Cowboy Pete,
I wake up in the night to pray…and I think about false teachers who are deliberately misrepresenting the Catholic faith. And it has come to my attention that for the past 3 years, Mormon ‘scholars’ are researching the early Church Fathers, but completely misrepresenting our teachings to your fellow believers.
You mention other anti-Catholic congregations here in the USA. These same sorts go out into foreign lands indoctrinating them with the same bias. I actually met and worked with African women who were subject to an American based Christian sect that was going about teaching that the priests had alot of money. I asked how, ‘They drive jeeps’. Then they told me that these sectarians taught them that we worship statues, and the typical other ‘stuff’ vulnerable people hear.
These kinds of sects primarily come out of our country. There is also a great dearth of lack of scholarship found in non-denominational communities always pointing the finger at the Catholic Church being a man made religion.
I am beginning to see that such ‘Christian’ teachers and others deliberately misrepresent our faith to simple people, are in fact promoting prejudice.
Likewise, if a person claims to be a scholar, and as a title representing some academic discipline, you would also assume like myself, that they have been taught prior to the fact, of learning to read documents objectively.
So when I see Mormon men quoting St. Athanasius whose position is complete contradiction to Mormonism polytheism where one progresses to become a god or goddess, St. Justin the Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, Ireneaus, to support your contrary beliefs, I see it on one hand…a good movement to study such teachings, but then the same falseness of not understanding, and subsequently misrepresenting.
You can recommend texts…Mr. Nash’s book gets into Scriptural depth on the background of Melchizedek and the perpetual sacrifice which is Christ in the Mass…Who has no beginning and no end.
We do not believe Christ had a beginning and thus an end, making Him separate from the Father. This is what St. Athanasius taught and affirmed at the Council of Nicea…otherwise, if Christ had a beginning and an end, He had a different substance from the Father…and this would lead to polytheism and a return to paganism…where really – the gods are either representations of unknown and uncontrolling forces or extensions of the will of men.
Christ never called us to be a god. Christ called us to a new life with Him and the Father. We are to renounce ourselves and to allow the new life of Christ to enter, to seek the humble life, and the perfect life in this world does not comprise of a family, or a big house, or money, or social status, but a renunciation of all these things for Christ. In return, we receive all of life. We then receive eyes, ears, hearts…that can perceive the goodness of life given us by the Creator that surrounds us, that brings us to joy and happiness the world can’t bring.
As Jesus said to the rich, young man, to gain perfection – not progression – Jesus said to renounce all that he had and to follow Him. For this you see in the Catholic Church many saints who lived lives of poverty but in joyful service to the Lord.
