The readings in this Sunday’s Lectionary speak to us of hospitality.
In the First Reading we hear recounted Abraham’s reception of the three strangers to whom he offers his choicest food. In the Gospel we hear another story about the hospitality offered to Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary, the two sisters whose brother, Lazarus, Jesus had raised from the dead (John 11).
The Gospel this week is as follows:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:-28-42
What is the difference between a Christian and a Protestant. If we are to FULLY lean on God’s Word, we are to be called “Christian” 3 times in the NT. Obviously, we are no Jewish/Hebrew, and we are the bride, NOT the chosen people of God. I have been called a Protestant and never understood why, as it is a title, NOT a belief. I believe in God’s Word, that Jesus (who is God in the flesh) became man to die for our sins and ONLY through his sacrifice, I am saved, by grace NOT by works “lest any man should boast”. So, biblically speaking, there are only 2 kinds of people; believers and non-believers, aka “sheep and the goat’s. Not sure if I may have missed it in the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic of being called a Protestant, but there is that.
Scripture is the authority, as it IS Jesus (John 1:1) and if you do not accept that verse, then you have issues you need to figure out before discussing any scripture or claim (generalization, NOT a finger point). So, if Jesus IS the Word of God, and is God, within his Word (himself) he promises to preserve His Word and never changes. Would we agree on that? Now, if we agree with that, then we can logically conclude, only 1 version of the Word of God that is among men is correct. That meaning; certain versions have pieces added to and others have some taken away. So, then, which ones?!
Now, my next question(s) are as follows, how would a Catholic respond (with scripture and other sources) for the following information:
For the first 280 years of Christian history, Christianity was banned by the Roman Empire, and Christians were terribly persecuted. This changed after the “conversion” of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine provided religious toleration with the Edict of Milan in AD 313, effectively lifting the ban on Christianity. Later, in AD 325, Constantine called the Council of Nicea in an attempt to unify Christianity. Constantine envisioned Christianity as a religion that could unite the Roman Empire, which at that time was beginning to fragment and divide. While this may have seemed to be a positive development for the Christian church, the results were anything but positive. Just as Constantine refused to fully embrace the Christian faith but continued many of his pagan beliefs and practices, so the Christian church that Constantine and his successors promoted progressively became a mixture of true Christianity and Roman paganism.
Most Roman Catholic beliefs and practices regarding Mary are completely absent from the Bible. Where did those beliefs come from? The Roman Catholic view of Mary has far more in common with the Isis mother-goddess religion of Egypt than it does with anything taught in the New Testament. Interestingly, the first hints of Catholic Mariology occur in the writings of Origen, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, which happened to be the focal point of Isis worship.
The Lord’s Supper being a consumption of the literal body and blood of Jesus is not taught in the Bible. The idea that bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus (transubstantiation) is not biblical. However, several ancient pagan religions, including Mithraism, which was very popular in the Roman Empire, had some form of “theophagy” (the eating of one’s god) as a ritualistic practice.
Roman Catholicism has “saints” one can pray to in order to gain a particular blessing. For example, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla is the patron saint of fertility. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals. There are multiple patron saints of healing and comfort. Nowhere is even a hint of this taught in Scripture. Just as the Roman pantheon of gods had a god of love, a god of peace, a god of war, a god of strength, a god of wisdom, etc., so the Catholic Church has a saint who is “in charge” over each of these and many other categories. Many Roman cities had a god specific to the city, and the Catholic Church provided “patron saints” for cities as well.
The idea that the Roman bishop is the vicar of Christ, the supreme leader of the Christian Church, is utterly foreign to the Word of God. The supremacy of the Roman bishop (the papacy) was created with the support of the Roman emperors. While most other bishops (and Christians) resisted the idea of the Roman bishop being supreme, the Roman bishop eventually rose to supremacy, again, due to the power and influence of the Roman emperors. After the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the popes took on the title that had previously belonged to the Roman emperors—Pontifex Maximus.
Many more examples could be given. These four should suffice in demonstrating the origin of the Catholic Church. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church denies the pagan origin of its beliefs and practices. The Catholic Church disguises its pagan beliefs under layers of complicated theology and church tradition. Recognizing that many of its beliefs and practices are utterly foreign to Scripture, the Catholic Church is forced to deny the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.
The origin of the Catholic Church is the tragic compromise of Christianity with the pagan religions that surrounded it. Instead of proclaiming the gospel and converting the pagans, the Catholic Church “Christianized” the pagan religions and “paganized” Christianity. By blurring the differences and erasing the distinctions, the Catholic Church made itself attractive to the idolatrous people of the Roman Empire. One result was the Catholic Church becoming the supreme religion in the Roman world for centuries. However, another result was the most dominant form of Christianity apostatizing from the true gospel of Jesus Christ and the true proclamation of God’s Word.
Second Timothy 4:3–4 declares, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
The comment is what I call “Spam Evangelism”. This is where someone goes around pasting the same text on any website they can find. It usually begins as a simple question but quickly degenerates into a confusing long list of challenges to Catholic doctrine which jump from topic to topic. In this case, it wasn’t even posted on an article which related to Catholic doctrine! When I respond, 99% of the time I never receive a reply…
Fortunately for the person who posted this, Heath, I have a policy of always answering questions! Additionally, I want to provide a resource to anyone else who has this posted on their blogs or social media pages…
I spent the last few days in Vegas on vacation so I’ve been catching up with my blog reading and found that, a couple of days ago, Joe Heschmeyer from Shameless Poperywrote a great post entitled Preparing Ourselves as Tabernacles For The Lord. This is a subject related to my post below. I began writing this entry about a month ago and scheduled it for publishing today – I’m not copying you Joe, honest!
A couple of weeks ago it was the feast day of St. Philip Neri.
Philip was born in Florence in 1515. At about the age of eighteen he experienced a deep conversion of heart and moved to Rome with no money or plan, but simply trusted in God’s providence. He worked for two years as a live-in tutor, but otherwise led a simple life of solitude and prayer.
He studied Philosophy and Theology for about three years but then brought his studies to an abrupt close. He launched a mission to the people of Rome, which was fortunate since, at that time, both the people and the Church of Rome were in a particularly shabby spiritual state.
There are many praiseworthy aspects of Philip’s life which are worth sharing, but the episode I would like to recount here is one which demonstrates his rather cheeky sense of humour…
In the early part of his talk, Dr. Barber discussed the question of authorship of the Gospel. He mentioned how modern sceptical scholars often say that the Gospel was originally anonymous, and that the text “The Gospel according to John” was a later addition. I have often heard claims such as these, so I was delighted to hear Dr. Barber present some potential problems with this position…
The main issue in asserting that the Gospel was original anonymous is that the manuscript evidence does not support this hypothesis at all. Where the manuscripts survive, we find the text present. Not only that, there are some other problems which flow from this…
If the original Gospel was anonymous and the association with St. John was a later development, why don’t we find divergent attributions? Since St. John is not identified as the author within the narrative itself, surely one would expect many divergent attributions to develop? Why was the Gospel never associated with, say, St. Peter? The obvious answer is that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.
If the sceptics are right, the text had been copied as an anonymous Gospel and distributed throughout the Empire. Why is it that manuscripts from all these different regions bear the text claiming Johannine authorship? It would have been an impossible task to gather up all these different manuscripts retrospectively in order to “fix” them with an agreed-upon author, particularly since they were in different languages (Greek, Latin etc). Once again, the simplest explanation for consistency in all these manuscripts in all these areas in all these languages is simply that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.
These reasons, coupled with the universal testimony of the Early Church Fathers, should give us great confidence that, from the very beginning, this Gospel opened with the words “The Gospel according to John…”
This past week I was being interviewed on two episodes of The Counsel of Trent, the podcast by apologist Trent Horn. Needless to say, we chatted a lot about C.S. Lewis…
Episode #190: The Secret Life of C.S. Lewis (Download)
Thus far we have been reading the letters this inspirational martyr wrote from the city of Smyrna, but we must now follow him to Troas where he will write his last three letters before completing his journey to Rome and to the mouths of the wild beasts!
Ignatius now addresses the schism and the Judaising attempts at the church in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. Here is my abridged version of the letter:
The readings in this Sunday’s Lectionary speak to us of hospitality.
A couple of weeks ago it was the feast day of St. Philip Neri.
This week I heard a talk on the Gospel of John by 
Ignatius is moving!
