I think you missed the point about the uneducated hicks part. Seems that only uneducated hicks leave the Catholic Church. Even your statement alludes to the idea that uneducated hicks that get educated join the Church.
it’s just anecdotal but something i have noticed is that converts to Catholicism usually do not blast their former denomination. As my wife would say, when she became caholic, it simply completed and built upon a Christian foundation already laid. maybe a few bricks are removed but really it’s more about the fullness of the faith than condemning the former denomination. She has positive memories of that early faith still.
Yet, when Catholics leave to join a Protestant church, we are usually blasted. I know that this can’t always be true, yet these “whore of babylon” judgments on us are just ludicrous.
Condemning the Church is similar condemning your own parents. Even if Luther was “right”, how can he be justified condemning the very Church that passed on that faith to him to begin with?
It seemed to me that he was implying, with tongue in cheek, that that was the opinion of Catholics. IOW, that Catholics like to think that only brilliant scholars find the Church and only people who are idiot, know-nothings would ever leave and so that also implies that non-scholars would never consider becoming Catholic as a matter of faith.
uneducated hicks that get educated
Well, you have to know and assent to what you believe but you still don't have to be a scholar. You don't have to read the early fathers, you don't have to know the whole history of the church, you just have to know what it believes and assent to that belief.
Uh, oh. I think I started something. :-)
Yes, it was definitely toungue in cheek. And I do rejoice when someone finds their home (though I believe “home” is in the Body of Christ - I do believe that God’s hand guides us as to exactly where we must be at one time or another).
I rejoice the most when His Church grows, and don’t consider any migration one way or another across the Tiber to be a net gain or loss for His Church, though I recognize many disagree.
For example, my brother found his way back to the RC church, and of course brought his wife and kids with him to be baptized. He was Free Methodist before then, and in the Unity Church (or Church of Today, whatever it is called now) before that. Well, I’m not particularly keen on the Unity Church, but as a Free Methodist in a very conservative congregation I felt he was well grounded, as I feel in my conservative evangelical church. When he went back to the RC I encouraged him to follow what he considered God’s calling, even if I chose not to go that way myself.