Do you consider Catholics part of the larger Christian family? Why or why not?

Not only do I consider Catholics to be Christian, I tend to consider non-Catholics in light of how near or far they are to Catholicism.

And, yes, I know. I should just up and convert already. But I do have religious obligations in my current denomination that I have vowed to perform. I can and do perform them without any betrayal of my conscience or theology, and I think it is imperative that we stick to our vows to the greatest reasonable extent. Otherwise, what would my vows upon entering the Catholic church mean?

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You are a Christian if you belong to Jesus Christ.

I believe that many Catholics are Christians, and many are not.

I believe that many protestants are Christians and many are not.

I disagree with some of the things that Catholics teach, but their theology is most certainly Christian.

I also believe that people can belong to non-Christian or quasi-Christian organizations (such as JW's and Mormons) and in spite of their ignorance can still be saved. Jesus is a being of volition, and if he wants to save you he can regardless of your theological misunderstandings.

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Most certainly! Although I was raised in a religious context that considered the Catholic Church as "The W***e of Babylon," moving full speed down the line straight to hell, along with the ignorant Protestants in the Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian arena, none of them real Christians. Dude, most Baptists weren't even real Christian. Just. Us. Pentecostals!

While I don't agree with all the dogma of Rome (if I did, I'd have to become Roman, yes?) - I deeply appreciate the Roman Church, and the great gifts it has brought to the world. And, whether Protestants like it or not, along with Orthodoxy, the Roman Church has a stake in the ground much older than anyone else's.

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Sure, but first a bit about the Immaculate Conception. The doctrine states that by a special grace the Virgin was conceived without original sin. Original Sin is a doctrine that emerges with Augustine, takes root in the West, isn't found in the patristics or the Eastern church. So, the doctrine of I.C. is a necessity to deal with Mary being actually sinless - she couldn't be actually sinless if born with Original Sin. But if the doctrine of Original Sin is rejected, then the whole I.C. becomes a mute point.

Soteriology: The problems start with Augustine (again), who incredibly influenced the whole of Western theology. It expands in later medieval times with Anselm's Why God Became Man. Anselm, too, influenced the West. The Protestant Reformers took it even further, with their Anselmian/Augustinian base of understanding, and developed the whole Penal Substitutionary Atonement doctrine.

In short, the West tends to look at the whole salvation thing as juridical - mankind (through Adam, original sin, and "sinful nature") is conceived and born under the wrath of God - estranged from God, worthy only of damnation, and (here is the important point) unable to pay God for their sin So God (who is disposed by necessity of his being to bewrathful toward fallen man) sends his Son to become incarnate, live and die as a sinless man, and pay (pay whom? Pay God!) for our sins in order for us to be forgiven. Forgiveness, then, isn't forgiveness as we are taught by Jesus to forgive (not looking for repayment), but forgiveness is only achieved through someone - an innocent someone -paying God on our behalf.

The question emerges, why is God's forgiveness something to be bought? Isn't forgiveness the canceling of sin/debt (consider the parables of Jesus on the subject)?

Forgiveness then becomes a very transactional thing. We sin, we pull the right lever (baptism, confession, or if you are Protestant, walking the aisle, kneeling by the side of your bed confessing your sins to God, whatever), and God gives us a dose of forgiveness to cover us until the next time.

It's all about how God sees us. Juridical. Courtroom decisions. Bookkeeping. Balancing columns.

The patristic (and Eastern) model is more wholistic: Adam sinned, and by his sin let sin and death into the world. The original mandate, "Don't eat from the tree or you will die," was not a threat, but a warning. It wasn't, "Don't eat from the tree or I will kill you, it was a warning of, "That tree is spiritually poison, don't eat from it, it will kill you." Sin enters the world, a kind of spiritual disease, and it gets passed on to all of us from Adam (the closest this view comes to Original Sin). But it isn't something in our nature, it's something we have (Read Romans 7 in light of this).

God's disposition toward us was not one of wrath, but love - "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son..." - it was a rescue operation from the get-go. The idea was not for Jesus to pay God, or to pay for our sins, but for the Son to assume our humanity, take on the disease, die from it (the consequence of sin is death) and to beat the disease - to rise again, victorious, having conquered hell.

And when he rises from the dead, he says, in effect, "I am the antidote to the spiritual disease and its consequences!" "Eat my flesh, drink my blood." We have a relationship with God through Christ.

I still have the disease, but I'm getting better, because Christ is in me. And on the last day, I too am going to conquer the disease. I'm going to kick sin and death in the teeth in the resurrection. Not because God was againstme but has now been appeased by the payment of Christ on the cross, but because God has been for me all along. While I was yet a sinner, he loved me. And everyone else, for that matter.

Salvation, then, is not a juridical thing ("Because of Christ I've been moved from one column to the next, I've been pronounced innocent though I am guilty), not a transactional thing ("I've done the right things, I've pulled the right lever, I get the right allotment of forgiveness."), but a healing thing (the Greek word sozo is the word for healing, made whole, and salvation in the N.T.).

from reddit.