One time during a Knights of Columbus Tootsie-Roll drive, a woman in the back seat of a car, (who was wearing a t-shirt bearing the name of a local, and vocal, Baptist Church) exclaimed loudly as they drove away, “salvation through works, right?!”
I was befuddled for a moment because I had no idea why she said that or what she meant. Evidently she thinks Catholics believe they will go to Heaven if they do good things, apart from grace from God. Which is Pelagianism, I believe. They were far down the road by the time I understood what she meant.
The only other person who has somewhat challenged me is my brother-in-law. Every now and then he will say something like, “what Catholics fail to understand is salvation is a free gift.” Or, “Catholics do whatever their Church tells them to do, instead of thinking for themselves.”
Most of what he says is out of pure ignorance. There is so much they do not know about Catholicism, and if they do not understand anything about Catholicism, they do not understand very much about Christianity as a whole. His daughter-in-law once reminded our kids to take their bibles and take notes at Mass. As if we sit and listen to the priest misinterpret scripture for an hour like the pastor at their Church. Yep, I used to have a bible with pages marked with every color of highlighter. Each color meant something at the time, but now I do not know what, thankfully.
Besides those cases, I haven’t had anyone challenge me. Maybe it is worse in the South?
