M
Maryam
Guest
Please pray for an elderly gentleman I encountered today named “Daniel”.
If anyone is interested I am posting below what happened during our encounter just to give you an idea of his mindset…
I was accompanying my mom to the hospital today and while I was in the waiting room I noticed the gentleman sitting next to me was reading “Life of Christ” by a Giorgio Papioni(sp? I think its spelled that way). I was intrigued because the book obviously looked very old…so I did something I never did before… I asked the gentleman if he was a Catholic or of another Christian denomination? He said “Neither… I am an Atheist” then continued by pointing at his book and saying that he “always likes to read a good mythological story”.
Well, at this point I could instinctively tell he was an ex-Catholic that became an atheist and thought all “religion was evil”… I asked him how many years he spent at Catholic school and he was taken aback at how I knew… He told me that even as a child he never believed in Catholicism and that the nuns at school (terrorists he called them) drove him even farther away from the faith.
I asked him what precisely made him become an atheist and he told me of his journey of studying other faiths and having taken a 3 year course on the bible and that this had cemented in his mind the fact that Catholicism was based on a myth and that it was a religion of manipulation.
I asked him to point out just how the Catholic faith manipulates people and he gave me the “Constantine did this and that…” story that we here at CAF hear constantly.
Since I am not an apologist in any way shape or form… I simply told him that I was away from the church for years and studied many different faiths as well… All I found were more questions than answers during my time away from the faith… but what I really was looking for was “hope”… I then explained that all the anti-Catholic propaganda…(similarity of pagan gods to Christ… Constantine created the Catholic faith… Using the “well, this isn’t in scripture” so the Catholic church invented it…etc) that I had come across as time passed I found that each of these points could be refuted by many Catholic apologetics authors and that it would be good to get into the mindset of the Early Christians by reading the Early Church Fathers.
I told him (and this was my subtle way of giving him the hint) that many Catholics imagine themselves to be well-versed on the Catholic faith but in reality are not. I then directed him to the condensed version of the writings of the Early Church Fathers called “The Faith of the Early Fathers” by William Jurgens and didn’t push it any further… something told me not to.
I don’t know if what I said impacted him in a positive way or drove him even father away from Christ… :crying: That’s why I am asking for all of your prayers. I’ve never been in this position before so I tried not to give rushed answers and prayed that the Holy Spirit would not let me sound like a big fool to him.
The real sad thing is how this gentleman was surprised that I came back to the faith and could actually believe what the Catholic church taught was true. This gentleman and I both shared many things in common… But there was one light of hope… His wife was a devout Catholic who he says “he has given up in trying to make her an atheist”. This sort of made me think of St. Augustine’s mother “Monica” and how she prayed for years for his conversion…
I would post every single detail of our 2 hour conversation… but it would take up too much space…
Please pray for “Daniel”… I don’t think he is as big of an “Atheist” as he would like others to think…not if after so many years of being an atheist he still has a curiousity to know about the life of Christ…
Thanks and God bless.
If anyone is interested I am posting below what happened during our encounter just to give you an idea of his mindset…
I was accompanying my mom to the hospital today and while I was in the waiting room I noticed the gentleman sitting next to me was reading “Life of Christ” by a Giorgio Papioni(sp? I think its spelled that way). I was intrigued because the book obviously looked very old…so I did something I never did before… I asked the gentleman if he was a Catholic or of another Christian denomination? He said “Neither… I am an Atheist” then continued by pointing at his book and saying that he “always likes to read a good mythological story”.
Well, at this point I could instinctively tell he was an ex-Catholic that became an atheist and thought all “religion was evil”… I asked him how many years he spent at Catholic school and he was taken aback at how I knew… He told me that even as a child he never believed in Catholicism and that the nuns at school (terrorists he called them) drove him even farther away from the faith.
I asked him what precisely made him become an atheist and he told me of his journey of studying other faiths and having taken a 3 year course on the bible and that this had cemented in his mind the fact that Catholicism was based on a myth and that it was a religion of manipulation.
I asked him to point out just how the Catholic faith manipulates people and he gave me the “Constantine did this and that…” story that we here at CAF hear constantly.
Since I am not an apologist in any way shape or form… I simply told him that I was away from the church for years and studied many different faiths as well… All I found were more questions than answers during my time away from the faith… but what I really was looking for was “hope”… I then explained that all the anti-Catholic propaganda…(similarity of pagan gods to Christ… Constantine created the Catholic faith… Using the “well, this isn’t in scripture” so the Catholic church invented it…etc) that I had come across as time passed I found that each of these points could be refuted by many Catholic apologetics authors and that it would be good to get into the mindset of the Early Christians by reading the Early Church Fathers.
I told him (and this was my subtle way of giving him the hint) that many Catholics imagine themselves to be well-versed on the Catholic faith but in reality are not. I then directed him to the condensed version of the writings of the Early Church Fathers called “The Faith of the Early Fathers” by William Jurgens and didn’t push it any further… something told me not to.
I don’t know if what I said impacted him in a positive way or drove him even father away from Christ… :crying: That’s why I am asking for all of your prayers. I’ve never been in this position before so I tried not to give rushed answers and prayed that the Holy Spirit would not let me sound like a big fool to him.
The real sad thing is how this gentleman was surprised that I came back to the faith and could actually believe what the Catholic church taught was true. This gentleman and I both shared many things in common… But there was one light of hope… His wife was a devout Catholic who he says “he has given up in trying to make her an atheist”. This sort of made me think of St. Augustine’s mother “Monica” and how she prayed for years for his conversion…
I would post every single detail of our 2 hour conversation… but it would take up too much space…
Please pray for “Daniel”… I don’t think he is as big of an “Atheist” as he would like others to think…not if after so many years of being an atheist he still has a curiousity to know about the life of Christ…
Thanks and God bless.