Misconceptions of the Mass

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EvelynEVF

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I’m just posting this to blow off steam, so that I can remain charitable in the real-life exchange.

I came home to the Church as the result of one invitation to Mass. Once in the door, my life was changed forever. I am not interested in proselytizing my evangelical Protestant friends, because having come out of that, I know all the misconceptions floating around. That said, I know how powerful an invitation to Mass can be, so when the opportunity arises, I mention it.

This week the Newman Center on our local campus had a teaching Mass, where they do it all in slow motion and explain everything, from vesting onward. I went ahead and posted it to the local homeschool egroup.

I immediately had a reply onlist, from a person who dropped a quick one liner that anyone who wanted to know about the Mass would benefit from the teaching of a particular well-known Protestant preacher. In her link, he wrote an article which described Mass as horrifying, pagan, and straight from Satan.

I wrote back that I was sure she didn’t realize that I was an adult convert to the faith, after spending my whole life as an evangelical, believing everything this guy wrote, until I actually went to Mass myself and learned better. Further, this guy misrepresents Catholicism in a way that is deeply insulting to Catholics. If people want to know what the Seder is, they ask a Jew, not an anti-Semite.​

If I had posted a note that Hillel on campus was hosting a Seder, would someone have felt the need to inform me in the nastiest possible terms that Judaism is a perversion of true Christianity and all Jews are going to hell? Or if the Muslim Student Association had a Q&A?>

I noted to my spiritual director yesterday that the devil may not be very good at keeping people away from Christianity here in the Bible Belt, but he sure knows how to keep them away from the sacraments.

I don’t think I was ever as vitriolic about Catholicism as an evangelical, at least is part because I didn’t do it online. At least if I said stupid things, I said them to someone’s face, and had to be polite about it. God forgive me for all the hurtful things I must have said, in the guise of “speaking the truth in love!” I guess this is my penance.

Thanks for listening 🙂 I’m done now :o
 
Be sure to offer it up to Jesus, and talk to Him about your problems 🙂
 
I agree with you, there are many non-Catholics who have an uninformed, negative opinion of the mass.

On the other hand, as our friend OneTrueCathApos has so aptly demonstrated, there are many Catholics who think that all Protestant churches are soulless and devoid of historical liturgy.

Both sides could stand to benefit from open and honest dialogue.
 
EvelynEVF said:
I immediately had a reply onlist, from a person who dropped a quick one liner that anyone who wanted to know about the Mass would benefit from the teaching of a particular well-known Protestant preacher. In her link, he wrote an article which described Mass as horrifying, pagan, and straight from Satan.
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So, sad, sorry, and wrong-headed. I have a number of times been blessed by attending Catholic mass. Care to share who this “well known Protestant preacher” was, or at least his denomination?

Jon
 
JonNC said:
So, sad, sorry, and wrong-headed. I have a number of times been blessed by attending Catholic mass. Care to share who this “well known Protestant preacher” was, or at least his denomination?

Jon
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Jon, you’re soooooooo close. Come over to the “dark side”. 😃
 
EvelynEVF said:
I’m just posting this to blow off steam, so that I can remain charitable in the real-life exchange.

I came home to the Church as the result of one invitation to Mass. Once in the door, my life was changed forever. I am not interested in proselytizing my evangelical Protestant friends, because having come out of that, I know all the misconceptions floating around. That said, I know how powerful an invitation to Mass can be, so when the opportunity arises, I mention it.

This week the Newman Center on our local campus had a teaching Mass, where they do it all in slow motion and explain everything, from vesting onward. I went ahead and posted it to the local homeschool egroup.

I immediately had a reply onlist, from a person who dropped a quick one liner that anyone who wanted to know about the Mass would benefit from the teaching of a particular well-known Protestant preacher. In her link, he wrote an article which described Mass as horrifying, pagan, and straight from Satan.

I wrote back that I was sure she didn’t realize that I was an adult convert to the faith, after spending my whole life as an evangelical, believing everything this guy wrote, until I actually went to Mass myself and learned better. Further, this guy misrepresents Catholicism in a way that is deeply insulting to Catholics. If people want to know what the Seder is, they ask a Jew, not an anti-Semite.​

If I had posted a note that Hillel on campus was hosting a Seder, would someone have felt the need to inform me in the nastiest possible terms that Judaism is a perversion of true Christianity and all Jews are going to hell? Or if the Muslim Student Association had a Q&A?>

I noted to my spiritual director yesterday that the devil may not be very good at keeping people away from Christianity here in the Bible Belt, but he sure knows how to keep them away from the sacraments.

I don’t think I was ever as vitriolic about Catholicism as an evangelical, at least is part because I didn’t do it online. At least if I said stupid things, I said them to someone’s face, and had to be polite about it. God forgive me for all the hurtful things I must have said, in the guise of “speaking the truth in love!” I guess this is my penance.

Thanks for listening 🙂 I’m done now :o
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First of all, Welcome Home!!!

The internet is a funny thing. It can open many doors. Some good, some not so good.

In today’s day and age, many people resort to attacks from behind a computer screen instead of facing the issue in person, and some just do it to get you upset.

Converting from one faith to another is a very difficult thing, as I am sure you are very much aware. It can bring out a flood of emotions for the person converting, as well as those around them.

Some people who squawk the loudest are the ones that are the closest to change.

As you know, the Catholic church is nothing like what many non Catholics “think” it is.

We need to pray for that individual that the Lord open his heart to the truth, and we need to be an example of that truth.

The rest is up to him and the Lord.

Again, Welcome Home!!!
 
Why don’t you offer to attend, with this person, a service by this Protestant preacher if she will, with you, attend the teaching Mass?

I’ve always found that to be the ultimate “put up or shut up.” 😉 And you might go a long way to make the list and your community more harmonious while you’re at it.
 
It was John MacArthur. For those who know him, his whole “Lordship salvation” thing is practically Catholic, so I was surprised at the vitriol in his article. It was just so over the top, as if he were describing an Aztec sacrifice where they rip the heart out and stuff. I really don’t want to share the link, because it’s so very hurtful and I don’t think anything good would come of it. We all know the type, right?

I’m curious about the poster who asked if I would invite her in exchange for me going to a protestant service. What is your religious history? Frankly, inviting a person from that position (with which I am all too familiar), whom I barely know, and going face-to-face for a whole conversation, would be a HUGE waste of time and generate a great deal of negativity, not peace. People who believe the whole Whore of Babylon thing don’t get anything out of Q&A or debate, ime.

It took me 18mo of regular biweekly Bible study meetings with mostly Catholics before I could begin to believe that they were really Christians. All of my evangelism with people I used to go to church with and folks of that ilk is only very casual, unless they ask directly. I consider it my mission to create cognitive dissonance 🙂
 
Oh, and spoiltvictorian, I don’t mean to be snarky to you at all. It’s just that these people want to beat about the head and shoulders with a Bible so badly because I worship Mary, that they are completely unable to hear me insist that I do not worship Mary. And it goes on ad nauseum with praying to saints, killing Jesus over and over again, etc.

Some great contemporary apologists like Scott Hahn and Mark Shea have written volumes of material disputing all this, but I don’t think any of these people (including me) read them until one toe was already in the Tiber anyway.
 
.

*so are all you Catholics out there going to invite a person to Mass this week?? *
 
EvelynEVF said:
Oh, and spoiltvictorian, I don’t mean to be snarky to you at all. It’s just that these people want to beat about the head and shoulders with a Bible so badly because I worship Mary, that they are completely unable to hear me insist that I do not worship Mary. And it goes on ad nauseum with praying to saints, killing Jesus over and over again, etc.
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Pardon the way I put this, but I personally don’t spend much attention on what the local village idiot has to say. If these folks will not listen to your witness of faith, then do not further waste your breath. You know your faith, as does Christ. What they think is irrelevent.

Jon
 
I don’t waste any breath at all 🙂 I answer if obvious misinformation is going on, like on the egroup, but otherwise I leave it. I feel an obligation to the people who are lurking or overhearing, to make the correction, but briefly. They all know where to find me if they want more.

I was a Protestant Evangelical for my entire adult life, going to the same church the whole time, in a small town. My conversion made a bunch of people take a second look, because it makes no sense at all to them. It’s kind of fun 🙂 That’s what I mean by cognitive dissonance. All these people knew me through college, graduate school, time with Campus Crusade for Christ, etc, so they know the depth of my formation and my commitment, and they just can’t make that fit with what they think they know about the Church.
 
Sadly, Evelyn, I’ve heard ugly thing before too. Their is some weird belief that all liturgical churches are “sacrificing Jesus repeatedly.” (I think that’s how I heard it.) I just walk away. There’s on reasoning with the unreasonable. 🤷
 
EvelynEVF said:
Oh, and spoiltvictorian, I don’t mean to be snarky to you at all. It’s just that these people want to beat about the head and shoulders with a Bible so badly because I worship Mary, that they are completely unable to hear me insist that I do not worship Mary. And it goes on ad nauseum with praying to saints, killing Jesus over and over again, etc.

Some great contemporary apologists like Scott Hahn and Mark Shea have written volumes of material disputing all this, but I don’t think any of these people (including me) read them until one toe was already in the Tiber anyway.
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No, you’re right. For some reason I thought you knew this person well enough to make such a suggestion. Reading your OP I can see she’s a stranger. And John MacArthur is a national name, so it wouldn’t be a local service.

I have found that agreeing to some sort of mutual participation is a good first step toward real dialogue, though. Even if one person (has been me, has been my ‘opponent’) begins with an angry outburst.

Never mind!
 
pgerpup said:
Sadly, Evelyn, I’ve heard ugly thing before too. Their is some weird belief that all liturgical churches are “sacrificing Jesus repeatedly.” (I think that’s how I heard it.) I just walk away. There’s on reasoning with the unreasonable. 🤷
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I was once presented with a very large tract by a big-name anti-Catholic, and it was a list of 62 Major Errors of the Catholic Church. The weird thing was, this guy had gone to the trouble of reading the Catechism and quoted it extensively, but it was like it was a foreign language to him. I think because he began with the assumption that the CCC was opposed to the Bible, he made it sound like it was. In fact, there were two columns, one on what the Bible said and a contrasting one quoting the Catechism. He was completely unable to see the CCC in context. People who belong to more recent denominations seem to forget that when you have two thousand years of really smart theologians chewing stuff over, you wind up with an immense body of writings, and they all have to be viewed in the light of Scripture and liturgy and culture and what have you.

It’s funny how it’s extra-Biblical to read popes and saints, but somehow John MacArthur and Chuck Swindoll are just fine. As if they were the first to figure out what they present.
 
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