We Catholics have to get off our high horse and realize that these people have been misled. They need our prayers, not our derision. They truly think they’re doing “God’s service” by trying to convince us of the errors of our ways!
I have a story I’ll tell at the end, but one book I highly recommend that everyone read if they are going to try and refute the anti-Catholics is Stephen Ray’s
“Crossing The Tiber.” In it he goes into great detail showing how the earliest Christians believed that the bread and wine was truly the Body and Blood of Christ. He has copious footnotes on each page quoting men like Iraneous, Eusebius and Justin Martyr who lived in the first couple of centuries.
“Crossing the Tiber” also goes into Infant Baptism, again using copious notations from the first Christians. His follow up-book,* “Upon This Rock,”* does the same thing by showing that Peter and the idea of a “pope” were most definitely in use by the earliest churches. Both of these books will give you direct passages you can quote when you are up against someone who likes to throw out that it wasn’t until some Council that the Church started to believe in a particular concept.
Speaking of that argument, here is an easy refutation that I have used many times. We know that with few exceptions the Councils did not initiate a belief, but rather confirmed a belief. Think of today. We all know that marriage has always been between a man and a woman, yet there are forces which are trying to redefine marriage. About 39 states have now declared through their own voters that marriage is between a man and a woman. Fast forward a few hundred years. If someone looks at the laws which were passed at the turn of this century, they can easily come away with the belief that prior to the early 2000’s Americans believed that marriage was open to men and men or women and women because it didn’t become law until then.
The same thing with the Protestants and their misunderstanding of what went on in the Councils. Just because it’s written in a Council that such-and-such is the belief of the Catholic Church does not mean that it hadn’t been that belief before then. As we know, typically there was a schismatic group trying to stir the pudding and the Council merely reiterated what had been our belief all along so as to reinforce it, not introduce it.
Now to my story. Around the turn of the century (boy, that makes me feel old) I had been deeply involved in internet apologetics. The site was Catholic and very active. We constantly had people enter the site to cause trouble, usually throwing out a very typical sentence like “Why do Catholics worship Mary?” or “Jesus had brothers.” There was a cohort of apologists who would tag-team answers as these people often opened up new threads all over the site simultaneously in order to get everyone into a lather. They would be antagonistic and derogatory in their tone. While we would try to keep things civil, there were times when the person just had to be banned.
Well, we had a guy named Tom. He did all of the above and then would re-appear as a new name within days. We’d quickly figure out it was him simply because his sentence structure was pretty unmistakable. He’d get banned again and again, each time trying to come in and prove that Catholics were going to hell because he had all the answers and he was called by God to save us.
I left the apologetics site mainly because my business kept me too busy to keep up with it. Well, four years after I left I received an email from this man Tom. He sent one to each of us who sparred with him back then, telling us that he was joining the Catholic Church! He thanked us for our kind and considerate posts, acknowledging that he had been extremely rude and egotistical in his approach. It was our very kindness and desire to hear him out (so long as he could behave
) that kept him coming back. He had decided to take us up on our constant admonishment to do his own homework rather than relying on information passed on by anti-Catholics that finally made him realize the error of his ways.
The bottom line is that these people who are so passionate often can be reached the best. They truly love God with all their heart and believe that what they are doing is God’s Will. Engage them, but insist that they stick to one question at a time rather than allowing them to send you on a constant rabbit chase. Have books that are not going to bash Protestants that you can readily refer them to. They aren’t going to take any stock in things like the Catechism, so be ready to do battle with Scripture verses that counter the ones they use. You may not win them over but it will do several good things – it will help you hone your skills so that you can quickly and easily quote Scripture and it will help others who read your posts to understand more and learn themselves. You never know who you can influence!
Scott Hahn said it best when he said
“Proof text taken out of context is nothing more than a pretext.”
