Posted on 08/02/2010 3:13:20 AM PDT by markomalley
I am just curious about the basic premise of the article: are evangelicals crossing the Tiber when they become more educated about church history?
My question for evangelicals is this: Were these people listed in the article legitimate evangelical scholars? Or were they squishy people who you are better rid of in the first place?
My question for Catholics is this: have you observed in your parishes a trend of evangelicals coming in through RCIA? Of course, we all know the high profile types that we see on EWTN and read about, but are you seeing this first hand?
Please note that this is an [ECUMENICAL] thread so let's keep it clean and above-board. I won't hesitate to ask the management to lock the thread if it goes down into the gutter...
‘His answer, like that of Hahn, Grodi and Talbot, and now of Croslow, Dunn, and White, is that the “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church”—the historical, traditional Church—can only be the Roman Catholic Church.’
May we agree to characterize this entity as the ‘Roman Catholic Church,’ on this thread, in light of the usage by the author?
Just because someone was baptized, made a faith profession, walked an isle or attends church every Sunday and Wed. does not mean they are saved. It means in many cases the Catholic church .
Personally I would rather see them go and take their false doctrine (in the case of preachers) than to have them stay and poison the flock.
Were they legitimate scholars ??? Well scripture says the natural man can not understand scripture.. so if they are unsaved they may know a lot of scripture, but be unable to rightly divide it. So they may have a kind of self made scholarship ...but not genuine scholarship .
Just because i sleep in the garage, go beep beep and have an auto manual does not make me a car.. :)
I personally wouldn't (just a IMHO here). I would think that it would include all particular churches that teach the apostolic faith and have valid apostolic succession.
An example of this would have to include the Eastern Orthodox churces. They are a historically significant part of the Church Catholic. They are absolutely legitimate churches as they maintain apostolic succession and they teach the orthodox (small "O") Faith as passed down from the apostles.
I would like to see who is publishing the numbers supporting this claim of an increased “trend of evangelicals” converting to Catholicism...is there a religious “Nielsons” rating service?
Any TRUE CHURCH OF PETER would be evangelical in nature, based on Peter’s own dream(sent by God) that the gospel should be preached to all nations, gentiles included. Christ’s great Comission was a call to world evangelism. So I think a clarification as to what a true evangelical is versus how they are often defined in loose vernacular tomes is also in order. Is the term “evangelical” a loose term for protestants said to be “returning to or acknowledging Roman Cathocism as their true “church”(but avoiding the term “protestant”, for fear of backlash)?
I found your contribution very interesting. I cannot speculate whether or not the the people in the article are “legitimate evangelical scholars”. Certainly, in North Park University, Wheaton College and to some degree, Baylor, you have a good representation of evangelical institutions.
I have a good friend with whom I have lunch frequently, motivated by business, friendship and a common interest in spiritual things. When we first came to know each other it was in an evangelical setting, but more and more he has identified with the Reform “movement”, and has since joined a Reformed church.
At our last lunch it seemed to me that he was becoming what I called “Catholic lite” on a previous thread. He cited his study of the early church fathers and the liturgy, in particular.
Cannot blame you. I am getting tired of the flame wars in the religion section of FR.
That is why I am very careful not to you the word “orthodox” until the Eastern Christian churches come home in full to the Roman Catholic Church.
1)My Brother-in-law (Fatheroffive) began to confront me on various anti-Catholic statements I was making on a regular basis. He would not accept satements that began with; "Well the Catholic Church does ....." With out supporting evidence.
I was forced to do historical research
2) Dr. Dennis Castillo at Christ the King Seminary. He taught all the Church History Classes and prsented the truth warts and all and we were forced to confront what people actually said in their own words.
3) My wifes constant petitions to St. Monica the Mother of St. Augustine.
In the area I live (Cantral Virginia) we are seeing a steady stream of Converts to the Catholic faith and our RCIA program is very rigorous.
I have attended several of the other churches here with friends and you hear the occasional anti-Catholic comments, but most of the people are very pleasent to have faith discussions with.
I can well understand the term "Crossing the Rubicon" as denoting taking an irrevocable step, as Caesar did when he came home to seize power.
I can understand "Crossing the Delaware" as a significant and symbolic step in reversing the fortunes of war, as Washington did in the unpleasantness between the Crown and its American colonies.
And "Crossing the Rhine" was what happened in the Volkerwanderung of the German tribes into the Roman provinces and was a significant step in the Allied conquest of Germany in WWII.
We can come up with lots of allusions to crossing rivers.
But the only context I had for the Tiber was that it was a bridge on that river that Horatius defended in his famous stand against the Etruscan invasion of Rome, celebrated in the epic poem "Horatius at the Bridge" by Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Perhaps it is simply that the Tiber is no longer a river on the approaches to Rome but instead flows through Rome and divides the Vatican from Rome's "city centre". So "crossing the Tiber" is simply a symbolic description of the process of returning to Holy Mother Church.
But I don't think that one "crosses the Tiber" by becoming more educated about the Church. Religious conversion, in any direction, is not an intellectual exercise; albeit the intellectual exercise may, for many, have been a condition precedent for a true conversion.
How about Catholic?
While your point regarding “evangelical” is well taken, in the context of this thread, and certainly in my post, I would think evangelical would be taken as Protestant and in many cases, though not all, Fundamentalist.
But we converts to Holy Orthodoxy swam the Bosporus. When I heard that a Bishop in the OCA (Dmetri - Orthodox Church in America) had been raised a Baptist, I had to take a serious look. Then I found out about Peter Gillquist and his cohorts.
As long as it's not violating the Ecumenical rule - I will throw out that Fundamentalists that I was aware of (20 years ago) scorned Evangelicals almost as much as they scorned the Catholic/Orthodox.
Just wanted to make sure the “code words” for this discussion were properly “decoded”, that’s all.
Mike...fair enough.
don-o: Understood. It was several decades ago that I chose evangelical to identify myself...as a subtle distinction from “fundy”. ;)
That is a very revealing statement. Thank you.
But one question? If somebody abandons your (Presbyterian?) confession to join the Catholic Church, do you write them off immediately or do you pray for them?
That's the reason I'm asking the question. I see the claim made and, frankly, if both sides' claims were factual, I would imagine that 100% of Catholics would belong to something else within 10 years and 100% of non-Catholics would be Catholic within 10 years. So I was asking for actual reports from the ground rather than relying upon a magazine article.
Well, actual education may tend to remove a few preconceived notions. And those preconceived notions may make it far more difficult to perceive and respond to the calling of the Holy Spirit (again, an IMHO)
Some Catholics lump evangelical and fundamentalists together under the broad term of Protestant. Most fundamentalists would call themselves evangelical in terms of their agreement with Christ’s command that Christians go out tinto the byways of the world and “evangelize” which some would also call prosletize(if one were casting aspersions).
So that is why I called for more clarification of definitions. I’ve read of a lot of Episcopalians joining the Catholic church with the terms both protestant and or evangelical being applied to them. I have not read of a lot of Assembly of God members leaving and joining the Catholic Church(in deed they are experiencing member growth supposedly documented by the same “neilsen” service that documents Catholic conversions, who ever documents these things). Yet Assembly of God members would call themselves evangelical and fundamentalist Bible believing orthodox Christians. So who has the authority to actually define what an evangelical is?
If one were to stay true to the socialized accepted meaning of the term “fundamentalist”; Roman Catholic believers believing that the Vatican is the only Christian authority on Earth and shunning all else who believe differently, might be described as “fundamentalist” in their view of their church and its practises!
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