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.

Priests (presbuteroi) are also known as “presbyters” or “elders.” In fact, the English term “priest” is simply a contraction of the Greek word presbuteros. They have the responsibility of teaching, governing, and providing the sacraments in a given congregation (1 Tim. 5:17; Jas. 5:14–15).

Here (by the grace of God) is more than should be needed on this:

Nowhere in the New Testament are there any Catholic priests, that is, a separate sacerdotal class of (mostly) celibate believers whose primary unique function is to conduct the Lord’s supper and change bread and wine into the “true body and blood of Christ” (under the appearance of the then non-existent bread and wine) and offer it as a sacrifice for sin.

The English word "priest" itself is a etymological corruption of the Greek presbuteros (even a Orthodox historian scholar admits: "the word "priesthood" is itself a corruption of the Greek "presbyter." - John Anthony McGuckin, "The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture) , being said to be referred to in Old English (around 700 to 1000 AD) as "preostas" or "preost," and finally resulting in the modern English "priest," which is also used for Old Testament ko^he^n, thereby losing the distinction the Holy Spirit provided by never using the distinctive term of hiereus for NT presbuteros, or describing as them as a distinctive sacerdotal class of believers.

R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) (while yet trying to defend the use of "priest"), reveals, "The Greek word for this office is...[hiereus], which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos [as for ko^he^n]. First century Christians [actually the Holy Spirit who inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest [from old English "preost"] took on its definition." (Russell Jonas Grigaitis)

For consistent with her erroneous understanding of the Lord's Supper (“Eucharist”), Catholicism came to consider NT pastors to be a distinctive sacerdotal class of clergy, later called in English “priests” (which the RC Douay Rheims Bible inconsistently calls them: Acts 20:17; Titus 1:5). For the words “hiereus” and “archiereus" ("priest" and "high priest" as in Heb. 4:15; 10:11) are the Greek words which the Holy Spirit distinctively uses for a separate sacerdotal (sacrificing) class in the New Testament (over 280 times total*, mainly as archiereus”) that of Old Testament "priests" (Hebrew ko^he^n) as well as those of pagans and the general priesthood of all NT believers. But which words the Holy Spirit never uses for New Testament pastors ("poime¯n"), which are called presbuteros (senior/elder) or episkopos (superintendent/overseer), and which refers to those in one pastoral office. (Titus 1:5,7; Acts 20:17,28.

All believers are called to sacrifice (Rm. 12:1; 15:16; Phil. 2:17; 4:18; Heb. 13:15,16; cf. 9:9) and all constitute the only priesthood (hieráteuma) in the NT church, that of all believers, (1Pt. 2:5,9; Re 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). But again, nowhere are NT pastors distinctively called "hiereus," and the idea of the NT presbuteros being a distinctive class titled "hiereus," using the same distinctive word for both OT "ko^he^n" and NT presbuteros, was a later development, reflecting the Catholic presumption of an imposed functional equivalence, supposing that NT presbuteros engaged in a unique sacrificial ministry as their primary function. Yet neither presbuteros or episkopos are described as having any unique sacrificial function, and hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5.

Moreover, instead of dispensing bread as part of their ordained function, and offering the Lord's supper as a sacrifice for sin, neither of which NT pastors are ever described as doing in the life of the church (Acts onward, which writings show us how the NT church understood the gospels), instead the primary work of NT pastors is that of prayer and preaching. (Act 6:3,4; 2 Tim.4:2)) by which they “feed the flock” (Acts 20:28; 1Pt. 5:2) for the word is called spiritual "milk," (1Co. 3:22; 1Pt. 1:22) and "meat," (Heb. 5:12-14) which is said to "nourish" the souls of believers and build them up, (1 Timothy 4:6; Acts 20:32) and believing it is how the lost obtain life in themselves. (Acts 15:7-9; cf. Psalms 19:7) In contrast, nowhere in the record of the NT church is the Lord's supper described as spiritual food, and the means of obtaining spiritual life in oneself.

Catholic writer Greg Dues in "Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide," states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."

"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist." (Catholic Customs & Traditions)

Neither the Hebrew word, "ko^he^n," nor the Greek word "hiereus," or the Latin word "sacerdos" (plural, "sacerdotes") for priest have any essential connection to the Greek word presbyteros, and sacerdos has no morphological or lingual relationship with the Latin word for “presbyter” (for which technicalities I rely on the knowledge of others, by God's grace). And hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5.

And hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5 Jewish elders (Hebrew "zaqen") as a body existed before the priesthood of Levitical priests (Hebrew "kohen"), most likely as heads of household or clans, and being an elder did not necessarily make one a Levitical priest (Ex. 3:16,18, 18:12; 19:7; 24:1; Num. 11:6; Dt. 21:2; 22:5-7; 31:9,28; 32:7; Josh. 23:2; 2Chron. 5:4; Lam. 1:9; cf. Mt. 21:13; 26:47) or a high priest, offering both gifts and sacrifices for sins. (Heb. 5:1)

While elders could exercise some priestly functions such as praying and laying hands on sacrifices, yet unlike presbuteros and episkopos (Greek), elders and priest did not mean the same thing in language or in distinctive function. Like very young Samuel, one could be a kohen/priest without being an zaqen/elder, and one could be a elder without formally being a priest, whose primary function was to offer expiatory sacrifices for the people.

In response to a query on this issue, the web site of International Standard Version (not my preferred translation) states,

No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people.

Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description.

To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. (https://www.isv.org/downloads/catacombs/elders.htm)

Thus, the Catholic practice of using the same term for Old Testaments priests and for NT pastors, thereby making the latter into being a separate sacerdotal class of believers, distinctive from the only priesthood in the NT church (all believers) is not Scriptural or justifiable. Instead of using the same term for Old Testaments priests and for NT pastors, the latter should be called elders or overseers or equivalents which correlate to the original meaning and keeps the distinction the Holy Spirit made evident.

Note also that etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and evolving changes in form and meaning. over time, but etymologies are not definitions (examples: "cute" used to mean bow-legged; "bully" originally meant darling or sweetheart; "Nice" originally meant stupid or foolish; "counterfeit" used to mean a legitimate copy; "egregious" originally connoted eminent or admirable). It is an etymological fallacy to hold that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase means it is the same as its original or historical meaning. Since presbyteros incorrectly evolved into priest (and were assigned an imposed unique sacerdotal function) therefore it is erroneously considered to be valid to distinctively use the same distinctive term used for OT priests for NT pastors, despite the Holy Spirit never doing so and the lack of the unique sacerdotal function Catholicism attributes to NT presbyteros.

Finally, a literary source laments,

Heaven and hell alone will tell all the mischief which has been done to men's souls by the double meaning of our word 'priest.' In the Old English Bible ' presbyter ' was rendered by 'preost,' and 'sacerdos' or 'hiereus' by 'sacerd.' Now, neither has 'preost' the 'uteros' of 'presbuteros,' nor has the latter the '0' of 'preost.' 'Preost' seems to have been a form of 'prafost,' and to have been, as such, accommodated to the expression of 'presbuteros'; for this reason, that 'prafost' or 'prafast' signified exactly what a 'presbyter' was in the ancient Church, namely, a president or rector.

If 'priest' represents 'preost,' it does so badly in form; for it [priest] has an 'i,' which 'preost' has not, and it has not an '0,' which 'preost' has; and it represents it utterly falsely in meaning, for it means both elder and sacrificer, both 'presbuteros' and 'hiereus ' or 'sacerdos,' whilst 'preost,' [for presbuteros] as I have said before, did not do this.

Accordingly, neither in form nor in meaning does 'priest' represent either 'preost' or 'presbuteros'... (Aarbert: A Drama Without Stage Or Scenery, Wrought Out Through Song in Many ... by William Marshall, p. 38. Transcribed using OCR software. In his time he apparently wanted to stop using "priest" for the equivalent of the Jewish ko^he^n and Greek “hiereus,” and use it for presbuteros instead, as it essentially once was, but seeing as "priest" is well established denoting the Jewish ko^he^n and Greek “hiereus,”, and since "elder" or "overseer" correlates to the original meaning and keeps the distinction the Holy Spirit made evident, then the latter should be used, or equivalents.)

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Becoming Catholic

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