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Posted on 08/09/2020 7:46:24 AM PDT by MurphsLaw
We should stop trying to evangelize Protestants, some Catholics say. “Let’s get our own house clean first, before we invite our fellow Christians in,” someone commented on a recent article of mine that presented a Catholic rejoinder to a prominent Baptist theologian. Another reader argued that, rather than trying to persuade Protestants to become Catholic, we should “help each other spread God’s love in this world that seems to be falling to pieces before our eyes.” As a convert from Protestantism, actively engaged in ecumenical dialogue, I’ve heard this kind of thinking quite frequently. And it’s dead wrong.
One common argument in favor of scrapping Catholic evangelism towards Protestants is that the Catholic Church, mired in sex-abuse and corruption scandals, liturgical abuses, heretical movements, and uneven catechesis, is such a mess that it is not, at least for the moment, a place suitable for welcoming other Christians.
There are many problems with this. For starters, when has the Church not been plagued by internal crises? In the fourth century, a majority of bishops were deceived by the Arian heresy. The medieval Church suffered under the weight of simony and a lax priesthood, as well as the Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism, culminating in three men claiming, simultaneously, to be pope. The Counter-Reformation, for all its catechetical, missionary and aesthetic glories, was still marred by corruption and heresies (Jansenism). Catholicism has never been able to escape such trials. That didn’t stop St. Martin of Tours, St. Boniface, St. Francis de Sales, St. Ignatius Loyola, or St. Teresa of Calcutta from their missionary efforts.
The “Catholics clean house” argument also undermines our own theology. Is the Eucharist the “source and summit of the Christian life,” as Lumen Gentium preaches, or not? If it is, how could we in good conscience not direct other Christians to its salvific power? Jesus Himself declared: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53) Was our Lord misrepresenting the Eucharist?
Or what of the fact that most Protestant churches allow contraception, a mortal sin? Or that Protestants have no recourse to the sacraments of penance or last rites? To claim Protestants aren’t in need of these essential parts of the Catholic faith is to implicitly suggest we don’t need them either.
* Moreover, in the generations since the Reformation, Rome has been able to win many Protestants back to the fold who have made incalculable contributions to the Church. St. John Henry Newman’s conversion ushered in a Catholic revival in England, and gave us a robust articulation of the concept of doctrinal development. The conversion of French Lutheran pastor Louis Bouyer influenced the teachings of Vatican II. Biblical scholar Scott Hahn’s conversion in the 1980s revitalized lay study of Holy Scripture.
Another popular argument in favor of limiting evangelization of Protestants involves the culture war. Catholics and theologically conservative Protestants, some claim, share significant common ground on various issues: abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, religious freedom, etc. Secularism, the sexual revolution, and anti-religious progressives represent an existential threat to the survival of both Catholics and Protestants, and thus we must work together, not debate one another. “Let’s hold back any criticism of them,” a person commenting on my article wrote. “Believe me, in the times that we are in, we need to all hang together, or we will definitely hang separately on gallows outside our own churches.”
This line of thought certainly has rhetorical force: we don’t have the luxury of debating with Protestants when the progressivists are planning our imminent demise! Ecumenical debate is a distraction from self-preservation. One problem with this argument is that it reduces our Christian witness to a zero-sum game – we have to focus all our efforts on fighting secular progressivism, or we’ll fail. Yet the Church has many missions in the public square – that Catholics invest great energy in the pro-life movement doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also focus our efforts on other important matters: health-care, education, ensuring religious freedom, or fighting poverty and environmental degradation. All of these, in different ways, are a part of human flourishing. Even if we consider some questions more urgent than others, none of them should be ignored.
Besides, there is a vast difference between mere polemics and charitable, fruitful discussions aimed at resolving disagreements. The former can certainly cause bad blood. The latter, however, can actually foster unity and clarity regarding our purposes. Consider how much more fruitful our fight against the devastation of the sexual revolution would be if we persuaded Protestants that they need to reject things like contraception and the more permissive stance towards divorce that they have allowed to seep into their churches. Consider how non-Christians could learn from charitable ecumenical conversations that don’t devolve into name-calling and vilification.
Finally, abandoning or minimizing the evangelizing of Protestants is to fail to recognize how their theological and philosophical premises have contributed to the very problems we now confront. As Brad Gregory’s book The Unintended Reformation demonstrates, the very nature of Protestantism has contributed to the individualism, secularism, and moral relativism of our age. A crucial component to our Catholic witness, then, is helping Protestants to recognize this, since even when they have the best intentions, their very paradigm undermines their contributions to collaborating with us in the culture war.
I for one am very grateful that Catholics – many of them former Protestants – persuaded me to see the problems inherent to Protestantism, and the indisputable truths of Catholicism. My salvation was at stake. I also found and married a devout Catholic woman, and am raising Catholic children. The Catholic tradition taught me how to pray, worship, and think in an entirely different way. It pains me to think what my life would be like if I hadn’t converted to Catholicism.
Why bother to evangelize devout Protestants? Because they are people like me.
By turning their kids over to godless and Marxist-run K-12 and colleges is one of the worst ways to do that.
Folks, Religion is about man more than God.
Listen closely to the reasons people move from RC to P and P to RC.
RC -> P They started reading the Bible, Gods word. The Logic was the primary reason.
P -> RC What they talk about is emotion and feelings.
Amen! Wonderful testimony!
Amen My Brother in Christ, Amen!
Christ is the leader of the Church and it is not named as anything else in scripture
Peter died long before the Romans under Constantine hijacked the movement and created a whole new set of “rules” that are not found in scripture
I am saved by my acceptance and belief in Jesus as the only begotten son of our Creator. John 3:16 says all that is needed, not by usurpers who took it and created their own version.
God decides my fate ultimately and not an organization that claims to have the right to my salvation and acceptance by Jehovah and adoption into his family. Jehovah alone decides who is in the book of life as redeemed by the blood of Christ.
Attending a service and following another’s rules is to me a form of blasphemy and in the command to have no other God’s before me. His Son came to provide for our salvation, and a bunch of others who think they do are not in control or have anything to do with it.
Choose, but do so wisely and stand by it. Jesus is the head of the New church and anyone else who claims to is in deep trouble when they go before the Bema seat.
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his ONLY begotten son, that whomsoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life
No mention of The Catholic Church in this tells me I have a personal relationship with Him and I am adopted into his family.
God Bless
I have never in my life met a Catholic, other than priests, who read their Bible every day.
All in all, I find Catholics are “lazy”. Sit back, sin, confess, penance, oh well, do it again. The priest said it’s all good after that, right?
This is a generalization of course. I know many Catholics. A very few are daily Bible readers, and honestly, those are the few whom I can have a good conversation with.
I guess it’s better to believe a rebellious priest who established a theology that nobody had seen before1500 years after Christ
Why not? Catholics did it several hundred years after Jesus.Oh the revisionists want to claim St. Peter and others, but it really wasn’t until much later that the Catholic Church was established and standardized. Or do you not recall the Great Western Schism in the 1300 to 1400s where eventually there were, count them, 3 rival popes at one point and at the same time. YEah Catholicism got it right is like saying the demoncrats got it right. How’s the current pope working out for you?
The Catholic Church needs something but it ain’t evanglizing, as they worship Mother Mary and call Jesus, a man, a God. Yeah there is no idol worshipping going on in Catholicism. How many statues of Mother Mary are paraded throughout this Earth and lavished upon? Yeah that isn’t idol worshipping in the slightest!
How many Catholics go against their own doctorine when they believe ALL war is bad, but the Catholic Church has doctorine for the justification of war? Yeah Catholicism got it right! If all men are sinners and all men have sinned, then the Catholic Church is the creation of man and is controlled by the judgements and tribulations of man, and man is fallible, this only leads to the fact, no Church, no religion, has ever “got it right”. To say otherwise is to invoke one or more of the 7 deadly sins.
“ When I started to read the Scriptures, really read them, my heart soared. There were the words of Paul, Peter, and Jesus himself. I could be saved from hell. And I could know it. Once I accepted Jesus Christ, it was the most profound thing that ever happened to me. I found out that not only did I know him. —- I LOVED him, and Jesus loved me.”
.....
+1
If by “evangelize” you mean preach the good news of Jesus ... by all means! Regardless of denomination (in the LARGEST sense of that word), all followers of Christ should evangelize.
“ my faith in Christ and His substitutionsry death for my justification. His blood, alone, with nothing more than my taking him at His Word. My good works follow, not lead. All else is dead works and paganism.”
...
+1
“ At the end of Mass, we are told to Go forth and spread the Catholic faith
Always about Catholicism.
Never about Christ.
He alone saves.
No mention of The Catholic Church in this tells me I have a personal relationship with Him and I am adopted into his family.
Jer 31:33 “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” says the LORD. “I will put My instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people.
Jer 31:34 And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’
God destroyed the Temple, destroyed the sacrificial system , destroyed the priestly system. Man rebuilt it.
God’s definition of the New Covenant explains why one MUST be born again. It is a personal relationship with God through the Holy Spirit.
“I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, 3striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: 4 one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:1-4 and 4:13-16
God seeks unity of His Truth that was delegated to the Catholic Church. Jesus didn’t authorize 40,000 different versions of His Truth. There can only be one Truth and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Yes, as Jesus worked with sinners so does the Catholic Church be the source for the process of salvation for sinners through the Mass and the Sacraments. Yes, the Church is full of sinners (horrible sinners) including among the Church leadership and many Popes and each will be judged bu Jesus in His mercy and justice. There are many Catholics that are sinners and do not fully believe and do not practice their Catholic faith. The Church has survived for 2000 years and will continue to do so as Jesus promised us to remain with His Church until the end of time.
There have been many heresies and schisms over the many centuries including the protestant heresy. Protestants may be good people, but that does not merit salvation. By their beliefs they have rejected Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.
I pray for the conversion of all sinners to accept God’s Truth and His Catholic Church. Good people should follow Christ and do his will and not follow their version of the truth.
Yes. God the Son made a new covenant with all. Some Jews and some gentiles accepted His Truth and His Catholic Church. Yet Jesus did not force anyone to believe His Truth or accept His Catholic Church. God is love and wants everyone to accept His love and truth freely.
Jesus wrote His laws in our hearts in our conscience, but delegated authority to His Catholic Church to spread His Good News of Salvation to all nations.
Jesus gave us His Catholic Church to help us in the process of Salvation with the Mass and the Sacraments.
Many continue to reject His Truth and His Catholic Church.
Many do not see or know the parallels between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Jesus formed a new priesthood in His Catholic Church that could forgive or retain sins and bring us the Real presence of Jesus Christ in the Mass and the Eucharist so that Jesus could abide in us ad we abide in Him.
“pray for the conversion of all sinners to accept God’s Truth and His Catholic Church”
Too general. God’s truth is Jesus. I am the way...and the Truth, no man come to the father but by me”.
The body or group of believers is the church, not some city/state in Italy.
But allegiance to man’s organizations is important, even critical, to some.
Trust in Christ alone. All else is either a distraction, or sinking sand.
Certainly many/most believers belong to a local congregation, and they should, but those organizations are just an architecture to meet policy and govt. requirements for ownership of temporal assets, having no authority except that which is tolerated by the individual.
Best.
Catholicism is a “religion”.
“FAITH” in Jesus Christ is not.
Two shipwrecked men are washed ashore on a formerly uninhabited island.
The Protestant man immediately dropped to his knees and thanked the Lord for saving his life.
The Catholic man immediately started building pews complete with kneeling platforms and carving a statue of the virgin Mary.
This ex-Catholic, now conservative Lutheran Christian doesn’t need to be evangelized, thank you very much.
Please do
Since the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church has benn emphatically against the gospel of Jesus Christ. (They were before that, too, but that was when they hardened their stance.)
I know they killed a lot od Christians and burned and tortured many. The atrocities are many. History can’t be erased.
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