Catholic apologists are out on the battle field so to say more than the laity who aren’t apologists as a profession and there are enough common objections Protestants have like authority to interpret scripture, sacraments, justification, original sin, the number of books in Bibles, and the Papacy they can generalize on certain topics.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said! In light of this I propose that people from all denominations should be curious and open-minded AND ask people from other denominations what they believe! It’s absolutely crucial! Instead of me hearing some belief you have from a fellow Catholic, I would like to hear it from you or someone else in your denomination. People should go to the source to find answers.
So for you it’s not that you are denying that Lutherans,Thanks for starting this thread and for trying to keep it on track. Sometimes it’s best to ignore posts from annoying “de-railers” that have some irrelevant side agenda (“don’t feed the trolls” as they say), but unless everyone else does it too, the tactic doesn’t work.
As I said in the other thread, I don’t think the label itself is all that problematic, except when coupled “And Protestants believe that…” which will result in an erroneous generalization 99% of the time.
I liked what you had to say about media. If people (for example, cradle Catholics) don’t know much about Protestant groups, they will likely gravitate to what they’ve seen on TV (maybe Billy Graham if they are older or maybe the Crouches or the Tim LaHaye types.) And as you observed as well, part of Catholic “insider” knowledge comes from Catholic converts. Since most, though certainly not all, of the popular apologists are converts, this can create severe distortions.
I think it’s safe to say that most Catholic converts in the U.S. are former Evangelicals/Fundamentalists. I have often wondered if there is some sort of similarity between Catholics and Evangelicals that creates this phenomenon (strict definitions of beliefs maybe?) or whether this is just a matter of the raw numbers and chance. I think most ex-Catholics that remain religious typically become Evangelicals in turn, so it seems like there is some two-way street exchange there for some reason.
Many Evangelicals construct their own religious history beginning with Martin Luther. In a way that’s not 100% incorrect, but it does tend to muddy the the waters considerably. And if particular Evangelicals are from a “Great Apostasy” group, they might even say that there were no real Christians from a time shortly after the death of the apostles until Luther–that way you don’t have to deal with all that messy Church history
Martin Luther is seen by Evangelicals as a champion of the Reformation, and associating the history of one’s group with him is more “glamorous” in a way because people have probably heard of Luther. At least the story of the Reformation is more attractive and interesting than portraying one’s group history going back to, say, a disputes surrounding the U.S. Civil War.
The problem is that many Evangelics imagine that Martin Luther was just like them. They imagine Luther accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior once he realized how “awful” the Catholic Church was–just like that ex-Catholic Evangelical convert down the street they know. When they hear “sola scriptura” they imagine Luther thought about the Bible theologically just like they do. When someone points out something about Luther that sounds “Catholic” (he baptized infants, you know) they assume that he just hadn’t gotten all the “Catholic” out of his system yet.
Now that Evangelical converts to Catholicism and he becomes a Catholic apologist. Because he (most apologists are “he”) sees Evangelicalism as somehow equivalent to a reconstructed generic Reformation Christianity, the apologist rails against “Protestantism” and what “Protestants believe.” Catholics listen to him and assume that he must know what he’s talking about because he was “on the inside” or maybe even has a claim to being a “former pastor.” But the truth is that he probably never really understood much of anything about the Reformation or Luther to begin with, and now that he’s a Catholic he has even less reason to learn about Luther’s theology or history–or Luther’s relationship to modern Lutheranism for that matter.
In a way that’s fine too; no one knows everything. I just wish Catholic apologists wouldn’t set themselves up as false experts on non-Catholic theology, because doing so results in gross misunderstandings. To me it’s both dishonest and harmful to Christianity. If you can’t even properly translate sola scriptura and don’t understand Martin Luther’s biblical theology, you have no business writing or speaking about sola scriptura or its history. If you want to talk about how Evangelicals understand the Bible and know something about that–then that’s perfectly fine.
I think this really touches on the heart of it, but I can’t agree that it’s impossible to generalize.
This seagoing reference reminds me of a paper my son wrote for a college course. In it, he took the doctrinal statements of a number of churches and the writings of some of their important writers and showed that the positions in a great number of the writings are nowhere in the doctrinal statements, and, in many cases are not really consistent with the doctrinal statements.
Joel Osteen succeeded his father, John Osteen, as pastor of Lakewood Church. His father was a Southern Baptist pastor who became swept up in the Charismatic Movement and embraced ideas connected to the prosperity theology.
in simple terms, evangelicalism started with the great awakening in the 1700 and even John Wesley is considered an early leader. Evangelicalism hold the Bible as final authority and consider it usually inerrant (free of errors). Evangelicalism also emphasis and personal or a born again (John 3:16) type of experience. There is emphasis on personal beliefs and piety as opposed to importance of the particular Church or denomination one belongs to. the best public example would be Billy Graham. Fundamentalism is an outgrowth of evangelicalism, but hold a much more stricter view of the Bible. There are also heavily influenced by dispensationalism which is what the end times rapture stuff comes from. The best example would be Bob Jones University. The quiver full movement is also a fundamentalist group. Fundamentalist would be the most anti-Catholic of all non-Catholic Protestant groups. The website that many come on CAF and ask about such as gotanwers.org is a fundamentalist group. Dave Noonan on this thread represents mainstream Protestantism which takes a much more liberal interpretation of scripture and emphasis more of the social message instead of personal like evangelical. These are very simple synopsis and I hope that helps.
Thank you that was a nice explanation. I have seen him a few times on TV like in interviews and he seems like a nice man which surprised me when I saw Dateline or 60 Minutes where he was showing his house and it was huge and then he was driving this super expensive car, which you know all the power to you. I don’t have any issues with people who have money, God saw it fit for them to have it but as a Catholic it seemed odd that a man of God would purposely live such a life. For a Catholic, when a priest or Bishop is found to be living in excess it is scandalous and they are condemned because frankly it is embarrassing to the rest Catholic community especially the religious brothers and sisters who take vows of poverty like Mother Theresa’s community the Missionaries of Charity who literally live in squalor with the people they care for and some of our great saints came from very wealthy aristocratic families in Europe and they joined religious communities where they took vows of poverty and renounced all wealth and wealth that they would inherit. I also know a few Baptist pastors who live extremely modestly with their families so I was wondering where Osteen fit in. Prosperity Gospel doesn’t make sense to me it reminds me of the how the Ancients believed that if you were sick it was because of your sin.
Wow! Excellent. You must be very proud of your son.
Like with most parents, very true.
I am very happy to see that you have joined the thread. I think you have some keen observations. The cross movement between evangelicals and Catholics probably on the surface seems unlikely but I think and was true with me, the big attraction to the the Catholic Church is it’s authority. The “culture wars” of abortion, divorce, moral standards have made strange bed fellows between the Catholic Church and evangelicals. I think in trying to answer the culture, there has been a reach by evangelicals into the past and history. Maybe having a definitive set of teaching about a number of things and having that as one’s historical teaching is a big draw. As evangelicals debate and argue with each other, I think they start to look back at Christian history which goes beyond Martin Luther. Take something like abortion. In the strictest sense, it isn’t mentioned at all in the Bible but the Catholic Church has always held that it is morally wrong and murder. In arguments among themselves or with main line Protestants, they turn to the Catholic Church for reference. I think that is why Rick Santorum had as his biggest base evangelicals.Thanks for starting this thread and for trying to keep it on track. Sometimes it’s best to ignore posts from annoying “de-railers” that have some irrelevant side agenda (“don’t feed the trolls” as they say), but unless everyone else does it too, the tactic doesn’t work.
As I said in the other thread, I don’t think the label itself is all that problematic, except when coupled “And Protestants believe that…” which will result in an erroneous generalization 99% of the time.
I liked what you had to say about media. If people (for example, cradle Catholics) don’t know much about Protestant groups, they will likely gravitate to what they’ve seen on TV (maybe Billy Graham if they are older or maybe the Crouches or the Tim LaHaye types.) And as you observed as well, part of Catholic “insider” knowledge comes from Catholic converts. Since most, though certainly not all, of the popular apologists are converts, this can create severe distortions.
I think it’s safe to say that most Catholic converts in the U.S. are former Evangelicals/Fundamentalists. I have often wondered if there is some sort of similarity between Catholics and Evangelicals that creates this phenomenon (strict definitions of beliefs maybe?) or whether this is just a matter of the raw numbers and chance. I think most ex-Catholics that remain religious typically become Evangelicals in turn, so it seems like there is some two-way street exchange there for some reason.
Many Evangelicals construct their own religious history beginning with Martin Luther. In a way that’s not 100% incorrect, but it does tend to muddy the the waters considerably. And if particular Evangelicals are from a “Great Apostasy” group, they might even say that there were no real Christians from a time shortly after the death of the apostles until Luther–that way you don’t have to deal with all that messy Church history
Martin Luther is seen by Evangelicals as a champion of the Reformation, and associating the history of one’s group with him is more “glamorous” in a way because people have probably heard of Luther. At least the story of the Reformation is more attractive and interesting than portraying one’s group history going back to, say, a disputes surrounding the U.S. Civil War.
The problem is that many Evangelics imagine that Martin Luther was just like them. They imagine Luther accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior once he realized how “awful” the Catholic Church was–just like that ex-Catholic Evangelical convert down the street they know. When they hear “sola scriptura” they imagine Luther thought about the Bible theologically just like they do. When someone points out something about Luther that sounds “Catholic” (he baptized infants, you know) they assume that he just hadn’t gotten all the “Catholic” out of his system yet.
Now that Evangelical converts to Catholicism and he becomes a Catholic apologist. Because he (most apologists are “he”) sees Evangelicalism as somehow equivalent to a reconstructed generic Reformation Christianity, the apologist rails against “Protestantism” and what “Protestants believe.” Catholics listen to him and assume that he must know what he’s talking about because he was “on the inside” or maybe even has a claim to being a “former pastor.” But the truth is that he probably never really understood much of anything about the Reformation or Luther to begin with, and now that he’s a Catholic he has even less reason to learn about Luther’s theology or history–or Luther’s relationship to modern Lutheranism for that matter.
In a way that’s fine too; no one knows everything. I just wish Catholic apologists wouldn’t set themselves up as false experts on non-Catholic theology, because doing so results in gross misunderstandings. To me it’s both dishonest and harmful to Christianity. If you can’t even properly translate sola scriptura and don’t understand Martin Luther’s biblical theology, you have no business writing or speaking about sola scriptura or its history. If you want to talk about how Evangelicals understand the Bible and know something about that–then that’s perfectly fine.
Not that I’m defending excessive wealth, but I do think its only fair to point out that much (maybe all) of his income comes from book sells. He’s written books that have sold extremely well and no doubt the royalties make his lifestyle possible.
Well, to be fair, in ages past bishops and other high ranking church officials often lived extremely well, while others in within the church and the general society lived in quite depressing circumstances.
Well, it would depend on the financial possibilities of the church in question. If there is a church that is made up of mostly poor people, I think people are generally upset when they see the pastor living in luxury. However, if the church is made up mostly of rich people, I think people are less upset when they see the pastor living similar lifestyles to their parishioners.
To be fair, what you describe is “hard prosperity gospel.” Most people who fall into the prosperity gospel camp don’t adhere to the “hard prosperity gospel.” They believe what scholars term “soft prosperity gospel.” Soft PG does not tell people that people are sick or poor because of their own sin.
You make a strong point in that Evangelicals, next to Catholics are the most outspoken against abortion than anyone. We even take it to the streets to let our voices be heard sometimes; I don’t know if Catholics also do this but I know they’re outspoken in their own way. Morally, yeah; we’re tight.
yes, I think these things are true. Billy Graham is probably the most quinessential evangelical yet I wouldn’t consider him at all anti-Catholic. He stays to his basic message and really in essence is considered “America’s pastor” A couple of other evangelical voices would be Dr. James Dobson and Chuck Colson. Maybe they are not the top theologians but they are very clear voices in the culture and support for families and basic Christian morality. I know of Catholic youth groups that have written letters of support for Tim Tebow who is very much an evangelical. He is also a wonderful model for all Christian youth. I think that would lead to the other generalization too many Catholics make is that they equate non-Catholic with anti-Catholic. There is a difference. Just because someone is a non-Catholic Christian or Protestant doesn’t mean that they are anti-Catholic. I think that idea gets lost on some of the responses I’ve seen on CAF to our non-Catholic Christian (Protestant) friends on CAF. I probably have much more common with someone like yourself than an unorthodox Catholic that supports abortion.
I think the commonality that you see with Lutherans, Anglican and some Methodist is that all three have maintained their liturgical forms of worship. I’m not sure if you have ever watched the show on EWTN called The Coming Home network. It is run by Marcus Grodi who is and adult convert. In his show, he interviews converts and the reasons why. I would say a big chunk of who he interviews are from either Anglican or Lutheran churches. The Methodist church which was a movement founded by John Wesley was an Anglican priest. I think there are various Methodist forms but when i was growing up, I went to a high church which has a very formal liturgy. The church itself was also setup similar to a Catholic church in that there was a center altar, a side lectionary and even a red hanging candle to symbolize the Holy Spirit.We had a visiting Priest who spoke about the “holy Catholic Church” - he commented that the members of the Holy catholic Church were the 3 branches: those in Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury (1) those in communion with the Roman Catholic Church (2) and the Greek Orthodox (3)
This is likely not the teaching of the Archbishop of Canterbury - however he made the point that the Episcopal form of Government ( Bishops) set these 3 apart-
A number of the Congregation at coffee hour seemed to agree -many members of the Episcopal Church do not lump themselves with other Protestants
I pointed out to him that perhaps his thinking was somewhat dated as I pointed out that the Methodists and Lutherans have Bishops although I am not sure how much influence they have
It seems to me that the Anglicans and Lutherans are in many ways different from other Protestants or at least we think so
Good to hear man.
