Posted on 11/24/2009 9:02:14 AM PST by Patrick Madrid
I would just throw out a thought to you, what saves an individual church membership or faith?
In the Catholic church, membership and faith are one and the same.
“’Do you believe that being a Baptist is important to getting to Heaven or not?’
“No.”
Okay. Then from my perspective, I don't know why one would be a Baptist. Why not go be a Presbyterian? Or heck, a rastafarian (they believe in Jesus, sort of) or a Mormon (they believe in Jesus). It's all the same, right? Or not?
“In the end I have to have faith that the Holy Spirit will direct them where they should go.”
Did you ever hear the joke about the guy who is caught in a terrible flood, and he climbs up on the roof of his house, and he prays to God to rescue him, and God says that He will, and He's coming? And a boat comes to get him, and another boat, and finally a helicopter. And to each he says, “No thank you, God is going to rescue me.” And then he drowns. He gets to Heaven and asks God, “Hey, you told me you were going to rescue me from that flood. What happened?” And God answers, “I sent two boats and a helicopter, whaddaya want??”
The point being that God works through us, as well. It is my duty as a father to help guide my children. That's what this thread is about, how Catholic parents should help guide their children. For us, we may not say, “Oh, we'll leave it all to the Holy Spirit, and He'll make it turn out all right.” Things don't always turn out all right. Some folks go to Hell. And some folks who eventually get to Heaven often go to a hell of their own making, unncessarily, to get there.
“As far as the abandoning the faith stuff we don't believe the Holy Spirit jumps in and out of believers. If they truly believe THE GOSPEL they will end up being planted in a Christian environment.”
We're Catholic, we don't believe in the doctrine of once saved, always saved. We believe that someone can fall away from the faith, and that that can very well lead to damnation.
“Interesting that you would draw satanism into it.”
It's a logical device to use the most extreme example to help illustrate a point that may have applicability in less extreme examples.
“’Truer than Baptist or Presbyterian faith. So why would we want our children to give up what is better for that which is lesser?’
“Thank you for your honesty. How can a lesser be an equal?”
You're welcome. So, do you think that your Baptist faith is NOT truer than my Catholic faith? Are both equally true?
Nonetheless, your posts still aren't quite correct. As a Catholic, I certainly believe that Catholic faith is superior to Baptist or Presbyterian faith, and that these religions are inferior to Catholic faith. In fact, the Catholic Church teaches that the communities of Baptist or Presbyterian believers are not even actual ontological churches. The Catholic Church may sometimes refer to these as “ecclesial communities.”
But the Christians who call themselves Baptists or Presbyterians, in what sense are they inferior? Their BELIEF is inferior, from our perspective, but they are not inferior in their personhood, they are not morally inferior, they are not less loved by God, less deserving of good things, more needful of salvation, more sinful.
We Catholics are not morally or spiritually or socially superior in any way. We merely believe that the faith that we hold is the fullness of faith given by Jesus to the Apostles.
I have a friend whose mother left the Catholic Church and became a Methodist. The woman told my friend that she became a Methodist because it seems that the people in the Methodist community are better, less sinful. My friend didn't know how to respond. I told her that her mother was probably right. The Catholic Church is for sinners, especially the worst sort, because we need the strongest “medicine.”
“The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.”
- Oscar Wilde
“My wife was RC. We went to her church for awhile. I started going to mine, she joined me and she never looked back.”
From the Catholic perspective, someone who leaves the Catholic Church puts his or her soul in jeopardy. For us it is a sad and frightening thing. Whether you agree with what we think and believe or not, you present me with precisely the evidence that makes me teach my sons not to marry outside the Catholic Church.
Thank you for the illustration that Patrick Madrid is right in what he says.
sitetest
Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.
“I would just throw out a thought to you, what saves an individual church membership or faith?”
To us, this is a false dichotomy.
To become a disciple of Jesus Christ, to be baptized in the name of the Blessed Trinity, is to become part of the Body of Christ, which is the Church. There is no following Christ, no Christian discipleship, no “being a Christian,” without belonging to His Body, which is the Church.
As a Catholic, I am taught, and I believe that the Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ. I also believe that all those validly baptized have in some way some connection or membership with the Catholic Church.
But for those who are not formally incorporated into the visibile Catholic Church on earth, that membership is partial, broken, incomplete. For us, non-Catholics are united to the Body of Christ, but not in fullness.
And for those who once were devout and serious Catholics, who formally renounce their Catholicism and become something else, they go from deeper and more complete union with the Body of Christ to a more broken, less complete, more attenuated union with the Body of Christ. And that's a bad thing.
So, as the previous poster pointed out, from the Catholic point of view, faith in Christ = incorporation into His Church, which is the Catholic Church.
sitetest
If Evangelicals considered all other denominations equal, there wouldn't be some many denominations. There are northern and southern Baptists, various Methodists, Church of God, Church of Nazarene, Church of Christ, Pentecostals, various Lutherans, etc.
Do you believe that all of these different churches with their sometimes conflicting doctrines are equal? How can they be?
As a Christian I have no problem if my children join another Bible believing church. Throwing the non Bible believing churches into the mix is not the same thing and only serves to confuse the issue, unless the view is that any non RCC is "defective".
We're Catholic, we don't believe in the doctrine of once saved, always saved. We believe that someone can fall away from the faith, and that that can very well lead to damnation.
I know. RC's have a hard time understanding Blessed Assurance.
It's a logical device to use the most extreme example to help illustrate a point that may have applicability in less extreme examples.
Or is it to illustrate that non RCC's aren't really Christian?
So, do you think that your Baptist faith is NOT truer than my Catholic faith?
I think the lens is so different RC's can't see that Evangelicals do not see their church as their faith.
From the Catholic perspective, someone who leaves the Catholic Church puts his or her soul in jeopardy.
I know, it's to bad.
Well, I think that maybe we've both had the opportunity to say what we think. If I were to respond to your last post point-by-point, I'd start repeating myself.
I'll leave it at this. We don't believe as you believe. We start with different premises, and rightfully come to different conclusions as a result.
We believe that Catholic faith is the fullness of faith given to us by Jesus through the Apostles.
We believe that other non-Catholic Christians do not have the fullness of Christian faith.
We believe that it is a terrible tragedy for someone to fall away from the Christ's Church which is the Catholic Church, a tragedy that can result in final damnation.
Thus, noting that many Catholics who marry non-Catholics fall away from Christ's Church (a statement for which you provide evidence), we wish to teach and help guide our children in a way that will bring them to salvation, and thus, to marry another serious and devout Catholic.
One thing follows from the other.
If you don't accept the premises, you won't come to the same conclusion.
That's fine. I understand.
But having accepted the premises, we do nothing wrong or mean or un-Christian to accept the logical conclusions.
I hope that you have a Happy Thanksgiving if we don't chat further.
sitetest
You have a few cousins left in the old country still do you? Makes you an expert I guess.
I grew up surrounded by an Irish expat community coming from all parts of Ireland, and all parts of the society from farmer’s sons, doctors, lawyers down to people who never finished grade school and lived in government cottages all held together by their desire to keep their Irish culture- music and dancing especially. I spent many nights listening to their rants and arguments so I think I have a better than average sense of Irish history and thinking.
I find that Loyalist and Protestant are used interchangeably in many contexts. On numerous occasions I’ve heard it declared by people who haven’t seen the inside of a church except for a a baptism, a wedding or a funeral that they were ‘born Catholic and will die Catholic’ only a few breaths later to say how much they hate the priests and bishops. While many are faithfully Catholic, many also are catholic only in the sense of Irish nationalism just as their opposites are Protestants in the sense that they support British rule.
I repeat again that your comments about Catholics in Belfast are not relevant Patrick Madrid’s post. You see Cromwell wasn’t a Catholic who sent his army to burn down Protestant churches and murder Protestant ministers and worshipers across Ireland and it isn’t the Catholics who march through the other side of Belfast on annual parades to celebrate English victories and subjugation of Ireland.
I was just going to wish you the same!
Have a happy Thanksgiving.
Then you certainly can't think of encouraging your children to marry a Catholic, can you?
Sounds like the very definition of "unequally yoked," to me.
So if our not wanting our children to marry Protestants means we think you're "defective," doesn't your not wanting your children to marry Catholics mean exactly the same thing in reverse?
If my Baptist children marry a Presbyterian I wouldn't think twice about it. We are united by our faith.
So all that stuff about "believer's baptism" isn't really true? It's just sort of a matter of personal taste, like what kind of salad dressing you prefer?
Hey - so's your bigotry.
I was like you, heartwood, as I also come from a broken home. The sense of betrayal over my parents’ divorce was staggering, especially since at least two priests “counselled” my folks to go ahead and split up. (”It’s better for the children if you do.” What nonsense; it was NOT better for us, it was devastating.)
Anyway, after that little fiasco, I was absolutely determined never EVER to do such a thing to my own kids, and I looked long and hard for a good, strong man to marry. I bided my time, said “No way” to a bunch of guys, and found my husband. He is a Lutheran, and as soon as we became more serious, I made it perfectly clear that I would not marry him if we were not married in the Catholic church, and that the children would absolutely be raised Catholic.
So...here it is, many years later, and we all go to the TLM every Sunday. One kid is in Catholic school, and our other has just begun home schooling (just this week, in fact).
And lo and behold...hubby is talking to our priest about conversion. I never nagged, I never pushed, I just....tried to live as a good Catholic and brought him along for the ride.
Has life been a big bowl of cherries? Well, no. One of our sons suffered a brain injury in infancy, so it hasn’t been easy. But like you, it doesn’t matter. I’ll stick it out no matter what, because that is what I SWORE to do when I got married. Can children of divorce be irreparably damaged? I think so. But they can also become the most determined of spouses, too.
I thank God every day for His gift of strength — given to both my brother and myself — the strength to overcome such a tragedy as our parents’ divorce, marry happily, and raise a bunch of good kids.
Regards,
PS: My advice to my own sons regarding courting girls from broken homes will be to make SURE she is as determined as I was, and that she has the fortitude of the Holy Ghost at her side.
One of the attractions of the Church for me was that she does not permit divorce. Your vows mean something.
My m-i-l also came from a bad childhood, broken home, foster care, orphanages, abuse, and determined her children would never suffer the same. She was a very protective mother and is a devoted wife and her marriage is going on for fifty years.
Her faith lingered into early adulthood but she lost it after she formed a secure family of her own and gained material security and autonomy. Faith didn’t seem to be necessary any more. My f-i-l, however, converted to Catholicism from cultural Judaism around the time he met her, and her Catholicism might have been part of the attraction for him. He remains a devout Catholic. Life is strange.
The childhood leaves marks. Neither my m-i-l nor I am always easy to live with, although I think I have made changes for the better in recent years.
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