What are the reasons I should (or shouldn't) become Catholic?

[MaryD7]

I’m curious as to what are the reasons that I should or shouldn’t become Catholic in your opinions.

I’ll start with should not. You should not come to the decision to be Catholic lightly. Do your research, read the Catechism, and understand what the Catholic teaches.And most importantly, pray for guidance.

Now two shoulds:

#1) You should become Catholic if you believe and want to have the true presence of Christ through the Eucharist.

#2) You should become Catholic if you believe that this is the church started by Jesus Christ himself and whose teachings are protected. (This is where “The gates of hell shall not prevail” comes into play.)

 

[donnyblake]

MYFAVORITMARTIN: You referenced Heb. Ch. 10: Then what exactly did Jesus mean when he at the Last Supper said, “Do this in memory of me”??? Any idea?

 

[Erich]

Sacrifice repetition of no value

Who said anything about repetition?

Heb. 2:17; 3:1; 4:14; 8:1; 9:11,25; 10:19,22 - Jesus is repeatedly described as “High Priest.” But in order to be a priest, “it is necessary for [Jesus] to have something to offer.” Heb. 8:3. This is the offering of the eternal sacrifice of His body and blood to the Father.
Heb. 2:18 - although His suffering is past tense, His expiation of our sins is present tense because His offering is continual. Therefore, He is able (present tense) to help those who are tempted.

Heb. 4:3 – God’s works were finished from the foundation of the world. This means that God’s works, including Christ’s sacrifice (the single act that secured the redemption of our souls and bodies), are forever present in eternity. Jesus’ suffering is over and done with (because suffering was earthly and temporal), but His sacrifice is eternal, because His priesthood is eternal (His victimized state was only temporal).

Heb. 7:24 – Jesus holds His priesthood is forever because He continues forever, so His sacrificial offering is forever. He continues to offer His body and blood to us because He is forever our High Priest.

Heb. 8:2 - Jesus is a minister in the sanctuary offering up (present tense) His eternal sacrifice to the Father which is perfected in heaven. This is the same sanctuary that we enter with confidence by the blood of Jesus as written in Heb. 10:19. See also Heb. 12:22-24.
Heb. 8:3 - as High Priest, it is necessary for Jesus to have something to offer. What is Jesus offering in heaven? As eternal Priest, He offers the eternal sacrifice of His body and blood.

Heb. 9:12 – Jesus enters into heaven, the Holy Place, taking His own blood. How can this be? He wasn’t bleeding after the resurrection. This is because He enters into the heavenly sanctuary to mediate the covenant of His body and blood by eternally offering it to the Father. This offering is made present to us in the same manner as Melchizedek’s offering, under the appearance of bread and wine.

Heb. 9:14 - the blood of Christ offered in heaven purifies (present tense) our consciences from dead works to serve the living God. Christ’s offering is ongoing.

Heb. 9:22 – blood is indeed required for the remission of sin. Jesus’ blood was shed once, but it is continually offered to the Father. This is why Jesus takes His blood, which was shed once and for all, into heaven. Heb. 9:12.
Heb. 9:23 – Jesus’ sacrifice, which is presented eternally to the Father in heaven, is described as “sacrifices” (in the plural) in the context of its re-presentation on earth (the author first writes about the earthly sacrifices of animals, and then the earthly offerings of Jesus Christ’s eternal sacrifice).

 

[Erich]

Salvation is not a one-time, sealed the deal thing. It was never meant to be that way by Christ. Think about it.

Heb. 10:22 - our hearts and bodies are (not were) washed clean by the action of Jesus’ perpetual priesthood in heaven.

Heb. 13:20-21 - Jesus died once, but His blood of the eternal covenant is eternally offered to equip us (present tense) with everything good that we may do God’s will.

Heb. 13:8 - this is because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. While His suffering was temporal (because bodily pain is temporal), Jesus and His sacrifice are eternal (because redemption, salvation, and the mediation of the New covenant are eternal).

Heb. 13:15 – the letter concludes with an instruction to continually offer up, through Christ, a sacrifice of praise to God. The phrase “sacrifice of praise” refers to the “toda” animal sacrifices that had to be consumed. See, for example, Lev. 7:12-15; 22:29-30.

1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 20:6 - we are a royal priesthood in Jesus, and offer His sacrifice to the Father on earth as He does in heaven.
1 John 1:7 - the blood of Jesus cleanses us (present tense) from all sin. His blood cannot currently cleanse us unless it is currently offered for us.

 

[BOBKAT]

I’ll not speak for all romans or all protestants, but me personally I have something that sadly many others appear not to…SALVATION!

Carefull sounds a little judgemental. Judge not lest you be judged.You may not send yourself nor anyone to heaven or hell and what you should be doing is working out your salvation in fear and trembling kind of like Paul. And as for Jesus being the fullness of the truth you get no arguement from me, however that fullness resides in the Catholic Church in which He is the Head…

God Bless,
Kathleen

 

[Charlie_Zeaiter]

It is Christ and Christ alone whom gives everylasting life!

Hello myfavoritmartin,

How very cute of you to snip out the bit of my comment which rebuts your post.

So now I have to repeat myself from Post # 2 above…

… You should become Catholic because the Catholic Church is the true Bride of Christ, and together with the Bridegroom, Jesus, they can give you the everlasting life that Adam and Eve lost for us. (It has always been God’s plan for male and female to come together and produce life… including spiritual everlasting life.) …

 

[myfavoritmartin]

Carefull sounds a little judgemental. Judge not lest you be judged.You may not send yourself nor anyone to heaven or hell and what you should be doing is working out your salvation in fear and trembling kind of like Paul. And as for Jesus being the fullness of the truth you get no arguement from me, however that fullness resides in the Catholic Church in which He is the Head…

God Bless,
Kathleen

Nothing judgemental there, furthermore Kathleen if I wonder but don’t inquire whether someone is saved how am I fulfilling the great commision. People dangerously over use and misuse the Judge not lest yee be judged, we are called to be fruit inspectors.

Paul says work OUT not work ON your salvation. Christ gave us the diamond already we just need to work it out of the mine!

 

[myfavoritmartin]

Heb. 10:22 - our hearts and bodies are (not were) washed clean by the action of Jesus’ perpetual priesthood in heaven.

three verses later…context,context,context!

26 Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.

So yes were!

 

[myfavoritmartin]

Heb. 13:20-21 - Jesus died once, but His blood of the eternal covenant is eternally offered to equip us (present tense) with everything good that we may do God’s will.

.

link this translation, that is unless this is a manner of you hacking together two thoughts to make one verse.
That’s dangerous territory I wouldn’t be messing with.

20 Now may the God of peace—
who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great Shepherd of the sheep,
and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—
21 may he equip you with all you need
for doing his will.
May he produce in you,[e]
through the power of Jesus Christ,
every good thing that is pleasing to him.
All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

Heb. 13:8 - this is because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. While His suffering was temporal (because bodily pain is temporal), Jesus and His sacrifice are eternal (because redemption, salvation, and the mediation of the New covenant are eternal).

AGAIN context…
9 So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them.

10 We have an altar from which the priests in the Tabernacle[d] have no right to eat. 11 Under the old system, the high priest brought the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, and the bodies of the animals were burned outside the camp. 12 So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates to make his people holy by means of his own blood.

 

[aristotle]

That’s dangerous territory I wouldn’t be messing with.

I wonder what would be the dangerous territory you would be messing with.

 

[mercygate]

three verses later…context,context,context!

26 Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.

So yes were!

The whole Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the Levitical Priesthood, with its animal sacrifices, against the One perfect Sacrifice of Jesus Christ: once for all. It is that SAME sacrifice into which the Sacrifice of the Mass enters – as it were, the veil of time and space being rent as we are united at the foot of the Cross and partake of the eternal Sacrifice offered by Christ to the Father.

You have been around here long enough to know that we do not re-sacrifice Jesus in the Mass. I really hope you will not bring this up again. It would make you appear to be contumacious.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

It is my understanding that the Muslims and the Jews saved Aristotle.

The Roman Catholics simply used what the Muslims and Jews preserved, as a tool of apologetics (a terrible use of great philosophy, in my opinion).

And, forgive my ignorance, and my bull-headedness (I like jumping into a pool of cold water, and either swimming or drowning embarrassingly), what is the Byzantine Catholic Church?

Actually a lot of the translations into Arabic (what you are referring to) where done by Syrian and other Orthodox Christians, and Nestorians too (e.g. Hunayn ibn Ishaq, known in Latin as Johannitius). And a lot of them were carried over by the refugees when the muslims took Constantinople (and who pumped up the Byzantine Catholic Church, your second question).

The earliest copy we have of ancient philosophical texts I believe is only a thousand years old. For that thousand year interval, someone copied it, and that would be someone’s attached to the Church.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

How come the LORD had no teeth marks after that day?
REread my post it’ll make sense…

What words was St. Peter refering to in your original post?

John 6.60 therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this [For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed], said “This is a hard saying: who can understand it?”

6.66 [Interesting number, no?] From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

The Biblical Protestants!

 

[myfavoritmartin]

I wonder what would be the dangerous territory you would be messing with.

I dunno, what do ya’ll think?
I certainly wouldn’t be rewriting sacred scripture…

 

[Palladio]

“The Roman Catholics simply used what the Muslims and Jews preserved, as a tool of apologetics (a terrible use of great philosophy, in my opinion).”

That is an enormously ignorant statement.

Read Texts and Traditions (ed. R. Tarrant) for the fate of Roman literature, Scribes and Scholars (N. G. Wilson) more generally, both published by Oxford University Press.

Well into the seventeenth century, but beginning in the biggest way with Petrarch in the fourteenth, the Renaissance recovered the Greek and Roman texts already copied in Roman Catholic scriptoria or held in Roman Catholic Church and monastery libraries. The closer we get to that terminal date, the more such mss (not all of equal value or antiquity) spread to private (including Church and papal) hands.

The RCC saved the West by saving, literally, Greece and Rome: She also invented it.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

What words was St. Peter refering to in your original post?

It is Christ and Christ alone whom gives everylasting life!

God’s plan for your eternal salvation is to place your everything in HIS hands and live out your life accordingly for HIS glory!

All of the answers for John 6 can be found in the words of Peter at the end…

67 Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”
68 Simon Peter answered him, ]"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life;

69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God."
Now does Peter talk about the bread? NO!

He addresses what the others left over, the divinity of Christ, Peter heard the message that one would be saved by BELIEVING in Christ as He had taught in this discourse.

This event opened because the crowd wanted PROOF, a SIGN, and so they asked for food.
Jesus made the transition to the manna because of the demand of the crowd for food to prove what he said.
This dialogue is on faith without signs , it is on being saved by faith.

It’s right there my friend I can’t read and think it through your head for you, meditate and pray on it…

 

[Isa_Almisry]

**
This doesn’t tell us why the crowd doesn’t rush Jesus and get a pc and a sip of eternal life**… IF! He was speaking literal.

They had better sense, understanding that He was speaking literally. Did the Chidren of Israel rush up Sinai to get those Commandments?

Or perhaps God was speaking figuratively, which should make the ACLU happy.

Read Hebrews 10.26-31. As you seem a “once saved-always saved” flavor, pay particular attention to the first verse.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Simply put, only a fool would have attacked the Lord.

You stick to your interpretation, because you are your own church, pope, and bishop and I’ll stick to what the Church has always taught. A teaching that pre-dates the existence of your own founder, Luther, and his followers

One of us is wrong, and one of us is right. You’ve picked your camp (16th century and forward) and I’ve picked mine (1st century and forward).

Let me continue on with your with your little game that you believe Jesus to be speaking figuratively. Note, I already asked you why Jesus said,
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink
and no response, since you can’t reason your way out of it (because its so obvious!)

Next, I ask, IF Jesus was TRULY speaking figuratively, why did those guys leave? Was it because they realllly wanted to eat Jesus? And why didn’t Jesus simply correct their misunderstanding? I’ll answer it for you: He didn’t because they understood Him perfectly

Actually Luther would have disowned this guy.

Your last point is on point.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Yes and only a fool would turn their back on Him and only a fool would disobey Him, yet the nature of the fallen man is to do precisely that…Right? Your answer is a cop out.

I don’t need a “Vicar” my LORD is with me always, and His teaching predates the world!

MINE…1 A.D.
yours…Pope Gregory the great! 6th or 7th century.

Still waiting for you to give me an answer that is not a cop out!

If you can show someone who believed as you do, from 1 AD till present, I’d consider your argument. Otherwise, you deny the Lord who said “the gates of Hell will not prevail,” and “Lo, I am with you always (actually in the Greek “all of the days”).” Did Christ take a leave of absence?