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."
"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."
Just getting this far with some people would be a small victory.
I hope you don't believe this attitude exists only on the Protestant side. What about the downright scorn of urban, hyper-intellectual Catholics for the "simplistic" folk-Protestants of America's rural heartland?
You've taken some liberties with my position but I understand that further rebuttal on this subject will be fruitless.
Sometimes we get to the point where we agree to disagree. I enjoyed our conversation. May God bless you.
I respectfully disagree. They think they are chr*stians but they are Biblicists. One day they will have to choose between Chr*st and the Bible. G-d grant that they choose well!
The Bible itself clarifies Genesis as possibly figurative... but then you don't go past the OT so you won't accept this reasoning.
Again, you take my arguments too far. I don't go into pagan mythology. I agree Genesis could have taken place word for word... God certainly has the power and authority. However, given the later writings, I think it more likely that God's authorship is the far more important lesson of Genesis than whether it took Him 144 human hours.
"Catholic clergy have and use normal hair, too. Not that phony-baloney plastic stuff favored by pretend pastors."
You're implying that any minister who isn't Catholic is "pretend". I know hundreds of pastors (am related to many) who aren't Catholic, and not one of them has "phony-balony plastic stuff" for hair.
You should grow up and/or become enlightened on both issues.
Sometimes we get to the point where we agree to disagree. I enjoyed our conversation. May God bless you.
Agreed, and thank you.
My point is simply that I was driven out of the Catholic Church not only by the things that drive conservative Catholics bonkers, but by things most of them accept that are utterly alien and an offense to the conscience of one coming from Fundamentalist Protestantism. You can see that I would not be comfortable in your church even if it were run by good people like you. My question is how long Mr. Giles will feel at home there.
All the best!
The over-riding truth, from the Reformed perspective, is that Salvation is of the Lord, and not of, by or through any temporal institution.
"For of him, and through him, and to him are all things; to whom be glory forever." -- Romans 11:36.
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"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." - John 16:33.
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Lately I've keyed on this verse from John. Its splendid assurance is complete. Christ's work is finished. He has overcome the world. Hallelujah.
"The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." -- Westminster Confession of Faith.
Who could presume to ask for more?
I must be having an especially bad day today, but I haven't got the slightest idea what you're saying.
Kindly elucidate.
Perhaps we could all undertsand each others' faith a little better if we didn't pretend to let the Roman Catholic Church speak for the various Protestant Churches and we didn't let the various Protestant Churches speak for the Roman Catholic Church.
Kindly elucidate.
There was a Bible long before chr*stianity existed, and it was the Word of G-d before any chr*stian church "canonized" it. Today's non-literal and non-inerrant views of the Bible are endemic to chr*stianity and were there in embryonic form from the beginning (see my friend pgyanke's defense of evolutionism based on the "new testament").
When chr*stianity says the Bible is mythical, to h*ck with chr*stianity. Discard the "new testament," reject the false claims of the Nazarene, and subscribe to the original and unsuperceded Biblical religion (Judaism for Jews, Noachism for non-Jews).
J*sus is not the logos. The messiah isn't the logos. The Torah is the logos. No one can recognize that fact and then blaspheme the Bible.
Um... we don't. You seem to have slipped a gear since our earlier conversation.
Thank you for that wonderful post. I hope, especially in this time of conflict with the muslims, that the followers of Christ can find common ground.
Zionist Conspirator, I guess you are Jewish and have your view of what is theologically correct.
However, I suggest you go back to my original posting and read it again.
This isn't the 1000's, it isn't 1492, its 2004.
Christians in the U.S., particularly fundmentalist Catholic and Protestant Christians are the best friends Israel has. They have supported Israel in the U.S. politically and thus indirectly in the U.N. As an American, I would like to see MORE support for Israel in doing in Israel what we are attempting to do worldwide with respect to dealing with the scourge facing all of us.
Christians aren't threatening you. But somebody else is. And that somebody is also threatening them, as well as every other religion on earth - from Animism to Zoroastrianism, and I know you know who I'm talking about.
My posting was not meant to be taken as a theological statement as much as it was intended to be a cultural/social/political one.
Its an old saying but a true one - The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I am Catholic and in myparish we don't even have coffee and donuts after mass but there are always a lot of folks hanging around for prayer and suchlike and others for socializing a bit.
Secondly, I was not responding to nor disagreeing with your initial post. I was responding to a very specific quote of yours which I provided in my post.
For Fundamentalists? Yes. But I've never heard a Catholic say that any baptized Christian isn't a Christian.
What about the downright scorn of urban, hyper-intellectual Catholics for the "simplistic" folk-Protestants of America's rural heartland?
For Fundamentalists? Yes.
And you think that's all right, obviously. So it seems the "universal church" isn't so universal after all, since it can accommodate a belief in Marian apparitions but not the belief that the world was created in six days.
But I've never heard a Catholic say that any baptized Christian isn't a Christian.
So what? You admit you despise people you depend on to hold the line and to elect their candidates. Looks like Blacks and Jews aren't the only hypocrites who believes "bigotry" only goes one way.
Also looks like you would not have been any help to me when my "Catholic denominational counsellor" told me to get out of the Church since I didn't belong. (And btw, the Catholic Church does deny the chr*stian status of some baptized chr*stians.)
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