Hello! So this is only my second post on this site, but I received such great help the first time, I thought I would try again.(quick background: I am not a catholic, to start with. I did not grow up as a christian, but Christ called me to Him nonetheless. I have attended many churches, largely baptist, but I do not really associate myself with a particular faith, if that makes sense.)
I have been told (rather fervently) that a catholic attending a protestant church is near sinful. I understand someone not wanting to go to another church for various reason, but to consider it a sin?? I understand that there may be opposing beliefs even within the catholic community, but could someone shed some light on this? preferably through scripture?
Thank you!!
Code:
Until the past half century, not only Catholics, but non-Catholics, would insist that people of other denominations not attend their churches. The multiplicity of denominations is a consequence of the fact that Baptists would not allow Presbyterians nor Methodists Episcopalians -- there was no such assumption that they were all Christians and should all go to each others' services.
Ecumenism, which was at first only a Protestant phenomenon, began to change this, because secularism was advancing, and it was recognized that one of the reasons for the advancement of purely secularist beliefs was the absence of concord, much less charity, between people all professing Christianity. The spectacle of the mutual slaughter of the Great War spurred the growth of this feeling; WWII’s horrors especially gave it point.
The fathers at the Second Vatican Council wanted Catholic faithful to recognize that the prohibition against attending Protestant services was not a product of superiority or contempt, but one of charity – one is obliged not to mix truths with half-truths or outright untruths – but they also wanted to make clear that the teachers and authorities in the Church were recognizing that an important element in Protestants maintaining faith was their resistance to the rising appeal and power of anti-Christian forces, whether hedonistic, materialistic, explicitly atheistic, neo-pagan. Now of course neo-paganism, which was largely fascistic in the mid-20th century, has assumed much wider dimensions.
We have to take care that we don’t take Jesus for granted, as if He were saying “Believe in me in any old way and you’re all right” – because the gospels show us that He instructed the apostles very carefully. Not only did He teach them that the way to life is narrow; He taught also that many people would do wonders, but that they would not be admitted to Heaven; He warned them, and us, not to be unfruitful disciples who simply took His grace and buried it far from view; and He warned us that if we denied Him before men, He would deny us before His Father at the Judgment.
To take Jesus seriously, we must take seriously the matter of His will, and what He means by the Church, and what He means by the Kingdom of God. If a Catholic does not understand that this means that fidelity to Him means complete fidelity to the Church to which He entrusted His authority, then they’ve been badly taught or are gradually assenting to falsehoods. They may be misled by false charity to do or say things that in fact deny the Master that bought them.
