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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.
And a whole passel of brothers and sisters.
Why?
All ya have to do is to boil the hell out of it!
Mormonism
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Catholicism
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LOL. I was embarrassed by confession too. Partially because I committed many racy mortal sins. Sometimes I thought the priest was getting his jollies, questioning me about my mortal sins. Then I just lied to the priest, at his probing questions.
Now, I am sure he really was getting his jollies listening to me. Lying to the priest, was a mortal sin of sacrilege. I enjoyed committing mortal sins, but I was scared of the mortal sin of sacrilege. I wanted to stay in the state of Grace, so I could attain Heaven, by my good works. 👍 Trying to avoid mortal sins, was putting a crimp in my lifestyle. Later, I just gave up, and just committed mortal sins, to my hearts content. Oh well. Somehow, I just thought it would all work out in the end. Actually, it did. I left the Catholic Church. 🤣🤑
Your comment: “GOD does not have a mother.”
So are you committing heresy by saying that Jesus is not divine and human?
Jesus has two natures - divine and human and The Blessed Mother is the Mother of Jesus - Truly man and Truly God with both natures. Jesus divine nature is eternal and has no beginning. Mary is the Mother of God precisely because Jesus Christ, her Son, is God. And when Mary gave birth, she did not give birth to a nature, or even two natures; she gave birth to one, divine person.
So you do not believe the Bible: “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Luke 1;43
So you continue to deny Christ a Blessed Mother that was the ark and the womb that fed and protected God inside her and must be influenced by Satan?
Mary is the mother of Jesus, as the Holy Spirit saw fit to identify her as.
The phrase *mother of God* is found nowhere in Scripture but is strictly a Catholic fabrication.
Catholicism has a habit of deciding that it can improve on divinely inspired, God breathed Scripture. It can’t.
The phrase *mother of God* says something different than *mother of Jesus*. They do not say the same thing and they do not mean the same thing.
The long convoluted explanation Catholics have to engage in to justify their corrupting the word of God says enough.
Also, the phrase, *mother of Jesus* was always used in regard o identifying which Mary in the Bible was being referred to. It was never about the nature of Jesus.
If Mary gave birth to one divine person, as you claim, then she herself must have been divinity to be able to pass that nature on.
Jesus is God with us.
Mary is mother of Jesus, God with us, not mother of God, period.
Mary is not the ark and there’s not a single thing in Scripture that even alludes to it. It’s just more Catholic wishful thinking and misapplying Scripture to fit their already predetermined doctrine.
Luke 1:43 uses the word for Lord, which is Kyrios, not the word for God, which is Theos.
Another fail on the part of the Catholic religion to justify its deification of Mary.
Are you saying the Holy Trinity is not indivisible?
If so, that's heresy.
If so, that’s heresy.
***
Ah, and ebb tide weighs in with his catchphrase. You’d make a good 40k Commissar with how often you like to throw it around.
Are you saying, ebb, that the Holy Trinity is only one Person?
If so, that’s...
Wait for it...
Heresy!
Preface for the Most Holy Trinity
(On Trinity Sunday, at votive Masses of the Blessed Trinity and on all Sundays throughout the year, except in Paschaltide and on feasts which have a proper Preface.)
It is truly meet and just, right and availing unto salvation that we should at all time and in all places give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty and everlasting God. Who with Thine only-begotten Son and the Holy Ghost art one God, one Lord; not in the oneness of a single person, but in the Trinity of one substance. For that which we believe from Thy revelation concerning Thy glory, that same we believe also of Thy Son, and of the Holy Ghost, without difference or separation. So that in confessing the true and everlasting Godhead, we shall adore distinction in persons, oneness in being, and equality in majesty. Which the angels and archangels, the cherubim also and the seraphim do praise nor cease to cry out as with one voice saying:
Any more questions, Lurch?
So are you saying that Mary gave birth to divinity?
Then she is not only the mother of Jesus, but of God the Father and the Holy Spirit as well.
That puts her above the Trinity, makes them subservient to her, and means they re not eternal, as they had a beginning.
This Catholic teaching then, not only denies the humanity of Jesus, it makes the Catholic God a created being who is not at all the eternal, without beginning or end, God of Scripture
Mary was more of Jesus’ incubator than an ark.
All she did was gestate Him for 9 months because she had the right pedigree.
More Catholic gobbledy gook.
And the muslims think the Bible is gobbledy gook. So what?
I can't help the either of you, except through prayers.
What does the Bible have to do with the Catholic nonsense you posted?
All that blather is not found in Scripture.
Or do you have a chapter and verse some for some book nobody ever heard of?
Sigh. Do we have to do this once again?
Sola Scriptura is not in Scripture.
Sola Scriptura is not in Scripture.
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Yes it is!
Just not your deluded version of what Sola Scriptura actually means.
Stop telling lies about what we believe, ebb.
Oh hey, I stole your other catchphrase! I’m such a mountebank.
Any more questions, Lurch?
***
Says the man who claims he never insults people.
Telling more lies are we, ebb?
You should go and confess.
No lies, Lurch.
Just facts.
Says the man who claims he never insults people.
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