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tparsons
Guest
Again a refute from my friend who is baptist said “Paul was not Catholic” I beg to differ. Any thoughts are always appreciated!
Tony
Tony
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Della
Guest
Paul was an Apostle of the “unverisal” or Catholic Church. He certainly wasn’t a Baptist or any other form of Protestantism which didn’t exist at the time.
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Catholic_Dude
Guest
Here is a classic, look what Paul said to Timothy:
Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses. 1 Tim 5:23
Baptists dont drink alcohol yet Paul encourages it, lets see them explain that.
Other than that joke above if you give us any particular baptists teaching we could probably find a quote from Paul to refute it.
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mikew262
Guest
I think it would be more accurate to say that Paul was a “Christian” at that time.
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Sean_Boyle
Guest
No! It’s safe to say that Paul belonged to the Church founded by Christ, the Catholic Church after his conversion of course. Christian and Catholic were the same thing, then. They weren’t separate ideas at the time of Christ or of Paul.
This may not be politically correct in todays world but Paul doesn’t live in todays world. He lived at a time in history when the only option in the christian world was what your christian name was to be. No one would dare consider a belief that was not of Christ or his Church.
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mikew262
Guest
At that time, the Catholic Church as a “formal” entity was not around yet. The very early followers of Christ at that time were Christians. The formal Catholic Church came later.
I suppose it’s really matter of semantics. Yes, Yes, I’ve read and heard the discussion that the original Church that Jesus started was Catholic, but really as a formal entity known as the Catholic Church, it really hadn’t formed yet in Paul’s time.
BTW, I really don’t care one way or another. I am now a Christian Catholic, and that’s what really matters.
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
I do not understand you. Jesus formally started the Church appointing Peter as the head of that Church, our first Pope. How much more explicit can you get than “feed my sheep”?
But then there are Catholics for choice so what seems common sense isn’t always readily apparent. Who knows how blinded I may be.
Oh my Jesus, have mercy on us.
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Pax
Guest
According to Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, the early Christian Church was as he put it “catholic.” It is quite likely that the paths of Paul and Ignatius crossed when Ignatius was a young man. Check out this Early Church Father…he was the first to use the term Catholic and he did not exclude St. John or St. Paul.
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mikew262
Guest
Ok Mike, spare me the dramatics and sarcasm. After doing some quick research, I retract my previous posting to some degree.
The early Church was starting to call itself “Catholic” as early as 110 AD. I suppose what I mean’t was that the first members of the Church were not calling themselves literally “Catholic”. The were known as Christians (as we are now, first and foremost). However, they quickly evolved into the formal Rome based Catholic Church started by Peter and Paul.
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Orionthehunter
Guest
Actually, there were other branches of Christianity. In fact they were the heresies that Paul admonished in his Epistles that the person referenced to in the OP tends to want to rely on. Ironic isn’t it? And he did so on behalf of the universal Church started by Christ under the See of Peter, the first Pope of the Catholic Church.
To say Paul was not a member of the Catholic Church is actually quite hilarious if the consequences of this false thought wasn’t so serious.
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Della
Guest
The truly odd thing is there are plenty of Evangelical Protestants who seem to have the idea that any person or group that opposed the formal Church, i. e., the Catholic Church, must have been a long lost brother in league with them. This in spite of the fact they don’t even know what those people/groups actually believed and would be horrified if they did!
And there are many who think of Paul as one of the first outsiders who had little or nothing to do with the established Church but founded his own churches based on their, Protestant beliefs.
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trogiah
Guest
Paul, like Peter, John, James, the other Apostles, Jesus himself, and Mary and Joseph, were all Jewish.
Jim
Jim
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myfavoritmartin
Guest
Wasn’t Paul a Catholic?
Scripture shows he could have been considered as such.
Scripture shows he could have been considered as such.
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thistle
Guest
It is quite possible that the name “the Catholic Church” (Greek: katholikos ekklesia) developed from Acts 9:31 “the Church throughout all” (Greek: ekklesia kath olos).
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Todd_Easton
Guest
It is probably an anachronism to call Paul a formal Catholic because the word Catholic probably didn’t come into common use to describe an orthodox Christian until many years after his death. Today, the earliest known use of the phrase the Catholic Church is found in Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Smyrnaeans, chap. 8, written about A.D. 110. The earliest known use, that I have been able to find, of the word Catholics to describe orthodox Christians is in the Paschal Canon of Anatolius of Alexandria, paragraph 15, written about A.D. 270.
It would be more accurate to call Paul a material Catholic. That is, he believed then what Catholics believe today.
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
There was no sarcasm intended. Dramatic? Yes, because I am constantly surprised by blatant heterodoxy or outright sin trumpeted as following Jesus. Paul not Catholic? Catholics for choice? Divorce and remarriage ok? Marriage expanded to include same sex couples?
These things are explicitly, EXPLICITLY defined in the bible and by the magisterium. Yet there is still confusion and debate with people saying evil is good. DRAMATIC! Yeah, I geuss that’s one term for it. More accurately it is frustration.
Hey, I’m a sinner too, selfish too, but painting my sin as a virtue baldfacedly? And you wonder why I cry out for mercy? and genuinely wonder if I am being deceived. How can anyone doubt that there is a deceiver out there. Look at the division in the anglican church. I stumbled across one of their catechism, I had to go pretty deep into it before it dawned on me that it was not a Catholic catechism and look over there!!!
Questions with a direct answer from the magisterium being contested are a source of dramatic concern to me. Something is going on here more than logic because the answers are too plain for there to be debate among people with properly ordered faculties. And if these people who arre rationally fooled into such baltantly incorrect thinking and they are trying to follow Jesus, how am I being deluded? How am I being self deluded?
If Jesus had not established a Church proof against the gates of hell and then left, could we then in honesty call him a Good Shepherd based on what men say and believe left to their own devices?
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trogiah
Guest
From various chapters in Acts:
"So Paul got up, motioned with his hand, and said, "Fellow Israelites and you others who are God-fearing, 7 listen.
17 The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors and exalted the people during their sojourn in the land of Egypt.
"My brothers, children of the family of Abraham, and those others among you who are God-fearing, to us this word of salvation has been sent.
When they took the road through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they reached Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2 Following his usual custom, Paul joined them, and for three sabbaths he entered into discussions with them from the scriptures, 3 expounding and demonstrating that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that “This is the Messiah, Jesus, whom I proclaim to you.”
Paul answered, “I am a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city; I request you to permit me to speak to the people.” 40 When he had given his permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned with his hand to the people; and when all was quiet he addressed them in Hebrew. "
It is difficult to know how best to respond to the original posted question without knowing more about the conversation with the Baptist friend. But if we are to assign a particular faith to Paul, based on Paul’s own testimony, it would be difficult to call him anything but Jewish. A Jew who has accepted that Jesus is the promised Messiah. This would be the most accurate description for the other Apostles as well.
One other poster was accurate in saying the use of the word “Catholic” in describing Paul or the Apostles would be an anachronism.
Jim
"So Paul got up, motioned with his hand, and said, "Fellow Israelites and you others who are God-fearing, 7 listen.
17 The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors and exalted the people during their sojourn in the land of Egypt.
"My brothers, children of the family of Abraham, and those others among you who are God-fearing, to us this word of salvation has been sent.
When they took the road through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they reached Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2 Following his usual custom, Paul joined them, and for three sabbaths he entered into discussions with them from the scriptures, 3 expounding and demonstrating that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that “This is the Messiah, Jesus, whom I proclaim to you.”
Paul answered, “I am a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city; I request you to permit me to speak to the people.” 40 When he had given his permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned with his hand to the people; and when all was quiet he addressed them in Hebrew. "
It is difficult to know how best to respond to the original posted question without knowing more about the conversation with the Baptist friend. But if we are to assign a particular faith to Paul, based on Paul’s own testimony, it would be difficult to call him anything but Jewish. A Jew who has accepted that Jesus is the promised Messiah. This would be the most accurate description for the other Apostles as well.
One other poster was accurate in saying the use of the word “Catholic” in describing Paul or the Apostles would be an anachronism.
Jim
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Randy_Carson
Guest
Mike-
I understand that you are a Catholic, so I’m not trying to get on your case about this, but I do think it’s a pretty big deal for us as Catholic apologists to be precise about this stuff because the Baptists are passing around a book/booklet entitled Trail of Blood which purports to show how there really were Baptists around from the beginning - thus they are staking claim to the Apostolicity that is found in the Catholic Church alone. It’s a big deal from an apologetics perspective.
Regarding the antiquity of the term, “Catholic”, Ignatius is credited with the first surviving use of the term in his letter to the Smyrnaeans dated around A.D. 107. It appears the term was already in widespread use at that time indicating that its application to the Church was much older. This means that the phrase “Catholic Church” could very well have been in use at the time of Paul’s martyrdom. So, very early on:
- “The Way” came to be called the Catholic Church.
- Nazarenes came to be called Christians.
Paul declares himself to be a member of “The Way” in the book of Acts, but he was Catholic. No doubt about it.
K
KnightforChrist
Guest
One more thought regarding Paul and let’s include Peter.
Where are their tombs ??? What churches high altars do their tombs/bodies reside under ??
Why aren’t their tombs to be found at one of the umpteen other church denominations throughout the world ???
Also, let’s not forget what the Catholic church has always posessed and acknowledged. Tradition, with a capital T.
Many other christian denominations will only accept early writings to prove or accept a point…Tradition is out of the question to a certain extent, because that would require non-catholics to face something, they’re not ready for, at least not right now…
Truth…And I mean in the fullest sense…
Where are their tombs ??? What churches high altars do their tombs/bodies reside under ??
Why aren’t their tombs to be found at one of the umpteen other church denominations throughout the world ???
Also, let’s not forget what the Catholic church has always posessed and acknowledged. Tradition, with a capital T.
Many other christian denominations will only accept early writings to prove or accept a point…Tradition is out of the question to a certain extent, because that would require non-catholics to face something, they’re not ready for, at least not right now…
Truth…And I mean in the fullest sense…
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