"Say something about Jesus" (Unam Sanctam Catholicam, July 20, 2011). Excerpts:
I read this very interesting article [well worth reading] over at Catholic Lane about a Catholic man who seems to have been somewhat shaky in his faith. Some Protestant family members picked up on his apparent ignorance of the principles of Catholicism and moved in on him like sharks at the smell of blood. They asked him, "If you died and stood before the Lord and He asked you why He should let you into heaven, what would you say?" Well of course the Lord doesn't let us into heaven based on whether or not we answer some questions correctly; the purpose is a Protestant ruse in order to find out where the Catholic puts his trust.Read more >>
Well, the Catholic gentleman in question failed the test. When asked why he had confidence in his salvation, he replied, "I just ask the Virgin Mary to pray for me.”
This answer, while not wrong if expressed to another Catholic who understands the tremendous graces that come to us through our Lady's intercession, it is nevertheless problematic in this context for two reasons.
First and foremost, when a Protestant asks you this question, beyond testing you to find out where you place your trust, he is implicitly seeking to either confirm or debunk the myth that Catholics do not know our Lord.
... [Second,] He wants to know the efficient cause, the cause from whence all these other secondary causes derive their efficacy. For the answer to this question, there can be no other answer other than the redemptive death of Jesus Christ. This is the only appropriate answer to this question.
Many Protestants are triumphalists whereas many Catholics are defeatists. And it does not help that Holy Mother Church has spent the past one-half century telling those whose who are not part of the Catholic Church how darn wonderful they are.
ReplyDeleteBasta. We get it.
Now how about pointing-out to protestants that their worship is worse than deficient and that the men who started their communities were not men worthy of emulation.
The 16th century LUZR's, (Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and other Revolutionaries) dethroned Jesus and chased Him out of the Sanctuary.
Now, I have nothing against the progeny of the protestant progenitors. They are doing their level best to study Scripture and attend Sunday services and they try and follow Jesus.
However, not one in one million know the truth about the 16th century LUZR's.
Malachias 1 prophesies ...
For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.
But, the protestant revolutionaries falsified Scripture substituting incense for Sacrifice and pure offering for oblation (and also heathen for gentile)
It is clear they absolutely had no love for Scripture when it came to a Prophesy their ideology rejected.
They simply falsified Scripture to cement their revolution which abandoned the Commands of Jesus vis a vis Worship.. Now, is there one in one hundred million well-intended protestant who knows this?
NO.
We must preach it to them.
We must preach this truth to them because they have been denied their birthright as Baptised Christians. As Baptised Christians, they ARE related,imperfectly, to the Church.
However, their worship is sans Sacrifice.
For Catholic and Orthodox, our Churches are permeated with the Odor of Sanctity because ours is not only the Worship Prophesied by Malachias, it is the Worship Malachias Prophesied and was Perfected by Jesus and He Commanded His Apostles to
Worship this way as The Way until the end of time.
At a Catholic Mass/Orthodox Divine Liturgy, it is the action of Jesus, as Priest, Victim, Meal, which is the focus and essence of Worship.
In a protestant service, it is solely the action of man - reading and commenting upon scripture and singing hymns and praising God. Now, there is nothing wrong with that. HOWEVER, there IS something wrong in that Our Lord and Saviour has
been excised from the exercise. Protestants tells us the works of man are bloody rags. By their own words they are condemned. Their service is solely about the work of man (bloody rags)as the protestant progenitors jettisoned the Sacrifice,
Priesthood, Eucharist and rejected Apostolic Succession, Eucharist, Mass etc.
What IS acceptable to God as Worship? Bloody Rags or the PluPerfect Sacrifice of the New Covenant?
(And I wonder why others think I am not a good apologist).
Preach it, bro!
ReplyDeletePerhaps opportunities for rousing ecumenical discussions with heretics should be missed more often. "Boniface" bills himself as a Catholic apologist, yet all he does in this blog piece is remonstrate Catholics for appearing like dunderheads before protestants, and for, horror or horrors, letting the opportunity for an ecumenical rap session slip away. Stupid Catholic! So embarrassing!
ReplyDeleteWhat does it say of a "Catholic" apologist that the good opinions of protestants matter so much to him?; that he criticizes Catholics for asking the blessed virgin Mary to pray for them, which is what a great many sensible Catholics do?; that he seems more focused on zesty argumentation in which he does not "appear like a fool" before his opponent, than he does on the salvation of anyone, himself included?
I congratulate the Catholic dunderhead for doing the sensible thing, regardless of what his heretical kin think about it. And regardless of what Boniface thinks about it.
"I congratulate the Catholic dunderhead for doing the sensible thing, regardless of what his heretical kin think about it."
ReplyDeleteWell, if you read the article linked by Boniface, Ralph -- the article that provoked his own post -- you would see that the Catholic dunderhead whom you congratulate for doing the sensible thing ended up going to Protestant services in his 80s until he died and was given a Protestant funeral, no Catholic funeral Mass, let along a Requium Mass.
I'm gradually coming around over the years to your attitude of not really caring so much what Protestants think about my Catholic practices and views. Yet I think that's only part of the issue.
For those of us who have been Protestants (of various stripe) and are now Catholics (of various stripe), a sensitive issue is, I think, how misunderstandings serve as obstacles to conversion. Since we have worked our way through many of these (who can possibly claim "all"?), we're naturally inclined to be eager about helping others to get beyond the obstacles. Why? Some of us, I suppose, are still interested because it's all a bit "apologetics" game, and I'm least inclined to take that seriously as a credible reason. Others are interested because they have had a first-hand experience of many of the blessings that come with conversion, particularly the resources that Catholic Tradition has to offer in the way of discipline and growth in grace.
Bottom line: there's a difference between (1) caring what Protestants think about Catholics because one covets their esteem, and (2) caring what Protestants think because if their misunderstandings can be overcome they can possibly come and share in the banquet.
"Banquet," of course, is a hard sell these days even for those of us who have been around the corner a couple of times and seen the devastated vineyard; but that's another issue.
"let alone," not "let along" --- sheesh!
ReplyDelete"the Catholic dunderhead whom you congratulate for doing the sensible thing ended up going to Protestant services in his 80s until he died and was given a Protestant funeral, no Catholic funeral Mass, let along a Requium Mass."
ReplyDeleteWell PP, he WAS doing the sensible thing. For one reason or another, he stopped doing it. That's all we know about him, isn't it? -- although, I do think his unfortunate end might have had a lot to do with spending too much time with jabbering heretics.
As for worrying that "if their misunderstandings can be overcome they can possibly come and share in the banquet," I confess that I do not worry about it at all. My attitude is that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of truth and gains nothing from tailoring its truth to garner the favor of Christian heretics. These people are not ciphers. They are not children. They have their own agendas, and we gain nothing, and risk everything, by trying to accomodate them.
Two thoughts, Ralph. (1) It's God who converts hearts, so in one sense, it's not our worry, true; but (2) contemporary Protestants heretics are not in a far different category from lapsed Catholics and other modern pagans who are in the dark about the Gospel and need to hear it.
ReplyDeleteThe first point reminds me of my days at Calvin College in Michigan as an undergraduate fresh from Japan. My background wasn't Calvinist and I was surprised to find my Dutch Calvinist profs and fellow students almost completely disinterested in evangelizing or arguing for the truth of their faith. Their attitude, as Calvinists, was that all souls are predestined, so it doesn't make much difference what you say to those outside the fold: their either damned and dead in their sins and can't hear a word you tell them anyway, or their among the Elect and will be saved pretty much regardless of what you tell them. Now they were very much interested in theology and working out the intellectual implications of their own reading of Scripture; but they didn't seem to give a damn about apologetics or that sort of thing.
Now, as much as there seems to be some truth in the fact that those with alien assumptions won't be phased by anything you tell them about the Gospel, this disposition strikes me the as wrong-headed. If it weren't for the likes of St. Boniface who evangelized our pagan forefathers in Europe, we might not be Catholics today.
An additional point I would make on behalf of the lapsed dunderhead: Know your enemy. A better acquaintance with what the enemy's agenda, how he thinks and assumes might have helped dunderhead from falling for heretical nonsense and half-truths.
I think the proper disposition toward heresy and various other non-Catholic ideologies should be exactly what C. S. Lewis proposes as the proper attitude of the Christian toward the occult world of Satan and the demons. One can err in two directions, said Lewis: (1) one can deny their existence or try to completely ignore them, or (2) one can take an unhealthy prurient interest in them. The first error makes one vulnerable to their unsuspected mode of attack. The second error makes one vulnerable to seduction.
"they're" not "their"! I must be losing it!
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that must be said is that the art of communication involves communicating in such a way that your hearer understands what you are trying to communicate. If you care about not being taken for an idolater, then this means that in certain audiences you explain that by "praying" to Mary and other saints, you are asking their intercession, not substituting them for God. If this matters to you.
ReplyDeletePP and Ralph,
ReplyDeleteRequiem, not requium. (requies, requiei, f.)
If you care about not being taken for an idolater, then this means that in certain audiences you explain that by "praying" to Mary and other saints, you are asking their intercession, not substituting them for God. If this matters to you.
ReplyDeleteI find that the longer I have been Catholic, and thus the longer I have not been Protestant, the harder it is for me to communicate with my Protestant friends and family in a way they understand. Conversion initiates a long process of deprogramming, which means re-learning the nature of God, the Bible, Mary, the Crucifixion, and so on. While this is good for the convert, it makes communication with those left behind more difficult, because they automatically think different thoughts when they hear these words. It's a noble effort to try and reeducate Protestants, but lifetimes of bias and belief are tough to break through. Also worth considering is the danger the convert puts his own soul into by focusing on apologetics more than on growth in the True Faith. To be constantly looking back to where you came from—even with the good intention of wanting your loved ones to follow you—can turn into the Hebrews yearning for the onions and leeks of Egypt while despising the manna given from Heaven. We cannot spend our whole lives looking back. If our family and friends have decided to remain in Egypt, there is only so much we can do beyond prayer.
Philip,
ReplyDeleteTrue anecdotes, immediately helpful to this discussion.
1) When speaking to a lapsed Catholic some years ago, I found myself speaking of Humanae Vitae. She said that she had had an initially negative response to it because she had had it forced down her throat. I asked her: have you read it again as a mature adult? She decided to give it a try. (The topic didn't come up again, and I have lost track of her, but the point is that the seed was planted that day.)
2) Recently, I have attended 2 weddings and a funeral, all High Masses. At the weddings Father clearly spoke in opposition to abortion and birth control, and reminded the assembled people that "mortal sin" could include missing Mass on Sunday through our own fault. At the funeral Father decided that the deceased couldn't be in Hell (my ears perked up) because he had already worked his first miracle: that the Latin Mass was his Requiem despite long-standing opposition in the parish. (More about the funeral on some other occasion.)
3) When we visited Mission San Francisco Solano recently, for a High Mass, Father fairly brimmed with joy in the truth he preached, and in the fact that he was following in the steps of the Spanish missionaries.
On the lighter side: do you know, asked this same priest, when Our Lord instituted the Sacrament of Marriage? In front of the bride and groom just weeks before their wedding, and with a twinkle in his eye, he announced: On the Cross, when He said "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Sure there's lots of sewage, and no shortage of people to gainsay us because we won't swim in it. But there's also our reason for hope.
(More, but not on this format.)
Ralph-
ReplyDeleteThis is Boniface, who wrote the original post in question. I second the PP's version of what I was getting at:
Bottom line: there's a difference between (1) caring what Protestants think about Catholics because one covets their esteem, and (2) caring what Protestants think because if their misunderstandings can be overcome they can possibly come and share in the banquet.
Just because we should always preach the truth to Protestants doesn't mean we need to go out of our way to offend them. St. Paul says we should become all things to all men. Far be it from me to say we need to back down against Protestant attacks, but when there is a genuine opportunity for real discussion, we should not spurn it, or destroy it before it has a chance to begin by saying something we know intentionally will offend.
I have no problem with the Magisterium's desire that we dialogue; my problem is with the manner of dialogue that has happened up until now.
When dealing with Prots re: Mary, my first goal is to demonstrate to them that we do not worship her. Since this is the case, I do not think "I pray to the Virgin Mary" is a good response when asked about the grounds for our salvation. Until we convince Protestants that we do not worship Mary, it is not possible to show the reasonableness of venerating her.
It is amazing to me that Traditionalists feel so beaten down by modernism that the original post prompted so much protest. Reminds me of the story about Vatican I, where when one Bishop said he knew many Protestants who loved Jesus, and the hall then erupted in protests until the comment was stricken.
ReplyDeleteA long way from Vatican II, wasn't it?
Of course, we are now a long way from Vatican II too, and I understand the deep resentment and frustration at the departure from basic doctrine. BUt are Traditionalists really so blinkered by anger that they cannot see that 1) many Evangelicals and Protestants ARE our friends in fighting for Truth, and 2) many Catholics are only nominal believers, and returning to the basics stressed by Protestants can help revitalize them on their road to a full and robust Catholicism. I'd rather give an essentially pagan Catholic a book by CS Lewis to open his or her eyes than Ratzinger's Intro to Christianity or an 1800 book of antiquated catechesis that may be too hard to understand. Then he or she will be much more receptive to Tradition. Simply appealing to Marian doctrines when the person does not grasp more fundamental basics can easily perpetuate superstition versus faith... I have seen it over and over again.
The knee-jerk, BAD Protestants meme is wrong-headed, and indicative of why Traditionalists remain marginalized. If everyone but you is absolutely and positively WRONG and needs to be eschewed, well, you might be the righteous remnant, and then you might be the impossible to ever please member of the Church of One. Makes me think of Gerry Metatics. Interesting how Wilfrid Ward in the 1900s already saw that faithful Protestants had become our allies against secularism. We need to catch up with him, even if we find Scott Hahn's puns insufferable.
“Until we convince Protestants that we do not worship Mary, it is not possible to show the reasonableness of venerating her.” – Boniface
ReplyDeleteThis is difficult because they don’t have a higher form of worship than prayer, and therefore can’t understand how we could “worship” - i.e. pray to - anyone other than Christ. To them it is an act of total disloyalty and consequently enables them to dismiss all the rest, and understandably: in their eyes the very foundation of our devotion to Christ is flawed.
Beyond prayer, they have Bible study, etc. and a statement of their faith in Jesus (that they have accepted Him as their Lord and Savior) but there it ends; there is nothing supernatural, and no understanding of the supernatural. They don’t realize that as Catholics we witness an act of *pure* worship, the consecration, at every Mass. We are free to pray to many but worship only One, using the highest possible form of worship, which they have no access to. To accept this is to believe – and therein lies the rub.
Marytoo
Reminds me of the story about Vatican I...
ReplyDeleteInteresting story. Is it true? If so, what was the context?
The knee-jerk, BAD Protestants meme is wrong-headed, and indicative of why Traditionalists remain marginalized.
The thing is, Protestants qua Protestant are objectively bad. They live in heresy and ignorance, they lack leadership from those of Apostolic succession, and they possess only one sacrament. (They usually perform valid baptisms, but without confession the only way to undo the penalty of later mortal sins is an act of perfect contrition, something which many sects explicitly teach is unnecessary.) Given these detriments, it's hard to be optimistic about their spiritual state and fate.
Subjectively, many Protestants have love for Jesus and the Scriptures, but the milieu of heresy darkens their minds. "Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them." Without the Church's infallible doctrine, they can only love a distorted idea of who and what Christ is. And as "Marytoo" noted, they fail to perform the perfect act of worship that is sacrifice.
Giving a poorly catechized and nearly apostate Catholic a C.S. Lewis book is more likely to convince him that all denominations are equally valid than that he needs to go to confession and devote himself to the sacraments and teachings of the Church. Despite Lewis's popularization of the Church Fathers, he is also widely loved for his indifferentism in ecclesiastical matters. His unsacramental theology is no laughing matter, either. Giving an "essentially pagan" Catholic a C.S. Lewis book will—if he likes and approves of it—simply make him a heretic and apostate. Despite the common wisdom to the contrary, I seriously doubt that it's better for a dissatisfied Catholic to become a committed Protestant than a Pagan; at least as a Pagan it's clear to him that he has lost something, but as a Protestant he can convince himself that he has "finally" found it.
Protestantism is bad precisely because it is an ersatz faith. This has nothing to do with the vanity of Traditionalists and everything to do with holding onto what the Catholic Church teaches about herself. Going on about how moral some Protestants are or how helpful they've been in the fight against secularism doesn't change the fact that their doctrines come from the prince of this world, nor the fact that by separating themselves from the sacraments, they separate themselves from Christ himself. The greatest lie is the one that is intermixed with the truth, and to praise Protestants qua Protestant, especially in a place like an ecumenical council, shows that we lack the charity to expose their religion for what it is: enslavement to Satan.