Mission to Protestants

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From an apologetics standpoint – what would be the outline of the best way to present the Catholic Faith to Protestants.
 
Junebug999 said:
From an apologetics standpoint – what would be the outline of the best way to present the Catholic Faith to Protestants.
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It depends on the protestant.

I suppose, in general, the first place I would start is with the Bible. Ask him if he believes the Bible is the inspired word of God. Of course, he will say “yes.” Then ask him to tell you why he believes that. The idea is to lead him to conclude that we need some authority (apart from the Bible) to actually establish that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And the only authority that could possibly do that is the Catholic Church.

But, again, everybody is different.
 
First straight from the Bible. Most Protestants hold to sola scriptura and need to be shown from Scripture where they’re wrong and the Church is right. Since they invariably read Scripture very selectively, and the Church alone is wholly consistent with Scripture, this isn’t hard to do.

Second from the writings of the ECFs. This is important because many Protestants hold to the false claim that the Church somehow “lost its way”—they never quite say when—but what is crystal clear is that the ECFs point toward the Church clearly and convincingly and rebuke attempts of various Protestant communities to make up their own history (see the “Trail of Blood” nonsense) interspersed between the alleged gaps in early Church history.

Third—and by far most importantly—by living exemplary Christian lives. We have the benefit of the seven sacraments Christ instituted for our benefit and sanctification. Use them and do God’s will. By our fruit shall they know us.
 
I need help in my thread Titled “Questions from Protestants”. How do I answer his latest post. Help me!
 
I would ask them what they know about the Eucharist. State your love of our Savior, Jesus! If they want to love Jesus even more than they do now, then they need to know POSITIVELY that the Eucharist is real. Ask for their help, because if you are wrong about the Eucharist, then Catholics are worshiping a false idol. Jesus will bring more people to the church. Knowing apologetics is a nice way to help explain our faith, but is not supposed to be used to win an argument (think humility!)

You are converting, is this question for your family members?

God bless
 
oh yeah, early church fathers – my dad had tried to tell me there was no real church – that John the Baptist had founded the Baptist church…

Learning about the ECF has been a blessing since coming to the Church
 
“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” John Henry Newman
 
Oh Ignatius – you’ll never know how thankful I am you directed me to that video. If an organization like catholicscomehome.org is established, then I should get involved with them instead of trying to re-invent the world.

The video “You Are My God” was wonderful also.

I can hardly wait until I have baptism (conditional) and full communion with Christ’s Church.

Thanks again Ignatius and for all who responded.
 
You have to get them to start reevaluating their reasons for being Protestant rather than Catholic.
  1. Ask them why they choose to be a baptist, or a Presbyterian or Lutheran or whatever it is they are rather than the 1000s of other protestant denominations and bible-churches out there. The idea here is to wake them up to the absurdity to the idea that a plurality of conflicting faiths can all be the true faith.
  2. Ask them where their denominational church came from in history and how do they know anything at all whether their denomination practises anything that remotely resembles what the original Christian church practiced? They will probably look at you silly and just say something like well because the bible tells me so. If they are honest and say that their denomination came out of the Protestant Reformation which itself came from the Catholic Church ask them to show in their bibles were God ever authorized a revolt within His Church (go to 2A).
2A Ask them to explain the conditions where God might think it OK to ever revolt against His Church (the Catholic Church and Orthodox practise substantially the same faiths). Ask them to show a single case in the bible where God permitted anyone to ever rebel against The Church and its leadership. There is one case (Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 16) but it resulted in God opening the earth and swallowing the false priests alive and God incinerating his followers with fire. Not a pretty sight.

Here I would quote Jude 1:10-11 to show what God does to Apostates - Past and Present:

But these people blaspheme anything they don’t understand, and what they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals—they destroy themselves with these things. 11 Woe to them! For they have traveled in the way of Cain, have abandoned themselves to the error of Balaam for profit, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion. – Jude 1:10-11

The three fallen leaders: Cain, Korah and Balaam are antithetical to true New Testament leadership and we can see the same spirit of false unacceptable worship (no offering of Jesus to the father), rebellion (invalid ecclesial authority) and manipulation (turning God’s words against Himself to try to condemn His People and preaching for profit too through self appointment).
  1. Ask them to account for by what apostolic authority their religious “ministers” self appoint themselves as spokespersons for God’s word and self-assign themselves teaching authority? Here it might be good to mention the fact that the Catholic Church has the same apostolic authority as was originally handed down from the time Jesus gave it (when he breathed on them in John 20:22-23) for 2000 years to this day.
  2. At some point they will come back to a “sola scriptura” argument since its their only basis for anything and then you need to ask them where in the bible it tells us it is inspired (both OT and NT) and where in the bible it mentions the word “bible” and where it tells us what books are in the bible. They can’t because as you know the Catholic Church is who told them it is inspired and developed the original Cannon.
You have to get them out of their comfort zone to revisit their core reasons for being Protestant in the first place.

Most when presented with this line of argument will just toss up their hands and say “well I don’t think God wanted all these rules and restrictions that Catholics have”. In which case have them explain why God put so many words and verses in the bible if all they needed to do was “just believe” and not actually do something for God out of love to demonstrate what they believe? 😉

James
 
Junebug999 said:
Oh Ignatius – you’ll never know how thankful I am you directed me to that video. If an organization like catholicscomehome.org is established, then I should get involved with them instead of trying to re-invent the world.

The video “You Are My God” was wonderful also.

I can hardly wait until I have baptism (conditional) and full communion with Christ’s Church.

Thanks again Ignatius and for all who responded.
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Thank you and may I extend the warmest of welcomes home to His Church. May God continue to fill you with all joy and peace.

Your Servant in Christ.
 
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