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."
Not my opinion but the teaching of the one apostolic church.
John 5:39-40 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on by behalf, Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
Follow the Holy Spirit’s leading to the best of your understanding.
I didn’t say the Roman Catholic church is apostate, nor that people within her ranks cannot be true believers...many are.
There is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (and NOT Mary).
My church is not perfect, and neither am I, but there will be a judgment day for each of us to stand before God and receive judgment for “the things done in the body.”
I am glad my mediator will be standing there with me...the one God appointed.
You have my respect for fervent prayer and a sincere desire to lead your children into strong faith.
Jeremiah 29:13 And ye shall seek me, and find [me], when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
James 5:15 Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
I’m sorry you feel that way, if you think I am missing Jesus.
What you have against wax candles, pious gestures and wholly biblical practices such as praying for the dead is beyond me. The point I'm trying to make is that much of this list is simply silly stuff! Wax candles? Priests cloths,the word Pope? How juvenile! You should take the time to re read the entire refutation at the link and really think about why someone would compile such a silly list.
That is quite a list, have you also posted from whence you cut and pasted it?
I have no time to delve into each one individually and I encourage you to seek out the Catholic understanding of each.
What I will say is that the theology of the Church is ever developing, not changing, but developing in understanding.
Many of those things you list as being innovated or introduced at specific dates were done so in response to specific heresies or a need to clarify in light of theological study.
The Church is like a darkened room of which the contents become clearer as the light comes up and illuminates them.
If you truly want answers to those questions there are many good references and works by Catholic theologians which could enlighten you as to each item’s origin and the theology and Scripture which supports it.
Simple. There are so many things the Catholic Church promotes as “faithfulness” to God which have nothing to do with God. Whether you want to eat hot dogs, steak, or bananas is irrelevant to “faith.” But when the church teaches, and its people embrace, the importance of eating hot dogs, or steak, or bananas as opposed to something else they detract from the core of Christianity, which is to love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself, and involves telling the truth and preaching the gospel so the lost can come to true faith in Christ which is internal, though it manifests itself outwardly.
I didn’t compile the “list,” I just cut and paste it to show the silly, extra-biblical or anti-biblical teachings/traditions/practices the Catholic church has embraced (or unembraced) over the years. And, from time to time, executed other people of true faith who dared to disagree with her.
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church.
Are you quoting 2 Timothy 4:3-4 about me, just in general, or about Catholics?
I would think it applies more to the latter two, but that is just my opinion.
I don’t hate Catholics, or the Catholic Church. I just disagree with many of their doctrines and am extremely glad they are not in political control in America as they were at times in Europe.
Actually, I am very thankful and applaud the Catholic church for its stance on abortion. Now if they would actually put their money where their mouth is and exercise church discipline (up to excommunication) toward obviously unbelieving child murders who use their personal and political power to extinguish the life of the unborn...shedding innocent blood.
BTW, I believe the church can only kick people out of their earthly communion, it is up to God where their eternal dwelling place will be.
But that’s the problem, the list is ridiculous, most of not all are gross mischaracterization of events or practices. Stick with facts that can be agreed upon and debated like the the seven sacraments, Christological dogmas, scripture, etc. Don’t let you self be confused by silly lists. If you wan’t to “save” a Catholic be able to tell him why the sacramental economy of the Catholic Church is wrong, not that wax candles are used in an “un-biblical” manner.
Funny, I always seem to get that same non answer whenever I ask this question.
You claim you have not said the church is apostate and yet every post is a pronouncement of her heresies.
Can you not give me a straight answer?
If the Church has strayed so far, why would the Holy Spirit lead me to partake in her delusions?
Why not direct me away?
It does not reference the Catholic church.
Rather, it would seem to be about the reformation.
People will not tolerate sound doctrine, and following their own desires and insatiable curiosity will accumulate many teachers and will stop listening to the truth, and will be diverted to myths.
Catholic doctrine rejected
Place own desires over sound doctrine
Thousands of Protestant denominations where by one can pick and choose beliefs or be drawn away by those who would tickle their ears saying what one wants to hear and not firm truth
Diverted to myths or erroneous understandings of the Church
It was not instituted by Constantine
The Apocrypha was not introduced in the 1200s but was confirmed as Scriptural Canon in response to its removal by Luther
Papal Supremacy was recognized in the first century as evidenced by the bishops writing to Clement in Rome
for support and guidance
It is your claim that you know and understand Scriptures all on your own with the help of the Holy Spirit. I contend that cannot be true as even Scripture acknowledges that one must be taught its meaning. The eunuch says in Acts, “how can I know, lest someone teach me?”
Even the Apostles had to have a teacher, Jesus and later the Holy Spirit, otherwise they would not have known who and what He is. Every Christian has come to knowledge of Christ through the teaching of someone else. If one adheres to a Protestant understanding of Scripture, then one has accepted the teachings of someone who disagreed with the teachings of others before him.
Even your “list” posted as a mockery of Catholic teaching was the work of someone else.
I didn’t say the Holy Spirit has led you to partake in her delusions, and I do not think He would do so (lead you into delusion)...He is the Spirit of truth.
I encouraged you to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to the best of your ability, and I trust that God will bless you for doing so. If you feel He has lead you into the Catholic church that is between you and God, regardless of my opinion.
If I rebuke a brother or sister in Christ for a sin (or many) in their life, that does not mean I count them as an unbeliever (though if they refuse to repent at some point I might), I just encourage them to walk in the truth and in the light — and to repent of their sin(s). BTW, what if they’re right and I’m wrong? Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
If I speak against the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, that doesn’t mean I think there is no good in the church or her people, sorry, the world isn’t always that black and white. There are people I know who met Jesus in cults (Jehovah’s Witness and Mormonism), and one friend I have who met Jesus and was radically converted on an LSD trip.
So I am sorry if you are disappointed by my not telling you what to do, but I respect you too much to do that, and I understand that you have to answer to God, and not to me.
Mission to Catholics:
Mission To Catholics is a fundamental/evangelical ministry reaching Roman Catholics with the Biblical message of salvation. Grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We believe in the message of salvation as taught by Scripture alone.
___________________________________________________________
Catholics are Christians, and do not feel the need for an evangenical witness. If you feel incomplete simply living your life as an evangelical follower of Christ, perhaps you need to explore the Catholic Church which contains the fullness of His revelation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is free, online, for anyone who wishes to know more.
Jews were/are God’s people, and didn’t/don’t feel the need for evangelical witness either.
So you can just say no to any gospel (good news) that you feel you don’t need or want.
Thank you for the invitation to explore a Catholicism “which contains the fullness of His revelation.” However, I think the “revelations” of the Catholic Church are a little too full for me, I have enough to keep me busy trying to be fully devoted to Jesus, according to Scripture, without adding Mary, the saints, and a whole host of other religious activities and observances.
BTW, do you feel that EVERY Catholic is a Christian?
I encouraged you to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to the best of your ability, and I trust that God will bless you for doing so. If you feel He has lead you into the Catholic church that is between you and God, regardless of my opinion.
Ah, I see. Do you not see the condescension in what you have said. And the fact that you copped out in answering the question I put forth? If I pray to be led to the truth, and that prayer has led me back to the Church, has the Holy Spirit misled me? Why would He lead me to a Church that is so wrong in its worship of God through His Son, Jesus? I don't accept your fall back, stock answer. Why would the Holy Spirit allow me to fall into false teachings when I have prayed for the truth?
You don't have to answer this post, I get it already
By definition, anyone who is a follower of Jesus, and believes He is the Messiah, is a Christian.
In terms of being a "real" Christian, the fact that many are "Catholic" in name only, applies to all Christians.
What I do know as a Catholic is that many of us are like spoiled children, who take our many God given gifts for granted. I spent many years with little consideration for Mary or the Saints.
As a mother I really appreciate the example of a Christian woman that God gave us in The Blessed Mother. The world tells us that Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are idols. The New Testament tell us that a Christian woman is humble and obedient to God, no matter what. To think that the Blessed Mother witnessed her son being tortured, spat on, and killed, while never questioning God's plan is amazing. She carried her cross with love and continues the good fight.
The saints are simply a testimony to their love of God, under various circumstances. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and souls. Some Catholics ask the saints, who are now close to God to pray for us.
For example, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, was devoted to her mission of serving the poor despite the fact that she didn't always feel God's love, she was obedient no matter what.
Having witnessed the deviance and schisms in so many other churches, I appreciate the Magesterium. When I see teachings of Christ used a divisive tools, instead of love for God, I appreciate the Catechism.
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