Posted on 05/24/2004 9:17:25 PM PDT by churchillbuff
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- As president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, John Giles is no stranger to a pew. Yet he remembers well the time he got lost in a Roman Catholic church.
"I couldn't even follow the order of service, it was so foreign to me," Giles says of that day some six years ago.
Since then he's found his way and a new home in the Roman Catholic church a home that might seem foreign to the overwhelmingly Protestant church population of Alabama.
"I have to admit to you that the whole time that I was in that church service, I was reduced to tears, and I couldn't explain it," Giles said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.
"In fact," he jokes, "you would have thought I had been spending the whole weekend down at the House of the Rising Sun down in New Orleans, that I had all this sin in my life that I had to get out."
In any case, Giles and his wife, Deborah, were received into the Catholic Church at St. Peter's Parish in Montgomery on Easter Sunday.
Such a decision normally wouldn't be a matter of public interest, but Giles says he anticipated the questions that have followed his conversion from the Protestant faith.
"It would be nice if my private, Christian walk could be my private, Christian walk, but it's very difficult in my job for that to be the case," he says.
Giles says he knew the questions would come because as a Protestant he, too, had mistaken notions about Catholics. And the most frequent question he gets from his friends is "why?"
With that in mind he wrote an eight-page letter explaining his reasoning. In it, he explains that he had attended a variety of Protestant churches in Montgomery, including Christian Life Church and River of Life Church.
But once he visited the Roman Catholic church, he found himself in awe of its history and ritual, particularly its use of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch in each service.
Trips to Israel and Rome spurred his curiosity. And the deeper he looked into the faith which is the largest in the United States but lags behind Southern Baptists and other Protestant denominations in the South the more he says he realized that many of his beliefs about Catholicism had been wrong.
"There is a perception among Protestants you kind of have this perception that if you're Episcopal or Catholic, you're not even saved, you're not born again, which is totally a myth," he says.
He recalls one example from the New Year's holiday, which he spent in Florida with the chairman of his board. He had told the chairman of his and Deborah's plans to convert, and he says they were well-received.
"But we went to some other friends of theirs' house on one of the nights we were down there," Giles remembers. "And so we're sitting around visiting and this one lady was teaching a Sunday School class on cults. And she began to name off all the cults that she'd be teaching and named Catholic in there."
He acknowledges that the reaction by his Protestant constituents may be mixed.
"We didn't make this change to win friends and influence people and do it from a popularity standpoint, because we knew that in the state of Alabama, this is probably not a popular position to take in the Christian movement," he says. "So it remains to be seen."
But he hopes they, like he and his wife, will keep an open mind.
"We hope that we could have a small contribution to building bridges where there weren't bridges," he says. "Because Christians are Christians. There's no such thing as Christians and Catholics."
In my NIV it says:
John 6:63 ".... the words I have spoken to you are spirit" and I have always understood this statement to be a spiritual thing, not physical in the sense you believe. There is another passage; can't think of where right now and I've gotta get back to work but Jesus chastises them for taking it literally.
Anyway, for whatever it's worth. You have your beliefs and I have mine. I've read Scott what's-his-face's book and even that wasn't enough to convince me you're right.
Yep, sure was, that Go back and look at the titles of the Emperors and the titles taken on by the Roman Bishops. Pretty much all transplants of form or literally. Remember your history? Odoacer was made Patrician and ruled as the "Vicar of the Eastern Emperor." Language usage does derive from certain places. It just so happened that this appears to have been common terminology amongst the ruling class of the Roman Empire. So, as with other titles...
I'm sorry you can't read history books. Perhaps you ought to.
Really? I can't remember dodging a request for a scripture reference. Might you point that out?
We've been through this dead thing before, so I'll keep it brief.
"And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in Heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God
(Rev.)
The prohibitions you refer to are grouped with witchcraft, sorcery, and refer to the common pagan practice of necromancy - by name in Deut. You can look up necromancy to see the difference, but it's akin to a seance - nothing like the doctrine of communion of saints.
We believe as St. Paul did that at death the saint's soul is separated from his body and: "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."
And also as St. Paul believed when, referring to the OT saints, he says: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses
"
We believe as our Lord taught ( in contradicting the position you share with the Sadducees):
"But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
Finally, if we follow your teaching, we must also condemn Jesus:
"And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus."
Yep, that's the one. Even posted where the commentary came from and how others could get it to check it. It's good that you posted the link so people could see the entire exchange for themselves.. including the offer of proof of where the quotation came from and direction on how to get the audio. But, by all means, you're doing the painting here. Don't let my words get in the way of your subjective editorializing. LOL
Odoacer was a Byzantine Christian Emperor. You said Augustus Caesar.
No, I didn't say that. I said something quite different. You keep forgetting all the "Christian" people that you guys slaughtered through the years for not recognizing Rome as an authority. If we can't say by what we see in scripture that you meet the definition of beeing Christian, we can't assume that because you label someone a heretic that it holds any water. I believe that, if memory serves, Writings of the Waldensians survived the attempt to destroy them all and exist still in France.. putting egg on the face of the Catholic church and earning them rebuke for their slanders of those people. Catholicism has never been the only game. And Theodosius started the trend of getting rid of anyone that didn't follow the "catholic" version of things. When you murder the competition, then try to tell everyone there wasn't anyone else, you got some splainin to do. rofl
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Monks couldn't produce Bibles in the bulk needed to put them in the hands of commoners. Nor did they print them in the people's languages so that they could fully comprehend God's word. Sorry; but, nice try.
***And of course, there is no question that this is wine as we commonly understand it...and not grape juice.****
Sorry, no argument from me on that!
And again, Revelation is prophecy to be interpreted as prophecy. You've stated nothing from revelation that gives any basis.
Second, the prohibitions cover all forms of communicating with the dead. It doesn't matter which you pick.
Third, Absent the Body - present with God isn't an argument for communicating with the Dead. Nor did Paul preach that.
Nor did Paul preach that communicating with the dead was either possible or allowed.
Paul using a rhetorical device doesn't mean you can communicate with the dead. Their past lives served as witness and that is all he said.
and on this point..
"But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
God of the living refers to Spiritual life. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were long dead physically. And as Revelation tells us that the resurrection of the Body won't happen till the end, you haven't one leg to stand on in trying to call this a matter of physical life. In short, you're confusing spiritual life with physical life in an attempt to decieve. Sorry, it' isn't there.
As far as condemning Jesus, I must do no such thing. Jesus himself stated that the appearance of Moses and Elias was a vision - not a visitation. Been over that too.
So you throw out the claims and I knock 'em down. Are we to assume that you think continuing to state things that are so easily knocked down and proven wrong is proof of something? .. well, beyond the obvious fact that ignoring facts is the only way you can make such irresponsible statements of error.
And unfortunately, the Catholic Church is the number one promoter in chr*stendom of the blasphemous "documentary hypothesis" (it's even taught on the official Vatican web site). When he runs into that stuff I hope his instincts kick in. I tried to remain in the church and reject this nonsense, but I was eventually convinced that I was too rebellious and didn't belong. There are a few Catholics who accept Mosaic authorship, Biblical inerrancy, and creationism, but they are a distinct minority and they aren't going to get anywhere. The Protestant "revolt" filled the Catholic Church with such a revulsion of "private interpretation" that now the belief is that evolution is almost required to illustrate that the Bible doesn't mean what it seems to say.
You never stop lying.
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