Breaking down the barrier with non-Catholic Christians

[dan]

Has anyone here successfully been able to convince non-Catholic Christians to at least be OPEN to hearing the opinions of Church authority, early church fathers (sources outside of the Bible)? If so, how did you do it? Or if a Catholic successfully evangelized you about extra-biblical sources, how did they convince you?

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

Hi Dan, talk about Jesus. Share your testimony on how Jesus changed your life. Many of us protestants look at catholics and frankly don’t see any difference between your life and those in the world. Since, it is likely we only see glimices into your life you need to learn to share Jesus.

 

[brycelaliberte]

It may depend on who you’re talking to, but for me, it was Mary;

Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, which means she HAD to be sinless, and without original sin, etc, which I had never even heard before in all my years as a Baptist.

Mary as Mother of all Christians, seeing as she could not just be mother of Jesus, as head of the Church, but must also be mother of the body, the Christians who make up the Church.

And, on side notes, the contradictory notion of sola scriptura, and through that to the idea of authority and apostolic succession (see Acts 1), the historical truth of the Catholic Church being the first Church, the ECF’s on the Eucharist, the need for faith AND works, and so through that the need for confession, baptism (not believer’s baptism), etc.

It mostly depends on the person’s willingness to understand and accept the ideas as they are. Would probably be different for others.

 

[nannygirl]

Hi Dan! I am the last person in the world I ever thought would become a Catholic (2 years now -converted from reformed baptistic type church). For me, it was the teachings of the Church Fathers that convinced me of the veracity of the Catholic tradition. The Catholic Church has never changed her teaching. She is reliable. You can trust her. That’s what did it for me. Then there were the literary converts…

 

[nannygirl]

One other thing- many Protestants are open to reading the writings of the Church Fathers since they often quote them.

 

[GJx86]

It’s hard to convince someone to be open to something.

Some of my Protestant friends started out being open-minded and curious about the Church. It was easy to convince them to read the ECFs, because their curiosity led them to be open to the claim that the earliest Christians were the ones most likely to know what Jesus and the Apostles actually taught.

On the other hand, other Protestants I know have been and are very closed-minded about the ECFs. Their attitude towards the Catholic Church is that it “adds falsehoods” to God’s written Word and that if the ECFs could be trusted, their writings would have been in the Bible. People who have already decided the Catholic Church is a church of lies aren’t liable to buy into the argument that the ECFs knew what they were talking about; one argument you’ll see against them, for example, is that when Constantine legalized Christianity, he allowed a bunch of pagan beliefs into Christianity, which are reflected in the ECFs’ writings.

In my experience (which, to be sure, is somewhat limited) there’s very little you can do in the latter case. If people have already made up their minds about the Church, nothing you say will convince them otherwise; you can get them to twist in the wind to defend their beliefs, but even if you can trap them in contradictions or misinterpretations, they still aren’t likely to run out and convert. The best thing you can do is lead a Christian life as an example to them and pray for them as often as you can.

Remember Jesus’ words: “Therefore I say to you that no man can come to Me unless it be given him by My Father.” No matter how convincing we are, it’s God’s grace that opens the hearts and minds of others.