Anti-Catholic prayer?

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Lost_Wanderer

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There have been more than one occasion (online) where I’ve met an anti-Catholic fundamentalist who has said that he/she will pray that I will ‘get out’ of the Church and ‘accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior blahblahblah’. (After of course they have given their typical Dave Hunt style rant about the Whore of Babylon yadayadayada…)

Now that I think about it, does anyone here have any thoughts of what to do or say in situations like that? It sounds like these guys can use the power of prayer against you.

And from what I best understand of prayer (and I’m really going to sound geeky for saying it like this), it’s like invoking the power of Light. So these guys, from what I see, are invoking the power of Light against you. Is there a sort of counter to this or do I just let these guys be? :confused:
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
There have been more than one occasion (online) where I’ve met an anti-Catholic fundamentalist who has said that he/she will pray that I will ‘get out’ of the Church and ‘accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior blahblahblah’. (After of course they have given their typical Dave Hunt style rant about the Whore of Babylon yadayadayada…)

Now that I think about it, does anyone here have any thoughts of what to do or say in situations like that? It sounds like these guys can use the power of prayer against you.

And from what I best understand of prayer (and I’m really going to sound geeky for saying it like this), it’s like invoking the power of Light. So these guys, from what I see, are invoking the power of Light against you. Is there a sort of counter to this or do I just let these guys be? :confused:
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His prayer is obviously not going to work…what a loser! Prayer doesn’t work that way. :rotfl: Just block him, you don’t have to say anything.
 
JPUSC said:
His prayer is obviously not going to work…what a loser! Prayer doesn’t work that way. :rotfl: Just block him, you don’t have to say anything.
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Oh no, I’m not talking to anybody in particular right now. :o It’s just that this sorta thing happens occasionally when I end up fighting fundies.

The reason why I’m a little concerned, well… these people are still Christians too (albeit twisted). They pray to the same God as we do. With that in mind, it just makes me wonder if Catholics and Fundamentalists are actually caught in some Light vs Light type of battle if you know what I mean. (Ugh, there I go again with my geeky terms. 😊 )
 
If you were talking to a witch or something, then you could be a little worried about spells, but prayers don’t cause any undesirable consequences.
 
I tell them the irony of such a statement. That is, Protestants say the Catholic Church is not scriptural, because the Bible doesn’t say “Catholic Church”. But, when they want to spew anti-Catholic rhetoric, it’s in the Bible all of a sudden.

I also ask why Revelations specifically uses the term “Church/Churches”, but does not state Church when speaking about the “Whore of Babylon”?
 
Someone far wiser than I has said, God always answers prayers. Sometimes the answer is ‘No’.":signofcross:
 
Having dealt with fundamentalist I believe the best thing to do would be to pray for them that their eyes may be open to the fullness of the truth. I was brought up in an Fundamentalist Pentecostal Church. Catholic as of Easter 2006!! There is always hope
 
JPUSC said:
If you were talking to a witch or something, then you could be a little worried about spells, but prayers don’t cause any undesirable consequences.
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There should be no fear of witchcraft because there is no power there. I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in vodoo or anything else like that. Its all nonsense.

As for a fundamentalist trying to convert you. You could always say “thank you, and I’ll pray for your salvation as well.” and when they ask you about your assurance of salvation you can always say “God saved me and I’m working out my salvation with fear and trembeling and have the hope of eternal life.”
 
Ask the Lord to turn their prayers back upon themselves…for their conversion to the Catholic faith, as they pray in earnest for the truth to prevail.
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
There have been more than one occasion (online) where I’ve met an anti-Catholic fundamentalist who has said that he/she will pray that I will ‘get out’ of the Church and ‘accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior blahblahblah’. (After of course they have given their typical Dave Hunt style rant about the Whore of Babylon yadayadayada…)

Now that I think about it, does anyone here have any thoughts of what to do or say in situations like that? It sounds like these guys can use the power of prayer against you.

And from what I best understand of prayer (and I’m really going to sound geeky for saying it like this), it’s like invoking the power of Light. So these guys, from what I see, are invoking the power of Light against you. Is there a sort of counter to this or do I just let these guys be? :confused:
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A conclusion I have come to about other people - they are simply one of God’s earthly creatures. When I look upon other people with this perspective it becomes easy to quietly listen to them talk about their ideas without it bothering me. Most of the time they are speaking about their worries and fears, or hopes and dreams. Also, I see/hear people that have trouble trusting God and they are trying to control the best they can their corner of the world.

So, I would suggest a healthy portion of patient listening. An occasion question thrown in here or there. Calm disagreement on important matters.

Think about question that will politely get the person to think about their beliefs without attacking them.

Also, reading up on the faith or time spent watching videos about the faith will give you a good foundation of knowledge. Also, on Catholic Answers’ home page if you look under ‘Library’ you will find several tracts on faith issues. I made it a goal to read one tract each time I logged on until I had read them all. It was a good learning experience.

God bless
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
There have been more than one occasion (online) where I’ve met an anti-Catholic fundamentalist who has said that he/she will pray that I will ‘get out’ of the Church and ‘accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior blahblahblah’. (After of course they have given their typical Dave Hunt style rant about the Whore of Babylon yadayadayada…)

Now that I think about it, does anyone here have any thoughts of what to do or say in situations like that? It sounds like these guys can use the power of prayer against you.

And from what I best understand of prayer (and I’m really going to sound geeky for saying it like this), it’s like invoking the power of Light. So these guys, from what I see, are invoking the power of Light against you. Is there a sort of counter to this or do I just let these guys be? :confused:
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Say a prayer for them and don’t worry - in Heaven they’ll be Catholic, too!
 
This is my answer to anyone who claims all they need to do is accept Jesus as their personal Lord and savior. Will take a couple of posts.
POST 1

First ask them where in the Bible does Jesus say to accept him as your “personal” Lord and Savior. Well, having a personal relationship with Jesus IS very important – as far as it goes. I would go so far to say that “Jesus and me” is possibly the biggest heresy of the 20th century!

I would challenge anyone to show me where in the Bible that Jesus says all you have to do to be saved is to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. You could look all you want, but you will not find it – it is not in there! This is really a relatively recent development – a development of our individualistic “me” oriented society. You will not see in the Bible “me”, “me”, “me”! St. Paul spent a lot of time driving home the concept that we are part of the body of Christ. His teaching is about a “we”, not a “me”. So there is something that we should be asking, that would give a clue on what Jesus felt was most important. We should be asking:

What did Jesus talk about more than any other thing? Was it loving each other? Was it forgiving each other? Was it that he was going to redeem us by dying on the cross? No, even those are all important, those are not it. Matthew 3:2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near…” Why did Mathew say this? Why didn’t he just say “Hey, Everybody, the Son of God is here and he is going to save us.”? He was announcing what Jesus was going to do. He was announcing that Jesus was going to re-establish His Kingdom – not His democracy.

But, what would this Kingdom look like? Are there any hints in the Bible? What would a 1st century Jew think of when they visualize “the Kingdom.” We need to go back to the Covenant God made with David. The Davidic Kingdom! The Kingdom that God said would rule for eternity. This is the Kingdom Jesus came to restore. From the Jewish standpoint, the Davidic Kingdom was the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly Kingdom that was entrusted to men. And this Kingdom had a hierarchy with court officials, it had succession for the different offices within the Kingdom, and it had a world-wide mission!

What are some hallmarks of the Davidic Kingdom?

There are 5 quick points I would like to toss out. There are many more that could be given, but for the sake of length these should demonstrate my points.
  1. The Davidic Kingdom was founded on a king – David. David was crowned King over all 12 tribes of Israel. After being crowned King, David defeats all of his enemies.
  2. It had the “Torah – Adam” The first word “Torah” means law, “Adam” means humanity. So Torah-Adam means the law for all humanity. The law given to the Jews was not meant to be just for the Jews. It was to be shared and spread throughout the entire world, a “universal law.” The Jews were to be the example that the other kingdoms would imitate.
In the Davidic Kingdom, the King did not do it all himself. He needed some administrative assistants. Let’s see who a couple of these are.
  1. The first administrative assistant is the “al-habbayit” the steward or Prime Minister who and ran the day to day affairs of the Kingdom and even more importantly ruled in the King’s absence when the King was away.
    Remember that the al-habbayit did not have any authority on his own, it was only through the King did he have any power or authority.
  2. The next assistant is the “Gebirah,” the Queen Mother. All Davidic Kings had their mothers sitting in the court at their right hand to act as an advocate for the people
  3. The last point is the Priesthood. Yes there was Priesthood, it was the Levites. Remember they were given that role after the “golden calf affair.” So what did David do with the Priesthood? He reorganized it. Why? Because he was establishing a new liturgy. (liturgy is “public worship”) In 1 Chronicles chapter 24, it tells how the duties of the Priesthood were to be divided and HOW this would be determined. How they were divided is an interesting point. To make this determination they cast lots. The new liturgy was needed because how they would worship as a people was going to change. David’s son Solomon was going to build “the temple” and in order to prepare the people for the changes having a temple where everyone could come to worship and offer sacrifices David had to reorganize the Priesthood to be able to accommodate the change.
 
POST 2
What is the first book of the New Testament? How does it start? So just why would Matthew start his book in this fashion? Genealogy was very important to the Jews AND THIS genealogy was more important than any other! It starts with the one person all Jews looked back to as their greatest hero, David and then their Patriarch, their father figure Abraham. All 1st century Jews would know that the Messiah would come from the line of David.

When the canon of scripture was determined there was a reason they placed Matthew as THE FIRST BOOK IN THE NEW TESTAMENT! There was a reason that Matthew wrote it this way. It was written to make certain that the Jews knew who Jesus was and what he came to do.

After the Babylonian exile, the prophets all tell of a time when there would be a new son of David and the Davidic Kingdom would be restored. All in all if you look at the genealogy you will see a significant pattern. From Abraham to David – 14 generations From David to the Babylonian exile – 14 generations From the Babylonian exile to Jesus – 14 generation

The ancient writers attached symbolic meaning to numbers. The number 7 signified completeness and covenant – the Hebrew word for making a covenant literally means “to seven oneself.” Therefore 14 was doubly complete since it was twice seven. The number three is meant to symbolize perfection. 3 groupings of 14 would not be lost on 1st century Jews.
Hebrew used letters to represent numbers and Hebrew has no letters foe vowels, So the name David is spelled “daleth-vau-daleth” (DVD) In Hebrew numerals “daleth” (D) stands for 4 and the letter vau (V) stands for 6. Numerically David’s name is 4 + 6 + 4 or 14. So when Matthew divides the genealogy into three groups of 14 he numerically repeats David’s name a perfectly complete three times. Mathew is showing us that Jesus is the perfect Son of David, in whom all the promises God made to David are completed in Jesus. If Jesus is the “Christ,” the “messiah,” the “anointed one,” then he came to re-establish the Davidic Kingdom. That is what the prophets foretold. They were concerned with the return of the Davidic Kingdom. Even in the Dead Sea Scrolls they were hoping for a Davidic Messiah to come. The Book of Daniel prophesized when this would happen. It predicted that this would happen in the 1st century.

And as we look at the Kingdom that Jesus restored, I think you will find it quite familiar.

Continuing in the Gospel of Matthew chapters 5 through 7 really tell us what Jesus was preaching and what his ministry was all about. He first gives the people the Beatitudes, and he tells them to spread it to the whole world. The Beatitudes are the Torah – Adam! The law for all of humanity. This is how Jesus started his ministry giving a law and telling people to share it with the world. An interesting point made in the Gospel of Matthew is how he finished his Gospel. Matthew 28: 18 – 20 “18 Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.” He didn’t just give SOME of His authority to the Apostles he gave ALL His authority to the Apostles and told them to make disciples of ALL NATIONS! Make disciples of all nations. That makes it universal, it makes it Catholic. Then Jesus at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus appoints Peter as the al-habbayit. Since He is the King he has Mary with him, his Gebirah.

In Luke 22:29 he says the following, “I confer a Kingdom on you.”

At the Last Supper Jesus reorganizes the Priesthood, for the new liturgy that he was about to give them. So, just as David reorganized the Priesthood and established a new liturgy, Jesus reorganizes the Priesthood and establishes a new liturgy at the Last Supper. But one of the Priests left during the supper and went to betray Jesus. Judas. Judas then killed himself. The Priest, even though a bad one, had to be replaced, there needed to be a successor. How was Judas replaced? In Acts they determined the successor for Judas just in the same way that they determined the roles and duties of the new Priesthood in the Davidic Kingdom – they cast lots. And all through the Book of Acts we see the theme of the Kingdom develop.

We now know what the Kingdom looks like. Jesus also told us how we get into the Kingdom. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells Nicodemus that entry into the kingdom of God means being begotten by water and spirit. Where does this happen. In the Church at our Baptism! Again we see how the Church and Kingdom share a common identity.
 
POST 3
Having a personal relationship with Jesus is important, but Jesus plainly meant for there to be more, so much more. He wanted us to be a part of His Kingdom, he wanted us to be a part of His Church. We have so much more than just “Jesus and me.” We have a Biblical, Scriptural, Covenantal relationship with Jesus. Covenants are not just between two individual persons. When a covenant was sealed it brought together the whole family, the whole tribe. When I married my wife I didn’t just marry her. I created a relationship with her mother, her father, her two brothers, and her four sisters. With our individualistic American mentality it is difficult to truly understand and appreciate covenantal relationships. So a covenantal relationship isn’t just with “Jesus and me”, It is “Jesus and His Church,” the Kingdom. It is with the “Church Triumphant,” Mary and all of the Saints in Heaven. It is with the “Church Suffering,” all of the souls in Purgatory. It is with the “Church Militant,” all of us here on earth, trying to fight the good fight and make it to our eternal reward in heaven.

You CANNOT say I accept Jesus and then reject His Kingdom, the Catholic Church.
You CANNOT say I accept Jesus and then reject the Gebirah, His Mother.
You CANNOT say I accept Jesus and then reject the Al-habbayit, the Pope.
You CANNOT say I accept Jesus and then reject his brothers and sisters, the Saints.

It is a package deal, you can’t have one without the other – it isn’t optional. All Catholics have what St. Augustine called “the whole of God.”

As Jesus said in Luke 10:16 “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

Remember, Jesus said He is establishing HIS Kingdom, not a democracy! In our 21st century America we see everything as a democracy, whatever the multitudes want is what we shall have! Jesus did not operate that way. We don’t understand the concept of a King and complete subservience to the King. Nowhere in the Bible will you see Jesus say all you need to do to be saved is to have a personal relationship with him. As he told Nicodemus, to be save you must be Baptized with water and spirit. Once again, He established His Kingdom and since He is the King what He says goes!!! I don’t remember Jesus ever calling his disciples over and asking them about something He was going to put forward, in essence doing a public opinion poll or a focus group on the theological concept he was considering. He did not do that; He gave us the truth and as King there are no questions asked. And we must accept everything that goes along with the kingdom, not just the King. And as Catholics we are required to do just that.

I don’t know if you have heard the term “Cafeteria Catholic” but it is a term to describe those Catholics who do not truly understand this concept and think that they can pick and choose what they will believe and what teachings of the Church that they will follow. Once again they are thinking Jesus founded a democracy not a Kingdom. The Church that Jesus founded at Pentecost is not a buffet line – the Church is a seamless garment. If we begin to tear pieces out of it that we don’t want or are too much of a pain to follow it becomes nothing more than a tattered rag.
In a paraphrasing of Mark 4:25 Fr. Corapi has said may times “With every gift, there is a commensurate responsibility.” As Catholics we have been given a tremendous gift. We have been given the fullness of the truth and as such we need to embrace the whole of the Catholic faith.

As Catholics when we are praying to Mary or the Saints, we are just asking our spiritual Mother and our spiritual brothers and sister to take our petitions to the Altar of God for us, as it says in Revelation.
 
POST 4
Protestants often say praying to Mary or the Saints detracts from Jesus, when in actuality it is just the opposite. They help bring us to Jesus. We see Mary and the Saints as example of the perfection that God can work in us and we try to emulate them so we can be more pleasing to God. Remember, through her “yes” Mary brought Jesus to us – now, in heaven she is bringing us to Jesus!

When someone says to you, “I don’t want or need all of those rules the Catholic Church has.”

How would you respond to them? I guess I would answer their question by first asking them a question. Ask them when they were growing up, did their parents have rules. Rules like:

Don’t go near the stove when it is hot.
Don’t run out into the street. Look left and right then cross.
Don’t accept rides from strangers.
Don’t stay up too late.

And the list could go on and on. Did their parents make up these rules to be mean? Or did they have these rules for them to keep them safe, and possibly make them a better person? If they are honest they will admit that the latter was the reason for the rules.

This is exactly what the Church is doing. The rules of the Church are not because she wants to control us, the Church’s rules are to protect us and keep us safe from those things that would jeopardize our eternal souls. The Church cares for each and every one of us; she wants us to be what Jesus has called us to be and that is “Saints!” The Church is giving us a framework to do those things and the freedom to behave in a manner that will allow us to get to heaven. And in the Church’s eyes, anything less would not be fulfilling the role that Jesus gave her.

I didn’t get into the Bibilical support for Peter as Pope, Mary as Queen Mother, becasue the post was already too long, but they are there.

Stillkickin:thumbsup:
 
Wow, Stillkickin! That was an awesome explanation of MANY things. Have you studies theology? Thanks for all the info!

Blessings,
 
I know that some of the convert stories that I have read have people in them that did just what you said. They prayed to get Catholics out of the church and ended up in the Catholic Church themselves. Don’t let their prayers worry you. I would ask them to instead pray that God’s will be done and not either or your own wills. See if they will agree to that prayer that you can both pray for each other.
 
You know I’m from an extreme anti-catholic fundies background. Now someone can say they are praying for me…blah blah blah…BUT

if and when ANYone starts with that Whore of Babylon stuff, I will immediately put up my hand in the STOP position and say, “Excuse me that is Christ’s Church you are calling a whore, Christ’s Church that he established and the Chris that died for the sins of the whole world. You will NOT speak that way at any time in my presence about my Church. Now this time you’ll get a freebie and I do forgive you, but do not talk that way about My Lord’s Church at any time in the future. And let’s do each pray for each other.”

Now I’ll say that firmly and nice. And that will take care of that.

(In my job I have to talk to the public and my co-workers who are in extreme situations at times – I have no trouble speaking up.) I will say it nice but firmly though.

So far the worse that was said was by a Catholic who has become a fundie. She had mentioned attending her mother’s rosary right about the time I had joined RCIA. I shared with her I was going to Mass and had joined RCIA. She said, “Oh, I’m not Catholic anymore, I"M a CHRISTIAN NOW!!”

I was speechless. I know I know, that surprised me. But that Whore of Babylon stuff I could never ever sit still with. I grew up hearing that junk, and even as a 5 year old girl did not like hearing that.

But that’s just me…
 
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