Posted on 02/19/2008 11:55:18 AM PST by NYer
I know that I was not the first Protestant to learn the truth about the Catholic Church; I am sure that this is a story you could probably hear from countless other people, changing only the names and places. I know that many have walked the road that I have; that road which leads home, to Rome!
I was born in 1975 to two God-fearing Southern Baptists in Dallas, Texas. My father had grown up Methodist, but became Baptist when he married my mother in 1968. From what my father has said, his family was mostly Methodist. His father and his paternal grandfather were both Thirty-Third Degree Masons. My father's paternal grandfather's father was even the founding pastor of the First Methodist Church of Dallas. Though I have heard the history of my father's family, I myself knew only a very few of them. A great majority of my mother's family was Baptist, with a smattering of Methodists here and there. I am fairly certain of one thing, however: there were no Catholics.
Since a very young age, I can remember going to church and Sunday school on Sunday mornings to listen to the preacher and my Sunday school teachers talk about Jesus, and how He would save us from the fires of Hell. Every Sunday morning, my parents and I would sing in church and listen to the sermons. Though we didn't usually attend the Sunday evening services, I knew that once a month on a Sunday evening, an event called The Lord's Supper would happen. At this Lord's Supper, the preacher would begin passing around large round trays made of chrome. One of the trays had tiny crackers on it, and the other one had little cups of grape juice. I can remember that before I was baptized I wanted to take part in this event, but my parents would not let me. They did not explain why I shouldn't, other than I hadn't been baptized yet. Just as it is in the Catholic Church, Baptism is an initiation of sorts into the active life of the church community. (Of course, to a Catholic, it is that and much more. I would not know this until much later.) A few years went by, and when I was about eight years old, I decided that I wanted to be "saved" and get baptized. To get "saved," you would pray a little prayer like, "Dear Jesus, please come into my heart and forgive me of all of my sins. I ask you to become my personal Lord and Savior. All these things I pray in Jesus' name. Amen." From a Baptist viewpoint, being baptized is only a symbol, and nothing more. In other words, for a Baptist, baptism isn't really necessary for salvation. After I got baptized, I was able to partake in the Lord's Supper. I asked my father what the Lord's Supper meant, and he said that it represented the body and the blood of Jesus. That is to say, it represented the sacrifice that He made for us on the Cross. My father then read the passage from a King James Bible that told about the establishment of what we called The Lord's Supper: "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:19-20, KJV)" I asked why it was that we only did this once a month, and even then at the evening service (most people went to the morning service). My father thought about it for a minute, then he said that the Catholics do it every Sunday at all of their services. (In actuality, most Catholic churches have at least one Mass every day except Good Friday; Catholics are bound to attend Mass only on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.) He said that perhaps we do it less often so as not to imitate them. As you can imagine, I did not understand this for what it was. The Baptists, and many other Protestant groups, were concerned that the "Lord's Supper" would become the focus of the church service rather than the sermon. Though there are some Protestant churches that have communion every Sunday, none of them place the same importance on the Eucharist that the Catholic Church does.
My father had nothing personal against Catholics; in fact, of all the people in my family, he probably liked them more than anyone else in our family did. My mother had a problem with the Catholic Church, but if you asked her why, she really couldn't tell you. She would give the same rote answers that many Protestants had been giving for centuries. "They worship the Pope, Mary, and the Saints." "They think a person can forgive their sins rather than God." She couldn't explain why she believed these things, or in the case of the last statement, she couldn't explain why a person couldn't say that your sins are forgiven. When I finally asked her why she thought a person could not forgive sins after the Bible said that Christ gave that power to the Apostles, she said she'd just rather confess directly to God. I believe that the real reason that she did not like Catholicism was because her father did not like it. I really believe that was the main reason. For some reason, my maternal grandfather (whom we have always called "Smittie") has a fairly wide streak of anti-Catholicism in him. Even as a child, I remembered him complaining every time the Pope was on television or in the newspaper. Whenever we were at a restaurant or shopping and we saw someone with a large family (four or five kids or more), he would often joke that they must be Catholic. The ironic thing about his dislike of the Church is that virtually all of his friends (excepting those from his church) since he became an adult were Catholic. I don't think that he had anything personal against individual Catholics; it was the Church that bothered him. Smittie was in England during World War II, and he found many friends there, all Catholic. He always spoke highly of them. He missed them all very much, too; all but a few of them had been killed in the war and those few survivors had died since. To this day, I do not know what makes Smittie think that the Church is somehow diabolical or at the very least, misled. I've often wondered if it had something to do with his association with Freemasonry. By the way, he is a Third Degree Mason (Master Mason), though he has not been an active Mason for many years.
Now you can see where I came from. A Southern Baptist upbringing with lots of anti-Catholic influence from just about everyone in my family and my church, with the possible exception of my father. If, when I was in high school, someone had told me that I would one day become Catholic, I would have literally laughed in his face. By the time I was fifteen, I had truly learned to have contempt for the Catholic Church. Not Catholic people, you understand, just the beliefs of and possibly the clergy of the Church. I figured that most Catholics were simply misled, and too ignorant to realize it. After all, "everyone knows" that Catholics are forbidden to read the Bible, right?! [a common Protestant myth]
I entered high school and turned fifteen at about the same time, and high school was a much bigger place than the middle school where I had attended. I decided to get involved in some of the clubs in school to make friends, and one of the clubs was called Raiders for Christ (the Raiders was the school mascot). This club was made up of mostly Protestant and "Evangelical" Christians of various denominations. In the meetings, we talked about "witnessing" to people, getting "saved," and how we should carry our Bible around as a good example to others. I decided that I would try to talk to people in classes and invite them to church with me. From some people, I got a fairly good response. Some would say they had already been "saved," and currently attended another church. Some would say that they had been "saved" and that they felt that church was not necessary because they read the Bible often anyway. I had no problem with these people. However, I ran into some that caused problems. As you can guess, these were the Catholics.
Many Catholics that I met did not know their faith very well, but they did go to Mass every Sunday. I derided them for not knowing why they believed the things that they believed. I said that it was apparent that the Catholic Church was based on blind faith and that reason was nowhere to be found. I told several people that if they did not renounce the Catholic Church and accept Christ as their "personal Lord and Savior," that they would most certainly go to Hell. I'm sure that these people did not appreciate what I was saying, and I am quite thankful that they were more charitable to me than I was to them. One particular Catholic with whom I made friends was a teacher at the school. In fact, she was one of the sponsors of an extra-curricular organization of which I was a member for three years. She knew her faith VERY well, and for that I am glad. I admit, however, it was quite frustrating at times. After all, I couldn't win a debate with her. While she did not convert me to Catholicism, she did put me on the right track. I quit harassing the Catholics so much and tried to see them as fellow Christians rather than "the enemy."
I graduated from high school, still a Baptist, though not a particularly devout one anymore. I didn't go to church very often, and I had begun to lose faith; not so much in God as in being Baptist. I felt that there were contradictions between what the Bible says and what the Baptists teach. For instance, Baptists teach that once you are "saved," you are always "saved." That is practically a dogma of the Baptist Church, as well as some other Protestant churches: "once saved, always saved." The problem here, is that there is no support in the Bible for this position. Scripture does refute this position: "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12, KJV)" (If you notice, I quote from the King James Version of the Bible because it is the universally accepted version of the Bible in Protestant churches.) Considering that a favorite saying of the Baptists was "No creed but the Bible," you can see why I was beginning to be skeptical. Here are some more (though certainly not all) doctrinal paradoxes:
|
The Baptist Myth |
What the (King James) Bible Says |
"Alcoholic beverages are inherently bad." |
"Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities. (1 Timothy 5:23, KJV)" "So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. (John 4:46, KJV)" |
"Dancing is bad." |
"And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. (2 Samuel 6:14, KJV)" |
"Salvation (being saved? occurs in an instant." |
"Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (Phillipians 2:12, KJV)" |
"We only need Scripture, not traditions." (This is an attack on the Catholic belief in Sacred Tradition. It is a pillar of the Protestant Reformation known as Sola Scriptura) |
"Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. (2 Thessalonians 3:6, KJV)" |
"Everyone can interpret Scripture for him/herself." (In other words, we don’t need an authoritative body like the Magisterium, or teaching office, of the Catholic Church to interpret for us.) |
"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. (2 Peter 1:20, KJV)" |
"Faith alone, not works, will get you saved." (This is one of the other main principles of the Protestant Reformation: it is called Sola Fide) |
"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. (James 2:26, KJV)" |
The list is seemingly endless, so I’ll stop here. As you can see, many of the beliefs of both the Protestant Reformation in general as well as the Southern Baptist Convention were at odds with the Bible. And not just any Bible, but even the one that the Protestants so cherished! (Rest assured, these verses are not much different in a Catholic Bible.)
At any rate, I was nineteen years old, and attending a major public university. I was exposed to many things that I had never been around before, mostly because my parents were somewhat over-protective of me. I felt quite far from God during my first year in college. Toward the end of my freshman year, my girlfriend from high school, whom I had been dating for over three years, and I broke up. I started dating a younger Catholic girl who lived in the Dallas area. Her uncle was actually a bishop in the northeastern United States. She was not particularly devout, but at the time, it didn’t matter to me. Actually, I figured that if we ended up together it would be easy to convert her to Protestantism and away from the Catholic Church. After we had been dating for about a month, her sister was graduating from high school, so I went to see her sister’s baccalaureate Mass. I had never been to a Mass before; I had been inside a Catholic church maybe once or twice before in my whole life. When I got home that night, I cried because I thought that since she was Catholic, she would be doomed to Hell if I couldn’t help her "see the light". However, the more I thought about what I had seen, the more intrigued I became.
First of all, the Mass was not what I had been told that it was: a pagan ceremony. To those of you reading this who are Catholic, this may seem humorous, but many Protestants, especially those leaning toward "fundamentalism," seem to think that Catholics are pagans or Satan worshippers or something along those lines. I don’t know where this myth got started, but I would sure love to put it to rest. For those of you not familiar with the Mass, here is the basic structure:
You’d think apostasy was a new thing.
“It seems standard OP on FR much of the time for alot of vitriol to be directed both at Catholics and Mormons (please excuse if you have great objections to the latter especially). And I mean vitriol. While I don’t see enough threads, I have yet to see that heavy and endemic vitriol hurled in other Christian directions.”
Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear enough. I’m tired of the rampant (unwarranted) bigotry and venom hurled both at Catholics and Mormons here.
Because you made the statement, and I'm not aware of any official Church pronouncement regarding such an understanding.
I would not countenance gratuitious assertions about your theology predicated on untraceable anecdotes; I'd like a substantive explaination on why you've done so with mine.
I don’t think you are the only one who gets tired of it.
Amazingly the Catholic Church has survived centuries of such hatred and I think that the Mormon Church will to.
I like the Mormons better because of the people here who attack them ... and Rick Warren, too :-).
My acronym stands for “Scriptural Tourette’s Syndrome” and thus does not fall into the category of profanity.
Excellent post.
The very fierce, hostile, super demeaning . . . probably even demonically inspired attacks on Rick Warren and Joel Olsteen
are very incredible, imho.
They are big boys . . . but still . . . it boggles my mind where such feelings originate from given the stimulus.
I would not countenance gratuitious assertions about your theology predicated on untraceable anecdotes; I'd like a substantive explaination on why you've done so with mine.
I'm sorry you have decided that your quarrel is with me. How can someone who's been on this forum for so long be ignorant of the evolutionist/errantist position of most Catholic FReepers? I don't get it. I don't get it at all. All you have to do is read their posts.
There are a few Catholic inerrantists on FR, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand. I wish this weren't so, but it is.
We are at a time when all believers of our Lord Jesus Christ need to come together and seek only Him. We need to encourage others to seek Him while He still may be found. I have learned to only trust His Words. I now understand why he says that no one gets to the Father except through Him.
I have been both Catholic and Baptist. I have seen both apostates and true believers in both denominations. I believe that right now, in this present day, the biggest danger to all believers of Jesus Christ is the ever present compromise of Jesus by these apostates in order to push a relative truth. A false truth where we can all coexist in interfaith dialog under a universalistic works based theology.
That is the bottom line. Will you, as a Christian, put a man made religion, of any religion, of any Christian denomination, before your Savior?
I don’t think any of you will. I love you all.
Whoa, Nelly. Try that again, this time accurately: The vast majority of Catholic FReepers believe that God directs evolution, i.e. we believe in Intelligent Design as hypothesized by those legitimate scientists who see that evolution has clearlly occured throughout the Earth's natural history, but believe that "chance" or Darwinian evolution is impossible, and that all creation seems to show the guiding hand of a creator.
If you're saying the vast majority of Catholics reject the totally scientifically unsupported Young Earth silliness that uneducated folks have insinuated into, and therefore severely harmed, the Intelligent Design movement, you're darn right we do. God, in his Almighty wisdom, gave us brains and wants us to use them, and, I would hazard to guess, not to build museums in which Adam and Eve hang out with T. Rex
But what really amazes me and saddens me is that before I joined FR, I truly believed that Catholics and Fundamentalists were compatible. Now I see that Fundamentalists see Catholics as useful idiots to be used in the political process and then consigned to hell as worshippers of a Satan-driven Church. I suppose you could say, therefore, that being on FR has made me more liberal. Like the left-wing, I now wouldn't vote for a Fundamentalist for any reason, but unlike the left-wing, I started out in your corner and you drove me away. I am sure there are some wonderful Fundamentalists on this site who can convince me I'm wrong, but the constant bigotry of folks like the usual suspects (who have, naturally, already posted in this thread), has made me want to steer very clear of the whole movement.
Let me rephrase something. please replace the word “danger” with “challenge”.
Danger was not an appropriate word to use in that sentence.
Quix, I know you and I disagree on some stuff. Oh, WELL! Doesn’t keep me up at night.
Even when people decide to be bigots ... Okay, knock themselves out. I have to write a skit in Spanish for Girl Scouts by tomorrow at noon.
But then, they expect that *nobody will say anything*! Well, sorry. Earth to Planet Zongo! It’s like when I tell my 16-year-old to “wash, rinse, dry, and put away the dishes,” and then she’s just *astonished* that everything she put in the dishwasher is back in the sink in the morning ...
If somebody decides to be ugly, eventually it’s going to come back around.
I’m garbled, I know ... not enough sleep the last few days ... but I just don’t understand the hatred. Aren’t we all trying to be what we think the Lord wants us to be?
Here's one example of the rejection of total Biblical inerrancy, papertyger.
For what it's worth, cammie, I once believed that Catholics and Fundamentalists were on the same page too. In fact, I was Catholic for six years. But I somehow got the notion that Catholics saw Fundamentalists as "useful idiots" to achieve certain political goals while regarding them as idiots (as you obviously do).
I might add that some may want to try reading this book:
Then I take it by your turning your response directly back at me you do not intend to substantiate the assertion that :
...most Catholics ... feel that in order to be loyal to their church, they must hold the Word of G-d to be full of errors and contradictions.
Young's Literal is only useful if you speak Greek or Hebrew. I wish I read Hebrew -- but I do read Greek and Latin. Worth learning if you want to read the New Testament in the original!
I hope everyone on FR reads this paragraph, and then reads it again, and then reads it again carefully.
If you want to destroy conservatism as an effective political force, drive wedges in it. Drive wedges between Mormon conservatives and everyone else, and tell the Mormons, "Keep out -- you're not wanted here". Drive wedges between Catholic conservatives and everyone else, and tell the Catholics, "Keep out -- you're not wanted here". Drive as many other wedges as you can think of to drive.
Divide and conquer has always worked, and it will always work if it's permitted to.
If you want to know why I voted for Mitt Romney and not Mike Huckabee, you have your answer. I can name 5 or 6 FReepers who alone convinced me to have nothing to do with Huckabee before ever looking at a single one of his positions.
Every one of the 5 or 6 is a vehemently anti-Catholic Protestant.
Would it change anyting about your Confession if I told you of the man I know who has been in a traveling Gospel singing troupe for thirty years that asked me if the book of Romans was in the Old or New Testament?
What about the public school teacher that tried to publicly humiliate my wife as a child because she knew "Son of God" means "God incarnate" and he, as a lifelong Baptist, didn't?
Of course these things aren't going to change the good things you know, just as I will keep the good things I know.
Of what value is holding a doctrine of total biblical inerrancy when it manifests itself as our functionally illiterate brother boldly standing up to proclaim Acts 7:54 of the King James Bible *clearly* proves the Sanhedrin where so mad at Steven they actually bit him!
Would to God we all took Paul's advice about meat sacrificed to idols as a general instead of a specific.
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