About a month ago I received my copy of Devin Rose‘s new book “If Protestantism Is True”. I’ve been a subscriber to Devin’s blog for some time, distributed some of his podcasts at the JP2 Group and occasionally interacted with him over the Internet.
I was therefore looking forward to read his book. Unfortunately, I had Vocation Director prescribed reading this month and that had to be done first! Last week I finally completed my reading assignments and so I finally got started on Devin’s book and, since it’s nice and compact at 162 pages, I read it from cover-to-cover this weekend.
I’ve written quite a bit lately about my recent period of discernment. I’m sure I will write some more on this subject sometime in the future, but for now I would just like to mention one other thing that has come up during this time.
When I began in earnest to pray about my vocation, I contacted a handful of friends, explained the situation and asked them to pray for me. Also, during this time, when friends asked me “What’s new?” I told them about my discernment (with varying levels of detail) and some of my thoughts about my vocation.
Apart from a few notable exceptions, I noticed a consistent trend among my non-Catholic Christian friends. Whenever I mentioned the word “celibacy”, I almost immediately encountered some resistance, regardless of whether I was talking about celibate life as a layman, priest or monk.
The other day I overheard a conversation during which some of my Catholic friends were speaking particularly brutally about non-Catholics and the non-Catholic churches. There was little gentleness, respect or love. There were a few cheap shots and some statements that were just plain wrong. Ironically, what I heard was reminiscent of some of the anti-Catholic tirades I’ve heard in the past…
I spent several years in Protestant circles and was greatly blessed there. During that time my love for Scripture was nurtured and I was surrounded by many, many inspiring people who lived out lives of deep prayer and courageous virtue. For this I will forever be grateful.
Ultimately, I found certain issues within Protestantism to be troublesome and some fundamental questions which Protestantism itself is unable to answer. This is why I’m Catholic. Even on this blog, I occasionally post entries in which I critique some of my former Protestant positions. However, I do hope that I always do this with respect, gentleness and love.
I still have a great affection for our separated brothers and sisters in Christ. Virtually every conversion story that I’ve heard of those who left Protestantism for the Catholic Church have expressed similar sentiments. Although they ultimately came into conflict with Protestant doctrines, they speak very warmly of their former denominations and express gratitude for the Christian witness they received there.
So, when speaking about non-Catholics and non-Catholic churches, please do so with charity. Otherwise, I may have to shout at you for a while…with respect, gentleness and love, of course 😀
Catholic Digital Studio has quite a lot of great resources, but I particularly wanted to draw your attention to the materials produced by Vic Scaravilli. Vic has done a load of talks on a variety of topics which include:
“Okay, Minion, you were right, and I was…less right” – Megamind
Okay, not that kind of apology… On Monday, when I put up the “Lectionary Notes” for yesterday’s Mass Readings, I said that later in the week I would try to do a slightly more apologetics-related post concerning Matthew 16.
Since this is an apologetics entry, if you haven’t read myEcumenical Apologistpost, I would invite you to read that first since it explains something of my perspective and my attempted approach with posts like this.
I was running a little low on time this week so I dug through my email and found a correspondence from a few years ago with a non-Catholic whom we will call “Jay”. Jay raised the question of the Pope early on in our correspondence, but I had resisted talking about the issue of the Papacy until we had covered some more fundamental issues (authority, the canon etc.).
Anyway, here’s what I said in response to his statements about Matthew 16…
As I wrote in my very first post, recently I have been called upon more and more to defend my faith – Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.
The continued questioning by others about my faith was actually one of the main reasons I started this blog in the first place. Sometimes, in an attempt to provide someone with a satisfactory explanation, I had to do quite a bit of research. A blog will now allow me to share the fruits of my hard work with more than just that one person! Also, as time has progressed I’ve noticed that much of the discussion has been around similar issues so I intend to use this blog to publish my explanations to some of the more commonly-asked questions and invite feedback.
However, before I can start addressing some of these issues, I feel the need to write about a tension that I find within myself, the tension that comes from being an “Ecumenical Apologist”…
You know what really grinds my gears? :-/
