Help me out and proofread this

[Paul_Folbrecht]

Hello folks,

Haven’t posted here in a while. Here’s the thing: I’ve written some essays about the faith, intended mainly for some protestant friends and acquaintances, and I’d like to post one (the intro) here for comments.

I’d like to here from Catholics ONLY, please - this is not a posting for debate purposes.

So, Catholics - any factual errors? Too snippy? Not snippy enough? Any feedback appreciated - thanks in advance and Merry Christmas!

(It is too long for one post and will be split into 4-5.)

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

This paper is an introduction to a series of essays I’ve written on Christianity and the Catholic Church. These are directed mainly at any non-Catholic Christian who is interested in learning more about the Church’s history and teachings. These essays make the argument that the Catholic Church is, in fact, the original Christian Church founded by Christ, and today represents the fullness of Christian doctrine - the complete truth of God’s revelation to man. That is, Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded (according to the Gospel) with Peter as its first head and Peter’s successors as Vicar since then, with a priesthood made valid by Apostolic succession, and protected from error in doctrine concerning faith and morals by the Holy Spirit as promised by Christ. You will see in these essays ample evidence for this assertion - evidence completely unknown, in my experience, to the vast majority of Protestants and even a great many Catholics as well.

My motivation for writing is mostly the fact that what I’m going to share is so incredibly unknown in this country and I feel a very strong urge to do what I can to rective that. Then there is the huge amount of ignorance, prejudice, and outright hostility towards the Catholic Church and Catholics, from almost everywhere in American society- the secular, the liberal Protestant, and the conservative fundamentalist/evangelical - something to be vigorously opposed. I write to spread understanding and appreciation based on the facts of history and logic I’ll present and also in the hope of inspiriting conversions to the faith. (This is a time of many Catholic conversions - almost all of my favorite Catholic authors are former Protestants, for example. These include Scott Hahn, Mark Shea, Dave Armstrong, Steve Ray, and David Currie.)

I wish to say a work about Catholic-Protestant relations and how this relates to what I write. Hard-line evangelicals/fundamentalists (hereafter abbreviated as 'E/F’s) teach that the Catholic Church is a non-Christian religion, or a strange mix of Christianity and paganism, and that somewhere between many and all Catholics are doomed to Hell for practicing a ‘religion of works’ and other nonsensical assertions that bely a total misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine and practice. Even when such beliefs are not fully accepted, their influence is felt. (I know - before I was a devout Catholic, I attended two different ‘Bible’ churches and was active in one of their young-adult groups. They always seem to have their share of fervent Catholic bashers - lifelong Protestants, new converts, and ex-Catholics who didn’t understand their faith, some innocently mislead and some probably less so.)

In contrast, the Catholic attitude towards non-Catholic Christians is far more charitable, sensible, and honest. The Catholic teaching regarding our Christian brothers not in full communion with the Catholic Church is that they are just that - our brothers and sisters in Christ, who have part of the Truth but not all of it. We honor their baptism as a valid sacrament and count them among the Body of Christ. We respect the good in their members and their sincere search for Christ.

With that introduction, let’s talk about the essays. I do not consider what I’m doing here to be original work - I’ve read a lot of books in the last several years, 20 or more, about the history of Christianity, especially the early Church, and Catholic apologetics. To a large degree, what I’m doing is distilling and repackaging a lot of that wonderful and eye-opening information. I will include a bibliography to allow people to go directly to the sources, what is what I enthusiastically recommend.

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

One of the most frequent and most baseless accusations leveled is that the Church is “not Biblical”. I will show that the Church is and always has been completely true to all Scripture (the Catholic Church, of course, itself produced the canon of Scripture) in its official teaching and practice. It is often said that ignorance and prejudice are what has kept people from the Church and the former proves to be the case in many matters regarding Scripture. For starters, Protestants tend to read the Bible through the lenses formed through their church. They do not see how colored their interpretations often are, and just how many seemingly confusing and contradictory passages are brushed aside as a matter of course. Most of the large errors in Protestant theology come as a result of what I call “a theology of sound bites” - reading certain verses in isolation and not reading Scripture as a whole. What I’ve found, in contrast, is that all of Scripture is very successfully incorporated in and explained by Catholic theology. Catholic theology is incredibly beautiful in it’s end-to-end consistency and staggeringly unwavering - unchanging - through the ages as well. Though many doctrines have grown - become more precise - as they were meant to, all have their firm roots in Christ and the Apostles.

(A common criticism leveled at the Church is that her doctrines have, in fact, “changed” - but this is not true - they have only become more precise. ‘All public revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, John.’ Nothing is ever rejected or revised, only clarified. Protestants should take note that many doctrines that they themselves accept without question, such as that of the Triune nature of God and the Incarnation, were definitively specified by Catholic ecumenical councils, several hundred years after the Resurrection.)

So, in terms of the evidence for the arguments I will put forth, the first major area is Scripture. This is obviously fitting, for the Bible is critically important to all Christians. Considering, especially, that sola scriptura is (along with sola fide, “faith alone”) is one of the two foundations of Protestantism, demonstrating that Scripture firmly supports Catholic theology provides even more impact. (It turns out that Scripture itself does not support sola scriptura - it firmly contradicts it. For but one example, see 1 Timothy 3:15 which call The Church, not “the Bible” (which didn’t yet exist), “the pillar and foundation of all truth”.)

The second are from which I draw evidence is the belief and practice of the early Church given to us by those known as the Church Fathers - the Christian leaders (priests, bishops, and popes) in the first three centuries of Christianity (for there have been priests, bishops, and a pope since the resurrection). What’s amazing to learn is that the testimony of the Fathers as to Christian doctrine and practice in the Church’s infancy is entirely Catholic in every area of Protestant disagreement - the Eucharist & the sacraments, the priesthood, the necessity of visible and concrete Church structure, Apostolic succession and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, Purgatory and prayers for the dead, honoring saints and the Mother of Christ, the role of Apostolic Tradition, and more. The early Church was, as is the Catholic Church today, entirely sacramental, with the Eucharist as the absolute center of spiritual life. Can the relevance of these things be overstated? We are talking in some case about Fathers that knew the Apostles themselves directly, such as Polycarp and Iraneous, both of whom were disciples of John. No, we must conclude - even outside of all the other evidence - that the Christianity of these men and this time was the Christianity of the Apostles and of Christ Himself. There exists, in fact, from Apostolic times to the present a complete and total continuum of Catholic belief and practice - and this easily demonstrable fact makes the Protestant lie that the Church is not the Church of the Apostles simply untenable. We can debate about Biblical interpretation for hours, but we have tomes upon tomes telling us what the earliest Christians actually did - we have their interpretations, and to claim that this is not of value is terribly irrational. As the famous Cardinal Newman, an Anglican convert, once stated, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

The comment regarding irrationality in the preceding paragraph is the next sub-topic I wish to address. It is true that many people to convert to the Catholic faith from the E/F world and that what convinces all of them is understanding of the Church that comes from the study of the Bible and of Christian history. It can also be said that many in the E/F community, both laymen unfamiliar with history and professional apologists (such as James White and Jack Chick), display what might be called an abandonment of rationality. I wish to choose my words carefully here to avoid offense, but I must use language that describes what I see - a conscience and deliberate refusal to engage in rational and logical thinking when it comes to Catholicism (and other topics). For example, to state that what the Church believed and practiced in the first and second centuries is irrelevant because “only the Bible is authoritative” is irrational. To refuse to accept what the Catholic Church itself and Catholics themselves state are the beliefs and teachings of the Church, as I have seen far too many times to mention, is irrational. There is an obstinate ignorance at work - a stark refusal to ever broaden ones’ view, process new information, or, again, simply think in a logical manner. Some Fundamentalist churches goes to far as to claim that reason is the enemy of faith, but this can never be so, for the Creator of the universe is the epitome of rationality and reason. I mention these things due to the difficulties that arise from them in the field of apologetics.

I had a realization after a number of months of pouring through volume after volume about Catholicism and the early Church - in an instant, I understand how so many preposterous falsehoods about the Church came to be: the only way to “beat” the Church, really, is to setup a straw-man Church in its stead and attack it - a Catholic Church that does not exist. This Church that does not exist is the one that worships Mary and the saints, teaches salvation by mans’ works, worships bread, makes up entirely new doctrine and dogma every few centuries, doesn’t consider the Bible infallible, and has murdered millions of Protestants (by some counts, more human beings than have ever lived in the entire history of our race). I am not, of course, suggesting that the average Protestant or even E/F engages in such intellectual dishonesty - the lies, for the most part, came to be long ago and are now passed on largely with innocent ignorance.

What else is there that makes Catholicism so appealing and so beautiful? There is its inherent rationality and intellectualism and it’s familiarity with and friendly relationship with science. The Catholic Church has produced so many monumental intellects it’s not possible to discuss more than a smattering of them in a forum such as this essay introduction. From St. Augustine, quoted today in peer-reviewed thesis on quantum mechanics for his stunning insights into philosophy and science, scientists like Georges Lemaitre, the priest who initially proposed the “Big Bang Theory” of the creation of the universe, the geneticist Mendel, Copernicus, countless Jesuit astronomers, etc., the legacy of the Church in the areas of science and philosophy is really amazing. The Church accepts observable science. We know that scriptures are infallible. Hence, when science appears to contradict scripture, it is not scripture that is wrong. It is our interpretation of scripture that is wrong. God, Genesis and evolution are totally compatible.

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

Concerning Luther and the Revolution

The average American is unaware of many of the relevant facts. In place of them, we have a distorted urban legend passed off as fact in our Protestant-formed society - the legend of Luther as the gallant crusader for Truth against a corrupt, outdated Church that had ceased to speak for the Apostles. But the fact is that, while there were indeed scandalous abuses at the time (mainly the sale of indulgences and Church office), these were not as widespread as the legend says - and, more importantly, such things are irrelevant to what actually occurred in the ‘Reformation’ - the wholesale discard of a great deal of the doctrine and dogma of the Church Christ founded. Luther was entirely correct to have found distaste in the corruption he saw, but entirely unjustified to make himself the new, infallible Church (he wrote several times that he considered himself infallible) and rewrite fifteen centuries of Spirit-guided interpretation and Apostolic Tradition. What the casual observers do not realize is that the two subjects are not even related. The new teachings Luther created, such as sola scriptura and sola fide, teachings somehow nobody had so much as conceived of in the first 15 centuries of Christianity, had nothing to do with the scandal he initially objected to.

I am going to address the issue of corruption in the Catholic Church briefly here. There are many today who would give as reason for leaving or not joining the Catholic Church the scandals of priestly abuse that have erupted in the last decade. These events - the cover-ups possibly even more-so than the actual abuse - were utterly shocking and disgusting beyond words, there is no doubt. However, the men committing these acts were men, and not the Church. The Church is not the people in it - a concept that many Protestants do have a difficult time understanding, it would seem. When the President of the United States runs around with his willie hanging out and bombs another country to draw attention from it, do people call for the end of the office itself? Should we do away with the executive branch of government? I think not, and the analogy is not a bad one. Christ’s parable of the wheat & the chaff foretold the bad seeds in the true Church, and the fact that they’d be often hard to spot as well. (Few people ever learn that the chaff he referred to is a weed that looks almost identical to a wheat plant! His parable had real subtlety!) There are now over one billion Catholics in the world and the notion that they must or should all lead moral lives to prove the worthiness of the Church itself does not hold logical water - in fact, it’s just silly, for several reasons. What matters is that the doctrine & dogma as taught officially by the Church through the millennia is true. Lastly, there is the critical point that the priests and bishops in question were in almost all cases dissenters from authentic Catholic teaching - and thus not true Catholics in one sense, at least. Ironically, it is accepting the values of the culture & media that hates the Church so much that paves the road to such grave sin. <<More to this paragraph that I’ve snipped for now…>>

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

The Essays - A Brief Overview

The Eucharist was the center of Christian worship and life of the early Church since the time of Apostles. It is still so today in the Catholic Church. The belief of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was upheld by all the Church Fathers we have on record (as it is by the New Testament); the theology is entirely Catholic, and only the Catholic Church maintains this theology.

The Papacy was established by Christ when He named Peter head of His Church, told him that the rules he made would be observed even in Heaven, and gave him the keys (metaphorically speaking) of Paradise itself. Scripture tells us this and also that Peter was prime among the Apostles after the Ascension; the further historical record tells us that Peter eventually became Bishop of Rome and was martyred there. (There are over 300 quotes from the Fathers of the first three centuries speaking of Peter teaching, ruling, and dying in Rome. Peter’s tomb, directly beneath the Vatican, was discovered and excavated in the 1960s.) Peter’s direct successors have ruled the Church as Vicar of Christ since his death (the first 32 all being martyred). That Peter’s chair in Rome was considered prime in the Church and exercised control over all other churches was established by the close of the 1st century (by Clement’s letter to Corinth) and the doctrine of infallibility of Christ’s Vicar in matters of faith and morals in official teaching (only!) is established no later than the 3rd century. By ‘established’ I mean that we have direct support in writing - like in any other area, generally the theology is formally specified only when challenged - in other words, the evidence demonstrates it existed before the formality, accepted by default.

**Sola fide **(“faith alone”) is one of the two pillars of the Protestant Revolution (this is a more accurate term than “Reformation”). It says that humans are saved - attain Paradise - by faith in Christ alone, and that “works” - what a person does - have no bearing. Protestants charge that the Catholic teaching that Christians “earn” their salvation through their good works in incorrect - and blasphemous. The first problem is that this is not Catholic teaching and never has been - the Church has always taught that the grace necessary for salvation is a gift from God which no man merits, and that the soul must claim this gift through faith and works working in concert - the two are, ultimately, inseparable. Luther’s theology here was brand-new and directly contradicts Scripture in many areas. As far as the words of Christ Himself, salvation is almost always put in terms of behavior - caring for the poor and other acts of charity are what Christ tells us get us to Heaven. Luther’s new theology was predicated on taking a very few, select verses out of context and ignoring - even disparaging - the Scripture that could not possibly be reconciled with his teaching. (Such as James, which he called “an epistle of straw”. If the “reformers” had ever had real reverence for Scripture, the reformation never could have gotten off the ground for it depended upon an arrogant man’s ego deriding Scripture from the outset.) This continues to this day - except that many Protestants sects themselves have abandoned sola fide themselves due to the overwhelming Scriptural evidence against it.

**Sola Scriptura **(“Scripture alone”) is the other of the two main pillars of the Revolution. This teaching, also completely new - revolutionary - said that the oral tradition handed down by the Apostles was no longer valid in any sense - only the written Word of God had an relevance. To most modern Americans, this sounds sensible, because we’re a Protestant society and this is what we’re used to. Even the enemies of Christianity tend to assume that ‘Christians’ believe ‘the Bible’ is all there is of substance. But, there are a couple of very serious problems with this teaching, the first being that Scripture itself directly contradicts it. Christ told us that the oral, unwritten Tradition of the Jewish Law and it’s teachers was valid, and the New Testament epistles tell us again and again that the Church is the source of authority - the oral teaching of the Apostles and their successors. When one considers that the early Church had no written gospels until a at least a generation after Christ, with some of the epistles coming much later, that there was no official canon until the 4th century (this is “The Bible”), that books at this time of history were extremely rare and expensive due to the manual labor of copying, and that the solid majority of the population of Palestine and Asia Minor at the time were illiterate, this makes a great deal of sense. Though every Catholic dogma and moral teaching is very much rooted in Scripture, the Church always has and must consider the oral Tradition valid as well.

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

Purgatory & Prayers for the Dead is one of the most misunderstood areas of Catholicism. (Actually, almost all of it is greatly misunderstood, but this is one area where some of the more preposterous accusations and falsehoods are seen.) Luther saw the abuse of the sale of indulgences being committed in some circles (indulgences themselves are a very Biblical concept and a staple of the early Church) and essentially threw all the babies out with the dirty bath water. Both Purgatory - a state of the soul neither Heaven nor Hell - and the practice of praying for deceased souls that have not yet attained Paradise have a good deal of direct Scriptural support and were practiced in the earth Church, as described by the oldest documents available. This essay will describe this evidence in-depth, and show just how Scriptural a concept post-death purification is. This is another one of those areas that can only be explained by selective and distorted Bible reading through “Protestant glasses”.

Honoring Saints the way the Catholic Church teaches is something else generally greatly misunderstood (or, worse, intentionally twisted). The key word is honor - this is what Scripture teaches us to do.

Mary Most modern Protestants are unaware of how their un-Biblical beliefs in this area evolved over time - for Luther held deep devotion to the Mother of God and preached such regularly. He, for example, defended Mary’s perpetual virginity and regarded her Immaculate Conception as “a pious and pleasing thought”. Cutoff from the Church Christ founded, various Protestant denominations have drifted farther and farther into error in many areas, and this one is a good example. Not even Luther would recognize the modern Lutheran churches’ Marian teachings (or total lack thereof) not to mention those of the Fundamentalist sects. (Yet, a Catholic from the 15th century - or the 2nd century - would immediately recognize every major Catholic teaching & practice as identical in substance to his own.)

 

[mdcpensive1]

Your essays are very interesting from an apologetic viewpoint. I would however elaborate on what was in #5 when you say that the Church is not the “people”. I understand what you mean but others I bet would have a hard time understanding the gist of what you are saying and might be turned off from it or come away with the idea that you are wrong here and must be wrong in other places also, putting all the truth you wrote in a bad light.

mdcpensive1

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

A response - thanks.

Actually, all of this is just the essay intro - a single ‘essay’ itself. The bold topics are the overviews - I wrote on essay on all of them individually.

But I did not write anything further about what you cited. Maybe that would be a good idea as you are correct - my experience indicates that most E/Fs have quite a difficult time understanding this distinction. (To them, ‘the church’ is the building they go to and its pastor…)

 

[mdcpensive1]

Thanks for your reply. It would help if you could explain the difference between being in the Body of Christ and in the Church Christ started. That may help a lot of people.

mdcpensive1

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

Thanks for your reply. It would help if you could explain the difference between being in the Body of Christ and in the Church Christ started. That may help a lot of people.

mdcpensive1

I assume you mean in the essay, not to you.

Yes, that is something else to be expanded upon. I can talk about the Church’s teachings on relations to other Christian bodies - things like what “No salvation outside the Church” really means in the post-Reformation era.

Anyone else have any comments? :bounce: