Posted on 07/28/2014 3:10:13 PM PDT by The Grammarian
FGS, take an RCIA class and convert already! The author is just making excuses.
“The main reason I am not (yet) Catholic and remain a Methodist and an ordained Methodist elder is that I do not know how to become Catholic without betraying the people who taught me to love God, pray, worship, desire the Eucharist, take delight in scripture, and so on. How can I leave the people I love?”
You don’t even have the Eucharist. You don’t even have a complete Bible. Don’t leave the people you love. Bring them along.
I stopped reading there, clearly this guy isn't ready yet.
“In fact, Catholics have often been better at reform than Protestants, as Karl Barth acknowledged after Vatican II.”
“Gee, if only there was a Vatican XXV...”
“Can’t we all just get along?”
Lol
That essay cost me a job at a Protestant evangelical institution.
Hmph. I was planning on welcoming the Catholics.
As Lutherans state (and I think this applies to Protestants more generally), we don't abolish the Mass so much as maintain it in a more pure form: "we do not abolish the Mass, but religiously keep and defend it" (Augsburg Confession).
More of the social gospel. No where do we have in the NT the example/exhortation for us to have guvment "love" our neighbor.
Maybe every "good" catholic should come out of the Roman Catholic Church and become a Christian.
As a former Methodist who converted to Orthodoxy, I can tell him to wait until the reasons for converting are more compelling than those for not converting. And, once converted, to accept what the church teaches, even if he doesn’t quite understand it. Don’t go in intending to reform or change the church. That is, don’t be what Frank Schaeffer is (or was) to Orthodoxy. For me, it all became very simple. I walked into an Orthodox church one Sunday morning and I knew I was home. He needs that conviction.
I disagree with him about the ACA's merits, but politics aren't theology. One can be a "good" Christian without being a political conservative in the sense the term is meant in U.S. politics.
I'm not sure how you can support the liberal agenda and be a "good" Christian. The two are incompatible.
“Nevertheless, I find the absence of women in leadership deeply problematic...I struggle to affirm Catholic teaching on contraception.”
Try to find one person of any faith who accepts women clergy/pastors but hasn’t accepted bc within marriage. I’ve never come across one, anyhow.
Freegards
I personally don’t see a need for reconciliation on earth aside from all of us shaking hands at the occasional Christmas ecumenical service and saying, “See you in Heaven!”
Meaning we’ll be reconciled in Jesus so why worry about it here?
If we make it about thinking the right way on items that are not essential doctrine (the Trinity or substitutionary atonement, for example), then we make it about what we think and that comes awfully close to works-righteousness: what we do and think.
I think it will be people coming to the Catholic Church, Megan.
We are Christians.
Right there is a problem.
No one can serve two masters.
Our loyalty should be to Jesus first and foremost.
Church affiliation and loyalty should be way down on the list of priorities.
Just like a Lutheran lady who started on one end of town and went to all the churches. When she stepped into the Catholic Church, she knew she was HOME!
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