Posted on 07/31/2002 9:27:40 AM PDT by Polycarp
| Title: | It Came From The Roman Church . . . |
| Author: | David Mills |
| Title: | It Came From The Roman Church . . . |
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| Larger Work: | This Rock |
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| Pages: | 12 - 15 |
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| Publisher & Date: | Catholic Answers, Inc., San Diego, CA, April 2002 |
| Includes: | Identical text with no graphics. |
| Description: | Catholic horror stories told by Evangelicals (and ex-Catholics) and how to respond to them. |
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"It Came From The Roman Church . . . "
Don't Flee From Catholic Horror Stories
By David Mills
In the brief time since my family became Catholics, some of my Evangelical friends have gone out of their way to tell me Catholic horror stories. They will tell me about some near-pagan example of Catholic folk religion they once saw, or an oppressive priest (reactionary or liberal) they once knew, or a Catholic family next door who went to Mass regularly but didn't know anything about the Bible and the faith, or a married friend who happily carried on a long affair supposedly by going to confession after each visit to his girlfriend.
Some of them like to talk about "recovering Catholics" who were supposedly so horribly damaged by growing up Catholic that they just had to become Protestants. (They are always surprisingly unskeptical about these stories.) These people suffered by being made to feel guilt and shame about everything they did or to feel that they could not ever satisfy all the rules God insisted they obey before he would love them.
This is both a personal and an evangelical problem for Catholics. Almost any Catholic who talks very long to a serious Evangelical will be told in some way that though the Pope is a wonderful man, and some Catholics really love the Lord, and thank God for the Catholics in the pro-life movement, the average Catholic parish is either a den of iniquity or simply dead spiritually.
The Evangelical will often claim, by contrast, that Evangelical churches are alive, and, since our Lord said we shall know them by their fruits (Matt. 7:16), Evangelicals are the real Christians. (This ignores, of course, that what Jesus said applied to individual teachers, not to movements or theological systems.) The implication is that if you're a Catholic you've been had.
It is probably worse for a convert, because his friends sometimes speak as if he were either a dullard who hasn't noticed the problems or a romantic who refuses to see them. "You won't live in Rome, you know," one close friend told me — meaning, I suppose, that the Catholic faith I would encounter wouldn't be pure — as if this would be shocking news to me, the mere stating of which would bring me to my senses.
What To Think
How can one respond to this line of argument?
First, you must admit that the Evangelical has enough facts to make a reasonable charge. The truth is that many Catholics do not lead a visibly faithful life. Most, for example, do not obey the Church's teaching on contraception. Few (amazingly to me) go to confession.
On the other hand, many Evangelicals and their churches appear to be models of faithfulness. They study Scripture, try to order their lives by its teaching, share their faith with others, and at some sacrifice minister to the world in many ways. We can learn much from them.
Second, you must listen with sympathy yet question the horror stories. Most of us have trouble doing this, because something in our culture trains us to accept any story of suffering without question and to assume that the Church must have been guilty of almost anything it is accused of.
Take the stories of "recovering" Catholics. Of course, some people have suffered real abuse and have been treated badly. But most of these stories I have heard from the allegedly "recovering" Catholics themselves do not ring true.
What I hear, beneath the emotion and the anger, is usually one of two things. The first is an unwillingness to grow up and forgive what seem to be the sort of offenses we have all suffered from parents or teachers or pastors. The second is an unwillingness to live the Catholic life, leading to a desire to blame the Catholic Church rather than admit this. I say this because the offenses they describe were often surprisingly minor, even trivial, and were often simply attempts — some clearly clumsy or unkind, but some apparently not — to get them to live a fully Catholic life.
For example, many (I do not know how to put this delicately) left the Church when they wanted to remarry after a divorce, and the conjunction of their remarriage and their enlightenment is too convenient for me to accept the latter at face value. (In my experience, it is rare to find an ex-Catholic in Episcopal churches who is not divorced and remarried, and friends tell me that this is also true in many Evangelical churches.)
And of course the Catholic life is a difficult one to live and some people do not want to try. My wife works a few hours a week in the nursery of a budding megachurch nearby, and several of the other women she works with were once Catholics. They have all told her they left the Church because they "found Jesus" elsewhere. I suggested she look them in the eye and say, "You're using contraception, aren't you?" (She didn't.)
Now, I do not mean that you ought to tell the "recovering Catholic" that you do not believe his story. That would be unkind and perhaps drive him yet further from the Church. I suggest only that you have a mental reservation, based on a reasonable reading of the evidence.
Hard To Argue With
Third, you must remember that the Evangelical has a different idea of the local church. He is comparing apples with oranges and complaining that the oranges aren't red enough.
For the Evangelical, the local church is primarily a gathered community of those of like mind and social class that forms a fairly complete alternative community for its members. For the Catholic, the local church is primarily the place we — people of different minds and classes — gather to meet the Lord in the Mass and from which we go out to exercise our vocations in the world.
The Evangelical church will therefore produce lots of public ministries, from Bible studies to short-term mission trips. The Catholic church may or may not have a lot of these ministries, but in either case they are not essential to its life and not stressed in the way they are in the Evangelical church.
The time and energy Evangelical put into their churches' public ministries Catholics may be putting into other, less visible religious activities. They may go to daily Mass when the Evangelical would go to a midweek Bible study, but for some reason going to Mass is not counted as a sign of "life."
Fourth, you must remember the practical differences between Catholics and Evangelicals. There is less attachment to a particular local church in Protestant circles because these churches are more transitory: They get created, split, and cease to be much more regularly than do Catholic parishes.
The Evangelical church therefore has to provide its people with the nourishment that deeper roots provide those who have lived there longer. The type of social interaction that the Catholic may have in his extended family the Evangelical may have to find in his church. The Evangelical church will seem livelier, though it is only giving its members what the Catholics have already. Its social homogeneity helps a great deal as well. There is more potential for interaction among its members due to greater similarities, interests, goals, et cetera. More diversity — which you find in many Catholic parishes — means less potential for interaction.
Because the two churches are different in theory and in practice, the Evangelical church can be presented as livelier than the Catholic church next door, because its life is much more public, while the life of the second is largely hidden from view. The Catholic parish may be producing saints by the dozen, but it may not produce enough visible efforts to get credit for "life."
Fifth, you must remember that as a Catholic you are tied down in a way the Evangelical is not. Anyone who doesn't meet the standards of holiness or zeal required in a particular Evangelical church may either leave or be disinvited to attend. The Evangelical can simply declare that the offender is not a "true Christian." But Catholics cannot disown bad Catholics. A Catholic is stuck with every other Catholic in the world, no matter how badly he behaves.
Besides this disadvantage, the Catholic Church does not even get to claim her own saints on her own behalf. Because they feel any good Christian must in some sense be one of them, Evangelicals will often adopt a Mother Teresa as a sort of honorary Evangelical and try to take credit for her as well. (This, I should make clear, has happened to me in discussions with my Evangelical friends.)
The Evangelical World
Sixth, you must realize that though there is much to admire in Evangelicalism, things are not exactly as they seem. A Catholic will have to note that even the most conservative Evangelicals have capitulated completely to the contraceptive mentality and for the most part to the divorce culture as well. Almost all neglect the sacramental life, and though they all recognize the authority of Scripture, they are enmeshed in intractable disagreements over what it means.
And even one of their own pollsters, George Barna, has found that they are doctrinally a confused body. Over one-third do not believe in Jesus' physical Resurrection, and over half do not believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit. About two in five "born again" Christians believe that "it does not matter what religious faith you follow because all faiths teach similar lessons about life," and from half to three-quarters believe "there is no such thing as absolute truth."
I bring this up not to put down our Evangelical brothers and sisters, who on most issues are our closest allies and often are models of faithfulness. I bring it up only to encourage those who have been left tongue-tied by the sort of argument I've described. Out of charity, you should not be quick to quote these statistics in return but will, I hope, be able to listen with some serenity to someone put down the Catholic Church as inferior to Evangelicalism.
A Sign
Finally, you must see that realism about the Catholic Church implies a surprising proof of her claims. My Evangelical friends think that comparing lax Catholics to lively Evangelicals will make me an Evangelical. Their horror stories may be disturbing to me personally, but not to my faith. They do not make me doubt the claims of the Catholic Church. Fallen men in groups rarely keep a high standard and almost never do so over any length of time.
As a barely Christianized teenager, listening to classmates in my social studies class sneer at Christianity because the Allies and the Germans both sang hymns as they killed each other, I thought that such a thing was only what one would expect. That Christians in 1915 thought that God was on their side did not seem to me to have much to do with the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God who rose from the dead almost nineteen hundred years before.
Laxity seems to me almost inevitable in something as big and as old and as embedded in the culture as the Catholic Church. But I do not suggest that Catholics console themselves with a realistic view of the Catholic Church as a human institution, because in the body of Christ sociological inevitability does not have the last word.
I began to love the Catholic Church in part because she kept reviving when she seemed to be dying and men of the world were writing her obituary. Time after time, when sociologists predicted her death, she exploded into new life. These revivals have always seemed to me a sign of her unique divine life. We are, I think, at the beginning of such a revival even now.
What To Do
But what to do, when a friend tells you Catholic horror stories? It is trying, being treated as a dolt or a fool. I have found the best way to respond is simply to say, gently, "I'm not stupid, you know." This will usually send your friend into retreat — though not always, I've found. While he tries to apologize you can begin to tell him about the one Church whose status is not affected by her members' sins and failings.
And then you can admit that most Catholics are not perfect Catholics and explain that in the Catholic Church you have found all the graces by which God will help you pursue God. You can say that you love and respect your Evangelical brothers and sisters, but only in the Catholic Church are these graces to be found in their full range and power — which is why all the horror stories in the world will not discourage you.
David Mills is the author of Knowing the Real Jesus (Servant/Charis [2001]) and a senior editor of Touchstone: A Magazine of Mere Christianity.
©2002 by Catholic Answers, Inc.
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Just post what you think is your Magisterium of the First Century Fathers trump card and quit the bombastic BS, OP.
And no, I will not grant you any of you biased and personl/calvinistic interpretations presuppositions. Post your point, then we'll proceed.
I'm searching for an article to post that would be a suitable starting point...I'll ping you, I want to continue this line of thought.
No problem. I will be happy to debate this further with you, who I consider to be a fellow Christian brother of good will.
Thanks. I appreciate your indulgence, it is an argumentational charity on your part.
Just post what you think is your Magisterium of the First Century Fathers trump card and quit the bombastic BS, OP. And no, I will not grant you any of you biased and personl/calvinistic interpretations presuppositions. Post your point, then we'll proceed.
On the basis of the Magisterial Epistle of the Apostle Saint Paul to the Romans, I hereby submit that any Salvific Theology which in any way conditions Salvific Election upon the will of Man is in direct contradiction to the Magisterium of the First Century Fathers.
Election is in no way whatsoever dependent or conditioned upon the Will of Man. Romans 9:16. The First Century Magisterium is explicit, defined, and infallible.
Ball is in your court.
best, OP
Hey, whatever "spin" works for you. I am sure that the pro-contraceptionists have their own spin on the meanings of words, too.
However, your critique does not even apply to my #304 in the first place.
No, I was simply pointing out that the First Century Magisterium defines - as the explicit and infallible doctrine of the Church - that Election unto Salvation is in no way whatsoever dependent or conditioned upon the Will of Man.
I do not know how to send to all at once as you suggested I do( is that what is called a PING ) . Perhaps you can tell me how to do it CONSTRUCTIVELY , and not in a hostile manner.
" Be ye holy , even as I am holy " , the scripture says . The Holiness of God is one of the attributes of God . As the act of holiness is commanded by God , in the debate about holiness the word does apply to Jesus exhorting , " let your light so shine before men , that they may see your good works , and glorify your Father who is in heaven . "
This is the example of God's people the Christian , setting that example of Godliness, which in turn will help activley draw people to Christ .
" Do you not know that your body is the temlpe of the Holy Spirit which dwells in you ? You are not your own , you were bought with a price . Therefore , glorify God in your body and in your spirit ". - Corinthians .
Also to the Christian , " Christ in you , the hope of glory ".
In the service of Christ Jesus the Lord , and God the Father who is mercy , love , justice , spirit , omniscient ( all knowing ) , omnipresent ( everywhere present ), forgiving , holy, omnipotent ( all powerful) - The Church Of Christ , voa-davidk 8/2/02
This is the example of God's people the Christian , setting that example of Godliness, which in turn will help activley draw people to Christ
" Do you not know that your body is the temlpe of the Holy Spirit which dwells in you ? You are not your own , you were bought with a price . Therefore , glorify God in your body and in your spirit ". - Corinthians .
Also to the Christian , " Christ in you , the hope of glory "
In the service of Christ Jesus the Lord, and God the Father who is mercy ,love ,justice , spirit , omniscient ( all knowing ) , omnipresent ( everywhere present ), forgiving , holy, omnipotent ( all powerful) - The Church Of Christ , voa-davidk 8/2/02
Frankly, I consider it quite hostile to post out-of-context scripture to multiple Catholic posters that suggests that their Church that Jesus Christ built on Peter has departed from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons.
Save me your sanctimonious disdain for my "hostility."
The word BS is scripturally defined as profanity , is it not ?
OP and I have a long standing friendship here on FRee Republic, and I respect him and admire him immensely. We are rather curt and harsh with each other in these doctrinal debates on this public forum, but it is all in good fun, though the subject may be very serious. OP can take it, but I should apologize if my use of the two letters "BS" has caused you scandal. My apologies.
Therefore, in the box labeled "TO:" simply type in the names of the mulptiple Freeper screen names you want to post it to, and separate the screen names using semi-colons. The directions are at the top of the page under "TO:" each time you post a reply anywhere on this forum, if you forget.
| To: (use semi-colons to separate multiple recipients) Your Reply: (HTML auto-detected, see help for more information)
Loose lips sink ships.
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My experience in Chicagoland is quite the opposite. (Is Chicago like other areas?) Each local Catholic parish has extremely narrow demographics. As My wife and I frequently moved, we visited many Catholic churches and were told bluntly that we did not belong in that church. Then another parish was named as the right church for our demographic group. We were always sent to a parish at the lower end or our mixed marriage.
Because small evangelical denominations do not have a large number of churches close by, their congregation of 100 has more diversity than a Catholic parish of 5,000.
In 1964 I did a research paper on upward mobility of people in the inner city. The research discovered that the church was the major vehicle for upward mobility. Evangelicals had more upward mobility than Catholics. In the Catholic church, only activity in a regional Knights of Columbus or similar group provided a vehicle for upward mobility. But these groups attracted few young adults so they did not provide a vehicle when it counted.
But small evangelical denominations had strong ties between churches in poor, middle class and wealthy areas. Joint meetings were frequent. An unemployed person would openly pray for a job, or a better job because his wife was expecting. The pastor/evangelist would openly pray the same for him, lay on hands, etc. In the congregation would be a supervisor, foreman, union steward or senior employee who knew of an opening at his place of work. Miracle of miracles. God answered the prayer. Read Horatio Alger again. Thats it!
Moving from the area of the poor church to the area of the middle class church was the next step. I have closely followed housing and housing choices. Ask any nominal Catholic who only attends on Christmas, Easter and his nephew's baptism where he moved to. More than any other answer, he will name the parish he moved to, not the village. (The public school also gets frequent mention.)
There is a climb from pentecostal/Assembly of God to Baptist; to Evangelical Free; to non-evangelical mainstream Methodist or Presbyterian and then to secular. The climb may take generations.
For Hispanic Catholics, the climb is from Catholic to Pentecostal to Baptist and back to Catholic. My parish had a discussion in Spanish about Priests and sex abuse. The attitude gap was startling.
The white upper class Catholics who minister to the Hispanics described the problem in the psychobabble of illness and treatment. The Hispanic Catholics talked of sin; good and evil; right and wrong. The Hispanics were concerned that many Catholic Hispanics would switch to Pentecostal/Assembly of God due to the scandal.
The whites were concerned the scandal would be a setback to the reforms of Vatican II. These white Catholics do not want to associate with lower class Pentecostals and Baptists. They favor of Ecumenicism and Unity ...but only with upper class Methodist, Presbyterian, UCC and Universalist churches.
A few years ago, when my wife finally found this Catholic church that accepted our mixed marriage I converted to Catholicism, which for me is like changing from Baptist to Evangelical Free. During the confirmation process they refused to recognize my fundamentalist baptism. They would welcome a Universalist or Christian Scientist equivalence, but not a fundamentalist Chritian Missionary Alliance. But their ecumenicism insisted there be only 1 baptism. Catch 22: I could not be baptized again. The result was they winked (literally, they squinted one eye) and gave me a provisional baptism that was only a baptism if my fundamentalist baptism was not a baptism. But if my fundamentalist baptism was a baptism, then this Catholic baptism I had never happened.
And you wonder why some of us are confused?
Absolutely. More than any other denomination.
I've been being a lurker on this thread for a while, but had to comment on this. I am not a Catholic, but am married to a former Catholic. We went to a Caothlic chruch (the one my wife grew up attending) for many years. And while I had never been fully comfortable attending, it was a nice old church, conservative in it's values, and did stick to a good basic bible message.
We wanted the kids to attend church youth events, but travel distance always made it impossible to make it to events (we lived in a different town that the church we were attending), so we decided to check out some of the local Catholic churches in our community.
The first was interesting. The best discription is simply rude. Another discription would be cold. Not friendly atmosphere in the least. Nothing like the church my wife had grown up in, and the attitude was one we didn't want our kids exposed to.
There was a second Catholic church in town, so we tried it. One visit was enough. It had gone totally new age. Hymms were sung to the Earth Goddess, and the mass "Message" was on "God, how she loves us". None of us had a desire to ever return.
We decided to try some of the other churches in the area. I will have to agree with you in that many of the churches did not have very biblical messages. We prayed for the Lord to lead us to a good church
We had just about given up. On the Sunday morning that we were going to go back to the Catholic church that we did like, the alarm did not go off (it was set) and we over slept. When we woke up, we realized that we could not make Mass on time. My wife a few days before had been given a phamplet for a Baptist church just down the road from us (the whole time we have been church hunting, my wife had been willing to try any church... "Anything but Baptist" had been her motto). We went anyway as we were wanting to stress to the kids that church was important and we couldn't just not go because we had overslept.
This church was amazing. The service was like a Bible study. Everything the Pastor taught, he had scripture to back up. He encourages his congergation to challenge him if they disagree on something, but that they should make sure that when they do, have scripture to back things up, not just "mans wisdom". My family ahs been attending ever since, and we joined about a year ago as members.
Please don't think that I am trying to use this as a slam on the Catholic church, taughting that my wife left the Catholic church... My point is, Just as there are good Catholic churches out there (such as the one she grew up in), there were many that were not so good (and some even lost in the new age movement). Evangelical churches are the same. There are those who hardly look at a bible, teaching "Touchy-feel-good" stuff, and there are those who are good, doctrinally sound churches.
It is your personal relationship with Christ that matters here. God gave us his Word. You can know if your church is one that is in good standing with the Lord, or if it is one that he will spew out. And whatever denomination you attend, if you have questions, turn to the Bible and determine if your church follows Gods ways or mans ways.
If anyone wishes to see my definition of a good non-Catholic church, check out Faith Baptist Church. We have online messages so you can hear and make your own determination if doctrine and good solid bible teaching is being taught.
Sounds a little like this exchange:
Mark
11:28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?
11:29 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
11:30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me.
11:31 And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him?
11:32 But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed.
11:33 And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.
Mmm, I don't know that voa-davidk's posting of 1 Timothy 4:1-3:
Without any supporting explanation, is any more "out of context" than the sometimes-encountered Roman habit of posting II Thessalonians 2:15
By themselves, though, I don't think either of these passages independently prove the position which the proof-texter is tacitly assuming. The debater could certainly choose to cross-reference his proof-text with other Scriptures which would demonstrate the validity of his argument; but absent Biblical cross-references establishing the logical linkage between the proof-text and the implied conclusion, the debater has skipped a logical step in his argument (IMO).
That said...
The word BS is scripturally defined as profanity , is it not ?
No, it is not. Christians do not use such language in polite company out of deference to cultural sensibility -- that's all. "Avoid even the appearance of evil", etc.
OP and I have a long standing friendship here on FRee Republic, and I respect him and admire him immensely. We are rather curt and harsh with each other in these doctrinal debates on this public forum, but it is all in good fun, though the subject may be very serious. OP can take it, but I should apologize if my use of the two letters "BS" has caused you scandal. My apologies.
Like I said a minute ago, it is appropriate that Christians avoid cursing like sailors in polite company, so as not to be giving unnecessary offense; but as for myself I was not in any way "scandalized" by the little phrase "BS", as I knew it was just Polycarp-Shorthand for "stop dancing and skip to the meat of your argument".
If I was "scandalized" by the letters "BS", I'm afraid I'd faint of traumatic shock if I tried to read Prophet Malachi:
As long as we respect Jim Robinson's rules not to directly employ actual profanity, violent threats, or racism, I'm not going to be scandalized by language (or rather, abbreviations) which would hardly have made the prophets themselves blush in nervous embarassment.
Honest debate requires honesty You state a false accusation in saying it was hostile for me to put up scripture . Not one word did I post of my own , and not one word of mine was hostile ! Amazing !
What you are really saying is that God's word , and therefore God , is hostile to the apostate Catholic teaching , because what you saw was the teaching of the Catholics ( knowing yourself the Catholics teaching ) juxtaposed next to God's word , in the light of God's word . And I never mentioned the teaching of the Catholics at all .
It is interesting how God's word , without the apostate interferance of apostate men , speaks wonders , and has astounding effect .
I also appreciated ' orthodox presbytarian's rebuttal to you and I about Thessolonians 2:15 . I saw a Catholic 'Priest' on a video tell a group of guests that " People ask us why we have made so many changes and added so much to our ( the Catholics ) teaching over the centuries . Well read Thessolonians 2:15 , " ...whether we come to you by word or epistle ..." (This Priest's meaning of his explaination of HIS and the Catholics interpretation of that scripture : what the Catholic Bishops , Pope etc. say , whatever it is , is inspired of God , and from God ,whether spoken or written in a letter ( No matter that it conflicts with previous letters or the Bible !} . "
The aforementioned is the epitomy of 'out of context' , and a gross perversion of the teaching intended . Paul as telling the church that the Apostles teaching is , whether they ( the Apostles )come to the church personally in person , or whether they , ( the Apostles) send a letter an Epistle ). " He who loves is born of God and knows God , for God is love . He who does not love does not know God ." - 1 jhn 4 " Love is patient and is kind ...." . 1 Corinthians 13 " Now abide faith , hope love , these three , but the greatest of these is love ." 1 Corinthians 13 " Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness , but rejoices with the truth ." 1 Corinthians 13 " Sanctify them in the truth , for your word is truth ."- The Gospel of John 8/3/02
Honest debate requires honesty You state a false accusation in saying it was hostile for me to put up scripture . Not one word did I post of my own , and not one word of mine was hostile ! Amazing !
What you are really saying is that God's word , and therefore God , is hostile to the apostate Catholic teaching , because what you saw was the teaching of the Catholics ( knowing yourself the Catholics teaching ) juxtaposed next to God's word , in the light of God's word . And I never mentioned the teaching of the Catholics at all .
It is interesting how God's word , without the apostate interferance of apostate men , speaks wonders , and has astounding effect .
I also appreciated ' orthodox presbytarian's rebuttal to you and I about Thessolonians 2:15 . I saw a Catholic 'Priest' on a video tell a group of guests that " People ask us why we have made so many changes and added so much to our ( the Catholics ) teaching over the centuries . Well read Thessolonians 2:15 , " ...whether we come to you by word or epistle ..." (This Priest's meaning of his explaination of HIS and the Catholics interpretation of that scripture : what the Catholic Bishops , Pope etc. say , whatever it is , is inspired of God , and from God ,whether spoken or written in a letter ( No matter that it conflicts with previous letters or the Bible !} . "
The aforementioned is the epitomy of 'out of context' , and a gross perversion of the teaching intended . Paul as telling the church that the Apostles teaching is , whether they ( the Apostles )come to the church personally in person , or whether they , ( the Apostles) send a letter an Epistle ). " He who loves is born of God and knows God , for God is love . He who does not love does not know God ." - 1 jhn 4 " Love is patient and is kind ...." . 1 Corinthians 13 " Now abide faith , hope love , these three , but the greatest of these is love ." 1 Corinthians 13 " Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness , but rejoices with the truth ." 1 Corinthians 13 " Sanctify them in the truth , for your word is truth ."- The Gospel of John 8/3/02
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