My Journey To Rome

by Wayne Clark

Forward
In 2007 my wife and I left a Bible-only, fundamentalist protestant tradition and became
Roman Catholic. It is incredible and I do not want to forget the slightest grace that was
given me. I so want my family to share in the joy that I have being in Christs Church.
Therefore, this work is my attempt to address my family, protestantsand my own
memory.
As a prior protestant, I know the confusion and disbelief that my decision has caused
most of my family and friends. A wall of distrust, denial and avoidance was
immediately erected. Communication with my family of why I became Catholic is very
difficult and almost impossible.
It is important to state that although there are many footnotes in this book, I would be
amiss to neglect the fact that considerable content is due to the priceless wisdom of
ancient and contemporary Christians, to name a few, St. Paul, St. John, St Ignatius, St
Augustine, St Ireneaus, St Justin Martyr, St. Cyprian, Tertullian, Origen, St John
Chrysostom, St John Damascene, Dr. Peter Kreeft, Mike Aquilina, Dr. Scott Hahn, St
John Cardinal Newman, Bishop Sheen, G.K. Chesterton and countless testimonials of
converts to the Church.
G.K. Chesterton, a famous English writer from the early twentieth century was an atheist
who converted to Catholicism and was instrumental in the conversion of once atheist C.S.
Lewis. After hearing of Chestertons Catholic conversion, a protestant friend said that
Chesterton was going to have to stoop low into a dark moldering old religious basement.
Chesterton replied that on the contrary, going into the catholic church was not like going
into a moldering basement but rather like coming out of a dark place into a bright
celestial light with all the winds of heaven blowing though his hair. This was my
experience also.
It is my fervent prayer that my family and friends, and whoever else that reads this take a
very close look at the rationality of my decision process and the validity of the
arguments. If you decide that my decision process is indeed rational and honest and
you desire to follow truth also, then please, please obey your conscience and come with
me and experience the true freedom of the gospel and the fullness of the faith.

May God bless you and give you grace to continue on your journey of faith.
In Christ,

Wayne Clark

Seek and You Shall Find

If you seek me you shall find me, if you seek me with all your heart Jeremiah 29:13
Various people, family and non-family, have told me in one form or another that I have
serious spiritual issues because I did not stay settled in a particular Protestant
denomination; that I constantly questioned the doctrines of so many disparate and
irreconcilable denominations; and now that I have found my way to Rome, I have
allowed Satan to sift me like wheat and finally succumbed to the temptation of
Romanism.
I would like to pose a question to you. Do you care about truth? If you do, do you seek
after truth and do you seek after it unconditionally? I mean, do you seek after truth as
long as it remains within your comfort zone; or do you pursue it with all your heart,
following wherever it leads, even if it leads to a place you have previously loathed and
dreaded? Are you willing to be obedient to truth and what it reveals to you?
Seeking with all your heart of the Jeremiah passage above, assumes a prerequisite
reasonableness, or honesty. Honesty is that virtue that recognizes facts as truth and
appropriates that truth by correcting previously held misunderstandings.
Therefore,
honesty constantly looks for what is true and as a result removes error.
Blaise Paschal, the famous mathematician, stated that there are 3 classes of people: Those
that are seeking after God and have found him; those that are seeking after God and have
not yet found him; and those that neither seek him nor find him. Those in the first class
are reasonable because they seek and they are happy because they have found him.
Those in the second class are reasonable because they seek but are not yet happy because
they have not yet found. Those in the third class are neither reasonable nor happy
because they neither seek nor find. According to Jeremiah 29:13, all who seek find.
Therefore, seeking of truth is not only fruitful but is required for salvation!
The seeker of truth must believe in a basic premise that there is such a thing as absolute
truth; that there is right and wrong; that there is true and false. Followers of Jesus Christ
have always believed that there is absolute truth. Today, our society states that there are
no absolutes. Despite the fully acknowledged problems of our day of violence, sexual
immorality, social injustice, hatred and materialism; we are not able to come to a
consensus as to what is absolute, and therefore what truth is the answer to our
problems.
Protestant Christianity has kept pace with society. These schisms from the Church
unwittingly testify of the denial of one truth, and introduce the idea that we can define
truth for ourselves. Therefore there is not one voice; there is not one truth; unity is
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scorned and ridiculed, and the Christian influence on society has become weak and
inconsequential.
Everyone wants to be their own person, their own decider of truth. This is the basis of
western thought today. I will venture to say that this same system of thought is the
center of the protestant mindset.
All Christians believe that their world view of truth is true. The problem though is few
Christians see eye to eye. Therefore, we must deduce that these same Christians have
decided to determine what is true for themselves irrespective of each others views or
those of the ancient church fathers. The sad fact is, they have invented their own view of
God; or, a God of their own.
We were taught that America was founded on Christian principles, but it seems very clear
that there was an abhorrence of authority (which really isnt very Christian). The
Pilgrim Separatists wanted the freedom to worship God the way they wanted to. They
learned how to protest by observing Henry VIIIs (and his daughter Elizabeth) protests
against the 1500 year old Church authority by inventing their own church. So they
reinvented English Protestantism. This bucking of authority is still rampant today. No
one wants to be told what to do, nor what to believe.
So the absolute truths (originating from the Bible or not) believed by one Christian are
denied by other Christians. With this observation, an outsider must conclude that these
Christians collectively have no real absolute truths for certain, since something cannot be
true and false at the same time. This is the root of agnosticism (no one can know the
absolute truth), or the denial of absolute truth. I will go one step further and say that the
existence of many Christian schisms prove to the agnostic that his world view is correct.
Thinking about this progression of logic with the list of tens of thousands of independent
denominations of Protestant churches can boggle the mind. Perhaps, when faced with
this dilemma, many do not want to think of what truth is and why most Christians are
content not knowing too much more about God before they die.
A way of describing the seeking of truth is by going on a journey. Even puritan John
Bunyan saw it as a Pilgrims Progress. We start the journey when we are born and it
ends when we die. Our willingness to seek, recognize and obey truth, will determine
how far we get and where we spend eternity.
The Long and Winding Road
My spiritual journey began as early as I can remember, at Contoocook Baptist Church in
New Hampshire. Our family was very faithful in church attendance and we prayed
together often. As fundamentalists, we were taught to believe in the Bible as our sole
authority for spiritual guidance to salvation. In Sunday School we used to sing the song,
The B-I-B-L-E., yes thats the book for me, I stand alone on the word of God, the
B-I-B-L-E. In addition we had Sword Drills, where we would hold the Bible up in
the air, the teacher would call out a book, chapter and verse and then shouted GO!.
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First one to find the verse jumped to his feet and started reading it.
My dad came from a long line of Salvationists (Salvation Army) originating in Maine and
New Brunswick, Canada. Three of his siblings were commissioned officers in the
Salvation Army and rose to high rank, even to Commissioner. As a youngster, he played
bass horn in the local Salvation Army Band and was very active in his church.
While she was in her early teens, my mother became a Christian through the witness of a
bible Christian worker. Soon thereafter, she and my father were married and they
attended a fundamentalist Baptist church and kept faithful to that particular distinctive
until I left home for college. She was very faithful to read us a family devotion for years
while we children were young. Those years were very effective. I remember a loaf of
bread made of ceramic on the kitchen table. In it was a stack of little cards, each
containing a bible verse that we would read at supper.
Later, my mother and father raised the five of us on a dairy farm in Vermont. That
lifestyle, coupled with their devout Christian belief and practice, provided for us an
idyllic setting for growing up. I am very grateful for their faithfulness, for without it, I
wouldnt be here today.
Summer, 1966, I was nine years old. It was then, through the work of Amy Hyde, a
wonderful sensitive person and administrator of Child Evangelism Fellowship of New
Hampshire, at a place called Camp Good News, I prayed the sinners prayer and
accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal savior. I still remember that summer
night on the cabin steps as my camp counselor led me through the prayer and a wild
rabbit came and sat next to my feet. As a protestant, this is where I would believe that I
became a Christian. To this day I still believe that this was a real encounter with God,
very much like my first sacramental confession in 2007.
For the next nine years we attended Baptist churches and my Christian witness would ebb
and flow. August 12, 1973, on a cloudy and windy Sunday afternoon, the Rev. Frank
Brown, a good and wholesome Baptist preacher who loved God, baptized me in Lake
Memphremagog in northern Vermont.
I would later wonder if anything good came out of those years. Long after graduation
from high school, when I moved out of state, I learned of an old high school classmate
who had a music ministry and while giving her testimony would recall to church
congregations that I would witness to her in high school which led to her eventual love
for Christ. This seeming insignificant recollection did much to assure me of Gods
working in my young life.
In 1975 I enrolled at West Point Prep School. During that year I learned more about
West Point and myself. My life as a Christian during this time was marginal at best. In
my better times I would listen to Christian radio - Unshackled of the Pacific Garden
Mission and just before taps, Stories of Great Christians on Family Radio. A
roommate that was irritated with my witness, such that it was, contacted me 30 years later
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via Classmates.com to tell me that he had become a Christian and thanked me for that
witness. Being the end of the Vietnam era with all the trappings of that time and my
lack of desire for continuing a military career, I turned down my appointment to the
academy.
Two months later I entered a church music program at Philadelphia College of Bible to
study the trumpet. I was very unsure what I was to do. In one months time I met Sue.
I fell head over heels in love with her and we were married 4 months later. The college
would not allow me, still a freshman, to be married and attend school, so I transferred to
an engineering program at a community college. After a few years I earned a degree in
Information Technology which has put bread on the table ever since.
Sue and I attended different sorts of evangelical denominations: different shades of
Baptist, Plymouth Brethren, Assemblies of God and Mennonite. We saw the love of
scripture in all of them, but particularly we saw strong moral guidelines and love of
scripture in the Baptist churches. We saw a love of the Lords Supper in the Brethren and
that it was to be held every time the Christians met. We saw belief in the supernatural
and holiness in the Assemblies of God and lastly we saw peace and simplicity in the
Mennonite church.
All of these churches emphasized a fundamentalist system of personal independence in
biblical interpretation, meaning that its You, Jesus and the Bible. All of these protestant
groups believed in something different, but they all did believe in this method of
interpretation, and I believe that is the reason they were different. We could see biblical
grounds for every one of them, and that was why we sought them out. The only problem
was that the more we saw as being biblical, the harder it was to feel at home in any
church. Thats why at the end of this chapter in our journey we started our own home
church where we could define our own doctrine with like minded believers.
Then after a year of home church we experienced some unsettling encounters with certain
people that had an interpretation of scripture that we felt was clearly way off. We felt
unprepared and unequipped to shepherd ourselves and we realized that this
fundamentalist system of personal and independent interpretation was dangerous ground.
We began a search which led us to the Reformation and we converted to the Reformed
faith in 1993 realizing that we needed the protection of a church and a confession of faith
developed by our Reformed Protestant fathers. For 4 years we attended a Christian
Reformed Church that followed the Belgic Confession and Hiedelburg Chatechism.
During this time we soaked up everything that was Reformed(Calvinistic). I had to give
up my beliefs in free will and the manifestation gifts of the Holy Spirit(speaking in
tongues, etc) since the Reformed church had no room for them. You see, I thought I
had finally found the beginning of the biblical church, and whatever those reformed
puritan writers said must be right.
We became reacquainted with Harold Camping and Family Radio via shortwave from
California. In 1994 I read his book 1994? where he very cleverly used scripture to
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point to Christs return in September 1994. His use of scripture appeared masterful to
us. He was however an outcast from the Christian Reformed Church, and a loner,
belonging to no established denomination. It seemed that only he had the right
interpretation of scripture until of course, 1995.
In 1996 our church left the Christian Reformed Church to become independent because
of sliding moral views in the organization. Our church became very isolated and our
pastor remained independent from any other church. Some friends of ours that were
attending did not believe in infant baptism and our pastor delivered a sermon for their
benefit and they subsequently felt unwelcome in the church. I conveyed my disapproval
of his methods about this and some other issues. This escalated, and by his edict, the
whole congregation summarily shunned us. So we left and joined an Orthodox
Presbyterian Church.
We were active members in the Presbyterian church for nearly five years. I taught a
catechism class for junior high school kids and started training as an elder. The
Presbyterian confession of faith is the Westminster Confession. It covers all of the
Presbyterian doctrines. One of the doctrines states that creation took place in 6 literal
days. We discovered our pastor didnt believe that and it was unsettling for us since our
whole purpose for going to the reformed faith was to find protection in a confession of
faith. In our eyes. if the pastor doesnt have to hold to the confession then it makes the
confessional church a farce. A member asked me to organize a meeting, knowing that I
believed in a literal 6 day creation. I did organize a private meeting at our home with the
pastor present to answer questions and the issue was discussed. To make a long story
short, my entire family felt compelled to leave the church as a result of a 2 month series
of sermons on the evils of dissension. I should state that we were able to make peace
with the pastor years later.
We spent a couple years bouncing from church to church looking for a home. We ended
up joining a small Missouri Synod Lutheran church. I had to set aside my Calvinist
doctrines on salvation. For three years we took part in a liturgical style of worship. Our
pastor had much love for the Catholic Church and would mention her whenever he could,
risking offence to the Lutheran sensibilities of the congregation.
The first sermon we heard in that church was how the Lutheran church should be
thankful for what the Catholic Church had given it. That ignited a spark in my soul, and
2 years later in January 2006 I started to investigate the Catholic faith.
In the Lutheran church we experienced liturgical worship and a belief in
consubstantiation, that Christ is present in, above and below the elements of communion.
Catholics believe in the literal interpretation of John 6, (transubstantiation), that the
elements of the communion become the actual body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ
under the accidental appearance of bread and wine. The problem with the Lutheran view
was their trying to justify the real presence of Christ without believing in the miraculous.
This fault or weakness of Luther, to me, seemed to be the same fault of everyone who
denies the miracles of the Bible. The same logical reasoning used to disbelieve the real
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presence of Christs body and blood in the Eucharist, is the same logical reasoning used
by non-Christians to deny that Jesus Christ was God. They use their five senses and
worldly reason to deny the scriptures.
What affected me in no small way was how the Lutherans defined themselves as close
to Catholicism as possible without being Catholic. So borrowing on my past experience
I decided to investigate the real reasons behind the Protestant Reformation, separating
fact from fiction, and just what the Catholic believed, rather than what the Protestant said
the Catholic believed.
To my amazement I have found that Scripture can support or alludes to every doctrine
that the Catholic Church teaches. This was frightening at first and then wonderful. I
found that the Church that has an unbroken link back to the apostles. I have found that I
am not alone. There are hundreds of fundamentalist and conservative evangelical and
reformed ministers and thousands of lay people that are coming home to the church just
like me. I have seen some of their testimonials. They went to fundamentalist bible
colleges and were Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, Brethren, Evangelical Free, etc.
There are amazing things going on as far as devoted Bible believing Protestants being
brought into the church. It is not the Great Whore of Babylon that I was taught. It is
the church that Jesus established.
Have you ever asked yourself why there are so many different Christian churches today
and how you can be sure yours is right? Have you ever been interested to know
whether someone else has proof that you have been wrong about Bible interpretation for
years? Have you ever read a Catholic apology or any of the Catholic catechism? In the
past I would have said, I already know that Catholicism is wrong and I dont need to
give their arguments the time of day. My mind is made up, dont confuse me with the
facts. Too many of us are guilty of this.
My Catholic conviction was reached by reading scripture and the church fathers.
Protestants who are notably anti-catholic will state that the church remained pure until the
middle of the sixth century just 200 years after it became legal in Rome. The early
fathers that I refer to lived during and before this time. Consequently, all the doctrines
which the anti-Catholics charge were invented hundreds or a thousand years later are, on
the contrary, to be found in the writings of these early fathers. The fathers were not
heretics but were defenders of the faith and fought against heresy. Some of these men
are Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus of Lyons, Polycarp, and Justin
Martyr to name a few. These men were either directly taught by the apostles or were
taught by the apostles students. Their written testimony essentially proves that the
church was Catholic from the beginning.
I must make it clear that the Church Fathers writings are not the proof that the Churchs
doctrine is the right doctrine, but they expose the protestant charges of doctrinal
contamination as absolutely baseless. After studying the fathers, one who is honest must
admit that the church has not changed its beliefs, it has only refined them. The Church
we know today is the same Church that thrived in the first few generations after the
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Apostles. The acorn of Acts has grown into a giant oak tree, it doesnt look the same
but it has the same DNA.
AD. 110 St Ignatius Where ever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as
wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. 1
Protestants have been so well indoctrinated that the Catholic Church is not Christian and
dismiss as nonsense any idea of biblical orthodoxy within its walls. We used to look at
Catholics lives as justification. We of course would not look at the Saints lives, just
bad Catholics. We would ridicule them for their sin and their confessing to a priest so
they could go sin again.
But that is not different from non-catholic Christians who are
slaves to sin. They have no sacramental confession like Catholics do, and they confess
their sin to God in private, and then go right back to their sin. I ask you, are the
sacrilegious Catholics any worse off than these?
Few people in America hate the Catholic religion, but many people hate what they
mistakenly believe is the Catholic religion ArchBishop Fulton Sheen 2

Foundation Of Truth
If I was to ask you what is the pillar and foundation of truth, what would you say? If
you said the Bible, you would be in agreement with most Protestants, but your answer
would not agree with scripture.
1 Tim 3:15 If I am detained you may know how people ought to conduct themselves
in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation
of the truth
Surprised? I was.

Sacred Tradition
What if I was to ask you whether or not sacred tradition had as much weight as
scripture? What would you say? That it was heresy? And you again would be in
agreement with most Protestants if you said sobut you would not be in agreement with
scripture.
2 Thess. 2:15
1

Therefore brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye

Jurgens, p.25
Bishop Fulton Sheen had a TV show starting in the 1950s when he would lecture on morality and the
Church.
2

have been taught, whether by word or by epistle. My amplified bible says

whether by our word of mouth or by letter.
Now I dont ever remember seeing that verse, and when it was shown to me I couldnt
believe it!
There were two ways for sacred traditions to be handed down, oral and letter (epistle).
One thing you should notice is that St. Paul is referring to the epistles as traditions, the
same as oral instruction. Since this sacred tradition is made of both oral and written
traditions, then it follows that sacred tradition cannot be complete consisting of only oral
tradition, and it is equally true that sacred tradition cannot be complete consisting of only
written tradition. Bible Christians should take note of this. Although they do not think
of scripture as sacred tradition, they must be honest, that according to this verse they
must combine oral tradition and scriptural tradition as being the two parts of the whole
Sacred Tradition.
Traditions is also restated in 2 Thess 3:6 to be kept and obeyed.
The traditions of
men argument that protestants use against sacred tradition is not speaking of sacred
tradition: Col 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through vain philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
It is dishonest to say that verse speaks against the oral tradition that Paul charges Timothy
to obey.

Who Gave Us The Bible?

A cursory look at history concerning when New Testament books were written and when
they were accepted into the canon will shed light on the fact that oral tradition had to play
a major role in the selection of writings as being inspired. As a matter of fact the
Catholic Church worshiped in liturgical form from the very beginning and the scriptures
(first the old testament; and then the letters and gospels that were selected by the Church)
were read as the liturgy, since the common man could not read, and that liturgy defined
whether or not a book was considered canon. The early Catholic Church held councils
to both fight off heresies and to discuss which books should be admitted as liturgy and
therefore canon. So the worship tradition of the Catholic Church defined the canon. It
wasnt until a council in AD 397 that St. Augustine used his influence to help push
through Hebrews and Revelations as canon.
Eleven hundred years later the protestant reformers would try to have Hebrews, Jude,
James, II and III John, and Revelations removed. They were successful in removing 7
Old Testament books in order to rid themselves of the doctrines of purgatory and
indulgences.
Now here is one crucial point of the protestant reformation; Sola Scriptura (or the
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Scriptures Alone). It wasnt held in the beginning of Luthers protest, but after the
tide of protest overwhelmed even Martin Luther and forced things beyond his control,
sacred tradition was cast out and Sola Scriptura became the rallying call.
Even Martin Luther saw the inescapable principle of fragmentation and
disunity that lies at the heart of sola scriptura. In a letter to Ulrich
Zwingli, he complained bitterly about the doctrinal anarchy that was even
then rampant among Protestants: "If the world lasts, it will be necessary,
on account of the differing interpretations of Scripture which now exist,
that to preserve the unity of faith, we should receive the [Catholic]
councils and decrees and fly to them for refuge." 3

On reflection, one cannot deny that much has been lost in Protestant tradition. If the
protestant studies his own history he will find that even he has lost original protestant
doctrine, since the protestant has kept alive the idea that they must be free of anything
that might be construed as Catholic, e.g. Penance, Confession, one teaching authority
(Magesterium), Marys perpetual virginity (even after her bringing forth Jesus), her
Immaculate Conception, her assumption into heaven, and a physical presence of Christ in
the consecrated elements of Communion. But, some of these were held by the earliest
protestant reformers and with each passing century, layers of sacred tradition were peeled
away and thrown out.
But being good bible Christians that we hope we are, can we point to any chapter and
verse that states that only scripture(Sola Scriptura) is to be used in matters of faith? The
most quoted one is 2 Tim 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that
the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Well it
certainly doesnt say that only scripture is to be used, but it does say that it is inspired of
God. One argument fundamentalists will use is that the man of God may be perfect,
implying that using only scripture you can be perfect, but you know that is not true since
we also have to pray without ceasing and that if we dont pray we are most likely not
Christians, let alone perfect. So it is dishonest to use that verse for Sola Scriptura.
Reformed Protestants champion Sola Scriptura, but they unwittingly demonstrate their
hypocrisy since they have their confessions of faith (Westminster, Belgic, Baptist of
1689), which state what you are to believe and how the bible is to be interpreted.
Catholics teach that the bible must be interpreted in light of the teaching authority of the
church (magesterium) and her tradition as received from the apostles. Presbyterians and
Reformed Baptists say that you must interpret the bible in light of their Confession of
Faith. Apparently, as testified by Luthers letter to Zwingli, the reformers saw the
danger of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is an unbiblical view of scripture and it is a
recipe for confusion.

Madrid, Patrick Sola Scriptura: A Blueprint for Anarchy (Catholic Dossier,

Mar-April 1996 issue)

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Consider this statement All generalizations are false. This very statement is of course
a generalization, declaring itself false and so the statement is nonsense. What should be
said is that all generalizations are false except this one. The same goes for I will
only accept as true what science can experimentally validate as true. It is also
nonsense. It should say I can only accept as true what science can experimentally
validate as true except for this one statement. Likewise, the protestant dogma of
Only doctrines explicitly grounded in the teaching of the bible are ultimately
trustworthy is nonsense. It should say Only doctrines explicitly grounded in the
teaching of the bible are ultimately trustworthy except this one . The
Bible-Only-Belief-System of Sola Scriptura cannot be true with an internal inconsistency
such as this.4

Catholic convert Dr. Peter Kreeft, graduate of Calvin College, ex-calvinist minister and
current philosophy professor at Boston College realized that if you are a Bible-Believing
Christian, you must not believe Sola Scriptura.

I came upon a series of audio cds from Ligonier Ministries by RC. Sproul titled Roman
Catholicism. This is an anti-catholic lecture series. On the first CD, on track 14, RC
states that the protestant view of the canon of scripture is that it is a fallible collection of
infallible books and that the Catholic views the canon as an infallible collection of
infallible books. While driving on the New Jersey turnpike, this statement processed
in my mind but I missed what my wife caught: that the Protestants really dont believe in
the infallibility of scripture. Their system of canon is a house of cards. When you
look at this logically, they have punched a hole in the floor of their boat by declaring the
table of contents fallible. They can not logically stand A fallible collection of
infallible books? The best this can mean is that they think the 66 books of the
protestant bible are infallible but they must admit that they may be missing more
infallible books. How can infallible books collected together be fallible? If the fallible
list of infallible books is missing books, then the collective message of their bible is
fallible. They have unwittingly admitted that there may be other truth that God intended
for them and by deduction that they may have something that might have errors,
regardless of their insistence of their claims of infallible books. This cascades to the
unmistakable conclusion of their illogical ability to vouch for their interpretation being
the correct one.
A quick side notewhy do the protestants think that the New Testament books they got
from the Church are infallible? The answer is that they trusted the authority of the
Church to decide which books were to be canon and which ones were not. This same
Church, up till the year 397 when the final books were added, believed in the Primacy of
the Bishop of Rome, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, oral sacred tradition,
Immaculate Conception of Mary, confession of sins to a priest, apostolic succession of
holy orders, praying to saints, birth control as a sin and more. If the protestant says,
no they dont trust the authority of the Church but their own wisdom, then how come
their own wisdom for deciding canon doesnt differ with the Churchs that believed all
4

11

Currie, David Born Fundamentalist Born Again Catholic, p. 57-58

these things which they abhor?

With the novel idea of a fallible collection of infallible books, it is no wonder Luther
felt free to rip out old testament books (deutero-canonical )that didnt agree with his
doctrines.
As a reason for removing the deutero-canonical books from the Old Testament,
Protestants will say that none of the deutero-canonical books are quoted or referenced in
the New Testament. This is patently false and not well thought through. First of all, not
all protestant Old Testament books are quoted in the New Testament. According to an
old 1695 version of the 1611 KJV, there are 11 references to the deutero-canonical
books in the margin. One example is Heb. 11:35 to 2 Maccabees 7:7.
Another reason protestants reject them is that they encourage immoral behavior. They
allege that from the following story.Judith went out to the enemy camp around her
village , deceived them and killed their leader and saved their village.(Judith 9:10,13)
What did Jacob do to Esau? He deceived his father Isaac by wearing a coarse goat skin
coat, making his nearly blind father think he was his hairy brother Esau; so he got the
blessing instead of Esau. Is Genesis endorsing immoral behavior?
Then there is the argument that the books endorse unbiblical practices. How could
books of the bible endorse unbiblical practices if the books themselves are in the bible?
Perhaps the practices are biblical? These practices/beliefs are purgatory, praying for
those in purgatory, doing good works to help atone for the temporal punishment of sin.
Well after Christianity was well established in Rome, the Jewish Pharisaical sect who
survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD decided to reject the deutero-canonical
books which had been in the very Old Testament used by the Apostles (Greek
Septuagint). They rejected them because they hated Christianity and they couldnt find
Hebrew manuscripts. Some Hebrew manuscripts were later found in the Qumran
Caves/Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1930s so much for the Pharisees. So Protestants are to
listen to the Pharisees rather than the Apostles?
It is important to note that when the New Testament quoted from the Old Testament, it
quoted from the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), the same Old Testament used by the
apostles which contained the 7 deutero-canonical books . So what right did the
Protestants have to go dig up Hebrew manuscripts and compile their own table of
contents and contradict the record of the new testament?
One last reason Protestants use is that the deutero-canonical books allegedly have absurd
legends like Bell and the Dragon in Daniel 14. Well if you want to consider
absurdities, what about Jonah and the Whale, crossing the Red Sea, Balaams ass or the
axe floating in the Jordan River?

12

The Eucharist
Catholics call the bread and wine the Eucharist. Eucharist comes from Greek meaning
Thanksgiving. They believe that once consecrated by the priest, the elements
actually become the real body , blood, soul and divinity of Christ.
Consider this verse.
John 6:51- I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this
bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give
for the life of the world.
Now in the previous verses Jesus speaks of the manna in the wilderness and now speaks
in this verse of living bread which in verse 50 if eaten that man will not die. Now it
would be reasonable to think that Jesus is speaking of spiritual death. Well lets look at
this verse 51. If any man eats of this bread, he shall live forever. We should
understand this as eternal life. Then Jesus restates that the bread that he will give is his
flesh, which he will give for the life of the world
Lets go to verse 52. The Jews therefore strove amongst themselves saying, How can this
man give us his flesh to eat?.
Now here would be an opportunity for Jesus to clear up
misunderstandings as he often did when he spoke in parables. Yes sometimes he
wouldnt explain himself with Pharisees but would take his disciples aside and explain
the mysteries. They didnt hear him wrong because Jesus reiterates in verse 53:
Verily, Verily I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his
blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal
life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Verse 55 Jesus is trying to relate a physical reality. For my flesh is real food and my
blood is real drink.
Now verse 56. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in
him. Anyway, do we dwell in Christ if we dont eat his flesh and drink his blood?
Does he dwell within us?
Jesus did not back down or water down what he said. He asked them what they would
think if they saw him ascending back to heaven. He said that his words are spirit and
life, the flesh is of no avail, and that the spirit gives life. He is not saying that after all
this talk that his flesh is of no avail, but the fleshly or worldly understanding is of no
avail and that one must have a spiritual understanding and faith. After all what indeed
would the fleshly minded think once they saw Jesus rising into sky, just as he said?
Since he is divine, his flesh will also have divine powers and properties. Many of his
disciples left him because of these sayings. So he said to the twelve, Will you also
leave?. Thats when the chief disciple, Peter, said Lord to whom shall we go? You
have the words of eternal life.
What I think so many of us forget when we think of the transubstantiation of His flesh
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and blood from bread and wine, is that He (in previous chapters) had laid a foundation of
miracles to show that He has the power to transform bread and wine into His body and
blood. They are: The first miracle showing power over the elements where he makes
wine from water; the miracle of the loaves showing power to multiply bread.
Another important fact is that He gave this discourse on the Passover day. The day
before he fed the 5000 with the multiplication of loaves and John 6:4 says that the
Passover was at hand, meaning the next day was Passover; and on the next day He gives
his discourse on why we should eat his flesh and drink his blood.. To the very day, this
is exactly one year before His Last Supper.
On the road to Emmaus, after His resurrection, Jesus, incognito, spoke with two of His
disciples about the events of Jesus passion. Still not knowing who He was, they sat
down and broke bread with Jesus. When He was at table with them, he took the bread
and blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they
recognized Him; and He vanished out of their site (John 24:30,31) Any wagers where
he went? Or why He went? Did He have to leave in a hurry for any reason? Wouldnt
it be somewhat untoward for Jesus to rudely disappear while supping with His
companions? Or could there be another message here? Did He not say that His flesh
is real food and His blood is real drink? He never said that they were mere symbols.
(Yes, yes, Jesus called himself the door in an analogy, but notice that His disciples
understood in that situation He was being symbolic and had no problem with His
language. This is entirely different. ) So with that being the case, what is so
unreasonable to think that he became the bread? He was still with them! What a way to
nail home His previous teachings on common bread and wine becoming His body and
blood!
Now speaking of 1 Corinthians 11...doesnt it say that we should examine ourselves
because of the body and blood of the Lord?
I Cor 11:27 RSV Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an
unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man
examine himself and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and
drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why
many of you are weak and ill and some have died.
This gives testimony of the reality and holiness of the blessed elements. If you think
the bread and wine are mere symbols, then consider this: How could we sin against
someone by destroying a photograph of the person, which is a mere symbol?
Dispensationalism, a widely held modern protestant system of biblical interpretation,
implies that the part of the Gospels that is before the death and resurrection of Jesus is not
binding to the church because it is Old Testament and that the church is not bound by
any command before the death of Christ. That could be one reason why these verses
might be glossed over. Another could be that conservative evangelicals who usually
pride themselves with the taking of scripture at its face value or literal interpretation, will,
in this case, opt for a second meaning if scriptures simple interpretation appears to go
against a particular protestant tradition, yes, tradition. How many times have you seen
14

a clear scriptural passage and then found the text spiritualized by ministers and teachers
into something figurative?
The early church fathers believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist from the
very earliest time. These men died at the hands of the Romans in the Coliseum, torn by
lions. Christians would risk their lives and secretly go to Mass which was held in
different households in order to receive the Eucharist. If anyone could not come to Mass
every day they were given a piece of the body of Christ to take home in order to use all
week until the next Lords Day.but Mass was held every day if possible. They were
charged not to let any crumbs drop or let mice get at it because it was the body of Christ.
Some would keep it on their person to eat just before they were sent in to the arena to be
destroyed by the wild beasts. The Roman pagans were very suspicious of the Christians
and reported to the authorities that they had cannibalistic worship.5
Mass is an ancient word. It is from the Latin Ite, missa est meaning it is ended.
It is what is said at the end of the Mass : The celebration is over, go and serve the Lord
and each other.
It was used by Roman Christians as a code word when speaking of
a church meeting.
Mass is said every day (364 days / year) in the Catholic Church. On Good Friday, only
a service of prayer and a short sermon is held and no joyful songs are sung. In the Mass
more scripture is read and sung than in most fundamentalist and evangelical churches. If
you were to attend Mass every day for three years, the entire bible would be read aloud.
This is because the Mass is broken up into 3 Liturgical Years.
At this point in my journey, the discovery of the truth of the Eucharist, I knew that I must
become a Catholic.
The Sacrifice of the Mass
If you understand that the elements of the Eucharist are transformed into the physical
body of Christ, then you must conclude that it is more than just a memorial. The certain
technical Greek word for remembrance in I Cor. 11:24-25 This is my body which is
given for you, do this in remembrance of me and Hebrews 10:3 Those sacrifices are an
annual remembrance of sins is always juxtaposed with a sacrifice being performed. A
few hundred years BC the Old Testament was translated into Greek (Septuagint) and in
this translation the same Greek word for this type of remembrance was used in tandem
with a sacrifice. So the celebration of the Eucharist is a sacrifice with remembrance.6
Didnt the Psalmist look back at Melchizedek in Genesis, when he met Abraham he
offered bread and wine. If Melchizadek didnt offer bread and wine as a sacrifice then
why did the Psalmist call the messiah you shall be a priest forever after the order of
Melchizadek (Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 5:6).
Once Jesus sacrificed himself what did he
5
6

47

15

Aquilina, Mike, Mass of the Early Christians

David B. Currie, Born Fundamentalist Born Again Catholic (San Francisco Ignatius Press, 1996) p.

offer us: His flesh and blood in the form of Bread and Wine. And his flesh was offered
for the life of the world, and by Christs command, it is continually offered as a sacrifice
with remembrance.
Remember that Jesus is the new Passover Lamb and what happened with the first
Passover Lamb? Look up the story in Exodus 12:8 10. They had to eat the Passover
lamb and apparently nothing has changed except we now eat bread and wine. But why
bread and wine? I have heard some say that when the blood is separated from the flesh
(in the mass, the bread and wine are consecrated separately) then that symbolizes death
and we do proclaim the Lords death till he come.
Hebrews 10:25-26 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and
good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner
of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day
approaching. For if we sin willfully, after we have received the knowledge of the
truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful
expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.
Remember what the Lord told the Isrealites in Egypt to do in order to be spared from the
Destroyer? They had to get a lamb without blemish, kill it and cook it whole, put its
blood on the door posts and lintels and then eat the whole lamb.
In Hebrews 10 we see that the gathering of Christians together was a requirement in order
to gain the benefit of the sacrifice for sins. If Christians willingly abstain from
partaking of the Eucharist, (a Eucharist that has been consecrated by a priest who has
apostolic authority) there is no sacrifice for sins.
Protestants have declared the Sacrifice of the Mass as a re-crucifixion of Christ and
therefore a blasphemous act. But it is only a re-presentation of his sacrifice, which is
yes, once, and yes, for all and yes, forever. (A priest forever after the order of
Melchizadek) What they miss is that Jesus is the New Passover Lamb and He
commanded that we eat his flesh for the same reason that the Jews had to eat the Passover
lamb. We are partakers of the sacrifice of Calvary. That is why Christs body and
blood are offered and consumed every Sunday and every time Mass is performed. But
why continue to do it? Christs command for one. Also, we continue to sin and we
need to renew our covenant with God. And we want to abide in Him as He abides in us;
without the Eucharist, no abiding can take place according to Christs words in John 6.
According to the early church fathers going back to the 1st and 2nd centuries and this is
what they believed and it is what Christians practiced until the reformation of Zwingli
and Calvin in the 1500s. How could Zwingli and Calvin (and now we) presume to have
a better grasp on the truth then those who were taught by the apostles themselves?
AD 110 St Ignatius of Antioch They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer,
because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus
Christ, Flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His goodness,
16

raised up again.
disputes.7

They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their

AD. 148 St. Justin Martyr For not as common bread nor common drink do we
receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word
of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been
taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer
set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, is
both the flesh and the blood of that incarnate Jesus. 8
AD. 244 Origen I wish to admonish you with examples from your religion. You
are accustomed to take part in the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you
have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a
particle of it fall, and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account
yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so believe, if any of it be lost through
negligence. But if you observe such a caution in keeping His Body, and properly
so, how is it that you think neglecting the word of God a lesser crime than
neglecting His Body?.9

Peter, The Rock and Receiving the Keys of the Kingdom

Now when Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Phillipi, He asked His
disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they answered. Some
say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and others Jeremiah or one of the
prophets. He said to them, But who do you [yourselves] say that I am? Simon
Peter replied. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Then Jesus
answered him, Blessed (happy, fortunate, and to be envied) are you, Simon Bar
Jonah. For flesh and blood [men] have not revealed this to you, but My Father
Who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter [Greek Petros a large piece of
rock], and on this rock [Petra a huge rock like Gibraltar] I will build my
church, and the gates of Hades (the powers of the infernal region) shall not
overpower it [or be strong to its detriment or hold out against it]. Matt
16:13-19 Amplified Bible
This is where Simon receives the name of Peter.
Most Christian scholars agree that Jesus and his disciples did not speak in Greek but
spoke rather in the vernacular of that time, which was Aramaic. In Aramaic there is only
one word for rock Kepha. So in Aramaic Jesus said to Simon, You are Kepha and
upon this Kepha I will build my church. Another thing to note is that Simon was called
7

William A. Jurgens, The Faith of The Early Fathers Vol. 1 (Liturgical Press - 1970) p. 25
Jurgens, p. 55
9
Jurgens, p.207
8

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Cephas, which is an English transliteration of Kepha. This should be proof enough that
Jesus spoke to Simon Peter (Petros) in Aramaic, otherwise Peter would not have picked
up the name Cephas. But I saved the best for last. Petros is the masculine form of
rock and Petra is the feminine form of rock. Matthew used the best Greek word to
explain Christs meaning of a very large rock, which is Petra, and he used the best word
in naming a man Peter or Petros. It wouldnt be fitting for Matthew to call Simon Peter,
Petra. In summary, Peter is the English translation of Petros which is the masculine
form of rock in Greek which in the neuter language of Aramaic is Kepha ! And Cephas
came from Kepha. Isnt the truth wonderful? A leading reformed protestant study bible
grants the point that the protestant leaders overstepped their bounds. According to notes
in the New Geneva Study Bible for this passage: if it wasnt for the excesses of the
Catholic church, the Reformed theologians would agree that Peter is the Rock.10 Also,
just to set the record straight, Calvin believed that Peter was the rock in Matthew 16..

English
Peter
Cephas
rock

Greek
Petros
------Petra

Greek Meaning
a small rock
-----------a large rock

Aramaic
Kepha
Kepha
Kepha

Aramaic Meaning
rock
rock
rock

The very next verse of Matt 16, verse 19, Jesus says (KJV), And I will give you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Here
Jesus is giving Peter the Authority over His church. Read Acts and ask yourself who
the head disciple is. Actually Jesus is making reference to Isa 22:22 where King
Hezekiahs new prime minister is given the keys of David : and the keys of the house of
David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open and none shall shut ; and he shall
shut and none shall open. The Amplified bible also points Matt 16:19 to Isa 22:22.
Basically when Jesus left the earth he made Peter the prime minister or the earthly
priest on earth in charge of his church, gave him His authority, and promised that Peter
and his successors would be prevented from leading the church into heresy.
One item that shouldnt be ignored. The actual renaming of Simon to Peter. Why
would Jesus rename him? Before we answer that, lets look at a few other examples.
Abram, whose faith was tested by God and renamed Abraham, Father of Nations
became the father of all the faithful. Even Jesus referred to him as Father Abraham in
the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
Another is the renaming of Jacob to Israel, to
become the father of the Israelite nation. We must conclude that the simple renaming of
Simon to Peter was a very significant event in and of itself, not to mention what the name
Peter signified.
Protestants are so quick to ignore the renaming of Simon to Peter. C.I. Schofield would
ignore the fact that Jesus spoke in the vernacular, Aramaic, and would incorrectly insert
10

18

New Geneva Study Bible (Thomas Nelson Publishers) p.1532

into his dispensationalist Bible the note that Peter means a little stone.
Oh how well
I know this since in my youth in bible college I was a dispensationalist and we used to
joke about our coursework with a little jingle My hope is built on nothing less than
Schofields Notes and Moody Press - to the tune of The Solid Rock.
Most protestants when pushed, will grudgingly agree that Peter may be the rock and that
Jesus gave him the keys but then they insist that the ball has been dropped and that
apostolic authority was not handed down, meaning that the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Rome has no authority over the Christian church. Then one must go back one verse
where Jesus tells Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. If the church
was apostate for 1200 years before Luther then one can say that the gates of hell have
prevailed quite nicely against it. Some have tried to say that there is a trail of blood
that goes back thru these years linking the early church with todays church. This trail of
blood implies that the church went underground and was persecuted by Catholics, but
when you investigate the so-called Christian groups included in this trail of blood you
would include groups like the Albigenses and the Waldenses, which were extremely
heretical. Foxes Book of Martyrs written at the height of anti-Catholicism in England
around the time of James I, implies things like this and with careful scrutiny, the historian
will realize that there was a deep bias behind the writing of this book. Twenty-five years
ago I read this book and developed an even greater prejudice against Catholics.
Informed protestant scholars will agree that groups like the Albigenses were hardly
Christian. They were very immoral, for instance, it was acceptable to have mistresses
and marriage was looked on disparagingly.
Putting aside doctrinal disagreements you might have with Rome, ask yourself what
church has been able to last 100 years without changing its views on moral issues, maybe
even 50 years? One nagging fact that has always come back to me over the years is how
the Catholic Church has not wavered on issues of morality. The Catholic church is a
worldwide church that is closely watched by the media and they hate her. Why?
Mainly because of her unwavering stance against abortion and birth control and
maintaining the discipline of celibacy in its priests and religious.
In 1930, there were no churches in the world that would support birth control. A couple
years later by the tireless efforts of Margaret Sanger, the Episcopal Church consented that
there might be reasons to practice birth control. You might remember that Margaret
Sanger was the leading thinker in the area of Eugenics, or controlling particular groups of
people from pro-creating. The Nazis were known to have admired her for her
progressive thinking and put it to practice in their own country. She is considered one
of the founders of Planned Parenthood. Today there is no protestant denomination that
speaks out against birth control.
In the mid-60s Pope Paul VI put out an encyclical (a word of teaching circulated to the
church, much like an epistle was) to the church called the Humanae Vitae. In this
document he warned against the use of birth control as the beginning of great immorality
and that it would lead to the devaluation of life, and abortion. He was a prophet in his
own time. 1973 brought us Roe V Wade. As near as I can tell no protestant stood with
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him. When Pope Paul VI died, Bob Jones, chancellor of Bob Jones University, and
promoter of anti-catholics like the Northern Irish extremist, Ian Paisley, said that Pope
Paul VI, arch-priest of Satan, a deceiver and an antichrist, has like Judas, gone to his
place. Incidentally, Jesus tells us that anyone that says Thou Fool is in danger of
hellfire. May God have mercy on Bob Jones.
So the Church still has kept its original position on this issue of life.
AD 222 St. Hippolytus of Rome Callistus even permitted women, if they were
unmarried and burning up at an unsuitable time of life, or if they did not wish to
lose their own dignity by a lawful marriage, to take a man of their choosing as
bedfellow, whether slave or free, and to regard such a one as a husband, though
not lawfully married. For this reason women who were reputed to be believers
began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so
as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on account of
relatives and excessive wealth, want to have a child by a slave or any
insignificant person. See then, into what great impiety that lawless one has
proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!.11
AD 200 Tertullian Birth control is premature murder. It makes no
difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is
coming to birth.12
AD 400 St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Intercourse with even a lawful spouse
is unlawful and wicked if the conception of offspring is prevented.13
AD 200 St. Clement of Alexandria He who seeks only sexual pleasure turns
his marriage into fornication.14

Jesus prayed for his church in John 17 in what is called his High Priestly Intercessory
Prayer. He prays that his church would be one That they all may be one; as thou
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may
believe that thou hast sent me. What unity in the protestant church would cause the
world to believe that the Father had sent us Jesus? You notice though, that when the
Pope speaks, the world does stop and listen.
St. Paul in his epistles speaks of handing down authority by the laying on of hands. This
is the sacrament of Holy Orders. One cannot be a priest or bishop without the unbroken
line of authority to the Apostles. Bishops that have been ordained by the laying on of
11

Jurgens, p.173
Aquilina, M The Way of the Fathers
13
Aquilina, M The Way of the Fathers p.162
14
Aquilina, M The Way of the Fathers p.162
12

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p.162

hands have elected all the popes. It is the teaching of the church that no pope has
preached error in the area of faith and morals. Have there been wicked popes? Yes most
definitely. But history will show you that even though some popes had intended to
introduce a heresy, they were either removed by natural death or had their minds changed
before they could do so.
Jesus promised Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. One of
the reasons that led Calvinist Dr. Peter Kreeft to convert to Catholicism was the fact that
despite the wicked Popes and Anti-Popes that tried to kill each other, immoral priests and
wrong practice of the indulgences in the Church, the Church has never officially changed
her dogmas and beliefs. She has miraculously remained pure for 2000 years. He said,
She is like an iron ball in the pit of the worlds stomach. She cannot be digested; she
cannot be assimilated. 15
Protestants will argue that the Catholic church has been making up new doctrines for 2
thousand years, the latest being the Assumption of Mary in the 1950s. If you go to the
letters written by the early fathers of the first 400 years, you will find that they believed
in the Assumption and Immaculate Conception. Argue with them, not the church.
The Immaculate Conception means that Mary was protected from the stain of Original
Sin from her parents. This doctrine along with her Assumption and Coronation do seem
to be documented later than any other: the earliest manuscripts are around 350 AD.
Marys perpetual virginity was believed from the earliest days by Calvin, Zwingli, Luther
and John Wesley. Perpetual virginity means that Mary stayed a virgin after she gave
birth to Jesus.
Papal infallibility (faith and morals) was declared in 1870, but all they were saying is
that this has always been the position of the church.
For me it all boils down to authority. I have scripture and I know that it is infallible but
who has an infallible interpretation of it? We better have some authority or we are lost.
Right now there are over 30,000 independent protestant denominations/churches in the
US right now. They dont answer to one another. Each of them is their own authority.
And they all base their beliefs on the Bible. Jehovahs Witnesses and Mormons, whose
doctrines deny the deity of Christ, say that they believe the scriptures.
If you research the Mormon founders I think you will find that they were fundamentalists
that took self-interpretation a little too far. I know one was a Baptist minister. One was
from Sharon, Vt (Joseph Smith) and the other from Wilmington, Vt (Brigham Young).
The Mormons were fairly observant however. They realized that scripture does not say
that only scripture (the Bible) is to be read, and since they deny one visible authority in
the Church, they added another book: The Book of Mormon.

15

Kreeft, Dr. Peter, Seven Reasons Why Everyone Should be Catholic Audio CD, Lighthouse
Catholic Media

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Then there were the Millerites who started as fundamentalists but got a little over
zealous in end-times theology and were venturing out at night in carriages waiting for
Christ to come back and were very disappointed.
Again, authority is a key issue. Without it we are tossed on the ocean like driftwood.
As a protestant I was taught that I have the authority and responsibility to interpret the
Bible myself. This would imply that every Christian should become a Greek and
Hebrew scholar to reinterpret and recreate doctrines and creeds. Even though it is not
intentional, the practical implication is that the wheel is reinvented each generation.
Thats a pretty tall order for the average man working 40 hours a week to support the
large family that God intended, not to mention the housewife that is tending the home of
that large family.
What about the tradition that was given orally and was not written down by the apostles?
The epistles of Paul and Peter were written primarily to correct or exhort a particular
church. More was not written down than was isnt that what John said at the end of
his gospel? (John 21:25)
Thus the existence of sacred tradition! Without the guidance of sacred tradition, isnt
it a little crazy to think that I am going to come up with the same interpretation as my
father or my pastor? Is it good that I couldnt? It shouldnt be.
I mean we could
have differences on the minors, things that are not eternally consequential, but what if we
did? Why wouldnt Jesus protect his church from error? Do you still think that the
Catholic church became apostate soon after Christianity was legalized under Constantine
in 325 AD. and remained so until now? On what basis? That it wasnt Catholic in the
beginning? We have already proven that it was. This is no longer a discussion of
opinion and abstract theological argumentation, it is a matter of empirical evidence: facts!
You cannot deny the church fathers witness. These are the facts.
Now, do you believe that the God damned millions of obedient Catholics to hell for over
1200 years until the protestant reformation came on the scene? Did Jesus let the church
go into ruin against his prayer of John 17? and against his promise to Peter ( and the
gates of hell will not prevail against it)? Was he just being figurative?
Lets step back and think about the 30,000 different protestant denominations, with new
ones being created as you read this. (Granted there are not 30,000 named denominations
as the word denomination is sometimes understood, but practically speaking when a
church is independent of any other church, then that church is its own authority and
therefore denomination.) These could be caused by denominational splits, church splits,
some splits are over minor issues: music, style of worship. Some are over major issues:
homosexuality, abortion rights, women in the pulpit, is baptism necessary, what is
baptism, is communion necessary, is communion nothing more than a fellowship meal,
etc.
What is Worship?
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If anyone looks at the history of Christianity, he will see that the Sunday worship service
of the protestant church is ever changing. I was surprised that the Catholic service (the
mass) is quite biblical, quite simple, with reading of scripture, prayer, reciting of the
Nicene Creed, hymns and always Holy Communion. The protestant service is, well,
whatever you want. The more orthodox protestant churches (Old Lutheran,
Anglican, Episcopal) resemble the Catholic mass, but as you follow the constant
protestant reformation since Luther, it has become less orthodox. Weekly worship is
optional and can be anything you want, dramas, plays, talent shows, pot luck meal,
business meeting, testimony day, sing-a-thon, or just be by yourself on a mountain top.
We had actually visited a 200 year old church a few years ago, and the woman pastor
stated that the worship service should be fun filled. The 150 year old pipe organ should
be pulled out along with the pews, and the worship service should be a basketball game.
And you know she could be right. Either there is one voice of authority and tradition
or Sunday worship is nothing more than picking the flavor of ice cream. Chocolate,
vanilla or Strawberry, pick a flavor; it is just a matter of personal interpretation and
personal taste.
Now I just spoke of Sunday worship; that can be extended to anything religious.
Discovering the Church Universal
I remember when I was a young Christian man going out on my own. I would witness
to people with different religious beliefs. In my mind, anyone who was not Baptist, was
either barely saved or could never be saved in their church for various doctrinal reasons.
One thing people would say to me that I could not counter was this: well thats your
interpretation. Of course I knew that their problem was they werent saved and
therefore they couldnt have the right interpretation. But as I grew older I realized that
there are Christians everywhere, with different interpretations. And I learned that these
disparate belief systems would not allow for interdenominational fellowship.
Dispensational fundamentalist preachers that I grew up with warned me of any
interdenominational cooperation (the ecumenical movement) as being the foundation of
the coming antichrist and tribulation. Missionaries that had gone to places like China
and Russia would talk about the coming Tribulation and the people would ask how that
tribulation could be any worse than what they had suffered under Mao Tse Tung or Stalin
or Hitler. (the dispensationalist view that God will not allow His people to suffer for
seven years before a thousand year millennium of peace, and therefore will physically
take them to heaven before the troubles)
Later in my life I would research the origins of the dispensationalist system and realized
that it was started by JN Darby in England but took its foothold in America and
flourished there. A new belief system barely 150 years old within a 2000 year Christian
church, could I hang my hat on that? I think not. So then I realized that I needed to go
into history to find the origins of Christianity, and therefore I would go to
the Reformation and stop since deeply ingrained in me was the hatred of the Catholic
Church. This sufficed for about 13 years until I started to question why Presbyterians,
Lutherans and Anglicans are the way they are.
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Drawing from my experience with American fundamentalism and researching the

founders of these Reformed faiths, I found that they were primarily based on national
heritage. Presbyterians were by in large, Scottish; Anglicans were English and
Lutherans were German and Scandinavian. After spending 7 years in the Presbyterian
Church I moved to an Old Lutheran church that basically worshiped in the form of the
Catholic mass. So I had to know what their origins were.
Luthers initial problem with the Catholic church was its abuse of selling indulgences
(simony remember Simon the magician?) and masses for money(buying people out of
purgatory), which is against sacred tradition. By the time the church corrected those
abuses, it was too late since Luther was protected and embraced by German princes who
were jealous of the Catholic Churchs wealth of land. Germany went Lutheran and it
was a literal death sentence to be Catholic in Sweden. England later went Anglican by
Henrys lust for women and the rich gentrys greed for monastic wealth. Catholicism
was outlawed by pain of hanging, drawing (disemboweling) and quartering. France
kept its Catholic faith, but not without much war between the common people and the
rich Huegenots.
So I was Lutheran for a while, long enough to discover what really defines them.
Basically, the definition of a Lutheran is that they stand against Rome, but for no good
reason, since all of the original problems that Luther had with Rome have been corrected.
Granted, Luther and his associate Philip Melanchthon developed a myriad of protests
later, but the initial reason for Luthers protest , his 95 thesis-on indulgences, had been
corrected by the church. It would be reasonable to assume that if the initial protest had
not happened, the rest would not have followed.
Anything But Unity
All protestants champion the protest of Luther. But some champion the disagreements
that Calvin had with Luther. And others the early Baptists (Anabaptists) had with
paedo-baptists (any church with infant baptism), or the Methodist split from
Anglicanism, or the Pentacostals from Methodism, or the Puritans from Anglicanism, or
the Congregationalists from Puritanism, and independent fundamentalists from everyone,
ad infinitum.
Consider the church of the Old Testament in the time of Samuel. Eli was high priest in
that time and his sons, also priests, were engaging in sexual immorality with women
outside the tabernacle. The Jewish church did not split although the people at that time
were very cognizant about the necessity of separating themselves from the world.
Come out from among them and be ye separate. The protestants used that verse for a
different purpose and set a new precedent: split and start a schism when it seems right.
Remember what Jesus prayed for in John 17.
AD. 110 St. Ignatius Those, indeed, who belong to God and to Jesus Christ they are
with the bishop. And those who repent and come to unity of the Church they too shall
be of God, and will be living according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren: if
anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk
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about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to
use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one
Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one alter, as there
is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons.16
Matt 23:2 The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses seat; so practice and observe
whatever they tell you, but not what they do
Thus it is against the will of Christ to go against the authority that he established the
Jewish tradition then / the Roman Catholic Church now. Secondly, it is a great verse
proving the acceptance of oral tradition in the time of Christ Moses Seat was not ever
referred to in the Old Testament. And last it tells us that there are some things that arent
necessarily in scripture that we are supposed to understand and appropriate.
Heb. 13:17 Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves

Confession
In John 20: 21-23 (Amplified Bible) Jesus appears to his disciples and showed them his
crucifixion wounds : Then Jesus said to them again, Peace to you! [Just] as the father
has sent me forth, so I am sending you. And having said this, He breathed on them and
said to them, receive the Holy Spirit! [Now having received the Holy Spirit and being
led and directed by Him] if you forgive the sins of anyone they are forgiven; if you retain
the sins of anyone they are retained.
Now that scripture looks pretty plain. The disciples could forgive sins and give absolution
as Jesus representatives.
The early Christians went to confession.
John Cardinal Newman said (after he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism) to be
deep in history is to cease being protestant. As a leading mid-nineteenth century
Anglican bishop he started to write a book which took him years to research about what
happened to Christian doctrine under Romanist abuses; and after 4 years, he became a
convinced Catholic. 400 church leaders followed him to the Catholic Church.
So Close and Yet So Far
Jesus gave authority to his apostles: Peter to lead the church, and all of them to forgive
sins. If I only knew when I was a boy singing the gospel song So Send I You(from
John 20:21) in church. That song was the introduction of Jesus sending out his disciples
16

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to do what? To forgive sins! How close I was to words of Christ and how far I was
from understanding. Interesting that the song omitted the last verse, John 20:23.
The Church requires that you go to confession at least once a year. Most serious
Catholics go more often. The church also teaches that if you are unable to see a priest
for confession, that by asking God to forgive your sins, your sins will be forgiven, but
you must follow it up with a visit to your confessor. Going to confession is the
normative means. This is called the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
AD 244 Origen the remission of sins through penance, when the sinner
washes his pillow in tears, when his tears are day and night his nourishment, and
when he does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord.17
AD 251 St. Cyprian of Carthage Finally, of how much greater faith and more
salutary fear are they who, though bound by no crime of sacrifice or certificate,
but since they did take thought of doing such a thing, confess even this to the
priests of God in a straightforward manner and in sorrow, making an open
declaration of conscience. Thus they remove the weight from their souls and
seek the saving remedy for their wounds however small and slight they be; for
they know that it is written: God is not mocked.
God cannot be mocked or outwitted; nor can He be deceived by any clever
cunning. Indeed, he but sins the more if, thinking that God is like man, he believes
that he can escape the punishment of his crime by not openly admitting his
crimeI beseech you, brethren, let everyone who has sinned confess his sin while
he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, while satisfaction
and remission made through the priests are pleasing before the Lord.
Purgatory
1 Cor 3:15 If any mans work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall
be saved; yet so as by fire. Jesus said in the gospels that every mans work ( and he
makes no exceptions) will be judged. If we die and we have not lived a holy life that we
should have, we may need cleaning or scrubbing, if you will, and basically that is what
Purgatory is. A purgation or purging of our seared conscience. One must not think that
he can be a mean angry person with resentment and die, find himself in the arms of a
smiling Savior without a time of embarrassment and reflection. It is the belief of the
church going back to the beginning that a time of penance, either in this life or the next
will be required.
AD 211 Tertullian We offer sacrifices for the dead on their birthday
anniversaries.
AD 350 St. Cyril of Jerusalem Then we make mention of those who have
already fallen asleep: first, the patriarchs, prophets, Apostles, and martyrs, that
through their prayers and supplications God would receive our petition; next we
17

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make mention also of the holy fathers and bishops who have fallen asleep, and to
put it simply, of all among us who have already fallen asleep; for we believe that
it will be of very great benefit to the souls of those for whom the petition is carried
up, while this most holy Sacrifice is laid out. And I wish to persuade you by an
illustration. For I know that there are many who are saying this: If a soul
departs from this world with sins, what does it profit it to be remembered in
prayer? Well, if a king were to banish certain persons who had offended him,
and those intervening for them were to plait a crown and offer it to him on behalf
of the ones who were being punished, would he not grant a remission of their
penalties? In the same way we too offer prayers to Him for those who have
fallen asleep, though they be sinners. We do not plait a crown, but offer up
Christ who has been sacrificed for our sins; and we thereby propitiate the
benevolent God for them as well as for ourselves.18
2 Maccabees 12:46 It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they
might be loosed from their sins. The reformers removed this book from the Old
Testament. This book was in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), translated from
Hebrew into Greek around the year 200 BC and was used by Jesus and the apostles.
Not until 90AD after the destruction of Jerusalem did the Jews decide to reject as Old
Testament Canon the books not supported with Hebrew manuscripts. (I guess somehow
one is to assume that Hebrew is a holy language?) It is reasonable to assume that the
Jews were bitter about their holy capital being destroyed by Titus, and they were
somewhat put off with Christianity hijacking their religion. They were also upset
about certain Jewish Christians who escaped the death and destruction from the Romans
and heeded the words of Jesus in Matthew 24. These Christians remembered the words
of Jesus and escaped to the mountains and Petra in modern day Jordan. When St.
Jerome translated the Greek Old Testament to the Latin Vulgate, he protested translating
the Apocrypha since there were no Hebrew texts. He was soundly contradicted by two
succeeding councils when the New Testament was finalized in 400 AD, of which St.
Augustine participated. Even so, in order to put a stop to indulgences (praying for the
dead in purgatory), Luther decided to listen to St. Jerome (even though he was corrected
by the early Church councils) and to heed the scribes and Pharisees rather than his
own Apostolic fathers.
Matt 12:32b but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven
him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
This verse implies that there will be forgiveness for sins in the world to come, therefore
some expiation may be endured after death.
I Cor. 15:29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized for the dead? If the
dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?
Whatever this practice was, Christians apparently did something for the dead here; and is
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not altogether unreasonable to think that this verse refers to the Maccabean account.
I John 5:16 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask,
and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I
do not say that he shall pray for it.
This is the proof text for Mortal and Venial sins. If a man dies in Mortal sin
un-confessed, he goes to hell. A sin is Mortal if it is grave matter, you know its grave,
and you decide to do it anyway. A venial sin is the sin that is in us that we are not fully
conscious of; or more simply put, all sins that do not meet the Mortal criteria. Now this
verse says that we should not pray for the brother that is in mortal sin. But we do know
that we should pray for everyone. So it is possible that this verse is referring to praying
for the dead. So if one dies in mortal sin, then we should not pray for their soul for they
are probably not in purgatory and it would be vain to do so. But if a brother does not die
in mortal sin then we can pray for him, to help him while he goes through his time of
cleansing.
Some say God does not demand expiation after having forgiven sins. That assertion has
no basis in scripture. When David repented of his sin with Bath-Sheba, God sent Nathan
with a message to him: The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.
But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must
surely die 2 Sam 12:14
This type of punishment is called temporal punishment,
which is only temporary. Again, the eternal punishment has been paid, but there are still
consequences. These are not just consequences brought out by the laws of nature; but
are consequences demanded by God to cause suffering leading to penance, which is what
David underwent.

Penance and Suffering

Protestants will often harp on the saying, We serve a Risen Lord. This is in contrast to
the Catholic displaying a crucifix in every church and in their homes, and Protestants see
that as a perversion. Let me make this perfectly clear. Catholics believe their LORD is
RISEN and is our eternal high priest offering himself before the Father in heaven. To
say that the Catholics worship a dead Christ is both blasphemous and a lie. We preach
Christ Crucified St Paul.
The truth is that we were charged by the example of Acts and of the early fathers to
remember the Lords death till he come every day we come together. Nothing in the
Lords Supper (Mass) centers on His resurrection although we know he is risen, thats not
the emphasis, it is the sacrifice of his flesh and blood which is celebrated. His
suffering paves the way for the rest of us to take up our crosses and follow him. Are we
better than Him? Now what is a cross for us? It would be suffering, not for sin, but for
Christ and his church. There is a verse in Colossians where Paul speaks of his suffering
being added to Christs. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I
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complete what is lacking in Christs afflictions for the sake of the body, that is, the
Church, of which I became a minister.
Somehow our suffering is added to Christs for the sake of the church. It is mysterious,
but there it is. That is why the Catholic displays Christ on the cross. Another reason of
course is that it is an aid for meditating on the sufferings of Christ during prayer and Holy
Communion where we are proclaiming the fact of the Lords death until he comes
again(I Cor. 11:26 Amplified Bible).

Salvation
The Protestant Doctrines of Grace, in their purest form, are heralded by the Calvinist.
Most evangelical churches today have a subset of these doctrines as part of their
statements of faith.

First the Calvinist believes that their works, good or bad, are like
Menstrous rags. This is called Total Depravity. They also take the Psalm that
says There is none that seeketh after God and state that no one seeks God.
Catholic teaching is that the good works of a believer follow him to heaven
Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Write: Blessed are the dead
who die in the lord from now on Yes says the Spirit, that they may rest from
their labors, and their works follow them (Rev 14:13). It is true that no
one in their natural state can seek after God without his initial pouring of
Grace, but after that obedience is required.

Second, the Calvinist believes that they are saved by Grace, meaning that
they are saved by the good grace of God, and not of their own works. This is
called Unmerited Favor. This doctrine also spills over into the assertion that a
life of obedience does nothing to save you. In its purest form, this would mean
that even the infant is required to be elect to be saved, otherwise eternal
damnation is due because of original sin. The exception here is children of the
elect.
Catholic teaching is yes we are saved by grace, but we are to follow in a life of
faithful obedience. Infants are innocent until the age of understanding.

Third, the Calvinist believes that Christ came to die only for the sins of
the elect, meaning that there are two classes of people, those that are elected by
God for eternal life and those who by default, are elected for eternal hellfire.
Catholics believe that when the scripture says that God wills that none
should perish but all should come to repentance, that he means just that.
But he does respect the will of man to reject him.

Fourthly, the Calvinist believes that the call of God to the soul for
Salvation cannot be resisted, thus the doctrine of Irresistible Grace, ie. no free
will.
Catholics believe that God respects the free will of man. Think of this
simple fact why would God reward his people(when they get to heaven) for
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things that He made them do. We are to be judged (Yes All of us God
makes no exceptions, protestants do, but God(Jesus) does not) for the deeds
we do in the flesh. Why would God judge a robot.

Fifthly, the Calvinist believes that every soul elected by God will
persevere till the end. This is where assurance of salvation/once saved always
saved comes from. This perseverance however is an act of Gods grace, and not
our work.
Catholics believe we must persevere, but we are not robots. It most
definitely is part of our work, requires Gods grace, yes, but it is still our
obedience, since we struggle daily to fight the good fight. It truly is by
Grace through faith, but faith working in love, not dead faith. We struggle
all the time asking for the graces to endure the trials and not sin and love
God and each other. These graces come directly from God through our
prayers, the prayers of our brethren, the prayers of the Saints in Light and
last but not least, the prayers of our Mother Mary, the Blessed Virgin
Mother of God.
I might interject at this point that now the Calvinist doctrines having been established, all
of scripture is sifted through this system. Any apparent interpretation of scripture that
runs counter to any one of these 5 Calvinist principles is rejected as heresy by the
Calvinist.
The Calvinist comforts himself that God cannot see their sin because of Christ. They
deny that obedience or lack thereof has any effect on their eventual salvation. They will
however, say that what they do in the flesh is a mirror of the state of their soul. If
people in a Calvinist church that first lived a life that was fruitful but fell away into sin
which appears permanent, then that person is considered probably never saved. What
kind of assurance of salvation is that? Calvinists will say that in the event that any
despair about possibly not being elected of God, that any one that comes unto me I will
in no wise cast out, which seems to nullify the first doctrine (implying that it is possible
to seek after God) and fourth doctrine (and that they do it of their own free will) . So,
the Calvinist who seeks assurance of salvation will endeavor (work) to live a holy life
to prove to himself that he has been chosen by God, which, by definition, is not
Calvinism. If a Calvinist converts to Catholicism, like myself for instance, then it is
probably because he was never born-again in the first place.
The same goes for
anyone who falls into deep unrepentant sin.
One thing that the Calvinist doesnt make much room for is James teaching of dead
faith. James taught that faith without works was dead. I hope that no one believes
that dead faith can save anyone. The reformers had issue with the book of James on
this very subject and either tried to have it removed from the canon or wouldnt vouch for
its accuracy. For a while Luther called it an epistle of straw.
St. Paul is elevated as the source of reformed (Calvinist) doctrine. I have heard more
than once that ones doctrine of salvation must be Pauline. Peter warned Christians
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about Pauline doctrine being misinterpreted: II Peter 3:16 as also in all his epistles
speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which
they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto
their own destruction.
Since I joined the Catholic Church a relative sent me an anti-catholic pamphlet with all
the usual charges and misconceptions that have been refuted time and time again by
Catholic theologians. I noticed that there were exactly 50 Bible verses used to prove
Catholicism was error. Forty-six of them were from the Epistles, 4 were from the mouth
of Jesus. None of the gospel passages said anything about doing good worksand all
50 passages were misinterpreted or taken out of context. Such is the Calvinist opinion of
the words of Paul over the words of Christ.
Eph 2:8-9 says For by grace are you saved thru faith, and not of yourselves, it is the gift
of God, not of works, lest any man can boast. The way I understand salvation in light
of Catholic tradition and in light of a verse like this is as follows. Our eyes are opened
by the grace of God. We did nothing good or smart to get this, it happens by Gods grace.
We are then Graciously given a free will to do his will or turn away. On believing we
receive Christian baptism immediately to remove original and any past sin. This puts
us in a state of grace. No other power can remove our eternal security from Christ,
unless we will to do so ourselves. We live a life that hopefully will result in a statement
from Christ well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord.
God gives all the Sacramental means to receive his grace continually: Baptism,
Confirmation, Confession, the Eucharist, Penance of prayer and scripture reading. A
life of good works is required for salvation faith without works is dead. As the
Calvinist asserts that any man that God has elected, God will cause them to persevere;
the Catholic simply teaches that only those who remain obedient to the end will be saved.
The protestant will argue that Jesus said that we are in His Fathers hand and no one can
snatch them out of my Fathers hand. Consider this. Our relationship to God is a
covenant and a covenant is an agreement where people are exchanged. In a contract,
property is exchanged, but in this New Covenant, we receive Christ and we give
ourselves totally to Him. No one can take us away from Him, except we can remove
ourselves.
Consider the marriage covenant, no one can remove our love from each other, except
ourselves. The marital act itself is seen as a renewal of the marriage covenant, a total
giving of ones self to each other. It is the same thing with the New Covenant. If we
willingly fall into unrepentant sin, we commit spiritual adultery, as it were, and place a
big obstacle between us and our Husband, the Lord. Unless we reconcile ourselves to
God through repentance, confession and penance and renew our covenant at the Lords
Table, our covenant remains broken.
James 2:24 Ye see then how a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Later in Luthers rebellion, he developed the heresy, Sola Fide, or Faith Alone.
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actually inserted the word alone in his German Bible translation in the Romans 3:28
passage stating that we are justified by faith alone.19 The point here is, there is only
one place in the scriptures where the words alone and faith are juxtaposed; and that is
the previous italicized passage in James 2:24.
Mark 13:13 and you will be hated by all for my names sake. But he who
endures to the end will be saved.
James 1:12 Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test
he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him.
Hebrews 10:25-26 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and
good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner
of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day
approaching. For if we sin willfully, after we have received the knowledge of
the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful
expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the
adversaries
This verse speaks of willful abstention from the Eucharist (the assembling of
ourselves together), which is the sacrifice of the Mass, implying that to miss the
Mass is to give up the sacrifice that is necessary for forgiveness of sins.
I Will Be Your God, and You Shall Be My People
As I have mentioned previously a covenant is a conditional agreement. In the old
covenant, Israel was charged to keep Gods commandments so they would be blessed.
They kept them imperfectly, and later didnt keep them at all; and God punished them for
it, when God wrote them a bill of divorcement in Isaiah 50:1. Now, we Gentiles are
grafted in.
Jesus speaks of the wine at the Last Supper : This is the New Covenant in
my blood (his blood is now the everlasting sacrifice, once, for all) and we today are half
of the party in the New Covenant. We promise to keep his commandments, love God
with all our might, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, treat each man as if he
was Christ himself and Christ will speak on our behalf and offer his flesh and blood for
us as he stands in the book of Revelations, a lamb standing looking as though it had
been slain, before the throne of God. We give ourselves to God, he gives Himself to
us. Draw nigh unto God and he will draw nigh unto you.

19

Luther defended his novel addition: You tell me what a great fuss the Papists are making because the
word alone is not in the text of Paul. If your Papist makes such an unnecessary row about the word
alone, say right out to him: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so, and I order it to be so, and my will is
reason enough. I know very well that the word alone is not in the Latin or the Greek text, and it was not
necessary for the Papist to teach me that. It is true those letters are not in it, which letters the jackasses
look at, as a cow stares at a new gateIt shall remain in my New Testament, and if all the Popish donkeys
were to get mad and beside themselves, they will not get it out. Cited in John Stoddard, Rebuilding a
Lost Faith, (Rockford, IL: TAN Books) 136-137, by Patrick Madrid, Surprised By Truth, (San Diego, Ca:
Basilica Press) 129

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If you are baptized, you were placed in a state of grace, but then you had to persevere. If
you are in a state of mortal sin, you are in danger of hell. The 10 virgins were a picture
of Christians, not the unsaved. The branch is a picture of a Christian (remember we are
grafted in?) and we dont want to be cut off and cast into the fire, do we? If you
persevere and do what Christ commanded, you have eternal security.if you do not
persevere and do not do what he commands you do not have eternal security. Its not
a happy thought for the once saved always saved Christian who thinks he can make a
decision and then live looselyyou mean we have to work?. Work out your
salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). Now that doesnt sound very Calvinist
does itnor does it sound Pauline as protestants would say; but it most certainly is the
word of St. Paul, and more importantly is the will of Christ.
Lets take a look at some Gospel lessons that Christ gives us.
The ten virgins are most definitely examples of professing Christians. Consider the fact
that they are virgins. Why virgins? There were Jewish women in those days that made
vows of virginity to serve God. Later, Christian virgins would make vows to God, much
like our religious sisters today.
AD 300 Council of Elvira Virgins who have dedicated themselves to God, if
they have lapsed from their covenant of virginity and have been enslaved to the
same libidinous pleasure: if they do not understand what they have perpetrated, it
is determined that communion is not to be given them even at death. But if they
are once for all persuaded, of if their having been tainted was a lapse caused by
weakness of the flesh, let such women as these do penance all the rest of their
lives, keeping themselves away from carnal intercourse, because they would
rather be regarded as lapsed: it is determined that they may receive communion
at death.
Whats the significance of virginal vows? How about our vows to serve the Lord, like
coming to faith in Jesus Christ, and entering into a covenant relationship with Him?
Anyway we have 5 who are ready and 5 who got lazy. Only the five who were ready
were allowed into the wedding.(Matt 25:1-13)
Additional Be Ready passages are: Matt 24:44, Mark 13:32-37, Luke 12:35-40. If
once we are saved and believe we cannot fall from grace by our own will, why worry
about being ready? Wont God save us anyway? Not according to these verses.
The wicked servant who did not invest his talent is cast into outer darknessand a
servant here is a clear picture of someone who is a servant of his Lord Jesus, which
makes him a Christian; but who had fallen away. That servant was cast into outer
darkness. (Matt 25:14-30).
The sin of omission in Matt 25:30-36 is a clear picture of someone being cast into hell for
not doing acts of mercy, ie. not doing works of charity. Jesus doesnt mitigate the
circumstances by excepting those that had trusted in Jesus or accepted Him as savior
and were baptized. There are no exceptions, and since the once saved always saved
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Christian cant find solace with Jesus Christs words they run and fall into their own trap
by conjuring up the terrible heresy by denying mysteries and putting God into a
Calvinistic box, misunderstanding the words of St. Paul, disregarding the warning of
St. Peter.
Then in Matt 24:45-51, the parable of the Faithful and Unfaithful servant, again the word
servant an additional analogy to people professing Christianity, a servant of Christ is
not an unbeliever, and that unfaithful servant will be weeping and gnashing his teeth in
hell.
I have been charged already with having a prideful spirit because I am working my way
to heaven. First of all, I can only do what Christ commands and the Catholic faith
doesnt exhort me to listen to Paul over our Lord, implying that we can develop a
doctrine of soteriology (Salvation) with Pauls words alone, not interpreting them with
the words of Christ, discounting the parables, and developing this doctrine contrary to the
very clear teachings of Christ.20 I must be constant in season and out of season when it
comes to prayer. I know that I could fall into sin if I take my eyes off Jesus. His
sustaining grace upholds me and his mercy crushes my pride and melts my heart. I cry
daily for both, like the Psalmist, and I have found a peace that I have never thought
possible. I used to think how awful it would be to not have the once-saved-always-saved
understanding. I thank God for his mercy.
The next time a protestant asks me if I am sure that I am going to heaven I will say: I
was saved (Eph 2:8,9 RSV), I am being saved (I Cor. 1:18 RSV) and I trust that I will be
saved (Matt 10:22 RSV).
Salvation Outside the Church
The Catholic Church teaches that it is possible for someone to be saved outside of the
church. But too many Protestants do not reciprocate. One thing I have learned is that
God is so much more merciful and loving than I was taught. The Catholic Church refers
to true Christians in the various Protestant distinctives as Separated Brethren.
Catholics for instance, believe that baptism is required for salvation and baptize their
infants, as many Protestants do, but if you are a believers-baptist, you obviously intend
to be baptized when you reach majority and therefore the Catholics see that as the desire
for baptism which can be sufficient for someone who dies before the time. The
Church sees living faith which meets the test of James and the words of Christ in the
Gospels as saving faith; and Protestants living a life that meets the test, are saved. These
are allowances, exceptions, but not the rule. If one knows the truth of the Catholic
Church, then he is required to be obedient and partake of the sacraments.
The Christian church is supposed to be known for its love for one another. Christs
20

It is a popular Reformed Protestant conviction that the red letter edition of the New Testament where
the words of Jesus are highlighted in red is a bad thing to do to the text of scripture. Reformed Christians
today have been taught that the word of Jesus carry no more weight than those of St. Paul, and should not
be considered as having more importance than other parts of scripture.

34

prayer to the Father was that we be one for a testimony. Is the constant war among
Christian brethren the testimony to the unsaved world that Christ intended? Does not
this disunity go back to the Protestant Reformation? I pose a very hard question to
myself and to my Christian brethren. Was Luthers Reformation Christianitys greatest
victory or one of Satans triumphs? What was the outcome? I must admit that I prided
myself as a protestant on being part of historic Christianity; but I had not studied the
history of the Church before the Reformation. I ask again, did God intend 30,000
floundering, ever changing denominations, or one visible church with one visible
authority?

Baptism
This subject must be discussed because it covers 2 areas of contention between different
Protestant denominations and between some Protestants and the Catholic church:
Baptismal Regeneration and Infant Baptism.
Baptismal Regeneration
The Catholic church has always believed in baptismal regeneration, or that you are
regenerated at the time of baptism, or that original sin from Adam and any past sin is
wiped clean. Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists (John Wesley) believe that you are
saved at the moment of baptism.
Titus 3:5 He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of
his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.
John 3:5 unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of
God.
It is imperative that the bible student be honest in his appraisal of the context of
the first 4 chapters of John. Chapter one speaks of Johns water baptism of repentence.
Chapter 2 speaks of Christ changing the waters of purification (jewish baptism waters)
into the symbol of the new covenant (wine). Chapter 3 is the born again by water and
spirit discourse. Chapter 4 Jesus baptizes his disciples and they in turn go and baptize
more disciples.
Acts 2:38 Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the forgiveness of your sins
Acts 22:16 And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins,
calling on his name.
Infant Baptism
The Catholic church has always believed in infant baptism.
Lutherans, Anglicans,
Presbyterians, Puritans and Methodists believe in infant baptism.
Acts 16:15 And when she was baptized with her household
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Acts 16:33 And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds, and
he was baptized at once, with all his family.
Col. 2:11-12 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands,
by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with
him in baptism
Here are some writings from Origen, St. John Chrysostom and St. Cyprian.
244 AD. The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism also
to infants.21
388 AD. For this reason we baptize even infants, though they do not have sins [of
their own]: so that there may be given to them holiness, righteousness, adoption,
inheritance, brotherhood with Christ, and that they may be his members.22
The council of Carthage in 252, condemned the opinion that infants should be withheld
from baptism until the eight day after the birth (Jewish custom for circumcision).
252 AD. Cyprian We all agree infants can be baptized and that infant baptism was
practiced from the first, but exactly when should they be baptized. 23
Soon after the Reformation, splinter protestant groups (eg. Anabaptists) started to reject
these doctrines and now a majority of evangelicals reject these. Do they really think
they can interpret scripture better than these early martyrs? The pagan Roman Emperor
Valerian had St. Cyprian beheaded as a martyr. Origen was tortured and died in prison.
This is just another example of some things being pretty clear in scripture, but because
they dont line up with a particular protestant view, it is either ignored or spiritualized.

Mary
Marys Perpetual Virginity
AD 358 St.Athanasius Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from
the Father and proper to His essence, deny also that He took true human flesh from the
Ever-Virgin Mary24
21

Origen Commentary on Romans [5, 9]

John Chrysostom, Catechesis ad Illuminados Apud Aug., Contra Iul. 1,6,21
23
Cyprian, Epistulae 64 (59), 2
24
Jurgens, Vol 1. p. 330 paragraph 767a
22

36

AD 381 Didymus The Blind It helps us to understand the terms first-born and
only-begotten when the Evangelist tells that Mary remained a virgin until she brought
forth her first-born son; for neither did Mary, who is to be honored and praised above
all others, marry anyone, nor did she ever become the Mother of anyone else, but even
after childbirth she remained always and forever an immaculate virgin.25
AD 400 St. Augustine A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a
Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this O man?.26

Upon receiving the news of her giving forth a son, Mary said, How can this be since I
know no man?. Interesting that she might say this since she had been betrothed to
Joseph.
Why would Mary think it strange that she would have offspring since she was
betrothed? unless Mary had taken a lifetime vow of virginity then she might think it
strange.
Luke 2:36 37 Anna lived 84 years as a virgin after her husbands death. Here is a
woman that lived with her husband 7 years and then 84 years without a husband. She
stayed chaste that long. If she had followed St. Pauls later advice and most Protestants
advice she would have been remarried. But notice, it says that she lived as a virgin.
Maybe she had a good reason to not get remarried; like a vow of chastity perhaps? It is
unclear.
I Cor 7:36
If you are behaving unseemly with your virginthen marry her. Here
this new testament verse cannot mean that a man would behave unseemly with his virgin
daughter and then marry her. It can only mean that he has under his care a virgin,
perhaps a virgin that has given vows of chastity, and he cannot control his desire for her.
Better to marry than burn as the same apostle says elsewhere. This sheds light perhaps on
Anna of Luke 2:36: she may have remained chaste while married to her husband.
Vows of chastity were taken by some Jewish women so they could devote themselves to
God. Numbers 30:3 is a plausible reference.
All early Christians professed of Marys perpetual virginity. Maybe this is why the
Apostles Creed states that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. If she is no longer a
virgin then why still refer to her as virgin?
Then there is the argument of Jesus having brothers. Jews did not differentiate cousins
fro brethren; immediate brother and sister; cousins, near and distant, can all be called
brethren. That being said; look at the evidence of scripture. By collection of all gospel
accounts, we can find three Marys at the foot of the cross.
25
26

37

Jurgens, Vol 2 p. 62 paragraph 1073

Jurgens, Vol 3. p. 30 paragraph 1518

In Matthew and Mark, at the cross we have Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of
James and Joses. And at the tomb, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary(mother of
James and Joses). Earlier in Matt 12:46, James and Joses are called his brethren.
Remember that Jesus told John that Jesus mother Mary was now Johns mother and told
Mary Behold thy Son. Why would he charge John with her care if she had other
children? Wouldnt they get first dibs on caring for her? Could it be that the traditional
belief of her perpetual virginity that the early church fathers and the protestant reformers
(Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Wesley) held was true?
In John 7:3, his brethren tell Jesus to leave and go to Judea. In Jewish custom, only
elder siblings would give advice or admonition. And we ALL know that Mary was
virgin at Christs birth, therefore these brethren were NOT Marys children!
In John 19:25, Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mothers sister,
Mary the wife of Cleophas [and also Alphaeus at a different time] , and Mary Magdalene.
So taking everything into account, we have:
Mary, The mother of Jesus, put in Johns care
Mary, the wife of Cleophas (and also Alphaeus at a different time), mother of
James the lesser and Joses and Salome (who were called Jesus brethren in Matt
12:46); She is also known as the Other Mary
Mary Magdalene - the woman whom had seven demons cast out
Marys sister, the mother of Zebedees children among whom are (Matt 4:21)
James and John - recruited by Jesus to be his disciples. Some bibles
introductory notes to James refer to him as the brother of our Lord. As I have
demonstrated, he is a cousin, but not a brother as we use the term in our time.
I insert something I got from Karl Keating in his book Catholicism and Fundamentalism,
The Attack on Romanism by Bible Christians.
With all this evidence, why are fundamentalists, particularly those most opposed to Catholicism,
so insistent that Mary was not perpetually a virgin? There seem to be two reasons.
One is dislike of celibacy for priests and nuns. They are aware that it is Catholic teaching that
celibacy is to be highly prized, that there is much virtue and much common sense in priests and
nuns giving up the privilege of marriage in order to serve Christ better. They know Catholics
refer to the example of Mary when praising consecrated virginity. So, by undermining her status,
they hope to undermine that of priests and nuns. By claiming Mary did not live her life as a
virgin, they hope to make religious celibacy seem contrary to the gospel.
The other reason concerns Mary herself. In the Catholic scheme of things, she is certainly
different from other women, so much so that she is considered worthy of special devotion (not of
course worship, but of a high level of honor, higher than other saints receive). Her status
accounts for the attention paid her. Fundamentalists think that what she gets, by way of devotion,
is necessarily taken from Christ.

38

This is neither true nor logical, but they nevertheless think devotion to Mary must be discouraged
if proper devotion to our Lord is to be maintained. One way to diminish her status is to show she
was just like other women, more or less, and that can be done in part by showing she had other
children. Their desire to do this tends to make impossible fundamentalists accurate weighing of
the facts. Their presuppositions do not allow them to see what the Bible really implies about the
brethren of our Lord. 27

The Immaculate Conception

When Gabriel came to Mary, he said Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with you.. I
will interject a question here; how full is full? Incidentally, the angel actually said Hail,
full of grace.
Catholics believe that Mary was protected from original sin and remained sinless since
her own conception. They believe that this was part and parcel of her bringing forth God
in the flesh.
The protestant argument that this is unscriptural is from St. Pauls statement, For all
have sinned and come short of the Glory of God and from Marys own Magnificat
where she proclaims I rejoice in God my Savior. First, all cant mean all literally
unless Jesus had sinned, since he is human. Therefore there has to be at least one
exception. Second, Mary needed the Savior to free her from original sin at her
conception.
If you insist that Mary sinned, what sin would you attribute to her? Later I discuss her
title as the New Ark of the Covenant. If the Ark was holy and it held holy objects and
Gods presence, then where does that leave Mary? When Mary bore God in the womb
for nine months, giving Him her flesh, did she have adulterous thoughts? Did she ever
take Gods name in vain? Did she break any of the Ten Commandments? If God made
His own mother, how holy or beautiful would she be? When Gabriel used the Greek
word that literally means made full of grace, why did later translators change it to mean
highly favored?
AD 387 St. Ambrose (baptizer of St. Augustine ) Mary, a Virgin not only undefiled
but a Virgin whom grace has made inviolate, free of every stain of sin.
AD 400 St. Augustine Having excepted the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, on
account of the honor of the Lord, I wish to have absolutely no question when treating of
sins, -for how do we know what abundance of grace for the total overcoming of sin was
conferred upon her, who merited to conceive and bear Him in whom there was no sin?
so I say, with the exception of the Virgin, if we could have gathered together all those
holy men and women, when they were living here, what do we suppose would have been
27

39

Keating, Karl Catholicism and Fundamentalism , p. 288

their answer?If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not I
us. 28

The New Eve

As Eve was the mother of all the living; Mary is the mother of the Church.
AD 175 St Irenaeus Consequently, then, Mary the Virgin is found to be obedient,
saying: Behold, O Lord, your handmaid; be it done to me according to your word. Eve,
however was disobedient; and when yet a virgin, she did not obey. Just as she, who was
then still a virgin although she had Adam as a husband, -for in Paradise they were both
naked but were not ashamed; for, having been created only a short time, they had no
understanding of the procreation of children and it was necessary that they first come to
maturity before beginning to multiply, -having become disobedient, was made the cause
of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary, betrothed to a man but
nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself
and for the whole human raceThus, the knot of Eves disobedience was loosed by the
obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed
through faith.29
AD 210 Tertullian through a Virgin, the Word of God was introduced to set up a
structure of life. Thus, what had been laid waste in ruin by this sex, was by the same sex
re-established in salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel. That
which the one destroyed by believing, the other, by believing, set straight.30

The Ark of The New Covenant

The significant object of the old covenant was the Law, or the Ten Commandments.
Where were the tablets kept? They were kept in the Ark of the Covenant with Aarons
rod and manna from God.
At the Last Supper, Jesus said, This is the new covenant in my blood. In John
where he teaches that we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he had just previously
spoken of the fathers eating manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
As the Law was the object of the old covenant, Jesus (the Word made flesh) is the object
of the new covenant, since he fulfilled the Law; and as manna was promised to his people
28

Jurgens, Vol 3. p 111 paragraph 1794

Jurgens, Vol 1 p. 93
30
Jurgens, Vol 1 p147 paragraph 358
29

40

in the wilderness to keep them alive, Jesus flesh is given to us to maintain spiritual life.
As the Ark of the Covenant bore the objects of that old covenant, Mary the new ark bore
the object of the New Covenant, God the Son.
When the Ark returned to Israel from the Philistines, David asks "How is it that the Ark
of the Lord comes to me?" (2 Samuel 6:9), when Mary comes to Elizabeth, Elizabeth
asks, "Why is this granted unto me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Because Mary is seen to be the New Ark, she is believed to be protected from sin when
she was in her mothers womb. This is called the Immaculate Conception. If this
sounds strange then consider how John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit and jumped
in his mothers womb when Mary visited her. If John was filled with the Spirit in the
womb in order to prepare him in his ministry, then how much more would Mary need in
preparation in the form of her Immaculate Conception, to give flesh and motherhood to
the second person of the Trinity.

Mother of God
If there is one thing that upsets Protestants it is the Marian title Mother of God.
AD 180 St Irenaeus of Lyons The Virgin Mary,being obedient to His word, received
from an angel the glad tidings that she would bear God.31
AD 428 Theodore of Mopsuestia When , therefore, they ask, Is Mary Mother of Man or
Mother of God? We answer Both. The one by the very nature of what was done, and
the other by relation. Mother of Man, because it was a Man who was in the womb of
Mary and who came forth from there; and Mother of God, because God was in the Man
who was born, not in Him in a circumscribable way according to nature, but existing in
Him by the intention of will
AD 725 St John Damascene We proclaim the Holy Virgin the Theotokos (God Bearer),
because it is she who bore God when the Lord truly became incarnate of her. We know
that she is the Christotokos, because she bore Christ. But since the snake-bit Nestorius
abused this latter term to the detriment of the word Theotokos, we do not call her the
Christotokos at all, but look only to the more excellent and call her Theotokos. 32
This really doesnt have to be that difficult. Is Mary the mother of Jesus? Yes. Is
Jesus God? Yes. Then Mary is the Mother of God.
To say that Mary cannot be the
Mother of God would place you in the ranks of the ancient heresy called Nestorianism,
that St. John Damascene refers to. The early fathers were very busy fighting Gnostic
heresies, of which this is one. Nestorius believed that Jesus could not be both God and
31
32

41

Jurgens, Vol 1 p101

Jurgens, Vol 3 p 348

human without being two persons.

As a fundamentalist I never gave this much thought. Because we were taught that we
were made in the image of God, I somehow believed that Jesus had the same body before
the incarnation, which is truly a contradiction to scripture. The Christian Doctrine of the
Incarnation means that he came to take on human flesh, which he took from Mary;
otherwise why the term incarnation? He kept this flesh, sacrificed it and because it was
without blemish (sin) it never saw corruption(decay). Jesus is now in heaven offering
this same flesh and blood to the father as an everlasting sacrifice (thus the perpetual
sacrifice of bread and wine in the ancient mass of the church). So now we should
understand that because Christ was begotten not made, that he like the Father and the
Spirit is God. Therefore he is divine, and he now has His flesh, yet he is still one person.
God forbid that we should deny that Jesus in the flesh is God; and we shall not deny that
Mary is the mother of God. The doctrine of the trinity is understood to represent God as
three persons, not four; and saying that Mary did not give birth to God in the flesh as one
person contradicts that doctrine.
After hearing the tidings of Gabriel, Mary said that all generations would call her
blessed. When was the last time you heard a sermon on Mary or when have you ever
heard a protestant call her blessed?
You ever notice how women in many Christian circles are considered to be second class
citizens? Doesnt this all go back to Eves disobedience? If you remember, after Eve
sinned, God told Eve that the seed of the Woman would bruise the head of the serpent
and that the serpent would bruise his heel.(Gen 3:15) Then later in history we have
Mary noticing the lack of wine at the wedding feast of Cana, and having empathy or pity
for them she tells her son Jesus that they have no wine. In the King James Version,
He replies what have I to do with thee Woman, mine hour has not yet come. This is a
verse that fundamentalists use to show that Mary is being bothersome and that Jesus is
rebuking her. First of all, Jesus would never do that because he would be breaking the
first commandment with promise, of honoring your parents. Other translations have this
passage as Woman, what is this between you and me? Mine hour has not yet come.
In understanding this, one must wonder what is being said, could it be in the same
meaning as the Woman of Genesis 3:15? Or what about when Jesus referred to his
mother as Woman when he gave motherhood of John to her. And then there is the
Revelation of John in Rev 12 where the Woman clothed with the sun and the moon
under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child cried,
travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.And she brought forth a man child, who
was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to his
throne.
At Cana, I believe that Jesus was speaking with Mary more in the dialogue of their
eternal relationship than of Mary being His earthly mother. She is the Theotokos, the
God-bearer. Notice however that Jesus listened to His mother. Do whatever he says
she says to the servants. Now did Jesus go on about His business after rebuking His
mother? No, nothing of the sort. He consents to his mothers request and provides a
42

miracle to grant the simple joy that wine brings to a wedding. Take careful notice that it
was Marys prompting that started the ministry of Jesus.
How many times does the scripture speak of us as believers as being brothers of our Lord
Jesus Christ, our eldest brother. As Jesus called John, the son of Mary, and Mary the
mother of John, and since we are spiritually alive in Christ and are his brethren then Mary
is our Mother and the Mother of the Church.
Now Mary is not to be worshipped the way we worship God (that would be idolatry), but
she is to be loved and honored for her position in the plan of salvation and her position in
the Church. Since God the Son is son of Mary, wouldnt he be displeased if we did not
honor his mother?
It should be great consolation that we have another advocate, a
prayer advocate, like those of the living that we rely on for prayers within our earthly
fellowship. She does not mediate forgiveness of sins, that is only for Jesus as the one
mediator scripture says, but she is a mediator the same as we mediate for each other in
our prayers.
With all of this, it is not strange to see the obedient Virgin Mary as the second Eve. As
Eve was the mother of all living, Mary is the mother of all the redeemed.

Mary, Queen of Heaven

The Assumption

According to Christian tradition, Mary died circa 55 AD. According to Catholic

tradition, her soul and body were taken by Jesus to heaven. Catholics venerate the
saints by keeping relics of their bones. Most apostles and saints are accounted for by
graves or the aforementioned relics, but there are no relics of Mary and no known tomb
holds her body.
Anti-catholics charge that Pope Pious XII invented this new doctrine in 1950 when it was
declared as a true Catholic teaching. But it was only dogmatically declared in 1950, it
had always been believed.
AD 590 St. Gregory of Tours The course of this life having been completed by the
Blessed Mary, when now she would be called from the world, all the Apostles came
together from their various regions to her house. And when they had heard that she was
about to be taken from the world, they kept watch together with her. And behold, the
Lord Jesus came with his angels, and taking her soul, He gave it over to the Angel
Michael and withdrew. At daybreak, however, the Apostles took up her body on a bier
and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold,
again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded
that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoined to the soul, rejoices with
43

the Lords chosen ones, and is in the enjoyment of the good of an eternity that will never
end.
But Mary, the glorious Mother of Christ, who is believed to be a virgin both before and
after she bore Him, has as we said above, been translated into paradise, amid the singing
of the angelic choirs, whither the Lord preceded her.
If one wants to understand the scriptures it is best to approach them as a Jew of Christs
time. Presbyterians will say this is true if one wants to understand why infants should
be baptized. Well the same holds true for all New Testament doctrine. When one
understands that Christ, the Messiah, the King of Kings was a Jew and kept the
commandments perfectly, honoring his mother and father, then a necessary conclusion is
in order.
In eastern tradition the wife of the king was known as the queen. When the king died,
she gained the title of queen mother and saw her son take the position of king. The
new king had all authority but the king always had respect for the queen mother. After
King Davids death, when Solomon was king we read in I Kings 2:19 Bath-sheba
therefore went unto King Solomon, to speak to him for Adonijah. And the king rose up
to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to
be set for the kings mother; and she sat on his right hand. So you can see where this
leads. Jesus, the answer to prophecies of a branch of Jesse, King David, greater than
King David because he is King of Kings, the Lord Jesus, Son of God, and son of Mary,
would honor his mother better than Solomon.
It is the Catholic belief that the Blessed Virgin Mary is Queen of Heaven. Her position
is to pray for the church: her children, who we are. Think of this. Mary is Daughter of
God the Father, Mother of God the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. This is why we
pray the Rosary:
Hail Mary, full of Grace,
The Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art thou among women
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners
Now, and in the hour of our death. Amen.
The first two lines come from Gabriel in Luke. Lines 3 and 4 come from her cousin
Elizabeth.

Along with the subject of the intercession of Mary is the praying to and the intercession
of the Saints.
The saints are considered to be still in communion with us. Does not
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Hebrews speak of the saints as witnesses and Revelations says that they deliver to the
throne of God all the prayers. They are not there to take away any glory but to help us
thru our journey of faith. We do have an example of the saints interceding. In
Jeremiah 15:1, we read Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood
before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people....
Just a thought : Once you die and go to heaven, will you intercede for your children?

Images
Protestants will say that the Catholic worship of images of Mary and the Saints break the
second commandment. There are two problems with this statement. First that it is
worship and that it breaks the second commandment.
It is a sin for a Catholic to worship anyone but God. It breaks the first commandment,
not the second.
Catholics do not worship Mary or the Saints. They do pray to Mary and the Saints for
one purpose. They pray to these people to pray for them, just as we pray for each other.
There are three different numbering systems of the Ten Commandments: Jewish,
Catholic/Lutheran and Protestant.
Jewish numbering System is based on Deuteronomy (Second Law).
1. I am the Lord thy God
2. Thou shalt have no other gods
3. Thou shalt not take the name of God in vain
The rest is the same as the Protestant

The Catholic/Lutheran numbering system is based on Deuteronomy also:

1. Thou shalt have no other Gods
2. Thou shalt not take the name of God in vain
3 8 Same as Protestant
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors house
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife
The understanding is that the second law (deutero second, nomy - law) should be
regarded as the most current, not the first; just as we take the New Covenant over the
Old. Also, Thou shalt have no other Gods and no graven images all read together as
one long sentence in the Hebrew. As far as coveting, there are two different words for
covet in coveting thy neighbors house and coveting thy neighbors wife. This is not
so in the Exodus account. So the Christians took the Jewish numbering system,
combined their 1st and 2nd into one, and then split the Jewish tenth commandment into
two separate commandments. There never was a separate images commandment until
45

the Reformation.
Hillaire Bellocs How the Reformation Happened tells a story that no protestant has
heard. During the Reformation, Protestants, who were affected and demoralized by the
successful Islamic incursions into central Europe, adopted a new fear of images. The
Muslim believes that all images, drawings, paintings are evil. History will show you
that the Eastern Rite of the Catholic church, removed statues from their churches because
they believed that the Islamists were being rewarded on the battlefield because they
believed the Islamist conviction that images were evil. That is why Eastern Orthodox
churches have no statues, only paintings, or what are called icons. The Muslims
captured Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) anyway and pushed all the way to
Vienna, Austria by the 1500s.
The Jews had carved angels on the Ark of the Covenant, palm trees and pomegranates
carved into the temple pillars. Protestants can have all sorts of images, but none of
Christ on the cross or His mother. They can have pictures of their patriotic heroes, but
none of their spiritual heroes who died for the faith and intercede for us now, unimpeded
by the cares of this world.
Politics, Inquisition and Sundry
You must keep in mind that the Reformation was politically charged. Over the early
centuries, the church educated the common people in ways of farming by the setting up
of monasteries. Much of the land that was owned by the church was land that was
reclaimed from the wilds. St. Bernard of Clairveaux was responsible for turning a giant
swamp into a beautiful clear valley, thus the name Clairveaux . In the beginning the
monasteries would rent the land for next to nothing for the peasants to use. Over the
centuries many princes of Europe became envious of the churches wealth. There were
monasteries in all corners of Europe, England and Ireland. By the 1400s, princes
wanted to get their hands on this wealth and the common people were resentful for
having to pay high rents to the church.
The year is 1517. Luther was 21 when he nailed his 95 thesis to the door in Wittenburg,
Germany, in what was more formally known as The Holy Roman Empire, whose first
king was Charlemagne and now had a staunch Catholic emperor, Charles. But he was
weak. The princes under him were strong.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Turks, were at the door of central Europe, already having
conquered the Byzantine Empire(Eastern Rite Catholics), Romania, Bulgaria and
Hungary. The popes had been trying to get the princes of Europe together to push out
the Muslim, but according to history they were too interested in getting rich.
Consequently, the local princes seized the monastery farmland and looted the churches.
Soon after Henry VIII wanted his marriage annulled so he could have a male heir, or so
he said. He ended up leaving the church and started his own. The princes raided the
monasteries and burned them and took the land. Then they charged larger rents. The
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monastic welfare system that supported the poor of England and Ireland was destroyed in
one lifetime.
Twenty years later a 25 year old Jean Cauvin (Calvin) finished his Institutes and actively
recruited rich influential people, promising them the spoils of Catholic wealth. So
France engaged in a 15 year conflict between the common Catholic people and the
Huguenots. The wars ended in a draw. As a Protestant I read of horrible atrocities
committed against the Huguenots but nothing else. My source was Foxes Book of
Martyrs which is one sided. The Huguenot princes exacted quite a toll on the Catholic
people of France. The people almost lost their country and their faith, until St.
Bartholomews Massacre, or at least that is what it is called by protestants. The people
actually orchestrated a very coordinated attack against the protestant Huguenots and
many were killed. The Huguenots were not entirely eliminated from France and that is
why we have individuals like Voltaire, Rousseau, Descarte, Sarte who were the atheistic
philosophers of renown.33
During the wars between Spain and the Muslim Moors, the Spanish wanted to make sure
that the Muslims would not infiltrate the church and the government. So they instituted
the Spanish Inquisition. One of the reasons that Spain did not get embroiled in the
Reformation was because of the wars with invading muslims. The Inquisitions initial
role was to keep muslim infiltrators at bay. It did spill over into other areas. There
was an Inquisition in Rome called the Holy Office but it was separate from the Spanish
Inquisition.
Some Protestant accounts say that the Inquisition was responsible for 95 million deaths.
This is ludicrous, since there was never 95 million people in all of Europe. Apparently
the Inquisition kept very good records and according to records a few thousand people
lost their lives due to the efforts of the Inquisition. But one thing must be stressed,
heresy and witchcraft were capital crimes in both catholic and protestant countries.
Generally, the church would define it and the government would carry out the
punishment. Historical research will show that after the reformation more people died
at the hands of Protestants than by Catholics. Now witchcraft was something that
Protestants sought out much more than Catholics did. According to some historians,
100,000 people in Germany alone were executed for witchcraft by Protestants. Ulrich
Zwingli, a hero of the reformation and the author of limiting the Lords Supper to a mere
memorial, endorsed the drowning of Anabaptists because they wanted believers baptism
(therefore wanting to be baptized again, disregarding their infant baptism). The early
reformers were paedo-baptists and hated the Anabaptist movement. I wonder just how
spiritual these people were who wanted to drown people to teach them a lesson. In1992,
I visited an Anabaptist Museum in Nappannee, Indiana which chronicles this history.
Anabaptists that kept their heritage are today known as Mennonites and Amish.
Foxes Book of Martyrs, written around the 1600s speaks nothing of the protestant
atrocities. It is a narrative of martyrs put to death by the Romans and then those heretics
33

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Hilaire Belloc, How The Reformation Happened (Tan), p. 100-109

that were opposed by the Catholics (Lombards, Albigenses, Waldenses) and then any
Protestants that were put to death. Have you ever heard of English Catholics that were
martyred?
Henry VIII killed everyone that opposed him including Sir Thomas More of renown and
a 67 year old woman whose son (an exiled Catholic Bishop) he couldnt extricate from
France. This woman was the last of the Plantageonets going back 500 years. In
defiance to the tyrant Henry Tudor (VIII), she would not lay her head on the block and
the executioner had to swing wildly at her head until after a number of hits he took her
down.
Later Mary Tudor tried to bring back the Catholic church and killed her fathers
benefactors, earning her the title of Bloody Mary, even though she refused to kill her
illegitimate half sister, Elizabeth, in order to preserve Catholicism in England. She
would die and Elizabeth would take the throne.
Elizabeth was no religious woman, but wanted to be in charge of the church like her
father. She put many Catholics to death, including Mary Queen of Scots, who was the
rightful heir to the throne, since Elizabeth was unwilling to admit that she herself was
illegitimate. The fact is she most definitely was illegitimate. Henry unlawfully put
away his first wife, and took another woman and called her his wife. Children of an
unlawful union are, to put it bluntly, bastards, or if that is too mean-spirited, lets just say
illegitimate.
What I found surprising is that hanging was a common form of execution under
Elizabeth. Hanging in those days was not just that. It came with a few minor details,
like disemboweling and quartering.
The fact is, atrocities happened on both sides.
Sundry Attacks
There are sundry attacks that the protestant makes against the church. Some of them are:
1. Peter was never in Rome
Actually he was. He addresses the reader in his first epistle from Babylon (I Peter
5:13), a code word for Rome. Ancient Babylon was non-existent. Calvin agrees.
So does Clement, 4th bishop of Rome.
2. The apostles didnt think that Peter was a chief apostle, they use Acts 15:6-21
Jerusalem council where Peter stands up to settle an issue and James finishes
the discussion, proving to them that Peter was not the leading apostle. Read it.
James actually states that he agrees with Peter (Simeon).
The Catholic church does not allow the Pope to unilaterally speakhe must
speak with the bishops.
Also, it was Peters shadow that healed the infirmed.(Acts 5:15)
3. Christs flesh cant be in heaven and on the altar at the same time.
This almost doesnt deserve an answer. But I will say that Jesus is God and
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that even though he is in heaven at the right hand of the Fathersomehow, since he
is God I can trust Him at His word. Remember also that his body had divine
properties after the resurrection, and he made reference to that in answer to the critics
in John 6, to paraphrase, If you cant believe that you must eat my flesh and drink
my blood, what will you think when you see my body ascending into heaven.
4. The church says that you are to confess the most intricate and lurid details of
your sin. Take it from a Catholicyou dont.
5. Only God forgives sins. Sure unless he(Jesus) gave the authority to the disciples
and their successors. They physically stand in for Christ. If they forgive, then it
is forgiven in heaven. Jn 20:23 It doesnt mean what it says?
6. The papacy, archbishops and cardinals are not in the Bible. Neither is the word
Trinity
7. Catholics worship statues. No more than you worship a portrait of scenery or a
family member. In early history 1 out of 10 people could read. Statues and
stained glass windows provided teaching lessons. They also help you meditate
on the glory of God
8. Catholics worship Mary. Not the way we worship God, that is sin. We venerate
her, we love her and we petition her for prayers.
9. When Catholics have Mary as a mediator then they take away Christs
mediatorship. If that is so then we should not ask anyone to pray for us. Christ
is our mediator in the role of High Priest as the one mediator scripture states.
10. Mary and the Saints cant hear us. Well, tell the writer of Hebrews 12 that.
Remember the cloud of witnesses.
11. Catholics worship bread and wine. If you were convinced that Christs body
was the wafer and that his blood was in the cup, what would you do? St.
Augustine (an often quoted person by Calvinists) said that to not adore the bread
and wine before we take it is sin. It is his body and blood under the appearance
of bread and wine.
12. Why do Catholics have priests? It comes from the same Greek word presbyter
Priests offer sacrifices (eg. the Mass)read the early fathers.
13. Only Christ is the Head of His Church! Amen! And Peter and his descendents
are charged with the sacramental care of His church on earth with Christs
authority and backing. Matt 16:16-19. Just as Moses and his successors had
teaching authority over Israel; Peter and his successors have been given teaching
authority over the Church.
14. The Catholic Church doesnt encourage scripture reading. Wrong. The
Catechism states that ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ.
15. The Catholic Church chained Bibles and kept them behind bars. True. Up until
a hundred years before the reformation, bibles were copied by hand. Since it
took so long to copy they did not use parchment, which would disintegrate in 3
years. Instead they used vellum, which is lamb skin. It cost the lives of over a
thousand sheep to print one bible. Therefore, on average, the Bible cost 3 years
wages in that day. So such an expensive article worth 3 years wages was not left
open on the pew. Chaining educational books to desks was a common practice in
libraries in those days.
16. People like Tyndale were the first to bring the Bible into native languages. This
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is a terrible lie. There were nearly a dozen German translations of the Catholic
Bible before the Reformation. Other languages were also printed.
17. Catholics burned Bibles. Yes. Especially Tyndales, since there were dozens of
errors on each page. You must remember that it was the Catholic Church that
preserved the Scriptures for us. It was her job to keep it pure. They handed
down the Old Testament which they received from the Apostles and then they
took 400 years to determine which 27 books out of hundreds that could be
canonized and used in the mass, to give us what we call the New Testament. The
Bible belongs to the Catholic Church.

The Church In Its Fullness

The early Christians were the first to coin the term heresy the way we understand it. I
have read that it comes from a Greek word that means to pick and choose. That is
exactly what the protestants are experts at. Each group likes to major in one area and
throw out the rest. The Catholic Church has thrown nothing out. To call Catholics
heretics is to show ignorance twice: misusing the term, and not knowing history.
Keep in mind that only 25% of Christianity has taken place after Martin Luther.
1500 years cannot be thrown out in light of Christs promise to Peter
Remember, the Catholic Church came before the New Testament was written
the Old Testament that was given by the apostles was larger than the one held by
protestants today.
All Catholic doctrines were held right back to the beginning of Christianity
Sacred tradition has 2 forms, word of mouth and written
Sola Scriptura (The Bible Alone) is not biblical and is an invention of man

Conclusion
Has it ever made you a little uneasy to be called Protestant? What kind of feeling do
you get when you think of the word protester. How about in the 1960s when
protesters started protesting the Vietnam war, then the same people protested against the
social norms. They grew long hair, lived immoral lifestyles. Then it moved to
abortion. It was all downhill from there. Reminds me of the Reformation. Protesting
an unjust war may be praiseworthy, much like Luthers original 95 objections to the
abuses of indulgences by many in the church; but when the Church corrected these
abuses, it seemed it wasnt enough and the Reformers, much like the free-love protesters
of the 60s wanted to destroy all that was good and beautiful.
Psalms 2:3 Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.
What does it boil down to? The rebelling against authority.
root of the Protestant reformation.
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And I believe that is the

I have never undertaken anything like this. I have never experienced a spiritual
awakening like this. I have come to realize that I can be part of something that I can
trace back to Christ and there is a small army of bible-believing Christians who have
already made the same journey. I now can take the scriptures pretty much at face value,
I dont have to toss things out in order to buttress a particular protestant distinctive.
On Easter Vigil 2007 I finally received the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus
Christ. This is an amazing thing, to take Christs physical presence into your body.
This is drawing me closer and closer to God in ways indescribable, and because of the
Sacraments infinite spiritual well of grace, I will never exhaust the ever increasing riches
that are there for the receiving. Now I can worship him with my whole being, not just
my mind. Where have I been all of my life? Thank you Lord!
Theres more! I can petition the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints for their
prayers. I can go to confession and hear and experience the absolution for my sins the
way the Lord intended! There is an abundance of grace in the sacraments that
protestants do not have and can not have as long as they resist the teaching of the Church,
the Church that Jesus established and authorized. I have been given an insight of what
good works are and how we are to be merciful as God is merciful to us. We are to treat
each person as though he was Christ. We can now respect and love the men and
women who have taken vows of chastity in order to be fully devoted to the work of
Christ. I can sit in the sanctuary during Eucharistic Adoration and know that Christ is
there in the flesh so I may adore him! And I can trust Mother Church to lead me, feed
me and protect me from error and to show me the way to salvation.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is
seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in
Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy
Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died and was buried.
On the third day he arose again in fulfillment of the scriptures; he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have
no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father
and the son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
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