Posted on 03/30/2019 8:12:59 AM PDT by Salvation
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?
— Name withheld
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.
And alive to Christ.
Unlike certain Romanists on the thread.
Ummmmm.....metmom.....my post 607 was NOT addressed to Elsie, it was addressed to Luircin. (You should read these posts just a bit more carefully, before jumping to such a horrendously erroneous conclusion like that, metmom, and you should follow that same exact advice for your Scripture reading too.)
I wasn't angry in the least. Read it again. I just asked you a very simple question, and in my other reply to your other post, I just stated a very simple fact. For all my posts on this thread, I continuously had a big, joy-filled smile on my face, and felt not one little single drop of anger.
I look at these debates here as sort of like mini political debates (on a much smaller, and much more modest scale of course). When Trump debated "Dim-Bulb, Low-Energy Jeb" Bush, or "Fruity Little Marco" Rubio, or "Lyin' Hillary", he wasn't trying to convince any of them, of ANYTHING. Quite frankly, he really didn't give a flying foo-foo what they thought about anything he said, because he felt they were already a hopelessly lost cause, with their weird, crazy, and harmful ideas. Rather, he was trying to convince the other observers of the debates (the voters). Here (on a much smaller scale), we are also trying to convince the other observers (the other posters and lurkers who might be reading the thread). Aside from them, there is a small group of hard-hearted, stubborn posters here, with an insane hatred of the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ, who think they know everything, and, ultimately, that problem is between them and God. I wasn't trying to convince you of anything, and I wasn't in the least angry.
I must have looked at the post above it.
But Luircin is not exactly a millennial either.
Dead means dead. As it says there in the Bible (James), if it is not reflected in works, it is not real faith. God is the only one who can save us, but He expects us to do our part to cooperate with His Saving Grace. (It is like breathing: God enables you to breathe, and you can not give yourself the ability to breathe even one more stinking breath, but you can do various actions to force your breathing to stop forever, if you so choose, with the free will that God gives you. God is the only one who can give life, and enable a person to breathe, but God does not force you to keep breathing (or living), and many people have been breathing for a while, then have chosen to stop breathing. Likewise, all Catholics believe that only God can save us, but a person is free to show by their actions that they reject the Salvation that God offers them freely.
Wow, you seem to have a sense of humor like James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey, who, after Trump joked about the Russians helping him find Hillary's 30,000 lost emails, got very upset, angrily blasted him, and seriously accused him of "collusion". People like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and Laura Ingraham, all knew Trump was just saying that in jest, while dingbats and doofuses like Clapper, Brennan, Comey, and the mainstream media, got all upset and in a huff, and started accusing Trump of awful, terrible things. I wasn't doing any "childish name calling", boatbums -- boatbums is your name here. For April fools day, I gave you (in jest) a Bible text about bums, and I gave you a funny song about bums. You obviously didn't think they were funny, so, I'm sorry for you not seeing the humor in them. I keep a list here of posters who don't seem to have a sense of humor (or who seem to have one that is very stunted, and rarely, if ever, engaged or displayed), so I try to avoid (like the plague with cooties) posting humorous things to those posters. As a gesture of Christian peace and harmony, I will place your name into my "no-sense-of-humor" list, and try to remember to never post anything I think is humorous to you, ever again.
(P.S. By the way, did you appoint yourself to be in charge of telling other FReepers what to post, and what not to post? Are you the new "Dictator Maduro" of Free Republic? How about this: you don't try to dictate to me what I post, and I won't try to dictate to you what you post. You take care of your posts, and I'll take care of my posts.)
Wow, there's an inspiring, lofty, uplifting, spiritual expression. (Did you take that inspirational thought with you when you got down on your knees to pray to God, or did you tuck that one away somewhere, and try to hide it from Him?)
Do you know what the word "hyperbole" means, metmom? Jesus used it quite often, to make His points, and it was a very common way to make points by everyone in the Jewish world at the time. For example, when Jesus said (in Luke 14:26) that, if anyone came to Him, and did not hate his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he could not be His disciple, did He mean that literally, or was He (obviously) just using hyperbole, to make His point more forcefully, so it would stick with them, and did not seriously mean that they had to hate all those people in their lives to be his disciples?
On other occasions, Jesus stressed the importance of keeping God's commandment to honor one's father and mother. (See Matthew 15:3-6, Matthew 19:17-19, Mark 10:17-19, and Luke 18:18-20.) Jesus would have been directly contradicting Himself, if He literally meant they should hate their father and mother. (You can't honor your parents, or others, by hating them.) He obviously did not mean that literally, but was, once again, just using hyperbole, to make His point more forcefully, and, memorably, (and once again using the term "father" in His hyperbole) .
That's exactly what He was doing when He said, "Call no man father", making His point more forcefully and memorably by, once again, using hyperbole. He did that quite often, throughout the Gospels, and you will find them if you just take the time to study your Bible, in search of the actual truth.
Here, metmom, I'll even give you some more resources (some from the Orthodox Church), to help you understand this important point better. Please take the time to actually look into these valuable references this time.
You say by your questions that you do not understand my post, but you call it foolish anyway. (In other words, you don't get it, but it must be foolish.)
Well let me try to enlighten you, imardmd1.
In Matthew 25:31-46, at that climactic final judgment, does the King there judge the sheep and the goats on what they were thinking, saying, and praying about, or on what actual actions they were doing, and what actual actions they were neglecting to do?
And, in Matthew 7:21, does Jesus say that not everyone who calls Him Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the ones who do the will of the Father?
And does the Holy Spirit say, in James 2:14-26, that faith without corresponding works is dead? Do you believe that "faith" that is dead, is really "faith", or, is it "fake faith", like "fake news" is not really "news"? Just saying you "believe", without accompanying actions, is similar to the belief the devils have (as James 2:19 clearly says), which is empty and meaningless. As our Savior and Judge plainly says in Matthew 25:31-46, He will be judging the "sheep and the goats" on their actions, not just their thoughts/words/prayers/abstract "beliefs". (Or, do you think that feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping the sick, etc., like Jesus Christ clearly said, when explaining His coming final judgment there, are not really actions?)
Guess again.
If they are saved believers, it would be better for them to leave Rome, but where they worship is between them and God.
The first crucial issue is the Gospel and eternal life.
Let’s hope they heard the Gospel of Grace before Thea went to Rome, where it isn’t taught.
In the meantime, millions leave Rome every year - many of those to salvation.
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the handful of people you posted didn’t swim the Tiber, but simply walked across on the backs of the millions swimming in the other direction, toward Christ.
I did that myself bro, and I have NO plans to swim the Tiber. 😁
Me neither bro! Why trade down??
Wow, you seem to have a sense of humor like James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey...
That was, of course, just the "tip of the tip of the iceberg". That handful I posted consisted of twelve people. (That sound familiar? How many guys did Jesus choose?) If you had taken the time to look at, and explore the link that Salvation provided, you would have discovered over a thousand conversion stories documented there, and that itself is just the very tip of the iceberg. Most converts do not end up on those shows. I'll post another link to that site for you, so you can really look through some of those conversion stories, from every conceivable denomination, so that you will at least have an idea what you are talking about when you attack it. Here goes that link - why not take an honest look through it? What do you have to lose?
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