A question for some Protestants who feel it is necessary to proselytize Catholics

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wmscott

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First off, let me clarify that when I say “Protestants” I am referring to some not all “Protestants”. Many “Protestants” here are here to learn about Catholicism and what Catholics believe. They and are very respectful and exhibit great Christian charity. They do believe differently as is their right to, but in no way do they demean and disrespect another Christian brothers and sisters. They are here to learn. To them I say thank you and the Peace of Christ be with you. :blessyou:

Therefore, one of my questions is and what concerns me is that once you are here and learn what Catholics and the Catholic Church teaches and believes about leaving the Catholic Church once you have accepted the fullness of truth and then decides to turn your back on it. And knowing full well that a Catholic is placing themselves in great peril of sin.

Why are the Protestants here are still willing to lead a Catholic, who is at a spiritual low and weakened in his or her faith, into apostasy. How Christian and how much Christian charity is being applied here to do such a thing. If Protestants believe that Catholics are Christians, then why the need to prostulize them. To do this then the Protestants must consider the Catholic Christian to be inferior to them. I find this a perilous and arrogant position to take. Is it a matter of pride and believing that your beliefs and faith is the only legitimate one?

Do some of the Protestants here really believe that the Catholic Church and Catholic faith is inferior to yours, regardless of theological differences?

Do you really believe that it is your mission to lead a Catholic, who is at a spiritual low and weakened in his or her faith away from the Truth?

How are your beliefs and faiths superior to the Catholic beliefs and faiths? Remember we all have the same Bible and aside from some grammatical differences in whatever translation, the Catholic and Protestant Gospels are the same.

Finally please show me where the Christian charity is in leading a Catholic who is at a spiritual low and weakened in his or her faith away from the into apostasy.

I just need to try and understand your logic.

As with the Protestant brothers and sisters above who do respect the Catholic, I also wish the Peace of Christ be with you also.
 
If I believed that the Catholic faith was the fulness of truth I would be a Catholic. I believe the Catholic faith has mixed the profane with the holy the pagan with what is true. What is charitable about leaving you in apostasy.
 
Hisalone said:
If I believed that the Catholic faith was the fulness of truth I would be a Catholic. I believe the Catholic faith has mixed the profane with the holy the pagan with what is true. What is charitable about leaving you in apostasy.
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If the RCC does not have the fullness of truth,then the man-made church you follow most definitely does not have it. Apostasy and pagan? Last time I checked all non-Catholic churches were founded by mere mortals and not God,a fact of history,so why brag about your denials of being swamped in apostasy?
 
Nicea325 said:
If the RCC does not have the fullness of truth,then the man-made church you follow most definitely does not have it. Apostasy and pagan? Last time I checked all non-Catholic churches were founded by mere mortals and not God,a fact of history,so why brag about your denials of being swamped in apostasy?
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God is Spirit and God is truth. The Spirit of God is founding many faith communities outside of Catholicsm in truth. Your polemic is invalid. Your presuppositions are false.
 
Nicea325 said:
If the RCC does not have the fullness of truth,then the man-made church you follow most definitely does not have it. Apostasy and pagan? Last time I checked all non-Catholic churches were founded by mere mortals and not God,a fact of history,so why brag about your denials of being swamped in apostasy?
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As a Catholic you were conditioned to believe the above. I never could understand why some people can’t process the fact that as much as Catholics believe they are the one true religion, that’s how non-Catholics feel about their religion.

non-Catholic churches don’t believe they were founded by mere mortals. According to those I have talked to, they believe they had to break away from the Catholic Church because the human element of the Catholic Church fell to corruption and ignored God’s influence, thus tainting the Church.

Insisting that the leaders of the Catholic Church are helped by the Holy Spirit, and therefore, cannot err, is a Catholic Church teaching only. And is impossible to prove beyond child-like faith. So exactly, why should non-Catholics believe in the Catholic Church as the “one true church”? They don’t understand why you question their religion as the one true church as well.
 
Rence said:
As a Catholic you were conditioned to believe the above. I never could understand why some people can’t process the fact that as much as Catholics believe they are the one true religion, that’s how non-Catholics feel about their religion.

I was an evangelical/pentecostal christian before I converted. Was I also conditioned? My quest for truth, undertaken logically and honestly, led me home.

non-Catholic churches don’t believe they were founded by mere mortals. According to those I have talked to, they believe they had to break away from the Catholic Church because the human element of the Catholic Church fell to corruption and ignored God’s influence, thus tainting the Church.

Belief does not equal truth.

Insisting that the leaders of the Catholic Church are helped by the Holy Spirit, and therefore, cannot err, is a Catholic Church teaching only. And is impossible to prove beyond child-like faith. So exactly, why should non-Catholics believe in the Catholic Church as the “one true church”? They don’t understand why you question their religion as the one true church as well.

Not really. Many churches feel that their pastors word, however different than the beliefs the members may be, is correct. It is only in extreme circumstances that they actually hold to their congregation beliefs over the pastors. This is the same as many Catholics, but is admittedly a horse of a different color. Any reasonably extensive search for the truth leads one back to the Catholic Church, if only for its historical basis.
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I think that the thing wmscott is advocating is what Mother Teresa taught
“There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs—all different religions. But they all come to our prayers.”
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In other words, why lead people AWAY from their faith rather than bringing them to search for the truth? Thomas Aquinas said that it is better to ask someone who knows the truth than to search yourself (not his point and taken out of context, but relevant to the topic) so why say “I am correct, your Church is false, follow me” instead of “I am correct, here is why, here is where to find the information, go to those who know more than you and learn”. Can you see the difference there?
 
It still doens’t change the fact that people who believe in their religion as strongly as we believe in ours do so because they believe that their own religion is the one true religion. Otherwise, they wouldn’t belong to that religion.
 
FidesSpesCarita said:
I was an evangelical/pentecostal christian before I converted. Was I also conditioned? My quest for truth, undertaken logically and honestly, led me home.
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It means you weren’t conditioned enough, otherwise you wouldn’t have left. No one belongs to any one religion, if they think that another religion is the one true religion. Why would someone belong to a religion that they believe is false, if they believe another religion is true? I know Catholics who are only Catholic because they are married to a Catholic, but those people don’t believe any religion is a “one true religion”. When people really and truly believe in a religion, it’s because they believe that religion is the right choice.
 
Many answers herein have proved my point that some non-Catholics (but not all) are merely using this Catholic site for their own personal agenda, and should really get their own site.

There are also a few who have listed themselves as Catholic who seem a bit dubious in listing themselves as Catholic.

Non-Catholics who are honestly seeking more information about the Catholic Faith are most welcome.
 
WatchingMedia said:
Non-Catholics who are honestly seeking more information about the Catholic Faith are most welcome.
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It would be nice to think that that’s why the majority of people are here. I can’t think of reading a thread started for the sole purpose of trying to convert catholics to another religion (which is not the same as challenging a belief), but I haven’t been all over the board. They shouldn’t be trying to convert anyone though.
 
Hisalone said:
If I believed that the Catholic faith was the fulness of truth I would be a Catholic. I believe the Catholic faith has mixed the profane with the holy the pagan with what is true. What is charitable about leaving you in apostasy.
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i’m sad to hear you say " I believe the Catholic faith has mixed the profane with the holy the pagan with what is true. What is charitable about leaving you in apostasy."

i have just one question for you.

What if Jesus founded the Catholic Church?

Your intentions are honorable, but so were the intentions of so many misguided men before you, throughout all time.

In all honesty, i challenge you to disprove anything the Catholic Church teaches!

Do not confuse the pitiful weakness & utter failures of us individual Catholics, with the Fullness of the Truth found only in the Catholic Church!

Just as the Apostles, chosen & trained By Jesus Himself, failed, misunderstood & betrayed Jesus, yet His Truth perseveres today, 2000 years later, so do the Truths endure!

Life is precious! Love is the ultimate Truth.

**“For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mk 8:35)

auschwitz.dk/kolbe.htm**

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!

mark
 
Hisalone said:
If I believed that the Catholic faith was the fulness of truth I would be a Catholic. I believe the Catholic faith has mixed the profane with the holy the pagan with what is true. What is charitable about leaving you in apostasy.
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Wow, so much disdain I sense in your answer and view of another Christian faith. I only hope Christ softens your heart a little.

Can you provide any examples where the Catholic faith has mixed the profane with the holy and the pagan with what is true? Please one at a time OK?
 
As a cradle Catholic who has only truly understood my faith in the past 4 or 5 years, I believe in the truth of the Catholic Church because of my study. I can understand that there have been serious injustices in the Church in the past and present, but I believe that when Jesus asked us to be one as He and the Father were one, He meant for us to stand together as one Church. When I look at the 20,000+ Protestant denominations, I know that the Catholic Church is still protected by the Holy Spirit. The fullness of the Catholic Church is not any one individual person or even a Pope, it is the Body of Christ on earth. I do not believe that the Catholic Church is Christ’s Church on earth because of anything that we do or have done to deserve it. We are definitely a body of sinners. I believe that it is the one, true church that Jesus founded because He said He would build His Church upon Peter and the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. I cannot believe that Jesus would approve of the new denominations and churches that develop on a daily basis based upon any new school of thought that comes along.

Therefore, I study to determine what the Church teaches, pray about anything I do not agree with, study more, pray more, and strangely enough, it starts to make sense. The more I read the Bible, the more I see the Catholic Church as the descendent of the Jews in the Old Testament. I do believe, however, that God can bring good from all things. I think the Reformation did serve to revitalize the Catholic Church, help us to learn to have a more personal relationship with Christ, how to read and study our Bible, and many other things. That cannot, however, ever make me think that if we disagree with a teaching of the Church we are supposed to just leave and start our own church with our own rules.

Sorry if this came across as harsh. I’ve just been looked down upon for most of my life because of my Catholic faith, and treated as if I wasn’t even a Christian. It has truly been a revelation to me to discover that I’m not just Catholic because I was born into it, but because by the grace of God, He has been teaching me and keeping me here.
 
The Catholic Church as the --fullness of resources] – If I can use that term, that will enable a person who choose, to walk the path of salvation, be nurtured and guided by the church, who acts as a mother…

Of course, we can all draw on past experiences that those religious/clerics weren’t always promoting the spirit of Christ.

But another hang up is this idea of people err…and they forget that the Apostles erred, you see the patriarchs and many testimonies of people erring, who were nevertheless chosen by God for a specific mission, and yet see their repentance, God’s forgiveness, and grace working through their humanity.

We are more our true selves when we live a life based on Christ, and so much so for Catholics who are nourished by Christ in the sacraments…and how we do fail and cause scandal when we do not apply ourselves to all the graces the Church gives us.

So one priest said, in relation to all the good people of Christianity, of other religions, and those of good will, that we Catholics should consider it a privilege that we have faith in the Church and the sacraments…that we do believe in the Eucharist as fully human and fully divine.

Sometimes I have wondered myself where the boundary is when people honestly debate and other times when they are seeking to take Catholics or others out to their way of thinking.
 
Hisalone,

A while back a major internet news site began promoting books that main line Christianity was basing a number of its practices and feasts on pagan days…I have read some posts a while back that proved it wasn’t true and actually the pagan days were different.

It is sad that people think Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection, that this greatest feastday in the church is still looked at suspiciously as pagan.

Someone on CAF said in response, after all, Jesus died on the Pagan cross…there is a big message He died that way…He could have died by stoning using the Jewish custom…

See the point??? He broke the power of all darkness and made everything new. He is restoring all of creation…it may not look like it at the present moment…those are man made…but the Lord is at work and He can restore anything!
 
Rence said:
It means you weren’t conditioned enough, otherwise you wouldn’t have left. No one belongs to any one religion, if they think that another religion is the one true religion. Why would someone belong to a religion that they believe is false, if they believe another religion is true? I know Catholics who are only Catholic because they are married to a Catholic, but those people don’t believe any religion is a “one true religion”. When people really and truly believe in a religion, it’s because they believe that religion is the right choice.
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“Conditioned?” Umm, before psychology burst onto the scene, people understood that we aren’t Pavlov’s dogs. Belief is not something that is ‘conditioned’. It has to be a free choice. Otherwise we aren’t talking ‘belief’, we are talking anything from a vague sort of cultural ‘assimilation’ to a lazy unthinking acceptance of the status quo.

To believe something one has to ‘know’ and one has to choose, freely.

I know that some CINOs (and probably PINOs as well) may possibly be those who simply ‘accept’ that they were baptized, or who simply ‘stay’ what their parents faith was because they just don’t really ‘care’, and who do or say as they please. But that is not a ‘believing’ Catholic Christian, or a believing PROTESTANT Christian either.

So rather than say really and truly believe, why not make the differential that some people are not believers per se but simply ‘identifiers’ (for various reasons). If you want to address why somebody believes, why on EARTH would you mix them up with those who do not believe? No wonder you are confused into thinking that belief is ‘conditioning’.
 
OK. Proselytize…

It is cool to come to CAF as a non-Catholic and use it to proselytize your own beliefs?
 
FidesSpesCarita said:
I think that the thing wmscott is advocating is what Mother Teresa taught

In other words, why lead people AWAY from their faith rather than bringing them to search for the truth? Thomas Aquinas said that it is better to ask someone who knows the truth than to search yourself (not his point and taken out of context, but relevant to the topic) so why say “I am correct, your Church is false, follow me” instead of “I am correct, here is why, here is where to find the information, go to those who know more than you and learn”. Can you see the difference there?
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Thanks FidesSpesCarita, I think you are getting my point out a little better than I did. I never resent an honest and respectful question from a non-Catholic that challenges me and makes me get into the books to learn more about my faith. In a way, these non-Catholics are actually being very charitable by helping me understand my faith more. They are not trying to prostulize me, just understand why I believe the way I do. I cannot fault them for that.

However, the one thing my original post did illustrate is in HISALONE’s comments. It did not take long for the wolves to come out and malign the Body of Christ. I only hope that he or she is comfortable on judgment day being judged by God using the same intensity and malevolence HISALONE ascribes to other Christians.
 
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