Excellent piece. Felt charitable rather than spiteful - which I would hope is what we're going for when talking to our Prot brothers and sisters.
Praise God for the depth of the Church. It's amazing how appalling she can appear to those outside of it. I can think of no other explanation for the anti-catholic indoctrination that we got growing up as Prots other than that the Devil doesn't want people to convert.
Protestant theologian Robert Gagnon spent a whole week on Facebook "proving" that any Scriptures Catholics use as references for our beliefs are mistaken, that the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts absolutely do not mean what Catholics say they mean. These arguments have been going on for 500 years and it usually devolve into "is so," "is not" sparring. 20 years ago,as a convert, I was relieved to learn that our beliefs were Scriptural as well as historical and traditional, yet also sad that we could be seen as just another group with a different interpretation of the Bible.
To me, the main issue was the authority that Jesus gave his disciples to teach and bind and loose. The writings of the early Christians bear out a continuity of interpretation and moral teaching, which gave me the confidence to believe in the "whole package."
Excellent piece. Felt charitable rather than spiteful - which I would hope is what we're going for when talking to our Prot brothers and sisters.
Praise God for the depth of the Church. It's amazing how appalling she can appear to those outside of it. I can think of no other explanation for the anti-catholic indoctrination that we got growing up as Prots other than that the Devil doesn't want people to convert.
Protestant theologian Robert Gagnon spent a whole week on Facebook "proving" that any Scriptures Catholics use as references for our beliefs are mistaken, that the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts absolutely do not mean what Catholics say they mean. These arguments have been going on for 500 years and it usually devolve into "is so," "is not" sparring. 20 years ago,as a convert, I was relieved to learn that our beliefs were Scriptural as well as historical and traditional, yet also sad that we could be seen as just another group with a different interpretation of the Bible.
To me, the main issue was the authority that Jesus gave his disciples to teach and bind and loose. The writings of the early Christians bear out a continuity of interpretation and moral teaching, which gave me the confidence to believe in the "whole package."