Of all the wonderful and weird things written yesterday about the Pope's historic action regarding the Anglicans, the weirdest thing I read was this:
Will they convert for the right reason???
The right reason, the person who penned this opined, is believing everything the Church believes, while the wrong reason is being mad at the Anglican Communion. If they believed what the Church believes, this person continued, they would already be Catholic. But they aren't, so they don't.
The person making this argument, who I am not going to identify or link to because it's so silly, is insulting many people and ignoring human nature. Being angry at the Anglican Communion is, of course, no reason to convert -- but it can certainly cause a person to look at the Anglican Communion with a cold eye and see its faults and failures, which is much more difficult to do under happier circumstances.
But suppose you are an angry Anglican, what then? You look at your communion and see that it isn't really a communion, and that many parts of it are only nominally Christian. You see that no one has the authority to correct anything wrong. And you begin to suspect that the Catholic Church has been right for all these years. What are you supposed to do?
Many brave people do swim the Tiber on their own, and they're certainly to be commended for it. But others find it much harder to leave all they're used to, their neighbors and friends, perhaps their family and even their livelihood. They're torn, they're hesitant, they're afraid.
And now they're welcome. The Church will take them all -- priests, prayer books, traditions, music, even their own "ordinariate" (supervisors). There is room in the Catholic Church for all that is good in Anglicanism.
So if your heart is Catholic and your worship is Anglican, the two can be one in the See of Rome. That's the right reason to convert, even if some people want to be cranky about it.
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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3 comments:
That is a bold move but beware of the Catholic Church. I used to be Catholic but then I stopped practicing after I found out some disturbing truth. Some say the papacy is the antichrist. They changed the ten commandments which is the Law of God, the Pope claims to be a god, they have killed innocent people for centuries like the Spanish Inquisition and supporting the Nazis, and the priests have molested a lot of children. Jesus would not approve of any of these, it is not Christian, that is evil hiding behind religion. I pray people really to open their eyes. I know I did!!!
Amy, assuming you're not just spamming about vacationsrentalad.com, allow me to address your concerns:
You begin by saying you "found out some disturbing truth."
Then you say: "Some say the papacy is the antichrist." Is what some people say about the papacy true? Have you investigated their claims? How exactly is the papacy (which is an office, rather than the person IN the office) the antichrist? Is the papacy "the liar ... who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son." (1 John 2:22) Is the papacy an office of "men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh"? (2 John 1:7) No! On the contrary, the Catholic Church, and thus any true pope, firmly believes that "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." (1 John 4:2)
You say that the Catholic Church "changed the ten commandments". Really? Which ones? The Catholic Church treats what Protestants consider to be commandments #1 & #2 as a single commandment (#1), and treats what Protestants consider to be a single commandment (#10) to be two commandments (#9 & #10).
Then you say "the Pope claims to be a god". Really? All popes claim that? Which pope claimed/claims that?
You said "they have killed innocent people for centuries", citing "the Spanish Inquisition" and "supporting the Nazis." How did the Church support the Nazis? Pope Pius XII is accused of such things, but the evidence is to the contrary... but you haven't provided any evidence yet yourself. And to be sure, people died as a result of the Spanish Inquisition, but the numbers are greatly exaggerated, and the actual sentences were handed down and carried out by the state, not the Church.
You said "priests have molested a lot of children." Some priests have done that. Some Protestant ministers have done it too. The Church does not condone it.
(P.S. How creepy... the captcha word was "arianday"!)
Jeffrey,
Thanks for saying what I had neither the time nor the energy to say.
By the way, I have a rich distant banker relative in Nigeria who wants to write me a check for several thousand dollars, but has reservations about sending it because of the Church's treatment of Galileo.
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