Denied the Gospel in the Catholic Church?

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I’m conversing with a Protestant pastor who told me that in his experience, the x-catholics who join his church “have deep bitterness because they were denied the Gospel while in the Catholic Church.” How woudl you respond to that?
 
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cklockner:
I’m conversing with a Protestant pastor who told me that in his experience, the x-catholics who join his church “have deep bitterness because they were denied the Gospel while in the Catholic Church.” How woudl you respond to that?
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I’d point out that the Catholic Church publishes a daily schedule of Bible readings that any Catholic can follow which insures all of the Bible is read over several years. That’s all of the Scripture, not just our favorites. Does his church have such a schedule? There is one Protestant church which does publish a schedule that I know of, however, as most Protestant Bibles do not contain the “hidden” books as the entire Catholic Bible does.
 
I’d ask how one can be “denied the Gospel” when it is read aloud in every single Mass. They cannot possibly be talking about Scriptures. There’s more Scripture in a Catholic Mass than in any Protestant service I have ever been to, and as a convert who did a lot of church shopping, I’ve been to many.

I’d ask the person what they meant by that phrase, and show them a Missal so they can see the readings for each Mass.
 
I would ask him to clarify what he means. I immediately thought : how can Catholics be denied the gospel when whenever they go to church there is a gospel reading? Daily Mass and Sunday Mass always include a gospel reading.

Maybe he means they have been denied the understanding of the gospel? According to Protestant church understanding? In what way are Catholics denied the gospel?
 
Has your protestant pastor friend ever been to a Mass? Please point out to him that a reading from the Gospel is a major part of each and every Mass. You may also inform him that our priests’ homilies are also about the Gospel. Does he know that Catholics are encouraged to read the Gospel, but we are not quizzed to receipt “chapter and verse”?

If he presses, and in all charity, you should ask him who kept the beloved Bible in the 1,500 or more years since his denomination was founded.

With all that said, I too wish more Catholics would read the Bible on their own, but it is not that the Church keeps it from us. After all the Bible is a “Catholic Book”.
 
Honestly I (think I) know just what you mean. When mom said that to me about her new church I was just about floored. What exactly had she thought the Gospel readings were?!? She was so excited that they “read out of the bible” at her new church. So I went with her one Saturday and told her to pay attention the next day at Mass… those were the exact same readings!!! That because they read it straight from the bible and everyone had to figure out which translation it was from rather than everyone knowing ahead of time what the readings would be and which translation it was from (NAB) didn’t mean we weren’t reading from the bible at every Mass… Most people are surprised that the Protestant lectionary follows almost exactly the Catholic lectionary with the exception of a few feast days… why throw out what took years of theological study and work to put together and do it all yourself when you can borrow from us? Even the most anti-Cathlic Protestant denominations use a lectionary that is very close to ours.
 
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cklockner:
I’m conversing with a Protestant pastor who told me that in his experience, the x-catholics who join his church “have deep bitterness because they were denied the Gospel while in the Catholic Church.” How woudl you respond to that?
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This pastor may not literally mean the New Testament Gospel books, but Gospel in terms of the “message of Christ”. I think many protestant faiths use the term to mean this - the message and teaching of Christ. I would venture to say this is more probably what he was meaning.
 
There is a tendency in many Protestant circles to try to boil down the Gospel into memorizable, easy-to-follow proof texts. Once one follows these simple steps, one is saved for all time, and that often their interpretation of what Gospel – Good News – means.

They don’t seem to understand, or get resentful, or even bitter when confronted with the idea that it’s not that easy. Our Lord bore His Cross for us; we follow Him in gratitude bearing our crosses. And they don’t seem to understand that a large part of the Gospel is the help He gives us to walk behind Him: His Church, the magesterial teaching, our Holy Mother, the Mass . . . It seems somehow too hard… does that make sense?
 
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Maggie:
Even the most anti-Cathlic Protestant denominations use a lectionary that is very close to ours.
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I think it’s just the mainlines that use the same lectionary. The MOST anti-Catholic denominations (and pretty much any fundamentalist or evangelical denomination or non-denomintion) don’t use a lectionary at all – the scripture is picked week to week by the preacher.
 
I agree, I think what they meant is that they didn’t hear the Protestant “faith alone” message at every mass–that’s the Gospel they’re talking about.

What this seems to mean, from x-catholics that I’ve heard, is that they never really understood what the Catholic Church teaches. They know all the motions and responses, but not why they do them. That’s a problem, to be sure. We need better adult formation.

My wife and I joined the Church last April. She says she’s bitter because the Protestants kept the truths of Church Fathers and fullness of the faith from her all her life!
 
When Protestants says "The Gospel’ they are not talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are speaking of the process of ‘asking Jesus to be your personal Saviour’ kind of thing. The ‘good news’ of the salvation message.

The steps are asking Jesus to forgive you of your sins. Then accepting him ‘into your heart’…

You can tell them that each Mass begins with an examination of conscience where you ask for forgiveness of sins. Then there are Bible reading and then you ‘receive’ the Body and Blood of the Lord just as he commanded.

If they missed that after all these years they must have been asleep.

dream wanderer
 
I would respond that I’m sure the Galatians were bitter when St. Paul told them that they had been severed from Christ and had fallen from grace (Gal 5:4). I’m sure the Galatians liked their Judaizer gospel and thought that the apostles had been denying the truth to them for many years. That’s essentialy what has happened to these Protestants. They didn’t like the true Gospel so they ran after an easier one.
 
I agree that what this Protestant pastor probably meant by not hearing the gospel was that they were not exposed to his church’s version of the gospel, i.e., sola fide, sola scriptura, perhaps dispensationalist, or any number of variations.
 
Sometimes, people get caught up in the emotional responce of a protestant preacher. When you “feel” the movement of the Spirit, you might begin to think that Catholics do not have it at all. WRONG!!! WE have the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, in a way that would make all jelous if they recognized it. See, we cannot see, taste, touch or smell Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. But, He is there. An energetic preacher may make one “feel” that Jesus is there, and a poorly catichized person may feel that this is the Gospel that they are missing.
 
I agree that we do need good faith classes for adults but I think one thing ex-Catholics either forgot or never thought about was this: we all have a personal responsibility to keep on learning the Faith. We don’t just stop learning and studying and asking questions when we get confirmed! It’s not the Catholic Chruch’s job to hold our hands and spoon feed us the Faith without any effort on our parts. When I meet folks that have left the Church because they were “denied the Gospels”, “Weren’t being fed”, or just plain didn’t know the Faith, I want to ask them, “Why were you so lazy that you didn’t get off your duff and study, learn, and ask questions?” Once they enter non-Catholic churches they devote immense amounts of energy doing “Bible study.”

Where was this same energy and zeal when they were Catholics??

Any of us Catholics that feel we weren’t taught the Faith very well are perfectly capable of hitting the bookstores, buying a CCC, going to good websites like catholic.com and filling in the gaps! We aren’t helpless.
 
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MichelleTherese:
I agree that we do need good faith classes for adults but I think one thing ex-Catholics either forgot or never thought about was this: we all have a personal responsibility to keep on learning the Faith. We don’t just stop learning and studying and asking questions when we get confirmed! It’s not the Catholic Chruch’s job to hold our hands and spoon feed us the Faith without any effort on our parts. When I meet folks that have left the Church because they were “denied the Gospels”, “Weren’t being fed”, or just plain didn’t know the Faith, I want to ask them, “Why were you so lazy that you didn’t get off your duff and study, learn, and ask questions?” Once they enter non-Catholic churches they devote immense amounts of energy doing “Bible study.”

Where was this same energy and zeal when they were Catholics??

Any of us Catholics that feel we weren’t taught the Faith very well are perfectly capable of hitting the bookstores, buying a CCC, going to good websites like catholic.com and filling in the gaps! We aren’t helpless.
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I do wonder at why some of us converts ‘hit the bookstore and the websites’ before our confirmation while so many cradle Catholics do not. Do they think they know all they need to know?

I agree the Church should not have to spoon feed them. I do think a ‘refresher’ course ever so often wouldn’t be a bad thing…

It really bothered me that after my RICA class so many cradle Catholic sponsers said things like "I learned so much that I didn’t know before!’

dream wanderer
 
Does anyone else find it ironic that when these Protestant “Bible” churches say “Catholics are denied the Gospel” that they don’t even MEAN the Gospels!!?

They act like Catholics aren’t focused on Scripture, when we can hear different old testament readings, epistle readings, Gospel readings and psalms–every single day of every single week!!

And when they start saying that we don’t get “the gospel” in the Roman Catholic Church…they don’t even mean the gospel but some other vague emotional “gospel” of Jesus Christ as one’s personal lord and savior!

Irony. It kills me.
 
I have many conversations with former Catholics.(God just seems to throw them in my path!🙂 ) Frequently, they will bring up reasons why they left. One that sticks in my mind was confession. I showed her the scripture where Catholics get this belief, and explained that when we say Father forgive me, We are talking to God. And the priest doesn’t forgive our sins, only God does.

She said, no one ever told me. I thought the priest forgave the sins.

It just makes me want to cry for all the people who have to leave the Catholic Church to find that relationship with Christ. Cry for those who never find their way back. In my opinion, this is not the problem of adults, it is the problem of the children’s religion classes. Too much doctrine and learning when to kneel, genuflect and not enough of why we do things. In my opinion, all teaching should hammer on the personal relationship of Christ. Lent, is more than giving up something, more than just doing it because Christ did it, we do it to prepare our hearts and minds to better talk with Christ. We focus on the Passion to better understand His love for us. The first gift Christ gave us upon His reserrection, The Sacrement of Reconciliation.

And I’m not talking about programs that concentrate only on the basic message you can hear in a Prostestant church. I mean the doctrine needs to be wrapped in His love and forgiveness. Please, memorize some of the beautiful prayers out there, but also teach how to just pray from the heart. We need to help kids establish a personal relationship with Christ so as adults, they can see and understand more fully the beauty of the Sacrements.

God Bless
A convert/revert to the CC and CCD teacher
 
This doesn’t go for all Protestants, but what I’ve heard is this: If a catholic or x-catholic was to go up to a Protestant minister/person, and say that they don’t know Christ or the “Gospel”, sometimes they will say to the catholic, Oh that’s because the catholic church doesn’t teach the simple good news of Jesus. But when a protestant from the same denomination goes to the same minister/person, they seem to focus on how that individual has been lacking and not the church’s message. My point is that instead of blaming the individual, it is always the Catholic Church.
 
Having been to several evengelical protestant services w/ my wifes family, you can see how people get so wrapped up in it. The thing is, is that the pastor picks one or two verses and his whole sermon centers on his interpretation of them. They usaully come across w/ such zeal and excitment, that it’s almost like watching an entertainer there for the purpose of performing for everyone. The congregation all really get into it, but to me there was just kind of an empty feeling, so much was missing from the entire thing.
Thank God my wife found that to be the case also after
exploring the Catholic faith, she converted and says she now realizes
why she always felt something missing from the church she attended. Not just that they didn’t actually use all the Gospels, or books of the bible, but that it was almost always select verses to support one thing or another, and whatever particular view point that the pastor wanted to get across on that sunday to fit his agenda.
She found that not only does the Catholic church provide the whole gospel, but the rest of scripture as well. The eucharist and
rest of the sacraments were all things she found she had been shortchanged on as well.
Rich.T
 
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