Hi,
I no longer consider my Catholic (I am now a sort of atheist agnostic). However…
The “stealing” of Catholic “sheep” by Evangelical Christians REALLY gets to me.
I have a friend from back in high school who is a PK (pastor’s kid). He just graduated from Liberty University. Anyway, he just got back from a “medical mission” in some mountain top village in Peru.
I was flipping through some of the facebook pictures of the trip. Intially, my comments on seeing the pictures were along the lines of:
“Ooooo look at the cute llama!”
“Wow those are huge mountains.”
“Look at the incredible rainbow!”
…then I flipped to a picture with the caption “Catholic Church in [insert village’s name here]”.
I was taken aback. Although the trip was primarily a medical trip (you know, to teach people basic health care and first aide), I know that they did some “gospel preachin’”, too. Since the village had one nice big Catholic Church in the middle of town, one would suppose that the villagers were Catholic. They have probably been Catholic for generations. In fact, the village being so remote, they probably haven’t heard of much anything BUT Catholicism for several generations.
Now, into this bation of Catholic faith comes a group of super fundamentalist evangelical college students ready to convert the masses to Christianity.
I flip through more pictures. I see a huge class of small children (most of them probably younger than grade 3) all holding up plastic bags called “hygiene kits and Bibles”. I flip some more. I see more evidence of missionary activity.
I am now kinda pissed. I posted half joking half serious on my friend’s wall:
"i was looking at the picture of the catholic church. i hope you weren’t down there converting the catholics

"
He replies:
“only the one’s who were’t christian!”
I am now even more pissed. My experience with evangelicals has let me know that many of them think that Catholics are definitely NOT Christian. It doesn’t matter how much Catholics love Jesus. It doesn’t matter how much they pray. It doesn’t matter that they are faithful. It doesn’t matter that they have been baptized. According to many of them, Christian and Catholic are mutually exclusive.
I kinda figure that my friend was just playing words games with me. It would’t surprise me if he said “only the one’s who weren’t Christian” as a cheeky, pompous, smart-*** (etc etc) disguise for “well, yeah we were.” Do you guys get my drift?
It makes me sooooo


that they have the gall to go down there and preach to Catholic CHRISTIANS and tell them that they are wrong, that they are not Christian.
I want to make angry faces all over the place!!!