"Baptist Bible" Christian Finds The Church!
Here's a great story of how a fundamentalist Christian from a tiny baptist sect in Long Island, New York came to be a Catholic. He now proclaims his joy in finding the Catholic Church on facebook, blogs and youtube. Read Michael's story here.
Blame it on the Early Church Father's once again, for it seems when he began to read history (Saint Augustine in particular) he knew that his sect in no way resembled the early christian church (AKA the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church)
It seemed that Augustine and his contemporaries believed something very different about the Church than most protestants today did. They believed in Scripture and the Sacred Tradition handed on from the apostles to their successors, the Bishops. They believed that what distinguished the Church was its unity of teaching and what distinguished the heretics and false teachers was their inconsistencies and divisions. They practiced confession to priests, prayed for the dead, believed that God works through sacraments to apply His salvation and grace into our lives. They recited written prayers, they spoke of Christ’s purification of Christians through something called purgatory. They testified that Mary was free from original sin and called her “The New Eve.” They wrote prayers to Jesus, they called on Mary to pray.
And as I read more and more of these writings, I became unsettled and wondered if all the things that these early Christians wrote about were still going on in their totality in any Church today."
Blame it on the Early Church Father's once again, for it seems when he began to read history (Saint Augustine in particular) he knew that his sect in no way resembled the early christian church (AKA the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church)
It seemed that Augustine and his contemporaries believed something very different about the Church than most protestants today did. They believed in Scripture and the Sacred Tradition handed on from the apostles to their successors, the Bishops. They believed that what distinguished the Church was its unity of teaching and what distinguished the heretics and false teachers was their inconsistencies and divisions. They practiced confession to priests, prayed for the dead, believed that God works through sacraments to apply His salvation and grace into our lives. They recited written prayers, they spoke of Christ’s purification of Christians through something called purgatory. They testified that Mary was free from original sin and called her “The New Eve.” They wrote prayers to Jesus, they called on Mary to pray.
And as I read more and more of these writings, I became unsettled and wondered if all the things that these early Christians wrote about were still going on in their totality in any Church today."
posted by Russ Rentler, M.D. | 10:13 PM
1 Comments:
"I accepted what my fellow Christians, including my family proposed regarding what the Catholic Church was. I did not give any initial challenge to what was suggested. I had deep trust in all of these people. They were family and friends who had been reliable and faithful in all areas of my life. I had no reason to question their word…"
SO TRUE! It never dawned on me back in my Protestant days that our "common knowledge" concerning Catholicism might be just a collection of old wives' tales, malicious gossip and out-and-out ignorance, with a little deliberate misinformation thrown in to scare off anyone who might be tempted to investigate the claims of the Church. When your pastor tells you that "Catholics believe they are saved by works-righteousness," you trust him. He learned this in seminary from professors he trusted. They learned it from textbooks by authors they trusted. This chain extends back through generations. As Michael points out, a little critical thinking is in order! I wish I had been given this challenge 30 years ago....
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