Becoming Catholic

Question: I had reason to hope my niece was going to convert to the Catholic faith. But there were so many obstacles the Church set up that discouraged her. She was asked to go to classes, and they told her that her marriage was not valid and she would need an annulment. Further, it was necessary to wait until Easter, etc. The nearby evangelical church set up no such obstacles, and she was able to join at once and be considered a member. I hear so much talk of evangelization today, but I share my niece’s frustration. Can we not streamline this process?

Answer: There is a kind of appealing simplicity that you describe in many Protestant denominations. But there are problems with the approach that should give us pause. Ultimately evangelization is more about conversion than mere membership. We are summoned to embrace the saving teaching of the Lord and to walk according to it.

Because adults make informed decisions, the Church considers it important to teach them the fundamentals of the Faith so that they can know what it is they are agreeing to when they enter the Church. Although some of the Scriptures portray an almost instant, on-the-spot baptism, the consensus in the early Church shifted to a lengthy, three-year period of instruction (called the catechumenate) prior to baptism. This likely was because of the insight that quick conversions often led to quick departures or a falling away when the true demands of discipleship became known.

Instructions are most insisted upon for those who are unbaptized. In the case of those who are baptized and come from different Protestant denominations, the length and content of instructions will depend on their background. It is up to the discretion of the pastor who discerns with each individual what is needed. It is certainly not required for those already baptized to “wait until next Easter.”

The concerns about a person’s marital status are rooted in the very words and teachings of Jesus himself. He teaches without ambiguity that for a person to marry, then divorce and enter another marriage, puts them in an ongoing state of adultery in the “new” marriage (cf. Mt 5:32; Mt 19:1-9; Mk 10:11-12; Lk 16:18, etc). He adds rather firmly, “What God has joined together, let no one divide” (Mt 19:9).

It will be further noted that when the Lord was evangelizing the woman at the well, he brought her to a moment of conversion, and she asked for the gift of faith. But the Lord Jesus saw fit to first raise with her the fact that she had been married five times and was now living with a man outside of marriage. Her conversion would not be complete or adequate until she was willing to live chastely. Then the graces could flow.

For reasons of their own, many Protestant denominations have decided to practically overlook such passages. But the Catholic Church takes the Lord’s teaching on these matters rather seriously, as he clearly intended that we should. In some cases, after an investigation based on evidence, the Church may use its power to bind and loose, to indicate that the previous marriage was not “what God has joined,” and it recognizes the first marriage as null. A person’s current marriage then can be blessed and recognized. But we simply cannot set the Lord’s words aside as if they were of little importance.

Thus some conversions to the Catholic faith will take some time to be faithful to the teachings of the Lord and the nature of true conversion. It is worth the diligence required.

Lots of words there to simply paraphrase what has been known for centuries:

John 6:22-36
²²The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. ²³Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. ²⁴Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.

²⁵When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
²⁶Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. ²⁷Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
³⁰So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? ³¹Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’^[c]”
³²Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
³⁴“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
³⁵Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.

1 John 3:21-23
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

...after the establishment of the one holy catholic apostolic Church.

THIS one??

The Council's Letter to Gentile Believers Acts 15:22-35

²² Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers. ²³ With them they sent the following letter:

   The apostles and elders, your brothers,
   To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:
   Greetings.
²⁴ We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. ²⁵ So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— ²⁶ men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁷ Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. ²⁸ It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹ You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.
   Farewell.

³⁰ So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. ³¹ The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. ³² Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. ³³ After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. ^[34] ³⁵ But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

Mortal sins kill and those who commit them will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

ALL sin kills.

ALL sin is law breaking.

It's not the kind of sin that makes sin so serious.

It's WHO the sin is committed against.

James 2:8-11 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

Since all sin kills, and there's no other remedy for sin than death, Jesus had to die.

Hebrews 9:22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Then enters the part that Catholics struggle with the most: forgiveness.

When a person puts their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to save them, He does. Salvation by faith by believing.

Then they are born anew/born from above/born again (whatever) and are given new SPIRITUAL life, the part that died through sin, and God comes and dwells in the new believers. The record of sin debt that stood against the person have been canceled, it is no longer in effect. That person is sealed with the Holy Spirit and is now seated with Jesus in heaven.

Colossians 1:9-14 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Ephesians 1:13-14 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 2:4-7 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Our salvation is then secure for us. Peter, your first pope, says this......

1 Peter 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Since our salvation did not depend on our works or anything else we did, it is not kept by our works or anything else we do. We can't earn it and we can't unearn it. It is a GIFT from God.

Galatians 3:1-29 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

I wonder if the reason Catholicism teaches salvation is through faith PLUS works is because they don't think people will behave themselves if they taught the Biblical gospel of salvation by grace through faith and not by works? I don't think they trust Christians to live holy lives without having the threat of eternal damnation hanging over their heads.

I'm convinced of it.

And again, they show that they do not understand the new birth, the new nature a Christian has that does not want to sin but wants to please God by living a holy life.

And nobody is perfect. We fail, but God is great and chooses to forgive it and relate to us as He does to His own Son.

Catholics stumble over the *does God even forgive future sin*? but the problem is, it's only future to US.

God sees it and knows it all before time began.

When the record of our sin debt is canceled when we put our faith in Christ, it's ALL of the record.

Repentance is not mere turning FROM sin. It's turning to Christ, changing our thinking about Jesus.

Lots of people can turn from all kinds of sin and while it makes life nicer here on earth, without the turning TO Christ, it means little for eternity.

So one can repent from sin again and again if they are just turning from sin. But turning to Jesus for salvation needs to be done only once.

After that, it's following Him.

However, I find it interesting that while they were betrothed, he was still considered her husband.

(Gratuitously and without invitation, let me break into your train of thought at this point and interject the comment as follows:)

Begging your pardon, but they were not betrothed MM, they were espoused. That is, they were fully legally the spouse each of the other. They were husband and wife. However, their union, though legally and spiritually consummated, was not yet physically finalized.

This was (perhaps still is, when determinedly observed) a unique Hebrew arrangement to ensure that the first child born could be assured that he/she was the get of the father by a virginal mother, according to Deuteronomy 22:13-29, esp. vv. 19 and 20. This was to preserve the genuineness of the primogeniture rule, that the first-born male should receive the title, blessings, and property of the father upon his death, as well as the obvious matter of inheriting Jewishness from the inescapable fact that the mother was of the Jewish heritage.

Until the Gentile Bible reader grasps this context, he/she will not be cognizant of the scriptural import of this passage, which will come into play in the later application to doctrine.

Even if it was not always perfectly observed in the some 1,400 years before Jesus' time, we today can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was, in validating Isaiah's prophecy, born of a pure virgin according to the strict observation of this rule--one of the prophecies that He fulfilled--passively or actively--that certified His Title as King of the Jews, as well as the Messiah/Christ and Savior in this first appearance on the Earth as a man-child, and legally the son of Mary's spouse. Joseph had legitimate claims to the throne, to royal privilege.

This is just a point clarifying the correct hermeneutic of the interpretation of the verse AMPU quoted in Post #1275, which was:

24 When Joseph woke up,* he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.*

This is from the (mis)translated New International Version, from which the modern reader, unfamiliar with the underlying text and Jewish customs, would erroneously infer that Joseph and Mary were not wed until they went to live together. In this version, interpretively (and poorly) translated by the dynamic equivalency style, the doctrinally clear meaning of the implicit Jewish custom escapes the reader, and thus unnecessarily leads to dissention such as the one in which the two of you are here engaged. This is just one of the instances in which the NIV undermines the Deity of Jesus, for which I find it not worthy of use in a finely reasoned Bible discussion. You may note that some other modern versions also miss the point when they do not hold to the exact interpretation of the Greek, which in this passage both the Textus Receptus and the W&H text are in exact agreement:

και παρελαβεν την γυναικα αυτου (Greek)

and took the wife of him (English)

Here, both lambano and paralambano may be translated as "took," but the "para" adds the sense of "alongside." The first century Jewish Koine speaker would immediately grasp that, whereas they had previously lived separately and not domiciled together, as a condition of carrying out their contractual obligations, now in subsequent compliance to the request of the Lord's angel he took alongside himself the woman who was already his wife (and had been at least long enough for him to know that she was with child), to live under one roof as would have been the case had the union been physically consummated as agreed.

Other doctrinal teachings rely on this fact, that everything was consistent with the approved execution of the finalization of the Hebraic customs under the Mosaic Covenant.

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