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."
You know LESS than nothing about the Catholic Church and their beliefs. You are spreading antiCatholic slurs. We have ALWAYS been pro-Israel and the Jewish people of God.....people of God being the phrase of note.
You gave me a very generalized question....I ask you for only ONE name that the Church has named as a heretic!! Geesh....you have a weak case.
Did you forget to put a smiley face on this post, lady?
This not a debatable issue, or one that gets voted on like American Idol, it is a simple, cut and dried historical fact.
What else in the history books do you deny?
I'm not making a case, I'm making a point. I merely asked if you believe something that your church has named people heretics for not believing. I'll ask agian, Do you believe it is against the Holy Spirit to kill people your church defines as heretics. It's a simple question.
Well thank you, but I am a Protestant.
"We have ALWAYS been pro-Israel"
The Catholic hierarchy is very anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. The Pope has a good opinion of Arafat and, indeed, met with Tariq Aziz, Saddam's minister, before OP Iraqi Freedom.
Thanks so much for that explanation! Now I understand. I had never heard that term before. Wonder where I have been? :-)
My question is much simpler...name ONE heretic and I will tell you!!
I hope he is replaced by a non-heretic.
Don't wonder.
Believe that you are saved by nothing but the grace, not any "good" works your filthy hands may do that only are done because the Holy Spirit leads you.
There were two altars in the Jewish temple - one for animal sacrifice and one for incense. There is only one in Revelation, and it is used for incense, clearly from the text -"
Good. Very Good. Now you're coming close to understanding the Catholic Mass. We would say its not JUST an incense altar, but, clearly, it is an altar to offer sacrafice -just UNBLOODY sacrafice. As you have pointed out from Hebrews, it is not the bloody sacrafice being offered over and over again. That happened once. Otherwise, Christ would be continually suffering the crucifixion. You have no idea how many Protestants I've met who routinely accuse the Church of re-crucifying Jesus over and over again. Thank you for being open enough to see that this is NOT what the Mass is.
Consider the words of St. Ambrose: "A priest must offer something in sacrifice and according to the Law he must enter the holy place through blood. Therefore, because God had repudiated the blood of bulls and of rams, it was necessary for this Priest, as you have read, to enter into the Holy of Holies, penetrating the heights of heaven, by means of His own blood, so that He might become an eternal oblation for our sins. Priest and Victim, therefore, are one and the same. But the priesthood and the sacrifice are a duty of the human condition; for like a lamb He was led to the slaughter, and He is a priest according to the order of Melchisedech. (The Faith 3:11:87)"
Further, consider the following explanation from James Akins:
"...one should point out that the book of Hebrews also uses the term "sacrifice" in a unbloody manner and indicates that Christ is sacrificed multiple times in that sense.
'Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf' (Heb. 9:22-24).
Note the plural there: The things of the heavenly temple are purified with better sacrifices than those offered in the earthly sanctuary. But today the only ultimate sacrifice for sin is the sacrifice of Christ, and so it is by the multiple offerings (re-presentations) of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross that cleanse the heavenly temple."
And, thus, we have the Mass -the multiple offerings(re-presentations, unbloody in nature) of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross that eternally cleanses the heavenly temple.
Next time look for the imprimatur.
Next time the problem comes up I'll be sure to consult with the Spirit.
The church before it became corrupt.
Ultimatetly though, God decided upon the Canon and made sure his Canon would be determined by people.
Oh my, another line of division .... those who wish to worship vs. those who wish to socialize. ;o)
Agreed on the singing.
God doesn't care how crappy we are....:)
Nice.
The sad thing is, you regular Catholics don't get taught such elaborate doctrines like the co-mediatrix doctrine that Mary is a co-mediator with Christ.
Thus, you think we are nuts and just stating what Prots state.
Well, you are wrong. I have a book of Catholic doctrine from the Archdiocese of Boston at that time (was my mom's father's book) from the late 1800's which is very clear that Mary is a co-mediator with Christ. This is in direct contradiction to Scripture, which states there is one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.
Vatican II watered down such things as non-Catholics going to hell, but reading this book, I felt like the Catholic Church believed I am doomed since I am a Christian of another denomination.
It is commanded in Scripture and has a history in the early church and the synagogue, which church worship was originally patterned after.
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