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."
Amen!
I contend that Jesus was serving his body and blood under the guise of bread and wine just as he does now in the Eucharist.
I love how the immediate reaction to those words is that the Jews were erroneous in their understanding of Jesus’ words and yet Jesus never corrects their error nor does he stop them from leaving.
Regarding your statements about access to God’s word in the catholic Church...they have changed their position over the centuries.
Pope Innocent III stated in 1199:
... to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted (Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum 770-771)
ITEM #2 COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE - 1229 A.D.
The Council of Toulouse, which met in November of 1229, about the time of the crusade against the Albigensians, set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry), to search out and try heretics. Twenty of the forty-five articles decreed by the Council dealt with heretics and heresy. It ruled in part:
Canon 1. We appoint, therefore, that the archbishops and bishops shall swear in one priest, and two or three laymen of good report, or more if they think fit, in every parish, both in and out of cities, who shall diligently, faithfully, and frequently seek out the heretics in those parishes, by searching all houses and subterranean chambers which lie under suspicion. And looking out for appendages or outbuildings, in the roofs themselves, or any other kind of hiding places, all which we direct to be destroyed.
Canon 6. Directs that the house in which any heretic shall be found shall be destroyed.
Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.
Source: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Edited with an introduction by Edward Peters, Scolar Press, London, copyright 1980 by Edward Peters, ISBN 0-85967-621-8, pp. 194-195, citing S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents [illustrative of the history, doctrine and rites, of the ancient Albigenses & Waldenses], London, Rivington, 1832, pp. 192-194.
You are entitled to your opinion.
Would you care to explain these other innovations (or traditions?) of the Roman Catholic Church?
Prayers for the dead were introduced in 310
The lighting of candles in 320
The worship of saints about 375
The mass was adopted in 394
The worship of Mary began to develop about 432
Priests began to assume distinctive robes in 500
The doctrine of purgatory was introduced in 593
Worship in Latin (since repealed) was mandated in 600
Claims to Papal Supremacy took firm foot in 606
Feasts in honor of the Virgin Mary began in 650
The custom of kissing the Pope’s foot was introduced in 709
The worship of images and relics was authorized in 788
The invention of holy water was about 850
The canonization of saints was formalized in 993
Feasts for the dead were introduced 1003
‘The celibacy of the priesthood was declared 1074
The dogma of Papal infallibility was announced 1076
Prayer beads were introduced in 1090
The doctrine that there are seven sacraments was introduced in 1140
The sale of indulgences began 1190
The wafer was substituted for the loaf in 1200
The dogma of transubstantiation was adopted 1215
Confession was instituted 1215
The adoration of the Wafer began 1220
‘The Ave Maria was introduced 1316
The cup was taken from the laity in 1415
Purgatory was officially decreed In 1439
Roman tradition was placed on the same level as Scripture 1546
The Apocrypha was received into the Canon 1546
The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary was announced 1854
‘The doctrine of the temporal power of the Pope proclaimed 1864
The personal corporeal presence of the Virgin in heaven 1950
The church has never changed it’s position: scripture is too important to let the ignorant or ill-intended abuse or misuse to a wicked end. Even Scripture tells us we need the Church to form our understanding (Acts: 8)! What has changed is the availability of access to the teachings of the Church which help us understand the Scriptures.
That understanding would be wrong.
Have you ever asked yourself why Jesus would say what He said?
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever, And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.
And then in
John 6:53 Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Why say that his followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood? The prohibition against cannibalism was strong, the very thought of it was enough to send many of His disciples packing. Yet the faithful stayed, trusting that Jesus was who they believed and that there was a way.
At the Last Supper, He showed them the way.
In Exodus, we are told that the Lord provided manna(bread). In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that those who ate the manna died, but He is the true Bread from heaven and those who eat Him will live.
St. Paul obviously believed Cor 11:27-29.
So, the bread of Exodus is merely bread, sustenance for the physical life but not enough for eternal life. Jesus makes a clear distinction between the bread that He will give and that which was given before.
What was the distinction, the bread of the New Testament contains the Word of God, Jesus.
The (Catholic) church has never changed it’s position
That’s quite a statement. Would you like to refer to post 185.
Yes, their all easily verified to be outright lies and calumnious historical fantasy.
OK, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt too.
Prayers for the dead were introduced in 310
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The lighting of candles in 320
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The worship of saints about 375
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The mass was adopted in 394
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The worship of Mary began to develop about 432
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Priests began to assume distinctive robes in 500
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The doctrine of purgatory was introduced in 593
Does the Catholic church believe this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Worship in Latin (since repealed) was mandated in 600
Did the Catholic church practice this?
When and where did this come from?
Was it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Claims to Papal Supremacy took firm foot in 606
Does the Catholic church believe this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Feasts in honor of the Virgin Mary began in 650
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The custom of kissing the Pope’s foot was introduced in 709
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The worship of images and relics was authorized in 788
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The invention of holy water was about 850
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The canonization of saints was formalized in 993
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Feasts for the dead were introduced 1003
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
‘The celibacy of the priesthood was declared 1074
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The dogma of Papal infallibility was announced 1076
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Prayer beads were introduced in 1090
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The doctrine that there are seven sacraments was introduced in 1140
Does the Catholic church believe this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The sale of indulgences began 1190
Did/does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The wafer was substituted for the loaf in 1200
Did the Catholic church make this change?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
The dogma of transubstantiation was adopted 1215
Does the Catholic church believe this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Confession was instituted 1215
Does the Catholic church practice this?
When and where does this come from?
Is it scriptural? Verse(s)?
Same questions for the following:
The adoration of the Wafer began 1220
‘The Ave Maria was introduced 1316
The cup was taken from the laity in 1415
Purgatory was officially decreed In 1439
Roman tradition was placed on the same level as Scripture 1546
The Apocrypha was received into the Canon 1546
The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary was announced 1854
‘The doctrine of the temporal power of the Pope proclaimed 1864
The personal corporeal presence of the Virgin in heaven 1950
The heresy for which these priest were excommunicated was not that they were communicating their flock under both forms, but that they believed that unless one received both it was invalid.
The Church held that Jesus is present fully in either, therefore, one need receive only the Host to be in full communication.
Sorry, the word is communion, not communication.
So you follow your church’s teaching, thinking you have salvation in the teaching of the church.
I’ll stick with the Bible.
BTW, I read through part of your list of refutations, and the first ten “refutations” have mostly to do with a disagreement over dates when the practices began, which is irrelevant to me.
Basically, answering the question “is it biblical” should be sufficient as to whether it SHOULD be practiced by the faithful.
And thanks for introducing me to the word “calumnious.” I had to look it up.
Jesus is the Word of God, the Scriptures are the story of Him and His salvation of the world.
Jesus was able to define His life by the Scriptures, because it is the Word of God, as He is the Living Word of God. He had no desire to defy His own revelation, but came to fulfill it and reconcile humanity to Himself and the Father.
Jesus did not define His life by the Scriptures, the Old Testament and the New Testament were defined by Him. Your statement makes it seem like Jesus manipulated His life to fulfill Scripture rather than Scriptures were written because of Jesus.
Where are you cutting and pasting from? What is your source?
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