No such thing as a Catholic convert?

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Carly:
Sure, no problem. I also just want to clarify that I am not supporting this view, I am asking for insight into a rebuttal of it.

Okay, the line of reasoning goes that Catholics object to the individual interpretation and discernment that Protestants use to arrive at their doctrinal position. Catholics submit to the authority of the Magisterium in doctrinal matters. But in order to decide to become Catholic you have to use the Protestant method of individual interpretation to decide that the Magisterium does in fact have the authority to teach.

Therefore these Protestant apologists (usually Eric Svendson) claim that converting to Catholicism is an oxymoron because they say you’ve used personal judgement to decide that personal judgement is not a correct method of arriving at a doctrine.
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I’ve run into the same line of argument a couple times, once was in Svendsen & Co. webboard. It seems they want to argue “see, you’re no better than we are!”

Another time was on my chat channel, I had a repeat visitor continually challenge, “You interpret everything, even Catholic Dogma.” To which I explained that once one gets beyond the linguistic level of “reading” - that no more “interpretation” is necessary. When the Church has defined that Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul; what further is to be interpretted?

In JMJ,
Scott<<<
 
I think the point these folks are really trying to make is:

“You Catholics blindly follow the Pope without being allowed to think on your own. There is no sound reason for your faith.”

Which, of course, we all know isn’t true.If that’s what they think, why not just come out & say it?
I agree w/the poster who said that the interpretation is usually done for you as a Protestant by the pastor. It’s some of the goofy ideas “the Lord revealed” to my pastor in Scripture that led me to Catholicism. 😉
 
Carly,

First of all the Protestant method of interpretation is that everyone is equal in authority in regards to interpreting scripture. Personal intepretation of a first year Christian is equal to that of a 25 year Christian. Amazing, huh?

What Catholic doctrine states is that we cannot interpret over and above the teaching magisterium of the church. We of course use personal interpretation. How else could we understand anything if our intellects were not engaged?

When you argue this with Protestants… Ask them where in the bible you see laymen having greater authority on doctrinal matters than the magisterium? It doesn’t exist.

Whoever is using this line of reasoning with you has not studied the issues.

Peace,

Vincent
 
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CathApol:
I’ve run into the same line of argument a couple times, once was in Svendsen & Co. webboard. It seems they want to argue “see, you’re no better than we are!”

Another time was on my chat channel, I had a repeat visitor continually challenge, “You interpret everything, even Catholic Dogma.” To which I explained that once one gets beyond the linguistic level of “reading” - that no more “interpretation” is necessary. When the Church has defined that Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul; what further is to be interpretted?

In JMJ,
Scott<<<
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In reference to CathApol’s note above regarding “what further is to be interpretted” once a doctine has been defined?, some Protestant apologists have stated that an infallible interpretation is required to interpret the infallibly prounounced definition. They argue that this then creates an infinte progression of required infallible interpretations. I’ve seen this line of reasoning mentioned many times. The problem with this line of reasoning is that the infallible definition of a doctrine is not given to us, then the giver of the promptly disappears, as if in a vacuum. If there is question regarding the interpretation of the infallible interpretation, one can simply appeal to the everpresent body which made the prouncement (i.e. the magisterium). And since Christ stated that “the gates of hell” shall not prevail against the Church he founded (on Peter), then we have a guarantee that it cannot teach error.
 
An analogy, analogy, my kingdom for an analogy.

I would sure like to speak Latin, but I guess I never will. In order to learn Latin, I would have use English and think in English as I was learning. I would only end up being an English speaking, thinking Latin wannabe?

Number two, Christians converts (even Catholic to Protestant converts) usually think to some degree about the reason they are converting. They use their background, experiences and logic in this process. Does that negate their conversion?
 
I think these anti-catholic apologists aren’t looking at the right thing.

The point is not how one got here, but that one got here. In other words: what makes you Catholic is not the method you used to become Catholic, but what you believe and the methods you’d use NOW.

It’s also an effect of one’s enculteration. A Protestant only knows the Protestant way to start with. If they’re Protestant, how can they know the Catholic method? They can’t! They must discover it.

But, since these people he speaks of have now become Catholic, they’d do the Catholic method of research. They’d go to the magisterium now. So again - it’s not how one got here. It’s how one is NOW that counts.

Svedsen and his ilk are morons.
–Ann
 
lets grind the arguement into dust:
  1. The assumption is that only catholic converts retain anything of a free will in the choice of the church, and that born catholics are programmed robots who don’t possess free will. I reject this concept as false and contrary to the scriptures, as we know that all people are born with free will.
  2. Religion is always an active choice. We must constantly submit our will before the will of God. This action does not come naturally to man, our will is a very powerful force. Therefore, every day catholics are actively choosing to subvert their personal will. if that is the characteristic of a “catholic convert” so to speak, then i quess we are ALL catholic converts.
  3. The arguement is pointless at any rate. We know that our salvation requires that we submit to Christ’s mercy (even protestants recognize this fact). By their arguement, protestants can never be saved, because they would have to make a personal choice to submit to Christ’s mercy. By their own rules, only those people born catholic, who are robots who always submit, could ever be saved.
 
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Carly:
Previously, I had heard a few anti-Catholic Protestant apologists make the claim that one can’t really be a Catholic convert because in order to convert to Catholicism one has to use the Protestant method of personal interpretation. Their contention is that to be really Catholic, you have to be born Catholic, since converts all used Protestant methodology to arrive at their acceptance of Catholicism. Lately, I have seen more and more people use this line of reasoning.

How can we respond to this stuff?

In Christ,
Carly
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This line of argument is pure sophistry and we shouldn’t be misled by it. Private interpretation means, in essence, that I become the final arbiter of the meaning of a text. It’s not far from the position of the literary deconstructionists of our day who say that the only meaning a text finally has is the meaning I give it.

This has nothing to do with becoming Catholic. I became Catholic, not because of private interpretation, but precisely because of the opposite. I submitted to the authority that Christ had established. In submitting to two thousand years of Magisterial teaching and the collected wisdom of the Body of Christ, I did exactly the opposite of what the private interpretationists do. Rather than setting myself up as the final authority, I submitted to the Christ-given authority vested in others.

This argument is a desperate attempt to try to discredit those who have seen through the falsity of the Protestant position. Someone on one of these posts said that this is an Eric Svendson argument. If so, that is really ironic, since Svendson is the one who embraced private judgment in leaving Catholicism (he did jump ship, didn’t he?) and becoming Protestant.
 
I think what those protestant apologists are driving at is this:

If, according to the Catholic Church, the individual doesn’t have the ability or authority to interpret Scripture (or other such things), how can the individual come to know that he ought to submit to the Church? It would then seem both the one who decides that the Catholic Church is true and the one who decides that it is not arrive there by the same method, both claiming the leading of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, yet the Catholic Church denounces the one and praises the other.

By the same token, how can the privately interpreting individual decide (or state to others) that something that the Catholic Church teaches is infallible by virtue of its magisterial source when his original decision to believe that the Catholic Church teaches infallibly was reached through the method of private interpretation?

The Catholic convert says, “Yes, but it was not I but the Holy Spirit who led me to the Church.” The protestant can and does claim the same. “This is not my teaching or interpretation. This is what the Holy Spirit showed me. The Holy Spirit showed me that the Great Whore of Babylon is. . .”

I do not know how to respond to this. (Mind you, I just entered the Church this Easter.)
 
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Prometheum_x:
The Catholic convert says, “Yes, but it was not I but the Holy Spirit who led me to the Church.” The protestant can and does claim the same. “This is not my teaching or interpretation. This is what the Holy Spirit showed me. The Holy Spirit showed me that the Great Whore of Babylon is. . .”

I do not know how to respond to this. (Mind you, I just entered the Church this Easter.)
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I admit to not being a great logical thinker, but it seems to me that there is a fallacy in this. What they are saying is this: “Well, you accuse me of using private judgment, but you’ve done exactly the same thing. So why is your judgment any better than mine? I can argue that my position is correct on the same basis that you argue that yours is.”

What is missed here, it seems to me, is the fruit of personal judgment. We all make personal judgments all the time. There is nothing amiss with that. But the validation of the rightness of our judgment is the truth or non-truth that it leads us into.

Protestants hold to the sole authority of Scripture. But their private judgment has led them to undermine the very authority of the Scripture they claim as the final basis for truth. Even some of their brightest lights have said essentially the same (see Francis Schaeffer’s The Great Evangelical Disaster).

Grant for argument’s sake that we have also exercised private judgment in coming into the Catholic Church. Once that act of private judgment has been exercised, then it is left aside. It may have been necessary to “bring us in the door” so to speak, but once inside, we no longer live by that principle. On the contrary, that is the engine that drives Protestantism and to lay it aside would in some sense mean that you had ceased to be Protestant.

The fruit of our exercise of a single act of private judgment (if that in fact is what it is. I prefer to think of it as an act of faith) has been to restore the authority of Scripture, to reverse the fragmentation inherent in Protestantism, to submit to those appointed to be in spiritual authority over us, and to restore the seamless garment of truth.

My point, to reiterate: We may all exercise private judgment, but the value of our judgments is measured by the fruit that it produces.
 
My point, to reiterate: We may all exercise private judgment, but the value of our judgments is measured by the fruit that it produces.

Very well said. I would add that not all private judgments are equal. Some are more correct than others. Sola Scripture is a private judgment that is false. Accepting the truth of the one Church founded by Christ is objectively true. So, private judgments are not the sole issue, it is the correctness of the judgments that are at issue.
 
This line of argument is pure sophistry and we shouldn’t be misled by it.
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I agree totally! If this is the best Protestant apologists can come up with, then I think we can all feel surer that we’ve made the right decision. :cool:

We don’t condemn private interpretation any way, we just say that it must be made to submit to Peter’s bindings and loosings.
 
The question is not answerable the way they want to hear it. They know this and that is why they ask it BUT the implication is that it is an invalid question for Protestants to be asked because they CAN choose to interpret scripture “as the Spirit leads”.

Ask them how they know “infallibly” that the Bible is inerrant, or how they know Christ is the son of God or how they know “infallibly” that their particular interpretation of scripture is correct, especially when it disagrees with others? Their answer would be the same as the Catholic. Grace and faith. After all Protestants have something that requires grace (valid baptisms for example).

To me this line of argumentation is no more a problem to Catholics than it is to Protestants. Grace still must be accepted. The truth of the Church has been accepted by the Catholic. It hasn’t been accepted by the Protestant.
 
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Carly:
Previously, I had heard a few anti-Catholic Protestant apologists make the claim that one can’t really be a Catholic convert because in order to convert to Catholicism one has to use the Protestant method of personal interpretation. Their contention is that to be really Catholic, you have to be born Catholic, since converts all used Protestant methodology to arrive at their acceptance of Catholicism. Lately, I have seen more and more people use this line of reasoning.

How can we respond to this stuff?

In Christ,
Carly
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“Personal interpretation”? NO! I prayed that God would lead me to his right Church. Prayers are very catholic.

God did not take me on HIS shoulders and placed me in the Catholic Church. No, I think He walked by my side when I went on looking for the right church. The catholic church was not in question, at first (People who want to be closer to God, don’t start looking for God in a church where they have been thaugth that the members of the church worship statues and has set the pope in Gods place).

My walk with God was very CATHOLIC (universal)! I looked, read, prayed, thaught about it. It’s nothing specially protestantic about that.

I grew closer and closer to God (To grow closer to God are very catholic, nothing spesially protestantic about that).

One day I statred to understand that the catholic church could be the right one. I got very frightend (because if this was right I would have to convert in the end). It is not spesially protestantic about being frightend.

I prayed and prayed (to pray is catholic). I started to go to mass and prayed. It is not spesiaally protestantic to go to catholic masses.

In Church I did a lot of talking to God (private comunication inside) It is not spesially protestantic to comunicate with God silent from inside. Catholics do that often.

So I went to the cathecesis fior the grown ups. I wanted to ask questions to the prists and deacons. Nothing spesially protestantic to do that. Catholics speaks to priests and deacons all the time.

Their contention is that to be really Catholic, you have to be born Catholic.

:eek: Noncense! Wen we are babtized into the name of the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit we were babtized into Jesus cross, His death and his rise from the dead. 👍

Everyone interpret “things”.** Only protestants** interrpret Sola Scriptura.

CCC 836 “All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God… and to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation.”

CCC 838 “… Those “who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.” …”

To be continued:
 
continue:

The babtized already are ine comunion with The Catholic Church.

The conformation , wich in the Catholic Church is a sacrament, in a spesial way connect a person to the Catolic Church. The catholic confirmation is the formal step into the Catholic Church for the convert. It can’t be taken away!

CCC 1289 "Very early, the better to signify the gift of the Holy Spirit, an anointing with perfumed oil (chrism) was added to the laying on of hands. This anointing highlights the name “Christian,” which means “anointed” and derives from that of Christ himself whom God "anointed with the Holy Spirit.“99 This rite of anointing has continued ever since, in both East and West. For this reason the Eastern Churches call this sacrament Chrismation, anointing with chrism, or myron which means “chrism.” In the West, Confirmation suggests both the ratification of Baptism, thus completing Christian initiation, and the strengthening of baptismal grace - both fruits of the Holy Spirit”.

Protestants that denies the convertions from protestantism to catholisism don’t really know what they are talking about.

G.G.
 
I might just add that the premise is wrong. Catholics can do all the personal interpreting they want. They just need to submit to the authority of the Church when and where their interpretations conflict with those taught by the Church. I doubt that discovering the truth of the Catholic Faith conflicts with the authoritative teachings of the Church! 😃
 
I might say that “convert” is not the right word for a Protestant who becomes Catholic. I think of them more as Christians who have come to know the fullness of truth where they once only knew part of the truth. Likewise, I’ve heard some Catholics who come from a Jewish background describe themselves as “completed Jews.”

Now a Catholic who was once a Buddhist or a Muslim would definitely be a true “convert.”

But the ideas described in the original post about sound like a few Protestants crying sour grapes over people becoming Catholic. It’s pretty obvious that the people Carly describes don’t really understand Catholicism.

However it is interesting that Protestants who enter into full communion with the Church typically do so as a result of study. Whereas Catholics who leave the Church typically do so because they never really learned their faith to begin with.
 
Tirian, above, hit the nail on the head. “Private interpretation” is a requirement of everyday life. When a cheeseburger is sitting in front of me, I have to make a “private interpretation” that it is, indeed, a cheeseburger. What allows me to come to that conclusion, after all, I could interpret it as a screwdriver or a train boxcar? It is intellect. That’s why it was given to us. Someone above asked for an analogy. Here’s one:

The answer to the question 2+2=?, required “private judgement”. I know (as well as is possible given my human condition), that 2+2=4. However, I may come to the conclusion that 2+2=5 with that same private interpretation. But that would be illogical. This is a mathematical absolute truth.

The problem with Protestantism, as I see it, is that it is illogical; as illogical as 2+2=5. In spite of the overwhelming evidence and the fact that reasoning precludes the arguments given in favor of Protestantism, some still choose this “interpretation”. In other words, some still chose to believe that 2+2=5, even after all of the evidence indicates that 2+2=4. Belief in Catholicism is not “just as rational” as belief in some other faith just because “private interpretation” is utilized in one’s decision. Belief in the truth of Catholisim is faith in evidence; it is not blind. No other faith has such overwhelming evidence for it’s position.

There is none so blind as those that will not see…
 
Well, I’m not quite sure who these non-converts are that the Protestants are referring to, but I made the decision to convert almost entirely based on spiritual feeling, *not *logic or intellectual persuasion or any of that. After realising that I believed Christ was God when I was 23 years old, I spent the next several years attending the worship services of every single Christian denomination I could find. I did a bit of research, but in the main, I allowed my heart to be my guide. All the other denominations left me cold, but the Catholic Mass always stirred a profound inner feeling in me that I “was home.” It’s difficult to describe this feeling: something like plunging into a pool of cool water on a hot, dusty day. Anyway, I definitely made the decision to convert based almost solely on this feeling. Of course, going through the RCIA process, I then learned the details of Church history and doctrine, but the decision was already made, and “Protestant methodology” most certainly did not enter into it.
 
Truly can’t convert from Protestantism to Catholicism ?
Thats strange, then the prayer of Jesus must mean nothing when He Prayed to the “Father that they might be one, as you and I are one” I don’t buy that for one moment.
Infact it keeps me humble when I think of the paitence of OUR LORD, since His prayer is still pending.
 
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