There are subjects that make a room go quiet, not because they are unimportant, but because they are personal. For many people, Catholicism is not an abstract institution. It is a grandmother’s prayers, a childhood parish, a funeral Mass, a sense of identity, and memories of sincere devotion. So if we are going to examine Catholic claims in the light of Scripture, we must do it with clean hands and a tender conscience, refusing both cruelty and cowardice. Scripture calls us to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), and it also warns that love which never warns is not love at all. The watchman image is sobering: if danger is real and we stay silent, we share guilt (Ezekiel 33:6).
That is the spirit I want to keep here. This is not an attack on individual Catholics, many of whom truly desire God, practice discipline, and show admirable reverence. It is, rather, an examination of whether certain official Catholic doctrines and practices align with the “once for all” apostolic faith delivered in Scripture (Jude 1:3). If we love people, we do not merely affirm their sincerity. We also ask whether the system guiding their sincerity is faithful to Christ.
From a persecuted, simple church to an imperial institution
The New Testament picture of the early church is remarkably simple: believers devoted to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, prayer, and the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42). It was not protected by political power. It was purified through suffering. Stephen’s martyrdom (Acts 7) and James’s execution under Herod (Acts 12:2) remind us how early Christian witness often ended.
As Christianity spread through the Roman world, persecution intensified at times, including the brutality associated with Nero after the Great Fire of Rome, where Christians were scapegoated and subjected to cruel public punishments (Tacitus, c. 116/Annals 15.44, as presented in a reliable compilation: Livius, n.d.). The point is not to romanticize suffering, but to notice what suffering often preserves: clarity. When confessing Christ could cost your life, you had less incentive to build a religious culture around prestige, spectacle, or political advantage.
Then the fourth century brought a real turning point. Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge (312) and the subsequent Edict of Milan (313) ended official persecution and granted legal toleration for Christianity (Hudson,2025; Britannica, 2019). This was, in one sense, mercy. Christians could worship openly. Yet it also opened the door to a new temptation: state influence over the church, and the church’s increasing resemblance to imperial structure.
It is historically responsible to say that this period marked a major institutional shift toward an imperially supported Christianity. What is harder, and where Christians often argue, is exactly how much “pagan blending” occurred, and by what mechanisms. Some claims in popular preaching are overstated. Still, serious historians do recognize that the Constantinian and post-Constantinian eras involved complex negotiations between Christian worship, Roman civic life, and inherited religious culture (for an accessible discussion of continuity and tension in that transition, see: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2023). So even before we touch specific doctrines, we are looking at a basic question: when the church gains cultural power, does she remain anchored to Scripture, or does she begin to treat extra-biblical tradition as equally binding?
Tradition versus Scripture: a first diagnostic question
Jesus rebuked religious leaders who elevated tradition to a level that displaced God’s command. His words are not a minor footnote: “They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines human commands” (Mark 7:6–8). That warning is the first diagnostic test for any Christian tradition, Protestant or Catholic. What assumptions underlie our acceptance of a practice: is it clearly taught by the apostles, or has it become “normal” simply because it is old and widely practiced?
Catholicism explicitly teaches that divine revelation is transmitted through both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition as interpreted by the Church’s teaching office (the Magisterium) (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997). That claim, by itself, forces the Protestant conscience to ask: where does Scripture authorize a parallel stream of binding revelation that can define dogma beyond what the biblical text teaches plainly?
The “rock” of the church: Peter or Christ?
Catholic apologetics frequently roots papal authority in Jesus’ words to Peter: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Official Catholic teaching presents the Bishop of Rome as Peter’s successor with a unique primacy and authority (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997).
Yet the New Testament repeatedly centers the foundation in Christ himself. Paul writes, “No one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). He also identifies Christ as the spiritual rock (1 Corinthians 10:4). Peter, strikingly, calls Jesus the “living stone” and “cornerstone,” while believers are “living stones” built upon him (1 Peter 2:4–8). And the church is described as built on the foundation of apostles and prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2:19–20).
So the Protestant concern is not that Peter mattered; he did. The concern is whether later papal claims exceed what Scripture actually grants to any one apostle. If Christ is the cornerstone, what do we gain by relocating that anchoring role to a continuing office centered in Rome?
Titles and reverence: “Holy Father,” and the danger of religious elevation
Jesus’ instruction, “Do not call anyone on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9), lands uncomfortably when popes are publicly addressed as “Holy Father.” Catholic sources defend the title as honor for an office, not a claim that the pope is morally perfect (Catholic Answers, n.d.).
A thoughtful Protestant reply is not, “Catholics never have an explanation,” but rather, “Is the explanation faithful to the force of Jesus’ warning?” The deeper issue is spiritual posture. When Peter saw Cornelius fall at his feet, he lifted him up: “Stand up. I myself am also a man” (Acts 10:26). And worship belongs to God alone (Matthew 4:10). Whatever one calls it, when physical gestures and religious titles blur the line between honor and a kind of sacralized reverence, the church should tremble rather than rationalize.
Confession and absolution: who can forgive sins?
Catholicism teaches a sacramental confession in which priests, by Christ’s authority, pronounce absolution (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997). Catholics often connect this to Jesus’ words in John 20:23.
Yet the same catechetical section also affirms, “Only God forgives sins” (CCC 1441) while explaining the priest’s role as ministerial participation in Christ’s work (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997). Protestants typically respond: Scripture calls believers to confess sins and promises that God forgives directly (1 John 1:9), and salvation is in Christ alone (Acts 4:12). The question becomes painfully practical: if the veil is torn and access is open, why build a system where forgiveness is normatively administered through a human intermediary (Hebrews 10:19–22)?
Mary and the saints: intercession, repetition, and the “Queen of Heaven” problem
Catholic piety commonly includes asking Mary and the saints to intercede, grounded in the “communion of saints” (CCC 962) and the belief that the saints in glory care for the church on earth (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997). Catholic theology also distinguishes between worship owed to God and veneration offered to saints, with special honor given to Mary (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997).
Still, 1 Timothy 2:5 is blunt: there is “one mediator” between God and humanity, Christ Jesus. Catholic apologists argue that subordinate intercession does not compete with Christ’s unique mediation (see a representative defense: Staples, 2013). Protestants answer that the act of prayer itself is inherently religious address, and Scripture models prayer directed to God, through Christ, in the Spirit. The concern is not whether Christians can pray for one another (they should), but whether addressing departed saints in prayer is biblically warranted.
This is where some believers raise another alarm: Scripture forbids attempts to contact the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). Ecclesiastes stresses the finality of death’s earthly knowledge (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Isaiah contrasts the living’s praise with the silence of the grave (Isaiah 38:18–19). Catholics will respond that the saints are not “dead” in the annihilating sense, but alive to God. Yet the Protestant unease remains: where does Scripture ever show believers addressing departed saints in prayer?
The title “Queen of Heaven” intensifies that unease. Catholic teaching explicitly uses royal language for Mary, including the claim that she is exalted as “Queen over all things” (CCC 966) (USCCB Catechism text, n.d.), and Pope Pius XII formally promoted Mary’s queenship in Ad Caeli Reginam (Pius XII, 1954). Protestants then notice that Jeremiah condemns offerings to “the queen of heaven” as idolatry that provokes God’s anger (Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 44:17–19). Scholars commonly identify Jeremiah’s “queen of heaven” with ancient Near Eastern goddess worship, often linked to Ishtar/Astarte traditions (Jewish Bible Quarterly, 2008). Even if a Catholic insists the term is redefined Christologically, a fair question remains: why adopt a biblically tainted title at all, especially when the human heart is so quick to slide from honor into devotion that competes with God?
Then there is the rosary. Catholic sources present the rosary as a Marian devotion that contemplates Christ’s mysteries and is widely encouraged (CCC 971) (USCCB Catechism text, n.d.). Historically, the rosary developed over centuries and became strongly associated with medieval devotional life (for a scholarly discussion of its development, see: JSTOR article, n.d.). Protestants raise two concerns: first, the repeated “Hail Mary” directed to Mary; second, the practice of structured repetition, which appears to conflict with Jesus’ warning against “vain repetitions” in prayer (Matthew 6:7). Catholics reply that repetition is not automatically vain if the heart is engaged. Protestants answer: granted, repetition can be sincere, but why normalize a method that so easily becomes mechanical, especially when it includes prayer addressed to someone other than God?
Mary’s sinlessness and perpetual virginity: what does Scripture actually say?
Catholic doctrine includes the Immaculate Conception (Mary preserved from original sin) defined as dogma in 1854 (Ineffabilis Deus) (Pius IX, 1854). Protestant readers compare this with the plain universality of sin: “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23), and with Mary’s own language of rejoicing in “God my Savior” (Luke 1:46–47). The concern is not to dishonor Mary. Scripture calls her blessed. The concern is that declaring her sinless risks functionally deifying her, and Scripture is severe about any self-claim to sinlessness (1 John 1:8).
On perpetual virginity, Protestants point to Matthew’s statement that Joseph did not have marital relations with Mary “until” she gave birth (Matthew 1:25), and to multiple references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Mark 6:3). Catholics have longstanding interpretive responses, but again the question is simple: does Scripture teach perpetual virginity clearly, or is it an inference elevated to dogma?
Works, indulgences, and purgatory: is Christ’s atonement sufficient?
Here we touch the nerve center: the gospel itself. Scripture insists salvation is by grace through faith, not works (Ephesians 2:8–9). Paul explicitly contrasts grace and works (Romans 11:6) and warns that adding law-keeping as a basis of righteousness empties the cross of its necessity (Galatians 2:21).
Catholic theology does not usually say, “Christ is unnecessary.” It says that grace initiates and empowers a life of faith working through love, and it formally articulated its doctrine of justification at the Council of Trent (1547) (Council of Trent, Session VI text, 1547). Protestants respond that Trent’s framework still implies a system where justification can be increased, maintained, and repaired through sacraments and works in a way that conflicts with Paul’s argument that justification is a gift received by faith (Romans 3:24–28; Romans 4:5).
Indulgences add another layer. The Catechism defines indulgences in connection with temporal punishment and the sacrament of penance (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992/1997). Whatever modern Catholics do or do not practice personally, the underlying logic troubles Protestants: if Christ “canceled the record of debt” by the cross (Colossians 2:13–14), what debt remains that must be paid down through ecclesial mechanisms?
Purgatory presses that question further. The Catechism teaches a “final purification” after death for those who die in God’s grace but remain imperfectly purified (CCC 1030–1031) (Vatican Catechism text, n.d.). Protestants contrast this with the New Testament’s emphasis on the sufficiency and finality of Christ’s offering: “By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10–14). They also note the immediacy implied in the believer’s death: to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8); to depart is “to be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23); and Jesus’ promise to the repentant thief was “today” (Luke 23:43). If Christ’s righteousness is imputed and believers are presented holy in him (Colossians 1:22), what theological need remains for a post-mortem purgation that functions like an additional satisfaction?
Stepping back: what kind of Christianity keeps Christ at the center?
If we step back, a pattern emerges. Many contested doctrines and devotions involve extra mediators, extra merits, extra rites, and extra purifications, precisely where the New Testament insists on Christ’s unique and sufficient priesthood. That is why this discussion is not “mere denominational preference.” It is about the location of our confidence. Are we resting in Christ alone, or in Christ plus an elaborate spiritual economy?
So here is a gentle but serious set of questions to sit with. When we pray, whom do we address, and why? When we fail, where do we run first: to Christ directly, or to a system that makes forgiveness feel more procedural than personal? When we speak of salvation, do we sound like people who have received a gift, or like people trying to keep a spiritual account from falling into deficit?
My hope is not that Catholics feel mocked, but that every reader, Catholic and Protestant alike, returns to the simple radiance of the gospel: Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, sufficient, present, and near. If you have been burdened by religious performance, hear the invitation again. He is not a partial Savior. He does not share his mediatorship with others. He is able to save completely those who come to God through him (Hebrews 7:25). And if you are already in him, you do not need to negotiate your way back into the Father’s presence. You are welcomed because of the Son.