If you’re living in or near a major urban area, there should be at least one Eastern Catholic parish around. The Divine Liturgy on offer there will most likely be far superior to the stereotypical Novus Ordo Mass. Here’s a YouTube playlist no Christian of any Church or denomination should miss out on.
Of course the Church should be accessible, but I don’t think accessibility to new members means much unless the Church prepares and informs them properly over a given amount of time before they join. And even though it’s beyond their ability to know who is truly sincere, priests are responsible for making sure people seem genuine and informed before being initiating them into the sacraments.
Sir I beg to disagree.Agree 100%. It is not seen as fashionable to be a Catholic but so what? Roman Catholicism has much to be pround of in music, art and history and of course being the Chruch of the first Christians. “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”
Why do we need to “change with the times” or “appeal to young people”? As the saying says, the more you try to please everybody you please nobody. Leave all the happy clappy music, “Christian Rock” and motivational workshops masquerading as services to the Pentecostals and Evangelicals.
The Roman Catholic history is much richer.
Well what about all the Bishops in the Philippines which are railing against the Reproductive Health Bill, which is being funded by American secularist and liberal groups like Planned Parenthood?
I agree. I am not opposed to evangelization per se but there is a fine line between sharing/evangelizing and watering things down in order to be all things to all people.
Sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words… so I thought these would shed some light at least to the OP’s question.
I’d like to ask if you could elaborate on what you believe these graphics indicate (I’m fully blind
).We do it differently, especially in Africa. Protestants got a bit of a head start on Catholics in Africa with one method, but Catholics have nearly caught up on the continent as a whole with a different method. In summary of the two methods, Protestant missionaries do evangelization and church planting. Catholic evangelization consists largely of establishing primary schools where nuns teach children to be Catholic, among other things, then they grow up and maybe stick with it. It’s still a little early in the process, so it’s hard to say how well that will work out long-term in what is generally an even more competitive environment than in America. We mostly stay away from your strategy, and you mostly stay away from ours.
This is specific to Africa. In general, Catholics are losing the overall evangelization race. But in Africa, it’s more of a toss-up. Things could open up for you in southeast Asia at some point, too, but that’s another place where we have a head start on you.
I will continue to pray that evangelization is no longer a competition and misunderstanding among Christians but rather love, compassion and understanding.
Soon as you stop believing all Christians must be converted to Catholicism, we’ll be there. Recall that Protestants of almost any denomination are able to demonstrate quite readily that they can work well with others. When we see a sufficient amount of that from Catholics- specifically, when Catholics can generally bring themselves to evangelize alongside Protestants- I’m sure you’ll be able to join us. We do the para-church thing quite well, and we’re not the ones who are stopping you from standing together, working together, back to back, strengthening each other, serving each other, building the kingdom of God. So until you’re able to do that with Christians outside your own specific denomination, we’ll just have to show you how it’s done. Here’s hoping you can join us one day- not in the sense of a patch over, but in the sense that you can evangelize with non-Catholics.
Ain’t gonna happen. Catholics and Orthodox don’t believe in compromising truth (i.e., theological relativism) as do some modern-day Protestants. Luther and Calvin would be appalled to hear the ideas you have expressed in this post.
It’s neither fair nor accurate for you to look at someone who declines to say “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos”- instead saying “I follow Christ”- and declare this position to be theological relativism. I don’t know why you would struggle with the fact that Protestants can work so well together, including and especially on the mission field. It’s something you should be envious of. And even if you’re not, you will eventually have to accept the fact that it’s somewhere in the future for your church.
If I put these two quotes in the same post, maybe you you will see how inconsistant you are. Six, in the end your concept will be flawed when you speak of…
There is only ONE truth and its not going to be reveiled from society negotiating their wants.
In the end, we will lose the evangelization race. In those times, this loss of believers will actually confirm our truth rather than inform our error.
You got “negotiating their wants” out of that? Really? Is something the matter with you? See if you can misinterpret that, too.
Unity among Christians from different denominations is hard, but we are working on it. It’s not something that you back into by being lazy, and it doesn’t happen by accident. Para-church organizations and inter-denominational evangelism and missions is the start. Mainline churches are approaching the end of a process whereby they come to an agreement on the RP and any of their priests/ministers can lead a service and administer Communion at any of the other mainline churches. And then there’s the thing I described- more of a long term goal that you so terribly summarized as “negotiation of wants.” Really, that assessment was just terrible. I compared it to the process of peer-review by experts in fields like science or history. Do you have a decent education? Are you familiar with how academia works? Do you understand that it’s not a negotiation of wants, but a process by which experts determine what can be demonstrated as truth and what cannot? It’s a process that works, by the way. We’re working on that and while it does need to be tightened up some- and while it may take some time to grab headlines and really rise to prominence- it’s coming along. But that’s for us to focus on right now and for you to really notice at a later time.