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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. Lets 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 Gods love in this world that seems to be falling to pieces before our eyes. As a convert from Protestantism, actively engaged in ecumenical dialogue, Ive heard this kind of thinking quite frequently. And its 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 didnt 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 arent in need of these essential parts of the Catholic faith is to implicitly suggest we dont 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 Newmans 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 Hahns 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. Lets 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 dont 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 well fail. Yet the Church has many missions in the public square that Catholics invest great energy in the pro-life movement doesnt mean we shouldnt 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 dont 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 Gregorys 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 hadnt converted to Catholicism.
Why bother to evangelize devout Protestants? Because they are people like me.
Augustine (De bono viduitatis)
1 Corinthians 14:27-28 kjv
If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret.
LOL
Heck; you don't even believe your own CATECHISM stuff!
PART ONE
THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION TWO
THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
CHAPTER TWO
I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD
The Good News: God has sent his Son
422 'But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.'1 This is 'the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God':'2 God has visited his people. He has fulfilled the promise he made to Abraham and his descendants. He acted far beyond all expectation - he has sent his own 'beloved Son'.3
423 We believe and confess that Jesus of Nazareth, born a Jew of a daughter of Israel at Bethlehem at the time of King Herod the Great and the emperor Caesar Augustus, a carpenter by trade, who died crucified in Jerusalem under the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, is the eternal Son of God made man. He 'came from God',4 'descended from heaven',5 and 'came in the flesh'.6 For 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.'7
424 Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.'8 On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church.9
That’s my take, too.
The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal
I Corinthians 13:1
Since then, the terms tinkling cymbals and sounding brass have often been used to signify words of emptiness and confusion describing perfectly most writings critical of the Latter-day Saints.
— Hugh Nibley
I think even the words of this Mormon apologist are applicable to so much of the non-biblical ‘reasonings’ that you have posted.
Elsie, your Anti-Mormon Cultism is showing again. Please get a medication refill.
Don’t like your cult being exposed, eh Mormon?
And he’s disappeared.
As usual when the BS is challenged.
I find it hilarious how he lashed out so angrily at me. I’m sure he’s never heard the verse, “It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.”
Still haven’t quite passed my record of the FRomans accusing me of both being and listening to the devil three times in one day, but it’s fun all the same.
Amen. Hear here, here is wisdom.
The problem with protestants is that do not understand
what faith is.
Faith is therefore a relationship with God as well as an engagement with the truths that he reveals. In other words, faith refers to both the act by which we accept God’s Word and the content of what he has revealed to us.
Abraham, whom the Church calls our “father of faith,” and the Blessed Mother Mary, the first among all disciples, show by their acts of trust in God that faith is a process of growth, day by day.
Our faith encounter with God’s revealed message takes time and maturity to probe its meaning and gain some hint of the awe and majesty to which divine truths point.
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matt 5:16
Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father who is in heaven... And then will I declare to them ‘I never knew you;depart from me you evildoers.’” Matt 7:21,23
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” John 14:12
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Our commitment to Christ is proved by our works and not merely by our words John 14:15
I can rely on the authority to interpret the Scriptures that was given to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church by Jesus. Whereas, protestants have at least 40,000 different personal opinions that do not reflect God’s Truth. (2Peter 1:20)(2Peter 3:15-16). Peter warns that that genuine believers can fall from God’s grace and ultimately lose their salvation (2Peter 2:20-21)
Protestants appear to have faith by words and not works, accordingly they selectively accept some of god’s revealed truths while ignoring other truths, they reject the authority of Jesus to appoint St Peter and his successors to preach and baptize and to protect God’s reveled truth in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.
You just pointed out why we need to evangelize Protestants. There is so much ya’ll think you know about the one true faith that is just plain wrong.
The problem with protestants is that do not understand
what faith is.
***
AMAZING, we have a MIND READER here on the thread, who is certain that he knows what I believe JUST from the text that I type to him!
In fact, he even knows that I’m actually the devil! And talking to the devil, so I’m a crazy devil!
Pfft.
Stop using strawman arguments; it’s a violation of the 8th Commandment and makes you look alternately arrogant and ignorant.
I know what you believe because I read your Catechism. You have no idea what I believe because you’ve never read mine AND you’ve never even asked.
I know enough about Catholicism to know that they preach salvation by works.
I also know that’s completely against the message of Scripture, and instead that good works are done in response to having saving faith.
I’m not going to believe in a faith that looks at what both St. Paul and Jesus said and tells me that they really mean the exact opposite.
And I’m not going to believe in a church that claims it’s never changed only to preach the exact opposite of what its own church fathers preached and taught.
+ unbiblical rituals
+ a pantheon of demigods and demigoddesses that stand between God and men
+ a denial of the gospel of grace that saves
+ adding to the simplicity of the gospel
+ idolatry
+ pagan beliefs
+ the largest gay clergy group in history.
You can’t handle God’s Truth?
ADSUM, the Lord will judge our words here, but He also says to work things out with people as much as possible before that happens.
Now your charges against me are false. It isn’t “changing the subject” to respond on a subject that you introduced, which is what you *really* meant when you spoke of “40,000 versions of His truth.” The Lord sees through us all and can’t be fooled and will judge our claims here.
And the Catholic Church differs from the church established by Jesus in many ways. That church was immediately under attack from inside and out, and of course the strategy was to infiltrate it and influence it from the inside. It still had the Gospel that people could respond to with belief but even that was constantly attacked to undermine it and over the centuries the tares did get a lot of influence.
So here’s a couple of questions that come to mind at this point: do you take the Creation account literally as written? And does your church?
You also referenced a number of Scripture verses in your reply to me, but very few Catholics would have the foggiest notion what they were about, or that they should know them.
There were ways that Scripture could have been taught before the printing press, but as the modern world has come into being it has been a greater failure of leadership all the time that the Catholic shepherds haven’t taught the Bible and its primary importance as evangelical Christians have. It gives us a new life right now of amazing intimacy with the Lord, as well as explaining this world so we’re no longer lost in it and dependent on the world’s lies, and it instructs us on how to defend our souls from Satan.
Yet the Catholic Church, including knowingly by its leaders, sends most of its flock into this world without adequate warning, defense, instructions and directions.
You are the one that cant handle Gods truth. You keep quoting the Roman catechism. That is not where Gods Truth is found.
Your comment: “Now your charges against me are false. It isnt changing the subject to respond on a subject that you introduced, which is what you *really* meant when you spoke of 40,000 versions of His truth. The Lord sees through us all and cant be fooled and will judge our claims here.”
You attempted to change my words and the meaning of what I wrote. You made a false statement in the form of question and continue to do so.
My opinion is that most protestants follow heresy and attempt to change God’s Truth in the Bible as they accept their own personal fallible opinions. They also do not accept that Jesus established the Catholic Church, the Sacraments and Jesus delegated the authority to St Peter and his successors, among other revealed truths.
Your personal fallible false opinion: “And the Catholic Church differs from the church established by Jesus in many ways.
The Bible states differently and you can show no historical connection to any other Church. Yes there have been several heresies that have been defended against successfully and the Church remains strong and holy in spite of many following worldly ways like the rest of mankind. Yes many sinners are working towards their salvation and if some sinners don’t repent and confess their sins they will endure the consequences.
Creation I believe “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit out of love for us made the world out of nothing, wanting to share divine life and love with us. The original creation became a new creation in Jesus Christ.”
That is why I want to follow God’s will as best that I can.
Your comment; “failure of leadership all the time that the Catholic shepherds havent taught the Bible and its primary importance as evangelical Christians have”
The Gospel and readings from both the Old Testament and the New Testament have been included in the Mass for 2000 years (even before the Bible was written or the protestant religions were formed by man). Why do you continue to lie about the Catholic Church? Are you a baptized catholic that has left the practice of the Catholic faith?
If I offended you or anyone else here, it was not my intention. My intention is to inform about God’s Word and contradict false statements about the Catholic faith and God’s Word.
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