics worship tradition, count beads for salvation, etc., etc.; following an old stodgy tradition that preserved God’s word for 1,500 years before dutifully handing that Word, verbatim mind you, to the Protestants to be properly reinterpreted. I'm sure you'd like to tell the Catholic, “your statues and scrolls are condemned by our common sense," (G.K. Chesterton). It's logical to think that after some 2,000 years of teaching Christ's word Catholics should add some sparkling new element to their old traditions and fuddy-duddy dogma.
I guess we've been found out, you noticed there seems to be an ensnarement? Surly you would think that all Catholics need to do is read the bible, denounce transubstantiation, denounce oral confession, denounce the clergy, and without a hint of a shudder, denounce the Pope in order to be properly saved according to a Protestant determination (assuming you could figure out which one). In fact Protestant's ask that Catholics denounce most all that is holy and salvific in the Sacraments.
But, the Snare? The problem though isn't the Church, its something closer to home. It's hard to explain, so I'll let C. K. Chesterton explain how it works:
”It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair. The man has exactly the same sense of having…compromised himself; of having been in a sense entrapped, even if he is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real psychological experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and is responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere trap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is not the Pope who has set the trap or the priests who have baited it. The whole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth. The whole point is that the man himself has made his way towards the trap of truth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps except the last step he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of interest in the truth; and even the last step, or the last stage, only alarms him because it is so very true". [The Catholic Church and Conversion]
Luther's own words tell us what his intentions were as early as 1520 A.D. From the onset Luther’s goal was to destroy the Church. There was no attempt at ‘reform’ or ‘correction’ from a gloss we can see schism early in Luther’s career. His main goal was to tear down what Christ had built up. Considering himself a great prophet on the order of Moses, the great deceiver openly declared his desire to disrupt the Mass:
If I succeed in doing away with the Mass, then I shall believe I have completely conquered the Pope. On the Mass, as on a rock, the whole of the Papacy is based, with its monasteries, bishoprics, colleges, altars, services and doctrines. ... If the sacrilegious and cursed custom of Mass is overthrown, then the whole must fall. Through me Christ has begun to reveal the abomination standing in the Holy Place (Dan. ix. 27), and to destroy him [the Papal Antichrist] who has taken up his seat there with the devils help, with false miracles and deceiving signs. (Grisar, Luther, Vol. II, pg 320 seqq., London Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., LTD., Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, E.G., 1913)
By the way, just so you're aware, she didn't fall.
JosephT
