Crossed The Tiber

An Evangelical Converts to Catholicism

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Location: Pennsylvania, United States

I was born into the Catholic faith. At 14, I was "born again" and found Jesus personally but lost His Church. After thirty years as an evangelical protestant, I have come full circle to find that He has been there all the time, in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I wish others to find the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith as I have found.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Universality of the Universal Church

                                                                      (St. Mary's in Potsdam before mass)
Every year that I have gone on vacation since I have been Catholic, which is 7 years now, I still can't get over the universality of this faith we share. On this past Sunday we were in a small lake town near Potsdam, NY and within a short distance was a Catholic Church. We didn't have to fore go keeping the sabbath command because we couldn't find a church with a theology and worship style we could agree with.

In the olden days, before I was Catholic, when I took my family on vacation, we would make a cursory review of local churches in the yellow pages after settling in.  We wouldn't be comfortable going to the First Pentecostal Assembly of Jesus-Only Believers ( "I think they don't really believe in the trinity there") or the "dead" ______ church ( weren't they the "liberal ones who didn't take the bible literally") or the wishy-washy _____ church ( "I think they just approved of  homosexuality, didn't they?") or  the stuffy 10th _____( "They are 5 pointers and don't believe in free will, aren't they")

Instead, when Sunday came, we would then try to then try to coral the kids together to read scripture and say a prayer. For all those years, there was probably a Catholic Mass being prayed right down the street from where we were staying at our beach rental house.  But with my anti-Catholic bias at the time, I am sure I would have over-looked the Church that was worshiping with the same theology as the early Christians and praying the same prayers over the Lord's Supper that had been prayed for over 1800 years Instead I decided to lead my family to break one of the ten commandments.  This is just one of the many reasons that one universal church makes so much sense and going on vacation now, always reinforces that for me.
One, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith. Yeah, it just makes sense.

4 Comments:

Blogger kkollwitz said...

Going to Mass on vacation is always a bit of an adventure. One time we went to Mass in Miami; turned out to be the snowbird Mass for the Quebeckers. The whole Mass was in Acadian French, which was still very close to the French I grew up around in Louisiana.

Hey I was in Potsdam about 25 years ago; still remember that Potsdam Red Sandstone.

August 27, 2011 11:17 AM  
Blogger Russ Rentler, M.D. said...

St. Mary's was made of a beautiful red stone. Now I know it was sandstone!

August 27, 2011 11:50 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I was going to write something on this. We just moved to a new state and my non-Catholic cousins asked if we found a church yet. It was a no brainer. Just went the neighborhood parish and viola, there's our church.
I know that no matter where we are we will be fed by the Body of Christ and nothing beats that.

August 28, 2011 2:42 AM  
Blogger Russ Rentler, M.D. said...

Suburban Mom: You mean you didn't check out the pastor's preaching first, or how "warm" you felt when first meeting and greeting, or how great the worship team was first?
Brave soul you are! But the reality is that no matter where you go, the Mass is the same, and Christ becomes physically present there for us to consume Him.
Thanks for visiting!

August 28, 2011 8:19 AM  

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