Catholic Answers

(For the use of Catholic Youth at Secondary and Tertiary Institutions)

“Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have but give it with courtesy and respect so that those who slander you when you are living a good life in Christ may be proved wrong in the accusations that they bring”.

(1 Peter 3:15-16)

In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus gives us “The Great Commission” – to go make disciples of all the nations. After 2000 years since this commission by Jesus only about two billion out of seven billion people are Christians and other world religions like Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are on the ascendant. I believe that Christian disunity is seriously hampering our evangelisation.

Jesus on Unity: Jesus prayed fervently in John 17 for the unity of His followers and that there would be “one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16): “Father may they all be one, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me”. (John 17:21). If there is not unity the world has the right to say that the Father did not send His Son! This is a terrible indictment. All of us have a duty to work for unity and must always be ready to answer to people who ask us the reason for the hope that we all have as Catholics. (cf. 1 Peter 3:15 above).

Hamstrung Christianity: This article is a small attempt to defend the truth of Catholic teaching and point out courteously the errors in non-Catholic teaching and encourage all Catholics to do likewise. It is done not from any sense of triumphalism but with sadness that the unity Jesus desired for his followers is not a reality today and is seriously hamstringing Christian attempts at fulfilling the Great Commission.

C.S. Lewis said that “Divisions between Christians are a sin and a scandal and Christians ought at all times to be making contributions towards re-union, if it is only by their prayers”.

(W. Hooper; C.S. Lewis pg. 554). So here is a prayer we could pray faithfully everyday:

Father I pray that all may be one as you Father are one in Christ

and He in you, so that the world may come to believe that it was

you who sent Him. May there be one flock and one shepherd. Amen. (cf. John 17 and

John 10:16).

Rome and Unity: The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsay once stated : “Without communion with the Bishop of Rome there is no prospect of a united Christendom”. The anti-Catholic writer Tim LaHaye, known for his best selling “Left Behind” Rapture fiction, admitted that the proliferation of denominations, sects and cults in Protestantism’ is an indicator of spiritual ‘deception’. (T. LaHaye, Are we Living in the End Times?, Tyndale, Wheaton, Ill., Pg. 33). The Lutheran theologian W. Pannenberg said that “the development of new churches was an expression not of success but of the failure of Protestantism” (C.W.R. April 2011, pg. 37). Christian unity will only come round a rejuvenated Catholic centre.

Common Enemy: It is sad that the only unity non-Catholic Christianity has is a united front against Catholicism – a unity based not on charity but antipathy. The only concept on which many Protestants seem to agree is that the Catholic Church is not the true Church and so to remain “united” demands unrelenting opposition to Catholicism.

The ex Baptist Pastor Steve Ray wrote: “I found it to be ironical, though not coincidental, that it is the Catholic Church by which others define themselves – like saying, “It’s the Cadillac of …..” Protestants, and especially Fundamentalists, define themselves by their opposition to the Church. They are protesting still, and it says a lot when something becomes the standard by which all others are measured. The Protestants refute this, say they define themselves by the Bible alone. Their very name, “Protestant”, however, is significant: they define themselves in their protest, not their affirmations.” (S.R. pg. 62/3).

Fulton Sheen rightly observed, “There are not over a hundred people in the world 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.”

1.         THE CHURCH IS INVISIBLE: The dominant Protestant position is that the Body of Christ is made up of the true believers in Christ who are scattered throughout the world in various denominations.

Protestantism tends to regard the Church as an amorphous, invisible, ‘mysterious’

collection of believers. Catholicism on the other hand teaches that Christ’s Church is indeed mysterious – since it is the Mystical Body of Christ (cf. Romans 12:3-8;

1 Corinthians 12:12-26) and Christ is the head (Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18) but it

is also visible and recognizable, like the city on the hill about which Jesus spoke. (Matthew 5:14).

Head and Body:  Surely it’s odd to have a personable relationship with the Head as Lord and Saviour in its fullness if one doesn’t embrace the Body as well. One can’t decapitate Jesus from the Body and expect to have a ‘personal’ relationship with just a severed head! That isn’t what Jesus intended for us. (See John 17:20-23). Without the Church Christ evaporates.

Peter Gillquist in his book “Becoming Orthodox” explains why he resigned from the prominent Campus Crusade Ministries to become an Orthodox priest. He wrote:

“The name of the game is Church. That’s why most modern evangelism isn’t changing the world. It’s self-appointed, not Church-directed. People are not being reached in the context of the Body of Christ – they’re like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves”. (pg. 18).

Church Final Arbiter: In the Acts of the Apostles we read about an organized Christian community led by the Holy Spirit, a visible church which St Paul could call ‘the pillar and foundation of truth’ (1 Timothy 3:15) not merely self-appointed individualists.  The Bible points to the Church as the final arbiter of truth in all spiritual matters (See 1 Timothy 3:15; Matthew 16:18-19; Luke 10:16).

2.      DENOMINATIONALISM (includes non denominational denominations)  

          Nowhere in the Bible do we have the concept “denomination” – it is one of the

“traditions of men” (Matthew 15).  The fragmentation of Christianity has been happening since the first centuray.  It is not confined to Western Christendom from the 16^th century onwards but fragmentation has increased substantially since then.   Church splits are a regular feature of Protestantism.

Is this not part of Satan’s policy of ‘divide and rule’? There is an unending search for the ideal church, a chimera, which keeps eluding them because the church has already been built 2000 years ago on the rock of Peter: “Jesus said you are Peter and on this rock I will build by Church”. (Matthew 16:18). Note Jesus said church – in the singular not the plural. Each split, each breakaway group inexorably retraces the missteps of the Catholic tradition to one degree or another because these missteps are not exclusively Roman, they are universally human. Jesus established only one church not a group of rival denominations.

Hiving Off: Many of today’s so-called “Bible churches” are barely two or three generations old. Many were formed when a group of people rallied around a prominent figure who introduced a new and supposedly “brilliant” interpretation of the Bible, e.g. the Scofield Bible Church.

Imbued with fervor, they left their former church which no longer held to “biblical truth”, and formed a new and supposedly better church. But eventually the initial enthusiasm wanes, the doctrines begin to change, and once again, people fall away, some going on to start yet another sect. Often the church of the third or fourth generation hardly resembles the church of the first generation. This scenario has happened thousands of times in the few hundred years Protestantism has existed. This syndrome of fragmentation is the Reformation’s tragic legacy of confusion and disunity. (S.B.T. pg. 121).

Protest-ants: If God spoke now as he spoke in 1 Samuel 8, he might say: “You want a different church? I’ll give you a different church. In fact, I’ll give you so many different churches you won’t be able to count them all”. Isn’t it exactly what has happened? God has given the protesters what they wanted – and much more: one long, continuous line of protesters: protesters protesting against the Catholic Church and protesters protesting against their fellow protesters. This plague of “protestantism” has spawned thousands of quarrelling sects. Time itself has shown that Protestantism is not God’s plan for his Church, but rather is a dismal failure. (S.B.T. pg. 132).

Household of God: The Church is the “household” of God (cf. Hebrews 10:21) and must be one of harmony and unity. But the collection of denominations, corporately known as ‘Protestantism’ is fraught with division and doctrinal disagreements.

St Paul called the Church ‘the pillar and the foundation of truth’ (1 Timothy 3:15). But how can thousands of competing and conflicting denominations (reckoned now at over thirty thousand and five new ones every week!) corporately be a stable ‘pillar and foundation of truth’? No one of them agrees totally with any of the others as to what the truth is. Yet they profess themselves to be “Bible Christians” with allegiance to Jesus who is “the Truth”! Jesus wanted one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:16).

Doctrinal Mayhem: Reformation Protestantism claimed the Bible alone is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. But ironically it was the emphasis on the Bible alone that caused all the confusion within Protestantism and the doctrinal mayhem.

Jesus promised to guide and protect his Church and to send the Holy Spirit to lead it into all truth. (cf. Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; 28:20; John 14:16, 25; 16:13) and prevent confusion.

The New Testament records conflict between believers, sharp disputes over circumcision, dining on meat sacrificed to idols, the person of Christ. And yes, the New Testament describes the sin and corruption of various church members. But nowhere are the believers given the option of hiving off into independent splinter groups; in fact one of the few offences that give us reason to expel a brother is the offence of causing disunity: ‘I urge you brothers, to watch out for those who, cause divisions. Keep away from them ‘. (Romans 16:17).

Unity’s Strength: For many Protestant pastors, with so many private interpretations of the Bible around, they each have to be their own Pope and reinvent the wheel again and again. The pursuit of what has been called ‘the narcissism of small doctrinal differences’ is hamstringing Christianity and is detrimental to its growth and to fulfilling the Great Commission. Unity is strength!   

3.      BIBLE CHRISTIANS: For many Protestants we Catholics are regarded as the most ‘unBiblical’

Church but don’t be fooled as the Catholic Church is really the Church of the Bible and we are the true “Bible Christians”! Some of our non Catholic brethren regard themselves as Fundamentalists who take the Bible literally. But we Catholics are the real literalists who take so many Biblical texts at face value. Catholic theology rests on the literal interpretation of the Bible e.g.:

1.         The Bible quotes God as saying ‘I hate divorce’ (Malachi 2:16). The Catholic Church is the only Christian body that does not allow divorce and remarriage.

2.         Bible says ‘confess your sins to one another’ (James 5:16). Protestants ignore this and confess directly to God. But nowhere in the New Testament does it say “Confess to God” but rather confess to one another. The famous Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer commenting on this “tradition of men” said: “Have we not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession to God, have we not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and granting ourselves absolution”? John 20:23 also implies confession of sins to another who has authority because to forgive or retain sins means the person has to make them known first.

3.         Catholics take John 6 re Eucharist literally, as well as 1 Cor. 10 and the Synoptics. 

4.         We also take Matthew 16:18 literally : “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church”.

5.         We are the only Church to follow literally the injunction re Mary : “All generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

6.         The Bible presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity. (Genesis 19:1-29; Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:10; 1 Timothy 1:10). Catholics take this literally. But many Protestant Churches ignore this e.g. the Worldwide Metropolitan Community Church is run by gay activists. (cf. CCC 2357).  Of course quoting the Old Testament on moral issues is dangerous because we do not practice a great deal of Old Testament morality e.g. Leviticus.  But the Church is the final arbiter on this.  See Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357 where the Church quotes from Genesis.

4.      SOLA SCRIPTURA (or the Bible Alone as the sole rule of faith, as the ultimate authority, not Tradition, Pope or Church council). For Protestants, this is one of the pillars of the Reformation along with sola fide (that we are justified by faith alone). Both of these are unscriptural and are ‘traditions of men’. Nowhere are these two pillars of the Reformation to be found in the Bible.

         

Sola Verbum Dei: As regards Sola Scriptura : yes “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable

for teaching” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). But it doesn’t say ‘only Scripture’. The Bible tells us that God’s authoritative Word is to be found in the Church : her Tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6) as well as her preaching and teaching-“the magisterium” (1 Peter 1:25; 2 Peter 1:20-21; Matthew 18:17). The Bible supports the Catholic principle of “Sola Verbum Dei”, “the word of God alone”, rather than the Protestant slogan : sola scriptura or Scripture alone.

Bible Canon: Protestants don’t realise that they are violating Sola Scriptura in recognising the Canon of Scripture because it was the Catholic Church at the Councils of Hippo (393 A.D.) and Carthage (397) which decided what New Testament books were authentic and which were false, coming to a figure of 27. These councils sent off the judgements to Rome for the Pope’s approval. So from 30 to 393 A.D. there was no New Testament. By teaching with infallible authority the Church gave us the Canon. The “Bible Alone” idea does not state what New Testament books are authentic – the Church tradition did that. (S.B.T. pg 125)

The truth is, Protestants are living off the borrowed capital of the Catholic Church, for it was the Catholic Church that infallibly recognised, under the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit the Canon of Scripture and the Pope ratified this.

5.      SOLA FIDE (Faith Alone) Martin Luther is regarded by many Protestants as the man who discovered the Bible and the first to translate it into the language of the people. But this is false as we can see: Luther’s translation of the New Testament was not published until 1522 and his version of the Old Testament did not appear until 1534. From 1466 to 1552, Catholics had already published 14 complete editions of the Bible in High German at Augsburg, Basle, Strassburg and Nuremburg, and five Low German at Cologne, Delft, Halberstadt and Lubeck. During this period of 70 years, from 1450 to 1520, Catholics had published 156 Latin and six Hebrew editions of the Bible, besides issuing complete translations in French (10), Italian (11), Bohemian (2), Flemish (1), Limousine (1), and Russian (1). (J.A.O. pg. 179).

          Emptying the Old Testament: In spite of his translating the Bible, Luther had a very cavalier attitude to Scripture:

(1) He took books out of the Old Testament, namely: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ben Sirach, and Baruch as well as 6 chapters in the Book of Esther and 3 chapters in Daniel. Luther removed these it appears for theological rather than for textual or historical reasons. They opposed such things as prayers for the dead (Job 12:12, 2 Maccabees 12:39-45, intercessions of the saints (2 Maccabees 15:14), and the intermediary intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12,15) (Alex Jones, pg. 210)

Emptying the New Testament: Luther also removed books from the New Testament (James,

Hebrews, 2 Peter, and the Apocalypse). When he died Reformers, remembering the words of Scripture not to cut anything out (Revelations 22:18), put back the New Testament books but the Old Testament books have not been replaced – yet! One is reminded of Tertullian’s remark about Marcion: “he does exegesis with a penknife”!  Early Christian writers have quoted from the Deuterocanonicals as if they were a legitimate pat of Scripture e.g. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386) quotes from all the Deuterocanonical books and St. Patrick (c. 389-461) quotes from Tobit, Wisdom, Ben Sirach and First Macabees in his few remaining works that have come down to us.

The Amplified Version:

(2) Martin Luther also added words to Scripture – again defying the Biblical injunction not to add anything to the Scriptures (Revelations 22:10).

It is true that Catholics objected to Luther’s translation, but only because if was faulty and

unreliable. As Emser wrote at the time : “He has in many places confused, stultified and perverted the old trustworthy test of the Christian Church to its great disadvantage and also poisoned it with heretical glosses and prefaces ... He almost everywhere forces the Scriptures on the question of faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of”. Emser, a contemporary of Luther pointed out as many as 1,400 inaccuracies, while Baron Christian Bunsen (1791 – 1860), a Protestant scholar, tabulated 3,000 inaccuracies. (J.A. O’Brien pg. 179f).

Luther went so far as to add the word ‘alone’ after the word ‘justified’ in his German translation of Romans 3:28 and called St James Letter ‘an epistle of straw’ because James 2:24 specifically states ... ‘for we are not justified by faith alone’. Following the Bible the Catholic Church teaches that we are justified, or saved by faith and works. (James 2:24; Corinthians 13:2; Matthew 25:31-46; Revelations 14:13 etc.).

Many Protestants accuse the Catholic Church of teaching a system of salvation based on human works independent of God’s grace. This is not true.

The Church does teach the necessity of works, but so does Scripture. The Church condemns the notion that salvation can be achieved through “works alone”. Nothing, whether faith or works, apart from the grace of God, can save us. It is works of grace that we do as a result of the grace of God moving us to act and helping us to bring the meritorious acts to their completion.

Father Mitch S.J. Pacwa summed it up nicely when he explained that we are saved by grace through faith which works by love (cf. Galatians 5:6). But we must choose to allow God’s grace to work through us. He does not force us to continue in grace” (cf. Acts 13:43). (S.B.T. pg. 233).

Eternal Redemption: Many Protestants believe in “once – saved – always – saved” and that one is eternally secure because one has received Christ by faith in an act of the will through sincerely praying a Sinner’s Prayer”. (Incidentally there is no evidence in the Bible for praying a “Sinner’s Prayer” or for “altar calls”.) According to this Fundamentalist dogma no sin committed after getting ‘saved’, no matter how heinous, will deny one access to heaven at death. But scores of Biblical passages deny this notion. See Romans 11:22; 1 Corinthians 11:32, 15:2; Colossians 1:21-23; 1 Timothy 4:16; 2 Timothy 2:11-13; Hebrews 3:12-14, 6:4-6; James 1:12.

The Bible says that only by enduring to the end can we be saved. See Matthew 10:22; John 15:6; Revelations 2:10-11, 26.

So if we are asked “Are you saved brother?” The Bible’s answer is: “I am saved (Ephesians 2:8), am being saved (1 Corinthians 1:18) and will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).

“Text without context is pretext”! (F. Sheen)

6.      TWO FAR REACHING ERRORS IN PROTESTANTISM:       

          A.      False dichotomies

          B.      Spiritualisation (or Angelism)

A.        FALSE DICHOTOMIES: Our Protestant brethren tend to go in for false dichotomies, acknowledging only one side of the coin rejecting the other. This espousing of the either/or mentality runs deeply thru’ Protestant theology e.g. “You can trust either the Bible or Tradition”. But the Catholic has a both/and approach, which says “You can trust both the Bible and Tradition”. The Protestant position is like saying: “You can love either your wife or your children” instead of saying: “You can love both your wife and your children”.

Other examples: either baptism or faith, either baptism or the Spirit. It is obvious that the Lord himself did not think this way. He simply said, ‘unless a man is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. (John 3:5). “You should do the one, without neglecting the other” (Matthew 23:23).

These components flow together as a clear and undivided stream from Genesis 1:1, through Moses and the prophets, through the teachings of Christ and the Twelve, through the early centuries to the Council of Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II. The stream has continued to flow clear and pure into our own century, with fidelity and constancy within the Catholic Church! Who dreamed up this either/or dichotomy, anyway?

Martin Luther added a little word to the New Testament that had a far-reaching impact- altering the thought processes of many Christians. It was the word alone.

St Paul said that a man is justified by faith (Romans 3:28). Luther added in the word “alone” after “faith”!

Either/Or: This little word added a big idea. This idea, that two things cannot work together, started a snowball rolling that cut everything in two pieces. It set up false dichotomies. You were forced to choose one side or the other. You couldn’t believe both, or you weren’t a real Bible Christian. It changed everything, and those who embraced this new way of thinking were impoverished.

Both/Ands: Are we saved by faith alone or baptism? Do we look to Scripture alone or the sacred tradition? Is baptism an effective sacrament or a symbol? Is Christ our only intercessor or do we ask others to pray for us?  Notice all the either/ors, the mistaken and harmful divisions. Catholics see these as both/ands. Did Jesus divide baptism from the Holy Spirit? No, he said water and Spirit. Does Paul say either Scripture or tradition? No, he said Scripture and tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15). We need to consider seriously our approach to truth. (Steve Ray, Crossing the Tiber pg.182).

B.             SPIRITUALIZATION (or Angelism): Protestants on the whole tend to deny Christ the use of his own creation. Ex-Protestant Thomas Howard in “Evangelical is not Enough” writes that Protestants have a bias or prejudice against the physical. Altho’ the Bible clearly teaches that physical substances do impart spiritual benefits, grace (John 6:26-59). Evangelicals stick to their prejudice. This notion that we should worship like angels, without the aid of our bodies, leads Protestants to reject other things besides the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism. D.B. Currie in his book “Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic” says “I have come to believe that this bias distorts the Evangelical understanding of baptism, marriage, death, communion, the body of Christ, grace, Mary, the Holy Spirit, and even the Incarnation”.

    (pg. 136).

                   The word ‘sacrament’ means pledge, or mystery. It does not occur in the Bible, any more than do words like Trinity, Incarnation, substitutions, prelapsarian, or inerrancy.

                   Visible and Invisible Things: The Protestant idea is that the Old Covenant involved “visible things” : like the blood of lambs, altars, incense, washings, circumcision, tabernacles, manna, and so on, but the New Covenant consists  only of invisible things, seen by faith alone including the Church. There are no “real things”, only symbolic language about spiritual things. However, this approach is belied by the fact that the New Covenant started out with gynaecology and obstetrics, mangers and shepherds; it involved a real wooden cross and painful nails. There are tombs, bread and wine, touching real nail holes, washing dirty feet, bodily resurrections, withering fig trees, flames of fire, special days, “favourable years”, and so on.

                  

                   Material Things: In between his birth and death, there were other “material things” involved to impart or facilitate spiritual life: Jesus took spittle and clay to heal a man’s eyes (John 9:6) – why not faith alone? Jesus laid his hands on children to bless them (Mark 10:16); he breathed on the apostles to impart the Holy Spirit (John 20:22); he brought coins from a fish’s mouth (Matthew 17:27), fed thousands with five loaves and two fish (John 6:9-13), turned water into wine (John 2:2-12); he said that the loaf was his “body” (Matthew 26:26); he revealed himself to men “through the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:30-31); he also put his finger in a man’s ears and spit and touched his tongue (Mark 7:33). What a strange way to start a New Covenant that won’t involve things. Is it unbiblical, considering these scriptural passages, to think God would use sacraments, or physical matter, to impart his grace?

                   “Thingless” Era: What about the strange situation in Ephesus, where handkerchiefs were carried away from Paul’s body and used to heal and expel demons?  (Acts 19:16). What about Peter’s shadow? (Acts 5:15). And why in this new “thingless” era do we still have to eat bread and drink wine, and get wet for baptism? Why the need for the laying on of hands for spiritual gifts, ordination, and healing? And what’s this in James about using oil to anoint people for healing and the forgiveness of sin? (.... 5:14). This really sounds “Old Covenant” to me. And wasn’t the new dispensation started by real tongues of fire dancing on real people’s heads? (Acts 2:3).

                   Creator and Creation: Can’t the Creator still use his own creation? Can he use water to cleanse a soul if he so desires? Can he use clay to anoint a man’s eyes, instead of just “speaking the word”? Can he really transform bread and wine into his body and blood? Wasn’t he the one who turned water into wine and fed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes? Can he use his oil to seal or anoint? Why is he denied the use of the things he has made for sacraments that can really impart grace, not merely symbolize it? Has this perhaps been extrapolated from the little word only again, the little word that was added.

                  

                   God uses matter. He creates in us his new life by his Spirit, through the agency of matter, in the form of water. It is not contrary to God’s character or track record to do such a thing; in fact, the Incarnation of Christ-God taking on flesh-shows he is not adverse to using matter, physical things, to bring about spiritual ends. God became man through the Incarnation, and the sacraments are only an extension of the incarnational theology. God can use matter; he can use sacraments to impart grace to his people.

                   (S.K. Ray, pg. 184).

                   Sacraments: The sacraments are built upon the theological principle that Creation is good. God made the world and He saw that what He had made was “very good”. (Genesis 1:37). In fact God even became matter at the Incarnation. One implication of the Incarnation is that God loved our bodies enough to take one himself. In eternity we will not shed our bodies; rather we will have them “enhanced”. (Philippians 3:20). (D.B. Currie, pg. 144).

                   Anti-Matter: The Reformers it seems had a poor estimation of matter – Calvin believed that man’s nature was ‘totally depraved’ and Luther believed that we humans ‘are dunghills covered over with snow’. (This is not in the Bible!)

                   Julie Swenson says that all Protestant misconceptions (communion of saints, the Papacy, the sacraments, the veneration of relics, images, liturgy, and the humanity of Christ) all revolve around the Protestant refusal to acknowledge the external, physical expressions of the Christian religion. (S.B.T. pg. 159). Protestants abolished Holy Days and now Christmas too is threatened. This is leading to Secularization.

                   Johannine Sacramentary: God can use matter. St John’s Gospel is loaded with so much sacramental imagery that it is called the “Johannine Sacramentary”. This Gospel and the Letter to the Hebrews show that liturgy and sacraments are an essential part of God’s family life. George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends like so many Protestants would disagree. In his desire that God be worshipped in Spirit and in truth, did away with the only 2 sacraments or ‘ordinances’ that Martin Luther had left – Baptism and Communion – “lest faith be placed in the elements of wine, bread and water rather than in the God to whom they pointed”! (J.H. pg. 110).

                   I’ll Come in and Sup: This suspicion of Sacraments can also be seen in the way our Protestant brethren quote or misquote Revelations 3:20 : “Look I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me”. Protestants often leave out the words “and sup with him” – too sacramental I suppose!

                   The early Fathers of the Church had no problem with sacramental materialism : Tertullian (160-222 A.D.) maintained that “it is on flesh that salvation hinges”.

                   St Ambrose (340-397 A.D.) compared Eucharistic communion with conjugal communion – both were holy communion. (Aquilina pg. 223).

                   Marriage of course is a sacrament and is one of the 28 Charisms explicity mentioned in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 7:7). Celibacy is also a charism (1 Corinthians 7:7,32; Matthew 19:12) and is a requisite for becoming a monk or religious. Unfortunately Martin Luther abolished religious life and the idea of celibacy.

                   Discrediting Religious Life: “Luther’s break with the monastic vows resulted not only in the abolition of community life in Protestantism, but also in the almost complete disappearance of the vocation and commitment to chastity. When criticising a position men tend to caricature it. Particular cases of immorality were generalised and because of this the call of the Gospel was for centuries discredited”. (Roger Schutz, the Protestant founder of Taizé community; in “Unanimity and Pluralism”). ABUSE DOES NOT RULE OUT USE!

                   Secularisation of Marriage: In 1517, Martin Luther formally broke covenant with the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Catholic Church did have problems in need of correction and renewal at the time of Luther’s break. Yet serious ecclesiastical problems, just like serious marital problems, don’t justify a “divorce”. Only three years after he severed ties with Rome, Luther wrote the Babylonian Captivity (1520) in which he denied the sacramentality of marriage and declared that marriage should be under civil jurisdiction instead of ecclesiastical. Indissolubility disappeared under the theory that marriage is merely a civil contract. These views launched the modern secularisation of marriage. How could Luther make such a profound mistake about marriage? Why has every major branch of, Christendom that had broken off from the Catholic Church embraced exceptions to Christ’s teachings on indissolubility? “So what God has united, man must no divide”. (Matthew 19:6).

                   Beliefs about marriage are interrelated with beliefs about the Church. History shows that when any group breaks covenant with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church it is just a matter of time until it allows the breaking of the marriage covenant. In Luther’s case it took just three years. Ecclesiology (beliefs about the Church) will inevitably influence one’s beliefs about marriage. Genuine renewal of marriage and family life will require re-examining the big questions about the Church. (Stephen Wood, Christian Fatherhood, 1997)

7.         AUTHORITY: The single most important issue for Protestants is authority. All of the

wrangling of how to interpret Scripture gets one nowhere if there is no way to know with infallible certitude that one’s interpretation is the right one. (S.B.T. pg. 53).

          Every Christian can have his own agenda and a liturgy of Bible verses to back up his views.

With no clear authority everything is up for grabs. Based on verses like 1 John 2:26-27 and Matthew 18:19-20 many believe that all Christians have the same authority given by Christ through the Holy Spirit, and the true Church is where any two or more of these Christians gather together. Clearly Fulton Sheen’s dictum applies here: “Text without context is pretext”! (i.e. a Bible text taken out of context is false justification).

          Twice the Bible says “There is no God”! (Psalms 14:1; 53:1). But put it in context it says that

          “The fool has said in his heart ‘there is no God’! Everything must be seen in context.

Catholics would reply to the above by quoting all of Matthew 18 (not just verses 19 and 20). In this text Jesus explains how to deal with a Christian who falls into sin or error. If he will not listen to an individual’s admonishment, two or more witnesses should confront him. If he refuses to listen to them, they are to refer the issue to the Church and “if he refuses to listen even to the Church treat him as you would a Gentile or tax collector”. (Matthew 18:16-17). In other words, the Church has the final say. In fact it has the authority given it by Christ to excommunicate someone for sin or heresy.

Immediately after this teaching on the final authority of the Church to settle such issues, Jesus delivers another promise regarding Church authority. “Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v. 18). So the Church must be infallible to fulfil the Lord’s command to decide issues authoritatively.

With all the conflicting opinions among Protestants on essential doctrinal issues, how can they claim that the Bible is the supreme authority when the Bible can’t interpret itself and whose interpretation are we to go by? Hebrews 13:7 says ‘the faithful must obey them that have the rule over [them], and submit; for they watch for [their] souls”.

Acts 15 and 16 describe a doctrinal and pastoral controversy that threatened to tear the early Church apart. So a council was called. The Council did not appeal to Scripture alone to settle the difficulty (this would have been difficult with only the Old Testament to refer to since none of the New Testament had been written yet!).

The Church decided the matter as the Lord commanded in Matthew 18. And this magisterial teaching (or magisterium) also fulfils what Jesus promised his disciples, and by extension the Church, ‘He who listens to you, listens to me, and he who rejects you, rejects me’. (cf. Luke 10:16; Matthew 10:40)

The Letter of Jude contains a warning to the Church (Jude 11) where Jude condemns those

intruders who are following after the ‘rebellion of Korah’ (Jude 3-11). What was this rebellion? Look at Numbers 16, the passage to which Jude is referring where Korah and his followers were condemned and punished by God for their rebellion against the priests who had been appointed to preside over the People of Israel. If the New Testament has no authoritative hierarchy, why was Jude warning the Church against those who rejected the authority of the New Testament’s Church hierarchy?

Jude’s warning coincided with Jesus’ warning to the churches of Asia Minor who rejected the

decisions of the Council of Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15): “Repent, or else I will come to you and attack those people with the sword of my mouth”. (Revelations 2:16; cf. Acts 16:1-8).

But what of 1 John 2:27 which says that we need not have any man teach us, but the Holy Spirit will teach us? Doesn’t this verse imply that we don’t need a Church to tell us what to believe and how to act?

But the Holy Spirit speaks pre-eminently thru’ the Church, so that when the Church teaches officially, it is not mere human teaching but the Holy Spirit guiding the Church.

Look at Acts 15:28, “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities”. The Apostles then sent Paul and Silas ‘who handed on to the people for observance the decisions reached by the Apostles and Presbyters in Jerusalem (16:4).

These Church decrees were necessary things that were binding on the consciences of all

Christians. They were not free to reject what the Church taught without in the same act, rejecting Christ himself (cf. Luke 10:16). Relevant is Paul’s statement: “Altho’ we were able to impose our weight as Apostles of Christ ... we were gentle among you”. (1 Thessalonians 2:7) (S.B.T. pg. 218).

The reason there are so many Protestants who can’t agree on what the Bible teaches is that they have no authoritative body. The analogy in law is, the Supreme Court. The Constitution lying on the table is of no use to anyone and in the hands of each individual it might be interpreted in a million ways. So what is needed is clearly an authoritative body of interpreters who can render judgements on which meanings are permissible and which are not – what Catholics call the Church’s Magisterium (J.H. pg. 70). The Church is “the pillar and the ground of truth”. (1 Timothy 3:15).  One unfortunate casualty in Christians failure to work for unity is truth as this will feed into and strengthen the prevailing spirit of the age which is relativistic – that is, there is not absolute truth – it’s all relative:  Your truth is not my truth:  Jesus ‘the Truth’ (Jn. 14:6) must weep as he sees his followers unintentionally perhaps, in food faith mouth the words of Pontius Pilate: ‘What is truth?’

8.      WORSHIP: Many Protestants believe in a very informal, almost spontaneous style of worship

 involving hymns and preaching. But Christian Worship was fixed liturgical ritual from the very start influenced by Temple worship. The second-century Jewish-Christian historian Hegesippus noted that the apostles made their priestly inheritance explicit by adopting the dress and customs of the Jerusalem high priest. (See Eucebius, Church History 5.24.3).

Some Protestants believe that liturgy was what came into the Church when the power of the Holy Spirit died down! But if we look at Acts 13:2 it states that “while they were engaged in the liturgy of the Lord (Leitourgounton in Greek) and fasting, the Holy Spirit spoke to them”. So here we have the Holy Spirit speaking to the Church during the liturgy.

The Old Testament worship in the Temple is called liturgy in the New Testament (Luke 1:23) and as we’ve seen above New Testament worship is also called liturgy (Acts 13:2). But there was a difference: According to ancient Jewish beliefs, the worship of Jerusalem’s Temple mirrored the worship of the angels in heaven. The levitical priesthood, the covenant liturgy, the sacrifices served as shadowy representations of heavenly models. So Israel prayed in imitation of the angels, but the New Testament Church of the Apocalypse worshipped together with the angels. (Apocalypse 19:10).  Revelation now revealed one worship, shared by man and angels. (Hebrews 12:22,29). (S.H.L.S. 69f).

Early Christian worship was pretty well fixed ritual like the Catholic Mass and not spontaneous as Protestants maintain. The three universally recognised sources outside the Scriptures tell us what early Christian worship was like, namely the Didache (A.D. 70), Justin Martyr (A.D. 150) and Hippolytus (A.D. 200). Here we find that liturgy was divided into two parts – the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. In the early Church there was no worship without the Eucharist, and early worship was based on the heavenly liturgy revealed in the Word of God especially Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4.  Yes, the early Christians went to the Temple each day to pray but then met in their homes for the ‘breaking of the bread’ ( or Eucharist) (Acts 2:46).

          In the Book of Revelation worship seems divided like the Mass into two parts:

1.        The Liturgy of the Word (Chs 1-11) and

2.        The Liturgy of the Eucharist (Ch 11 following, touches on the heavenly Temple, the

                                                                            7 chalices and the marriage Supper of the Lamb.

The liturgical objects of John’s vision in Apocalypse are still the liturgical objects of the Catholic Mass:

Sunday worship a high priest an altar Priests (presbyteroi) vestments consecrated celibacy lamp stands, or Menorah penitence incense the book, or scroll the Eucharist Host chalices the Sign of the Cross (the tau) the Gloria the Alleluia Lift up your hearts

1:10 1:13 8:3-4; 11:1; 14:18 4:4; 11:15; 14:3; 19:4 1:13; 4:4; 6:11; 7:9; 15:6; 19:13-14 14:14 1:12; 2:5 ch. 2 and 3 5:8; 8:3-5 5:1 2:17 15:7; ch. 16; 21:9 7:3; 14:1; 22:4 15:3-4 19:1; 3, 4, 6 11:12

the “Holy, Holy, Holy” the Amen the “Lamb of God” the prominence of the Virgin Mary intercession of angels and saints devotion to St Michael, archangel antiphonal chant readings from Scripture the priesthood of the faithful catholicity or universality silent contemplation the marriage supper of the Lamb

4:8 19:4; 22:21 5:6 and throughout 12:1; 13-17 5:8; 6:9-10; 8:3-4 12:7 4:8-11; 5:9-14; 7:10-12; 18:1-8 ch. 2-3; 5; 8:2-11 1:6; 20:6 7:9 8:1 19:9, 17

Catholics can truly claim to be the real Bible Christians when it comes to the worship of God revealed in the Bible. Many of the standard prayers of the Mass are taken verbatim from the pages of Scripture:

Opening blessing Apostolic greeting Amen The Lord be with you Lard, have mercy Glory to God … Alleluia Lift up your hearts Holy, holy, holy … Eucharistic prayer The great Amen The Lord’s prayer Peace be with you Lamb of God This is the Lamb of God Lord, I am not worthy Go in peace Thanks be to God

Mt 28:19 2 Cor 13:14 1 Chr 16:36b Luke 1:28; 2 Thess 3:16; Ruth 2:4 Mt 17:15; 20:31; Ps 123:3 Lk 2:14; plus many texts in Revelation Rev 19:1-6; Tob 13:18 Lam 3:41 Rev 4:8; Is 6:3; Mk 11:9-10; Ps 118:26 1 Cor 11:23-26; Mt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:17-20 Rev 5:14 Mt 6:9-13 Jn 14:27; 20:19 Jn 1:29; Rev 5:6 and elsewhere Rev 19:9 Mt 8:8 Lk 7:50; 2 Chr 35:3 2 Cor 9:15

                                                                                                      (From S Hahn, R.T.B. 113)

Some of our Protestant brothers argue that Catholics resacrifice Jesus at every Mass. But this displays their poor understanding of a key Biblical concept : the memorial or anamnesis. Jesus said: “Do this as a memorial of me” (Luke 22:19). This was not a mere recalling of the past. When the Jews in the Bible, who lived a thousand years after the time of Moses, would remember the great events of the Exodus at the Passover Meal, they spoke as if they were the ones actually present. The ritual remembering connected them to the event.

When Jesus at the Last Supper, which was a Passover Meal, commanded “Do this in memory of me”, he intended that we relive the Eucharist in a way that we actually participate in the original once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. This is why Catholics refer to the “Holy sacrifice of the Mass”. The Mass is a memorial of a sacrifice and so by that fact is a sacrifice not that Jesus is resacrificed at every Mass.  I quote here from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:  “Because it is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice.  The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution:  ‘This is my body which is given to you’ and ‘this cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood’ (Lk. 22:19/20).  In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ (Mt. 26:28)  (CCC 1366)

“The Church which is the Body of Christ participates in the offering of her Head.  With him, she herself is offered whole and entire.  She unites herself to his intercession with the Father for all.  In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body.  The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer and work are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value.  Christ’s sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering”.  (CCC 1368)

The prophet Malachi speaks of the perfect sacrifice of the Messianic era in Chapter1, verse 11:

“For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts”.

This prophecy could only refer to the holy sacrifice of the Mass which is offered, often with incense, all over the world virtually every hour from sunrise to sunset.

All Christian churches before the Reformation had altars for the Sacrifice of the Mass. So the “altar calls” that Protestants are used to is one of the last vestiges of their Catholic past as they do not have altars today except perhaps our high church Anglican brethren.  No wonder the famous Catholic convert from Protestantism J.R.R. Tolkien author of the “Lord of the Rings” could refer to Protestant worship as “a shadowy medlay of half remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs”.

BAD POPES: Why Popes at all? In Matthew 16:17-19 Jesus gave Simon three things : first, the new name of Peter (or Rock); second, his pledge to build his Church upon Peter; and third, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.

When Jesus speaks of the ‘keys of the kingdom’ he is referring to an important Old Testament passage, Isaiah 22:20-22 where Hezekiah, the royal heir to David’s throne and King of Israel in Isaiah’s day, replaced his old Prime Minister Shebna, with a new one named Eliakim. Everyone could tell which one of the royal cabinet ministers was the new Prime Minister since he was given the ‘keys of the kingdom’. By entrusting to Peter the ‘keys of the kingdom’, Jesus established the office of the Prime Minister for administering the Church as his Kingdom on earth. The ‘keys’ are a symbol, then, of Peter’s office and primacy to be handed on to his successor; thus it has been handed down throughout the ages. (S.H.R.S.H. 71).

In the passage mentioned Isaiah 22:21 it says that the new Prime Minister will be like a father to his people. The Pope (word means father) is also like a father to his people.

Yes there have been bad popes but fortunately the Church has been protected by Christ and never permitted the handful of scoundrels to teach error in matters of faith and morals.

A search on the internet reveals about a dozen bad popes from St Peter the Apostle to Pope Benedict XVI, a total of 266 popes of which 78 were regarded as saints, 11 are Blessed, 33 were martyrs. The popes are the leaders of the People of God today as the Jewish kings were the leaders of the People of God in the Old Testiment times.  When one compares the popes to the kings of Israel, we find that out of a total of 19 kings, none were good! Of the kings of Judah, out of a total of 16, 6 were good and 10 were bad! Out of 12 Apostles Jesus had one bad one – Judas Iscariot. But then Jesus did warn about good and bad seed (Matthew 13:24f) and good and bad fish in the kingdom of God (Matthew 13:47f).

Politically minded people almost from the start of the Papacy have insinuated themselves into Papal affairs because of the huge influence that the Papacy has. But politicians come and go but the Papacy continues making it the oldest extant institution in the world today. After all, Jesus said that the gates of hell would never prevail over his Church built on Peter the Rock and his legitimate successors (Matthew 16:18).

The Protestant historian Lord Macauley said that there has never been an institution on earth like the Papacy which has seen the death of so many historical institutions and may still exist when London is only a heap of ruins!

Another Protestant historian J.A. Froude said that “the Roman Church after all is something. It will survive against all other forms of Christianity” … (M. Geffin, Objections, 1967).

10.    VAIN REPETITIONS: Catholic formula prayers are often attacked for violating the Lord’s

condemnation against ‘vain repetitions’ (Matthew 6:7). But no wife would object to her husband repeating the words ‘I love you’ over and over again. So why can’t we tell God we love him over and over again in our prayers? Biblical prayers like the Psalms have lots of repetition. (See Psalm 136; 150). The Rosary is often dismissed as vain repetition but the great Protestant John Wesley prayed it and his Rosary beads are preserved in the Wesley Museum in the United Kingdom.

11.    THE “BROTHERS OF JESUS”: Matthew 13:55 lists the “brothers” of Jesus as James, Joses, Simon and Judas. But Luke 6:15-16 reveals that James and Joses, though elsewhere called “brothers” of Jesus, are here shown to be the sons of Alphaeus (cf. Matthew 10:3; 27:56) whose wife Mary was actually the blessed Virgin Mary’s sister, or perhaps her cousin (cf. John 19:25). These “brothers” were actually Jesus’ cousins. The term brother is often used to mean ‘cousin’ or some other type of kin in Scripture. (S.B.T. 214)

12.    “CALL NO MAN FATHER”: “Call no man your father, since you have only one Father and he is in heaven. You must not allow yourselves to be called teachers” ... (Matthew 23:9). Our Protestant brethren take the father bit literally and ignore the second part re not calling people teachers. Again it’s “text without context is pretext”.  In context, Christ is actually warning against looking to any man as a father in the way God alone is our Father.  Similarly, he warns against calling men teachers or masters in a way that is proper to God alone, our true and ultimate teacher and master.  As we will see in subsequent verses, Christ did not literally mean that we cannot address others as “Father”, even in a religious context.  Also, many non-Catholics who object to the Catholic custom of calling priests “Father” forget that in the same passage below, Christ also says “Call no man teacher.”  Yet these non-Catholics call many people teacher, and commonly use the word “doctor” which is the Latin word for “teacher”.

In context Jesus says we must not give honour to men that belongs to God alone, and must not regard any human as taking the place of our Father in heaven. Protestant aversion to the Catholic custom of calling priests “father” is biblically untenable. Jesus calls Abraham “father Abraham” in Luke 16:24, as Paul does repeatedly in Romans 4.  In fact, Paul made the startling statement that, “Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:14-15). This passage sums up the theological reason why Catholics call priests ‘Father’. Also the deacon Stephen, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, addressed the Jewish priests and scribes as “my fathers” (Acts 6:12-15, 7:1-2). And the other New Testament writers addressed men as “father” (cf. Romans 4:17-18; 1 Thessalonians 2:11; John 2:13-14). (S.B.T. 221)

13.    THERE IS ONLY ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MAN: Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5)

All Catholics will say ‘Amen’ to this, but it does not take anything away from Christ’s authority and glory when Christians share in this mediatorship “For we are God’s fellow workers”

(1 Corinthians 3:9). When Christians preach the Good News to those ignorant of it (Romans 10:14) they are acting as mediators for Christ who came to preach the Good News to all. Also when we pray for one another to effect change that would not occur unless we prayed, we are mediators. The Bible is clear that God grants gifts ‘thru the prayers of many’ (2 Corinthians 1:11). In fact the Bible is clear that when Christians offer ‘supplications, prayers, petitions and thanksgivings for everyone”, those things “are good and pleasing to God our Saviour’ (1 Timothy 2:13). So Mary’s role as a heavenly ‘prayer warrior’ is completely Biblical (J.H. 231). C.S. Lewis said ‘If you can ask for the prayer of the living, why should you not ask for the prayer of the dead”? (Letters to Malcolm, pg.15).

14.    MARY: Why do Catholics worship the Virgin Mary? The simple answer is they don’t – they venerate her or regard her with great respect just as Protestants do when they place the Bible in a prominent place in their homes or pray on their knees before an open Bible. They are not worshipping the Bible clearly.

Catholics make a big fuss about Mary because the Bible makes a big fuss about her! So as Bible Christians Catholics give her the attention she is due. Billy Graham the great Protestant evangelist has said the “we evangelical Christians do not give Mary her due”. The South African Pentecostal Pastor David du Plessis said: “Protestants ignore Mary”.

Mary is the mother of our Saviour Jesus Christ and also we are “her children” if we obey the commandments and bear witness for Jesus. (Revelations 12:17). The Bible also refers to Mary as the “Mother of God” in Luke 1:43. The reference to “Lord” here is translated Kurios in Greek, the Old Testament Greek word for Yahweh (or Jehova). So the mother of “my Lord” or “my God”.

In Old Testament times, the most important woman in the Kingdom was not the King’s wife but the King’s mother (gebirah or great lady in Hebrew). Gebirah was more than just a title, it was an office with real authority. Solomon reigns with his mother Bathsheba at his right hand and this custom continued to the very end of the monarchy. The gebirah was considered an intercessor, or advocate for people (1 Kings 2:19). Jesus is a Davidic king with a Davidic queen : Mary our intercessor before the throne of God.

The Bible says that “all generations will call [her] blessed”. (Luke 1:48) and Mary is shown in the Bible as the new Ark of the Covenant (Apocalypse 11 and 12). Luke chapter 1 also alludes to Mary as the Ark:

In Luke 1:35, Mary is told that “the power of the Most High will overshadow you’ – the same verb is used when the winged Cherubim overshadow the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 13:22).

There are subtle but significant parallels between Luke 1 and 2 Samuel which describe King David’s effort to bring the Ark to Jerusalem e.g.

1.     Luke tells us that Mary ‘arose and went’ into the Judean hill country to visit

                 Elizabeth. Luke reminds us that David ‘arose and went’ into the same region

                 centuries earlier to retrieve the Ark (2 Samuel 6:2).

2.    Upon Mary’s arrival, Elizabeth is struck by the same sense of awe and unworthiness before Mary (Luke 1:43) that David felt standing before the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:9).

Parallels continue as the joy surrounding this great encounter between BVM and Eliz. causes the infant John to leap with excitement (Luke 1:41), much as David danced with excitement before the Ark (2 Samuel 6:16). Finally, Luke adds that Mary stayed in the ‘House of Zechariah for ‘three months’ (Luke 1:40, 56) recalling how the Ark of the Covenant was temporarily stationed in the “house of Obed – edom” for a waiting period of “three months” (2 Samuel 6:11). Taken together, these parallels show us that Mary now assumes a role in salvation history that was once played by the Ark of the Covenant. Like this golden chest, she is a sacred vessel where the Lord’s presence dwells intimately with his people.

Luke also draws upon a second tradition from the Books of Chronicles. This time he brings into his story a highly significant expression once connected with the Ark. The term shows up in Luke 1:42, where Elizabeth bursts out with an exuberant cry at the arrival of Mary and her Child. The Greek verb translated as “exclaimed” is found only here in the entire New Testament. Every time the expression is used in the Old Testament, it forms part of the stories surrounding the Ark of the Covenant. In particular, it refers to the melodic sounds made by Levitical singers and musicians when they glorify the Lord in song.

It thus describes the “exulting” voice of instruments that were played before the Ark as David carried it in procession to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 15:28; 16:4-5) and as Solomon transferred the Ark to its final resting place in the Temple (2 Chronicles 5:13). Alluding to these episodes, Luke connects this same expression with the melodic cry of another Levitical descendant, the aged Elizabeth (Luke 1:15). She too lifts up her voice in liturgical praise, not before the golden chest, but before Mary. Luke’s remarkable familiarity with these ancient stories enables him to select even a single word that will whisper to his readers that this young Mother of the Messiah is the new Ark of the Covenant. (Ignatius Bible pg.107).    

In Biblical typology Old Testament types prefigure more important New Testament ones. The    movement from types to the reality they signify is always a movement from the lesser to the greater e.g. the Temple prefigures the New Temple which is the Body of Christ (John 2:19f). Jesus said of himself that “something greater than the Temple is here”. (Matthew 12:6). The Ark of the Covenant prefigures Mary the new Ark of the Covenant.

Consider the symbolism : The Ark held God’s presence. And now Mary carried God incarnate in her womb. The Ark contained the tablets of the Law. Mary held the Lawgiver. The Ark held Aaron’s rod of authority. Mary carried the One who held authority over all things in heaven and on earth. The Ark held the jar of manna – the bread of God’s provision to sustain the Hebrew people in the wilderness; Mary bore Jesus, the Bread of Life’.  (D.J. pg.51).

15.    IMAGES: Our Protestant friends often ask why statues and pictures of Jesus, Mary and the saints are permitted by Catholics when one of the Ten Commandments condemns the making of graven images and bowing down before them. But all Christians have photos in their homes of family members. They don’t love the photos themselves but rather the people they represent.

          That’s what paintings and statues do – they remind us of wonderful brothers and sisters who have gone before us. We love them and thank God for them.

          The critical question is not whether or not these images should exist, because the Old Testament records, soon after the Ten Commandments are listed, specific instructions for images that were to be made as part of the Holy of Holies – garden imagery and the cherubim over the mercy seat, for example. God even commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent on a pole, which the people were to look upon in order to be healed from a plague. Either God got his commands mixed up, or the point of the command is not to worship images (as the Jews did at Mount Sinai with the golden calf) rather than not to have them. (S.H. – R.S.H. 153). The Commandment obviously refers to idols.

16.    CROSS OR CRUCIFIX?: Catholics don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead and so he’s still

          crucified!  So, many Protestants believe.

All four Gospels give more attention to Jesus’ final days than to the rest of his ministry. In Matthew, Passion Week (Chs 21-28) comprises nearly ⅓ of his Gospel. This unparalleled emphasis reflects the centrality of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection. (Ignatius Study Bible, pg. 54). In Matthew there are 75 versus dealing with the Passion and only 20 verses dealing with the Resurrection. In Mark: 119 verses (Passion) and 20 (Resurrection); in Luke: 127 verses (Passion) and 53 (Resurrection).

As Bible Christians, this emphasis on the Passion is reflected in Catholic worship and explains the use of the crucifix with the crucified Christ and also the 14 Stations of the Cross in every Catholic Church. This is in keeping with the Word of God which recommends meditation on the Passion of Jesus : “Let us look on Jesus who endured the Cross so that we do not give up for want of courage.” (Hebrew 12:2f). Jesus is risen but we are not yet! Meditation on the suffering of Christ helps us bear our own trials and sufferings.

         

          In the central act of Catholic Worship the Mass, the Resurrection of Christ is proclaimed three

times : 1. in the Creed; 2. In the memorial acclamation and 3. In the Eucharistic prayer – it’s at the heart of Catholic worship.

Catholics should invite their non Catholic friends to Mass and explain these things to them because as Fulton Sheen said:

“There are not a hundred people in the world that hate the Catholic Church, but there are thousands who hate what they mistakenly believe the Catholic Church to be” – or teach.

Again it’s a problem of false dichotomies in Protestantism – the either / or problem – that you can’t have the Resurrection and a figure on the Cross. We believe you can have both!  

16.    PURGATORY: When Jesus let his power and holiness be seen in the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5:8), Peter fell to his knees and said: “Depart from me Lord for I am a sinful man”. He did not say ‘whoa Lord’ or something to that effect. Peter’s imperfections seem magnified to him in the presence of divine holiness. He felt unclean and unworthy in the presence of the majesty of God. So it will be with us when we come before God at the individual judgment (Hebrew 9:28), we will squirm in our uncleanness before God and long to go to the ablution block for purification or purgation of our sin before entering heaven.

That is what Purgatory is, a place of purging of sin and purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven – a cleansing fire that is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. Purgatory is not the antechamber of Hell but of Heaven. So after death there are only two places Hell and Heaven (and its annex Purgatory). The work purgatory does not appear in the Bible (nor does the word Trinity etc.) but the concept does.

Since “nothing unclean shall enter” heaven (Revelation 21:27) we need first to be purified. From reflection on Scripture, the Church has always taught that there is an intermediate state for those who are bound for heaven, it is a state of purification and tradition calls it purgatory.

When Jesus says that whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come (Matthew 12:32) then there must be a state, in which people are forgiven ‘in the age to come’. Tradition calls it purgatory.

In another place, Jesus is speaking of God’s judgment. He says: “Make friends with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny”. (Matthew 5:25-26).

Again, this implies a state in the afterlife in which people “pay” their penitential debt to God- that is, they are purified. And Christian tradition calls that state purgatory.

Even in the Old Testament the prophets discussed judgment in these terms. Malachi employed the image that will recur in the New Testament. The final purification of the faithful, he says, is like a refiner’s fire. (Malachi 3:2-3).

St Paul, too, speaks of this purifying fire. It is the fire of those who are ultimately saved, not damned. Indeed, Paul says the fire itself is their salvation, for it rids them of the sins that cannot enter heaven. (1 Corinthians 3:13).

          That saving fire is what Catholics call purgatory.

There is an intermediate state between earth and heaven. The Israelites called it Sheol, the abode of the dead. And the Jews of Jesus’ time fervently believed that the souls of God’s faithful could be “delivered … from the depths of Sheol” (Psalm 86:13). Pious Jews, then as now, considered it an obligation to raise prayers (the Kaddish) for their deceased family members.

There is a book in the Bible called Second Maccabees. As mentioned above Martin Luther, in cavalier fashion removed books from the Bible – New Testament books like James, Hebrews, 2 Peter and the Apocalypse (books cherished by Catholics and Protestants alike). He also removed Old Testament books like Second Maccabees. But even those who do not accept this book as part of canonical scripture can’t doubt its historicity, its valuable historical witness. It’s a glimpse of the beliefs of Jews in Jesus’ time - the beliefs implied in Jesus’ own statements about an intermediate state in the afterlife. This is the “prison” of spirits where, according to St Peter, Jesus first went to preach the Good News (I Peter 3:19-20). The Jews called it Sheol. The Greek New Testament calls it Hades (as distinct from Gehenna, the place of hellfire). Catholics call it purgatory. ((S.H.R.T.B. 123f).

The great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, probably under the influence of his Catholic convert friend J.R.R. Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame) believed in Purgatory and so offered up prayers for the dead. In “Letter to Malcolm”, he commented “Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they”? Just two months before he died, Lewis wrote to a close friend, “When you die and ‘prison visiting’ is allowed come down and look me up in Purgatory”!   Admittedly the above treatment of purgatory may seem negative and one-sided as it speaks only of the purgation of sins and says nothing about cooperating with the Holy Spirit to reach one’s full potential for love so as to be able to enter into the life of the love community of the Trinity fully.  But in a short article like this, this is inevitable.

17.    THE RAPTURE AND THE END TIMES: Why do our Protestant brethren make such a fuss about the Rapture, the millennium, Israel in the End Times etc.?

The Rapture concept is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 where it talks about Christians being “caught up” or snatched up. But Catholics reject the hype and rapture fiction surrounding this concept. And Rapture fiction it is because it is a “new gospel” (1 Corinthians 11:4). Though nearly unheard before the nineteenth century, since then it has spread like wild fire through the USA, the home of prosperity cults and the sugar coated gospel – a cult of softness as “they want to escape persecution for the cross of Christ” (Galatians 6:13). It is a “beam me up out of here Scotty” theology!

Escapism: Peter Hammond, the editor of the popular South African Protestant magazine Joy has characterized rapture fiction as an “eschatology of escapism”, a longing to be removed from responsibilities here on earth”. “Paralysed by pessimism”, he says, “many passive pew warmers are praying for the rapture to rescue them out of their responsibilities”. (Joy, May 2007) (See also www.carl_olson.com/rapture).

The anti Catholic writer Tim LaHaye has made a fortune on his books and movies in the “left-behind” series. At the Rapture he teaches all the baddies (particularly the Catholic Church) will be left behind and all the goodies meet Jesus in the air and be saved. 

Caught up Together:  Dr. Paul Thigpen, ex Evangelical Pastor, explains what St. Paul meant:

When Jesus and the saints come down from heaven, St. Paul insists, the faithful Christians who are still alive on the earth “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air;  and so we shall always be with the Lord”  (1 Thessalonians 4:17).  What is the significance of that Meeting?

First, we should note that this statement parallels Jesus’ words about sending out the angels to “gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven,” so they can be with “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory”.  (Mark 13:26-27;  see also Matthew 24:31),  In addition, St.. Paul’s remarks on the same subject in 2 Thessalonians are prefaced with a slightly different description of this meeting:  “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet Him”  -  a day when “the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire”  (2 Thessalonians 2:1; 1:7).

As we have seen, the context of the 1 Thessalonians passage, with its references to the angel, the trumpet, and the clouds, shows that St. Paul is writing about the glorious public return of the Lord.  The question that arises is this:  What is the purpose of the faithful on earth being “caught up” in the glory of their descending Lord to meet Him as He arrives in triumph?

The answer is simple when we recognize an ancient custom in St. Paul’s culture.  State dignitaries and victorious military leaders of his time often made grand public visits to a city.  Such an appearance was called a parousia, the same Greet term that St. Paul and other biblical writers often use to write about Christ’s glorious arrival at the close of the age (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 15:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:8;  2 Peter 3:4;  1 John 2:28).

When the illustrious visitor approached a city with his entourage, he was often met by the citizens who wanted to go out to welcome him and then accompany him back into the city.  It was a way for the people to honor such a person’s arrival and to take part in the celebration of his coming.  This, in fact, was the custom that led to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the day we remember as Passion (or Palm) Sunday  (see Matthew 21:1-17).

When we find that the Greek word translated here as “meet” or “meeting” (apantesis) is the same term that was used for the gathering of citizens to meet the approaching celebrity, the passage makes perfect sense.  Those who are still alive on earth when Jesus returns, gathered together from the ends of the earth by the angels, will have a great privilege:  They will be caught up in His coulds of glor to meet the approaching “King of kings and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15) and to join the saints whose souls have already experienced the rewards of living with Him in heaven.  Then they will accompany Him as He enters the world in triumph.

On that day, each faithful Christian will become “a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1).  Those who “suffer with Him”  (that is, for His sake) through the terrors of the last days will at that time “also be glorified with Him”  (Romans 8:7).

(Paul Thigpen, The Rapture Trap p. 114f)

The Millennium: This word for a thousand years does not occur in the Bible but the concept does in the Apocalypse Chapter 20. Millennialists see Christ as reigning for a thousand years on earth. Catholic tradition since the time of St Augustine (354 – 430 A.D.) has interpreted the 1000 years of Apocalypse as a symbolic reference to the age of the Church, which spans the distance between the first and second coming of Christ. For us Church, Kingdom, and the millennium are all different ways of describing the same thing. Before St Augustine a few theologians believed in a literal thousand-year reign by Christ on earth. But they were a minority and there is no consensus. The Vatican declared in 1944 that millenarianism could not safely be taught as authentic Christian doctrine. The Church has rejected “even modified forms of this falsification of the Kingdom” (CCC 676). So generally speaking Catholics don’t get concerned with fanciful terms like Premillennialists, Pretribulation, Posttribulation etc.

Now the history of the Protestant movement which broke away from the Catholic Mother Church in the 16^th century is full of endless prophecies about the end times, the antichrist, the end of the world, the Tribulation etc. etc. None of these endless prophecies have come true and yet the so called prophets go on producing new dates for all these things to discredit Christianity in the process. Why do they do this?

1.    Firstly perhaps because they have little tradition and little continuity with the past. At the Reformation they distanced themselves from the past. They referred to the traditions of the Church as ‘so much baggage’ which has accumulated over 2000 years. But this baggage can be a real blessing, for if a new theological theory develops, that does not have a precedent (or if precedented, does not constitute a consensus) in our Tradition, it may not be a valuable insight, so much as a dangerous deviation – we need to be discerning. The rapture and left behind theories are just that – a dangerous deviation that is leading to the ridicule of Christianity.    

But can Protestants not learn from the past? The problem is they have no past. Protestantism began in the 16^th century and jettisoned the past as so much Papist obscurantism. “Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes”! Remember too that the majority of Protestant Churches only began in the last 100 years – what older mainline churches call the “mushroom churches” – here today and gone tomorrow. Non-denominational denomination Churches!

England and America is littered with old, discarded, boarded up churches that began and ended in less than a hundred years – now alas they are turned into cinemas, bingo halls or temples of other world religions.

In Time Magazine of May 1989 there was a long article entitled: “Those Mainline Blues: America’s Old Guard Protestant Churches confront an unprecedented decline”. It stated that these Churches are in “deep trouble” whereas Roman Catholic Membership has grown a solid 16%.

What of the American mega churches on DSTV Channel 77? They all tend to be built on some very charismatic individual (like John Hagee) and when he dies the church dies with him or dies out like family businesses with the grandson – family businesses rarely continue after it’s taken over  by a grandson! So the new denominations tend to last about 50 years or so.

Remember the ex Catholic Pentecostal Ray McAuley and his Rhema Church. In the early 1980’s his was the mega church at the time – unstoppable – churches, shops, T.V. station etc. But in about five years he lost about thirteen of his pastors, who broke away to start their own churches; the T.V. station is gone and so have many of his congregations.

Ex Catholic Ray McAuley’s Rhema was not built on the rock of Peter and so was built on sand. The famous American Jewish Sociologist Will Herberg who has studied Catholic, Jews and Protestants in the U.S.A. once remarked that no reform movement in the Catholic Church through 2000 years has had lasting success if it was opposed to, or unsupported by the See of Peter. I would also include breakaway denominations like Rhema.

Revivalism:

2.    The second reason why Evangelicals tend to be so gullible re endless prophecies, is I suggest that they have no consistent Eucharistic doctrine. By this I mean that the pastors go in for revivalism to keep the congregation focused on eternal realities. Catholic pastors stress the Eucharist. Aldous Huxley the famous English writer and author of the best selling book Brave New World – a pessimistic view of the future along with Orwell’s 1984. Huxley wrote once that:

       Revivalism is much more common in strictly Protestant than Catholic countries for irregular emotional boosters seem to be required by Protestants to take the place of those slight but regular recurring boosters provided by Catholic ritual. (See “Proper Studies” on Ritual).  Many Protestants don’t believe in ritual – generally speaking. By ritual Huxley was referring to things like the Mass, Confession etc. which involve ongoing revival all the time e.g. The Bible warns of receiving Communion unworthily “you are eating and drinking your own condemnation” (1 Corinthians 11). Wary of this we need to go to Confession regularly so keeping us on the straight and narrow – Huxley’s “Regular recurring boosters”.

Parousia: Scott Hahn has pointed out that the first Christians saw the Eucharist as a Parousia. This is a Greek word for coming – the coming of Christ, used generally today for the second coming of Christ. It also means a real, personal, living, lasting and active presence. Jesus said in Matthew 28:20 “my presence (parousia) will be with you always”. Now the first Christians saw the Eucharist as a Parousia, as we Catholics do today. (“Every Eucharist is parousia – the Lord’s coming” – Joseph Rattzinger). That is probably why the first Christians celebrated the Breaking of the Bread (Acts 2) every day so as to experience the consoling real presence of Christ among them.

“Whenever the New Testament speaks of Christ’s coming, it speaks also of His judgment. The Eucharist parousia is a real presence – Christ coming in power to judge. His power is evident in its effects on those who receive Communion. Paul speaks specifically of those who receive unworthily and so bring judgment upon themselves. ‘That is why many of you are, weak and ill, and some have died

(1 Corinthians 11:30). For such unrepentant sinners, the Eucharist is the final coming of Christ; it is the last judgment”.                                                                            (S. Hahn, Catholic For A Reason, pg. 44)

First Judgment:

3.      The third possible reason for Evangelical preoccupation with the Last Days etc. is that they tend to

          play down the first judgment at Death – “after Death comes Judgment” (Hebrews 9:28) we read in

Hebrews. Catholics tend to emphasis the First Judgment and leave out the endless speculation about dates of the Second Coming, the Tribulation, the Name of the anti Christ etc.   

4.      The fourth possible factor – money! The prophets of doom profit from gloom!

ISRAEL IN THE END TIMES:

Catholics believe that Jewish people have a very important part to play in the future of the Church. Basing himself on Romans 11 St John Chrysostom (d. 407) wrote: “Seeing the Gentiles abusing little by little their grace, God will recall a second time the Jews”. St Jerome (345 – 420) said that the sins of the Jews “occasioned the salvation of the Gentiles and again the incredulity of the Gentiles will occasion the conversion of Israel”. However this does not necessarily refer to the geographic entity of Israel as the majority of Jews do not live there and probably never will. The majority of Jews live in the Diaspora and every Jew in the world is regarded as a citizen of Israel, of belonging to the Nation of Israel. God’s promises are to the Nation of Israel and not necessarily to the State of Israel.

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS:

Making the sign of the Cross is very ancient. Tertullian (160 – 225 A.D.) said: “At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, or sit at table, or light the lamps, or go to bed or sit down, and in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead, the sign of the cross”.

St Cyril of Jerusalem (315 – 386 A.D.) said: “Let us not be ashamed of the Cross of Christ, but though another hide it, you should openly seal it upon your forehead, that the devils may behold the royal sign and flee trembling far away. Make then this sign at eating and drinking, at sitting and lying down, at rising up, at speaking, at walking: in a word at every act”.

P.S.  The three small thumb crosses on the forehead, lips and heart made by the priest and the congregation at the Gospel proclamation in the Mass depict a triple consecration: of the mind to understand the Gospel message, of the lips to speak of it openly by evangelisation and of the heart to love and cherish the Gospel.

19.    CHURCH HISTORY:

One of the greatest converts to the Catholic Church in England was the Anglican John Henry Newman. He once wrote: “whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this … And Protestantism has ever felt it so … This is shown in the determination of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone … To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

The flip side is also true : to cease to be deep in history is to become a Protestant! So as Catholics we need to study history ourselves and encourage our Protestant friends to look at history before the Reformation. Many Protestants are liable to skip from the Acts of the Apostles all the way to Martin Luther. This tendency is explained by the Protestant Robert McAfee Brown in The Spirit of Protestantism: “Emphasis on sola scripture has been the distinctive grandeur of Protestantism, but it has been the source of distinct misery as well. For it has often been based on the faulty assumption that it is possible to ‘leapfrog’ as it were, over 1900 years of Christian history, and read the Bible as though nothing had happened since the documents themselves were composed. Even if this were desirable, it is impossible. The ‘leapfrog’ is doomed to failure”.

As long as we Catholics try to argue from Scripture to Scripture in a fundamental fashion, the Protestant will win the war, if not the battle. For if apologetics is simply a matter of proof-texting, who is to say whether the Protestant or the Catholic twist is the right one.   

      

We have only to step back and look at the Church of the post-apostolic generation, the period of

          Clement of Rome (d. 96) the third bishop of the Roman Church who knew St Peter or St Ignatius of

          Antioch (50 – 107), the second bishop of Antioch who knew St John; or St Polycarp (66 – 155)  

         Who was a disciple of St John or the anonymous authors of the Didache (C. 60 A.D.), Shepherd of        

Hermas  (C. 140 A.D.) the Epistle of Barnabas, Fragnent of Papias etc. During this period  some of  the books of the New Testament were being written and the Protestant can see for himself that this was clearly a Catholic Church – “to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant”.

The witness of the early Fathers of the Church is very valuable and we should make good use of it not

as I’ve said above to be triumphalistic or score points over our Protestant friends but so that their   energies can be diverted from defending the indefensible to feeding and relishing the truth. Karl Keating once asked: “Who would you believe to relay the details of an event accurately – an eyewitness – or someone who came along fifteen hundred years later and then told you what he thought had happened?”  (A.J. p. 79). Someone has compared the early Church Falters to a spring – the closer you get to a spring the purer the water will be. 

“REFUTE FALSEHOOD, CORRECT ERROR, CALL TO OBEDIENCE BUT DO ALL WITH PATIENCE AND WITH THE INTENTION OF TEACHING”. (2 Timothy 4:2)

I am often amused by some new non denominational church that arrives flashily on the scene seemingly overnight. They can be an anthill of activity but in reality it is more like rearranging the desk chairs on the TITANIC!

Ex Baptist Pastor Steve Ray has written: “The majesty of the Church has been reduced to thousands of beggarly groups disputing doctrine and competing for members – an exponential multiplication of confusion, sects, schisms, and false teaching ... There is no longer a united front – the organic, visible unity – that once demanded the respect and fear of the Roman Empire and turned a pagan society into a Christian civilisation. This lost unity is the very thing that could shake our modern world to the core and again convert the world to Christ” (C.T.T. pg. 65/6)

CIVILIZATION:

Whilst on the subject of civilization I recommend strongly Sir Kenneth Clarke’s Civilization and Professor Thomas Wood’s How the Catholic Church Built Civilization. Both writers were Protestants but were so impressed by the Catholic Church’s contribution to civilization that both became Catholics.

20.       CHURCH PLANTING:

The future in South Africa for Christianity looks particularly bleak because of the popularity of the “Church Planting” movement (plant a new sect movement?). All Pastors’ fraternals from all denominations (except Catholic) collect money for a big tent. They loan the tent to some young charismatic aspiring Pastor. He builds up his new tent church largely by “stealing” sheep from older established churches. Once he is established, he builds his own church and returns the tent to the Pastors. But he has a dilemma – he’s in debt to Pastors from a wide cross section of beliefs – those who believe in no sacraments or two sacraments, Saturday not Sunday worship, baptism in the Spirit not water baptism, Pentecostal or more ritualistic worship etc. etc. So the new Pastor has to “pick and mix” and the result is a new, brash kid on the block with an eclectic mix of beliefs. Unity is a dream! If there is not unity the world has the right to say that the Father did not send His Son. (cf. John 17:21).

21.       TO THOSE WHO ASK YOU:

Once again I quote the highly perceptive remark of Fulton Sheen : “There are not a hundred people in the world that hate the Catholic Church but there are thousands who hate what they mistakenly believe the Catholic Church to be.”

The majority of people who approach you will be honest enquirers who want an honest convincing answer. But there will be others who only wish to offend and score points. Jesus told us that an honest assessment of our neighbour’s dispositions is sometimes necessary as when for instance there is the danger of sacrilegious irreverence. (See Matthew 7:6).      

22.       CHICK COMICS:

Those who are genuine enquirers will examine official Catholic sources (available on internet) and  not quote from outrageously slanderous material like Jack Chick comics which spread hate and paranoia. They claim that the Catholic Church started Islam, Communism, the Freemasons, and the Ku Klux Klan; that it controls the Illuminati, the Mafia, and the New Age Movement; that it created the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism and is data basing the name of every single Protestant Church member for a future inquisition!

If the anti-Catholic Pastor John Hagee, Soli Philander, Leon Schuster and John Cleese all tripped out a six-tab of mescaline, then collaborated in a brain-storming jam-session, they could not have come up with a tale like this! Yet Protestants have distributed 500 million copies of Chick comics!

23.       REMBRANDT:

The great Protestant Dutch artist Rembrandt lived in a country which was almost half Catholic and half Protestant. The lack of Christian unity distressed him. One of his paintings shows St Francis of Assisi (1181 – 1226) a Saint loved by Protestants and Catholics alike kneeling before a large open Bible (a symbol of Protestantism) and holding a Crucifix in his hand (a Catholic symbol). We could imitate this great artist in his desire for Christian unity by showing courtesy and respect “so that those who slander you when you are living a good life in Christ may be proved wrong in the accusations that they bring”. (Peter 3:16).

The non Christian Mahatma Gandhi was tremendously influenced by Jesus especially the Sermon on the Mount. As regards the saying of Jesus “if an enemy strikes you on the right cheek you should offer him the left” (Luke 6:29), Gandhi said:  “I suspect Christ meant you must show courage – be willing to take a blow, several blows to show you will not strike back nor will you be pushed aside. And when you do that, it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred decrease and his respect increase. I think that Jesus grasped that and I have seen it work.”

CONCLUSION:

“Divisions between Christians are a sin and a scandal and Christians ought at all times to be making contributions towards re-union, if it only by their prayers.” (C.S. Lewis).

DAILY PRAYER FOR UNITY:

Father I pray that all may be one as you Father are one in Christ and He in you, so that the world may come to believe that it was you who sent Him. May there be one flock and one shepherd. Amen. (cf. John 17; 10:16).    

RECOMMENDED READING:

Most of the books quoted above are by Protestant converts to Catholicism – pastors and lay people. For many of the latter there was a dissatisfaction with Protestant worship (usually songs and sermons) and a search for the authentic worship of the early Church.

For the Pastors there was a weariness with having to be their own pope with no tradition to fall back on or no magisterium to guide them on so many thorny moral issues like in vitro fertilization etc. Also the disintegration of Christianity into endless factions was obviously the work of the devil – divide and rule and an alarming aspect of Christianity today.  Their stories are available on the Coming Home Network International Website. 

I conclude briefly with one of them:   Leons Choy, the well known evangelical missionary in China.  With her husband she founded Ambassadors for Christ, WTRM-FM radio station in the USA, writer, editor and collaborator of nearly 30 books.  She wrote the Authorised Biography on one of the most famous South African pastors:  Andrew Murray.

Quotes from her:

“I came to believe that the Catholic Church was not another religion or “another gospel” against which Paul warned, not an aberration of God’s truth and certainly not a heracy.  It was the original trunk of the Christian tree, preserved from error in matters of faith and morality by the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus.  It did not contain partial truths like the branches, but the fullness of truth.  Could I live with myself if I failed to become part of the truth even at this late stage of my life?”

“Enough hanging suspended precariously over the Tiber but not courageously walking to the other bank!  Enough scrutinizing of every doctrine and judging truth with my own fallible interpretation!  Enough stalling after I  heard Jesus’ clear call, “Follow me!”  Enough anxiety about the potential fallout from my decision!  Enough excuses about advanced age, difficult change and criticism!  It was time to finally, joyfully embrace the truth of the Catholic.”

Books Used:

Marcus Grodi, Journeys Home, CH Resources, Zanesville, Ohio

Patrick Madrid, Surprised by Truth, Basilica Pr, Dallas, Texas

Stephen K Ray, Crossing the Tiber, Ignatius Press, San Francisco

Scott and Kimberley Hahn, Rome Sweet Home, Ignatius Press; The Lamb’s Supper, Doubleday, New York;

Catholic Bible Dictionary, Doubleday, Reason to Believe, etc.

J.A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, St Paul Publishers, New York

Mike Aquilina, The Mass of the Early Christians, O.S.V., Huntington, Indiana

Alex Jones, No Price Too High, Ignatius Press

D.B. Currie, Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, Ignatius Press

Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Ignatius Press

(Orthodox Church : Peter Gillquist, Becoming Ortho-dox, Conciliar Press, Ben Lomond, California

Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Ignatius Press

CCC = Catechism of the Catholic Church

Websites:

EWTN.com

catholicscomehome.org

Catholic Answers (www.catholic.com)

catholicanswers.org

evangelicalcatholic.com

wordonfire.org

truthandlifebible.com

catholicleague.org

salvationhistory.com

integratedcatholiclife.org

www.iapwe.org