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."
“Your claim is laughable on its face.”
Who was St. Jerome? Was he not a Catholic?
If the Catholic Church was founded by Christ and his Apostles, then yes, the Apostles were Catholic. They certainly weren’t Lutheran, they certainly weren’t protestant, so what were they?
“were no Roman Catholics when the Bible was written, Old or New Testaments.”
So who was the first Roman Catholic?
I don’t know who the first Roman Catholic was, but I doubt that it was a former Jewish fisherman from Galillee.
OOH OOOH, I know! I know! Constantine:)
“I don’t know who the first Roman Catholic was,”
Then how do you know it wasn’t the Apostles?
It is great to be home isn’t it?
You, however, are much more gentle than me in your defense of the Church.
Of what importance are my feelings about anyone else? God is the judge of who is, or who is not, a Christian.
I agree with your assessment that there are many Christians “in name only” in the visible church, Protestant and Catholic.
And I also am humbled by the godly example of Mary as a servant of God, as a woman, and as a mother. Truly she is blessed. Mother Theresa is/was a challenge to us all, in her service to the poor.
We should all endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, but I cannot agree with you on the magisterium.
Because I know who they were.
When I was little a Jehovah Witness told me the Pope was the devil, and scared the **** out of me. I have no doubt that because of that, I strayed from God, and I now pray for her soul may she rest in peace. She was later diagnosed with a mental illness, before she passed away. Jesus did say, you are better off with an anchor around your neck, than to take away the faith of my children.
I was naive in placing my child in a Christian school. I had no idea how rampant the animosity was. I guess I should have known better from my childhood experience. We live and we learn.
If one opens his or her heart to Christ, the Holy Spirit will lead one home to His Church. It is not easy, as many false teachings that have been embraced are difficult to cast off, but as Paul taught, we must test our faith.
True enough, God is the judge.
I was just responding to your statement that Catholics are Christians. I took it you meant to imply that they should be excluded from the list of people that evangelicals should share the gospel with.
Sorry if I mistook your intent.
If however, I share my faith (the gospel) with Catholics or anyone else, and it turns out that they are already Christians, then that witness merely turns into fellowship...as it should.
Don't you find a problem with the fact that any creep can come along, call themselves "Christians" pitch a tent, and start promising people salvation?
Thousands of "churches" are popping up everywhere to preach hate in the name of our beloved Savior Jesus!
3 guilty of murder for starving infant who didn't say 'Amen'
You may be naive in believing that “no Catholic teacher or priest has ever taught animosity towards fellow Christians.”
That, simply, is historically untrue.
However, we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” and hope in the present and future truth of your statement.
Sorry you had some bad experiences with your child.
I am a life long Catholic. NEVER has a priest said anything negative to me about fellow Christians. NEVER!
We live in 2 different worlds as far as that is concerned.
I don’t think you want to get into atrocities or abuses committed by those whom the church, Catholic or otherwise, has approved for ministry.
I find it a tragedy that people don’t know the Bible and aren’t able to protect themselves from the error that comes at them either from within the church or from without.
No, I don’t have a problem with the fact that people have freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It was the absence of those things during the Dark Ages that led to many abuses through the “church.” However, the Protestant Restoration, and the dissemination of the Bible and the Judeo Christian ethic throughout the West brought much relief to Europe. It even led to some reformation within the Catholic Church in an effort to stop the hemorrhaging of people to Protestantism.
That is wonderful. May it ever be so!
Thank you friend. We are spoiled brats. I think a short absence made the heart grow fonder. Also being in a great evangelical Catholic church made be grow in amazing ways. Bible study, the Cathechism, FAMILIA training, it isn't a sacrifice, it is a blessing! It is simply amazing to learn our history. Knowledge is power.
When I tell you that for Lent I am going to daily mass, and I laugh at myself for for who I've become, and what I was. The thought of wanting to go to daily mass blows my mind, but being filled with the Holy Spirit is euphoric. I love it, I was missing out for long time.
I laugh at myself for what I was and what I voluntarily missed out on because of my stubbornness. But, the laughter is joyful for in some ways I appreciate it all so much more for having starved myself of it for so long.
I was away for 20 years and like a man starving I gorged myself on it all. Daily Mass, Ha! I fasted every day for Lent one year!
Well, I just wanted to comment to you as I am only an inFRequent visitor here and had never seen anything posted by you.
I said you are gentle, but after the last couple of posts, I sense some steel in your spine as well:)
A Catholic priest has to study tehology, from 6-12 years. I have never met such educated men. You can go to any Catholic church in the world and the mass will be the same, perhaps in different languages. In five years, the Old and New testament is read in it's entirety in catholic Masses.
I'm glad you feel theologically superior, but I have a problem with priests who selectively pick biblical passages to suit their personal interests. Such as using the Old Testament to claim that God unleashed His wrath on the Jewsbecause they sacrificed with incense and had icons, as opposed the fact that they were worshipping the God's of the Sumerian's and the Egyptians. God demand that we worship Him, he doesn't condemn us for having icons. That's silly.
Did you talk to them?
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