Need some help...

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Dave_in_Dallas

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I have a close friend who was brought up protestant and has raised with the whole Catholic church is evil thing. Specifically some of the issues:
  1. Bible withheld from people – some people killed over it. There was a display at the Dallas Biblical Museum where they saw this information.
  2. The movie Luther the Catholic church is a bunch of greedy souls and Luther was the lone pious and sane man.
  3. Catholics invented a bunch of stuff during the Middle Ages. Like worshipping Mary, real presence, etc
Does anyone have a non-Catholic website or websites that give a more balanced point of view. Also may a Catholic one for me that says “Yes these Catholics were bad when they did this… but these other things are exagerations…”.

I’ve done some apologetic research… but this person would be more inclined to believe if the facts came from a non-Catholic source if that made sense.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.
 
Dave_in_Dallas said:
this person would be more inclined to believe if the facts came from a non-Catholic source if that made sense.
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You might tell your friend that you don’t believe any of his claims unless they come from Catholics. :rolleyes: I mean why not, right? If he can make up his own rules…

Anyway, here’s a lengthy piece on the Inquisition from a Catholic source if it helps, admitting some minor faults if that’s what you’re looking for.
 
Dave_in_Dallas said:
I have a close friend who was brought up protestant and has raised with the whole Catholic church is evil thing. Specifically some of the issues:
  1. Bible withheld from people – some people killed over it. There was a display at the Dallas Biblical Museum where they saw this information.
  2. The movie Luther the Catholic church is a bunch of greedy souls and Luther was the lone pious and sane man.
  3. Catholics invented a bunch of stuff during the Middle Ages. Like worshipping Mary, real presence, etc
Does anyone have a non-Catholic website or websites that give a more balanced point of view. Also may a Catholic one for me that says “Yes these Catholics were bad when they did this… but these other things are exagerations…”.

I’ve done some apologetic research… but this person would be more inclined to believe if the facts came from a non-Catholic source if that made sense.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.
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1). Bible withheld from people – some people killed over it. There was a display at the Dallas Biblical Museum where they saw this information.

What time frame is he talking about? Before the printing press, Bible copies were made by copying by hand, so these were expensive. Churches chained their Bibles to prevent theft. Also, literacy-not a lot of people knew how to read. So the Bible was not owned by everyone. Could it be those killed were thieves trying to steal expensive Bibles?

Also, maybe you should view that info also, it may be your friend was taking it too far. And also, call the attention of your diocese if there is or you suspect some misreprentation of history or Catholic teaching.
 
Ask him how Lutheranism has worked out for the entire protestant movement over the last 500 years.
 
Dave_in_Dallas said:
I have a close friend who was brought up protestant and has raised with the whole Catholic church is evil thing. Specifically some of the issues:
  1. Bible withheld from people – some people killed over it. There was a display at the Dallas Biblical Museum where they saw this information.
  2. The movie Luther the Catholic church is a bunch of greedy souls and Luther was the lone pious and sane man.
  3. Catholics invented a bunch of stuff during the Middle Ages. Like worshipping Mary, real presence, etc
Does anyone have a non-Catholic website or websites that give a more balanced point of view. Also may a Catholic one for me that says “Yes these Catholics were bad when they did this… but these other things are exagerations…”.

I’ve done some apologetic research… but this person would be more inclined to believe if the facts came from a non-Catholic source if that made sense.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Click to expand...
catholic-convert.com/
The above link is to Stephen Ray web site. He was a former Baptist who held many of the above ideas. His CD “Discovering the fullness of faith”, provides answers to all the above.
 
You’ll get the help you need, but I’d like you to consider a number of points that also serve as quick-and-dirty responses because they use common sense rather than historical research. At the same time, they suggest some side-issues that are worth investigating.


  1. *]In your apologetics studies, you learned that there are something like 3000 Greek and 5000 Latin manuscripts of the NT made before the 1400s (that survived, so this is only a sampling). If the RCC wanted to suppress the Bible, then why did they make so many copies at such great expense?
    *]From the time of the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment, Latin was practically the common language of western Europe. If the RCC wanted to keep the Bible from the people, why would it keep the Bible locked up in the one language everybody who could read, could read?
    *]On the morning Wycliffe published his translation of the Latin Bible in 1382, there were more languages and mutually unintelligible dialects in Europe than today, and practically no spelling rules for nonacademic languages. So how many people did his new translation really benefit? Remember, they had to (1) be able to read and (2) understand his written rendition of his dialect of 14th century English. My personal estimate: a few hundred.
    *]Those who could read, already read Latin, so what was the point?
    *]On a practical note, what happens when you give the Bible to the people? If you answered “Monty Python” you get half credit.
    *]If the Protestants had a problem with the Catholics keeping the Bible from the people, then why didn’t Protestants just teach everyone Latin? One possible (cynical) answer: Because they knew the dangers of education.
    *]Would you give a new English-reading Christian a copy of The New World Translation? Or how about The Inclusive Bible?
    *]Why are there so few college-educated Protestants who are fluent in Biblical languages?
    *]Have you ever participated in a Bible study in which every participant has a different English translation of the Bible?
    *]In general, which version of history tends to be truer: the simple version with clear lines between the good guys and the bad guys, or the complicated version based on primary sources? Quick anecdote: A student of mine was offended that Queen Isabella of Castile expelled the Jews from her kingdom in 1492. I told him to look it up. He tracked down the actual edict of expulsion and came back to me and said “There’s more to the story than anti-semitism”.
 
Barbkw said:
Ask him how Lutheranism has worked out for the entire protestant movement over the last 500 years.
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Here’s how it’s working out: minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/16/elca-lesbian-clergy/
“Frost and Zillhart, the first lesbian couple ordained without the blessing of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, once were cast out. On Saturday, for only the second time in the country, the Lutheran Church will officially welcome them to its roster of clergy.”
Click to expand...
 
Dave_in_Dallas said:
I have a close friend who was brought up protestant and has raised with the whole Catholic church is evil thing. Specifically some of the issues:
  1. Bible withheld from people – some people killed over it. There was a display at the Dallas Biblical Museum where they saw this information.
  2. The movie Luther the Catholic church is a bunch of greedy souls and Luther was the lone pious and sane man.
  3. Catholics invented a bunch of stuff during the Middle Ages. Like worshipping Mary, real presence, etc
Does anyone have a non-Catholic website or websites that give a more balanced point of view. Also may a Catholic one for me that says “Yes these Catholics were bad when they did this… but these other things are exagerations…”.

I’ve done some apologetic research… but this person would be more inclined to believe if the facts came from a non-Catholic source if that made sense.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Click to expand...
Your friend is just regurgitating attacks that have been destroyed many times on this and other forums.

1- Church supressed the Bible- A classic from Lorraine Boetner’s book Roman Catholicism. The claim is that the Church banned the Bible at the Council of Toulouse (he mistakenly says the Council of Valencia which does not exist.) Anyway, what happened was that the Albigensians were using corrupt versions of the Bible to support their twisted heresies. For instance, they believed that marriage was evil, fornication and suicide were not sins. The Church banned corrupt translations of the Bible, not all Bibles. Your friend should appreciate the efforts the Church has taken for almost 2,000 years to preserve the Bible. Also, the council was a regional council, not an ecumenical council, so it did not have authority over the whole Church, only a small region in France.

2-If he thinks the movie Luther was historically accurate, he needs more help than you can give him. Ask him if he has ever read Luther’s works. They often contained expletives. That certainly didn’t show up in the movie… Anyway, what those corrupt Church officials were doing in this case is called the sin of Simony- selling something sacred. The Church has always taught that Simony is sinful. The fact that there were a few of the clergy doing it anyway in no way reflects on the whole Church. The Church, in fact was taking action to stop the practice when Luther bailed and became his own personal Holy Spirit.

3-Catholics invented- I guess you could also make the argument that the Catholic Church also “invented” the Bible about 300 years after Christ was crucified. If the Catholic Church is invalid, so is the Bible used by all Christians.

I think you need to boil this and most other apologetics arguments down to the following:
-Christ clearly established a Church in Scripture.
-It is not some “hidden and invisible” Church with no authority
-Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against this Church,
-and that the Holy Spirit would guide it forever.
-This Church is the “pillar and foundation of truth” 1 Tm 3:15

Well, then, which Church is it? There only one Church which fits the definition we find in the Bible. The Catholic Church. There is only one Christian Church that even existed 2,000 years ago and still exists. The Catholic Church. There is only one Christian Church which still believes and does things the way it did 2,000 years ago. The Catholic Church. There is ONLY ONE Church whose beliefs (such as contraception) have never changed. The Catholic Church.

Hope that helps. For more, look at some of the documents available here at Catholic Answers.
 
If your friend want to learn about the history of the Catholic Church (especially when it comes to the inqisition where a lot of non-Catholics claim they killed millions of people), I would take him to newadven.org website to look through the Catholic Encyclopedia. It will explain a lot of things that your friend is asking.]

newadvent.org/cathen/
 
Your friend is very gullible.
  1. Ask him where the Bible came from. Specifically, it came from the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Here’s a great video on Origin of the Bible:
alabamacatholicresources.com/Bible.html
  1. So, he gets his historical data from a modern movie, made by Hollywood, that HATES the Catholic Church? Luther was anything but pious and sane. He had a horrible temper, which is the main reason he schismed from the Church. He originally had no intent of doing so, and at the end of his life regretted doing so when he saw the mess Protestantism had begun.
  2. Tell him we don’t “worship” Mary, we “honor” her like Jesus did. Or does he believe Jesus disobeyed the Commandment to “Honor thy father AND they mother?” The real presence of the Eucharist has always been there. Refer him to the following link (Or print it out for him.)
catholic.com/library/Real_Presence.asp

It shows the early Christians (Early Church Fathers) clearly believed in the Real Presence.

Ask him who the father of lies is. When he says, “Satan,” ask him why he has swallowed these lies about the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. Ask him why we wants to belong to a church (assuming he’s Protestant) that was founded 1500 years or longer after Christ by mere men? Historically, the Catholic Church was the ONLY Christian Church for the first 1000 years. Then, in 1054, the Orthodox broke off. Not until the Reformation in 1517 A.D., did Protestantism began, and it has been splintering ever since, into literally thousands of man-made, doctrinally disagreeing denominations.
 
Luther was by no means the lone pious one. I won’t get into the “mudslinging”, but you may want to point out that Luther did venerate Mary as well.

I have some information at home that I will post later, but for now, here is a quote by Luther:

“She, the Lady above heaven and earth, must have a heart so humble that she might have no shame in washing the swaddling clothes or preparing a bath for St. John the Baptist, like a servant girl. What humility! It would surely have been more just to have arranged for her a golden coach, pulled by 4,000 horses, and to cry and proclaim as the carriage proceeded: ‘Here passes the woman who is raised FAR ABOVE all women, indeed above the WHOLE human race.’”

It’s funny how this was ignored by the Protestants. Another point to mention is that Luther did not act entirely alone - he was also being persuaded by some of the German nobility. The Protestant Reformation was not driven by religious/doctrinal issues, but also on political ambitions.

Luther was correct that there were some notable abuses being exercised by local bishops, etc, but he went about it incorrectly. As one speaker eloquently put it, "You don’t leave Peter because of Judas."

God Bless,
CSJ
 
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