Why I am a Catholic

[JackmanUSC]

I wanted to take the time to write a post about why I am a Roman Catholic.

I am a cradle Catholic, but until the age of 20 I had never fully embraced my faith. CCD was great, but I don’t think it was taught in a way that allowed kids to fully understand the Catechism. As I got to college I saw that something was missing. I didn’t know what it was. I have friends, a girlfriend, and most anything that should make everyone happy, but I still saw something missing. Then I rediscovered faith. I studied the history of the Church, read the Bible, and the Catechism. Now today, I believe that Catholicism is the one true faith. I find myself awaiting Sunday’s with joy and hope and I love attending Mass to be with the Living God. I am sad by the state of the Church in America, but at this point I am considering joining a home mission one summer. I discoved also, that as Catholics, we must not be selfish and horde the truth and the Eucharist from the rest of the world. We must spread the news. I am a Catholic to convert people to the mission of Christ. Convert them to the truth that is the Word of God. I am a Catholic, because God told me to go forth and serve the Lord. Not for an hour or a day, but for a lifetime. I am a Catholic becuase I believe in the message of Christ as it was when he ascended into Heaven to take his seat at the Right Hand of the Father. I am a Catholic because I believe in the mystery of the Eucharist. To those on these boards who question your faith I say believe in it and the truth shall set you free. It is man who has caused sorrow, not the Lord, and if you come into the fullness of your Faith you will realize that it is a most joyous and wonderous mystery. You will praise God from the high mountains to the low valleys.Be fishers of men. You will be at peace and recieve your just reward. To my protestant cousins I say to you, revisit your heritage, which lies not with the congregations of the modern age, but with the acient apostolic Church founded at Pentacost with the Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you well and please respond with anything you wish to say.

 

[Espi]

Would you like to discuss the catholic / protestant divide? I myself was a RC for 27 years until I read the bible for myself. Now I am a protestant. I do enjoy this topic of conversation.

Adrian

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Word Alone

 

[JackmanUSC]

Go for it.

 

[Catholic_Tom]

Espi:

Would you like to discuss the catholic / protestant divide? I myself was a RC for 27 years until I read the bible for myself. Now I am a protestant. I do enjoy this topic of conversation.

Adrian

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Word Alone

huh???/ Until you read the bible? The bible makes up most of the mass and is read every day in the Catholic Church…or were you not listening? The bible was put together by the Catholic Church, lol, so how did you come to accept the authority of the bible while rejecting the Catholic Church? If you accept the bible, you accept the authority given to the Catholic Church whic decided what should be in the bible, infallibly. Time to get specific here.

 

[jimmy]

Espi:

Would you like to discuss the catholic / protestant divide? I myself was a RC for 27 years until I read the bible for myself. Now I am a protestant. I do enjoy this topic of conversation.

Adrian

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Word Alone

Did you ever go to mass? If you did, you should have heard the scriptures in every word that was said.

 

[ephphatha]

Catholic Tom:

The bible was put together by the Catholic Church, lol, so how did you come to accept the authority of the bible while rejecting the Catholic Church? If you accept the bible, you accept the authority given to the Catholic Church whic decided what should be in the bible, infallibly.

Tom, you’re assuming protestants accept the canon as it is because of the authority of the church. The councils that addressed the canon didn’t ask anybody to accept their decision merely on their authority. They arrived at their conclusions because they had criteria to determine what should be included and what shouldn’t. Protestants agree with their conclusions because they agree with their reasons, not because they take it on their authority.

 

[jimmy]

ephphatha:

Tom, you’re assuming protestants accept the canon as it is because of the authority of the church. The councils that addressed the canon didn’t ask anybody to accept their decision merely on their authority. They arrived at their conclusions because they had criteria to determine what should be included and what shouldn’t. Protestants agree with their conclusions because they agree with their reasons, not because they take it on their authority.

One of there main criteria was that it agree with Church teaching.

 

[ephphatha]

Tradition, when it’s as early as they had access to, is reliable, not because of the infallibility of the teaching magesterium, but because it is early. If it can be shown that the writings in our New Testament were consider authoritative by the majority of the earliest Christian writers, that that’s a good reason to believe it’s scripture, not because of the authority of the teaching magesterium, but for historical reasons.

 

[jimmy]

ephphatha:

Tradition, when it’s as early as they had access to, is reliable, not because of the infallibility of the teaching magesterium, but because it is early. If it can be shown that the writings in our New Testament were consider authoritative by the majority of the earliest Christian writers, that that’s a good reason to believe it’s scripture, not because of the authority of the teaching magesterium, but for historical reasons.

However, you reject the teachings of those same men regarding the Eucharist and every other teaching.

 

[ephphatha]

That’s because I don’t think they’re infallible. I think early church tradition is generally reliable when there is a wide concensus, and should be trusted unless you have good reasons to think otherwise. So far, I haven’t been given any good reasons to reject the new Testament canon, so I trust that’s it’s accurate.

And incidentally, I don’t get the impression that Catholics even take early concensus to be an infallible indicator of truth. The concensus of the early church for the first three hundred years was that Christians should not join the military at all. But from what I understand, Catholics have adopted a just war theory that allows Christians to join the military.

 

[El_Catolico]

*Would you like to discuss the catholic / protestant divide? I myself was a RC for 27 years until I read the bible for myself. Now I am a protestant. I do enjoy this topic of conversation.

Adrian

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Word Alone*

If you didnt read your Bible then, then that means one thing: you werent a very good Catholic. A good Catholic knows and understands the Bible. You didnt.

 

[coralewisjr]

jimmy:

However, you reject the teachings of those same men regarding the Eucharist and every other teaching.

JackmanUSC, great job! I’m curious about the Eucharist (BTW I’m Catholic and a budding apologist). Did Martin Luther invent consubstantiation? Until then, all Christians believed in transubstantiation & the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Catholics still believe. God bless you all!

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne

 

[JackmanUSC]

Consubstantiation, a heracy, tries to hold the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist without admitting Transubstantiation. What it says is that the substance of Jesus’s Body exists together with the substance of bread, and in like manner the substance of His Blood together with the substance of wine. Hence the word Consubstantiation. How the two substances can coexist is variously explained. The most subtle theory is that, just as the son took to Himself a human body without in any way destroying its substance, so does He in the Blessed Sacrament assume the nature of bread. Hence the theory is also called “Impanation”, a term founded on the analogy of Incarnation.
In the mind of the Church, Transubstantiation has gone hand and hand and is entirely tied with the Real Presence,both of these dogmas have been handed down together since the days of the apostles. The total conversion of the substance of bread is expressed clearly in the words of Jesus Christ: "This is my body". These words are not symbolic,but a practical proposition, whose meaning rests in this, that the objective identity between subject and predicate is effected and verified only after the words have all been said. It is kind of like a General giving someone a promotion: "You are a major", or, "You are a captain", which would immediately cause the promotion to take effect. When, therefore, when Jesus said "This is my body", the bread became, through saying these words, the Body of Christ; consequently, on the completion of the sentence the bread was no longer present, but the Body of Christ under the outward appearance of bread. So now the bread must have become the Body of Christ, So....the bread must have been converted into the body. The words of Institution were at the same time the words of Transubstantiation. The real way in which the absence of the bread and the presence of the Body of Christ is effected, is not read into the words, but is deduced from them in a strict manner. So the Calvinists are right when they reject the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation as a fiction, with no foundation in Scripture. If Jesus Christ wanted to say that there was a coexistence of His Body with the Substance of the bread, He would have expressed it by saying : "This bread contains my body", or, "In this bread is my Body." Had He wanted the bread to contain his body, He would have had to say this expressly, for neither from the nature of the case nor according to common parlance can a piece of bread be made to signify the receptacle of a human body. On the other hand, the same is plain in the case of the Chalice: "This is my blood", i.e. the contents of the Chalice are my blood, and hence no longer wine.

 

[michaelgazin]

ephphatha:

Protestants agree with their conclusions because they agree with their reasons

I am glad you bring up “reason.” Name just one reason why you believe God authored the Bible as opposed to only fallible men. Don’t worry about discussing the historicity of the Bible, the accuracy as confirmed by archaeological study, the wonderful lives led by the human authors, the unity of the books etc. None of this remotely proves the Holy Spirit’s authorship, and that is what I would like for you to prove by reason.