December 2015 Watchtower article

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Hi All,
Did anyone see the December issue of the Watchtower (JW’s publication) which refutes the Primacy of the Pope.
Any advice on where to find best articles to refute this. I’ll be meeting JW’s again in 2/3 weeks.

Cristo
 
Cristo said:
Hi All,
Did anyone see the December issue of the Watchtower (JW’s publication) which refutes the Primacy of the Pope.
Any advice on where to find best articles to refute this. I’ll be meeting JW’s again in 2/3 weeks.

Cristo
Click to expand...
I just glanced at it through the online version.

You can never go wrong with starting with a search at catholic.com 🙂

You’ll find what you are looking for.
 
it doesn’t shock me that they have an article about this. I think JW’s are anti-Catholic. I once had neighbors who were both cradle Catholics and the wife became a Jehovah Witness while they were stationed in Europe and the husband was a non-practicing Catholic until he also became a Jehovah Witness later in life. They never had anything good to say about the Pope or the Catholic church.
 
before I was Catholic my neighbor I mentioned in my previous post would occasionally give me a Watchtower magazine. I was not attending any church at the time and I suppose she was evangelizing for the JW’s. Sometimes I would read them out of curiosity just to see what they were proclaiming. I remember once a scale with Jesus on one side and Adam on the other and they were equal balance. I don’t think I looked at anymore after that. They went into the trash.
 
They (JW)used to drive my mother crazy when they came to the door. You couldn’t make them go away unless you were rude. It was more like harassment than evangelizing. Maybe they have changed and are less aggressive in their approach. Peace.
 
Cristo said:
Hi All,
Did anyone see the December issue of the Watchtower (JW’s publication) which refutes the Primacy of the Pope. Any advice on where to find best articles to refute this. I’ll be meeting JW’s again in 2/3 weeks.

Cristo
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Not to contradict but simply complement what the others are saying:

Talk about their lives and yours. The Pope is miles away, neither you nor they understand him, he has less of a hold in your life than they think. God is in your home on a bad night. Why?

In His creative way God has a foot in their door already. Where they are - to pick up on Mary Estelle’s point - agressive and rude, a way to be agressive and rude back is to get any conversation (if you are meant to relate to them at all) onto more realistic ground. It will inflame them (or extinguish their ardour) as it hits their agenda head on. It even hits your agenda head on!

Most of society especially the huge variety of religions have extremely well-founded arguments against what passes for Papal primacy (and in my observation magazine articles don’t usually use the strongest ones). It would be a rare person genuinely called to specialise in advocating for it. Catholics (almost exclusively) don’t know what Papal primacy is, either.

This is before critiquing specific points in the Watchtower article, sorry I can’t go over it in detail.

Maybe you would catch their attention by giving arguments against it that were stronger than the ones they employed!

Peter is after all our fellow worker. Your archbishop might like to portray you as “the Pope’s troops” but remember that’s just him.
 
Cristo said:
Hi All,
Did anyone see the December issue of the Watchtower (JW’s publication) which refutes the Primacy of the Pope.
Any advice on where to find best articles to refute this. I’ll be meeting JW’s again in 2/3 weeks.

Cristo
Click to expand...
I just read it, and a few things stood out to me. The first, is when they quote the Bible as saying “on this rock I will build my church” they add after church the words “or congregation.” To me, this takes away from the idea of a universal Church, which is not right.

While I was reading, something else puzzled me, and I think the JW’s need to answer this if you speak to them. Was Peter, or Paul or any of the other Early Church Fathers mentioned in the piece a Jehovah’s Witness? My understanding of the JW’s is that they are their bible only, but if they are going to bring outsiders into the fold, then that makes them fair game. If they were not JW’s, what were they? What did they believe? What did they practice? I would drill this point as hard as I possibly could, because like I said, they started using “outside sources” so if they can do it, you can as well.

Good luck and God Bless!
 
Johann_du_Toit said:
Maybe to know what how the opposition is thinking, and planning accordingly?
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Exactly Johann, I did mention I’ll be meeting them again in 2/3 weeks.
Sorry for delay in getting back. I don’t get as much time to visit as I’d like to.
They are certainly anti-Catholic but they are not offensive. I consider them friends despite robust discussion.

Hi Vic, I think it’s an over generalisation to suggest “Catholics (almost exclusively) don’t know what Papal primacy is, either.”

Thanks ShanPo, great suggestions that I hadn’t thought of. I was thinking too straight.

You were right John Gerard, You can never go wrong with starting with a search at catholic.com

God Bless

Cristo
 
Cristo said:
Hi All,
Did anyone see the December issue of the Watchtower (JW’s publication) which refutes the Primacy of the Pope.
Any advice on where to find best articles to refute this. I’ll be meeting JW’s again in 2/3 weeks.

Cristo
Click to expand...
Well I’ll tell you what I’ve read them and I’m not convinced by them and there’s a reason for that it’s because I’m really well grounded in my religious beliefs if not necessarily always able to defend them. I have the logic part down but I don’t always have the charity part down. With regards to Jehovah’s Witness literature I used to do people a favour and throw it away at the laundromat (someone would always seem to leave it there)
 
Mary_Estelle said:
They (JW)used to drive my mother crazy when they came to the door. You couldn’t make them go away unless you were rude. It was more like harassment than evangelizing. Maybe they have changed and are less aggressive in their approach. Peace.
Click to expand...
In my old neighborhood I used to share my faith with them. I think I defended the faith too well, they put me on the “don’t go there” list 🙂
 
JohnGerard said:
I just glanced at it through the online version.

You can never go wrong with starting with a search at catholic.com 🙂

You’ll find what you are looking for.
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At the bottom of my post is a link. I made a book with different catholic teachings, beliefs, and Protestant objectives. There is a section about the pope, the primacy of Peter. Check it out, you will show them with the Bible and the early church fathers.
 
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