How do I reply to this?

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GaryCox

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My Father-N-Law tells me “God is within us and around us not in a building made of brick and stone” and that is the reason he does not attend mass or receive the sacraments. I have tried everything I know to get him back into the church. He claims to have gotten this script from the “Dead Sea Scrolls” and also says the church does not want us to know…Obviously a very lost man… I need advice to help him.
 
Um, ask him if he really got his quote from a ridiculous movie called “The Order.” Or was it “Stigmata”? I can’t remember. Either way, he’s right in judging where God is. However, God’s people have to gather somewhere, God’s church needs a hierarchy, and his attitudes are entirely unbiblical. Oh, and God does make himself present in the bread and wine, but that’s hardly brick and stone, is it? Pray for this man. He probably won’t be persuaded by hard facts about the pseudographia he’s chosen to believe in, but such facts are available. Check another thread around here somewhere on the “Secret Books of the Bible.”
 
Yes, God is everywhere… but he makes His presence in certain places in a very special way… Like in the burning bush in the Old Testament and the Eucharist in the New Testament and even in the person of Jesus Christ… he has a special presence in these places.

Ask your Father in Law if he saw Jesus walking down the road, would he say: “Nah, I don’t want to go over there and see Him, God’s everywhere, I can worship Him in my house, on the toilet, in the library, etc.” That would be sick.

It is the same with the Eucharist, it is really Jesus, and sure we can pray to Jesus at home, but he is Sacramentally present in the Eucharist and His grace comes to us in a special way in the Sacraments that He instituted.

Jesus’ very words were “on this rock I will build my Church” and
“unless ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you”. Ask your father in law why he would say these things if you can just take the attitude of: “God is everywhere, why listen to these sayings? I can do my thing at home” That is not Christianity that is Pantheism.

We have the Bible and the Words of Christ who told the Church: “Who hears you hears me, Who rejects you rejects me” and he ensures the Church that it will be lead by the Holy Spirit “into all truth”. Now ask him, if the Church is being deceiving and lying to us about Dead Sea Scrolls is Jesus a deceiver? Because Jesus said started this Church and told us to obey it.

God Bless.
 
Before you get into any apologetics with your father-in-law, I think it is important to clarify what exactly does he believe. Does he believe in the Real Presence and why or why not? What does he understand by our professing that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ? And as the Mystical Body does he understand, agree or reject our belief that Chist lives in and is active through His Mystical Body - The Church? And that the 7 Sacraments are specific acts not of man but Christ acting through the Sacraments of the Church? And, just what are the sources or basis for the things he believes.

I think it is important to first know where he is coming from in regards to his beliefs and why/how he got there. Not so much so
to give you a bases to apologize (in the technical sense) but to know the man so that you can truely communicate with him.
 
Gary, Explain to him that Christ is the Body of the Church, also Catholics and (some Protestants ) believe that communion and honoring the Sabbath day ,(going to church are Gods Laws and or Commandments which is part of Faith in Christ. One can claim they have faith but they do not show how they love the Lord.

People today are excusing themselves from Obedience to Gods word and laws in both OT and NT. They claim they have faith in God but real faith in Christ is to abide in his word. You cant seperate Faith and obedience.

Good luck to you.

Sara
 
Oftentimes when a person decides s/he is not going to go to Mass or the sacraments anymore they make up some excuse, such as this, but it’s not the real reason they have abandoned their faith. Something else is at the back of this, not just some silly statement about God being everywhere but not in the church building.

I mean, if God is everywhere why wouldn’t he be in the church building too? Isn’t God capable of inhabiting a mere building if he already inhabits the whole of the universe? You see, it’s not reason but emotion and some kind of spiritual difficulty that is keeping your father out of the Church.

Pray about it and wait for the opportunity to talk to him about why he’s left the Church. Tell him you don’t buy his excuse but want to know the real reason. You’ll have to do this at the right time and place, so fast and pray before you ask him.

And if you don’t think this would help encourage him to go talk to his priest. There’s probably something he needs to confess or clear up so he can return to practicing his Catholic faith.

God bless you and him. I will remember you and your father particularly in my prayers today.
 
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sara888:
Gary, Explain to him that Christ is the Body of the Church
Sara
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Sara,
I think you mean the Church is the body of Christ. Christ is the head.

God bless
 
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