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“The main reason that I am surprised is because I knew Catholicism to be a religion where people did not have their own relationship with God. Even my mom [she used to be Catholic, but is now Baptist] says that she always went to the priest to confess her sins and stuff so I just kind of assumed that you came from the same thing… I guess I never considered Christian and Catholic to be the same thing because my mom’s family is all Catholic and they believe pretty differently than my family does.”
How can I explain the entire concept of Catholicism to her, especially about how of course we have relationships with God, Confession, and maybe the Eucharist, too? I’m 16, not in the greatest place to defend my faith, and don’t want to mess this up! Thanks for the help!
well, although we do have our own relationship with God, our relationship is also interconnected with all the other Catholics in a different way, since we are all part of the Mystical Body of Christ(the church) where Christ is the head, and we are the limbs,
one thing to understand is, most protestants have the wrong idea of the Catholic faith, and sometimes it just takes a simple explanation of each of the things they are mistaken on to turn them around,
of course it’s a process that’s not going to happen all at once, so you need to have patience with your friend, but just remember that you are Gods friend first and foremost, and despite what others say, you should not “accept” her religion, because by doing that you are not a true friend to either her or God,
now of course to not accept it does not mean to be harsh with her or mocking of her religion, but it simply means to not let her think you approve of it or think that it’s somehow “good”,
the true spirit of ecumenism is not accepting other religions into ours, but instead accepting the people themselves, God want’s us to be charitable to our neighbor, and part of that is bringing them into the true church, and if we do not believe with all of our hearts the the catholic church is the one true church and all other “religions” are false, then who’s gunna take us seriously? if we let others think we accept their religion and are ok with it, then they’re gunna keep on believing in it and thinking it’s good…
we can’t be cruel or cold about it, but they at least have to see that we are firm in our faith.
and let’s not forget, human respect is a vice, and then how much more so is respect for other religions displeasing to God? we must be friends with God first in all things, even at the risk of being hated and scorned by others…
well, i haven’t explained that as well as i could because i want to address your actual questions, but if you want to understand better what i am talking about read this article, which is not very long, and will help you very much in helping your friend also -
gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?t=14178983
ok so first of all, confession,
you haven’t mentioned what your friends views are on confession, so i’ll just go over the more common misconceptions,
such as “i can just confess to God”…well, sure, you can do that, but is that what God told you to do?
we are told in the bible - *"And it came to pass, as he was going to Jerusalem, he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain town, there met him ten men that were lepers, who stood afar off; And lifted up their voice, saying: Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Whom when he saw, he said: Go, shew yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, as they went, they were made clean. And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back, with a loud voice glorifying God.
And he fell on his face before his feet, giving thanks: and this was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, Were not ten made clean? and where are the nine? There is no one found to return and give glory to God, but this stranger. And he said to him: Arise, go thy way; for thy faith hath made thee whole." *Luke 17:11
now, see how Jesus commanded them to go to the priests, well, why would He do that? while He could have cured them right then and there,
and then even before they reached the priests, they were “made clean”, so, indeed God can forgive us even before we reach the confessional, so why? - for the sake of obedience,
now lets say that they refused, and said something like “you can just cure us yourself, why should we go to a priest??” do you think Jesus would have cured them then?..most likely not.
there are many things we prove of ourselves by going to a priest for confession, and many things we gain spiritually, but one of the greatest things God asks of us out of confession, is our obedience,
God is all knowing and all loving, He knows what is best for us, and has instituted the sacrament of penance only for our great benefit,
we do not deserve Gods forgiveness, we deserve hell for our sins, God does not have to forgive us, but only does so out of His deep love for us, and so who are we to judge how God wants us to confess our sins? we should be grateful that we may be forgiven at all, and we should accept even harder ways of being forgiven, without complaining…but God gives us this easy way, though of course not always so easy, and even near impossible at certain times in history when Christians were being persecuted…but what i mean is, it’s always available to us, and we are aloud to remain anonymous, and it takes only a few minutes, and we can go as often as we need…i think we have been spoiled by confession in our current time in a way, because years ago, people would travel many miles just to go to confession, they would even risk death, many priests died for the sake of absolving others of their sins, they really knew the true value of it…whereas nowadays, it seems like some would rather die than confess to a priest.
I’m in the midst of trying to explain that we’re the original Church, founded on the apostles. I’ll post if I have more questions, but I wanted to say thank you for the advice.