Church Hoppin' Anabaptist Comes Home!
Why I'm Catholic blog highlights the journey of a postman from Australia who finds the Catholic Church after more than 20 years of searching for the "perfect church." Brad Schilling's story is similar to many of ours who kept looking for "that perfect church." Once a person suspends their pre-conceived biases against Catholicism, they can see clearly what they have always been looking for.
"Much to my surprise the Mass was entirely focused on Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity. I heard more Scripture read than I had ever heard in any Protestant church. I heard a 15 minute sermon on the Gospel reading. We said the Our Father together. We confessed our sins together. We prayed for the Church, the government, the needy, the lost and our selves. We remembered members of the Church who had died. We sang hymns. We kneeled. We stood. We made the sign of the Cross. We shook hands with each other and said, "Peace be with you." It was a corporate affair."
"Firstly, as a Protestant I had always read church history backwards. That is, I would start with where the Protestant church was in the present and trace a path back to its origins in the 16th Century. I would compare how the denominations looked in the present with the early church as recorded in the New Testament to see which were the most faithful. I ignored the period of history from 90 AD through to the 1500's."
"Much to my surprise the Mass was entirely focused on Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity. I heard more Scripture read than I had ever heard in any Protestant church. I heard a 15 minute sermon on the Gospel reading. We said the Our Father together. We confessed our sins together. We prayed for the Church, the government, the needy, the lost and our selves. We remembered members of the Church who had died. We sang hymns. We kneeled. We stood. We made the sign of the Cross. We shook hands with each other and said, "Peace be with you." It was a corporate affair."
"Firstly, as a Protestant I had always read church history backwards. That is, I would start with where the Protestant church was in the present and trace a path back to its origins in the 16th Century. I would compare how the denominations looked in the present with the early church as recorded in the New Testament to see which were the most faithful. I ignored the period of history from 90 AD through to the 1500's."
2 Comments:
Tim Staples talks about the search for the "perfect church". It doesn't exist, but if it did -- the moment you enter, it no longer is (paraphrasing).
On Brad's observation about the missing years, I did a piece on it a while back, including a fancy homemade graphic...
I read that article, it was very good, maybe I will put a link to it as a post thanks George!
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