Photo Credit: Michael Caven.
Posted on 03/20/2015 9:46:29 AM PDT by NYer
Photo Credit: Michael Caven.
This Easter I become a Catholic.
It’s been a strange, unexpected journey. Something I often think about, and reflect on, is what I would’ve thought of myself, today, if I’d met me ten years ago. What if, by some miracle of space and time, the twenty year old me was able to visit the thirty year old me, today. What would the younger me think?
Becoming a Catholic is something I never could’ve imagined or envisioned.
I became a Christian at the age of about fifteen. I found an incredible local Pentecostal church, and incredible youth group, and was welcomed into a group of fantastic, devout young Christians. It’s hard to imagine all the grace I received through the friends I found and the experiences I had.
Then, at a time when so many Christians lose their faith and their identity, by the grace of God I was plugged into an incredible campus ministry in my university years. There I met lifelong friends, and my beautiful wife.
I fellowshipped, alongside my wife and our best friends, at a non-denominational church for many years. We still attend. It’s been an incredible place of grow, grace, and meeting God.
But the trajectory of my faith life—which impacts, of course, the whole of my life—changed one day when a Protestant pastor asked me what’s more important, the Bible or tradition. I didn’t have an answer, and that stumped me. And when I dug for answers, I was even more stumped, and unsatisfied. This began a long journey of searching, prayer, and unexpected discoveries.
A journey which will culminate at Easter, and continue for the rest of my life, in an entirely new direction.
What I know now, I didn’t know then. I’m becoming Catholic because of what I’ve learned—and I’ve learned it, I believe, by grace of God.
St. Francis de Sales is a favourite saint of mine. In the 16th century, as the Reformation split apart the Christian Church in Europe he wrote, preached, and worked tirelessly to explain the Catholic faith, and bring Protestants back into the fold. He was incredibly successful and something in his mission of cordially explaining his faith resonates deeply with me.
To paraphrase St. Francis de Sales to the early Protestants: If you’d known what the Catholic Church really taught you’d never have left.
In my case, if I’d known what the Catholic Church really taught, I’d have become Catholic much sooner.
Catholics Don’t Worship Mary
The Catholic Church doesn’t teach the worship of Mary. Worship (and adoration) are for God alone.
As a Protestant I thought, for a long time, that Catholics worshipped Mary alongside her son, Jesus. There are plenty of churches named in her honoured, Catholics seemed obsessed with statues of the Virgin, and the Rosary, of all things, seemed to be nothing more than vain repetition of praise for Jesus’s mother.
The reality, I’ve learned, is much different. Catholics don’t worship Mary but, because of her special role in salvation history, she is venerated. How is that different? In Catholic theology, which, remember, was the theology of the whole Christian Church for 1,500 years, we ask Mary to pray for us.
Like Mary’s request to Jesus at the wedding at Cana, Catholics believe that Mary has the ear of Jesus in a special way. This is also reflected in biblical typology—the same kind of exegesis that Jesus used to explain His role in salvation to the apostles on the road to Emmaus. In the same way I can ask my best friend—a living, breathing Christian—to pray for my intentions, the Catholic Church teaches that Mary can be asked for prayer in the same way. When Catholics say they pray, “to Mary,” they don’t mean that Mary will answer our prayers. When we “pray to” Mary, we ask for her to pray for us, to Christ.
Jesus answers all prayers. We ask Mary to pray on our behalf.
Catholics Don’t Worship the Saints
In the same way, the Catholic Church believes that holy men and women (more women than men, for the record) are, presently, in the presence of God. We call these people saints and, like the Virgin Mary, we can ask for their prayers.
As pictured in Revelation, the prayers of the saints gathered around the altar float up like incense before God. That’s why, since the very beginning of the Christian Church, there has been a strong belief in ability of the dead to pray for us—and the practice of us asking them for their prayers. This is why the earliest Christian Churches were built on sites where holy men and women were killed.
The beautiful theology of the Catholic Church says that the Church, as a body of believers, is made up of all past, present, and future Christians. We’re all one and the same and just because I pass away doesn’t mean I cease to be a part of that active body. The saints, as Christians, continue their role in the body, only now in the presence of God.
Jesus is Present in the Eucharist
For all the different Protestant branches and denominations I’ve learned that no one in Protestantism takes Jesus’s words more literally than the Catholic Church.
When Jesus said, “This is my body; this is my blood,” the Catholic Church—and the whole of Christianity for 1,500 years—takes Him at His word.
Incredibly, the Catholic theology of transubstantiation says that when the priest consecrates the elements (the bread and the wine) they become the actual body and blood of Jesus through a mysterious, miraculous process. The fact that we can’t see, touch, or taste these elements are real flesh and blood is part of the miracle.
This bold claim is backed up not only by a thousand and a half years of Church history but by solid exegesis of the gospels.
Jesus, from Bethlehem (which means “the house of bread”), who was laid into a manger (which is a feeding trough) when He was born is the actual manna from Heaven.
If I had known that I can actually receive Jesus in the Eucharist, I would’ve stormed the doors of my local Catholic Church a decade ago.
There’s Only One Mass
What strikes me as even more incredible is the Catholic theology of the act of the Eucharist itself: There’s only one.
Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross was once and for all, final, and this is something that all Protestants can get behind. The brilliant, beauty of the Mass and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic elements is that it links us up with all of Christian history—past, present, and future.
Jesus only died once. When the priest prayers the Eucharistic Prayers and says, “This is my body; this is my blood,” we are, as a church community, reliving the Last Supper and Jesus’s death on the cross. We are linking up, together, with all of the other Christians who have ever, and will ever, celebrate the Eucharist. And we’re linking up with the saints, angels, the Virgin Mary, and God Himself in Heaven as we see this same celebration taking place in Revelation.
As a Catholic, then, when I go to Mass I am experiencing something universal: Jesus’s death re-presented before my eyes.
The Priest Acts as Jesus
In a similar way, I never understood the importance of the priest in Catholic theology. As a young Protestant the priest, like Mary and the saints, stood in the way of my personal relationship with Jesus. But I had it all wrong.
The priest, as understood by Catholic theology, acts as Christ. The priest is a stand-in, if you will.
In the Mass, the priests acts in the place of Jesus, as he consecrates the bread and the wine. In the blessing of people, in Baptism, in prayer, and in the healing of the sick the priest, based on the authority that Jesus gives His apostles in the New Testament, is acting in His place. Where Jesus is not tangibly, physically with us, the priest is here in His place.
In confession, the priest, based on the direct charge from Jesus, “whoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven,” represents Christ in forgiving our sins for us.
We don’t have to imagine God among us: there He is.
God Gave Us a Real, Tangible Church
Perhaps the greatest, most incredible thing I’ve learned, and wish that I knew a long, long time ago, is that Jesus left us with a real, tangible Church.
As a Protestant, I thought of the Church as a non-physical, spiritual union of Christians all over the world. But this isn’t how Jesus meant it, I’m convinced. Because this isn’t the Church as conceived by the apostles, the fathers of the Church (who were taught by the apostles), and all Christians for more than fifteen hundred years.
As I become Catholic perhaps the greatest gift I’m to receive is union with a real, tangible Church founded by Christ.
A Church with bishops and priests who can trace their authority, historically, all the way back to the apostles. Authority that we see manifest in the New Testament as the ability to forgive sins, drive out demons, and define an understanding of doctrine. These authoritative charges, according to the Catholic Church, remain with today’s bishops and priests through Apostolic Succession.
That’s why when the priest says, “You’re forgiven,” he means it. Because Christ said he’d have that power.
Rather than having to “feel” or “know” it on our own, God gave us the beauty and the blessing of a physical, tangible Church to be His hands and feet on earth. I don’t need to pray and ask for God to give me a sense of His grace, although I certainly could, and do. But in the Eucharist, in confession, and in the knowledge that God gave us the Church, we can be certain of His grace. This, in my experience, has been the most powerful aspect of the Catholic Church—and something I wish I knew years ago.
The most beautiful gift that Jesus gave us, beyond His sacrificial offering, was the establishment of a Church to proclaim, celebrate, and safeguard truth.
There’s a lot—a lot!—I wish I’d known about the Catholic Church a long time ago. I would’ve become a Catholic. And, of course, now that I know I can’t help but do anything else. At Easter I’ll turn in a new direction, take a new path, but I suppose, really, it’s the path I’ve always been on: A slow road to Rome. But I’m finally getting there. My new orientation, then, will be to continue to explain and champion this incredible faith I’ve found. And to be a cordial Catholic.
“Then his quote about them having “left” the Catholic church still doesn’t make much sense.”
It makes sense in one way: if they were ever properly baptized, they had once been members of the Catholic Church through baptism, but they certainly never saw it that way and they were not raised that way. In any case, De Sales brought thousands and thousands of them into (or back into) the Catholic Church over a number of years. He risked his life in doing so.
Sorry my friend. I bear no false witness. I bear the truth.
If you want to continue to believe that as you kneel before an idol of Mary in "church" while praying to her and asking her for things and relying upon her for anything is not worship, then there is nothing I can do to help you.
My sincere prayer is you would see the error that you've been taught regarding Mary.
If you want to use Latin to try to disprove the One, True, Church, I recommend you look up “dulia”.
It’s the Prots who have been duped by their “own interpretation” of everything under the sun.
Irrelevant verses don't prove the point whether one holds to Sola Scriptura or holds to Scripture and tradition.
Sure thing. Since you suggested it.
Dulia - from Medieval Latin: service, from Greek douleia slavery, from doulos slave [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dulia]
So Catholics are slaves to their so called saints and Mary. As opposed to:
1 Corinthians 7:22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant (doulos).
Like I said, Catholics have been duped.
Yes, there are Catholics that are sinners, even priests and bishops. We have broken every commandment, but we have the graces that God provides including Confession.
Communication can be an issue that it not clear when presented or misunderstood by the receiver. Even if there is a problem by the Church in communicating, Jesus stated that he would be with His Church until the end of time.
While some may feel justified when leaving the Catholic Church (God gave us free will to do so), Jesus also stated that when you reject His Church, then you also reject Jesus.
HAHAHAHAHA! More perfectly scripted talking points! Sheesh! you guys should REALLY try to make it more convincing.
A) Catholics are too stupid/ addle minded to know what we are doing. Or
B) We know exactly what we are doing and are lying about it.
Those may not be your exact words, but that is what I am hearing.
What is your source?
Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary:
veneror to ask reverently, beseech with awe
From Lewis and Short:
With men or things as objects, to revere, do homage to, reverence, honor
Not saying you are stupid or addle minded or that you are lying.
I would suggest that you have been lied to.
Is there anything in the Word that suggests Mary is capable of the things catholicism teachings?
I think an honest answer is no.
The catholic position on Mary has to rest on extra-biblical writings. Many will point to the ECFs as a source for these. However, the ECFs are all over the board on this topic and others. So I would invoke the tennis rule....when in doubt call it out.
The whole purpose of the Word is to point us to Jesus and to show that we are in need of a Savior. And that Savior is Christ.
All this Mary discussion is a distraction from that central issue.
Who benefits from this distraction? Satan does in that the attention is off of Christ and His ability and willingness to save a sinner. If Satan can get people believing that Mary is a co-redemtrix, an advocate, a helper, Satan has put the focus on her and not Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit where it belongs.
No.
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
That's what we're saying.
Your comment: “Like I said, Catholics have been duped.”
If we been duped, then at least we are following God’s will as servants of God, unlike some that reject the teachings of Jesus’s Catholic Church.
I have told you the truth, should you choose to ignore it and keep repeating a falsity you are bearing false witness.
I have told you the truth, should you choose to ignore it and keep repeating a falsity you are bearing false witness.
Marcus Grodi’s “The Journey Home,” on EWTN, Mondays, is one of my favorites. Every story is different and fascinating. The converts are uniformly articulate, and I appreciate that Marcus rarely interrupts.
Is there anything in the Word that suggests Mary is capable of the things catholicism teachings?
Catholics are not bound by the man made tradition of Sola Scriptura. And this has been discussed many times. There is evidence in the Bible, but non-Catholics refuse to see it.
Perhaps you will appeal to the Book of Mormon or maybe the Koran?
And this has been discussed many times. There is evidence in the Bible, but non-Catholics refuse to see it.
Please elaborate.
I've included it multiple times now.
Venerate - from Latin veneratus, past participle of venerari "to reverence, worship" [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/venerate]
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