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."
***To the Catholic Church Protestants are heretics and not saved.***
That’s an often misunderstood point. What the Catholic church actually says is that if a man believes that the Catholic church is the true church and does not join it, he will not be saved. We can also say the same thing about any other church. In other words, we must do what we truly believe to be right. God would not condemn to hell anyone who acts in the way that person believes to be true.
So why, biblically, is the “blood” of Christ not given to every believer, but only for the priest? Perhaps to consolidate power in the institution (Roman Catholic Church and its “priesthood”).
What scriptural support do you have for WITHOLDING life from lay Catholics. “He who does not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood has no life in him.”
I suggest you experiment by spitting out the host after you have chewed it up. Your “faith” that it turns into an actual mass of “flesh” might be in for a rude awakening.
However, I have no problem with the belief that those who partake in Christian communion are receiving the benefit of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord Jesus, which, by the way is for every believer, not just the “priests” (in the case of the wine, grape juice, or “blood”).
Yes, I believe someone who comes to faith in Christ, which is a choice, ought to follow the Lord’s command to be baptized, even if they were sprinkled as an infant.
Regarding baptism of/for the dead, there is some discussion as to whether it was practiced early in some “orthodox” churches, which I assume the Roman Catholic Church would lay claim to. I have no idea if it has been practiced since the early centuries of church history.
What an odd question, I take it you have not been to an ordinary form Latin Rite Mass in the United States in the last thirty years.
Your misuse of the greek changes its plain, easily understandable meaning into an apology for false Catholic doctrine.
“When we carefully consider the Biblical record, the question itself seems quite ridiculous, because it is so clear even from the context of many of the scriptures that He did (Jesus had brothers and sisters). The only major religion that chooses to dispute this is the Roman Catholic religion. Roman Catholicism dogmatically maintain that following the Lord’s birth, Mary continued in her virginity the rest of her life and never bore any more children. This in direct contradiction to everything in scripture which shows that though Joseph and Mary did not come together before Jesus was born, they did afterward, and the Lord indeed blessed them with Children.
With so much Biblical validation for this, the question is, why would anyone attempt to dispute it, or even want to? The answer is as simple as the word ‘tradition’. It is because these scriptures directly contradict Roman Catholic tradition which glorifies Mary as a perpetual virgin, Co-Redemptrix, and Mediatrix. If this church were to confess that the scripture is correct and Mary had other children, it would destroy their well oiled myths about Mary. Therefore, a way had to be devised which would justify this teaching.
Matthew 13:55
“Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?”
Matthew 27:56
“Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of
James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.”
Here we see from many different levels that Mary is identified as the “Mother” of James and Joses. This has nothing to do with the translation of the word “brother”. And it is clearly stated again in Matthew 13:55 that James and Joses were Jesus’ brothers! And so unambiguously, on two separate levels, we have the truth of the Word that Mary was mother of Jesus, James and Joses, and that James and Joses was the brother of Jesus. That should settle it for any rational, objective thinker. But Roman tradition is not rational, it’s indoctrination. Nevertheless, the clear sense of scripture (to those without any preconceived ideas) is made manifest in it’s clarity.
Matthew 1:24-25
“Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him HIS WIFE:
And knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn Son: and he called His name, Jesus!”
Note that Joseph abstained from sexual relations with Mary only before Jesus was born, and not after.
Link follows:
http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/faq/sisters.html
I would invite you to stop relying on hearsay and slander and look into matters for yourself. We have our cranky congregants just like any other church, but most Catholics will welcome the opportunity to explain the faith to you.
As I said before -- if you're going to dislike the Church, at least dislike it as it really is, not as some ignorant or hateful person has told you that it is.
This event took place nearly 10 years ago. A Catholic television station chose to rebroadcast Alex Jones story, yesterday. I posted a thread and pinged the Catholic list, to let them know about the program. If this is not a topic of interest to you, why would you visit this thread?
Plus he's dead wrong about the issue at hand. I already pointed out to you that not only the early Church fathers but Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli believed what Warren claims only Catholics believe. Orthodox do too. In fact, the only people who use that passage for a proof text are modern members of certain denominations who use it to attack Catholic faith (as Warren does with his rather snippy tone in the article you linked - and he spends a lot of time attacking the Catholics rather than preaching the Gospel.)
And why would you go to a Reform website for an explanation of Catholic doctrine, anyway? I don't go to Catholic websites to figure out what the Church of Christ or the Brethren or the LDS believe! This is the problem, instead of going to the source and studying it for yourself you're relying on biased folks with an axe to grind. (Since you're obviously not interested in the language issues, I won't bother to explain to you the 17th century usage of the words "unto" and "until".)
********************
Excellent post.
Nice try. See post 86
You said I am “forming your opinions from extremely outdated and biased sources.”
Actually, I am forming my opinions from personal studies and experiences in the Roman Catholic church.
Though I must confess that I have not attend a Roman Catholic mass for many years. Has it changed in the past several decades?
You wrote:
Since you’re obviously not interested in the language issues, I won’t bother to explain to you the 17th century usage of the words “unto” and “until”.
OK. Thank you for the time you have already taken. I appreciate the effort you have put into explaining your faith.
You wrote:
I take it you have not been to an ordinary form Latin Rite Mass in the United States in the last thirty years.
That would be correct. Have they changed it since I was a child? And if so, why?
Unless there was a problem with the old form of mass I used to attend? In which case I applaud the change.
Others in this discussion have addressed your claim, so I will not duplicate.
Thanks for answering for NYer.
Agreed. Thanks for your comments.
You might want to take another look.
And please remember, as I said before, that like all churches we have some cranky members, even impatient priests who don't help as they should. Errare humanum est.
Have you read the new Catechism or the new Code of Canon Law? They really do an excellent job of explaining things. The old Catechism assumed a great deal, and there was an interregnum of poorly catechized folks after VCII that has caused a lot of confusion.
You might like this reference more (lest you think I haven’t seriously considered your contentions).
Pages 1508-1520
Without thought you insult again.
Those who adhere to Rome adhere to Jesus.
And by whose authority do you make this declaration?
Your own understanding of Scripture? If it is thus, then you have usurped for yourself infallibility and declared that you alone are the holder of Truth.
Another man's teaching? Then you have subjugated yourself to another man's infallibility.
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