Posted on 03/03/2010 10:14:34 AM PST by NYer
NO PRICE TOO HIGH (1 hr)
The profound conversion story of a Protestant minister who brought his congregation with him into the Catholic Church. The viewer will discover the sacrificial yet triumphant journey of a man of deep integrity and love for Christ.
Wed 3/3/10 10:00 PM ET / 7 PM PT
Sat 3/6/10 5:00 AM ET / 2 AM PT
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When Detroit-born Alex Jones became a Pentecostal minister in 1972, there was little question among those who knew him that he was answering God's call to preach.
Now, many of his friends and family have dismissed the 59-year-old pastor as an apostate for embracing the Catholic faith, closing the nondenominational church he organized in 1982, and taking part of his congregation with him.
At this year's April 14 Easter Vigil, Jones, his wife, Donna, and 62 other former members of Detroit's Maranatha Church, was received into the Catholic Church at St. Suzanne's Parish. For Jones, becoming a Catholic will mark the end of a journey that began with the planting of a seed by Catholic apologist and Register columnist Karl Keating. It also will mean the beginning of a new way of life.
Jones first heard Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, at a debate on whether the origins of the Christian church were Protestant or Catholic. At the close, Keating asked, "If something took place, who would you want to believe, those who saw it or those who came thousands of years later and told what happened?"
"Good point," Jones thought, and tucked it away. Five years later, while he was reading about the church fathers, Keating's question resurfaced. Jones began a study of the Church's beginnings, sharing his newfound knowledge with his congregation.
To illustrate what he was talking about, in the spring of 1998 he re-enacted an early worship service, never intending to alter his congregation's worship style. "But once I discovered the foundational truths and saw that Christianity was not the same as I was preaching, some fine-tuning needed to take place."
Soon, Maranatha Church's Sunday service was looking more like a Catholic Mass with Pentecostal overtones. "We said all the prayers with all the rubrics of the Church, all the readings, the Eucharistic prayers. We did it all, and we did it with an African-American style."
Not everyone liked the change, however, and the 200-member congregation began to dwindle. Meanwhile, Jones contacted Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary and was referred to Steve Ray of Milan, Mich., whose conversion story is told in Crossing the Tiber.
"I set up a lunch with him right away and we pretty much had lunch every month after that," said Ray. He introduced Jones to Dennis Walters, the catechist at Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Mich. Walters began giving the Pentecostal pastor and his wife weekly instructions in March, 1999.
CROSSROADS
Eventually, Jones and his congregation arrived at a crossroads. On June 4, the remaining adult members of Maranatha Church voted 39-19 to begin the process of becoming Catholic. In September, they began studies at St. Suzanne's.
Maranatha closed for good in December. The congregation voted to give Jones severance pay and sell the building, a former Greek Orthodox church, to the First Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.
Father Dennis Duggan, St. Suzanne's 53-year-old pastor, said the former Maranatha members and their pastor along with about 10 other candidates comprise the 750-member parish's largest-ever convert class.
UNITY AND DIVERSITY
Although not all parishioners at predominantly white St. Suzanne's have received the group warmly, Father Duggan, who also is white, said he considers the newcomers a gift and an answer to prayer.
"What the Lord seems to have brought together in the two of us — Alex and myself — is two individuals who have a similar dream about diversity. Detroit is a particularly segregated kind of community, especially on Sunday morning, and here you've got two baptized believers who really believe we ought to be looking different."
Father Duggan hopes eventually to bring Jones onto the parish staff. Already, he has encouraged Jones to join him in teaching at a Wednesday night Bible service. And, he is working on adapting the music at Masses so that it better reflects the parish's new makeup.
The current European worship style at St. Suzanne's has been the most difficult adjustment for the former Maranatha members, Jones said, because they had been accustomed to using contemporary music with the Catholic prayers and rituals. "The cultural adaptation is far more difficult than the theological adaptation," he said.
PROTESTANT ISSUES
Jones said the four biggest problems Protestants have with Catholicism are teachings about Mary, purgatory, papal authority, and praying to saints. He resolved three of the four long ago, but struggled the most with Mary, finally accepting the teaching on her just because the church taught it.
"It is so ingrained in Protestants that only God inhabits heaven and to pray to anyone else is idolatry. ... The culture had so placed in my heart that only the Trinity received prayer that it was difficult."
He is writing a paper on the appropriateness of venerating Mary for a class at Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary, where he is taking prerequisite courses for a master's degree in theology and pastoral studies. He also is writing a book for Ignatius Press and accepting speaking engagements through St. Joseph Communications, West Covina, Calif.
Jones, the father of three married sons and grandfather of six, is leaving the question of whether he becomes a priest up to the Church.
"If the Church discerns that vocation, I will accept it. If not, I will accept that, too. Whatever the Church calls me to do, I will do."
Although he has given up his job, prestige, and the congregation he built to become Catholic, Jones said the hardest loss of all has been the family and friends who rejected him because of his decision.
"To see those that have worshiped with and prayed with me for over 40 years walk away and have no contact with them is sad."
It was especially painful, he said, when his mother, who had helped him start Maranatha, left to go to Detroit's Perfecting Church, where his cousin, gospel singer Marvin Winans, is the pastor.
Neither Winans nor the pastor of the church that bought Maranatha's building would comment on Jones' conversion. Jones also is troubled that those he left behind do not understand his decision.
"To them, I have apostasized into error. And that's painful for me because we all want to be looked at as being right and correct, but now you have the stigma of being mentally unbalanced, changeable, being looked at as though you've just walked away from God."
Jones said when his group was considering converting, prayer groups were formed to stop them. "People fasted and prayed that God would stop us from making this terrible mistake. When we did it, it was as though we had died."
He said Catholics do not fully understand how many Protestants see their church. "There's this thin veneer of amicability, and below that there is great hostility."
But he remains convinced he is doing the right thing.
"How can you say no to truth? I knew that I would lose everything and that in those circles I would never be accepted again, but I had no choice," he said.
"It would be mortal sin for me to know what I know and not act on it. If I returned to my former life, I would be dishonest, untrustworthy, a man who saw truth, knew truth, and turned away from it, and I could just not do that."
I see it no different from when they burned Thomas Percy, and Thomas More.
Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Jesus is The Word, the only Word of God.
It is by Him that we live and it is Him which we receive not mere bread as symbol.
Could you be a little more precise? Are you referring to the teachings on the Eucharistic mysteries or the teaching that Christ is fully present in either species or maybe that spilling His blood is bad?
Ah, cannibalism. Yea, that’s new.
John 6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’
John 6:60 When many of his disciples heard it they said, ‘This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?’
I take it you decided not to read the section in the catechism to which I gave you a link. Too bad.
So do you mean by that that you hold Ridley and Latimer to be “saints?”
Or do you mean an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
Or, in this case, beheadings and burnings?
Are you saying you disagree with the Catholic Church in their execution of Latimer and Ridley, as well as with the executions of More and Percy as Catholics?
Your link is below:
As I said, another nice tradition without biblical support.
The Catholics make much of “except you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you.”
So NOT eating and drinking is not a viable option. But then they make the flesh AND blood into a flesh OR blood, because, somehow, mysteriously, “flesh” is literal flesh AND blood, or “blood” is literal blood AND flesh.
So which is it?
Do we need to eat Jesus’ flesh AND blood,
or do we need to eat His flesh OR blood?
Where does the Bible teach 1) corporeality, and 2) eating either the flesh or blood is the same as eating the flesh and the blood.
NO more Catholic dogma, please, point me directly to the Scripture verses that support the Catholic position.
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION
PART TWO
THE CELEBRATION OF THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY
SECTION ONE
THE SACRAMENTAL ECONOMY
1076 The Church was made manifest to the world on the day of Pentecost by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.1 The gift of the Spirit ushers in a new era in the “dispensation of the mystery” the age of the Church, during which Christ manifests, makes present, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of his Church, “until he comes.”2 In this age of the Church Christ now lives and acts in and with his Church, in a new way appropriate to this new age. He acts through the sacraments in what the common Tradition of the East and the West calls “the sacramental economy”; this is the communication (or “dispensation”) of the fruits of Christ’s Paschal mystery in the celebration of the Church’s “sacramental” liturgy.
It is therefore important first to explain this “sacramental dispensation” (chapter one). The nature and essential features of liturgical celebration will then appear more clearly (chapter two).
What I’m saying is that the execution of More came first. If protestants wish to execute Catholics, why are they surprised when they reap the whirlwind?
The Jews erroneously misunderstood Jesus to be saying what the Catholic Church asserts: that Jesus was speaking of His literal flesh and blood.
Do you contend that Jesus was serving His literal flesh and blood during the Passover on the night he was betrayed?
So are you justifying the response of the Catholic Church, or were they wrong to execute Ridley and Latimer?
I read those verses to mean that man needs not only physical sustenance, but spiritual sustenance as well — which comes from the Word of God!
So did Jesus baptize the little children that came to Him? Or did his disciples baptize them? Or did the apostles after Pentecost baptize children according to the New Testament record?
Can you offer any Scriptural support for infant baptism?
Or perhaps Jesus and the apostles hadn’t figured out (yet) that the children were going to hell without baptism, and they needed help from the church (later) to come to that conclusion.
So you deny original sin?
There’s no record in scripture of him baptising infants.
There’s also zero evidence of him condemning the practice.
I’m saying it doesn’t matter whether you are Catholic or protestant, they were both wrong.
No, I don’t deny original sin, just the ability to wash the sins away from an uncomprehending indivudual through the ritual of baptism.
An unbeliever who submits to baptism goes down a dry “sinner” and comes up a wet “sinner.”
He that BELIEVETH and is baptized shall be saved.
An infant cannot/does not yet believe, so whatever magic or miracle the Catholic church supposes there to be in infant baptism has no scriptural support.
And no, Jesus didn’t condemn the practice just as He didn’t condemn eating hot dogs. To state that there is something holy (or unholy) about eating hot dogs or baptizing infants is extra-biblical.
Agreed, both were wrong, as was the Spanish Inquisition, and all attempts to force men to believe.
Why should we (or the church or any political entity) try and attempt conversion by other than God ordained means?
“No, I don’t deny original sin, just the ability to wash the sins away from an uncomprehending indivudual through the ritual of baptism.”
What does comprehension have to do with it? How do we know whether or not an individual is of sufficient capacity to understand? Let’s take the consequence of your argument. If we only baptise those who are deemed ‘comprehending’, have we not put up a barrier between them and Christ?
“An infant cannot/does not yet believe, so whatever magic or miracle the Catholic church supposes there to be in infant baptism has no scriptural support.”
Do you believe there is any regeneration at all? If all we need to do is cry, “I believe”, why do you baptise?
“And no, Jesus didn’t condemn the practice just as He didn’t condemn eating hot dogs. To state that there is something holy (or unholy) about eating hot dogs or baptizing infants is extra-biblical.”
So then why are you opting for an unbiblical position by rejecting those who baptise infants? Do you see any Catholics condemning a protestant church for refraining from the practice?
What does comprehension have to do with it?
“For without faith it is impossible to please God...”
How do we know whether or not an individual is of sufficient capacity to understand?
Do you suppose an infant understands their baptism?
Let’s take the consequence of your argument. If we only baptise those who are deemed ‘comprehending’, have we not put up a barrier between them and Christ?
Then lets get the fire chief and the priest together so the fire truck/hose can spray all lost sinners while the priest recites the Trinitarian formula over them and remove the barrier between them and Christ.
You never answered my questions. Who decides whether someone is sufficiently comprehending?
Why baptise at all, if all you have to do is say, “I believe?”
Do you believe there is any regeneration at all? If all we need to do is cry, “I believe”, why do you baptise?
Yes, I believe there is regeneration, paliggenesia, which is used twice in the N.T.:
Matthew 19:28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Titus 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
Regeneration is a function of the inward activity of the Holy Spirit, not the outward activity of baptism. Note the salvation of Cornelius’ household.
Acts 10:47 Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?
Now that they are saved, and have received the Holy Spirit, BRAND them as Christians!
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