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Most Protestants have ideas about the Catholic Church and Catholic doctrine which are completely wrong. This is because some protestant churchs have made a concerted effort to discredit Catholicism.

The following are the correct views of what the Catholic Church really teaches.

1. Salvation comes through Christ and His work of redemption. There is no other way.
2. Christ established the church as a unified, visible institution composed of believers, the “body of Christ.” This is, of course, the Catholic Church.
3. The mission of the church is (1) to provide correct doctrine and fight heresy, (2) to provide unity among believers, and (3) to provide for the sacramental blessings.
4. Doctrine has developed over the centuries and that is what God intended.
5. The Protestant “reformers” in their zeal to address the corruption of church leaders went too far and corrupted essential doctrines such as the nature of sin, salvation, and the church. This destroyed the unity of the church that Christ intended which is evidenced by the continuing splintering and fragmenting of the Protestant denominations, each having their own particular doctrinal distinctives which contradict one another. How can we believe any of these?
6. The Catholic Church does not teach Catholics to worship Mary or the Saints, nor to worship idols.
7. The Early Church Fathers accurately received correct doctrine and passed it on to the next generation.
8. Even Protestants accept certain Catholic doctrinal formulations, for example, the Trinity.
9. Catholics do not believe in salvation by works.
10. Catholics do not believe that Protestants are unsaved.
11. Catholics do not believe that membership in the Catholic Church guarantees salvation.
12. Catholics look to the Church Fathers for the understanding of certain truths as do Protestants. Examples are (1) the list of books in the Canon, (2) the doctrine of the inerrency of the Bible, and (3) the formulation of the Trinity. The difference is that Protestants pretend that they don’t consider the Church Fathers as authoritative even though they really do in these important issues.
13. The Catholic Church is the true church as established by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Protestant denominations are the “separated brethren” because they have separated themselves from the one true church.
14. Protestants must believe that the first generation of Church Fathers after the apostles fell into apostasy and that this apostasy continued until the time of Martin Luther who restored the true teachings of Christ. If this is true then why don’t all Protestants become Lutherans since this is the church that Luther founded? And why do most Protestants deny many of the teachings of Luther if he was so wise or anointed by God to be the one person in 1,500 years who finally properly understood the Bible’s teaching? For example,Luther, Calvin and other reformers believed the same basic doctrines concerning Mary that the Catholic Church does.
15. When Jesus Christ came into this physical universe He imbued it with His Divine essence in a very real and mystical sense. Catholics seek to experience the divinity of Christ and use the various symbols, icons and other religious artifacts to assist. Catholics do not worship any of these things but worship the God who is represented in them.
16. The Bible is inerrent.
17. The Bible cannot be properly interpreted without an divinely-sanctioned interpretation authority (which is the Catholic Church). Protestants dispute this point, but if they were correct then all Protestants would agree on the proper interpretation of the Bible. Of course, they don’t agree at all, and each denomination has its own particular interpretations and set of doctrines and all claim that their own particular interpretation is the true, biblically based one.
18. When Jesus said, “this is my body,” He meant it. This provides the basis for the Eucharist. Catholics have a different perspective about what the words of Jesus mean – they believe His words are absolutely true in their very essence. In contrast, Protestants believe that Jesus is merely teaching principles of truth which we can apply in our lives. This robs Christ of His divinity and holiness.
19. Church leaders, including the pope, are human and subject to the same weakness and fallibility as anyone else. This accounts for the historical problems with the church. But just as the God-ordained, Old Testament nation of Israel was God’s true institution even though the leaders became corrupt, so the Catholic Church is the true church. The working and indwelling of Holy Spirit in the church guarantees that it will be free from error in matters of faith and morals, and this includes doctrinal formulations.
20. The church is free to change the rules regarding the practice of the church. These things are not absolute and unchanging as we see in the New Testament church, which went through three stages within that short time period.

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