Rico,

We have been evangelizing from the beginning. That is how the Gospel has come down to us to this date. Admittedly, today we need a renewal of evangelization, which Pope St. John Paul II called for.

As for the offices and roles you mentioned, they all exist in the Church.

As for the question about salvation, we do not teach that people can go to Heaven if they are sincere in what they know, but if they follow the light they are given. However, it is hard to know the truth without the aid of Revelation, and still harder to live by it without the aid of the sacraments.

Moreover, God wants more for us: He wants us to be light to others. Perhaps that is why He has permitted so many people to believe in something other than Christianity; so that Christians can be a light and a leaven to the others, so that we can share in His work of salvation. We do know that Christ said that the nations (the Gentiles, the unbelievers to the Jews) would be saved through their works of charity to others, which He takes as done to Him.

Mary Ann

Rico —

Trust the Lord. Come back to the Church. The Church needs you. You are correct in seeing that the Church is, in many ways, in a sad state. The teaching of the Church is now, thank God, expressed in one place in Her Catechism of the Catholic Church, so you do not need to be a victim of false teachers.

I can also understand that it would be a concern to lose all the roles you are used to in Protestantism, but if you trust the Lord, He will use you in the best way. He may, however, test you first to be sure you are following Him, not a role opportunity.

You and your wife are more important to Him than any work you can do for Him. Perhaps you need a time of retreat and closeness with the Lord. Do no fear. Answer the call you are hearing from Him for:

• a closer walk
• a communion with Him, and
• a union with Him in the sacraments.

Then you will be equipped and empowered to do what He wishes.

God bless.

Mary Ann

Hi, Rico —

You are correct; there are many, many fine Protestant Christians, with great hearts who also have a great love for the Lord. I don't think anyone from our site will deny that.

Although there are also some fine Catholic witnesses, sadly, there are also many, uncatechized Catholics who never were trained in the faith correctly or, if they were, have purposely scandalized the faith for the interests of the secular world. This is indeed very sad.

Nevertheless, the common denominator in both groups is sin and the effects of original sin; this leads to bad behavior in both groups.

As my colleague John has said, Protestants and Catholics base their theology on two very good but different questions.

Protestants ask:

• What must I do to be saved?
  

While Catholics ask:

• Who is Jesus Christ?
  

Both good questions, but ones that yield a different theology.

I would encourage you to contemplate on the second question and the ramifications of the answer. If Jesus is true God and true Man, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, when He sends His Spirit on the Church on Pentecost, it must have ramifications. There was only one Christian Church in existence on Pentecost Sunday, the Catholic Church.

This doesn't take away from the individual's free will to say No to the Church, even if they are Catholic. It's a matter of separating the issues of truth from the issues of bad behavior.

The Church only teaches what the Apostles left us and guides the faithful, by the Holy Spirit, on new areas that never existed during Apostolic times (e.g. IVF, and end of life issues.)

She doesn't create new teachings.

There is a unity, but it is a unity in Truth. Sadly, despite their excellent witness to their faith, our separated brethren only hold to a portion of what Our Lord would want them to believe.

At times, I wish our Catholics in the pew would have the same zeal, our Protestant brethren have for the faith. As John has said in the past, many Catholics have been sacramentalized, but never evangelized to appreciate what they have inherited from their parents.

You said:
Since the Lord Jesus told us all to go and make disciples of all the nations, how do:

• regular Catholics, and
• the Church

This is one of the most disappointing areas in the Catholic Church today. In my town of Natick, whenever I visit the post office, I always see my Jehovah Witness friend, Carl, passing out his cult-ish Awake or Watchtower magazines with devotion!

In my opinion we could may great strides in evangelization in the Catholic Church if:

• we also had Catholics at that post office passing out Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth booklets, or
• we had trained parish evangelists going door-to-door asking one simple question:
  
  
  • Do you have any questions we can answer about the Catholic faith?

You said:

• If a Catholic wants to bring the Gospel to the lost, but they are going to Heaven anyway if they are sincere in what they know, why even tell them?
• Couldn't telling them about the Church make them worse off?

This posting should address these questions:

• If ignorance or the goodness of people is enough, why waste time sending out missionaries?

Hope this helps,

Mike

Fratello Rico,

I'd simply add to Mike's answer since he referenced my point about two of your questions. Not only do Protestants start by asking:

• What must I do to be saved?,

they misunderstand Paul's explanation in Romans. I would be happy to discuss where they go off if you wish.

Justification in Catholic theology is, in essence, the same as it is in Orthodox theology. It is a real and intrinsic action of the Holy Spirit, not just a legal declaration.

As to the Orthodox Church, you are right, they are ethno-centric but, in essence, the only real impediment to unity with the Catholic Church is that we disagree over the jurisdiction of the Pope. All other differences amount to a matter of semantics. We agree, in principle, to every essential and integral point of doctrine, but like the Protestants, the Orthodox ask different questions. In their case, they accept paradox, they don't apply philosophy to explain their theology and they need less definition than we do in the West. In a sense, they have a claim to being the Church Christ founded on Peter and the Apostles. It's just that they've left Peter.

As it relates to Catholic theology, we wouldn't actually ask:

• What must I do to be saved?

Rather we'd ask:

• What is salvation?

If we asked, What must I do to be saved?, then we are implying a salvation of works so instead, the question we ask is:

• What is salvation? and
• How does God extend it to us?

We start with the question Jesus asked Peter (Matthew 16:15), not the question the Philippian jailor asked Paul. (Acts 16:29-30) Jesus asked Peter:

• 15 Who do you say that I am?

So every single doctrine comes from a contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation.
We are therefore saved by being brought into Christ. Christ has a Body — The Church.

• So where is this Church?
• Is it some nebulous body that we can't see?

No, I don't think so. In fact, Christ said to Peter:

Tu sei Pietro e su questa Pietra Io fabrichero la mia Chiesa.

Now my brother, you can clearly read the Italian and you know the nature of nouns in the romance languages. Well, it's the same way in the original Greek. You know that Petros is just the male version of Petra. So Jesus is promising to build His Church on Peter.

• So where is Peter, my brother? <He is in Rome.>

Yes, the Church has Her share of idiots and hypocrites. You can't blame God for cheap labor.
To the poorly catechized, we can add the un-evangelized. We fail miserably at introducing our people to Jesus in a personal way.

We sacramentalize; we sort of teach the faithful enough so they can answer a couple of questions, but we haven't evangelized them. As important as the sacraments are, and as important as teaching is, if we don't introduce people to Jesus, the Sacraments become of no use to those who just go through the motions.

Nonetheless, none of that changes the Truth that the Church holds in its entirety. Yes, our Protestant brothers hold some of the Truth. Our Orthodox brothers have almost all the Truth,
but the whole Truth is found in the Catholic Church both East and West in union with the
Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter.

Dio Ti Benedicha,

John DiMascio

Rico,

With respect to Matthew 16, the argument that the profession of faith is the foundation of the Church is rather weak when you look at the entire context of both the immediate context and other texts in Scripture.

You'll note that in that text Peter receives the keys of the Kingdom. Jesus says I will give you the keys . . . and the you, as I recall in the Greek, is singular. Though there were other Apostles present, he didn't use the plural form.

He then gives Peter the authority to bind and loose. This is a specific rabbinic expression which refers to the authority to impose disciplines, discern doctrine, and make pastoral decisions.
We later see, in the same Gospel, in chapter 18, that this authority is given to all the Apostles,
or the Church, as a whole, but the keys have been reserved for Peter.

When we study the text further, we find that Jesus is practically quoting Isaiah 22. In fact, many Protestant Study Bibles will use Isaiah 22 as a cross reference. In that text, God takes away the key from one of Israel's Prime Ministers and gives it to Eliakim and the language about succession and authority is virtually the same. So Jesus knows He was evoking a memory of this text to Peter and the Apostles. In addition, Matthew, the human author of Scripture, chose to record this, led by the Holy Spirit, because the Jewish readers of this Gospel would have understood the text in the light of Isaiah 22.

This is a good time for us to discuss biblical interpretation. When New Testament authors quoted or paraphrased the Old Testament, they assumed the reader was familiar with it so they never took a text out of context, rather they would quote the salient and poignant part of the text in order to bring to memory the entire text and its context. When you see an Old Testament reference, it's always best to go back, read the context and study the historical context and circumstance of the original text so that you can understand what the original reader or hearer would have heard.

Let me give you an example. If I were to sing two words — "Faccetta Nera" — the average Italian that is old enough would immediately think of Mussolini and recall the fascist era, World War II and so on. I wouldn't need to sing the whole song. The same can be said if I were to sing:

"Oh say can you see, by the dawns early light".

If you were an American, you could probably finish the song because you would recognize it as the national anthem of the United States of America: "The Star-Spangled Banner".

I will have to bid you good night for now, but I'd like to continue our discussion. Before I leave,
I want you to know that, just like you, I started out as a Catholic. I left, became a Protestant Minister and later left the pulpit to return home. I came to Christ in 1989. When I surrendered to Him, He instantly delivered me from ten years of cocaine abuse so I spent many years away from the Church before returning home. I came home through Protestantism, but ultimately I could no longer defend Sola Scriptura or Sola Fide as taught by Luther. I began to study:

• the Early Church
• the history of the canon of Scripture, and
• so forth.

I even looked at Orthodoxy as my good friend was an Orthodox priest.

I will address some of your other points as well. I especially want to deal with the subject of the salvation of non-Christians because evangelicals typically wrench texts out of context and again, relying on Scripture alone, you don't get the whole picture. Scripture is properly understood in the context of the Church and Her Liturgy.

God desires all men to be saved. Grace is therefore extended to all men in some way or another.
All salvation is possible because of Jesus Christ. Those who knowingly reject the Gospel are indeed in peril of eternal damnation but God isn't limited to what He has limited us to. We are told to go preach the Gospel. God can save whomever will accept His Mercy, no matter how He shows it. Therefore, all are saved in and through Jesus Christ, but not all will know who He is in this life. Read Matthew 25 carefully. Read the judgment of the nations (Matthew 25:31-46); it's not the judgment of the Church.

• Those being judged ask the Lord, When did we feed you, or clothe you, or visit you?
  (Matthew 25:37-39)
• As if to say, who are you?

No Christian would respond to the Lord that way.

For starters, we've all heard that text eighteen gazillion times. We know that in feeding the poor and clothing the naked, we do so unto Christ so Jesus is teaching us that some will be saved in the nations, the goyim, by the way they respond to grace. If by grace they are moved to respond with acts of charity, then they are accepting grace. Remember faith without works is dead, Rico, (James 2:18-20) so Scripture gives us hope for the salvation of non-believers.

Ultimately, we rely on the Mercy of God and we know all men are called to seek the truth.

Take care for now!

John

Welcome Home brother,

As to what exactly you'll need to do; it depends on a few things. I take it you were baptized Catholic.

• Did you receive your first Holy Communion and first Confession?

Either way, the first step is to go talk to your local priest. Tell him what your situation is and tell him you were licensed as a Minister as well; that may make a difference.

• Also, did you say you were chrismated in the Orthodox Church?

If that's the case, you don' t need to be confirmed, as we accept all the Orthodox sacraments as valid.

In some circumstances, all that is required is Confession. In other cases, especially in cases like ours, where we were ministers, they may need some other public profession of faith in front of a witness. This is because the priest is never at liberty to tell anyone that you've been to Confession. It's part of the seal of Confession.

If you are known in public as a Protestant Minister, then the parish congregation might not understand what you are doing receiving Holy Communion. In these cases, they would ask the priest, and he would be able to tell them you've returned to the Church, without stating you've been to Confession, although you will still need to go to Confession.

The priest will know what to do. If he doesn't, he'll call the diocese and they'll tell him.

You should also continue to study. I recommend just about anything by Dr. Scott Hahn.
Also see if you can get a copy of a book called:

• By What Authority — An Evangelical Discovers Tradition.

It's a very good book that describes how Mark P. Shea, Catholic author and Protestant convert, journeyed home.

I can also put you in touch with the Coming Home Network if you like. They are a wonderful ministry that helps Protestant ministers in their journey home to the Church.

For now, let's keep it simple. Go talk to your local priest; you may need to make an appointment. In the mean time, nothing is stopping you from attending Mass, but you shouldn't receive the Eucharist until you are completely reconciled to the Church.

I'm sure you will come across doctrinal questions. Please write me and we'll work through them together.

God Bless for now!

John DiMascio