Ask A Catholic II

[civ_king]

Ask a Catholic: How many converts do you know? From the outside perspective, it seems like Catholicism is something that you're raised in, and then might leave. I don't know many people who become Catholic.

Protestants and Mormons seem to be able to recruit from the 'casually spiritual, looking for answers' pool of people. IMO, obviously.

Additionally, how do you feel about Catholic rules becoming secular laws? My region recently negated its 'Lord's Day' legislation, and allowed stores to be open on Sundays. Obviously, any law with a 'religious vibe', but strong secular reasoning, is considered on its merits. But how would you feel about laws that would be specifically (and obviously) Christian? For flavour, I'm kinda thinking about laws that used to exist in the OT, but are no longer in modern societies.

Maybe a dozen, the primary reason Protestants and Mormons get more converts is because Catholics do little missionary work. Of converts I know two are a lesbian couple (it will take to much space to explain), two or three are actually reverts and the rest were Protestant or Atheist

 

[shadowplay]

Ask a Catholic: How many converts do you know? From the outside perspective, it seems like Catholicism is something that you're raised in, and then might leave. I don't know many people who become Catholic.

I'm good friends with a man who converted from conservative Judaism. At least that's what he was born into. He didn't make the jump straight from that to Catholicism, though. If I recall correctly, it went something like Conservative Judaism --> Messianic Jewish Congregation ---> Anglican ---> Catholic. His wife also eventually converted. Their children remain Anglicans.

 

[Takhisis]

Down here no one asks if you're a convert (most people aren't anyway) because it simply doesn't matter. Argentina has never had any bad case of sectarian strife on religious grounds.

 

[Jehoshua]

Therein lies the problem with Catholicism, as I see it... it doesn't encourage individual learning, etc.
It allows people to be lazy and have their opinions/interpretations fed to them.

Its a question of obedience not a question of being lazy. As I have said elsewhere (not on this thread) one is not expected or supposed to accept the dogma of the Church lying down. The catholic is expected to study the faith to understand the truth so he can fully live the truth.

Personal opinion is not a valid source of authority because there being only one God, there can be only one religious truth. Thus your own opinion is irrelevant as you have no authority to proclaim what is true. The Church being the church founded by Christ himself and given the authority by Christ to teach does. Thus a catholic must either accept all that the Church teaches, or if he doesn't accept everything work to study, understand, repent and then accept the truth in knowledge. Otherwise I would say that the one who cannot for whatever reason accept the truth should leave the Church, although naturally we'd prefer it if he repented.

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ON CONVERTS

I know a number of converts, atheists, anglicans and evangelicals mostly. The commonalities I found is they researched what the Church actually teaches and determined they were reasonable, consistent and true, and that they joined because they found their old religions spiritually empty, or devoid of any actual religious substance.

 

[ParkCungHee]

One of my professors is a convert from episcopalianism. Learning Tudor history made her change her mind on the Anglican communion.

 

[Jehoshua]

"To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant"

~Blessed John Henry Newman (convert and former bishop of the Church of England, later became a cardinal in the Catholic Church)

 

[kochman]

You guys keep talking about tracing it back to Jesus's path... as if hundreds of years of corruption wasn't a direct break from His teachings.
It comes off as really arrogant when you make it out to be that the RCC is the best answer. I get that you are into it, but do catholics not see that some folks would rather take different paths, and they could be just as good, and not inferior?

No catholic ever addressed this post.
Let me summarize...
1) Is it legitimate to claim a direct line of authority when hundreds of years of corruption in the Church separates the Church today and Jesus?

2) It comes off as really arrogant when you make it out to be that the RCC is the best answer. I get that you are into it, but do catholics not see that some folks would rather take different paths, and they could be just as good, and not inferior?

 

[Jehoshua]

1) Your presumption that the Church in its doctrine is corrupted is just that, presumption. You have no logical or historical evidence for the claim and it is merely opinion. Furthermoreby saying the Church Christ founded has been corrupted you then reject the promises of Christ. Christ promised that he would not leave us orphans, that he would be with us till the end of days, that he would send the Holy Spirit to reveal ALL truth after he was gone and that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church.

If you are referring to human corruption that asusmption that the Church somehow loses its authority is fallacious. You are judging the Churches doctrine and spiritual authority on the failures of its members to follow its teaching. It would be if I judged the validity of protestantism solely on the basis that a certain preacher raped a certain number of parishioners. That does not mean the teachings are automatically wrong, but it does mean that the guy was a sinner. Indeed we call the Church a hospital for sinners, becaues everyone is fallen and we are naturally inclined to sin.

2)

If you actually believe in something, and believe that there is one God, there can therefore only be one truth. To somehow say that two contradictory truths are both valid is then to deny the oneness of God by creating a situation where God can be two different and totally contradictory and opposing things yet still somehow one. It is simply illogical.

Thus If you believe that Christ founded a Church and promised to preserve it, and in Christs words that "I am the way the truth and the life, and there is no other way except by me" then of course all other faiths are inferior. They must be because if you genuinely believe that the Catholic Faith or any monotheistic faith for that matter is true then you accept that there is One true God and thus One true faith. You can't have one God and many contradictory and then somehow equally valid faiths because then your rejecting Christs teaching that he is the only way, and your saying God is multiple contradictory things which is to deny the truth that there is one God.

Thus if one actually believes in something of course you would hold that all other faiths are only true insofar as to the degree they accept what your faith teaches. To say otherwise is effectively to reject God and make the idea of faith a creation of your own mortal mind by conceptualising God to fit whatever view one has at any particular time when God is eternal, one and unchangeable.

Thus for One True God there can only be One True Faith for that one unchangeable and eternal God. God is the same yesterday, today and forever he doesn;t change to fit popular human opinion. And since Christ founded the Catholic Church and because we accept the promises of Christ then naturally catholics reject the so-called equal validity of religions. To do so would be to reject the teachings of Christ and to tacitly deny the truths of Christ. You simply can't say Islam and Christianity are equally valid for example and the same goes for all the various products of heresy, which emerged as forewarned by Christ which are likewise wrong in light of Christs promises to keep the Church from doctrinal error and that the path to salvation is only through total fidelity to him.

 

[kochman]

1) If you are referring to human corruption that asusmption that the Church somehow loses its authority is fallacious. You are judging the Churches doctrine and spiritual authority on the failures of its members to follow its teaching. It would be if I judged the validity of protestantism solely on the basis that a certain preacher raped a certain number of parishioners. That does not mean the teachings are automatically wrong, but it does mean that the guy was a sinner. Indeed we call the Church a hospital for sinners, becaues everyone is fallen and we are naturally inclined to sin.

I'm not referring to a certain trivial number of incidents slipping under the radar in specific places... I am referring to centuries full of crooked Popes, who should be pretty darn good people...

2)

If you actually believe in something, and believe that there is one God, there can therefore only be one truth. To somehow say that two contradictory truths are both valid is then to deny the oneness of God by creating a situation where God can be two different and totally contradictory and opposing things yet still somehow one. It is simply illogical.

Thus If you believe that Christ founded a Church and promised to preserve it, and in Christs words that "I am the way the truth and the life, and there is no other way except by me" then of course all other faiths are inferior. They must be because if you genuinely believe that the Catholic Faith or any monotheistic faith for that matter is true then you accept that there is One true God and thus One true faith. You can't have one God and many contradictory and then somehow equally valid faiths because then your rejecting Christs teaching that he is the only way, and your saying God is multiple contradictory things which is to deny the truth that there is one God.

Thus if one actually believes in something of course you would hold that all other faiths are only true insofar as to the degree they accept what your faith teaches. To say otherwise is effectively to reject God and make the idea of faith a creation of your own mortal mind by conceptualising God to fit whatever view one has at any particular time when God is eternal, one and unchangeable.

Thus for One True God there can only be One True Faith for that one unchangeable and eternal God. God is the same yesterday, today and forever he doesn;t change to fit popular human opinion. And since Christ founded the Catholic Church and because we accept the promises of Christ then naturally catholics reject the so-called equal validity of religions. To do so would be to reject the teachings of Christ and to tacitly deny the truths of Christ. You simply can't say Islam and Christianity are equally valid for example and the same goes for all the various products of heresy, which emerged as forewarned by Christ which are likewise wrong in light of Christs promises to keep the Church from doctrinal error.

So, long story short... yes, you guys believe that your way is the best way.

Do you think that arrogance attracts more members? Or turns people off? In general.


And, a new question...
We discussed how many converts you know...
How about this... how many people do you know that have left or basically don't practice RC after being born into it?

Which number would you say is higher, and why?

 

[Jehoshua]

A) popes sin like the rest of us. But that hardly invalidates the truth of the doctrine of the Church. Your still using the same judgement based on the acts on sinful men in judging the teachings. In fact a jewish man once converted to the Catholic Faith because on visiting Rome he said that the Church must be divinely preserved and true because with that much corruption no mortal organisation would still be standing with its doctrine preserved unchanged through the ages.

It is the dogma and doctrine of the Church that is divinely preserved from error. Not the holiness and impeccability of the people in it.

B)Naturally the Catholic Church is the One True Faith. That is simply the truth and Id say any religious group who denies that they are the One True Faith is simply not worth listening too as they clearly have no conviction that their teachings were revealed by God and that there is only One God who is the source of all truth.

Generally actual faith that your religion is true combined with the catechumen researching the Catholic faith from legitimate orthodox sources results in conversion. Arrogance has nothing to do with it, we simply actually believe that our faith is true, which logically means it can only be the one true faith as otherwise were denying the teachings of Christ. Indeed the most arrogant thing a catholic could do would be not to tell a non-catholic about the faith as they'd be withholding the means to salvation from them and implying that the otehr person was unworthy or that only they were worthy to know about the truth. They'd be greedily hoarding it for themselves. The most charitable thing is to teach people about the faith.

C)Left the Church, 0 officially, a large number of cultural catholics but that is not surprising where I live as its basically an atheist paradise land where ever you look. The same problem of secularisation affects all religious groups here, the evangelicals for example hold a 5% retention rate of members.

interestingly statistics of weekly churchgoers reveals that Catholics form 50% of weekly churchgoers compared to consisting of 25% of the population in my country.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Maybe a dozen, the primary reason Protestants and Mormons get more converts is because Catholics do little missionary work. Of converts I know two are a lesbian couple (it will take to much space to explain), two or three are actually reverts and the rest were Protestant or Atheist

For curiosity, why don't they? Aren't they supposed too? I mean, it was only Jesus' last command to his disciples.

he didn't say that

You are correct, he didn't. I misinterpreted it because of the use of the word "Damn." My first assumption was that he was using it literally (That certain denominations were damned) but apparently it was a different use of the word. My apologies for the confusion. Did I mention I tend to take things literally too often?

 

[Jehoshua]

For curiosity, why don't they? Aren't they supposed too? I mean, it was only Jesus' last command to his disciples.

They are, unfortunately in the west evangelisation until exceedingly recently was near absent because in most places either everyone was catholic, or the society was so anti-catholic that the general population didn;t evangelise as they should. Recently however its started up again in the west, in fact the pope has made a congregation especially for that purpose. Fortunately since the biological solution of internal heresy is underway the evangelisation efforts amongst the general catholic population is increasing.

(interesting fact: the first televangelist was a catholic, Archbishop Fulton Sheen)

If you were to go to the third world however catholic missionaries abound and are remarkably successful particularly in Asia and Africa where the Church is expanding rapidly. Particularly in Korea where its the most respected religious institution (thanks to its refusal to support the worship of the japanese emperor in the japanese colonialisation and due to its vigorous fight against communism. The clergy also has a clean image compared to the buddhist Sangha or protestnat ministers in Korea.)

 

[GhostWriter16]

They are, unfortunately in the west evangelisation until exceedingly recently was near absent because in most places either everyone was catholic, or the society was so anti-catholic that the general population didn;t evangelise as they should. Recently however its started up again in the west, in fact the pope has made a congregation especially for that purpose.

(interestingly the first televangelist was a catholic, Archbishop Fulton Sheen)

If you were to go to the third world however catholic missionaries abound and are remarkably successful particularly in Asia and Africa.

I assumed Catholics believed in Proselyting (If for no other reason than its so dang obvious we're supposed to) but since Civ_King didn't state this in his post, I wanted to clear it up. Thanks!

Another question: I have seen many cases where Christians (Protestants) have had their lives dramatically changed by God. Do you believe this is possible to happen to a non-Catholic? Why or why not?

 

[civ_king]

I'm not referring to a certain trivial number of incidents slipping under the radar in specific places... I am referring to centuries full of crooked Popes, who should be pretty darn good people...


So, long story short... yes, you guys believe that your way is the best way.

Do you think that arrogance attracts more members? Or turns people off? In general.


And, a new question...
We discussed how many converts you know...
How about this... how many people do you know that have left or basically don't practice RC after being born into it?

Which number would you say is higher, and why?

Popes are people too and people sin...

Yes, we believe the path laid out by Jesus Christ is the best path to God
Am I arrogant to believe that 2+2=4 in base ten?

Most people who leave the Catholic Church were poorly taught, this is a result of the "spirit of Vatican II"

 

[GhostWriter16]

Most people who leave the Catholic Church were poorly taught, this is a result of the "spirit of Vatican II"

What does that phrase in quotes mean?

Also, Jesus didn't say anything about Catholicism, the best you can get is "On this Rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it" but back then there WAS no Catholic Church so it makes more sense that he was talking about Christians in general (Which includes both Catholics and other Christians.)

 

[Jehoshua]

God can work outside the Church but I am extremely wary of saying that anyones life has been dramatically changed by God due to reason of lack of knowledge and due to the myriad of otehr explanations of outward piety (especially considering lack of knowledge of ones private life [such as a famous evangelist who later turned out had relations with homosexual prostitutes])

 

[kochman]

I like how a series of hundreds of years of Popes is summed up... People sin.
Nothing about how that affected the policy/tradition of the RCC of course...

Yes, explain the Vatican II thing...

And, from my knowledge, the VAST amount of Atheists I know started out Catholic... The vast amount of Catholics I know do not practice.

 

[Jehoshua]

What does that phrase in quotes mean?

Also, Jesus didn't say anything about Catholicism, the best you can get is "On this Rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it" but back then there WAS no Catholic Church so it makes more sense that he was talking about Christians in general (Which includes both Catholics and other Christians.)

A load of heretics created a heresy in the Church that rejects dogma under something called the "spirit of vatican II" to fit their own liberal ideology. The spirit of vatican II is thus the ideology of rebellion and disobedience to teh Church that has infected even bishops within the Church (such as the bishop of Toowoomba). Interestingly problems only emerged after VII due to the abuses of the liberal heretic crowd both liturgically and in regards to teaching false doctrine (or even not really teaching at all). The problem really is that too many leaders in the Church arent actually teaching the faith and thus people don;t actually know what it is, and since it just becomes some vague morality thing under pseudo-heretical pastors people leave because it has lost the substance that properly practiced catholicism contains. Thus you see today that all the young catholics who are faithful are orthodox because no young catholics were produced under the liberal heretic crowd. (and now they are all old and dying). You also see orthodox parished remain strong whereas heterodox parishes with disobedient and even heretical priest who do not hold reverance in the liturgy are fading away as their congregations age.

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Since there is one God there can only be one truth. Thus when Christ speaks about the gates of hell not prevailign against his church he can only mean a singular Church with singular teaching. Not some vague communion of Christians with vastly contradictory views to eachover (as this would violate the fact there is one God and thus one truth).

This Church is the Catholic or universal Church which before heresy existed was simply called the Way, or the Church with its people simply christians. By the end of the first century however with the advent of gnostic and other heresies the term catholic Church was already in common use as evident in the epistle to the smyrnaeans by St Ignatius of Antioch.

 

[Jehoshua]

I like how a series of hundreds of years of Popes is summed up... People sin.
Nothing about how that affected the policy/tradition of the RCC of course...

The dogma of the Church has remained unchanged since the time of the apostles. It has deepened in understanding but nothing has ever been abrogated (because abrogating dogma is impossible) nor has anyting been added that is contrary to any previous dogma of the Church or contrary to the precepts of Christ. (thus unlike many, many protestant groups we don;t condone homosexuality, or contraception, or abortion)

The rest I have somewhat explained in an earlier post. Not to mention its part of an internal catholic debate which would be difficult to explain to an outsider. (culture wars between heretics who unlike the protestants of old havent left the Church, and faithful orthodox catholics)

 

[GhostWriter16]

God can work outside the Church but I am extremely wary of saying that anyones life has been dramatically changed by God due to reason of lack of knowledge and due to the myriad of otehr explanations of outward piety (especially considering lack of knowledge of ones private life [such as a famous evangelist who later turned out had relations with homosexual prostitutes])

I wasn't asking if you acknowledged any specific change in a specific person. I was asking if you acknowledged, in general, that God could change a life if the person was not Catholic.

A load of heretics created a heresy in the Church that rejects dogma under something called the "spirit of vatican II" to fit their own liberal ideology. The spirit of vatican II is thus the ideology of rebellion and disobedience to teh Church that has infected even bishops within the Church (such as the bishop of Toowoomba). Interestingly problems only emerged after VII due to the abuses of the liberal heretic crowd both liturgically and in regards to teaching false doctrine (or even not really teaching at all). The problem really is that too many leaders in teh Church arent actually teaching the faith and thus people don;t actually know what it is, and since it just becomes some vague morality thing under pseudo-heretical pastors people leave because it has lost the substance that properly practiced catholicism contains.

So, what is the fate of people that leave because of this? Are they then rejecting God since they left Catholicism, or are they following God since they are leaving a Church which perverts God's message, or both, or neither?

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Since there is one God there can only be one truth. Thus when Christ speaks about the gates of hell not prevailign against his church he can only mean a singular Church with singular teaching. Not some vague communion of Christians with vastly contradictory views to eachover (as this would violate the fact there is one God and thus one truth).

This Church is the Catholic or universal Church which before heresy existed was simply called the Way, or the Church with its people simply christians. By the end of the first century however with the advent of gnostic and other heresies the term catholic Church was already in common use as evident in the epistle to the smyrnaeans by St Ignatius of Antioch.

Well, there can be one absolute truth without us knowing what all of it is. IIRC, even in Catholicism the Church acknowledges that they don't know the absolute truth on all matters, since not everything is a dogma.

The thing is, though, that while there IS an absolute truth, some things are to be left to the individual, as Paul clearly explains about Christian liberty. Of course, that gives no excuse to knowingly sin. But certain things are left to the conscience. And certain things in the Bible aren't necessarily clear, because God doesn't want us to just have knowledge, he wants us to seek Him and seek more knowledge of Him.

So, yes, there can only be one truth. Amongst Protestants there are numerous teachings, some better defended by Scripture than others, but eventually, if the teachings contradict each other, only one or none of them will be right. But not everything is made clear on this Earth, because not everything is all that important.

Note that I'm not trying to prove Catholic teaching wrong here, I'm just saying sometimes there's more than one valid way to interpret a given Scripture.

And to comment on a separate issue:

[citation needed]

Ummm... No not really, since Kochman was talking literally and he wasn't talking about Catholic teaching. His point was that sex outside of marriage being immoral doesn't make oral immoral. And that point can't really be argued. It could still be immoral, but not on the grounds that sex outside marriage is immoral.

But still, I wish to know, is the fact that oral sex is sinful a Catholic Church teaching or is it simply an opinion a lot of Catholics seem to hold? And is it a mortal sin (In a marital relationship) or venial?