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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
 Posted - 04/22/2009 : 06:48:44
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21. If the reasons, by which I have endeavored to defend our religion, convince you of its truth, do not blush to own it openly and boldly. It is noble to confess and correct an error. Besides, your error, if you do not make it personal, by a willful adherence to it after it is known to be such, is rather the fault of your education than yours. Remember that Christ threatens to renounce before the assembled universe, those who refuse to confess him before men.
22. My dear brother, would to God, I could express to you all the sensations that I have felt with respect to you and my family, since the hand of God has- deigned to draw me from those errors in which I was engaged, by birth and education! Your unhappiness has ever been so strongly impressed on my mind; that my prayers for you have been continual. I cannot think without shuddering, that if we continue separated from each other in our belief, one of us must necessarily perish forever. Yet this is what I must conclude from comparing this text of St. Paul, " One faith," with that other of the same Apostle, "without faith it is impossible to please God," and consequently to be saved. There can be but one of us in the right, since our faith is entirely opposite. If it be you who are in error, as I am fully and intimately persuaded, give me the ineffable consolation of seeing you return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, which alone is the true spouse of Jesus. United together in the arms of this tender mother, we will then use every means to obtain of God the conversion of him to whom we owe our being. We will employ all our zeal to become in some sort the fathers of our father, by procuring him a life infinitely more precious than that which we have received from him. This, my dearest brother and most cherished friend, is what I desire with the greatest possible ardor. I conjure you by the bowels of the charity of our Heavenly Father, and of his Son Jesus Christ, to think as seriously as if at the eve of your death, on what I have written, and to beg God's light to guide you. Give this mark of tenderness and friendship to a brother, who lives only for you, for our father, relations and countrymen. I am, with all possible cordiality and affection,
Your tender and loving
Friend and Brother,
J. THAYER.
Paris, ______________ 1787.
Mr. Nath. Thayer,
Boston, Mass.
P. S. If you communicate this letter to any of your ministers (which I should wish) I beg you not to be content with whatever answers they give; but write them down together with your own objections, and on reflection you will find the answer to all in the little that I have written. The more you read and meditate the Bible, the more you will see the harmony and consistency of our principles, and the inconsistency and contradiction of those of your protestant ministers. When I say, the inconsistency and contradiction of the principles of your ministers, I do not speak from any bitterness or animosity. If I were present among them, I trust they would soon see how sincerely I love them in Jesus Christ, and that neither passion nor party-spirit guides my pen, but the sole love of truth and the light of faith.
J. T.
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 05/12/2009 : 06:36:49
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Dear Reader, CONFESSION OF A ROMAN CATHOLIC, is the incredible story of Paul Whitcomb's conversion to the Catholic Church through reading the Bible. It is a graphic recounting of a rather extraordinary spiritual odyssey, a spiritual odyssey which had its finale in the Catholic Church. This is simply a testimonial of one man's faith, an intimate glimpse of one man's soul. Viewed in the broad sense one might call this a study of the Catholic psyche, for contained in this testimonial is the basic Catholic motivation, the reason why all Catholics are Catholics. To get the most out of the author's narrative, however, one really should view it in the narrow sense, that is, as an individual religious experience confided privately, person to person, for then one will more fully recognize the sincerity and good will that inspired it, and more fully appreciate the unreserved frankness of its presentation. But viewed either way this story is sure to provide a memorable reading experience.
CONFESSION OF A ROMAN CATHOLIC
Yes, dear reader, I am a Catholic, or "Roman" Catholic, if you prefer. I recognize the Pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth, I worship God at that solemn rite called the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary and I confess my sins to a priest.
I am one of those people who harbor the conviction that the Catholic Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ.
And if you happen to be of another religious faith, particularly if you happen to be a Protestant, I have a pretty good idea what you are thinking. You are probably thinking: "Poor deluded fellow... it is a pity that he has never been exposed to the light of Scripture, a pity that he does not enjoy the intellectual freedom enjoyed by other Christians... for if he had the least familiarity with Sacred Scripture, the least freedom of intellectual inquiry, he would never subscribe to such a faith... he would be a Protestant, or an Eastern Orthodox, or an unaffiliated Christian-anything but a Roman Catholic."
This is likely to be your opinion. In fact, if you did not regard me as something of a religious oddity I would be very surprised. You hear so many stories about the "strange goings on" in the Catholic Church, and so many of these stories purport to be "authoritative" reports on Catholic belief and practice - what else can you think? If you did not attach some credence to these stories, you just would not be a "normal" non-Catholic.
Before you pass final judgment, however, there is something I feel you should know: I have a confession to make. I have something to tell you that will undoubtedly surprise you and strike you as being altogether incredible; but believe me, dear reader, it is the truth - every word of it.
All of the stories you have heard about the unscriptural and totalitarian character of the Catholic Church notwithstanding, it was my pursuit of Scriptural truth and my exercise of intellectual freedom that led me to become a Catholic.
I mean that! But for the fact that I was exposed to the light of Scripture, but for the fact that I do enjoy freedom of intellectual inquiry, and but for the fact that I found all those accusations against the Catholic Church to be thoroughly untrue, I would, in a probability, have this day the same opinion of Catholics that you have.
You see, I have not always been a Catholic. For the first 32 years of my life I was a Protestant. And what is more, I was a through and through Protestant. I was born of Protestant parents - an Episcopalian father and a Methodist mother. I was baptized a Protestant - Episcopal because my brother before me was baptized a Methodist. I was reared a Protestant - sent regularly to Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational, and Baptist Sunday schools, whichever was handiest to where we lived, and enlisted in various Protestant youth movements. My parents were staunch "liberal" Protestants: they believed that one church is as good as another - so long as it is Christian and Protestant.
As might be expected, when I reached manhood I married a Protestant - a devout Augustana-Synod Lutheran. Then began my stint, for the sake of domestic harmony, in the Lutheran faith, because within a year's time my wife and I were obliged by economic considerations to move to another section of the country where, except for a sprinkling of Baptists and Pentecostals, all of the Protestants were Methodist. There I became active once again in the Methodist Church, my wife joining with me (I think that, with the possible exception of Missouri-Synod Lutherans and some Southern Baptists, all Protestants are liberals at heart), and there I decided to become, and in due course, did become, a Methodist minister.
Yes, for 32 years, through childhood and well into adulthood, my environment was strictly a Protestant environment, my creed strictly a Protestant creed. If ever there were a "thoroughbred" Protestant, it was I.
And I say that without any misgivings. Why should I have misgivings? My association with Protestantism did me a great deal of good. It was as a Protestant that I learned of the reality and power and munificent goodness of God. It was as a Protestant that I learned of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, come into the world to atone for the sins of man and lead man in the way of eternal salvation. It was as a Protestant that I learned to acknowledge and revere the Bible as the holy Word of God. And it was as a Protestant that I came to know many wonderful God-fearing people, people whose sincerity and genuine Christian charity were a great source of inspiration to me.
It would be deceitful and most ungrateful of me to deny that I benefited from my long association with Protestantism. In all Christian truthfulness I must admit that those were good days, so good I still feel a very pleasant nostalgia whenever they are recalled to memory.
However, be that as it may, I had to make a change. In conscience I had to become a Catholic.
Divine Providence just would not have it any other way. To be sure, I was an avid student of the Bible - I believed that the Bible is the sole Christian rule of faith. But, as Divine Providence would have it, the more I studied the Bible, and the more I made it my rule of faith, the more I realized that my faith was not wholly what God had ordered. I discovered voids in my religious fabric, voids which had to be filled if I were to know real peace of soul. This feeling of spiritual insecurity led me inexorably to a study of comparative religion; and, again, as Divine Providence would have it, the more I studied comparative religion the more I came to realize that the Catholic faith was the one faith that could fill the voids in my religious life, the one faith that could give me the real peace of soul I longed for.
"Poppycock! Pure figments of the imagination!" you will say. And again I say that may indeed be your honest opinion. But I also say, read on. For if you will read on and not draw hasty conclusions I think you will alter your opinion. Perhaps you will not sympathize with my explanation, but I am sure you will find that I am not relating something that happened solely in my imagination.
A really conscientious student of the Bible does not imagine what he reads there, and as I said before, after entering the Methodist ministry I was just that, a really conscientious student of the Bible. I practically lived in the Bible, for not only did I consider it expedient that I should be constantly enlarging upon my knowledge of Scripture text, so that I could preach with more and more fluency, I also considered it expedient that I should be constantly enlarging upon my knowledge of Scripture exegesis (correct interpretation), so that I could preach with more and more authority. To be a proficient quoter of Scripture was not enough - I also wanted to be a proficient explainer of Scripture. Particularly, I wanted to be able to explain the indistinct passages of Scripture, the passages most Protestant ministers pass over on the grounds that they are "too ambiguous" for explanation; for it was my considered opinion that those passages contained some very significant truths, truths that could be brought to light and should be brought to light.
In short, I wanted to preach God's whole revealed truth, and I wanted to be able to verify that it was His whole revealed truth. I wanted to be a fully qualified minister of the Gospel.
Now you can call this presumption if you want to, but I honestly do believe this program of mine was God-inspired. For, as it happened, my study of Scripture exegesis had hardly begun when I made a very remarkable discovery, a discovery which had the effect of removing all apprehension from my mind. I discovered that whenever I cam across an indistinct, seemingly ambiguous, passage of Scripture, one which allowed for several interpretations, I could remove the ambiguity, find the one true interpretation, by searching out other passages directly bearing on the subject and correlating them.
For example, Christ repeatedly refers to God in the Bible as "my" Father and to Himself as the "son" of God. When those passages are isolated, three distinct and contradictory interpretations can be drawn from them: 1) Jesus was a mortal being, a son of God in the same sense that all Christians are sons of God; 2) Jesus was a supernatural being, a son of God in the sense that visible angels are sons (emissaries) of God; 3) Jesus was a divine Being, a son of God in the sense that He was of the very Essence of God. But when those passages are not isolated, when they are correlated with Jesus' other statements bearing on His identity - e.g., John 1:18, 8:19, 10:38, 12:45 and 14:8-12 - the one true interpretation, namely the third one, emerges clear as crystal. Hence the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, professed by the overwhelming majority of Christians, which defines God as being numerically and individually one in essence but existing in three Persons - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
his method of ascertaining the true intended meaning of indistinct Scripture passages - employed by all the leading authorities on Scripture exegesis, I later found out - brought a great deal of consolation to me because it established the scriptural validity of some tenets of faith I had previously taken for granted simply because the were traditional Protestant tenets. But it also brought some surprising revelations, revelations I had not bargained for, revelations which challenged the scriptural validity of some of my beliefs. In this I was not consoled but rather very disturbed.
The first of these surprising revelations had to do with the intrinsic structure of Christ's true church. In the most literal and absolute sense Christ's true church is a body, I learned. Further, this body is not a group body, like a body of people, but is an organic and spiritual entity, like the body of a single person. Further, this body, the true Christian Church, is not strictly a human body but is akin to being a divine body - this is by virtue of the fact that it is the Mystical Body of Christ Himself. Actually, albeit mystically, Christ's true faithful constitute the members of His church body, while he reigns in Heaven as the Head of His church body.
And where does the Bible say such a thing ? This significant truism is expressed in a great number of Bible passages, but it is most apparent in the following:
"And he is the head of the body, the church." (Col. 1:18).
"But now there are many members indeed, yet one body... Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member." (I Cor. 12:20-27)
"Because we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Eph. 5:30)
"For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office: So we being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." (Rom. 12:4-5)
"Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" (I Cor. 6:15)
Because the body of Christ is one body, His Church must perforce be one body also:
"There shall be one fold and one shepherd." (John 10:16).
"Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all." (Eph. 4:3-6).
"Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who make dissensions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them." (Rom. 16:17).
Because a special supernatural grace was needed to cement permanently the unity of His Church, Christ provided that special supernatural grace; He had His Church sanctified in truth:
"These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up his eyes to Heaven, he said Holy Father, keep them in my name whom thou hast given me; that they may be one, as we also are.... sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth.... .that they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us...... I in them, and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in one." (John 17:1-23)
In the face of such evidence how could I entertain any doubt? There it was plain as could be in Sacred Scripture, the Word of God, the Christ's true faithful constitute a single unified body; unified in every respect: in organization, in belief, and in worship. That was the way Christ's Mystical Body on earth was originally constituted, and in order for it to live on as His Mystical Body on earth that is the way it had to stay constituted.
...to be continued
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 15:02:47
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It would have been foolhardy in the extreme for me to entertain doubts concerning the invincible oneness of Christ's Church; for not only was it self-evident in Sacred Scripture, it was self-evident in all the writings of the primitive Church Fathers.
St. Cyprian, In the third century, wrote: "God is one and Christ is one, and one is His Church, and the faith is one, and one His people welded together by the glue of concord into a solid unity of body. Unity cannot be rent asunder, nor can the one body of the Church, through the division of its structure, be divided into separate pieces." (St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, chap. 23).
Tertullian, also in the third century, says: "We are a society with a single religious feeling, a single unity of discipline, a single bond of hope." (Apology 39, 1)
In the fourth century, St. Hilary of Poitiers wrote: "In the Scriptures our people are shown to be made one; so that just as many grains collected into one and ground and mingled together, make one loaf, so in Christ, who is the heavenly Bread, we know that there is one body, in which our whole company is joined and united." (Treatise 62, 13).
Now I ask you, is it any wonder that my conscience was disturbed by this revelation? Behold, I was not a member of a Christian unity or body. As a Protestant I was part of a Christian "cooperative," an "interdenominational association" made up of over 300 Christian bodies, each one different in name, in belief, in government, and, to a lesser extent, in form of worship. True, they all professed Christ as Lord and Savior, and they all professed to preach His Gospel � they all proclaimed that their primary objective was the salvation of souls. In that respect there was indeed a common identity, or sameness. But the fact still remained: They refused to meet on the same premises to profess their faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, they disagreed as to what constitutes Christ's whole and true Gospel, and they were very much at odds concerning what qualifies a person for eternal salvation.
For example, one Protestant body held the independent view that altar and liturgy have no place in Christian worship. Another held the independent view that the sacraments should be withheld from infants and small children. Another held the independent view that man becomes impervious to sin and assured of salvation once he accepts Christ as his personal Savior. Another held the independent view that membership in Christ's Church is restricted to a select few, and when one of the select few falls away from God's grace no amount of repentance can restore him. Another held the independent view that Saturday is the Lord's Day, not Sunday. Another held the independent view that the powers of the church administration reside not with the clergy but with the laity of the local congregation.
Yes, here within this interdenominational framework was fellowship here was a genuine, concerted love and longing for Christ and His promise of salvation. That much had to be conceded. But here also was division, division in the most explicit and flagrant sense of the word. Here, unquestionably, was a concept of Christ's mystical Body on earth which could not possibly be consonant with the one spirit, one faith, one shepherd concept described in the Bible.
This realization distressed me more than I can say. Like His glorified body in Heaven, Christ's Mystical Body on earth never was and never will be a disjointed body, my conscience kept repeating and I did so want to be joined to His true Mystical Body, that I might share in its bountiful graces, that I might be, as St. Paul said, a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. (Eph. 5:30). The pleasantness of my Protestant association notwithstanding, I did so want to be ONE with Christ, my Salvation.
One passage of Scripture suddenly became very meaningful. Over and over I pondered these words: "Seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you." (Matt. 7:7). And at length I realized what I must do in order to placate my conscience. Just worrying over the situation would gain me nothing. If I were ever to find the unity which Christ said would distinguish His true faithful, I would have to search for it.
So down to the big public library I went and I commenced to search. I searched through every history of Christian church development I could find. I searched through the sectarian histories and the non-sectarian histories, the big encyclopedias and the little encyclopedias. I took special pains to be as comprehensive and as objective in my search as possible. Indeed, I took the same pains with these volumes as I did with the Holy Bible; for here again it was my own conscience I was serving; I would have been fooling no one but myself if I shirked any evidence or displayed even the slightest bias.
Then finally, after several weeks of intense searching and comparing, I found the blessed unity I was looking for. And I found it where I least expected to find it in the Roman Catholic Church.
That was not easy to accept, believe me. I hated to think that the church I had been most opposed to was the church most united in Christ. But I had to be honest with myself. The spectacle of 825 million Catholics, three-fifths of all professed Christians, perfectly, indomitably united in belief, in organization, and in worship the historical fact that Catholics, consistently the largest body of Christians in the world, have always been thus perfectly united was evidence I could not ignore. Perhaps I was prejudiced, but I certainly was not blind.
Here was the unity of the Bible prophecy there was no doubt in my mind about that. It had to be! Nowhere else on the Christian scene was there a unity nearly so compact, nearly so long-lived. Nowhere else on the Christian scene was there a unity so obviously permanent.
However, finding the unity of Bible prophecy did not entirely settle the matter. Just as great as the problem of finding it, I found, was the problem of embracing it. What about the other aspects of Catholicism, I asked myself. What about Catholic doctrine, Catholic dogmatism, Catholic authoritarianism. Could I, in justice to my conscience, set aside my suspicions concerning those aspects of Catholicism merely for the sake of the unity of Catholicism?
....to be continued
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 06/09/2009 : 14:59:19
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Those questions posed quite a problem. But I solved that problem all right. After considerable soul searching I concluded that unity was indeed a precious and most important Christian commodity, but right doctrine and right authority were also precious, also important, perhaps even more so. Therefore, I should play it safe: I should preserve the status quo of my religious affiliation, at least for the time being, and get back to my Bible studies. The prospect of having to interrupt my Bible studies did not set too well with me anyway.
That was a wise decision, you will say. But I say that it was a Providential decision, a God-inspired decision. For lo, I had no sooner returned to my beloved Scripture studies when along came another revelation, a revelation even more significant than the first one. Yes, and it was every bit as disturbing.
Clear as day I saw in Sacred Scripture that Christ's true church is not the "learning" church I had always believed it to be, but is manifestly a TEACHING church. Moreover, it was quite evident that Christ's true church is an INFALLIBLE teacher, never liable to teach false doctrine.
The key that opened the door of my conscience to this truth was Christ's directive to His Apostles shortly before His Ascension into Heaven:
"All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." (Matt. 28:18-20)
The teaching mission of His Church could not have been more clearly pronounced if Christ had devoted a great long sermon to it. Those two sentences were direct and peremptory enough to rule out any possibility of misinterpretation.
Then there was His statement to the Apostles on another occasion, telling them: "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you." (John 20:21). Here again is a clear, unmistakable reference to the teaching mission of His Church; for here He is telling the Apostles that they had fallen heir to His own teaching mission. His Church was to be no less of a teacher than He was.
Further, it was quite obvious that Christ did not give this teaching authority to all and sundry, that is, to the whole Church, but only to His duly appointed Apostles, those who were to be the administrative body of the Church. Had He meant that this teaching authority was to be exercised by all of the faithful He would have addressed His words to all of the faithful, or he would have instructed the Apostles to so advise all of the faithful - neither of which He did. The Bible is quite clear on that score. Some have been placed in the Church as teachers, not all, wrote the Apostle Paul. (1 Cor. 12:28-29).
Now where did I get the idea that the teaching authority of Christ's Church cannot err when it defines the essentials of Christian doctrine? Where did I get the idea that this teaching authority can no more err today than it could in the beginning when it was held by the Apostles? I got the idea from Christ Himself – by correlating His statements concerning the teaching authority of His Church with His statements concerning the divine protection pledged to that teaching authority. Christ said to the Apostles:
"These things have I spoken to you, abiding with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you... when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me. And you shall give testimony, because you are with me from the beginning." (John 14:25-26; 15:26-27).
In other words, the teaching authority of Christ's Church would not, could not, teach error, because infallible human beings would not be doing the actual teaching. The infallible Holy Spirit of God, the infallible Christ, would be doing the actual teaching, speaking through the human teaching authority of the Church. Our Blessed Lord made this quite clear when He said to His disciples:
"He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." (Luke 10:16).
Confirming that the teaching authority of the Church is the perennial and infallible voice of Christian truth, the Apostle Paul wrote:
"These things I write to thee... that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." (1 Tim. 3:14-15).
And then there was the testimony of the primitive Christian Fathers. A cursory study of their writings disclosed that they also believed that Christ's Church is incapable of teaching error. Wrote the great St. Irenaeus in the second century:
"For where the church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church in every form of grace, for the Spirit of God is Truth." (Against the Heresies, 3, 24,1).
And finally there was the testimony of my own faith. After pondering the matter, my own latent Christian faith insisted that Christ would not have admonished sinners to "hear the Church" unless He was sure they would be hearing the truth; nor would He have assured the Church that her pronouncements would be "bound in heaven" unless He was sure that her pronouncements contained no error. (Matt. 18:17-18). Careful analysis of Christ's teachings revealed that faith in the doctrinal infallibility of His Church is synonymous with faith in Him.
Yes, Christ's Church just had to be both a teaching church and an infallible teaching church. The evidence of Sacred Scripture was just too overwhelming to permit any other conclusion.
Now let me explain why I was disturbed by this revelation. I was disturbed, dear reader, because I obviously was not a member of a divinely authorized teaching church, much less an infallible teaching church. The church I was a member of repudiated the whole idea of a divinely authorized teaching church. It maintained that no man or council on earth possesses the God-given authority to pronounce, as binding on the Christian conscience, what is and is not true Christian doctrine.
Here I was a "minister" of the Gospel, yet I could not mount the pulpit and say: Learn of me, for I teach with the authority of the Lord. Learn of me, for he who hears me hears Him. Nor could my bishop make such a declaration. Nor could the highest official in the church make such a declaration. Any minister would have been liable to the charge of heresy - he would have been accused of "Popery," which was the same thing as heresy.
It was perfectly all right to mount the pulpit and say, "Learn of me." In fact, we were duty bound to teach when we preached. But to say that we had direct authority from God to teach, to imply that our teaching bore the stamp of divine infallibility – that definitely was out. That would have been a serious breach of one of the most basic and fundamental tenets of Protestantism: the tenet that the Bible is the only divinely authorized dispenser and guarantor of Christian truth.
This idea that the Bible is the supreme and final arbiter of Christian truth had to dominate the theme of every sermon. We ministers had to make it quite clear that while it was good and edifying to hear the voice of the church, in the final analysis it was direct to the Bible, to the "constitution" of the church, that the Christian must needs go for the binding convictions of his faith. It had to be emphasized that the primary mission of the church was not so much to teach Christ's saving faith as it was to lead people to the Bible so that the Bible could teach them Christ's saving faith.
This despite the fact that for the first four hundred years of Christianity there was no published Christian Bible; this despite the fact that for the next one thousand years, until the invention of the printing press, there were scant few Bibles; this despite the fact that only the literate have access to the Bible; this despite the fact that those who have made the Bible their sole rule of faith have come up with literally hundreds of conflicting rules of faith – this despite the fact that the Bible itself states that many who interpret it privately will interpret it wrongly, to their own destruction: ".....in which [St. Paul's epistles] are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." (2 Peter 3:16).
The more I thought of it the more I thanked God for His wonderful revelation. However, do not misunderstand me. I was not beginning to doubt the whole truth of the Bible, nor was I doubting the value of the Bible where Christian learning is concerned. These things I shall never doubt. I was simply facing up to the fact that the Bible, venerable book of truth that it is, is not the teacher of its own truth. The obvious was forcing itself upon me: Instead of a catalog of truths God wants taught, and taught so that all Christian generations, including the blind and illiterate of those generations, can hear and understand.
Hence the Church.
....to be continued |
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 06/20/2009 : 05:14:21
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Quite obviously, a living church possessed of an audible voice was needed to carry the great tidings of Salvation to all generations; therefore God in the Person of Jesus Christ founded such a church, and He said to it: "Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15). Note that he said preach His Gospel to every creature, not distribute His Gospel to every creature in the form of a book. He ordered His Church to speak to the world because through His Church He would be speaking to the world (Luke 10:16). How anything so obvious could have escaped me before, I do not know, unless my training had erected a mental block. It certainly is as plain as can be in Sacred Scripture.
Now my earnest desire was to seek out this church that could teach with the voice and authority of the Lord. I wanted this singularly blessed church to teach me. I wanted the wonderful assurance of Christ's own personal guarantee that my Christian faith was the true Christian faith prescribed by Him for the salvation of the world.
So the months that followed found me once again engrossed in a great assortment of books on comparative Christian religion. Once again the library and all the sectarian books stores in the vicinity became my favorite spare time haunts.
And once again my search ended where I least expected it to. That is right, dear reader, the church I was looking for turned out to be none other than the same Catholic Church. How could I consciously say that it was not? My study of the doctrines and practices of the various Christian churches revealed most clearly that only one, the Catholic Church, exercises the same kind of teaching authority that was exercised by the church of the Apostles and primitive Church Fathers. Only the Catholic Church functions for her members as an unerring interpreter of God's revealed truth. Only the Catholic Church dares proclaim to the world that when she teaches the truths of Christian doctrine, it is Jesus Christ, who can neither deceive or be deceived, teaching through her.
Only the Catholic Church was NAMED by the primitive Church Fathers as the church appointed by Jesus Christ to carry on His sacred teaching ministry. Wrote St. Irenaeus in the second century:
The Catholic Church, having received the apostolic teaching and faith, though spread over the whole world, guards it sedulously, as though dwelling in one house; and these truths she uniformly teaches, as having but one soul and one heart; these truths she proclaims, teaches, and hands down as though she had but one mouth. (Adv. Haer., 1, x, 2)
Wrote St. Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century:
But the brightness of the Catholic Church proceeded to increase in greatness, for it ever held to the same points in the same way, and radiated forth to all the race of Greeks and barbarians the reverent, sincere, and free nature, and the sobriety and purity of the divine teachings as to conduct and thought. (Ecclesiastical History, 4, 7, 13).
Wrote St. Augustine in the fifth century:
The Catholic Church is the work of Divine Providence, achieved through the prophecies of the prophets, through the Incarnation and the teaching of Christ, through the journeys of the Apostles, through the suffering, the crosses, the blood and death of the martyrs, through the admirable lives of the saints, and in all these, at opportune times, through miracles worthy of such great deeds and virtues. When, then, we see so much help on God's part, so much progress and so much fruit, shall we hesitate to bury ourselves in the bosom of that Church? For starting from the apostolic chair down through successions of bishops, even unto the open confession of all mankind, it has possessed the crown of teaching authority. (De Utilitate Credendi).
Confirming that the primitive Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church were one and the same church, St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, wrote in the second century:
Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church that has found mercy in the transcendent Majesty of the Most High Father and of Jesus Christ, his only Son; the church by the will of Him who willed all things, beloved and illuminated through the faith and love of Jesus Christ our God; presiding in the chief place of the Roman territory…presiding in love, maintaining the law of Christ, and bearer of the Father's name: her do I therefore salute in the name of Jesus Christ. (Introduction - To The Church of Rome).
How significant and thought-provoking those statements of the primitive Christian Fathers are. How significant that every time they mentioned the teaching church of Jesus Christ it was the Catholic Church, never one of the Coptic churches, or one of the Orthodox churches. And who should know better than they which Christian church is the true teaching church of Jesus Christ, the teaching church described in the Holy Bible?
I know, about now you are probably thinking: If the Catholic Church is the teaching church described in Bible prophecy, why does she suppress the Bible? Why does she bypass the Bible by drawing upon tradition for some of her articles of faith? Why does she indulge in such unscriptural practices as praying to Christ's mother, Mary?
My reply to that, dear friend, is this: Go to the Catholic Church as I went to the Catholic Church; conduct an on-the-spot investigation of Catholic teaching and practice as I did. You will quickly find out, as I did, that all those stories about the Catholic Church suppressing and bypassing the Bible are as false as false can be. They are calumnies, that is lies calculated to tarnish the Catholic Church (and you, my dear protestant friend, know very well that, they who spread calumnies shall not see eternal life). You will also find out that there is absolutely nothing unscriptural about praying to Christ's Blessed Mother.
I realize that this is a lot to ask. Like me you have probably been taught to distrust and stay strictly away from everything labeled Roman Catholic. But, believe me, you must go to the Catholic Church if you want complete and accurate knowledge of her teachings and practices.
You certainly would not go to the Swiss Information Bureau for authoritative information on the winter resorts of Norway, or to General Motors for authoritative information on the performance of Ford automobiles, or to a staunch Democrat for authoritative information on the achievements and aspirations of the Republican Party. Nor would you seek information about the former from the latter. Why? Because it is just not fair to obtain information about something, or someone, from a rival. It is not fair to yourself, and it certainly is not fair to your subject. Rival information its always prejudiced information, and therefore is seldom free of serious omissions and gross exaggerations.
Why, then, trust another church to give you completely reliable information about the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church?
That was the simple rule of logic and fairness I adopted, and I must say that it rewarded me beyond measure. Instead of finding the Bible suppressed in the Catholic Church, I found it very much in evidence and very highly honored. In fact, I had never before visited a church where the Bible was so much in evidence, so highly honored. I noticed that during Mass an enormous and exceedingly beautiful book filled with Scripture, called the Missal, rests on the altar and occupies much of the priest's attention as he proceeds through the Mass liturgy. I noticed that during Low Mass the priest raises this great book of Scripture to his lips and reverently kisses it, and during High Mass he solemnly incenses it, signifying the Church's loving devotion to God's revealed truth. And I noticed that the priest celebrant of the Mass, or a priest assistant, never preaches the Mass sermon without first taking a New Testament and reading some Epistle and Gospel verses to the congregation, and never without first offering up this prayer with the congregation: "The Lord be in my heart and on my lips, that I may worthily and in a becoming manner proclaim His holy Gospel."
I noticed that throughout the whole course of the Mass, which is the center and heart of all Catholic worship, there was a most profound reverence shown to Sacred Scripture by all present. At the reading of the Gospel, for example, everyone stands in reverence of the Word.
And that is not all. I found that this reverence has been manifest in the worship of the Catholic Church since the fourth century when the Christian canon of Sacred Scripture was first determined - and determined, incidentally, by this same Catholic Church. Catholic devotion to the Bible is as old as the Bible itself.
Are Catholics encouraged to read and meditate upon the Scriptures privately in their own homes? Indeed they are. Contrary to what many Protestants think - contrary to what I myself had long believed - Catholics are constantly being told, in sermons, in letters from their Bishop, and in Papal encyclicals, the spiritual good that will come from keeping a Bible in the home and daily meditating on its content. Thus wrote Pope Pius XII in the Encyclical Letter, On the Promotion of Biblical Studies:
For the Sacred Books were not given by God to men to satisfy their curiosity or to provide them with material for study and research, but, as the Apostle observes, in order that these Divine Oracles might instruct us to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus, and that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work. Bishops should help excite and foster among Catholics a greater knowledge of and love for the Sacred Books. Let them favor, therefore, and lend help to those pious associations whose aim it is to spread copies of the Sacred Letters, especially of the Gospels, among the faithful, and to procure by every means that in Christian families the same be read daily with piety and devotion... for, as St. Jerome, the Doctor of Stridon, says: To ignore the Scripture is to ignore Christ.
No, there definitely is no suppression of the Bible in the Catholic Church. All who believe otherwise have been grossly misinformed.
Concerning the allegation that the Catholic Church "bypasses" the Bible when she bases some of her articles of faith on tradition, I merely had to focus my attention on a few passages of the Bible itself to be convinced that this allegation is totally without foundation in fact. Strange I had not noticed this before, but the Bible does actually state that some of Christ's teachings were committed to tradition. That is to say, they were handed down by word of mouth rather than by letter. Further, the Bible actually states that these teachings were no less important for having been committed to tradition. Here are the Bible passages to which I referred:
"Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle." (2 Thess. 2:14).
"And we charge you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received of us." (2 Thess. 3:6).
There is no questioning the meaning of those sentences. Here the Apostle Paul specifically states that there is not one but two criteria of Christian truth: that which was left to the Church via the Bible, via the written word, and that which was left to the Church via tradition, via the unwritten word - both of which, he says, are of equal importance to the faith of Christians.
And why was it necessary to bequeath some tenets of Christ's saving faith to the Church via the unwritten word, by word of mouth rather than by letter? Again the Bible furnishes the answer:
"This is that disciple who giveth testimony of these things, and hath written these things; and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written." (John 21:24-25). 1, x, 2).
So we have the Bible's own word for it that there were some things which Jesus said and did, some things which the Apostles taught, that were not written down, that did not find their way into the Bible - not because they were relatively unimportant but because writing it all down with the means and time available would have been humanly impossible. Had the Apostles and their disciples attempted to record all of Our Lord's doings and teachings they would have had no time left for preaching and baptizing and organizing the Church in the far-flung mission fields, which was what Christ had ordered them to do.
Now the question arises: What made me so sure that the tradition which forms the basis of part of Catholic doctrine is the tradition, the unrecorded teachings of Christ, mentioned in the Bible? A little objective research, plus a little objective Christian reasoning, made me sure.
First of all there was the testimony of the primitive Christian Fathers. Thus wrote St. Athanasius in the fourth century:
But it will hardly be out of place to investigate likewise the ancient traditions, and the doctrines and faith of the Catholic Church, which the Lord communicated, the Apostles proclaimed and the Fathers preserved; for on this has the Church been founded.
And wrote St. Augustine in the fifth century:
These traditions of the Christina name, therefore, so numerous, so powerful, and most dear, justly keep a believing man in the Catholic Church.
Then I went back over the mainstream of Christian belief and practice since Christianity began, and discovered, much to my surprise, that all the other ancient and semi-ancient Christian churches - Coptic, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox - have consistently held to the same tradition-based doctrines that the Catholic Church holds to, proving that acceptance of them was universal prior to the advent of Protestantism in 1517.
Also it occurred to me that if the tradition which forms the basis of part of Catholic doctrine is not the tradition mentioned in the Bible, what has become of it? Could it be that some of Christ's teachings have become extinct? To this I had to answer in the conscience of my faith that after suffering ignominy on the Cross to plant His truth in the world, Christ would not permit any part of it to become extinct. Thus said Jesus Christ, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away,". (Mark 13:31).
So there it was, all the evidence I needed to be thoroughly convinced that Catholic tradition is Bible tradition. In basing part of her doctrine on tradition the Catholic Church quite obviously is not bypassing the Bible, but complying with the Bible.
Manifestly clear to me now was the justification for such Catholic practices as praying to Heaven for the intercession of Mary and the saints. For these practices are the traditions referred to in the Bible. They have to be the traditions referred to in the Bible, otherwise why were they so precious to the primitive Christians?
To give you an idea who precious these traditions were to the primitive Christians I refer you to St. Ephraem's Prayer to the most holy Mother of God, composed by that illustrious deacon in the fourth century:
O Virgin Lady, immaculate Mother of God, my lady most glorious, most gracious, much purer than the sun's splendor, budding staff of Aaron, you appeared as a true staff, and the flower is your Son our true Christ, my God and Maker. You bore God and the Word according to the flesh, preserving your virginity before childbirth, a virgin after childbirth, and we have been reconciled with Christ, God your Son.
Then there is the prayer, composed by St. Germanus of Constantinople in the seventh century:
O Lady, all-chaste, all-good, rich in mercy, comfort of Christians, tender consoler of the afflicted, the ever-open refuge of sinners, do not leave us destitute of thy assistance. Shelter us under the wings of thy goodness. By thy intercession watch over us.
Indeed, I could go on and on, quoting Bible passage after Bible passage, Church Father after Church Father, until several volumes were filled, displaying the evidence which convinced me that Catholic tradition is Bible tradition, and therefore part and parcel of the Christian deposit of faith.
But, alas, as convincing as this great mass of evidence was, I still did not have the strength of will to hand myself over to the Catholic Church. Force of habit is a mighty force, I found, quite capable of resisting some of the strongest mental persuasions. It plays tricks on the mind, it creates the illusion in the mind that custom, somehow, is a profound truth in itself, a truth which, for some mysterious reason, transcends all other truths.
Somehow I managed to convince myself that I was a Protestant by the irrevocable force of heredity, like my skin was white by the irrevocable force of heredity. Therefore, I should not change the complexion of things like this because it was God's doing. In other words, I was a Protestant "by nature," therefore the "natural" thing for me to do was remain a Protestant. Certainly God would make allowances on the Judgment Day for people who just naturally were not Catholics, I told myself, providing, of course, they believed in Him with their whole heart and soul and repented of their sins, which I did.
However, force of habit and all the excuses I conjured up were no match for the grace of God. It was not long before my eyes were opened to yet another Bible revelation, one so rife with eternal consequences that there could be no resistance, no excuses. Had I remained out of the Catholic Church after this truth was made known to me I would have had to abandon my conscience altogether, and declare to the Lord, Not Thy will, Lord, but mine be done. But does this not eerily sound like Lucifer's cry of defiance, prior to his fall together with his followers?
Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21).
...to be continued
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2009 : 09:08:01
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Speaking right out of my Bible, Christ my Lord said to me:
I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. (John 6:48-52)
I contemplated those words long and hard, for while I had read them many times before and found them beautiful and stirring, I now saw in them something extremely personal and challenging, something that demanded clarification. You see, I had been led to believe that in this text Christ was speaking figuratively, that is, the bread He promised to give for the life of the world was not to be construed as His actual self, but bread symbolic, or representative, of His self. But somehow the more I contemplated His words the more I suspected that there was something drastically wrong with this interpretation. How, I asked myself, can symbolic bread be called "living" bread? How can symbolic bread vivify and impart divine life to the soul? How can dead vegetable substance be representative of the living Son of God?
Faced with these perplexing questions, I sought for the answers elsewhere in Sacred Scripture - I resorted to "interpretation by correlation," the method of interpretation that had served me so well before. And again this method did not fail me. A close analysis of all the pertinent Bible texts revealed that the Jews did not understand Christ to mean symbolical bread. They understood Him to mean bread that consisted of His true and living flesh. "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" they argued (John 6:53). Christ was speaking not in the figurative sense but in the literal sense, those Jews surmised; and they must have surmised correctly because Christ made no attempt to change their thinking. Instead, He repeated Himself, laying even greater stress on the literal sense of His words:
Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6:54-56).
No, He did not retract even when many of His disciples, likewise scandalized at the literal implication of His words, deserted Him. (John 6:67). He even told the Apostles that they, too, could desert Him before He would subtract one iota from the literal import of His words. (John 6:68).
Christ must have meant exactly what He said. In truth He must have intended to nourish mankind with the divine soul-saving food of His own Flesh and Blood, otherwise He would not have been so adamant, so unswervingly specific.
But how? How could the faithful actually partake of His true and living Flesh and Blood? That was what the Jews wanted to know and that was what I wanted to know. Only there was this difference between the Jews and myself: Like the Apostles, I had faith that somehow it could be done; like the Apostles, I believed that with Christ, with Divinity, all things are possible; like the Apostles, I exercised patience and was rewarded for my patience. Searching the Scriptures further I learned exactly how Christ intended to give His Flesh and Blood for the faithful to eat and drink - I found the full explanation contained in the account of the Last Supper.
And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. THIS IS MY BODY. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. FOR THIS IS MY BLOOD. (cf. Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20).
The bread and wine of Holy Communion, that was it! The bread and wine of Holy Communion were not mere symbols, or representations, of Christ's Body, as I had been led to believe, but were in very truth bread and wine miraculously transformed by the power of God into Christ's true and living Flesh and Blood, only the appearance of bread and wine remaining. Not only did I have Christ's promise at Capharnaum and the fulfillment of Christ's promise at the Last Supper to convince me of this, I had the testimony of the Apostles, preached to the whole infant Christian community. In the most unequivocal language the Apostles affirmed that the bread and wine duly consecrated on the altar did in fact become the actual Substance of the Savior. Declared the Apostle Paul:
The chalice of benediction which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? (1 Cor. 10:16). But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. (1 Cor. 11:28-29)
What further proof did I need? None at all, for the Bible was my criterion of Christian truth and the Bible could not have been more explicit. Yet, lest there be some lingering suspicions, I sought out the belief of the primitive Christian Fathers. If anyone were qualified to pass judgment on the correctness of my conclusion it was they, for they were the disciples, the immediate successors, of the Apostles - their interpretation of Sacred Scripture was obtained firsthand from the very authors of Sacred Scripture.
It turned out that the primitive Christian Fathers had a great deal to say on the subject, and it turned out that all of them were in perfect agreement. Those illustrious leaders of the infant Christian Church called the bread and wine consecrated on the altar the "Eucharist", and they unanimously maintained that by virtue of the consecration it was no longer common food-stuff but had become, by the Omnipotent Power of God, the true Flesh and Blood of the Savior.
Wrote St. Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the Apostle John, concerning the heretics of his day:
They have abstained from the Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ.
The bread and wine of Holy Communion, that was it! The bread and wine of Holy Communion were not mere symbols, or representations, of Christ's Body, as I had been led to believe, but were in very truth bread and wine miraculously transformed by the power of God into Christ's true and living Flesh and Blood, only the appearance of bread and wine remaining. Not only did I have Christ's promise at Capharnaum and the fulfillment of Christ's promise at the Last Supper to convince me of this, I had the testimony of the Apostles, preached to the whole infant Christian community. In the most unequivocal language the Apostles affirmed that the bread and wine duly consecrated on the altar did in fact become the actual Substance of the Savior. Declared the Apostle Paul:
Wrote St. Justin Martyr, another Church Father of the second century:
This food is known among us as the Eucharist... We do not receive these things as common bread and common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior, being made flesh by the Word of God.
Wrote St. Cyril of Jerusalem, venerable Church Father of the fourth century:
Since then He has declared and said of the bread, 'This is my body,' who after that will venture to doubt? And seeing that He has affirmed and said, 'This is my blood,' who will raise a question and say it is not His blood?
Now I knew with absolute certainty that I was right. Not only did the Church Fathers confirm the correctness of my interpretation, they did so must emphatically. And so did all of the great Christian apologists of succeeding centuries. Indeed, I found that it was not until comparatively recent times, until modernism began infecting Christianity with its fondness for reckless theorizing, that any professed Christian held a contrary view.
What a predicament! There in the Bible was Christ my Lord telling me that I needed to eat of His Flesh and drink of His Blood in order to have eternal happiness with Him in Heaven. There in the Bible was the Apostle Paul telling me that I should prove my faith by discerning the Body and Blood of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine of the altar. There in history were the Church Fathers condemning as heretics all Christians who do not associate themselves with the Real Presence. And there I was without this divine soul-saving food, without this discernible Body and Blood of Christ on the altar, without this blessed association with the Real Presence.
There I was with my eternal salvation in obvious jeopardy. It was a desperate situation, one that called for immediate and positive action. And act I did, following the same positive course of action I am sure you would have followed, dear friend in Christ, under identical circumstances: I went calling on churches, I went in search of that particular church which could give me the true and living Christ in Holy Communion, not common everyday bread and wine such as I could find down at the corner market place.
First I called on the other Protestant churches, hoping upon hope that one of them would have the true Eucharistic Christ. But no success. Wherever I called, the answer was negative. Invariably the consecrated bread and wine of Holy Communion were only "symbols" of Christ's Flesh and Blood, or were "abodes of His Spirit," or were "temples of His Sacramental Presence," or were "vehicles of His hidden Flesh and Blood," or were "bread and wine mysteriously merged with His Flesh and Blood." Invariably the physical substance of bread and wine substituted for the physical Reality of Jesus Christ.
Some ministers did indeed call their communion bread and wine the real Body and Blood of Christ, but invariable, when I pinned them down, asking if by "real" they meant corporeal, they said no. Invariably, when I asked if one receives a new influx of divine grace at their Holy Communion service, the answer was: "No, we believe that Holy Communion is not productive of grace but is a reflection of the grace already present in the soul through faith," or words to that effect. Such an answer is, of course, tantamount to rejecting the doctrine of the Real Presence, for to receive the real Christ is to receive His real grace, not a mere reflection of His grace.
Now it was up to the Catholic Church to show the glorious fulfillment of Christ's promise. And show me she did. Yes, it was in the Catholic Church, the "Roman" Catholic Church, that I found the manna which has come down from Heaven, the Communion bread and wine that are truly the Body and Blood of Christ my Savior. The Catholic Church declared that it was so, and when I witnessed the profound solemnity of the Consecration on her altar, when I witnessed the radiance and peace that shone on the faces of the communicants, when I myself felt His Divine Presence pervading the atmosphere, I had to agree that it must indeed be so.
How could it be otherwise? Could those Catholics and the hundreds of millions that preceded them back through the centuries to the very dawn of Christianity ALL be the victims of hallucination? Hardly. Mass hallucination becomes less prevalent with the advance civilization, not more prevalent. Hallucinations do not inspire the building of the world's greatest private network of universities and scientific laboratories. Hallucinations do not attract and hold such people as Augustine, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, Copernicus, Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Pasteur and Marconi, people to whom finding the truth is a veritable mania, a sort of religion in itself.
No, this was no hallucination I was witnessing. Pure and simple, it was faith in the power and integrity of Jesus Christ. Those Catholics had come to a most realistic conclusion: Jesus Christ is God; therefore He has the power to change bread and wine into His Flesh and Blood on the altar without effecting a change in the appearance of the transformed bread and wine; and Jesus Christ promised that He would do just that for the spiritual nourishment of His faithful; therefore it must be confessed that He is keeping His promise.
In other words, those Catholics were simply believing in the Bible as I was committed in conscience to believe in the Bible. They were simply believing what Christ expects all of His faithful followers to believe.
...to be continued
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 07/17/2009 : 11:19:21
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The sacrament of the Real Presence is also called the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic Church - but to me it was a blessed sacrament in more ways than one. For it was my discovery of the true and living Christ in this sacrament of the Catholic Church that inspired me to inquire into her six other sacraments. Did the other six also enjoy an abundance of scriptural support? I wanted to know. Not that I expected to find them without scriptural support. I was quite convinced that the church wherein dwelt the Real Presence of Christ would be the church wherein dwelt the full complement of His sacraments - but I considered it expedient that I should make a complete survey of the Catholic sacraments while I was on the subject, so that my conviction would be confirmed.
Needless to say, my conviction was confirmed. One by one I went over the other six with a Catholic priest, and one by one they turned out to be thoroughly grounded in Scripture. No doubt about it, each and every one of them was instituted by Christ, and no doubt about it, each and every one of them imparts grace to the soul, exactly as the Catholic Church teaches.
The following Bible passages established the divine origin, and the great importance, of the Sacrament of Baptism:
Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John 3:5).
Do penance and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins... (Acts 2:38)
And Jesus coming, spoke to them saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. (Matt. 28:18-19).
And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned. (Mark 16:15-16).
The following Bible passages established that priests have the God-given power to forgive sins in the Sacrament of Penance:
...where the disciples were gathered together... Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them: Peace be to you... As the Father hath sent me, I also send you... Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (John 20:19-23).
Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matt. 18:18)
The following Bible passages established that the Holy Spirit descends on the newly baptized when the Bishop lays hands on them in the Sacrament of Confirmation:
Having heard these things, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had imposed his hands on them, the Holy Ghost came upon them... (Acts 19:5-6).
Now when the apostles, who were in Jerusalem, had heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. Who, when they were come, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For he was not as yet come upon any of them; but they were only baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost. (Acts 8:14-17)
The following bible passages established that in the Sacrament of Holy Orders God ordains priests to offer up sacrifice for sins, to forgive sins, and to govern His Church:
Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church of God... (Acts 20:28)
For every high priest taken from among men, is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins... Neither doth any man take the honor to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was. (Heb. 5:1-4).
And taking bread, he gave thanks, and broke; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. (Luke 22:19).
...the disciples were gathered together... Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them: Peace be to you... As the Father that sent me, I also send you... Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (John 20:19-23).
And when they had ordained to them priests in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, in whom they believed. (Acts 14:22).
For this cause I [Paul] left thee [Titus] in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and shouldest ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed thee... (Titus 1:5).
For which cause I [Paul] admonish thee [Timothy], that you stir up the grace of God which is in thee, by the imposition of my hands. (2 Tim. 1:6).
Neglect not the grace that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with imposition of the hands of the priesthood. (1 Tim. 4:14).
The following Bible passages established that husband and wife are united, permanently united, by God in the Sacrament of Matrimony:
For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother; and shall cleave to his wife. And they two shall be one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God that joined together, let not man put asunder... Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. (Mark 10:7-12).
Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of his body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it. So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself. For no man ever hateth his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the church: Because we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church. (Eph. 5:22-32).
Thus, just as Christ and his Church are inseparably united, so are a man and woman inseparably untied in the Sacrament of Matrimony.
The following Bible passages established that the sick and dying receive physical and spiritual balm when they are anointed in the Sacrament of Extreme Unction:
And going forth they preached that men should do penance: and they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. (Mark 6:12-13).
Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. (James 5:14-15).
And those were not the only Bible passages shown to me. My priest consultant brought my attention to many others. He made it so glaringly obvious that the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church are Christ's true Sacraments that I found myself blushing with embarrassment, confessing that I must have been in some kind of trance when those passages were in front of me before.
Yes, it was embarrassing to think that the full import of those Bible passages had escaped me over the years, although I must have read them hundreds of times. But what a joy it was to know that their full import had not continued to escape me. God had indeed answered my prayers for enlightenment.
There was no alternative left now but to become a Catholic and to become one as soon as possible. Every mental reservation I had ever entertained about the great Mother Church of Christendom was now gone, thanks to three great Bible revelations. The Catholic Church, I was firmly convinced, is everything she claims to be. Either she is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, His Mystical Body, His infallible teaching voice, His Eucharistic abode, or the Bible is nothing more than a book of fables and the writings of the primitive Church Fathers nothing more than a collection of pipe dreams.
Once my mind was made up it did not take me long to make the transition from Protestantism to Catholicism. And what a glorious adventure it was, too, to become a Catholic, to receive those several weeks of instruction in true Apostolic theology, to make that solemn profession of faith, to receive a Catholic Baptism, to cleanse my soul in the Sacrament of Penance, and then, finally, to receive the living and true Christ in Holy Communion. Believe me, dear reader, there is no adventure more glorious, more satisfying to the soul, this side of Heaven.
The transition was really much easier than I thought it would be. I had imagined that there would be a great storm of resentment within my family and that I would lose a great many very dear friends. I was quite certain that not a single one of my former ministerial colleagues would ever again speak to me, except perhaps to castigate me for being a "traitor." But, surprisingly, that was not the case at all.
After that initial shock, which an announcement of this kind invariably produces, I was confronted not with a wave of bitter resentment, but with a wave of curiosity and wonderment. There were a few instances of ridicule - a few of my acquaintances were more protest-ant than Protestant, more anti-Catholic than pro-Christian - but by and large the freedom of my conscience was respected. By and large the reaction was not "Curse you for doing it!" but "WHY did you do it?" My family and my really close friends knew that I would never defect from Christ - they knew that my loyalty to God and His revealed truth superseded all other loyalties. They simply could not understand why my loyalty to God and His revealed truth had become so suddenly and drastically altered in the mode of its expression.
That took a great deal of explaining, a great deal of very difficult explaining, for it is not easy to translate into words all the things that motivate the soul. But I managed somehow - and with singular success. I say with singular success because shortly afterward my entire family and several of my close friends followed me into the Catholic Church. Yes, once they had the facts, they, too, confessed that the Catholic faith is the true Bible faith - they, too, wanted the ineffable joy of being united to Christ in the fullness of His Gospel, in the fullness of His Sacraments and in the fullness of His grace.
How tremendously gratifying that was, to realize that God had not only chosen me to be an object of His grace, but an instrument of His grace as well. My gift of faith was indeed a blessed gift of faith, for I could say with another convert named Paul: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God." (Romans. 1:1).
Verily, I could sum up my whole confession with that one sentence taken from the Bible.
If I should write a thousand confessions before I die I would be able to sum them all up with that one sentence taken from the Bible. For henceforth my life's principal dedication will be serving Christ. I will not be wearing clerical cloth and I will have no pulpit, but that will not constrain me. I will have His truth and His grace, and I will have my thankfulness for His truth and His grace, which is all I need to outfit me as one of His apostles.
So call me anything you want to. Call me a religious enigma, call me a slave of papal totalitarianism - call me anything. But while you are calling me these things please keep this in mind: I would not have it any other way. Before I would relinquish one little particle of my Catholic faith I would gladly face the scorn and derision of the entire world. For now, at last, I know real peace of soul, real oneness with Christ my Savior.
No, I would not have it any other way, and if you, dear reader, should ever become a Catholic, I am sure that you would not have it any other way either.
Sincerely yours in Jesus Christ,
PAUL WHITCOMB
Nihil Obstat: Rev. Edmund J. Bradley Censor Departatus
Imprimatur: + Timothy Manning, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles Vicar General
December 23, 1958
--- ENDS ---
Some final words
Dear Reader, it is an incontestable fact that, amongst the countless churches in the world today, there can only be ONE true Church. This being so, it follows that the true church could not have been established by anyone else but our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is Truth.
Any church, therefore, claiming to be the true church established by Christ, must meet ALL of the following criteria: it must be ONE, HOLY, APOSTOLIC, and CATHOLIC.
The true Church is ONE, just as its founder, Who is God, is ONE because all her members are UNITED in submitting to the same doctrines.
The true Church is HOLY, just as its founder, who is God. It is APOSTOLIC because it has existed continuously since the time of Christ, who commissioned His Apostles to go to the four corners of the world and preach the message of eternal salvation.
It is CATHOLIC, from the Greek "katholikos" which means universal, in accordance with Christ's command to teach all nations, so that all enter Her, who wish to be saved.
So, if your church does not meet ALL of the above criteria, then for the sake of your own eternal salvation, you must immediately join the true Church outside of which there is no salvation (Church Fathers; Council of Trent).
The Catholic Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, firstly, because it is the only Christian Church that goes back in history to the time of Christ. All other "christian" denominations disappear as one goes back in history; none can be traced beyond the 16th Century. Secondly, because it is the only Christian Church which possesses the invincible unity, the intrinsic holiness, the continual universality and the indisputable apostolicity which Christ said would distinguish His true Church. Thirdly, because the Apostles and primitive Church Fathers, who certainly were members of Christ's true Church, all professed membership in this same Catholic Church (See Apostles' Creed and the Primitive Christian letters).
St Ignatius of Antioch, The illustrious Church Father of the first century, wrote: "Where the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be; even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church."
Moreover, our Lord said: "There shall be one fold and one shepherd", yet it is well known that the various Christian denominations cannot agree on what Christ actually taught. Since Christ roundly condemned interdenominationalism in Mark 3:25 when he says: "And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.", it is not possible that He would ever sanction it in His Church.
Christ admonishes each one of us to prioritize his/her eternal salvation, over everything else. Each and every member of the human race ever created shall either be saved or damned for all eternity. Creation will cease when the full complement of the elect has been reached. But the number of the elect is known only to The Holy Trinity. However, in Matt. 7:13-15, Christ Who is Truth Itself, tells us in plain language, the frightening but sobering truth: few are saved. This, too, is the common opinion of most theologians.
This truth is not meant to drive anyone to despair. On the contrary, it should spur the serious Christian to strive to be counted, not only among the few, but the very few that shall see eternal life.
The main weapons to counter error and falsehoods is knowledge and truth. Please continue checking this thread for more amazing facts.
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2009 : 09:37:57
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Who Has The Authority?
My posts are written for Protestants, to challenge them to rethink some of their beliefs. This post, however, is directed at those who call themselves "pastor", and have a penchant for founding their own "churches".
The title of this article is, of course, taken from the pages of Sacred Scripture. The Jews asked this very question of Jesus:
"And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, 'By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?'" (Matt. 21:23)
This is indeed a legitimate question, and one that any sincere Christian ought to ask of anyone who claims to be a leader appointed by God. My challenge to Protestant pastors: "by what authority" do you claim your title and position, and "who gave you this authority?"
To understand the gravity of this challenge, it is necessary to define both the terms pastor, and authority. The word pastor is from Latin, and means "shepherd". Therefore, if you call yourself a pastor, you are claiming to be a shepherd of God's flock.
The word "pastor" is also interwoven with the biblical term overseer, or "elder" (in Greek, episkopos, or bishop). We see this in St. Paul's farewell discourse to the elders of Ephesus:
"Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son." (Acts 20:28)
There is the connection: the "episkopoi" of the church at Ephesus have guardianship over "the flock" of God's people.
Further, to be a "pastor" (shepherd, overseer, elder) is also to be an "ambassador" for Christ (c.f. 2 Cor. 5:18ff). And we know that an ambassador must have credentials which he presents to the ruler of the host country. Being a pastor is no light responsibility at all, and Scripture tells us that this position is never self-appointed. No man can merely take it upon himself, of his own initiative, to start shepherding God's flock: "And one does not take the honor upon himself, but he is called by God, just as Aaron was." (Heb. 5:4)
Authority is derived from 'author', which means creator or originator. It is from the Latin auctoritas - the creator's power to command or to make decisions. The dictionary defines it as, "the power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge". It also means, "one who is invested with this power, especially a government". So the word can apply to a form of government as well as to an individual. The US Senate has the authority to make laws, the Supreme Court has the authority to interpret those laws, and the President has the authority to enforce those laws.
What would happen if there was no authority? There would be anarchy, unrest, chaos, with everyone taking the law into their own hands. Civilization as we know it would very quickly collapse. Take Albania, as an example. Within days of the collapse of authority, there was anarchy, with thousands trying to flee for their lives. Scripture reminds us, "Where there is no governor, the people shall fall, but there is safety where there is much counsel" (Prov 11:14,24:6.)
Now, all authority comes from the "Author of Life". All authority comes from GOD (Rom 13:1-7), as He empowers us. GOD has given authority to several people in the Bible. He signifies the passing of authority by changing the name of the person. Some examples Are...
1. GOD renamed Abram to Abraham when He made him the 'Father of a Multitude of Nations'(Gen 17:5.)
2. GOD renamed Sara to Sarah when He made her the 'Mother of Nations' (Gen 17:15-16.)
3. GOD renamed Jacob to Israel, the name of the Jewish Nation, and he became the first Israelite(Gen 32:29.)
4. GOD renamed Simon to Peter when He made him the head of His Church(Matt 16:18.) Peter was given the authority by GOD, and GOD renamed him to emphasize it. In Matthew 16:19, Jesus Christ gave Peter even more authority. He gave him, and none other, the "keys to the kingdom of heaven", and told him, "Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." In these two verses, plenty of authority was given to Simon, now Peter, a mere creature of GOD.
5. There are more than 50 verses in the Bible that refer to the supremacy of Peter over all of the Apostles. The name of Peter appears more often than the name of any other Apostle in the New Testament. When the Apostles are named, Peter is named first in every case except Gal. 2:9. In Matthew 10:2, Peter is even called "first", "Now these are the names of the twelve Apostles: FIRST Simon, who is called Peter...".
In Acts 15:7, Peter said, "Brethren, you know that in early days GOD made choice among us, that through 'MY MOUTH' the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe." Peter recounted his supremacy, as GOD had given it to him in Matt. 16:18-19.
In Luke 22:31-31, Jesus said, "Simon, behold satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and do you when once you have turned again, strengthen your brethren." Here Jesus appointed Peter to strengthen the others, another clear sign of his supremacy. Finally, in John 21:15-17, it is Peter, and only Peter, to whom the Lord commands three times to feed his flock. Peter was the supreme Apostle. The present day supreme Bishop, the Bishop of Rome, is the Pope, Peter's direct successor in a long line of Popes.
6. Jesus Christ gave full authority to the Apostles, when He said, "He who hears you, hears Me; and he who rejects you, rejects Me; and he who rejects Me, rejects Him who sent Me."(Luke 10:16)
Now, what is meant by "to be sent", if not that someone in authority over you has conferred the privilege and authority upon you? It goes without saying that the one who confers the authority must be superior in authority to the one being commissioned, since no one can confer that which he does not possess himself. In other words, a congregation's vote cannot suffice, Biblically speaking, to appoint a man as "pastor," since the congregation (having inferior authority) cannot confer superior authority upon a man.
And what is the Scriptural pattern for such things? This we ascertain by observing the mission of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is a pattern of Divine Succession:
God the Father (the superior authority) sends Jesus Christ "...these very works which I am doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me." (John 5:36)
Jesus, in turn, sends the Apostles: "...As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." (John 20:21). Jesus sends these Apostles in the same manner, and with the same authority: i.e. "all authority.", as He was given.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." (Matt. 28:18)
7. Jesus also gave authority to 72 other disciples, and told them He sends them forth as 'lambs in the midst of wolves'. He told them to shake the dust off their feet from the towns that do not receive them (Luke 10:1-12).
8. We are commanded to obey our superiors (priests, Bishops, and the Pope) and to be subject to them, as they keep watch as having to render an account of our souls(Heb 13:17).
9. GOD placed others in His Church as well, "And God indeed has placed some in the Church, first Apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers; after that miracles, then gifts of healing, services of help, power of administration, and the speaking of various tongues," (1 Cor 12:28). Does your Church have all these?
Knowing of course, that the Apostles would not live forever, and that His Church must continue until the 'end of time' (Mt 28:20), Jesus Christ made provision to pass on the authority from generation to generation when He said:
1. "I laid the foundation, and another builds thereon. But let everyone take care how he builds thereon, for other foundations no one can lay, but that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ." (1 Cor 3:10-11).
This clearly points out that there will be followers who will build upon the foundation started by Him.
2. "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain..." (John 15:16).
And that those who would add this foundation would be chosen by Him, i.e. the priestly calling.
3. "...that you should set right anything that is defective and should appoint presbyters (priests) in every city as I myself directed you to do,"(Titus 1:5).
So, St. Paul commands them to ordain new priests.
4. "Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as Bishops to rule the Church of GOD" (Acts 20:28).
Here the Bishops are given the authority by the Holy Spirit to rule the Church that Jesus Christ founded.
Does your Church have Bishops?
5. "And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, who is able to build up and to give the inheritance among all the sanctified" (Acts 20:32).
The Apostles, then, did not take their office and authority upon themselves, but were appointed by a Superior Authority, Jesus Christ.
We hear His words through His Church, which He personally established to continue His work, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, till the end of time. Therefore these words have to apply to His Church as well, 'he who rejects My Church rejects Me'.
Paul acknowledged the authority given to the Apostles when he says, "For even if I boast somewhat more about our authority, which the Lord has given for your upbuilding, and not for your destruction, I shall not be put to shame."(2 Cor 10:8)
The question we must ask now is this: after the original 12 Apostles, how is this Gospel and apostolic authority passed on? Is it passed on at all? After the death of the last Apostle, can any individual who feels "called" by God simply take up the mission and message and carry on where the Apostles left off? The answer to this question is plainly "no," as we have already begun to see from Scripture. The mission and the message can only be passed on by someone who first possessed it. That is, the mission does not merely entail preaching the message, but with it comes the authority to spiritually "reproduce" and pass on the necessary authority to the next generation. Let us recap and see how this is so:
God is the source of this mission and authority. He passes it to His Only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, in turn, passes it on - along with "all authority" to the Apostles. The Apostles pass the mission and authority on to men like St. Timothy and St. Titus (Titus 2:15).
The second apostolic generation is expected to entrust the mission to the next generation, ad infinitum. The first generation of Apostles takes care to not only pass along the message, but also creates new pastors with apostolic authority to continue transmitting the message. This authority is passed on, in turn, to heirs and successors.
Without doubt, the unbroken line of Catholic Popes throughout the ages, is by far the only, and longest continuous line of succession of any religious institution on earth. By the time that the last book of the Bible (Revelation) was written, the Catholic Church was already on its fifth Pope. In his work titled Against Heresies written about AD 180, St. Irenaeus listed the first 14 Popes.
So, the Pope and the Bishops are the lawful successors to the Apostles. If we reject their authority, then we reject Christ. Before the Apostles passed away, they started a system, commanded by Jesus Christ, to pass the baton to successors. This was to insure the perpetuation of the Church which Jesus Christ founded, which Church was Catholic. That system is called 'Apostolic Succession'.
Every Catholic Bishop can show his line of spiritual descent, that is, who consecrated him, who consecrated his consecrator, and so on, all the way back to the Apostles. Jesus Christ vested in the Apostles special authority. This special Apostolic authority has been passed down in unbroken succession through the Bishops of the Church for more than two thousand years, so that the present Bishops of the Church truly teach with the voice of Jesus Christ through the Apostles.
In order to have only ONE truth, it is necessary to have only ONE authority. And, as already shown, the Church that Jesus Christ founded, was given that authority. Does your Church meet all the scriptural requirements given in this text? Can you trace your Church all the way back to Christ? If you can't, then your Church does not have the authority. If your Church does not have the authority, then why are you there? The main difference between the Catholic Church and all other Churches, is that the Catholic Church, and only the Catholic Church, has the authority...
This, therefore, is the answer to the all important question, "Who has the authority?".
Although Scripture clearly teaches that, apostolic succession is the ordinary means of transmitting apostolic authority and the Gospel message, Protestantism rejects entirely the notion of authority and apostolic succession. So, only one option remains for the Protestant pastor: to claim to have been appointed directly by God, as Moses was (that is, by extraordinary means).
Considering our Lord Himself, His was, of course, an extraordinary calling, having being directly appointed for His mission by His Father:
"If I bear witness to myself, my testimony is not true; there is another who bears witness to me, and I know that the testimony which he bears to me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony which I receive is from man; but I say this that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has granted me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me." (John 5:31-36)
This last case should truly give pause to any professed follower of Christ who claims to have been called as a Shepherd of God's flock. Where are the miracles that must attend your ministry as verification of your extraordinary calling? If even Jesus submitted to this proof-test, how can any mere man exempt himself from this same test, unless he wishes to say he is greater than even Jesus?
Here, then, is the summary of what we find in Scripture: no man can take the responsibility or title of "pastor" to himself. Rather, he must be sent by God, either indirectly (via succession), or directly (via extraordinary calling). If he claims the latter, his mission must be accompanied by miracles, signs and wonders as proof of his Divine vocation. This is the crux of this challenge to you, if you are a Protestant pastor: by what authority do you claim your office?
By succession? If so, demonstrate that you were called by a superior authority who himself had a legitimate claim to his office. By extraordinary calling? If so, then show the required signs and wonders that authenticate your ministry.
In conclusion, you must be absolutely sure, for your own soul's sake, that your calling is legitimate. For, in the Book of Numbers 16, we read about the rebellion of Korah and his followers against the authority of Moses. Korah set himself up as an illegitimate authority against Moses, who was God's appointed authority. He was destroyed for his audacious act. But not before Moses did everything he could to try and convince Korah, pleading with him to end the revolt which was from within Moses' own tribe of Levites (the only tribe permitted to exercise the Jewish priesthood). The rebels were adamant in their "No". Read the final outcome of this rebellion in Numbers 16:30-35, paying special attention to what happened to Korah, and to his followers. It isn't pretty.
Nowhere in Scripture is authority given for anyone to start another church other than the ONE which Jesus Christ founded. However, there are many verses which warn against forsaking GOD given authority regarding His Congregation (O.T.) or Church (N.T.) which He bestowed upon prophets such as Moses (Exodus 3-40), and on the Apostles (John 20:21-23), and to their successors (Hebrews 13:7-8,17).
Read the history of Martin Luther, where he displayed the same obstinacy toward the GOD given Papal authority, in exactly the same fashion as Korah had done to the GOD given authority of Moses some 3000 years earlier. Luther was a Catholic priest who started Protestantism, thus making himself the first Protestant.
Luther's revolt against authority, is a carbon copy of Korah's rebellion. Luther revolted against the authority of the Papacy and the Magisterium. God's appointed Authority on earth, the pope, pleaded with him in vain. The vulgar and profane language he often employed in response to summons from the authorities are legendary and well known. Luther had no GOD given authority whatsoever, so he claimed he was his own authority so to speak. He had written many pamphlets and had them printed and distributed all over Europe.
"I know that after my departure fierce wolves will get in among you, and will not spare the flock. AND FROM AMONG YOUR OWN SELVES MEN WILL RISE SPEAKING PERVERSE THINGS, TO DRAW AWAY THE DISCIPLES AFTER THEM." (Acts 20:29-30)
How do these verses apply to the so-called reformers? Well, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli were Catholic priests. So they were, "from among your own selves men will rise". And they did, "speak perverse things" (Hebrews 13:17). And they did, "draw away the disciples after them".
Pretty good fit, wouldn't you say? Did not St. Luke hit the nail on the head in Acts 20:29-30?
Now, read Numbers 16 again, but this time substitute the name of the head and founder of your church for Korah, and for Moses, the name of the Pope.
St. Jude, prophetically, warns us of falling into the same sin: "Woe to them! For they walk in the way of Cain, and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perish in Korah's rebellion." (Jude 11)
Dispensation of authority by GOD over His flock is the same today as it was then. GOD is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Dear Reader, you may choose to brush this challenge aside, but that will not absolve you of the account that you will have to give before God one day regarding these issues. Ask yourself, honestly: have you set yourself up illegitimately against the legitimate authorities who can prove their mission by succession? Are you in danger of being destroyed for committing Korah's sin?
Those who fail to profit from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. "Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new; for it has already gone before in the ages that were before us." (Ecclesiastes 1:10)
One side note, to those of you who read this who are not pastors: this same challenge applies secondarily to you. Are you certain that the man who shepherds your soul is a legitimate leader? Or are you following a self-appointed shepherd who is in rebellion against God's appointed authorities?
Have you ever read Psalms 127:1 "Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it." ?
Now show me the verse(s) in the Bible which gives the authority to any human creature to found another church other than the ONE CHURCH which Jesus Christ founded?
Show me the verse(s) in Scripture which authorizes anyone to simply hold up a Bible and proclaim, "This is my authority".
Cardinal John Newman, a convert from Anglicanism said it best in regards to historical documents: "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."
Do you ignore the history of your country? No? Then why do you ignore the history of Christianity? Christian history is of much greater value for you, as it will gratuitously profit you in your quest for eternal salvation.
"What is it that has been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that has been done? The same thing that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new; for it has already gone before in the ages that were before us. There is no remembrance of former things; nor indeed of those things which hereafter are to come, shall there be any remembrance with them that shall be in the latter end." (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11)
So why would anyone want to ignore the former things? We can profit enormously from what has been accomplished by milenniums of ancestral writings by thousands of others who went before us. One of the worlds great scientists was asked how he was able to accomplish so much in his lifetime. He replied, "It was because I stood upon the shoulders of giants".
Could he still have soared as he had done, by ignoring the scientific giants that lived before him? Wouldn't the same logic also apply to us regarding the theological giants and saints who lived before our time?
"Because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you, that you shall not do the office of priesthood to me." (Hosea 4:6)
Coming Next ...Authority...The Calling....Passing The Baton...And What Church Fathers, Church Councils, and early writers had to say about Apostolic Succession...
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2009 : 10:17:49
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Did Christ Establish a Church?
by David Goldstein (LL.D, 1943)
Before the Apostles passed on, they started a system, commanded by Jesus Christ, to pass the baton to successors. This was to insure the perpetuity of the Catholic Church which Jesus Christ founded. That system is called Apostolic Succession.
Did the Church established by Christ ceased to exist soon after the last Apostle died ?
Before answering this question, we must first show that Christ did in fact establish a visible Church. That this is the case, has already been abundantly proved by the early Church Fathers, Doctors, and Theologists. Even more noteworthy, is the fact Jewish intellectuals such as David Goldstein (LL.D, 1943), agree. This is significant in itself because, Jews are the most IMPLACABLE enemies of the Catholic Church to such an extent that the antichrist, according to the prophet Daniel, shall arise from among them.
Let us look at what Catholics as well as Jews understand a Church to be. Both the Jews of old and Catholics believe in a God-made and not a man-made Church.
The term church is traced to two Greek words, Kuriakon, translated "belonging to the Lord," and Ecclesia, an "assembly," meaning a religious assembly (though not originally given such an exclusive definition). The Hebrew equivalent is given by Moses when referring to the Church of Israel. The term synagogue is of Greek origin, meaning "congregation." Synagogues, as we understand them, came into existence long after the Jewish Church was instituted by Moses and Aaron, by command of God. Therefore while Moses speaks of congregations, the term in the synagogue sense does not appear in the Old Testament. The Aramaic equivalent - Keneshta - is used, which signifies "a people's house," a "house of prayer."
Now, Jews hold that only a Mosaic-instituted, has any legitimate right to command allegiance, while Catholics only adhere to a Christ-made Church.
While it was correct to refer to the Jewish spiritual society in pre-Christian times as the Church of Israel, it is not exactly correct to so designate it in Christian times, since the Church of Christ supplanted the Church of Moses, though it is a common thing to call any group of believers a church. Let me say again that Moses and Aaron did not institute synagogues, they came into existence centuries later than their day. The Church of Moses centered in their places of worship where sacrifices were offered to Almighty God as God ordered them to be offered. That was in the Temple. Before the Temple was built, the Church of Israel, composed of the circumcised under the headship of the High Priest, centered and worshiped where the ohel moed, the portable sanctuary, the tabernacle, the altar were located, such as the Israelites carried with them while in the wilderness. Synagogues have no altars, they are houses of prayer, not of sacrifices. Therefore during Christian times it is proper to contrast the Synagogue to the Church; one Jewish, the other Christian. Writing of these terms fifteen centuries ago, St. Augustine of Hippo said,
"By the Synagogue we understand the people of Israel, because synagogue is a word properly used by them, although they were also called the Church. Our congregation, on the contrary, the Apostles never called synagogue, but always Ecclesia...," the Church.
The Jews of old, like Catholics, always looked upon the Church as designating a formal visible spiritual society of God's making. Isaiah refers to the Church as being on the top of a mountain, therefore ever visible,
"Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob..." (2:3).
There is no doubt Christ that had the above text in mind when, in the Sermon on the Mount, He referred to "A city on the mountain (that) cannot be hid" (Matt. 5:14). To deny the visible character of a God-made Church, which many good-meaning people do, is an utter absurdity.
Christ called His Church a "building" (Matt. 16:18); a "kingdom" (Matt. 16:19); a "city" (Matt. 5:14); a "flock" (John 10:16); and a "house" (St. Matt. 7:24).
Only when buildings, kingdoms, cities, flocks and houses become invisible entities will the Church of Christ ever be an invisible spiritual society. There are invisible parts of Christ's Church. They are the Church Triumphant, made up of the souls in heaven; and the Church Suffering, made up of the souls in purgatory.
Such a thing as an invisible spiritual society on earth of Christ's making, is of sixteenth century anti-Catholic origin. It was prompted by the realization that a Visible Church, a corporate body of Christ's making, would have to date back to the first century, back to Jerusalem instead of Germany where Protestantism was born.
While intense divisions existed within Jewry, the sects, those groups that broke away from Israel, such as the Karaites and Samaritans, were refused recognition as Mosaic, though they held tenaciously to parts of the Law. The twelfth of the "Eighteen Benedictions" called upon God to "let there be no hope for the sectarians."
The only thing a Church of God's making can consistently do is to condemn sects, as did the Catholic Church when she declared Lutheranism and Anglicanism to be no part of Christ's Universal Church, though she always asks God to let hope enter the hearts of the misguided adherents of them, that they may be one with Catholics in the Visible Fold of the Good Shepherd. While there is a wide difference between the Catholic and Protestant concept of the Church, they are one in holding that Christ did establish a Church.
When Catholics speak of the Church they mean a visible spiritual society, made up in the beginning of a teaching body of Twelve Apostles, selected by Christ Himself, and commissioned to teach, preach, baptize, offer sacrifice, forgive sins, etc. in the name of Christ. It is a Divine Corporation with which Christ promised to remain until the end of the world. Though divine in origin, it was to be a living self-perpetuating human society, insofar as it was composed of persons who, through their successors, were to extend and continue its work throughout the world, during all ages until the consummation of time.
Pope Leo XIII, said,
"The Church is a society divine in its origin, supernatural in its ends and means, yet because it consists of human members, it is a human society."
The Church of Christ is referred to in St. Matthew's Gospel no less than thirty times as "the kingdom," the "kingdom of heaven," the "kingdom of God." It is also referred to as Christ's "household" (Matt. 10:25); as the "flock" of the Shepherd (Matt. 26:31); its members being called "the branches of which Christ is the Vine" (John 15:1-6). It is definitely spoken of, by Christ Himself as "the Church" He was about to build, in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, which alone is a refutation of the erroneous belief that "Christ did not establish a Church."
What follows is the text, and also a detailed explanation of it as understood and believed by Catholics. Christ begins by addressing Simon, afterwards named Peter,
"`But who do you say I am?' Simon answered and said `Thou are Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the living God.' Then Jesus answered and said, `Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but My Father in heaven. And I say to thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys to the kingdom of heaven; and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven'" (St. Matt. 16:13-20).
The above text embodies much more than the announcement of Jesus Christ that He was to build a Church. It shows,
1. That Christ commanded a public declaration of who He is, which includes a recognition of His mission.
2. Simon unhesitatingly declared Jesus to be the Messiah expected in Israel.
3. Simon proclaimed the divinity of Jesus, by declaring Him to be the "Son of the living God"; that is "Son" with a capital S.
4. No further questions were asked, as Jesus had received the proper recognition of His Messianic Lordship; the recognition that is desired of every Jew in the world today.
5. Jesus called Simon "blessed," because his confession of belief, that Christ is true God as well as true man, was an illumination from on high. It is a confession of faith that every Catholic in the world has since made.
6. Jesus rewarded Simon with a new name, Peter (rock), that signified the office he would henceforth occupy. This change of name meets no obstacle in Jewry, as history records the fact that God changed the names of Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of a multitude); Sarai ("contentious") to Sarah (princess); and Jacob (supplanter) to Israel (he that striveth with God), to signify the missions they were to fulfill in Israel.
There is no misunderstanding of the statement, "thou art Peter," on the part of Jews who know that Jesus spoke the Aramaic dialect of the Jews in Jerusalem. Hence Jesus did not say "Peter" (the English translation of the Greek word Petros, Petra, which means a stone or a rock), but rather Kepha (Rock), thou are Kepha and upon this Kepha, etc.
7. "Upon this rock I will build my Church."
A. The Eternal Rock made Simon the Kepha, that earthly, solid human foundation of His Church.
B. Jesus spoke in the first person singular, "I." The "I" is God, for only God could rightly assume to build a Church to take the place of an existing Church that was of God's making, and by His own fiat.
C. Jesus says "My Church," not my churches; that is the Church. That means it was to be either in competition with the Church Moses established by direction of God, or it was to displace it. There is but one God, hence there can be but one Church of God. Two churches could only be established to teach two different doctrines, codes and practices, which would mean a contradiction.
8. Jesus said that the "gates of hell" would never prevail against His Church. He referred to the evil forces; the enemies within as well as without; the schisms, sects, false doctrines, slanders, robberies, slaughters, all of which have taken place, and will take place in the future. These words implied that such forces would endeavor to prevail against the Church, but would not succeed. It is Jesus Christ who, faithful to His promise to remain with His Apostolic Band and their successors until the end of the world, that kept this Barque of Peter afloat despite the tempestuous gales that have blown against her, and the attempts to drive her off her divine course during the past nineteen hundred years.
9. Christ gave Peter, the earthly head of Christ's Church, His "keys," His authority, for that is what keys symbolize. No need of telling Jews what keys mean from a religious point of view. They recall that when a man was made a Doctor of the Law he was given a key to the closet in the Temple. With that key went the authority to take the scrolls of the Law out of the Ark and to interpret them.
10. Christ gave Peter, and later The Twelve under Peter's headship (St. Matt. 18:18), the power "to bind and to loose." This means that Peter had the right to legislate, pass sentence, or rather judgment as to what is to be allowed or forbidden in Christ's Church. Such powers were exercised by the High Priest in Israel, who had the juridical right to pronounce a person "zakkai" (innocent), "patur" (absolved), or "chayyabh" (liable to punishment, guilty).
This may seem a long way around to an ending of the question regarding Christ having established a Church. Yet it may not be a waste of words to stress Peter's primacy, as it enforces the Catholic concept of a Church as a corporate body of believers in Christ; a society of doctrinal and authoritative oneness, the universal headship centering in the Chair of Peter; its divine heavenly head being Jesus Christ.
Speaking of that Church, Christ said it would be one fold, of which He is the Good Shepherd (St. John 10). Christ made Peter the shepherd of His flock, when He said "feed My sheep" "feed My lambs." That is why the Pope is called the Shepherd of Christendom.
While Peter was the first in authority, the Church was "built upon the foundation of the Apostles" (Eph. 2:20), the bishops of today being their ecclesiastical successors. They were commissioned to perform tasks that are the ministerial functions of a church. Christ referred to it when He said that anyone who would not "hear the Church, let him be to thee like the heathen and the publican" (Matt. 18:17), condemned.
Christ did establish a Church, and it is, without a question of reasonable doubt, the Church over which the occupant of the Chair of Peter, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI officiates today.
Next, we shall see exactly how and in what manner authority was conferred upon His Church; the calling to the priesthood; the command to pass on the baton; and what the Church Fathers, Church Councils, and early writers said about Apostolic Succession. All with solid backing from Scripture.
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2009 : 09:57:27
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"One cannot have God for his Father, who will not have the Church for his Mother"[/i]
Likewise one cannot have the Word of God for his faith who will not have the Church for his teacher. It is the infallible teaching authority of the Church, as promised by Christ, which alone preserves God's word from erroneous interpretation.
Our Lord Jesus Christ sowed the seeds of his divine doctrine, and watered them with his blood. But he himself made very few converts. He left the conversion of the world mainly to his apostles and to their lawful successors. Nevertheless, he had made a sufficient number of converts to form of them a well-organized society, which he called his Church, or his kingdom on earth.
This society consisted of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, twelve apostles seventy-two disciples, and some other followers of our divine Savior, with Christ himself as its chief teacher, pontiff and ruler : for, "God the Father" says St. Paul, "hath made Christ the head over all the Church." (Eph.i, 17-22.) But when the time drew near for our Savior to return to heaven, he appointed Peter to take his place as visible head and chief pastor on earth, Christ himself continuing to be the invisible head of the Church in heaven.
The community of the apostles and the small flock of true believers that had thus far been gathered formed the visible body of the Church of Christ. But a visible body or society must have a visible head. It is in the nature of things that this should be so. There never has been, and never can be, a living, active, organized body without a living head. Reason and experience teach us that there can be no order, no law, no civilization, without some final authority which, of its very nature, must be supreme. In other words, supreme authority is the foundation of order and law. We see the necessity of such authority whithersoever we turn. Every ship must have its captain. Every railroad engine must have its engineer. In every society we find a president. In every government there must be a president or a monarch. Even amongst the animal world or the tiny insects we find the principle of authority in practice. We find, for instance, that ants and bees have their queen or supreme ruler. Now the same God who gave so wonderful an order to nature, the same God who planted in our reason the principle of order and authority, must observe this magnificent and necessary law in the greatest of his works, the establishment of his Church, or kingdom on earth. Nothing, therefore, can be more natural than to find that our Lord Jesus Christ appointed one of his apostles to be the visible head and chief pastor of his Church.
The Church, therefore, is that visible society of men upon earth, founded by Jesus Christ, guaranteed by Him to exist all days until the end of the world, and sent by Him to teach all nations with His own authority. Its members are bound together by the profession of ONE faith, the same Sacraments, same worship, and by submission to ONE spiritual authority vested in the successors of St. Peter - the present successor being the Bishop of Rome.
Whom did Christ appoint to take His place ?
Christ appointed the apostle St. Peter to be the visible head and chief pastor of his Church.
Christ compared his Church to a house, and made St,Peter its foundation, saying : "Thou art Peter (that is, a rock), and upon this rock I will build my Church."(Matt, xvi, 18.) He compared his Church to a flock, and made Peter its chief shepherd, saying: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep." (John xxi,15-17). By lambs, Christ means the faithful; and by sheep, the pastors. To Peter, therefore, Christ entrusted both the pastors and the faithful. Peter, being made the head and chief pastor of the Church, received also from Christ greater powers than the rest of the apostles. To him he gave the power to make laws for all the pastors, as well as for all the faithful, and to enforce those laws, saying : "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven and what soever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." (Matt, xvi, 18-19.) There is no possibility of mistaking or explaining away the plain, emphatic words of Christ to Peter by which he invested him with the prerogatives of the head of his Church.
By virtue of this supreme power, Peter called the disciples together, and presided over the council which they held in Jerusalem to elect a new apostle in the place of Judas: and the council readily recognized this power. It was Peter who first preached Jesus crucified, and converted, by his sermon, three thousand persons. It was Peter who first declared that the Gentiles were to be admitted to baptism, according to a revelation which he had received. Peter, too, first decided, in an assembly of the apostles at Jerusalem, that the Christians were no longer to be subjected to the Jewish law of circumcision and the assembly bowed to his decision. From all this we clearly see that Peter was the head of the Church, because on all those occasions he exercised the office of Supreme Head of the Church of Christ, and no man questioned it.
The apostles and their lawful successors acknowledged Peter as the head of the Church. When the evangelists give the names of the apostles, they always name Peter first. For instance, when St. Matthew gives us the names of the apostles, he says: "The names of the twelve apostles: The first, Simon who is called Peter." (Matt, x, 2.) Now it cannot be said that Peter was always named first, either because he was the eldest, or because he had been called to the apostleship before the rest, for St Andrew was both older than. Peter, and had become a disciple of Christ before him. The true reason, therefore, why the evangelists always name Peter first, is because he held the first or highest office in the Church. Hence the Fathers of the General Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, say: "It is known in all ages that Peter was the prince and the head of the apostles, the foundation-stone of the Catholic Church. This is a fact which no one doubts."
Christ intended His Church to be visible and discoverable, not only as an existent fact in this world but as being His. If He establishes a Church to which He invites all men to come, it must be a Church discernible as His. The Apostles and the early Fathers condemn schism, which can only mean separation from a visible, historical, and organÂized Church. Were the Church not a discernible Church, the forbidding of schism would be absurd. No man would know whether he had left the True Church or not. St. Cyprian who died as early as 258 A. D. had no misgivings on the subject. "Whoever is separated from the Church," he wrote, "is separated from the promises of Christ; nor will he who leaves the Church of Christ obtain the salvation of Christ. He becomes a foreigner and an enemy. One cannot have God as a Father who has not the Church as his mother."
If a man who is separated from the Church is separated from the promises of Christ, it is of the utmost importance that he should be able to know which is the True Church to which he must cling.
What power had the other apostles as teachers?
They had the power to preach Christ's doctrine, and to be judges in matters of faith and morals.
When Christ said to his apostles, "Go and teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matt, xxviii, 19-20), he empowered the apostles to spread abroad, explain, and preserve his holy doctrines, pure and uncorrupted, and to condemn and reject all false teachings. He empowered them to inveigh against crime and to encourage virtue, to point out to every one his individual duties, to monarchs as well as to their subjects, to the learned and to the ignorant, to the rich and to the poor, to the just and to the sinner. He empowered them to offer to all men instruction, counsel, and hope, to encourage the good, to exhort the weak, to convert the sinner, to speak of the sweet consolations of the just,and to describe the fearful state of the impenitent sinner. He empowered them to condemn and reject all false principles, impious writings of every description, wicked societies. In a word, Christ empowered the apostles to proclaim his doctrine, everywhere, one and the same, to defend his rights on earth against every enemy; to resist with all their might the passions and evil tendencies of nations, communities, or individuals; to make constitutions and decrees conducive to the preservation of faith and morals, and even to proscribe such opinions as approach, more or less closely, open heresy.
What power had the apostles as priests?
They had the, power to offer up the holy sacrifice of the Mass, to administer the sacraments, and to perform other priestly duties.
When Christ said to the apostles at the last supper, "Do this for a commemoration of me " (Luke xxii,19), that is, offer the unbloody sacrifice which I have offered, he empowered them to change bread and wine into his body and blood by the words of consecration, and offer him to the heavenly Father, under the appearance of bread and wine. Thus Christ gave to the apostles power over his own sacred body, power over himself.
The eternal, omnipotent God, in whose presence the pillars of heaven tremble; that God before whom the earth, and all that dwell thereon, before whom the boundless universe, with all its countless suns and planets, before whom all created things are but as a drop of water, as a grain of sand, as if they were not, that God of infinite majesty and glory made himself subject to the apostles when he said, "Do this for a commemoration of me !".
Whenever they said Mass, they held in their hands, after the words of consecration, Jesus Christ, their Lord and God, to receive him, and to give him to all those who wished to receive him in holy communion. This power which Christ gave to his apostles, surpasses far even the power of creation. By creation, God produces the substance of bread out of nothing, by his word ; but by the words of the apostles, in consecration, the substance of bread and wine is changed into the most sacred body and blood of Christ. Ah! when we see the apostles, weak, sinful men as they were, gifted with a power which angels could not and did not dare to claim.
But, as Christ could not wish to enter, by holy communion, into souls as long as they were in mortal sin, the great power of the apostles to change bread and wine into Christ's body and blood would have been of little avail to the greater part of mankind, had not Christ given to the apostles another power, viz.: that of forgiving sins by means of the sacraments, especially by the sacraments of baptism and penance. Therefore he said to the apostles: "Go, baptize mankind in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;"(Matt, xxviii, 19). "Whose sins you shalt forgive, they are forgiven them." (John xx, 23). This power was given to the apostles to free men from their sins, and prepare them for the union with Christ in holy communion. This power, too, surpasses that of any created being, either in heaven or on earth.
But Christ said to his apostles: "To me is given all power in heaven and on earth. As the Father has sent me, I also send you." He who bestows all power, excludes none. Christ, therefore, gave to his apostles the power to cast out devils from possessed persons, and to prevent the evil spirits from hurting men in their bodies or property: "And calling together the twelve apostles," says St. Luke (ix, 1), "he gave them power and authority over all devils." And the same evangelist tells us, also, that the disciples cast out the devils from possessed persons, at which power they were greatly amazed, and said: "Lord, the devils also are subject to us in thy name." (Luke x, 17.)
Christ also gave to his apostles power to bless or consecrate things for the divine service, or for the pious use of the faithful such as altars, chalices, vestments, churches, graveyards, h6ly-water, oil, bread, wine, palms.
By the sin of Adam the curse of God had come upon all creatures: "Cursed is the earth in thy work", said God to Adam. (Gen. iii, 17.) But Christ came to take away not only man's sin, but also the curse which had fallen upon all other creatures of the earth. And as Christ gave power to the apostles to drive out sin from the souls of men, by their applying to them the merits of his redemption through the sacraments, in like manner he gave them power to free creatures from the curse of sin, by their applying to them the blessing of redemption, through prayers and blessings, in order to make them work good to those that love God. For "every creature," says St. Paul, "is sanctified by the word and prayer." (1 Tim. iv, 5.)
St. Matthew tells us, in his gospel (vii, 29), that our Savior was teaching the people as one having power and authority, and not as their Scribes and Pharisees. Christ, who chose the apostles to take his place as teacher and priest, wished also that, like him, they should teach with power and authority. To increase their authority, he gave them another power: the power of ruling and governing those who believed in him, and were baptized.
What power had the apostles as rulers or pastors of the Church?
They had the power of governing the faithful, under the supreme authority of St. Peter.
Christ said to his apostles : "Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven." (Matt, xviii, 18)
In these words Christ gave power to his apostles to govern his Church, to regulate the divine service and the manner of administering the sacraments, to govern nations, kings and peoples, according to his unchangeable doctrine, to make laws for them, and to enforce those laws, by refusing the sacraments to those who transgress them, or by expelling such transgressors from her society, or by imposing upon them such works of penance as were deemed proper for their own spiritual good, and that of others.
Gifted with this threefold power of Christ, the apostles were greater than the patriarchs, greater, more exalted, than the prophets. A widow of Sarephta fed the prophet Elias for some time. As a reward for her charity, the prophet obtained for her the miracle that her pot of meal wasted not, and her cruse of oil was not diminished, and thus sustained that family in a miraculous manner. The apostles did more : they fed not merely one family, but the nations of the world. They gave not mere material bread, but the living bread from heaven : the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They strengthened the souls of men with the oil of grace, which they administered to them in the holy sacraments.
Elias raised, moreover, the widow s son to life but the apostles did more : they raised to life the dead souls of hundreds and thousands. In the sacraments of baptism and penance, they raised to the life of grace the souls of those that were dead in mortal sin.
Elias caused fire to rain from heaven upon the heads of the wicked. The apostles caused not simply material fire to fall from heaven, they did far more : they caused the fire of divine love to fall upon the cold hearts of sinners, and moved them to contrition. They inflamed them to a new and perfect life.
Again, the apostles were greater than the prophets. The prophets beheld the Redeemer only from afar, in the dim future. The apostles beheld him present before their eyes. They touched the long-wished-for Redeemer with their hands ; they offered him up to the heavenly Father. They carried him through the streets, they even fed on the precious blood of this Holy One ; they received him into their hearts, and united themselves most intimately with him in holy communion.
The prophets foretold that, when the fullness of time should come, God would write his laws, not on stone, but on men s hearts. He would govern men, not by the law of servile fear, but by the sweet bonds of holy love. That God himself would dwell in them, and direct them by his grace. Now, this fullness of time for which the prophets sighed, came with Jesus Christ. He gave his grace, his own divine life, to man, and he gave it abundantly. And, as the ministers of that grace, he chose, not the prophets, not his angels, but his apostles.
The apostles had the patriarchal dignity of Abraham. Abraham is called the Father of the Faithful. The apostles were, in reality, the fathers of the faithful, for they made them the children of God, by preaching the Gospel, and especially by administering to them the holy sacraments. They stood at the helm of the Church, the ark of salvation, like Noe. They were consecrated forever according to the order of Melchisedech. They were invested with a dignity far higher than that of Aaron. Aaron offered up only the blood of sheep and oxen, while the apostles offered up the blood of the Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. They had the authority of Moses. Moses led the people of God, through the desert, to the promised land. The apostles led the children of God, through the desert of this life, to the true land of promise, their home in heaven.
Unutterably great, indeed, were the powers of the apostles. But these powers were not bestowed upon them for their own private benefit. They received them for the spiritual welfare of the people. And as Christ came to save and sanctify all men, it was his will that his power as teacher, as priest, and as ruler, should continue as long as his Church lasts.
How long will the Church last ?
The Church will last to the end of the world.
From the very beginning the Church of Christ was made up of two classes of men : of teachers and hearers, of priests and people, of rulers and subjects. Thus established, it will continue to the end of time, according to Christ s promise, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church." Christ calls his Church his kingdom on earth, which he has acquired at the cost of so much toil, and labor, and suffering. It is that kingdom which he purchased with his own blood, and which he loves more than his own life. It would be blasphemous to think that any power should ever be able to tear that kingdom from Christ. The Church is the sheepfold of Jesus Christ. He is her divine shepherd. No hellish wolf will ever be able to take entire possession of this sheepfold. The Church, says St. Paul, is the body of Christ. Christ, then, is inseparably united with his Church. Sooner shall the sun refuse its light. Sooner shall the stars fall from the firmament; sooner shall the precious blood of Christ lose its atoning power; sooner shall God cease to be God, than Christ cease to protect and defend his body, the Church. "Behold," says he to the apostles, v (Matt, xxviii, 20.)
How can Christ be with his apostles to the end of the world, since the apostles died ?
Christ is with his apostles to the end of the world, in their lawful successors.
It is fitting to remember again what Christ said to his apostles: "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth." Had our Savior, when he uttered these words, considered himself God, he could not have said, "is given to me," because, as God, he had, from the beginning, as much power as his heavenly Father. He spoke as man, then, when he said, "All power is given to me," and as man he could and did receive all power from his heavenly Father. That is, his power as teacher, as priest, and as ruler, together with the power of conferring, as man, this three fold power on other men on his apostles. He tells his apostles: "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you". That is, as the Father hath sent me to confer unto you the powers I have received from him, I also send you to confer upon others the powers you have received from me, and they are to confer again upon others the powers they received from you, and so on to the end of time. I shall die, it is true, but the powers received from my Father will not die or cease with my death. They will continue in you. You, too, will die, but with your death the powers received from me will not cease, they will continue in those upon whom you confer them, and so on to the end of the world. It is thus that I am with you, in your successors, to the last day of the world. I will be, to the end of the world, with you, Peter, as head of my Church, in your successor, and also with you, my other apostles, in those who take your place.
[i]...to be continued
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2009 : 11:06:27
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Dear Reader, here is a fragment of a reprint from The Catholic Gazette, of February, 1936, a monthly publication of the Catholic Missionary Society of London, England. The extract is part of a document known as the Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion.
"As long as there remains among the Gentiles any moral conception of the social order, and until all faith, patriotism, and dignity is uprooted, our reign over the world shall not come...
"We have still a long way to go before we can overthrow our main opponent: the Catholic Church...
"We must always bear in mind that the Catholic Church is the only institution which has stood, and which will, as long as it remains in existence, stand in our way. The Catholic Church, with her methodical work and her edifying and moral teachings, will always keep her children in such a state of mind as to make them too self-respecting to yield to our domination, and to bow before our future king of Israel...
"That is why we have been striving to discover the best way of shaking the Catholic Church to her very foundations...
"We have blackened the Catholic Church with the most ignominious calumnies; we have stained her history and disgraced even her noblest activities. We have imputed to her the wrongs of her enemies, and have thus brought these latter to stand more closely by our side... We have turned her Clergy into objects of hatred and ridicule; we have subjected them to the contempt of the crowd... We have caused the practice of the Catholic Religion to be considered out of date and a mere waste of time...
"One of the many triumphs of our Freemasonry is that those Gentiles who become members of our Lodges, should never suspect that we are using them to build their own jails, upon whose terraces we shall erect the throne of our Universal King of Israel...
"So far, we have considered our strategy in our attacks upon the Catholic Church from the outside... Let us now explain how we have gone further in our work, to hasten the ruin of the Catholic Church... and how we have brought even some of her Clergy to become pioneers of our cause.
"We have induced some of our children to join the Catholic body, with the explicit intimation that they should work in a still more efficient way for the disintegration of the Catholic Church...
"We are the Fathers of all Revolutions -- even of those which sometimes happen to turn against us. We are the supreme Masters of Peace and War.
We can boast of being the Creators of the REFORMATION!. Calvin was one of our Children; he was of Jewish descent, and was entrusted by Jewish authority and encouraged with Jewish finance to draft his scheme in the Reformation.
"Martin Luther yielded to the influence of his Jewish friends, and again, by Jewish authority and with Jewish finance, his plot against the Catholic Church met with success...
"Thanks to our propaganda, to our theories of LIBERALISM and to our MISREPRESENTATIONS OF FREEDOM, the minds of many among the Gentiles were ready to welcome the Reformation. They separated from the Church to fall into our snare. And thus the Catholic Church has been sensibly weakened, and her authority over the Kings of the Gentiles has been reduced to almost naught...
"We are grateful to PROTESTANTS for their loyalty to our wishes -- although most of them are, in the sincerity of their faith, unaware of their loyalty to us...
"France, with her Masonic government, is under our thumb. England, in her dependence upon our finance, is under our heel; and in her Protestantism is our hope for the destruction of the Catholic Church. Spain and Mexico are but toys in our hands. And many other countries, including the U.S.A., have already fallen before our scheming...
"Likewise, as regards our diplomatic plans and the power of our secret societies, there is no organization to equal us. The Jesuits are the only ones to compare with us. But we have succeeded in discrediting them... for they are a visible organization, whereas we are safely hidden under the cover of our secret societies.
"But the Catholic Church is still alive...
"We must destroy her without the least delay and without the slightest mercy... Let us intensify our activities in poisoning the morality of the Gentiles. Let us spread the spirit of revolution in the minds of the people. They must be made to despise Patriotism and the love of family, to consider their faith as a humbug... Let us make it impossible for Christians outside the Catholic Church to be reunited to that Church, otherwise the greatest obstruction to our domination will be strengthened and all our work undone...
"Let us remember that as long as there still remains active enemies of the Catholic Church, we may hope to become Masters of the World... And let us remember always that the future Jewish King will never reign in the world before the Pope in Rome is dethroned...
"When the time comes and the power of the Pope shall at last be broken, the fingers of an invisible hand will call the attention of the masses of the people to the court of the Sovereign Pontiff to let them know that we have completely undermined the power of the Papacy... The King of the Jews will then be the real pope and the Father of the Jewish World-Church."
So, we have it straight from the horse's mouth that the reformation was was the brain child of Jews and that it would never have succeeded without Jewish financial support. This admission shouldn't be a surprise, since without financing it would have been well nigh impossible for a poor monk to print in large quantities the pamphlets that explained his new doctrines.
A cursory analysis, though, of the protocols and a glance at past present and present world events, reveals that they have been, and are still being, fulfilled to the letter. We, need no further proof of the gravity of the calamity that is about to befall mankind, and that we live in apocalyptic times.
But whence comes such deep and abiding hatred against the Catholic Church?
It started with the hatred of Jesus Christ by the Sanhedrin and Pharisees. This hatred, passed on from generation to generation since then, points to a supernatural origin which can only be the infernal pits of hell. For, it is only the demon that capable of such hatred.
However, Christ himself has promimsed that the gates of hell shall not prevail againt His Church. And when everything is placed in reverse, it clearly comes out that this Church established by Christ and hated by its enemies just as Christ was hated 1) is the only upholder of morality, social order, faith, patriotism and dignity... 2) is the only institution which has stood, and which will always stand, in the way of antichrist.
This Church, the Catholic Church, is the great exemplar of methodical work, edifying and moral teachings. She always keeps her children self-respecting, and will never bow to satanic allurements. Only when Catholics become ashamed of professing the precepts of the Church and obeying its commands, shall we have the spread of revolt and false liberalism (this is already happening). And we know, according to the book of Daniel, that the antichrist will only appear after there has been total revolt, and not before.
The Catholic Church has been blackened by the most ignominious calumnies and slanders; her history has been stained, and her noblest activities disgraced. But the Practices of the Catholic Church are not, and shall never be, out of date or a mere waste of time.
Freemasonry, on the other hand, is allied with Satan against the Catholic Church. Moreover, not all priests are to be trusted. Many among the catholic clergy are liberal and have leagued up with freemaosnry and kindred socities, as well as other enemies of the church in order to undermine and eventually destroy the church from inside and hasten the reign of lucifer.
The Reformation was the work of evil conspirators who financed Calvin and Luther to overthrow the Catholic Church.
Freedom and liberty are mere misrepresentations of good. Protestants have unwittingly helped to bring all the evils into our present world. Protestant England aims to destroy the Catholic Church. The revolutions that happened in Spain and Mexico were part of a plot against the Catholic Religion. For, these countries are almost wholly catholic. Revolution has always aimed at removing the social kingship of Christ in this world.
The Jesuits are the only organization, however, who could defeat the force of evil in the world. Unfortunately, they, too, have been completely infiltrated, and taken over, by Freemasonry. But as long as the Pope remains on his throne in Rome the world is safe...though not for long.
The Antichrist will not be so called. Otherwise he would have no followers. He will not wear red tights, nor vomit sulphur, nor carry a trident nor wave an arrowed tail as Mephistopheles in Faust. This masquerade has helped the Devil convince men that he does not exist. When mankind nolonger recognizes, the more power he exercises. God has defined Himsel as "I am Who am," and the Devil as "I am who am not."
Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find warrant for the popular myth of the Devil as a buffoon dressed in "red." Rather is he described as an angel fallen from heaven, as "the Prince of this world," whose business it is to tell us that there is no life after death. Lucifer's logic is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell. And if there is no hell, then there is no sin. And if there is no sin, then there is no judge. And if there is no judgment then evil is good and good is evil.
But above all these descriptions, Our Lord tells us that the antichrist will ape Him so well that even the elect will be deceived. Certainly no devil ever seen in picture books could deceive even the elect. How, then, will he come in this new age to win followers to his religion?
The pre-Communist Russian belief is that he will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian. He will talk peace, prosperity and plenty (materialism) not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves...
....The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God's.
In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counterchurch which will ape the true Church, because he, the Devil, has always, and will always, ape God. This counterfeit "church" will have all the notes and characteristics of the true Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ....
....But the world will join the counterchurch because it claims to be infallible when its visible head speaks ex cathedra from Moscow on the subject of economics and politics, and as chief shepherd of world communism (Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, Bobbs-Merril Company, Indianapolis,1948, pp. 24-25).
In the final analysis, there are two Camps in this world, namely: the Catholic Church led by God on one hill, and the combination of Protestants, Jews, freemasons, communists, socialists and atheists led by Lucifer, on the other.
Father Coughlin's Social Justice magazine, issue of February 5, 1940, for instance, said that: the Catholic Church is "the ideal Christian Front" and proclaims that all those opposed to, or not with it, belong to anti-Christian groups which will soon "appear incarnated in the person of Antichrist himself."
Dear reader, if you are outside the Catholic Church, then you are with the enemies of Christ.
They who laugh with satan shall not dine with the Lamb.
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spaxx
Junior Member
205 Posts |
Posted - 11/21/2009 : 07:24:24
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By Ed Phillips,
245 Clover Circle,
Greenville, MS 38701
"But if I should be delayed, you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth." - 1 Timothy 3:15
I grew up Baptist and fondly remember as a child scurrying to the back of the sanctuary for left over crackers and grape juice after we had communion. It was a special occasion so it was not something we did very often. But us kids loved it. I had many Catholic friends. We never talked about religion. We were usually too busy playing baseball or swimming. As I grew older and started asking various questions, adults in my life told many things about the Catholic Faith. They worshiped idols. They worshiped Mary. They worshiped the Pope. They were a cult. These, and a few others, were the standard explanations when it came to questions about Catholics. As I look back, I realize most of it was due to ignorance and fear. I certainly hope it was not malicious. Growing up Protestant, especially in the south, was really the only option of which I was ever aware.
I didn't go to Church for a long period of time after I turned 17. I guess that is common these days. But even though I drifted away, God chose to touch my heart, open my eyes, and lead me to the Catholic Faith. I had visited various Churches over the years for funerals and weddings, and I did notice the "spirit" that captured some people. It was not until I was touched directly and distinctly by God at a Catholic funeral that I became aware of His presence, His call, His Church. It was not a "feel good" experience. It was a distinctive "wake up" call that only God can offer you. It is impossible to explain or share this experience on a web site, but my heart burns with the desire to share the truth the best I possibly can. I have never known anything so clearly in my life.
One of the most difficult obstacles I have had to overcome in my faith journey is the spirit of independence. This is a wonderful country built on that wonderful spirit. But, unfortunately, it is that very spirit that often separates us from a true relationship with Christ for two simple reasons:
1. We bristle at anyone who expects us to be obedient.
2. We find it very difficult to be humble.
So, most of us find a church that makes us feel good. Lets us worship God in "our" way. In other words, we don't want to bear a cross. We don't want to feel guilty. We want it "our" way, which of course is not necessarily" God's" way. We want to storm the gates of heaven. Write our own ticket......
Sounds like WE are playing God and setting the standards. Hmm.........
No - I'm not comfortable with everything about the Catholic Faith. But absolute truth will cause discomfort to any honest person. It means I must accept just how truly short I am of the glory of God and acknowledge how much I depend on the mercy of Christ.
No - I don't like a lot of things that go on in the Catholic Church, but I know it was started by Jesus and he will forgive me just as I forgive the shortcomings of men. The Faith is pure.
No - I don't believe that people ignorant of the Catholic Faith and the Church founded by Christ are lost, but I am certain I would be lost outside the Catholic Church because it would require me to deny the very body and blood of Christ.
No - I don't believe people hate the Catholic Church. I believe they hate what they mistakenly believe about the Church. There are so many misconceptions and so much misinformation spread for dubious purposes that the ill-informed often speak out against the Church.
No - I don't feel ill will toward those that have left the Church and now speak against it. There were many in the time of Jesus that heard His words, did not believe, left His side, and returned to their former ways.
Yes - Yes, it is true what many of my Protestant friends say. The term Catholic Church does translate to "Universal Church". But it DOES NOT translate to Universal Churches. I believe that Christ founded one Church, on one leader, for all people, for all time. I pray often, just as Jesus did, that we become one. One in the Church founded by Christ, not in any church founded by man. Man cannot found a "church" and consider it part of the Universal Church, especially "churches" that do not submit to the Universal Church founded by Christ. Just because I call myself a millionaire does not make me one. Just because an organization founded by man calls itself a "church" does not make it one. Christ founded ONE Church for ALL mankind.
God has graced me through prayer and the teachings of the Church with a true understanding of what Jesus did for all of us and the truth of the Catholic Christian Faith. And yes, the teachings of the Church are oh so very critical. We have all been guilty of answering our own prayers the way we want them answered. That is what I like about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I know I am forgiven instead of "forgiving myself" through selfish prayer. I don't like to assume anything.........
The most important thing to me in the Catholic Faith is the Eucharist. We join with Jesus through the blessed sacrament of the Eucharist. We remain in him, and he in us. Jesus speaks of his flesh and blood, but many cannot comprehend what he means. That was true in his time also. We are too caught up in the worldly meaning of "flesh and blood" to understand that his real presence in the Eucharist is glorious. Real food to strengthen us on our journey. So many people today can't seem to grasp this. Sometimes it is difficult to overcome what we have been taught as a child and find the truth. But the truth is there.
At one time or another, we have all wondered how the Jewish religious leaders in the time of Jesus could have strayed so far from what God had intended. We all feel pretty confident that we know what God thinks and we would never get to the point reached by the holy men of Jerusalem. Yet today, we can look at the many "variations" of Christianity and come to the realization that we have done exactly that. We have all decided that we know best and we can interpret the bible and obtain our own meaning. We, as a Christian society, have decided that we all understand Christ and we all have the answers. We all have the inside track to salvation. The fragmentation started with the Protestant Reformation and has accelerated ever since.
In the time of Jesus there was only one truth. He founded one Church. For 1600 years there was only one Church. For 1600 years there was only one truth. Paul did not foretell the Protestant Reformation and the thousands of different Christian churches, but, in his Epistle to Timothy, he did warn us about the human nature that led to it.
"For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths." 2 Timothy 4:3-4
For about the last 400 years, Protestant churches have multiplied and divided until today there are over 33,000 denominations - all professing their own version of the truth. All Protestant faiths disregard Sacred Tradition, which is the literal living history of the Church founded by Jesus. I explain it to my religion classes in this way. Imagine in 20 years you go to a high school reunion. When you begin to reminisce about your time in school, all you are allowed to do is to open your yearbook and look through it, read it. You can't talk about anything but what is in your yearbook. You can't talk about any of the activities that pictures bring to mind. You can't rely on the memory of others to refresh your memory about some of the things you have forgotten. That eliminates a big part of your high school years. This is a very simple analogy with Sacred Tradition. Disregarding Sacred Tradition strips the faith down to only what you can read and leaves much open to interpretation. While we all hold the Sacred Scriptures dear to our heart and read them often, it is important to know from Tradition how things were done, why they were done, and other critical aspects of the Faith not found in the Bible. It is important how the early Church worshiped. It is important how the early Church practiced and understood the Faith. Contact a Catholic Church about RICA classes. Take some time in your life to learn about Jesus and HIS Church. Take time to learn THE COMPLETE TRUTH and experience THE COMPLETE FAITH.
"And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are." - John 17:11
If you take time to learn only one more thing in your life, I pray that you open your heart and learn about the Catholic Faith. I mean that sincerely. The Catholic Faith is the single most consistent representation for the true faith of Jesus and has remained so for the last 2000 years. Do not let your mind be poisoned and turned against the truth. If you are a Christian, you know the truth. Come learn about the Church founded by Jesus and learn the WHOLE truth. Jesus started one Church. Christ warned about the wisdom of man as compared to the wisdom of God. Do not fall to the folly of men who think they can do it better. The Church was founded by and belongs to Jesus. It is not a free enterprise opportunity.
Of the Apostles on night Jesus was arrested, one betrayed him, one denied him three times, and ten ran away. The Church has, and always will, suffer due to human weakness; but the ONE HOLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH REMAINS
What Is The Catholic Church ?
by Bishop Fulton Sheen
There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing. These millions can hardly be blamed for hating Catholics because Catholics “adore statues;” because they “put the Blessed Mother on the same level with God;” because they “say indulgence is a permission to commit sin;” because the Pope “is a Fascist;” because the Church “is the defender of Capitalism.”
If the Church taught or believed any one of these things, it should be hated, but the fact is that the Church does not believe nor teach any one of them. It follows then that the hatred of the millions is directed against error and not against truth. As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do.
If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world. In other words, I would look for the Church which the world hates. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world.
Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world.
Look for the Church which is accused of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned.
Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth.
Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils.
Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because he called Himself the Truth.
Look for the Church which amid the confusion of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly, it is other-worldly. Since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself.
... the Catholic Church is the only Church existing today which goes back to the time of Christ. History is so very clear on this point, it is curious how many miss its obviousness...
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Why Protestantism Cannot Lead To Salvation
