that’s interesting… You mean you actually had no trouble believing in Transubstantiation?
You must have alreayd been a fairly devout Christian?
You say…" learning the faith I had been called to from the very beginning "
what exactly do you mean?
You ask some good questions, and very good ones at that.
1: I had no trouble believing in Transubstantiation because, to me, it’s simply taking Christ at His Word. We take him at His Word on everything else, don’t we? “This IS my body…” “This IS my blood…” I can see how people would take it as symbolic, but it seemed he was being pretty plain about telling us what He meant. Plus the argument that when some of His disciples left Him over that particular teaching, He didn’t say “Hey, wait! I didn’t ACTUALLY mean this was my body and blood! What’s wrong witchoo?”
Though, truth be told, the last time I had been to a Lutheran service was when I was 3. I had been searching in seventh grade, then it kicked into high gear when I was around 15. I went to non-denominational church to learn the core tenets of Christianity, and then I planned go to Lutheran catechism classes once I hit college A bus-ride conversation with a very good Catholic friend of mine, which was actually a rather light conversation on Church history and some doctrines, prompted me to compare Catholic and Lutheran doctrines. One of the first hits I got was a discussion topic between several Lutherans and Catholics in the Non-Catholic Religions forums here; I have to admit, one of the Lutheran views on the Eucharist (consubstantiation) was quite weak in comparison to Scripture. So, in some regards, I was devout, but seeking to learn my faith better. Six months later, the first weekend after Easter last year, I began attending Mass.
2: When I say “learning the faith I had been called to from the very beginning” I mean I was already quite Catholic at heart; I had always maintained a great respect for the Church even as a child, and the occasional movie my family rented on a Catholic saint (St. Bernadette and St. Joan of Arc being fairly recent) led me to respect those people and their devotion to God. Heck, even though my family was quite prejudiced against Catholics, I actually didn’t know about the Protestant churches until 7th grade world history class!
Before then, I only thought there was one Church, one Christian body. Now I wish bitterly that that was the case. So, I always had my heart attached to the Church, and the first time I attended Mass, I was thinking, “This is where I was meant to be all along.” God had called me to His Church, but it took me 16 years to realize it.
Originally posted by
HarmonyServant
I will say this. For every non-charitable response here, there were several very charitable responses to make up for it. People are human, sinners, and I’m not going to judge the Catholic Faith because of the sinners in it. I look at the core teachings of the Faith.
When I began to question my Episcopalian/Lutheran background, I started searching through EWTN and the Catechism because what I read in my Bible wasn’t matching up with my Protestant background. One day during an internet search, I came across Catholic Answers. And so my search and religious journey continued.
CAF assisted in my journey, answered some more questions, and now I’m here, about to jump into the Tiber and come home.
Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, AMEN. You judge a faith by what it teaches, not by what its followers do. I’m sure every poster here has had some lapse in patience, or suspected themselves of it. But at least, if not a thousand times as often, we treat each other with dignity, love and integrity, as Christ wants us to. Our journey of faith never ceases; it’s a lifelong effort to grow closer to God through Christ, but the rewards after we’re done on this earth are worth every bit of the agonizing decisions, heartbreak, struggle, joy, sorrow, courage and faith, so long as we entrust ourselves to the care of God.
se la human nature…