vintage Havocial! Dancing around the truth!
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."
I appreciate advice on this topic from one so masterful as you, but no, I'm interested in truth.
Jesus told them it was a vision and not to tell anyone of it till later. You're the one fighting his words, not I LOL. It isn't like people can't go to scripture and look it up. The conversation in reference to this is also well documented in countless threads here on FR. You guys just cover your ears and scream when it's pointed out. Sorry you can't handle it.
Can you interpret a Green light at an intersection any way you choose?
A book can be authoritative, but it cannot be an authority, supreme or otherwise. An authority is necessarily a person or collection of persons.
I am quite certain, therefore, that the Catholic Church does not see the Bible as "supreme authority," because that would be to place the Bible in a position that belongs to God.
And I doubt very much that Baptists think they place the Bible in a position of authority higher than that of God, either.
By the way, when the Bible commands obedience to Church authority (Heb 13:17, 2 Tm 2:2, Mt 18:17) is it not commanding that we recognize an authority over and above our personal views about what the Bible teaches?
Not being entirely forthright are we. LOL. Never expect you to be either.
Well thanks for clearing that up! Next!
I'll take a "redneck" preacher over a catholic priest any day of the week. Repeat after me the Pope is just a man, a priest cannot forgive you at confession only through Jesus Christ is that possible. There are not "saints" on this planet we are all sinners. Repeat after me again the pope is just a man and mary was a mortal women, she and he shouldn't be worshipped.
Well, we'll just expose your lie all over again, lest anyone be duped by you. Does the original Gospel use the English word 'vision?' Which word, in which language, is used?
As you'll notice in post #328, you can't argue with supposed divinities
I'm a boston irish Catholic - catholic grade school, high school and college. I'm a professional Catholic essentially.
I have been to protestant masses and they seem very odd to me. Not because I have anything against them. It's just that, they were so unstructured and one (a congregational mass) seemed like it was thrown together. I felt no historical connection to the church.
I can't see being anything but Catholic - but that is my persoanl feeling.
Havoc is superbly equipped to stand before a purple light, point at it and say it is green, and that anyone who disagrees with him is a no-good lying cath-o-lick who is going to hell, and by the way is also colluding with the Bush administration to outsource his job to India and slur his good character, despite his arduous struggles with a handicap.
Let's at least look at the citation in context (from the NIV)...
60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" 61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? 62 What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe."
There is another way to look at this. It is a confirmation that we don't have to expect to be eating raw meat at the altar to know we eat the flesh of the Lord. It is the Spirit inhabiting the offering that matters.
Words of the Liturgy of the Eucharist: "Let Your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy."
Strange the story changes with every post. It is a joy to watch.
Could you please direct me to the verse in the Bible where Peter is called a "Pope".
Ah, well, you see, we Catholics don't rely on scripture ALONE. If you do your research into church history, you would see that the Bishop of Rome was affirmed head of the Catholic church during the reign of Peter, which is certainly reflected in Jesus' repeated admonitions to Peter (not any of the other Apostles) to "tend his sheep," and "feed his flock". I don't have the exact chapter and verse to memory (I'm sure you know where it is, since you rely on scripture alone to form your faith).
But as long as we're on the subject of scripture, show ME where God commands, "divide my Church 20,000 times..."
Most Catholic detractors have no idea that the Church presents EVERY SINGLE WORD of Scripture to the faithful during Mass over the course of three years. Every mundanity, every word.
The Catholic Church may not be "Scripture alone", but it is perfectly Scriptural.
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