Mad Dawg WROTE:
If you are validly baptized you are a Christian and a member of the body of Christ, grafted into his death and rising. In some sense the old man is dead and the Spirit of Christ is in you. You are in the one and only Church.
verdadjusticia ADDS:
This statement is inaccurate, as it would only apply to validly baptized infants of Protestant parents before the child reaches the age of reason. An adult Protestant is outside of the Catholic Church. Though the Church today uses politically correct euphemisms, properly speaking, clearly saying the real thing, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox are heretics.
Mad Dawg WROTE:
This is why when a baptized person, reared and “formed” in another communion wants to become a full-bore (I’ve got the boring part down, anyway) Catholic, though we loosely speak of “conversion” IMHO the only proper language is that so-and-so is admitted to full communion. The implication is that SOME communion already existed.
Verdadjusticia ADDS:
A validly baptized Protestant can simply decide to be Catholic, be willing to reject all his heretical ideas, and he is no longer a heretic. His other sins still have to be confessed to a priest. If he is willing to confess his sins to a priest, and he is fully repentant for his sins, and he dies before he can confess his sins, he can be saved. It is called a perfect act of contrition. This is only possible if he truly intended to confess his sins to a priest.
I believe that this confession to a priest is the number one obstacle that keeps Catholics, specially men, from coming back to the Church after they reach the teenage years. It’s quite embarrassing to tell someone else your sins of the flesh, but that is why God instituted it. It takes real remorse to humiliate yourself like that. Christ allowed Himself to be crucified for our sins, all we have to do is embarrass ourselves for forgiveness of ours.
Because of this embarrassment of confessing our sins, very few Catholics are saved. AND Protestants keep away. Men need to MAN UP!
Will you at least grant that your position tends to the more rigorist side? I think a lot of ignorance is a good deal more invincible than people consider, and that some of the resistance to the Church is because of our failings.
I do htink there is an adult responsibility to test all things and to hold fast to that which is good. On the other hand, my childhood best friend was thoroughly indoctrinated against the Catholic Church, to the point where I would think it would take therapy before he would be able to consider the issues anything like objectively.
As for moi: My favorite person to study in college was Thomas Aquinas. Dante was a joy and delight and still is. Eckhardt appealed and still appeals. It is clear to me that (a) God was saying, "get a clue, you need to be a Catholic and a Dominican;" and (b) that being Catholic never occurred to me as a possibility for me, until after I'd been an Epsicopal minister for a decade and could see for myself what a disaster 'my' church was.
I think I and my life path have suffered for my blindness, but I think there were what you might call invincible aspects to it.