Posted on 11/18/2002 8:34:02 AM PST by pseudo-justin
Church Is Still Attracting Converts
By PAUL LIKOUDIS
A personal note: The phone rang the other day and the gentleman on the other end identified himself as Jim Anderson from the Coming Home Network. He said he had a message from an old high school friend. Who might that be, I asked, and he gave the name: Dion Berlowitz.
Anderson told me the Coming Home Network, with which I was not familiar, helped Protestants come into the Church, and that Dion was on his way in.
I hadn’t heard from Dion in more than a decade, even though we were best friends at Williamsville South High School, outside Buffalo, sharing several interests, including cartooning and comic books. Raised Jewish, Dion became a born-again Christian in his junior year of high school as his parents’ marriage broke up, and spent hours, days, weeks, and months trying to convert me into a Bible-believing Christian.
In 1971, Dion went on to the University of Buffalo to study literature and I went on to Eisenhower College to study history, and our paths never crossed again until a call out of the blue came from him around 1990, when he told me he was a Presbyterian. We have had no further contact since, though I suspect and hope that will change.
In this initial conversation, Anderson told me that so far, this year, the Coming Home Network has helped 94 Protestant ministers of various denominations, along with many other Protestants, come into the Church. Some, like Dion, are on their way in. This is the largest annual crop since the CHNetwork was founded nine years ago.
Here, in a year in which the Catholic Church in the United States and around the world has been wracked by scandals, we do have good news indeed.
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What would prompt a Protestant, especially a minister with a wife and family, to leave his tradition and often his livelihood to come into the Catholic Church, especially when there are so many broken-hearted Catholics embarrassed by the past ten months of sordid revelations involving clerical sexual abuse, bishops’ resignations, episcopal cover-ups and pay-outs? Not to mention the ongoing abuse of authority by bishops to hammer the lay faithful who object to dissidents and heretics speaking in parishes and education conferences.
"For Protestants," says Jim Anderson, "the scandals are a non-issue. Among the hundreds of people I have talked to who are thinking of coming into the Church, the scandals just aren’t an issue. Of all the people who have contacted me, only three or four have mentioned them, and that was only at my prompting.
"To a man, these men are intellectually convinced that the Church is a divine institution established by Christ, and bishops are only human — and, besides, they say, ‘These things are going on in our own denominations — only in our denomination they are not being addressed.’
"They see this as the Holy Spirit cleaning house. The judgment of the Lord begins with the family of God. They view the present scandals as a terrible tragedy; they want justice like everybody else. But as far as the truth of the Catholic faith is concerned, it is a non-issue. It’s sin; it needs to be addressed. And that’s it.
"These men," he continued, "are educated people. Most have master of divinity degrees and doctorates. They are aware of the problems, but once their hearts are converted and they see the Church as Jesus Christ’s, they know Christ will keep His promise. They have experienced troubles in their own denominations, but they know that when they are in the Church, God will prevail."
On average — based on the first ten months of this year — Anderson hears from a Protestant minister every three days who has made the decision to become Catholic.
Most, he says, are drawn to the Church for two reasons. Either they have come to understand the dead end to which the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura leads, and they want to settle, in their own minds, the issue of authority in the Church; or they have been led to the Church by its doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and they want to receive Jesus.
What many Protestants are coming to understand, even at a time when many Catholics and non-Catholics lament the apparent breakdown of authority in the Church, Anderson explained, is that the Church’s authority "is set by God."
"Those who take their faith and Scripture and God seriously," he said, "see the Catholic Church as being the answer to the chaos of the Protestant condition: Sola scriptura is a dead end, is unhistorical and unworkable. They understand this and so they have a crisis of faith and they enter the Catholic Church. And this is occurring across the Protestant spectrum. A lot of people contacting the Coming Home Network are ‘higher church’ Episcopalians or Lutherans, but we do get calls also from ‘low-end’ Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, and Assembly of God ministers.
"To speak, as some Catholics do, about a ‘crisis of authority’ in the Church doesn’t make a lot of sense," Anderson said. "There is a ‘crisis of obedience to authority,’ but that has always been the case, just as there has always been a ‘crisis of obedience to the authority of God’ on the part of many men and women. The authority is there, and it is working; it is just not obeyed."
The Coming Home Support Network
The Coming Home Network was founded in 1993 out of the experiences of several Protestant clergy and their spouses. Upon leaving their pastorates to enter the Catholic Church, these clergy and their families discovered they were not alone. To help others come into the Church — and to deal with some of the tremendous personal and professional obstacles they faced — they began the organization as a support network.
Catholics, Anderson suggested, should understand some of the challenges these ministers face once they have made the intellectual decision to "cross over" to Rome.
"They go through tremendous struggles. They think, ‘I’m losing my friends, my family, my community, my church, and people think I’m crazy and I’m apostatizing from Christianity.’ Often the most serious conflict is with spouses, who not only have to deal with the change of religion, but have practical problems as well, such as, ‘What about me and the children?’ ‘How are we going to survive?’ ‘What will our friends think?’ ‘Have I been following the wrong religion all my life?’
"Most of these people have M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees, and so they are not employable in the world. It’s a difficult decision for these men to give up their work, their careers, and their livelihoods. Nevertheless, 94 this year have entered, or are on their way into, the Church."
One former minister, Anderson recalled, gave up his role as a prominent, prestigious minister for his community to work as a greeter at WalMart. For him, the blessing of being able to receive the Eucharist more than compensated for what he had to give up.
Anderson is well-prepared for his work helping Protestants come into the Church. Reared as a Methodist, the 47-year-old Anderson became a Lutheran at 19. As a history major specializing in medieval Europe at Ohio University in Athens, he knew he was on his way into the Church.
Three years after graduating, he entered evangelical Ashland Seminary in 1980, interested in pursuing studies in ecumenical dialog. In his freshman year, he made the decision to join the Catholic Church, and on July 25, 1981, the Feast of St. James, he was confirmed. His wife, Lynn, who entered the Church in 1983, now teaches in a Catholic school.
Contrary to popular stereotypes, he said, the biggest roadblocks would-be converts confront are not such "hot-button" issues as contraception, papal infallibility, or women’s rights, but the Church’s doctrines concerning Mary.
But another obstacle, he said, is "liturgical craziness."
Many Protestants, he said, "are scandalized by the liturgical craziness. They try to get around it by seeking out a Byzantine rite, or seeking out orthodox parishes. And usually, if they come into the Church, having been good Protestants, they have church-hopped enough to have found a parish where they don’t have to deal with abuses."
But, he added, many look beyond the abuses, because "they are attracted to Christ in the liturgy. For a lot of the converts, there are many who have intellectually convinced themselves already that they must join the Church before they ever attended Mass. And when they finally start going to Mass, often there is a culture shock, especially if they come from a small, intimate, loving Baptist church, and go into a parish of 2,000 people who aren’t particularly friendly. So there is this bit of culture shock — and that doesn’t include the shock of liturgy."
Asked to name the leading intellectual sources Protestants are reading to find their way into the Church, Anderson named familiar names.
"The intellectual sources are, certainly, Cardinal Newman, G.K. Chesterton, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Scott Hahn, and Catholic Answers.
"But most often, it is the fathers of the Church. When Protestant ministers encounter the fathers, they realize they were lied to and betrayed, because they were taught the Protestant Reformation cleansed Christianity of the barnacles on the Barque of Peter and the Reformers recovered ancient Christianity. Then they go back and read the apostolic fathers, especially Ignatius of Antioch who is preaching the Real Presence, the authority of bishops, and all these many Catholic things, and the conclusion is the words of Jesus, who says: ‘I will be with you always.’
"Either Jesus kept His promise, or the Church went to Hell in a hand basket after the death of St. John.
"When they start studying the early Church fathers, they are blown out of the water."
Solid Apologetics
The Coming Home Network’s executive director is former Presbyterian minister Marcus Grodi, who, captured the feeling and beliefs of many fellow Protestants who came into the Church in his book, Journeys Home (Queenship Publishing 1997).
"[T]he biggest thing that opened my heart to the truth of the Catholic faith was not all the apologetic arguments that convinced me of the trustworthiness of Catholic truth, but the realization that the Catholic Church, with all of her saints and sinners, was exactly what Christ had promised.
"The majority of complaints against the Catholic Church over the centuries have been aimed at the decisions and actions of bad Popes, or immoral clergy, or ignorant laity, or corrupt Catholic nobility, and the correct answer to this is, ‘But, of course! The Church is made up of wheat and tares, from the bottom to the top, sinners in need of grace! This is no reason to leave and form a new church, for any church made up of human beings is made up of sinners.’
"All true conversions to the Catholic faith from any other starting point carry with them complications, primarily because this conversion must be rooted in and thereby an extension of one’s conversion and surrender to Christ. If becoming a Catholic does not involve this, I don’t believe it is a true conversion. It might be a change of convenience or even possibly for some sort of personal gain or aggrandizement.
"But only when one recognizes or painfully discovers that to be fully a follower of Jesus Christ, and thereby have the full potential of growing in union with Him, one must also be in union with the Church He established in and through His Apostles, can one be truly converted.
"These conversions by definition must involve some extent of leaving behind and rejecting part of what a person once held very dear. Some things can be joyfully brought along, others can be cautiously tolerated, but yet there are ideas, practices, and sometimes even relationships which must be severed.
"It of course never means that we cease to love those we may need to leave behind, or who choose to turn their backs on us. In fact, we are called all the more to shower our now confused or indignant friends and family with the all-forgiving, all-accepting love of Christ. However, we must not let the emotional trajectories of our loving glances turn our attention off of the fullness of truth found only in union with the Catholic Church."
For more information about the Coming Home Network, go to its web site, www.chnetwork.org, or call 740-450-1175.
1. Do you believe it is possible to know the Truth rather than guess about it? 2. Would you agree this is the reason Christ left us the Church , which scripture clearly tells us is the pillar and foundation of Truth? 3. Do you ever consider the Catholic position when you are comparing opinions?
1. It's not a guess. It's a process of evaluting choices that I learned through a 20 year career in the Army.
2. You get some distance with the Church sayings of Jesus. Those are biblical facts. Ideally, a church will be properly operating. The churches in the book of revelation tell us that some churches are closer to the truth than are others. Those that were failing were obviously not correct in the things the Lord was chastising them over.
3. I consider the catholic opinion if I know it. There's some things I know fairly well. Family and Army career has opened insights into other things. The things I like best about the catholic church are: (1) I like having a place where the buck stops. (2) I like the separation of male and female ministries. (3) I like the organizational commitment to educating their younger generations. (4) I like their follow-through on pre-marital, membership, confirmation, catechetical, etc. programs. (5) I like catholic charities. (6) I like their stand on abortion. (7) I like the separate orders with particular emphases. (8) others
So do I sound like some kind of rapid, unreasonable guy?
I don't like the marian theologies, the opulence, the transsubstantiation theology (as I understand it), the celibacy theology, others that I can't remember at the moment.
Bernard set a good example. But I already said I like the separate emphases of the different orders...see post #281
This sounds like a dodge xzins. You stated previously you had an opinion regarding premillennialism and the answer was fuzzy . This does not sound like you know. My question had to do with knowing rather that guessing at Truth. Based on your response I take it you don’t think its possible to know the Truth. This is not the message of the gospel.
You get some distance with the Church sayings of Jesus. Those are biblical facts. Ideally, a church will be properly operating.
Another dodge. I wanted to know if you agree that Christ left us the Church to teach and defend the Truth.
The churches in the book of revelation tell us that some churches are closer to the truth than are others. Those that were failing were obviously not correct in the things the Lord was chastising them over.
The Churches in Revelation had the Truth and some were being chastised for not being faithful to it.
I consider the catholic opinion if I know it.
Do you ever seek the Catholic teaching if you don’t know it?
So do I sound like some kind of rapid, unreasonable guy?
Not at all.
I don't like the marian theologies, the opulence, the transsubstantiation theology (as I understand it), the celibacy theology, others that I can't remember at the moment.
I guess that’s the bottom line isn’t it? You don’t like.
Could it be you don’t understand? Could it be you do understand but don’t agree? The point I have been trying to make is the Bible does tell us where to find the Truth.
I saw the Plano mega church while I was visiting my sister last summer. She said Ross Perot was a member there. It looked more like a convention center to me. It was quite impressive.
It's no dodge. I said that the premill theology was pretty strong. 70/30 is a strong case. PRE-TRIB at 51/49 is not very strong.
The resurrection is 100% or 100/0. There are the primary doctrines of the church that are clearly in the realm of certainty. You can maintain if you wish that premillennialism is a necessary doctrine for salvation, but I don't think so.
The church response is not a dodge. The universal church is mystical. On earth we have believers combined in various churches and those are connected in Christ to one another. They can form various unions and highlight different emphases.....a denomination is really little different than is an "order" within your church. Little more than a different emphasis. The churches in Revelation had STRAYED from the truth, proving thereby, that there was no infallibility extant within them.
You didn't mention what I do like.
What do you like about the Methodist Churches? Tell me all you know about it and all our historic particular emphases?
Not at all. We make a distinction between human nature and sin. It all goes back to having a proper understanding of the Incarnation.
Jesus was fully human, with a human nature like ours. But He was not subject to Original Sin, because it is contradictory, as pegleg explained above.
What we call "Original Sin" is a description of the lack of fellowship with God that resulted from Adam's Fall. Since Jesus is God, He can hardly be said to have a "lack of fellowship" with God.
Therefore, Jesus had no Original Sin.
SD
Yes, but they were our representives in that garden when they fell all of us fell..Mary contributed the flesh and human nature of Jesus ..the part that was tempted in all ways as we are ..yet unlike the first Adam He did not sin..
Thank you. You just contradicted your statement that Only Jesus Christ the Son of God was born without sin.
Technically, Adam and Eve weren't born. They were created.
Still not a definite answer, it’s just an opinion.
The resurrection is 100% or 100/0.
Excellent, something we can agree on.
The church response is not a dodge. The universal church is mystical.
It’s also visible an authoritative.
On earth we have believers combined in various churches and those are connected in Christ to one another. They can form various unions and highlight different emphases
Yes. They are called Rites within the Catholic Church. The doctrine is the same though.
.....a denomination is really little different than is an "order" within your church. Little more than a different emphasis.
This is where we part ways. It is not possible for the Church that Christ established to teach different doctrine. He said he was the way, the Truth and the life. Truth is the Truth and it does not change. Doctrines regarding the Real Presence, a male only ordained priesthood, regenerative baptism, divorce, remarriage, Church authority, etc. are not negotiable. The teachings were given by Christ to the Apostles and have been preserved in Christ’s Church since Pentecost.
The churches in Revelation had STRAYED from the truth, proving thereby, that there was no infallibility extant within them.
The teachings the Churches received were infallible Truths. The fact that Churches strayed does prove the Church is not infallible. It does prove however that its members are not infallible.
You didn't mention what I do like.
I think its wonderful you recognize these things as good and necessary and they are preserved within Catholicism. How many of the items you mentioned are true in the Methodist Church?
What do you like about the Methodist Churches? Tell me all you know about it and all our historic particular emphases?
I know you don’t have to go very far back in Christian history to find the origin of your Church. It was founded by John Wesley in the 18th century. What I like about the Methodists is you teach free will and Christian charity. What I don’t like is like many mainline Protestant denominations, you continue to split and fracture and become more secular rather than holding to spiritual truths.
Technically all of us are created.
Technically all of us are created.
Would you agree that Adam and Eve were not born?
Sure if you would agree we are all created by God.
So maybe the way I should have phrased my questions was:
Do you think Adam and Eve were created without sin?
Yes, of course. I think we are all created without sin.
Actual sin yes, original sin no. With the exception of Adam, Eve and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Yes, of course. I think we are all created without sin.
Actual sin yes, original sin no. With the exception of Adam, Eve and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Well, you asked me what I thought. Jews do not believe in a doctrine of original sin.
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