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."
When chr*stianity says the Bible is mythical, to h*ck with chr*stianity.
Um... we don't. You seem to have slipped a gear since our earlier conversation.
I'm sorry you feel that way. But I have not "slipped a gear." The famous "conservative" Catholic apologist Fr. Peter Stravinskas in his book The Catholic Response (which is pretty smarmy and patronizing throughout, btw) defends the use of pagan elements by chr*stianity by claiming that Genesis was spliced together from various Canaanite and Mesopotamian myths. And please don't tell me that Fr. Stravinskas is a lefty weirdo; he's quite well known and I once met him at a conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He also has a magazine and is very much active with such "conservative" evolutionist/higher critical/non-inerrantist apologists as Karl Keating, Patrick Madrid, and the Our Sunday Visitor crowd (and yes, Fr. Stravinskas is a deniar of total inerrancy and insists the Catholic Church has never taught it).
Perhaps you will enjoy the comment of your co-religionist aquinasfan that American Catholics do indeed feel scorn for the folk of the rural American Protestant heartland (which, considering the number of illiterate louts who have doubtless been members of the Catholic Church during its long period of European cultural domination is sheer hypocrisy as well as bigotry).
I told you that I learned that I did not belong in the Catholic Church. You evidently thought that if I had encountered typical "conservative" Catholics such as those enumerated above and those here at FR I would have settled down and felt right at home. What you do not seem to understand is that your belief that there can be a Church that tolerates evolutionism and higher criticism but which does not tolerate homosexuality is a chimera, since evolutionism is the root of all the things which you oppose (but you can't admit that because you feel that to do so would be to endorse "sola scriptura," a position I do not even adhere to!).
And finally, I am fully aware of how naive you believe me to be, but you do not realize that from the Jewish/Noachide perspective you know absolutely nothing about the Holy Torah.
As I stated before, the idea that all conservative chr*stians are basically the same and are all swell pals is very mistaken. I pray my beloved people (whom aquinasfan chooses to scorn) will make the right choice when the time comes.
For whatever reason I'm having trouble opening the official Vatican web site, but I'll keep trying until I log off (I'll be offline for the next two days for the holiday). However, if I can't get there to post the link just go to the English language page, then to "Scripture" or "Bible," then to "Pentateuch." They don't use the words "documentary hypothesis," but they teach it (they claim that the Torah/Pentateuch was compiled centuries after Moses by various "schools of thought" and thus late date it by centuries). Look for references to "J, E, P, and D." That is the essence of the classical theory.
Right now I'm getting a "cannot find server" when I try to go to the Vatican site. It doesn't look like I'll get to give you a specific link this evening, but if you can still get in just follow my directions as given earlier. That should get you there.
Arg, post #84 was meant for "aquinasfan." I don't have any bishops (thank G-d), whether loopy or "orthodox."
How about Heb. 9:27: It is appointed unto man once to die and after that, the judgement" and the RC teaching of pergatory?
How about Mary in the Magnificat glorifying "God, my Savior" yet the RC doctrine calls her sinless, thus not needing a Savior? There are numerous non-Scriptural doctrines in the RC that puts it outside of Christ's teaching: "If you continue in My Word, then are you my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." John 8:32. He forbids adding one dot of an i or one crossing of a t to the Word of God, by anyone, including the church or the pope, until He returns.
As a former RCC, I would have no problem with the, say, Lutheran view of the Presence in the Eucharist. However, the idea that the Mass is a Sacrifice is clearly unscriptural. Jesus was sacrificed "once for all" as the book of Hebrews says many more times than "once for all".
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/remonstrant
REMONSTRANT: Dictionary Entry and Meaning
Matching Terms: remonstrance, Remonstrantly
Webster's 1913 Dictionary
Definition: \Re*mon"strant\ (-strant), a. [LL. remonstranc,
-antis, p. pr. of remonstrare: cf. OF. remonstrant, F.
remontrant.]
Inclined or tending to remonstrate; expostulatory; urging
reasons in opposition to something.
\Re*mon"strant\, n.
One who remonstrates; specifically (Eccl. Hist.), one of the
Arminians who remonstrated against the attacks of the
Calvinists in 1610, but were subsequently condemned by the
decisions of the Synod of Dort in 1618. See {Arminian}.
There is a perception among Protestants.............................
Splitters
***This blows my mind. I'm Protestant, wondering about Catholicism.***
Don't trade one religion for another.
Religions is empty. Seek Christ.
***Actually, all you *need* is grace.
But that's like saying all you need for a meal is crackers.***
So the grace of God is "crackers"?
Not in my parish, no one moves until the last note, some stay and make their thanksgiving and everyone hangs aroung outside and chats. We like each other.
"Isn't that an oxymoron since the Catholic Church believes those outside the Church are heretics?"
Yeah - but at least Protestants are Christian heretics!
Sola Scriptura: "The teaching that the Scriptures contain all that is necessary for salvation and proper living before God"
In the Bible:
"... from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." - 2 Tim 3
I recommend a book called Not By Scripture Alone: http://www.catholicintl.com/products/scripture.html It deals thoroughly with 2 Tim 3 and the other passages prots use. It simply does not mean what you want it to mean. The NBSA book has the reasons.
http://www.catholicintl.com/products/scripture.html
"I haven't reviewed the piece in question so I have no basis on which to debate this with you."
If its the "Documentary Hypothesis" first espoused by Wellhausen that ZC is criticizing, then this has never been accepted by the Church as a valid hypothesis - even though many "biblical scholars" and theologians accept it as fact.
The late Fr. William J Most did some excellent work debunking this theory, and I believe Scott Hahn also teaches against it.
The Roman Theological Forum is dedicated to expunging the malicious effects of higher criticism from Catholic theology and their website is well worth a visit:
www.rtforum.org
"To celebrate Christ's victory over death again and again and again means that His sacrifice is NOT complete, but needs to be repeated in perpetuity."
I think you misunderstand the concept of perpetuity - it is the one and only perpetual sacrifice, how on earth (or in heaven) can it be repeated?
Something that is perpetual cannot be repeated because it is never-ending - it is perpetual. But because it is perpetual then it is always present before God.
Because it is always present before God, then when we come before God's throne, then it is also present before us at that point at which time and eternity intersect i.e. the Divine Liturgy or the Mass.
LOL! You must have been to a Baptist Church once or twice in your life eh? (Just a joke, I am a Baptist!)
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