I am bothered by why some Baptists...

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blackstone:
Let me just say that I personally do not know of any Baptists that have converted to Catholic. In my study of religions I find no need to.convert that is. Being a Baptist is the closes think to being in a first cenutary church.
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Have you read the writings of the first century church?
 
the only first century writtings that need to read I have read a hundred times. It is called God Word!
 
If you are confident in your understanding of scripture and the connection between first century Christianity and the Baptist faith then I invite you to read early Christian writings.

We would be open to listening how the Baptist faith was practiced by the early Christians.

If you do not trust Catholics in this regard, feel free to check out Calvin College

ccel.org/fathers2/

I would trust the interpretation of people who directly heard the apostles and their followers to illustrate how the early Christians understood the faith.

God Bless
Scylla
 
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blackstone:
Being a Baptist is the closest thing to being in a first cenutary church.
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This is a false statement.

Do you believe that the Eucharist is TRULY the body, blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ?

Do you believe that where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church?

Do you hold to apostolic succession? Being obidient to the bishop as you would to Christ?

The early Church sure did. Baptists do not. Therefore the Baptist church is NOT like the Church that Christ establish and that the successors to the apostles handed on throught the last 2000 years.

(The Early Church Fathers believed that the Catholic Church was the one true Church, that it taught infallibly and that the clergy was made up of three ranks; bishop, priest, and deacon.)

**Ignatius of Antioch
**
Follow your bishop, every one of you, as obediently as Jesus Christ followed the Father. Obey your clergy too as you would the apostles; give your deacons the same reverence that you would to a command of God. Make sure that no step affecting the Church is ever taken by anyone without the bishop’s sanction. The sole Eucharist you should consider valid is one that is celebrated by the bishop himself, or by some person authorized by him. Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as, wherever Jesus Christ is present, there is the Catholic Church (Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2 A.D. 110]).

In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church. I am confident that you accept this, for I have received the exemplar of your love and have it with me in the person of your bishop. His very demeanor is a great lesson and his meekness is his strength. I believe that even the godless do respect him (Letter to the Trallians 3:1-2 A. D. 110]).
 
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blackstone:
the only first century writtings that need to read I have read a hundred times. It is called God Word!
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Blackstone, are you saying that the historical record and the pastoral and spiritual writings of the first and second centuries, from men who learned at the feet of the apostles (therefore credible witnesses), can tell us nothing significant about the belief and practice of the Apostolic and subapostolic Church?

Baptists don’t reject history, namely, the witness of actual Christians, do they?
 
There are Biblical references for many fundamentals of the Catholic faith (i.e. Real Presence, Primacy of Peter, Foundation of the Church, Priests forgiving sins, Mary is to be called blessed, Oral Tradition is to be upheld, just to name a few) that you and the Baptist church reject.

If you studied the history of Christianity and the Fathers of the Church you would see that the church Christ founded was NOT Baptist by any means, it was Catholic in all respects.

Moreover, Blackstone, it is evident to me from various posts you have written that you are not here to find out what the Catholic Church genuinely believes. You are only here to provoke argument.

I leave you with some quotes:

Merely ten or fifteen years after the death of the apostle John, Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the church at Epheseus that they were “to obey [the] bishop and clergy with undivided minds abd to share in the one common breaking of bread - the medicine of immorality and the sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ for evermore… The sole Eucharist you should consider valid is one that is celebrated by the bishop himself or by some person authorized by him. Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be, just as wherever Jesus Christ is present, there is the Catholic Church.”

“There are not a hundred people in the world who hate the Cathoic Church, but there are thousands who hate what they mistakenly believe the Catholic Church to be.”
Bishop Fulton Sheen

“To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”
John Henry Newman

“To cease to be deep in history is to become Protestant.”
Marcus Grodi

You are in my prayers, Blackstone, hopefully you will one day find the Church that Christ founded as the Pillar and Foundation of Truth, the Catholic Church.
 
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blackstone:
I was bothered by what seemed to be (on this forum) of a lot of Baptist converting to Catholic. But then I remembered what a former pastor had said, "Not every church that has the name Baptist attached to it is a true Baptist Church and not everyone that calls themselfs Baptist are true Baptist.
…I would therefore presume that these Baptist where not rooted and grounded in the teaching of the baptist church and that they had serious doubt about their salvation.
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Your presumption, at least in my case could not be more wrong. For my whole life I attended church twice every Sunday and every Wedensday. My whole family and extended family was Baptist, my father a deacon and both he and my mother are Baptist to this day. I graduated a Baptist University and attended seminary for two years. I knew about as much of the Baptist faith as could anyone.

It was my thorough grounding in sola sciptura and belief that Baptist were the most like the early church that final lead to my conversion to Catholicism. Specifically that sola scriptura is not supported in the Bible and is thus a logical contradiction. Second that the early Church’s liturgy resembles a Catholic Mass more than any Baptist Church I have every been in.
 
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blackstone:
the only first century writtings that need to read I have read a hundred times. It is called God Word!
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Then you really do not know what the early Church was like, except where the Bible touches on the subject.
 
E.E.N.S.:
This is a false statement.

(The Early Church Fathers believed that the Catholic Church was the one true Church, that it taught infallibly and that the clergy was made up of three ranks; bishop, priest, and deacon.)

**Ignatius of Antioch
**

Follow your bishop, every one of you, as obediently as Jesus Christ followed the Father. Obey your clergy too as you would the apostles; give your deacons the same reverence that you would to a command of God. Make sure that no step affecting the Church is ever taken by anyone without the bishop’s sanction. The sole Eucharist you should consider valid is one that is celebrated by the bishop himself, or by some person authorized by him. Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as, wherever Jesus Christ is present, there is the Catholic Church (Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2 A.D. 110]).

In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church. I am confident that you accept this, for I have received the exemplar of your love and have it with me in the person of your bishop. His very demeanor is a great lesson and his meekness is his strength. I believe that even the godless do respect him (Letter to the Trallians 3:1-2 A. D. 110]).
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And to also add, Ignatius of Antioch was a disciple of the Apostle John. There are also other Church Fathers who were disciples of the Apostles, including Clement of Rome and Polycarp of Smyrna. Look up some of their writings if you want to know whether the first century Church held Baptist beliefs or Catholic beliefs. You can’t get any closer to knowing what the first Christians believed and how they worshiped than studying the writings of the people who personally knew the Apostles themselves.
staycatholic.com/early_church_fathers.htm

It’s really a shame that these writings have been preserved by Christians for 2,000 years and yet most Christians today don’t even know they exist.

Now here’s the kicker, for the OP, can YOU show us any proof that the first Christians believed the Bible was their sole authority? That infants should be denied Baptism? That the “breaking of bread” was only symbolic? How about “I just need to accept Jesus into my heart as my personal Savior and I will go to heaven no matter what”? The ball’s in your court now.
 
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blackstone:
the only first century writtings that need to read I have read a hundred times. It is called God Word!
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Do you listen to your pastor on Sunday? Does he preach a sermon? Why is it ok to listen to a pastor 2000 years after Christ and not the pastors that were taught by Jesus and the apostles of Jesus. That is not logical.
 
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blackstone:
the only first century writtings that need to read I have read a hundred times. It is called God Word!
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How can you be sure that your understanding of God’s word is the same as first century Christians if you don’t read about how THEY understood God’s word?

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
I have only time for one short comment. Not all the early chruch fathers were in one hundred percent agreement on very single bit of church dogma.
 
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blackstone:
I have only time for one short comment. Not all the early chruch fathers were in one hundred percent agreement on very single bit of church dogma.
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Nor were they infallible either…however, this adds statement doesn’t lend any credibility to your position.
 
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blackstone:
I have only time for one short comment. Not all the early chruch fathers were in one hundred percent agreement on very single bit of church dogma.
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So how many agreed on the Real Presence of Christ and how many disagreed?
 
Which early Church Fathers have you read and how have they contradicted each other in doctrine? I just want to know, to see what familiarity you have with early Christian writings.

If you familiarity only lies in commentary then I invite you to read them for yourself. If you are sincere in your love for Jesus then be open to truth and I invite you to search for it. If the Baptist faith holds the fullness of truth it will stand up to your own private investigation into its similarity to the early Christian Church.

May God Bless you
Scylla
 
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blackstone:
Not all the early chruch fathers were in one hundred percent agreement on very single bit of church dogma.
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You also said
the only first century writtings that need to read I have read a hundred times. It is called God Word!
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Your prejudice, like all prejudice is grounded in ignorance. You started this thread by making broad sweeping statements about Baptist converts to Catholicism based on nothing than your unwillingnes to accept that a rational, trained fatihful Baptist could ever become Catholic. From that prejudice you made baseless conclusions.

Now, even though you admit ignorance of the Church Fathers, you make another generalization about them.
 
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MariaG:
So how many agreed on the Real Presence of Christ and how many disagreed?
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I don’t think any of them disagreed with the Real Presence. If someone knows of someone who did I’d be interested to read it.

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
Blackstone…You may have a good point. My own sister and her husband are members of a Baptist church, but are no more Baptist than I am…

I thnk you could safely say that many people who claim to be of one denomination or another are not really grounded in their faith. Catholics are nortorius for this…That’s why so many Cathoilcs become evangelicals…They do not know their faith well enough to effectively refute evalgelical claims and criticisms.

Having worked with the RCIA for a number of years I can attest to the fact that we DO take in a lot of so-called Baptists. Most, of course, are interested in becoming Cathoilc because of family issues, but there they are…They are often very open to our faith, and eager to learn…They ask lots of questions, too!
 
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