(I stumbled across this looking for something else online. This is the best quick run-down I've ever seen. The guy who wrote it suggested printing this up in a brochure format so it's ready to hand out as needed. I thought of you, M, and your preparation for the coming onslaught of questions following your Tiber crossing. Hope this helps.
Thank You…
Thank you so much for your concern for my soul. I deeply appreciate it, however with all due respect and all charity, the fact is that in spite of your misunderstanding, we Catholics are Christians, and part of the same Christianity that the early Apostles practiced. Our faith is the same one that began with Our Lord Jesus Christ and has endured for 2,000 years.
We Catholics believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God; that God is a Trinity that consists of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that we are saved by a personal relationship with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. We are “born again” and we do our best to live out that relationship by producing fruit worthy of repentance. None of us are perfect; we’re still all too human , but we confess our sins to God in obedience to the scriptures and make a moment-by-moment effort to be the best Christians that we can.
There are differences between us…They are the result of a division that occurred about 500 years ago called the Reformation. Prior to that we were all Catholics, a name which is Greek for universal and was used for all Christian churches and can be verified by the letter of Ignatius, the Bishop of the church of Antioch that he wrote to the church at Smyrna in about 107 AD. (Remember Antioch, the church in Acts 11:26 where we were first called Christians to begin with?) This name stuck in order to differentiate between the church of Christ and other heretical groups such as the Gnostics.
The difference between us is simple and fundamental. The core of the differences are the Protestant doctrines called “Sola Scriptura” (meaning Scripture Alone) and “Sola Fide” (Faith Alone). The first has to do with the verifiable fact that the early Christians relied on verbal tradition until the 4th century when the Council of Carthage settled the matter of the canon of the Bible with the 73 books that consist of the 46 books of the Alexandrian text of the Old Testament (also known as the Septuagint,) which was in Greek (not Hebrew) and the 27 books of the New Testament. As a result, the Apostles encouraged the early church to hold fast to the traditions that had been taught to them either by word or letter. Keep in mind that the last verse of Saint John’s Gospel says that not all that Jesus said and did is written down and that the entire world could not contain all the books if they were. Sacred Tradition helps us properly interpret the Word of God. It is not the “traditions of men” that Jesus condemned, since it in no way sets aside the laws of God, but along with the Bible confirms what they mean and helps to guide us into right doctrine.
2nd Thessalonians 2 :14 “Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.”
2nd Thessalonians 3 :6 “And we charge you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received of us.”
The other is the doctrine that we are saved by “faith alone” and that our works have no merit before God. The fact is that a breakaway priest named Martin Luther developed both doctrines on his own authority, ignoring the fact that no one in the 1500 years of Christian history had believed any such things. In fact Luther had the audacity to add the word "alone" to Romans 3:28 in his German translation of the Bible so that it said that we are saved by faith alone, knowing full well that the Greek text does not say that at all. In fact, the only place where the words “faith” and “alone” are used together is in James 2:24 where it says, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” He also removed 7 books from the canon of the Old Testament and 4 from the New, including Jude, 2nd Peter, James, and Revelation. Most of the confusion between Catholics and other Christian churches is “trickle-down effect” of these doctrines.
This is just a brief overview, but rest assured that if you are willing to do some research into authentic Catholic writings like the Catechism of the Catholic Church you will find that there are very good reasons for what we believe and practice. You can also check out authentic Catholic teachings online at Catholic.com and Vatican.va (The official Vatican Website!). For the truth about the Catholic faith, ask us, we have nothing that we want to hide. We do not attempt to proselytize people though we will readily dialog with anyone and try to answer any questions they may have concerning Catholicism. Our focus is on insuring that everyone hears the Gospel.
The harvest is indeed plentiful, so let’s be about Our Father’s business.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Hmmmm...
Our priest shared something I found interesting during his Christmas homily; he said that the name Bethlehem means city of bread. Jesus, the Bread of Life, was born in the city of bread. I wonder if people connected any of the dots while He was still walking on Earth. My crazy mind finds little things like this interesting. The use of names and their layers of meaning in the Bible. The Old Testament types and foreshadows fulfilled in the New Testament. Father mentioned the tree in the Garden of Eden and the tree used to make the manger, which leads to the tree used to make His cross. I just love seeing all the ways God points towards what He's going to do from the very beginning. Eve's disobedience brought us under the curse of sin and death, while Mary, the New Eve, through her obedience brings us Jesus to free us from that curse. The tree in the Garden grew fruit that would give the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge Eve was willing to die for. By contrast the tree on Calvary held the embodiment of all knowledge. The fruit of the first tree brought death; the death of the second tree brought life. Looking at, smelling, or touching the fruit isn't what brought sin into the world; eating it was. Jesus says we must eat His flesh in order to have eternal life. Hmmm....both death and life entered the world on a tree, and to receive either requires the consuming of the fruit of that tree. Coincidence? Am I reading too much into this? Tell me what you think.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Sacrament of Reconciliation
Catholic confession has been made into a caricature and for most of my life I bought into the misconception. On Christmas Eve God, in His matchless mercy, blew my lingering false notions out of the box. The day before, our sweet little 9 year old told me he wanted to make his First Confession before Mass because he had "sins on his soul". How much sin can a 9 year old have, really? But, bless his heart, it was important to him that he make his confession before receiving the Eucharist. We hadn't had a chance to carefully go over an examination of conscience or the mechanics of confession because it was so spur-of-the-minute, but he wasn't about to be deterred. He walked into the Blessed Sacrament chapel and closed the door behind him while I sat and prayed for him, then the door opened and another little boy walked out. He looked an awful lot like our son and was even wearing his clothes, but there was something very different about him. His eyes met mine and never wavered as he walked over to me wearing the sweetest smile I've ever seen. His eyes were swimming as he stopped and smiled at me, then threw his arms around me and just held on tightly. He pulled back and smiled into my eyes again before hugging me once more and kneeling to pray. He seemed to float for the rest of the day and kept telling us how good he felt inside. It was beautiful.
Monday Father was going to hear confessions before the Christmas Vigil Mass, so we made sure we were there early enough to make our confessions before the crowds arrived. Matt and I were going to be serving as Eucharistic Ministers and it was important to us that we'd each made a good confession before Mass. This would be my First Confession since I was just baptized in October and I wasn't really sure what to expect. I knew it wouldn't take me long. I'd only had two months worth of "garbage" to sift through and nothing mortal that needed addressing. I don't do drugs. Ever. I don't get drunk. Ever. I don't cheat on my husband, or even think about it. Ever. I don't swear. Ever. I don't steal or lie or wish people dead. Ever. (There are many people I've wished would move far, far away...but I never wish them dead.) The sins I wanted to confess probably seem pretty trivial to some people, but they're areas of weakness that I continually fall in and I need more of God's grace to avoid the temptations to sin. But I digress...I entered the room and knelt at the screen and told Father that this was my First Confession so I'd need him to help walk me through it. As I made my confession, even though my list of sins would probably seem trivial to others, I was overcome by a sense of sorrow that I wasn't anticipating. For the first time in my life I truly felt heartbroken by the realization that I'd let my God down. I've felt disappointed and frustrated by my own weakness, but not heartbroken about what it does to God. As I wiped my eyes and quietly knelt there Father softly chuckled and said "You long to live in a perfect world, don't you?" What?!? This is his response to my transparency and heartbreak?? "Yes, Father, I do!" I responded. To which he said, with another slight chuckle, "My child, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until Jesus comes again." My priest laughed at me! He heard my first confession and he laughed at me!! But this is how God works with me. He allows circumstances to be less than ideal so there's no room for me to question whether or not I emotionally manipulated an experience. When the Holy Spirit spoke through Father and said "Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace." I felt a release in my spirit. I can't explain it, but I felt it. And it left me feeling like I was floating. My capacity to love seemed somehow expanded and I wanted to dance before Jesus. I wanted everyone I saw to know how deeply Christ loves them. It was wonderful!
I've prayed and sought Christ's forgiveness for my sins on a fairly regular basis throughout my adult life but I'd never before *felt* truly forgiven, even though my head told me I was. The Sacrament of Reconciliation truly is a gift from God and one of the ways Christ comes to personally interact with us. It was the best Christmas gift of all!
Monday Father was going to hear confessions before the Christmas Vigil Mass, so we made sure we were there early enough to make our confessions before the crowds arrived. Matt and I were going to be serving as Eucharistic Ministers and it was important to us that we'd each made a good confession before Mass. This would be my First Confession since I was just baptized in October and I wasn't really sure what to expect. I knew it wouldn't take me long. I'd only had two months worth of "garbage" to sift through and nothing mortal that needed addressing. I don't do drugs. Ever. I don't get drunk. Ever. I don't cheat on my husband, or even think about it. Ever. I don't swear. Ever. I don't steal or lie or wish people dead. Ever. (There are many people I've wished would move far, far away...but I never wish them dead.) The sins I wanted to confess probably seem pretty trivial to some people, but they're areas of weakness that I continually fall in and I need more of God's grace to avoid the temptations to sin. But I digress...I entered the room and knelt at the screen and told Father that this was my First Confession so I'd need him to help walk me through it. As I made my confession, even though my list of sins would probably seem trivial to others, I was overcome by a sense of sorrow that I wasn't anticipating. For the first time in my life I truly felt heartbroken by the realization that I'd let my God down. I've felt disappointed and frustrated by my own weakness, but not heartbroken about what it does to God. As I wiped my eyes and quietly knelt there Father softly chuckled and said "You long to live in a perfect world, don't you?" What?!? This is his response to my transparency and heartbreak?? "Yes, Father, I do!" I responded. To which he said, with another slight chuckle, "My child, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until Jesus comes again." My priest laughed at me! He heard my first confession and he laughed at me!! But this is how God works with me. He allows circumstances to be less than ideal so there's no room for me to question whether or not I emotionally manipulated an experience. When the Holy Spirit spoke through Father and said "Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace." I felt a release in my spirit. I can't explain it, but I felt it. And it left me feeling like I was floating. My capacity to love seemed somehow expanded and I wanted to dance before Jesus. I wanted everyone I saw to know how deeply Christ loves them. It was wonderful!
I've prayed and sought Christ's forgiveness for my sins on a fairly regular basis throughout my adult life but I'd never before *felt* truly forgiven, even though my head told me I was. The Sacrament of Reconciliation truly is a gift from God and one of the ways Christ comes to personally interact with us. It was the best Christmas gift of all!
The Liturgical Calendar
I was asked how the Liturgical calendar has played into our celebrations of Advent and Christmas and I have to admit, rather sheepishly, that it didn't this year. Having not come from a liturgical church background I'm still not up to speed on the Liturgical calendar and it's symbolic colors and dates. I do notice the changing vestment and banner colors and I'm aware that the white for Christmas symbolizes newness; but understanding the calendar and teaching it to our children is something I'm just now beginning to do. We successfully followed through with our Advent wreath, for the first year ever, and I plan on working on Jesse Tree ornaments to help deepen our understanding of Advent next year. But even without fully grasping all the liturgical symbolism, this was by far our most peaceful Christmas as a family.
The celebration of the birth of our Lord has always been deeply meaningful to us, but there was an extra layer of meaning this year as we celebrated our first Christmas in the Church. After Mass on Sunday our youngest kids realized we could celebrate Mass on Monday and Tuesday as well, and started clamoring for "3 days of Mass in a row". (Sidebar: we've attended church as a family every week since our kids were born. Depending on the children's program at our "home" church in each town, the kids displayed varying degrees of enthusiasm about attending each Sunday, as is true with most kids. But since we first began attending Mass almost exactly one year ago, their enthusiasm has only grown. They're becoming little Catholic Mass freaks! If one of the younger kids isn't acting out part of the Mass, one of the others is singing or humming one of the liturgical songs. It's great!)
Matt and I have both been trained as Eucharistic Ministers and were asked to assist Father during the Christmas Vigil Mass. Nothing could have prepared us for the tangible presence of Christ up at the altar after the Consecration. The best way I can describe it is to say that it felt like my soul was trembling. I wanted to lie prostrate and just worship Him. To hold the chalice and pronounce "The Body of Christ!" to each fellow believer, offering them the cup of Christ's Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity was humbling in the extreme. The sense of grave responsibility as my hands wrapped around the chalice, and the spiritual connecting of souls as each person looked in my eyes and agreed "Amen" before receiving His precious blood. Yes, this Christmas was so much more meaningful for us.
The celebration of the birth of our Lord has always been deeply meaningful to us, but there was an extra layer of meaning this year as we celebrated our first Christmas in the Church. After Mass on Sunday our youngest kids realized we could celebrate Mass on Monday and Tuesday as well, and started clamoring for "3 days of Mass in a row". (Sidebar: we've attended church as a family every week since our kids were born. Depending on the children's program at our "home" church in each town, the kids displayed varying degrees of enthusiasm about attending each Sunday, as is true with most kids. But since we first began attending Mass almost exactly one year ago, their enthusiasm has only grown. They're becoming little Catholic Mass freaks! If one of the younger kids isn't acting out part of the Mass, one of the others is singing or humming one of the liturgical songs. It's great!)
Matt and I have both been trained as Eucharistic Ministers and were asked to assist Father during the Christmas Vigil Mass. Nothing could have prepared us for the tangible presence of Christ up at the altar after the Consecration. The best way I can describe it is to say that it felt like my soul was trembling. I wanted to lie prostrate and just worship Him. To hold the chalice and pronounce "The Body of Christ!" to each fellow believer, offering them the cup of Christ's Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity was humbling in the extreme. The sense of grave responsibility as my hands wrapped around the chalice, and the spiritual connecting of souls as each person looked in my eyes and agreed "Amen" before receiving His precious blood. Yes, this Christmas was so much more meaningful for us.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Home At Last!
Almost three years ago my wonderful husband and I inadvertently began our journey into the Roman Catholic church. Had we known at that time where this path would lead we would have turned around and run in the opposite direction. But our loving Father, aware of our ignorance of and biases towards His church, allowed us to continue on for some time blissfully thinking we were gaining information with which to help our "confused" Catholic friends discover the truth and freedom of Protestantism. I will never stop praising Him for leading us so slowly and gently. We now understand what so many others before us meant when they said they've "come home". What follows is the letter we sent to our family and friends briefly synopsizing our journey in the Lord Jesus Christ's Church.
Dear Family and Friends,
Deb and I are writing this letter to let everyone know of a momentous decision that we have made. We have decided to join the Catholic Church. We understand that this will be difficult for many of you to accept, much less understand. This decision, though, has not been made hastily, nor without the potential ramifications prayerfully considered.
As most of you know, Debbie and I had been convinced for several years that the Bible was very clear in its teachings about artificial birth control. About 2-½ years ago we read a book by a former Protestant pastor detailing his journey into the Roman Catholic Church. We were shocked to find that the Catholic Church was the only Christian denomination that has firmly held to what we had seen as a very clear Biblical mandate. Any denomination that has existed as long as the Catholic Church has is bound to end up being right about at least one doctrine, so our agreement with this particular doctrine didn’t send the slightest tremor through our solidly-built Protestant foundation. We began researching the teachings and beliefs of the Catholic Church from Vatican approved sources in an attempt to discover where this highly intelligent, yet clearly confused, pastor misstepped. There is a plethora of “authoritative” teaching on Catholic doctrine in most book stores, but the only way to know what the church really teaches is to read what she writes to her own followers. To our shock and dismay though, we found that Catholic doctrine lines up perfectly with scripture and looks nothing like what we thought it did. Our understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches had been based on nothing but misconceptions and misunderstandings. Debbie has always been anti-Catholic and jumped in with both feet to prove the inaccuracies in the Catholic teachings. As we read and studied we looked up countless Protestant arguments for the various Catholic claims, and time and again the arguments fell flat in the face mounds of clear historical and Biblical evidence. We both had to admit that we had been operating under many misconceptions and in all fairness should give the Catholic Church a more honest look. Even considering such an idea sent tremors through what we considered our “immovable Protestant foundation“. We have since spoken with life-long Catholics, former Protestant Catholics and former Catholic Protestants. We’ve read countless books written by both Protestants and Catholics, dug deeply into the Bible and spent hours in prayer.
After several months of taking this approach we realized we were trying to understand what the first Christians believed by seeking out the opinions of people, rather than going straight to the sources themselves. We discovered an amazingly rich treasure trove of Christian faith in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, those followers and contemporaries of Christ’s Apostles, and our foundation really began to shake. In reading the writings of the early Christian leaders we saw clearly that their beliefs and practices were very different from ours on many crucial points of doctrine. We were stunned by how “Catholic” the Early Fathers were. Our reading of Church history had always begun at the Reformation. It had never dawned on us that we were neglecting the first 1500 years of history. Why is it that we seldom, if ever, delve past the mid 16th century when studying church history? Everything in our historical, religious education began at the time of Luther and focused on the undeniably heinous abuses being practiced by many of the Catholic bishops at that time. We were very familiar with the Pope’s un-Christian response to Luther’s Thesis and the ensuing chaos that resulted from Luther’s unwillingness to recant his position. There is no doubt that reform needed to take place within the church; over the years many evil men had held positions of leadership for no other reason than to garner personal power and wealth. Luther certainly had every reason to be outraged at what he witnessed, as do we all. But, to our surprise, we discovered that there were many godly leaders within the church, who were equally outraged by the many abuses and were actively working, through much prayer and networking to bring about the necessary reform. God was not separated from this church we’d never understood. The writings of Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Iraneus, and others shone a light on the continuity of doctrinal fidelity from the time of Christ to the present within the Catholic church. Despite the best efforts of several bad, even evil, priests, bishops, and popes the core doctrines of the church had remained untouched for nearly two thousand years. We couldn’t dismiss that as coincidence. In Matthew Jesus promised to preserve His church and said that “the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.“ God’s supernatural protection had clearly been at work preserving the doctrines of this church. When we traveled back to the second through seventh centuries our “solid” foundation split wide open and Deb and I both knew we were heading to Rome.
Throughout our studying we saw, for the first time, that the cornerstone of every religion or denomination is authority. We’d always claimed and wholeheartedly believed that the Bible alone was our sole authority; but as much as we tenaciously clung to that essential Evangelical Protestant belief, we had already seen its problems. That the Bible is an inerrant, inspired, authoritative source of communication from God to us is without question. The problems we’d seen were in the interpretation of that Holy communication. Being in the military has afforded us opportunities to see and experience so much more than we otherwise would have been able to. We have spent time worshiping with and inquiring about countless different Protestant denominations and saw first-hand how sadly unfulfilled is Christ’s Gethsemane prayer for the unity of His believers. We routinely dismissed the seriousness of the disunity reflected in the tens of thousands of Christian denominations by stating that the body of believers is diverse and requires diversity in worship to meet the various needs. We insisted that the only thing that really matters is a belief in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and it’s efficacy in our regeneration. Beyond that, everything from styles of worship to practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit are merely window dressing. Minor points that shouldn’t be majored on at the expense of disrupting our unity. But we weren’t able to reconcile the instructions from Paul (in Romans , I Corinthians, and Philippians) for believers to be of “one mind” with all the divisions. In His Gethsemane prayer Jesus repeatedly prays for our total unity. Not just unity in purpose, but complete oneness as He and the Father are one. Over the years we’d both became increasingly uncomfortable with the practice of finding a church. Moving to a new town required weeks of spiritual reconnaissance as we visited church after church and read each one’s Statement of Faith. We checked out what ministry programs they offered, what the worship music was like, and most importantly we scrutinized the preacher’s messages to see if his interpretation of scripture was in agreement with our own. The latter was done without any conscious pride or arrogance, but that was our bottom line. Does this preacher’s and church’s theology line up with our own? If so, we rejoiced that “the Lord had led us to our new home church”; if not, we continued our search. We didn’t realize how all about “us” it had become. Programs that fit our family, religious curriculums we agreed with, music we liked, a blend of people we were comfortable with, a preacher who interpreted the Word the way we did. Heaven help our Baptist preacher in Texas if he stood up one week and announced that he’d received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and had been graced with the gift of tongues! Or our Pentecostal preacher in New York if he announced that after fasting and prayerful study of scripture he’d determined that the gifts of tongues, prophecy, and healing were no longer valid gifts in the church, but were only intended for the First Century growth of the church! If our pastor was to preach something we felt ran contrary to our personal interpretation of scripture and the congregation as a whole didn’t ask him to resign, we would have left that church to seek one that wasn’t afraid to speak the “truth”. The truth according to Matt and Debbie Rose, though. We found the fact that two spiritually mature, discerning Christians could prayerfully come to two different conclusions about specific points of scripture disconcerting. If my Lutheran friend believes in the supernatural regenerative powers of the waters of baptism absolutely necessary for salvation, and my non-denominational friend believes that baptism is merely an outward sign of an inward change and not a necessary act , who’s right? We couldn’t dismiss this as one of the “minor” points that divide denominations; this is a salvation issue. So who’s right? Book stores are full of books written by the most brilliant theological minds in history, some of them espousing very divergent theologies. Again, who’s right? Does it matter? Our perfect, loving Father was very specific in His instructions to Israel about how He wanted to be worshipped. He chose the day, the location, the order of the sacrifices and prayers and the situations in which to offer each one, even the clothes His ministers were to wear. He obviously knows how He wants to be approached, but we’d found ourselves approaching Him in the way that felt the most comfortable to us, assuming that all that mattered was that we came. We discovered that several of our basic beliefs were less than 600 years old! Imagine how shocked we were to realized that for the first 1400 years of Christianity certain of our key beliefs were not accepted by the followers of Christ. Some even unabashedly shot down as heresy by the Early Fathers.
As we went back to the writings of those first Christians and read again what was professed in the earliest faith statements, we began to work our way forward and found a continuity of teaching and beliefs that clearly connected early church to that of Rome. It was almost like connecting the dots in a puzzle. We were amazed to see that over a nearly 2000 year span of time not a single “doctrine” of the Church had been changed or omitted, regardless of the occasional less-than-stellar intents of those in leadership. Each and every doctrine has been more fully developed, and at times clarified as needed, as the Church has matured; but not one has been altered. Considering the degree and variety of doctrinal changes that have marked Protestantism these past 500 years, that’s astounding! We could find no other explanation than divine intervention . The fulfillment of Christ’s promise to preserve His Church.
We come to the end of this part of our journey convinced that the Roman Catholic Church is what Jesus set up. We believe that the Gospel of Matthew clearly shows that Jesus placed Peter in a position of leadership over all of the other Apostles and the Church as a whole. In time Peter became known as the Bishop of Rome and his successors have continued in that Christ given authority, as is well documented in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. We have come to believe that this Christ given authority has been passed down through the last 2000 years and currently resides in the person of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. This authority gives the Catholic church a stability and order that has enabled it to stay true to the doctrines that Christ put forth two millenniums ago.
The doctrine that has been the most troubling, frightening, and ultimately most satisfying and fulfilling is that of Transubstantiation, the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, Jesus is exceptionally clear as he introduces the disciples to this crucial teaching. The writings of the Early Fathers as far back as the first century AD testify to this belief being paramount to early Christian theology. When we opted to take Jesus’ words at face value, suddenly Paul’s strong admonition to the church in 1 Corinthians 11 made perfect sense. How could we sin against the body and blood of our Lord, and eat and drink judgment on ourselves unless Jesus meant exactly what He said in John 6. Deb and I have come to understand that this directive is fulfilled through the miraculous transformation of the bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Christ. The beauty of this teaching has drawn us like no other; and the reality has fundamentally transformed our family.
We understand that this change in our lives will seem completely out-of-the-blue for most of you. This has been a long, 2-½ year journey for us, but one we felt we needed to take slowly and completely on our own with the Lord. We deeply love and respect so many of you and did not want our desires to please any of you to influence us. Our initial, nearly paralyzing fear of losing relationships should this path lead where it appeared to be heading, has been replaced with a peace that doesn’t come naturally to people-pleasers like us. This has been a deeply personal, and at times very emotional, journey with the most amazing outcome. We are humbled beyond words to be called His children, knowing we could never deserve what He chooses to shower on us. Deb and I feel very secure in the Lord’s leading in this decision. We are more than willing to dialogue with any of you and will gladly attempt to answer any of your questions. As confusing or frightening as you may find this decision, please be assured that our love for Jesus our Savior, and our trust in his sacrificial death for our salvation has only been strengthened. His Word, which we both have always passionately loved, is even more alive and beautiful to us now.
In Christ’s Redemptive Love,
Matt and Debbie
Dear Family and Friends,
Deb and I are writing this letter to let everyone know of a momentous decision that we have made. We have decided to join the Catholic Church. We understand that this will be difficult for many of you to accept, much less understand. This decision, though, has not been made hastily, nor without the potential ramifications prayerfully considered.
As most of you know, Debbie and I had been convinced for several years that the Bible was very clear in its teachings about artificial birth control. About 2-½ years ago we read a book by a former Protestant pastor detailing his journey into the Roman Catholic Church. We were shocked to find that the Catholic Church was the only Christian denomination that has firmly held to what we had seen as a very clear Biblical mandate. Any denomination that has existed as long as the Catholic Church has is bound to end up being right about at least one doctrine, so our agreement with this particular doctrine didn’t send the slightest tremor through our solidly-built Protestant foundation. We began researching the teachings and beliefs of the Catholic Church from Vatican approved sources in an attempt to discover where this highly intelligent, yet clearly confused, pastor misstepped. There is a plethora of “authoritative” teaching on Catholic doctrine in most book stores, but the only way to know what the church really teaches is to read what she writes to her own followers. To our shock and dismay though, we found that Catholic doctrine lines up perfectly with scripture and looks nothing like what we thought it did. Our understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches had been based on nothing but misconceptions and misunderstandings. Debbie has always been anti-Catholic and jumped in with both feet to prove the inaccuracies in the Catholic teachings. As we read and studied we looked up countless Protestant arguments for the various Catholic claims, and time and again the arguments fell flat in the face mounds of clear historical and Biblical evidence. We both had to admit that we had been operating under many misconceptions and in all fairness should give the Catholic Church a more honest look. Even considering such an idea sent tremors through what we considered our “immovable Protestant foundation“. We have since spoken with life-long Catholics, former Protestant Catholics and former Catholic Protestants. We’ve read countless books written by both Protestants and Catholics, dug deeply into the Bible and spent hours in prayer.
After several months of taking this approach we realized we were trying to understand what the first Christians believed by seeking out the opinions of people, rather than going straight to the sources themselves. We discovered an amazingly rich treasure trove of Christian faith in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, those followers and contemporaries of Christ’s Apostles, and our foundation really began to shake. In reading the writings of the early Christian leaders we saw clearly that their beliefs and practices were very different from ours on many crucial points of doctrine. We were stunned by how “Catholic” the Early Fathers were. Our reading of Church history had always begun at the Reformation. It had never dawned on us that we were neglecting the first 1500 years of history. Why is it that we seldom, if ever, delve past the mid 16th century when studying church history? Everything in our historical, religious education began at the time of Luther and focused on the undeniably heinous abuses being practiced by many of the Catholic bishops at that time. We were very familiar with the Pope’s un-Christian response to Luther’s Thesis and the ensuing chaos that resulted from Luther’s unwillingness to recant his position. There is no doubt that reform needed to take place within the church; over the years many evil men had held positions of leadership for no other reason than to garner personal power and wealth. Luther certainly had every reason to be outraged at what he witnessed, as do we all. But, to our surprise, we discovered that there were many godly leaders within the church, who were equally outraged by the many abuses and were actively working, through much prayer and networking to bring about the necessary reform. God was not separated from this church we’d never understood. The writings of Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Iraneus, and others shone a light on the continuity of doctrinal fidelity from the time of Christ to the present within the Catholic church. Despite the best efforts of several bad, even evil, priests, bishops, and popes the core doctrines of the church had remained untouched for nearly two thousand years. We couldn’t dismiss that as coincidence. In Matthew Jesus promised to preserve His church and said that “the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.“ God’s supernatural protection had clearly been at work preserving the doctrines of this church. When we traveled back to the second through seventh centuries our “solid” foundation split wide open and Deb and I both knew we were heading to Rome.
Throughout our studying we saw, for the first time, that the cornerstone of every religion or denomination is authority. We’d always claimed and wholeheartedly believed that the Bible alone was our sole authority; but as much as we tenaciously clung to that essential Evangelical Protestant belief, we had already seen its problems. That the Bible is an inerrant, inspired, authoritative source of communication from God to us is without question. The problems we’d seen were in the interpretation of that Holy communication. Being in the military has afforded us opportunities to see and experience so much more than we otherwise would have been able to. We have spent time worshiping with and inquiring about countless different Protestant denominations and saw first-hand how sadly unfulfilled is Christ’s Gethsemane prayer for the unity of His believers. We routinely dismissed the seriousness of the disunity reflected in the tens of thousands of Christian denominations by stating that the body of believers is diverse and requires diversity in worship to meet the various needs. We insisted that the only thing that really matters is a belief in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and it’s efficacy in our regeneration. Beyond that, everything from styles of worship to practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit are merely window dressing. Minor points that shouldn’t be majored on at the expense of disrupting our unity. But we weren’t able to reconcile the instructions from Paul (in Romans , I Corinthians, and Philippians) for believers to be of “one mind” with all the divisions. In His Gethsemane prayer Jesus repeatedly prays for our total unity. Not just unity in purpose, but complete oneness as He and the Father are one. Over the years we’d both became increasingly uncomfortable with the practice of finding a church. Moving to a new town required weeks of spiritual reconnaissance as we visited church after church and read each one’s Statement of Faith. We checked out what ministry programs they offered, what the worship music was like, and most importantly we scrutinized the preacher’s messages to see if his interpretation of scripture was in agreement with our own. The latter was done without any conscious pride or arrogance, but that was our bottom line. Does this preacher’s and church’s theology line up with our own? If so, we rejoiced that “the Lord had led us to our new home church”; if not, we continued our search. We didn’t realize how all about “us” it had become. Programs that fit our family, religious curriculums we agreed with, music we liked, a blend of people we were comfortable with, a preacher who interpreted the Word the way we did. Heaven help our Baptist preacher in Texas if he stood up one week and announced that he’d received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and had been graced with the gift of tongues! Or our Pentecostal preacher in New York if he announced that after fasting and prayerful study of scripture he’d determined that the gifts of tongues, prophecy, and healing were no longer valid gifts in the church, but were only intended for the First Century growth of the church! If our pastor was to preach something we felt ran contrary to our personal interpretation of scripture and the congregation as a whole didn’t ask him to resign, we would have left that church to seek one that wasn’t afraid to speak the “truth”. The truth according to Matt and Debbie Rose, though. We found the fact that two spiritually mature, discerning Christians could prayerfully come to two different conclusions about specific points of scripture disconcerting. If my Lutheran friend believes in the supernatural regenerative powers of the waters of baptism absolutely necessary for salvation, and my non-denominational friend believes that baptism is merely an outward sign of an inward change and not a necessary act , who’s right? We couldn’t dismiss this as one of the “minor” points that divide denominations; this is a salvation issue. So who’s right? Book stores are full of books written by the most brilliant theological minds in history, some of them espousing very divergent theologies. Again, who’s right? Does it matter? Our perfect, loving Father was very specific in His instructions to Israel about how He wanted to be worshipped. He chose the day, the location, the order of the sacrifices and prayers and the situations in which to offer each one, even the clothes His ministers were to wear. He obviously knows how He wants to be approached, but we’d found ourselves approaching Him in the way that felt the most comfortable to us, assuming that all that mattered was that we came. We discovered that several of our basic beliefs were less than 600 years old! Imagine how shocked we were to realized that for the first 1400 years of Christianity certain of our key beliefs were not accepted by the followers of Christ. Some even unabashedly shot down as heresy by the Early Fathers.
As we went back to the writings of those first Christians and read again what was professed in the earliest faith statements, we began to work our way forward and found a continuity of teaching and beliefs that clearly connected early church to that of Rome. It was almost like connecting the dots in a puzzle. We were amazed to see that over a nearly 2000 year span of time not a single “doctrine” of the Church had been changed or omitted, regardless of the occasional less-than-stellar intents of those in leadership. Each and every doctrine has been more fully developed, and at times clarified as needed, as the Church has matured; but not one has been altered. Considering the degree and variety of doctrinal changes that have marked Protestantism these past 500 years, that’s astounding! We could find no other explanation than divine intervention . The fulfillment of Christ’s promise to preserve His Church.
We come to the end of this part of our journey convinced that the Roman Catholic Church is what Jesus set up. We believe that the Gospel of Matthew clearly shows that Jesus placed Peter in a position of leadership over all of the other Apostles and the Church as a whole. In time Peter became known as the Bishop of Rome and his successors have continued in that Christ given authority, as is well documented in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. We have come to believe that this Christ given authority has been passed down through the last 2000 years and currently resides in the person of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. This authority gives the Catholic church a stability and order that has enabled it to stay true to the doctrines that Christ put forth two millenniums ago.
The doctrine that has been the most troubling, frightening, and ultimately most satisfying and fulfilling is that of Transubstantiation, the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, Jesus is exceptionally clear as he introduces the disciples to this crucial teaching. The writings of the Early Fathers as far back as the first century AD testify to this belief being paramount to early Christian theology. When we opted to take Jesus’ words at face value, suddenly Paul’s strong admonition to the church in 1 Corinthians 11 made perfect sense. How could we sin against the body and blood of our Lord, and eat and drink judgment on ourselves unless Jesus meant exactly what He said in John 6. Deb and I have come to understand that this directive is fulfilled through the miraculous transformation of the bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Christ. The beauty of this teaching has drawn us like no other; and the reality has fundamentally transformed our family.
We understand that this change in our lives will seem completely out-of-the-blue for most of you. This has been a long, 2-½ year journey for us, but one we felt we needed to take slowly and completely on our own with the Lord. We deeply love and respect so many of you and did not want our desires to please any of you to influence us. Our initial, nearly paralyzing fear of losing relationships should this path lead where it appeared to be heading, has been replaced with a peace that doesn’t come naturally to people-pleasers like us. This has been a deeply personal, and at times very emotional, journey with the most amazing outcome. We are humbled beyond words to be called His children, knowing we could never deserve what He chooses to shower on us. Deb and I feel very secure in the Lord’s leading in this decision. We are more than willing to dialogue with any of you and will gladly attempt to answer any of your questions. As confusing or frightening as you may find this decision, please be assured that our love for Jesus our Savior, and our trust in his sacrificial death for our salvation has only been strengthened. His Word, which we both have always passionately loved, is even more alive and beautiful to us now.
In Christ’s Redemptive Love,
Matt and Debbie
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