For Protestants who have been around awhile...

[MariaG]

LOL Maria, I didn’t know I was shocking.

Remember I said my list is still valid, but always in light of the real issue I cannot reconcile. CC authority, if wrong about justification, would still be wrong about something. If they are wrong about such a huge issue, I cannot accept their authority.

I can see how changing ones belief about authority could make it all fall into place though… Like when I say, “God says it, so it is.” You can accept many things if you have faith in your authority.

But at least you have found your “issue”

I know for me from a nonbeliever, to Nazarene and eventually to the Catholic Church it went something like:

God’s word or not, Belief in Christ and His word 100%, believe His word shows the Real Presence (church in didn’t), believe His word shows the authority of the Catholic Church, Believe scripture shows the Church will be the pillar and foundation of truth and will teach all truth, so everything else I “don’t agree with” must be my problem and so work to understand why Church is right, because scripture does not lie about the Church being a pillar and foundation of truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail.

I do sometimes wonder where I would be today if any of the Churches I had been in had believed in the Real Presence of Christ since this was the pushing point for me into the Catholic Church Would I still have found my way to the Catholic Church if I had ended up in a sacramental protestant church?

Your sister in Christ,
Maria

 

[MariaG]

I think you’re reading this through a Catholic lens (I know that you are a convert, but converts typically take on a Catholic lens!). Becoming Catholic often (not always) involves (or is the result of!) a paradigm shift in which authority becomes the main issue. (Note Scott Hahn’s story, for instance. It was only after he had already decided that the standard Reformed/Protestant view of salvation was wrong that he started looking at Catholicism seriously. He had already decided that the dominant theme in Scripture was God bringing humans into a covenantal relationship, and this led him to Catholicism. Had he started out with the assumption that faith vs. works was the defining issue, he might never have converted.) But it isn’t necessarily the main issue for Protestants. For the bulk of American Protestants–Baptists and Reformed particularly, also Lutherans on the whole–justification is the main issue.

This is not true for those of us coming from a Wesleyan position. Our differences with Catholicism on this point are relatively more nuanced, and questions of authority, ecclesiology, etc., tend to be the main thing.

Edwin

Very true Edwin. I had not read your post yet, but as you can see, I had found what I believed to be error in my church, and all the churches I had attended who did not believe in the Real Presence of Christ, and it was then that I looked at the Catholic Church more seriously.

As I said, I often wonder where I would be if I had, had friends in a sacramental Protestant Church, if I would have been there even today

Also, although the first Church I went to as an adult, a Nazarene Church that preached a Weslian holiness doctrine, I never could quite agree or grasp? the whole justification, sanctification issue that the pastor always preached on. So I guess I was a defective Weslian even though I still really like him And I tried really hard to!

Your sister in Christ,
Maria