Posted on 11/28/2014 2:33:31 PM PST by NYer
It was the day after Ash Wednesday in 2012 when I called my mom from my dorm room at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic.
“You’re not going to become Catholic, you just know you’re not Southern Baptist,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
A pause. “Oh boy,” she sighed.
I started crying.
I cannot stress enough how much I hated the idea of becoming Catholic. I was bargaining to the last moment. I submitted a sermon for a competition days before withdrawing from school. I was memorizing Psalm 119 to convince myself of sola scriptura. I set up meetings with professors to hear the best arguments. I purposefully read Protestant books about Catholicism, rather than books by Catholic authors.
Further, I knew I would lose my housing money and have to pay a scholarship back if I withdrew from school, not to mention disappointing family, friends, and a dedicated church community.
But when I attempted to do my homework, I collapsed on my bed. All I wanted to do was scream at the textbook, “Who says?!”
I had experienced a huge paradigm shift in my thinking about the faith, and the question of apostolic authority loomed larger than ever.
But let’s rewind back a few years.
I grew up in an evangelical Protestant home. My father was a worship and preaching pastor from when I was in fourth grade onwards. Midway through college, I really fell in love with Jesus Christ and His precious Gospel and decided to become a pastor.
It was during that time that I was hardened in my assumption that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t adhere to the Bible. When I asked one pastor friend of mine during my junior year why Catholics thought Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth when the Bible clearly said Jesus had “brothers,” he simply grimaced: “They don’t read the Bible.”
Though I had been in talks with Seattle’s Mars Hill Church about doing an internship with them, John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life clarified my call to missionary work specifically, and I spent the next summer evangelizing Catholics in Poland.
So I was surprised when I visited my parents and found a silly looking book titled Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic on my father’s desk. What was my dad doing reading something like this? I was curious and hadn’t brought anything home to read, so I gave it a look.
David Currie’s memoir of leaving behind his evangelical education and ministries was bothersome. His unapologetic defense of controversial doctrines regarding Mary and the papacy were most shocking, as I had never seriously considered that Catholics would have sensible, scriptural defenses to these beliefs.
The book’s presence on my father’s desk was explained more fully a few months later when he called me and said he was returning to the Catholicism of his youth. My response? “But, can’t you just be Lutheran or something?” I felt angry, betrayed, and indignant. For the next four months I served as a youth pastor at my local church and, in my free time, read up on why Catholicism was wrong.
During that time, I stumbled across a Christianity Today article that depicted an “evangelical identity crisis.” The author painted a picture of young evangelicals, growing up in a post-modern world, yearning to be firmly rooted in history and encouraged that others had stood strong for Christ in changing and troubled times. Yet, in my experience, most evangelical churches did not observe the liturgical calendar, the Apostles’ Creed was never mentioned, many of the songs were written after 1997, and if any anecdotal story was told about a hero from church history, it was certainly from after the Reformation. Most of Christian history was nowhere to be found.
For the first time, I panicked. I found a copy of the Catechism and started leafing through it, finding the most controversial doctrines and laughing at the silliness of the Catholic Church. Indulgences? Papal infallibility? These things, so obviously wrong, reassured me in my Protestantism. The Mass sounded beautiful and the idea of a visible, unified Church was appealing - but at the expense of the Gospel? It seemed obvious that Satan would build a large organization that would lead so many just short of heaven.
I shook off most of the doubts and enjoyed the remainder of my time at college, having fun with the youth group and sharing my faith with the students. Any lingering doubts, I assumed, would be dealt with in seminary.
I started my classes in January with the excitement of a die-hard football fan going to the Super Bowl. The classes were fantastic and I thought I had finally rid myself of any Catholic problems.
I proved a point. I didn’t prove “then meet in church homes on Sunday for the celebration of the Eucharist.” Sunday as a worship day didn’t come until much later. The Sabbath was still The Lords Day as long as the Apostles were alive.
Your post 102. I’ve explained it numerous times and have shown the Greek support on this yet Catholics refuse to believe the Greek. It can’t be made any clearer.
Non-apostate Lutherans are Sola Scriptura. The same issues remain for Confessional Lutherans regarding communion with Catholicism and Catholicism lite.
There is the ONE Catholic Church based on Petrine authority. And then there is everything else under the sun.
Take “your” own interpretation, or that of the Joel Osteens, Rev. Al Sharptons, Rev. Billy Grahams, Rev. Jeremiah Wrights; Rev. David Koresh; Rev. Jim Jones’; Rev. Moons; Rev. Jimmy Swaggart; the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the self-appointed pastors at every corner street street Foursquare Church. You have seen for yourself how mainline Protestant and Evangelical Churches have given us “Bible-based” interpretation whereby gay and lesbian married pastors ar enow admitted to “their” Churches.
The young lad and his Dad made the only correct choice they could They are not alone. Prominent Protestant scholars and theologians have after a lifetime of teaching and preaching have converted to Catholicism. This includes the President of the scholarly Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). Francis J. Beckwith
See
http://www.amazon.com/Return-Rome-Confessions-Evangelical-Catholic/dp/1587432471
Then there is the popular Wheaton professor, Joshua Hochschild
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB113659805227040466
And then came the shock. The founder of Sweden’s largest Protestant denomination, Ulf Ekman converted to Catholicism
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/03/ulf-ekmans-charismatic-conversion
The books in the Bible did not fall from the skies and automatically arrange it self in a set order. These were carefully put together after years of discussion ad debate by the early Church theologians based on Petrine authority and by drawing upon a boat load of written materials, confirming some and discounting others like the Gnostic Gospels, they drew upon the oral tradition, the Aramaic and Greek meaning of words, early liturgical practices, and revelation. This authority did not dissipate over time. It continues to remain to this day and until the end of time.
The famous British essay, Hillaire Belloc wrote, that unlike other heresies, Protestantism spawned a “cluster of heresies” and the evil of the Reformation continues to spawn a mudslide of various sects and sub-sects.
Cross over my friend.The water is warm and inviting and get rid of all that born-again nonsense etc.
Catholicism IS Christianity, the various protestant denominations are subgroups of Catholicism.....sort of Catholicism lite!
I will readily admit, that sometimes my fruit is pretty rotten.
But I do appreciate the way the message was delivered.
Thanks to both of you. (I mean that)
And Popes who committed murders are regarded by he Church as murderers, not saint.
For instance, Pope Innocent III died suddenly at Perugia on 16 July 1216. Innocent III was believed to be in the flames of God's punishment on the very day he died. He appeared to St. Lutgarda in her monastery at Aywieres in Brabant, (modern-day Belgium), which is impossible to account for naturally, since they would not have yet known, even in Rome, that he had died in Perugia. Engulfed in flames, he declared to her, “I am Pope Innocent”.
He continued to explain that he had had the grace to repent of his sins just before he died, but was in Purgatory for three evils which required him to be purified for his remaining attachments to sin. Innocent asked St. Lutgarda to come to his assistance by prayer, saying, “Alas! It is terrible; and will last for centuries if you do not come to my assistance. Help me!” At that moment he disappeared and St. Lutgarda informed her sisters of what she had seen, writing letters to all her allied nun's communities. These letters still exist: this is how we know she knew what she knew, and when she knew it!
My point here is not to start an argument about the reality of mystical visions or the docrine of Purgatory (please! don't let's argue about that right now) but to point out that murderers are considered murderers, even if they are Popes.
In Islam, they would be saying he was a Shaheed and would get to enjoy his 72 virgins. In Catholicism, he is considered to have just missed Hell by the skin of his teeth and the mercy of the Lord Jesus, and still by God's justice engulfed in flames for his sins, which included some of the the worst aspects of worldly wickedness, aggressions and cruelty. The Albigensian Crusade was only one of them.
Damnable? We can only agree. There have been 266 popes, some great, some good, some very, very bad. But the bad ones are not emulated nor honored. They are not our saints.
As the comedienne Gilda Radner used to say, "If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horible warning."
Moutn man is just fine.
Bless your heart
You should watch me howl at the full moon.
1. Caths? So, Protestants would be "Prots"?
2. How can YOU read the hearts of ALL 1.6 billion Catholics on this earth and make the blanket statement that they don't apply the Bible?
3. Why do you decide that the GREEKS had all the answers about Jesus and Mary? One of my oldest friends was married to a wonderful Greek man and I used to visit them often. I learned all about Greek Orthodoxy and I never did hear what you just wrote.
4. I NEVER, EVER learned that we had to go through Mary, or ANYONE, to get to Christ. Of course, I only took religion classes for 12 years and have been attending DAILY Mass for decades. The "Our Father" is an old prayer that Jesus said to His Father in heaven. How intimate is that? Jesus TAUGHT us to pray.
Perhaps you were speaking with someone who knew JACK about the Catholic faith. If you have a question about Catholicism you can go to two websites:
1. Catholic Online http://www.catholic.org/
or
2. Catholic Answers http://www.catholic.com/
for REAL answers from Catholics who make it their business to answer questions about our faith. People from anywhere can ask all kinds of questions. There you will get answers that you might not get here on the FR.
NO reason to be afraid. NO ONE will try to convert you or put you down.
God bless you and yours.
See Mathew 25:31-46....our own actions mean a lot in our salvation!!
No Catholic believes in this stuff. No need to be born again. We having the Living Bread. The Holy Eucharist. Believed by a constellation of theologians for over 2000 years: saints, martyrs, and stigmatists.
You did not address the issue I raised in my post to you.
I am always amazed when a Protestant objects to Catholic claims of being the one true church. Does not every Protestant preacher present the teaching of his denomination as being the truth and that of other denominations as being false? Do not Protestant posters here at FR present their opinions as the truth against all other interpretations of the gospel? If they do not claim to hold the one true gospel then perhaps they should add the phrase "but this might not actually be true" to everything they preach.
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