Torn between two churches!

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Chuck1

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Hi I have been going to a local catholic church for a few weeks and just today I got to know a few of the old dears there which was nice some young people were there but they where with there pearnts do left afterwards but I also go to a smaller baptist church and I know everyone there and there all nice and I don’t feel much in the catholic Church
there was one young teen girl at the baptist church so that was good but now I’m torn between the two !
I agree with the catholic church’s teaching an beliefs etc but I feel bad because the baptist church has more of a community and I love the people and more relaxed worship and I feel bad if I ditch the baptist Churh completely cuz they care about me I got an email from the paster since I havnt Ben well checking up on me via email and a member of the congrigation who runs the teen bible class who checked up on me via text and I just need some advice !

Thanks all 🙂 chuck
 
Choose the Catholic one.

You believe everything the Church teaches, and God is calling you home, into the one TRUE Church.

I know it’s hard, leaving something you’re so familiar with. You know everyone, you feel at home. But, attending the Baptist church is endangering your soul very much. You really should talk to your Parish Priest (of the Catholic church). He should make your transition comfortable. He’ll also help you to meet the Parishioners.

About the minister, email him back explaining what’s happening. Tell him you’re being drawn to the Church, and that it MUST be an act of God. I’m sure, if he’s caring, he’d understand.

Hope I’ve helped?

God Bless :signofcross::byzsoc:
 
God is in the Catholic Church in every Tabernacle.

God is NOT at any Baptist Church.

You do not go to church for anybody but God.

Will pray that you will choose wisely.

There may be groups and communities at the Catholic Church where you go, but, ultimately, you are with the angels and the saints (and the Trinity) at every Mass.

You MUST go to the Catholic Church if you believe all She says, otherwise you would be lying to yourself.

Reply to your pastor and the Bible Class leader; thank them for their concern, inform them of your decision to become part of the Catholic Church, and pray for them.
 
Chuck1 said:
Hi I have been going to a local catholic church for a few weeks and just today I got to know a few of the old dears there which was nice some young people were there but they where with there pearnts do left afterwards but I also go to a smaller baptist church and I know everyone there and there all nice and I don’t feel much in the catholic Church
there was one young teen girl at the baptist church so that was good but now I’m torn between the two !
I agree with the catholic church’s teaching an beliefs etc but I feel bad because the baptist church has more of a community and I love the people and more relaxed worship and I feel bad if I ditch the baptist Churh completely cuz they care about me I got an email from the paster since I havnt Ben well checking up on me via email and a member of the congrigation who runs the teen bible class who checked up on me via text and I just need some advice !

Thanks all 🙂 chuck
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Well, choose the Catholic one obviously. You must choose the church for the truth and your salvation. Not for the community.

That being said, I think you might have been presented with a wonderful opportunity. You could still attend the Bible studies at your former church (ONLY if you are well catechized in the Catholic faith of course. Otherwise you could risk loosing your faith) and use it as a moment to present what the Catholic church teaches to your friends. Since they are all your friends, they will be willing to listen to what you have to say. In the discussions, you could say, ‘we as Catholics believe this verse means so and so’ etc.

So in other words, you can clear a path for them to see the Catholic Church for what it is. But you should attend the Catholic Liturgy and such because that is where you will get the spiritual nourishment and grace that you will need to help your friends and yourself.
 
adstrinity said:
No Baptist church has a Tabernacle, nor can a minister there consecrate. It’s really that simple.
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So what did Jesus mean when he said “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”??
 
adstrinity said:
God is in the Catholic Church in every Tabernacle.
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This is true
God is NOT at any Baptist Church.
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This is not what the Catholic Church beleives.

The Catholic Church believes that the other Christian ecclesial communities posses degrees of the Truth and that Christ does use them for the salvation of souls. Therefore, God is present in those congregations as well.

Pope Benedict has clarified that modern Protestantism is not the same as the Protestantism of the Reformation. Over 500 years, it has evolved into a faith community where men truly seek God through prayer, the preaching of the Word and attention to the needs of Christ in their neighbor. All of these are signs of God’s presence.

That being said, they are still lacking the fullness of the Christian faith which subsists only in the Catholic Church. Every human being is bound to search for the fulness of truth to the measure that is possible for him.

Fr. Benedict G. had a very interesting talk on this subject this weekend. If they run it again on EWTN, it’s worth listening. It helps the non-Catholic and the Catholic understand how God is present outside of the Catholic Church and yet, how there is much more that is not there.
You MUST go to the Catholic Church if you believe all She says, otherwise you would be lying to yourself.
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This is part of what I mentioned above, the duty to seek the fullness of truth when one becomes aware that this fulness is not present where one is, in this case, at the Baptist community.
Reply to your pastor and the Bible Class leader; thank them for their concern, inform them of your decision to become part of the Catholic Church, and pray for them.
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This is a good suggestion and it is good not to forget or lose appreciation for what they have contributed to your life of of faith.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton said it very well. She explained that it was Protestantism that led her to Catholicism, but not because she was running away from Protestantism, but because Protestantism taught her to search for Truth. She always had a special place in her heart for her Protestant roots, because God began to call out to her through that community. Bl. John Henry Newman said the same thing about the Anglican Church. St. Edith Stein said the same about atheism. This was also my experience with Judaism. God did not begin to speak when we discovered Catholicism. God was present where we were and began to whisper back there and gently led us here.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
I think he meant in regards to the Blessed Sacrament Br. Jay. I don’t think he was using it as a slur.
 
MartyrForJesus said:
I think he meant in regards to the Blessed Sacrament Br. Jay. I don’t think he was using it as a slur.
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No, I don’t think it was intended as a slur as such, but an expression of the truth as he saw it. But his statement is not, in fact, the truth as the church teaches it, and Bro JR has done his usual superb job of clarifying what the Church says.

Brother, thank you for your post. I am another who was gently nutured and led by God to the Catholic church by means of non-Catholic worship. it was my time as an Anglican which taught me a deep love and reverence for Scripture, a love of history, and of beauty and regularity in worship - ‘seemliness’, a very Anglican word. I am totally grateful for this.

‘Ubi caritas, Deus ibi est’.
 
JReducation said:
Pope Benedict has clarified that modern Protestantism is not the same as the Protestantism of the Reformation. Over 500 years, it has evolved into a faith community where men truly seek God through prayer, the preaching of the Word and attention to the needs of Christ in their neighbor.
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While this may be true, I don’t see too many Lutherans disagreeing with Luther, Anglicans disagreeing with Henry VIII/Cranmer, and so forth. While Vatican II advanced the notion of ecumenism, I don’t believe it intended to undo the 18 years (spanning the terms of three Popes) of Council of Trent accomplishments either.

That said, the OP is in a tough spot as he apparently has attachments to two communities, which is nothing wrong per se. If it’s strictly a social thing and there is no anti-Catholic activity or beliefs forced (there are still Catholic obligations after all), then there probably is no harm in maintaining the status quo. But I’m only going with what was stated in the OP. If there’s more to the story, then I might very well change my personal opinion and that’s all it is.
 
ProVobis said:
While this may be true, I don’t see too many Lutherans disagreeing with Luther, Anglicans disagreeing with Henry VIII/Cranmer, and so forth. While Vatican II advanced the notion of ecumenism, I don’t believe it intended to undo the 18 years (spanning the terms of three Popes) of Council of Trent accomplishments either.
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No, it does not intend to change Trent. What he is saying is that modern day Protestantism is not the same Protestantism that Trent dealt with. Therefore, to say “God is not there” as was said above, is not correct, because it is a faith community, albeit deficient, but God is not absent from it.

What the Holy Father wants Catholics to understand is that we cannot deal with Protestantism as Trent did, because this is not the same community. He explained this very well. He said that this was a very different community and that it is very difficult for us (Catholics) to deal with it appropriately until we have a better understanding of it. He refers to it as a “phenomenon difficult to understand.” He’s not claiming to understand it’s nature today. He’s just saying that it’s not the same as that of the time of Trent.

When the statement was made that “God is not there,” I tried to explain that this is not what the Catholic Church teaches about modern day Protestantism.

**The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, pp. 87-88:

“The difficulty in the way of giving an answer is a profound one. Ultimately it is due to the fact that there is no appropriate category in Catholic thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today (one could say the same of the relationship to the separated churches of the East). It is obvious that the old category of ‘heresy’ is no longer of any value. Heresy, for Scripture and the early Church, includes the idea of a personal decision against the unity of the Church, and heresy’s characteristic is pertinacia, the obstinacy of him who persists in his own private way. This, however, cannot be regarded as an appropriate description of the spiritual situation of the Protestant Christian. In the course of a now centuries-old history, Protestantism has made an important contribution to the realization of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function in the development of the Christian message and, above all, often giving rise to a sincere and profound faith in the individual non-Catholic Christian, whose separation from the Catholic affirmation has nothing to do with the pertinacia characteristic of heresy. Perhaps we may here invert a saying of St. Augustine’s: that an old schism becomes a heresy. The very passage of time alters the character of a division, so that an old division is something essentially different from a new one. Something that was once rightly condemned as heresy cannot later simply become true, but it can gradually develop its own positive ecclesial nature, with which the individual is presented as his church and in which he lives as a believer, not as a heretic. **
That said, the OP is in a tough spot as he apparently has attachments to two communities, which is nothing wrong per se. If it’s strictly a social thing and there is no anti-Catholic activity or beliefs forced (there are still Catholic obligations after all), then there probably is no harm in maintaining the status quo. But I’m only going with what was stated in the OP. If there’s more to the story, then I might very well change my personal opinion and that’s all it is.
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I believe that once you have been struck with a thirst for the Catholic faith, you have a moral duty to pursue it, because everyone has a moral duty to pursue the fulness of truth. This different from what I was saying above.

In fact, I beleive that in this person’s case, who is still a member of the Baptist community, God has acted through that community to stir him. Regardless of the emotional attachments, he has a moral duty to follow God’s lead which is pointing to Catholicism.

In discerning spirits, this is obviously a movement of grace, because it’s a movement toward the fullness of the Church which subsists only in Catholicism.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
This is true

This is not what the Catholic Church beleives.

The Catholic Church believes that the other Christian ecclesial communities posses degrees of the Truth and that Christ does use them for the salvation of souls. Therefore, God is present in those congregations as well.

Pope Benedict has clarified that modern Protestantism is not the same as the Protestantism of the Reformation. Over 500 years, it has evolved into a faith community where men truly seek God through prayer, the preaching of the Word and attention to the needs of Christ in their neighbor. All of these are signs of God’s presence.

That being said, they are still lacking the fullness of the Christian faith which subsists only in the Catholic Church. Every human being is bound to search for the fulness of truth to the measure that is possible for him.

Fr. Benedict G. had a very interesting talk on this subject this weekend. If they run it again on EWTN, it’s worth listening. It helps the non-Catholic and the Catholic understand how God is present outside of the Catholic Church and yet, how there is much more that is not there.

This is part of what I mentioned above, the duty to seek the fullness of truth when one becomes aware that this fulness is not present where one is, in this case, at the Baptist community.

This is a good suggestion and it is good not to forget or lose appreciation for what they have contributed to your life of of faith.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton said it very well. She explained that it was Protestantism that led her to Catholicism, but not because she was running away from Protestantism, but because Protestantism taught her to search for Truth. She always had a special place in her heart for her Protestant roots, because God began to call out to her through that community. Bl. John Henry Newman said the same thing about the Anglican Church. St. Edith Stein said the same about atheism. This was also my experience with Judaism. God did not begin to speak when we discovered Catholicism. God was present where we were and began to whisper back there and gently led us here.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
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Aren’t you derailing the thread here? This thread is after all not on whether Protestantism is lesser than Catholicism or anything of that sort, right?

Why not answer the OP’s question rather than go on the defense of a Protestant church? That is going to go in to some other whole area of discussion anyway. Unless of course you want to suggest that he attend the Protestant Church which according to your last post doesn’t look like the case either.
 
passer_by said:
Aren’t you derailing the thread here? This thread is after all not on whether Protestantism is lesser than Catholicism or anything of that sort, right?

Why not answer the OP’s question rather than go on the defense of a Protestant church? That is going to go in to some other whole area of discussion anyway. Unless of course you want to suggest that he attend the Protestant Church which according to your last post doesn’t look like the case either.
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I’m correcting an incorrect response that was given to the OP. He was told to come into the Catholic Church because God is not present in the Baptist community.

While we have a moral duty to help someone who moved by grace is moving in the right direction, we also have a moral duty to help them move for the right reason, that being that the fulness of the Church subsists in the Catholic Church, not that God is not to be found in the Baptist community. My guess is that the poster was referring to the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist and did not mean to say that God is not in the Baptist Church.

We have to give the OP the right answer. Everyone is obliged to follow the fullness of truth once the light of faith has been sparked.

It would be contrary to Catholic truth not to clarify this unfortunate wording.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
passer_by said:
Why not answer the OP’s question rather than go on the defense of a Protestant church?
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Because if the answer I got when I was discerning the Catholic church had been the NON-Catholic answer of “God isn’t present anywhere but in a Catholic Sanctuary” I would not be catholic today.

Masking bias or poor choices of words as catholic teaching is wrong, and then pandering it to those who have legitimate questions as though it is official catholic teaching is not only wrong, but HARMFUL to the church. The Brother is right to offer fraternal correction in this regard, and then, having offered actual church teaching, to offer real and concrete reasons to be catholic (faithfully). This is the path to real conversion.
 
JReducation said:
I’m correcting an incorrect response that was given to the OP. He was told to come into the Catholic Church because God is not present in the Baptist community.
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So you are ok with him coming in to the Catholic Church by something imperfect as the Baptist Church. BUT, you are worried about him coming in to the Catholic faith because of an imperfect response by a Catholic?

Don’t you think that is a double standard?
JReducation said:
We have to give the OP the right answer. Everyone is obliged to follow the fullness of truth once the light of faith has been sparked.
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Yes, so does it matter how he arrived at it?
JReducation said:
I
It would be contrary to Catholic truth not to clarify this unfortunate wording.
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I know. Which is why I wonder why we don’t take this same stance about other non-Catholic religions. We sometimes seem very much ready to let errors of non-Catholics slip by but are ready to jump on fellow Catholics when they say something slightly erroneous about a non-Catholic.
 
passer_by said:
We sometimes seem very much ready to let errors of non-Catholics slip by but are ready to jump on fellow Catholics when they say something slightly erroneous about a non-Catholic.
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We do this because offering incorrect and non-catholic teachings (untruths) as though they are catholic teachings can only HARM one’s conversion and understanding.

As I said in my post above, had I gotten such a response and trusted it as catholic teaching when I was discerning the church, I probably would not be catholic today.
 
promethius said:
We do this because offering incorrect and non-catholic teachings (untruths) as though they are catholic teachings can only HARM one’s conversion and understanding.

As I said in my post above, had I gotten such a response and trusted it as catholic teaching when I was discerning the church, I probably would not be catholic today.
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I know. But my point is that we seem to be ok in putting up with less than perfect non-Catholics ideas because they ‘might’ lead others to the Catholic faith. All the while, we condemn our own pretty quickly.

That to me is a double standard.
 
passer_by said:
I know. But my point is that we seem to be ok in putting up with less than perfect non-Catholics ideas because they ‘might’ lead others to the Catholic faith. All the while, we condemn our own pretty quickly.

That to me is a double standard.
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It is not a double standard. When something is worded incorrectly be it by a Catholic or non-Catholic, the fraternal thing is to clarify.

It is wrong to encourage a person to enter the Catholic Church for the wrong reasons. The ends do not justify the means.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
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