"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
A few of you have asked, so I thought I’d do a quick post to say that I haven’t had any more visits from the Jehovah Witnesses following my last meeting.
I went through the material they left concerning the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha. It wasn’t very good, just the usual objections. It was rather amusing though to find them trying to marshall St. Athanasius, particularly given that he vigorously opposed Arius who taught something similar to what Jehovah Witnesses believe about Jesus.
Today’s “Quick Apology” comes from a conversation a friend of mine recently had with a Reformed Protestant. It’s actually a bit of a long response for a “Quick” apology, but oh well…
“I’ll concede that the case for the historical church being the Catholic church is very strong. However, the chosen people (the Israelites) were consistently disobeying God throughout history and eventually ended up crucifying Christ. Throughout history the chosen people abandoned God. What makes you think that the Catholic Church hasn’t done this or won’t do this?”
Here, the Protestant is admitting to many of the claims of the Catholic Church, but appears to be challenging the Church’s continued status as Christ’s Church, as well as calling into question her continued authority.
It must first obviously be admitted that sinners are found in the Catholic Church. After all, why else do you think I’m allowed membership?!. However, a few points should be made…
Israel certainly sinned over the course of Salvation History. However, would it mean that because of this, it would be better for a Jew or Gentile to abandon God’s people and “go it alone”? Of course not! If one left Judaism, thinking that this couldn’t possibly be the true religion due to the hypocrisy of some of their rulers and many its followers, then one would be making a huge mistake!
As Saint Paul said, “…to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs“ (Romans 9:4-5). The Lord had given to Israel many wonderful gifts for the sake of salvation. It would be crazy to reject these gifts and walk away!
However, we actually have an example in the Old Testament of when some members of Israel did just that. After King Solomon’s death, his son ascended to the throne (1 Kings 12) who was a complete tyrant. The northern tribes refused to follow him and this resulted in the division of the Kingdom: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judea in the south. This separatist movement received the condemnation of the prophets. Not only had they abandoned their rightful king, they had cut themselves off from the priesthood, the Temple and the sacrifices.
This blog post is meant as a supplement to my earlier earlier posts on the subject of Saintly intercession (read here and here)…
One issue we have in Catholic-Protestant dialogue concerning the Saints is the language we use. You will often hear Catholics talking about “praying to Saints”. However, it is important to point out that what we really mean is that we’re asking the Saints to pray for us.
Part of the problem is the use of the verb “to pray”. It can mean two different things, depending on context. The word itself comes into English from the Latin word “precari”, which means “obtained by entreaty”. To pray, therefore, means to ask for something.
This is aptly demonstrated in my favorite Shakespeare play, A Much Ado About Nothing (Act 2, Scene 3):
BENEDICK: An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief…
DON PEDRO: Yea, marry, dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee, get us some excellent music…
Here you see both uses of the word “pray”. In the first, Benedick petitions God, and in the second, Don Pedro asks Balthasar for music. In the former, a request is made to God, in the latter, to man.
While I think that pointing out this distinction goes a long way to further Catholic-Protestant dialogue, I think that Catholics should go the extra mile and be careful with the way they speak around Protestants, so as to communicate the Catholic Faith as clearly as possible.
When talking with Protestants about praying to Saints, it might be worth spelling out exactly what you mean, saying explicitly that you’re asking the Saints for their intercession before the throne of God. Rather than talking about “Praying to the Saints”, you might speak about “Praying with the Saints”. Most Protestants are used to talking about praying with friends, so when expressed in these terms, the Catholic devotion will seem less alien and more accessible.
All you angels and saints, pray for us.
This should be the last Marian “Quick Apology” I’ll be doing for a while. After all, I have other things I want to write about! However, before we leave the subject of Mary, I wanted to address the claim that Catholics think that Mary is divine…
On this blog I’ve received comments like the following:
“Catholics basically think that Mary is divine. It’s like the Trinity has been replaced with a quartet – Father, Son, Spirit and Mary”
How might you respond?
The simplest way to respond to an assertion like this is to ask for any official Church document which teaches this. Can the objector produce a reference in the Catechism, a Council or a Papal Encyclical? I can guarantee you they cannot.
When they are unable to provide the evidence you request, I would suggest that you then point them to the binding teaching of the Catechism:
488 “God sent forth his Son”, but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee…
The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.*
[This is a beautiful teaching from the Early Church, where the Fathers referred to Mary as being a kind of “New Eve”]
489 Throughout the Old Covenant the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary…Eve…Sarah…Hannah…Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther….
Mary “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and the new plan of salvation is established.”
A while back I advertised a debate between Trent Horn and Cecili Chadwick on the subject of abortion. During the exchange, Miss Chadwick said:
“I think it’s really interesting that every time I have been asked to debate this issue I have been debating a man…”
Trent’s response to this was rather spot-on, but I wanted to advertise an upcoming debate where Processor Chadwick will be debating with a woman! On 27th October, Miss Chadwick will be in a formal debate with my friend Timmerie. All the details are in the Facebook event below:
I’ve already written a “Quick Apology” to this topic before, but as I was responding to a recent commenter on this subject, I thought of an even shorter response…
Here’s the standard objection:
“Mary is not the ‘Mother of God'”
In response to this, you may ask a very simple question: did the child Jesus call Mary “Mama”? Yes or No?
UPDATE: As the more pedantic among the readers have pointed out, Jesus would have spoken Aramaic and therefore called her “Ima”.
A while back, I posted about Catholic apologist Trent Horn’s debate with Dan Barker on the subject of atheism, as well as his debate with Cecili Chadwick concerning abortion. Well, later this month Trent is going to be debating Dr. Richard Carrier on the historicity of Jesus. You can register for tickets here. Since I couldn’t find one, I also created a Facebook event:
This debate should be particularly interesting since Dr. Carrier is a prominent Jesus Mythicist and, to the best of my knowledge, the only historian with a PhD in Ancient History who casts serious doubt of Jesus’ existence. He’s published a couple of books on the subject where he explains why he thinks the scholarly consensus is wrong and what historical methods should be used instead.
If you’ve been to the other debates which Trent has done, you’ll know that this is sure to be a charitable and engaging debate. See you there 🙂