Writing A Letter

[BG45]

Alicymary, CoffeeCatholic is indeed right. You're not being dense at all, heh, even Father the first time I met him assumed I was a fallen-away Catholic at first.

When did I become Episcopalian?

philothea, thanks! I hope they take time to read it as well, and if not, I tried. But yeah, it's funny you quoted what you did; I took a break after I started getting snarky there.

Brother Adam, yes I've heard hehe. I can think of at least three off the top of my head, including one from my own state, which is kinda cool. Thank you though for the welcome home and all it entails; thank you also for the compliment. As for who receives this, if it's the secretary it may be destroyed or gossiped into circulation; if it is the pastor it will never again see the light of day from his office, if it is someone else snooping through the office (not unheard of) then again it will probably be gossiped about. At least though, the gossip will be closer to the truth if I take the time to explain this all; and I promised my mother that since I'm far better at expressing myself in words than speaking, I would explain to her on paper. This is also going to be used for my father, to try to explain this decision to him was not one I made lightly; especially in the light of his hatred of Catholicism. (He's quite the Templar nut...I played Assassin's Creed once and he told me not to while he was home, because he didn't want me killing Templars, that I was a traitor.)

Edit: The letter should be finished tomorrow; I don't think I have the proper energy to devote to it tonight.

Edited September 26, 2008 by BG45

[princessgianna]

'BG45'

let me just first to say you have guts!!!! It is so cool that you are willing to risk all for the pearl in the field! i can't even imagine how hard this is for you and family and church members! May God bless you for your efforts!
You are in my prayers!
Pax~
princessgianna

[BG45]

Thanks PG.

Now I believe I owe you all the rest of the letter, just completed.

[quote]Next up is the foam at the mouth knee-jerk reaction when most of us think of Catholicism, and that is the topic of Mary. How one young Jewish woman can cause so much dissension is unfathomable at times, until one accuses the Roman Catholic Church of worshipping Mary as a goddess unto herself; which is far from the truth.

Mary herself would say what is to be said of her in later years in the set of Scripture known as the Magnificat. In the Gospel of Luke, in Luke 1:46-55 it says, “And Mary said: ‘My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me – holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.”

Martin Luther would back Mary’s own words in his Explanation of the Magnificat, which he penned in 1521. In that work he stated, “One should honor Mary as she herself wished and as she expressed it in the Mangificat. She praised God for his deeds. How then can we praise her? The true honor of Mary is the honor of God, the praise of God’s grace…Mary is nothing for the sake of herself, but for the sake of Christ. Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God.”

Then in the Gospel of John, John tells of how our Lord passed His mother into the care of the beloved Disciple. John 19:26 states that, “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is you son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Christ gave His earthly mother into the care of his Disciples, and He gave His Disciples into the care of His mother; in a sense He made her into the mother of all believers. This view can also be supported through Scripture.

Mary’s role in this sense can be seen in both the beginning of the infallible Word of God and in the end of those same sacred texts. In Genesis 3:15 we are told by the author, widely believed to have been Moses, that, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” Interestingly there are only two women in the Bible who are referred to by the title “woman”, Eve being the first, and Mary being the second.

In the New International Version this seems to clearly point to Eve, however in other versions where we are closer to the original text in translations the word “he” in crushing the serpent’s head is replaced by a “she”. Enmity between her children and the serpent, between the believers and the forces of the devil; enmity which has been shown in the beginning, and enmity that is shown in the end in Revelation 12:1-5, “A great and wonderous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.”

We can not deny that the only man whom God the Father will allow to rule this entire world is none other than Christ Jesus. Just as we can not deny that, we can not deny that He was born of a virgin named Mary; that she is theotokos, the Mother of God by simple virtue of bearing Christ. Yet what does Mary do that we Protestants all shake with anger at demand of us? She demands of us the same thing she told the servants at the wedding in Cana when she interceded on behalf of the hosts of the wedding; the same thing she said in John 2:5 right before Christ’s first miracle, “Do whatever he tells you.”

With this letter of resignation I come to the final object of what I feared amongst the Roman Catholic Church, the ultimate test of whether or not it is a true Christian faith, or the greatest lie ever told by the devil. I speak of course of the “Blessed Sacrament” that many accuse of being idolatrous, the Eucharist. Which of course I found myself going, “Where is that in the Bible.”

Our first stop then will be the Gospel of John, in John 6:47-79, “’I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’

“Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.’ He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.’

“From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. ‘You do not want to leave too, do you,’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

“Then Jesus replied, ‘Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!’ (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)”

It struck me when I was reading John 6 once more how so many left Him over something symbolic. If it were a mere symbol, then why would one leave? After all, as we know from Pslam 27:2’s statement of, “When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall,” that the symbolic meaning of devouring flesh in the Old Testament is to slander someone. Do we slander the Christ by proclaiming his flesh and blood to be a mere symbol?

In 1 Corinthians 10:16 I found to my chagrin that Paul makes a similar rhetorical question, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” An interesting choice of words in his rhetorical statement as well, given that the root word of the Lord’s Supper is a synonym for Thanksgiving, and that word is “Eucharistia” in the Greek and Latin, or in its modernized vernacular form, Eucharist.

Paul goes on to give an answer to his own rhetorical question later in 1 Corinthians 11:27-32, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.”

To quote one of the Early Church Fathers, Saint Ignatius in his letter to the Smyrnaeans, section seven stated, “From Eucharist and prayer they hold aloof, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in His loving kindness raised from the dead. And so, those who question the gift of God perish in their contentiousness. It would be better for them to have love, so as to share in the resurrection.” He goes on to state, “Shun division as the beginning of evil.”

One might think that this idea of a Eucharist took centuries to develop, but that is not the case as witnessed in Paul’s own writings, and this brief excerpt from the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans from 110 A.D. Indeed, by reading through some of Dr. Hahn’s works and my own occasional notes, it is laid out clearly in the Old Testament and the New in the form of Passover.

It was Passover at the time of the "institution of the Eucharist" as the Catholics put it, or just Communion/The Lord's Supper as we put it.

In Exodus Chapter 12 we see the beginning of this, as it is the story of Passover. That the Lord spoke unto the Israelites, through Moses and Aaron, that to be spared the wrath of the Plague of the Firstborn, they must sacrifice a lamb and use the blood to paint the doorways. Just about every Christian knows this story somehow, however an oft overlooked section is where God tells them that for this sacrifice, they must also eat of the lamb that has been slain, in Exodus 12:7-23 we read, “Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover.

’On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

’This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD -a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do.

’Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.’

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, ‘Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.’


Note how demanding the Lord is in this sacrifice to stay His wrath. He tells the Israelites not only to spread the blood, but with what it is to be spread. He tells them how to eat the sacrifice, how to prepare the sacrifice, how the sacrifice must be honored through the generations to come. Jesus was an observant Jew of course, and we know due to the Gospels that Christ was celebrating the Passover during his last week on this earth.

But is God always so demanding in terms of sacrifice? Well, since sacrifice is the way that the Jewish people were atoning for their sins, yes it could be quite demanding. We see such sacrifices throughout the book of Genesis; Noah, Cain and Abel, Abraham…and the list goes on. Unless God spoke differently, the sacrifices were always carried out in roughly the same ritualistic manner, the building of a stone altar on which to present the slain animal as a repentance of sorts for sins; in Passover the Lord established a set time of sorts for the most important of the sacrifices until the coming of the Christ which would in due time be carried out in His temple.

The temple, interestingly enough was not chosen at random on some spot through a whim of a single man. It was, as Second Chronicles Chapter Three, verse thirty-one says that it was built on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had first appeared to David. Mount Moriah might also sound familiar from the story of Abraham, where in Genesis 22:1 1-15 we’re told that, “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’
’Here I am,’ he replied. Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’

“Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.’

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’ ‘Yes, my son?’ Abraham replied.

‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’
Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together.

”When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’
’Here I am,’ he replied.
’Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’

”Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.’

”The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, ‘I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’

The Lord calls upon Abraham to sacrifice his only son in order to appease the will of God, a sacrifice so great that only he could do so because it was directly commanded of him. Isaac, we see, is even forced to carry his own wood, whilst remaining unaware that he is the sacrifice that is to be given. Because Abraham was faithful, he is given a ram to be sacrificed in the stead of his one and only son. The Lord provided the sacrifice, as He would again later for all mankind; yet in this case, the Lord lays out very different requirements from the standard sacrifice rituals, a portent of the True Sacrifice to come.

Another interesting case of sacrifice being different from the “normal” as it were is that of Melchizedek. Hebrews Chapter Seven makes a few interesting parallels between Melchizedek and Christ, including sacrifice and titles; in Hebrews 7:1-3 it states, “This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, his name means ‘king of righteousness’; then also, ‘king of Salem’ means ‘king of peace.’ Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.”


The King of Salem is an interesting title in that it means King of Salem and sounds self explanatory until one thinks about the fact that Salem is later known by the name of Jerusalem. The Scripture also points out that King of Salem is also exchangeable with the title King of Peace. It goes on to compare Melchizedek to Christ, saying that the High Priest to come would be the Son, whom would not need to sacrifice animals, and that like Melchizedek, He would not be of the tribe of Levi; which of course was well known for its priests! This is well demonstrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan when the Leviite walks by without aid and the scandal such a part of the story would cause amongst the audiences of the day.

Yet when the time comes for Passover, Jesus is still sacrificing an animal. Why? Because He is an observant Jew at the time, and is not pushing Himself in the faces of people as it were that He alone is the ultimate and final sacrifice. Nor does He reveal this at first to His disciples, especially not when they, as observant Jews are renewing their Covenant with God.

In John 19:14 it states that when Christ was handed over to Pilate, it was the sixth hour of the day of preparation of the Passover. This time would better be known to Jewish readers of the era as the time that the lambs were beginning to be slaughtered by the Priests in the thousands. Christ is the lamb of God. Christ is the sacrifice that has been brought forth to be slaughtered.

In John 19:36, we are told that ‘These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken,"’. The most common citation of this Scripture is to match the prophecies made of the Messiah, and in my own opinion this is rightly so. However, if taken in the context of the Passover Sacrifice, we can look to Exodus 12:46, which demands that none of the Passover lamb’s bones be broken as part of the sacrifice.

This seems to be reaching a bit until we read that Christ is given his last drink on a sponge attached to a Hyssop branch. In Exodus, 12:22, previously quoted, we read that Hyssop branches are what is prescribed by the Law for the sprinkling of the lamb’s blood.

If Christ is the new lamb to be sacrificed for the sins of mankind, and one of His titles is The Lamb of God, then why would we not partake of His flesh and of His blood? The entire Passion and Crucifixion ties into the Passover sacrifice, and part of that sacrifice, is to eat the body of the lamb that has been slain for the sins of those who offer it; in this case God gave His one and only Son as Abraham had been willing to offer Isaac, and allowed for His Son to be sacrificed…for no lamb could take away sins the way the Lamb of God can eternally.

To switch gears some, allow me to share my first encounter with this “piece of bread”. To do so I must first tell the tale of a French Archbishop; he was presiding over a Mass at the famed Notre Dame Cathedral and told a story of how three young men entered into the church. It was apparent that they did not believe in the Lord, and two made the third a wager to go confess a list of false sins, to show just how old, doddering, and stupid the priest was on duty; to show that it was all bunk.

So the third young man took this bet. He confessed his false sins. Then he was given a penance by the old priest, he was to go to the crucifix and look upon the body of our Lord, to look upon the suffering He went through for us, and the young man was to say three times, “all this you did for me, and I don’t give a beaver dam”.

The young man went to his friends to collect his money, but they told him he had to do the penance first. He approached the crucifix, suddenly unsure about what he was doing, and the words began to form, “All this you did for me and…” the young man stopped. He just broke down into tears, unable to say the rest. The Archbishop then smiled spryly at the gathered parishioners and softly spoke, “I was that young man.”

So to was I in going to encounter the Eucharist. I went to disprove it, to show that a simple piece of bread could hold no sway over me, that it was nothing more than idolatrous filth. I went in to the only Perpetual Adoration Chapel in our state, Blessed Margaret of Castello in Shinnston, and sat down. I prayed, I read the Bible. I thought to myself, “this is nothing, nothing at all. I win, the Catholics lose.”

Then as I prepared to declare my victory and leave I looked up, a small statue of Mary to the side, pointing as they all do if you study Catholic architecture, to her Son -- in this case to the Eucharist that was on display. I looked at that wafer of bread, and I felt the Holy Spirit as strongly as I had when I was saved when I was little, as when I decided to go forward for baptism when I was sixteen; and with the presence of the Holy Spirit came the half memories of Scripture, the weight of a long and rich history.

In that instance, I lost to Christ once more. I am fond of saying that God loves irony: The film TheDaVinci Code and its accompanying book brought a friend to Christ, Socialist nations deriding capitalism lost almost all their money recently when Lehman Brothers failed, Congressmen get forced into an emergency landing by a mechanical failure on their flight to go vote on an aviation safety bill, the Crusades caused many deaths but opened Europe up to the idea there was a whole world outside their borders. These examples are but a handful I can think of; and one I find to be most amusing in a way, the idea to disprove Catholicism on my part stemmed from a Catholic form of prayer at a Baptist summer camp, and eventually led me to decide to convert to Catholicism.

Thus I suppose, my letter of resignation comes to an end. If you have continued to read this far you have my thanks, as it means I did not just explain everything in a bare bones manner for nothing; but if you did not, then it does not matter.

I wanted to explain myself and my decision, not as a flight of fancy, but as a grounded decision that was decided upon by looking deep in Scripture and in prayer. Thank you for helping to raise me in the Christian faith, for helping to give me a great appreciation for Scripture and the marvelous truths it unveils to us about this world and the next.

Thank you for being there in trying times and good times alike. Thank you for providing me with a spiritual home all of these years, a place I can always feel safe in. Thank you for providing me the teaching and friendship to first come into my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Thank you for allowing me to question the Scriptures along with my peers.

Thank you for reminding time and time again worship is not a static experience. Worship of the Lord our God can be anywhere, anytime, doing anything. We have all been blessed to have this opportunity before us to know Christ Jesus as our Lord and as our Savior; while I have thanked you time and time again, I thank Him most of all. For we are nothing but His children, and we can not come to salvation except through Him.

May God continue to bless you,
*name omitted*[/quote]


10,690 words, 14.25 pages in Word. Easier to read full version found at:
[url="http://mindmirage.blogspot.com/2008/09/letter-of-resignation-to-my-church.html"]http://mindmirage.blogspot.com/2008/09/let...-my-church.html[/url]

Edited September 26, 2008 by BG45

[MissyP89]

You're gonna set the world on fire someday.

[BG45]

Thanks heh...right now I'm glad to have what amounts to a written statement of faith.

[philothea]

I really do hope someone (besides us) reads it!!

[BG45]

Thanks Mom did at least and said most of it went over her head, but she backs me. With the caveat "you really shouldn't send it until you're sure you won't back out".

[CatherineM]

[quote name='BG45' post='1665517' date='Sep 27 2008, 10:56 PM']Thanks Mom did at least and said most of it went over her head, but she backs me. With the caveat "you really shouldn't send it until you're sure you won't back out".[/quote]

I put off my resignation letter to the CWL group at my old parish until tonight for the same reason. I thought I was going to lose my nerve. I was also just plain chicken. The president is one of those older, cranky kind of women, and I'm not looking forward to having my head taken off.

[BG45]

Catherine, I can't blame you from the description...heh.

I went to my first RCIA meeting, just a short informal intro. For informal everyone else was dressed up.


First RCIA meeting
I was walking, talking on the phone to Missy about telling dad, etc. How I had this dream at kneeling at the Consecration. How when I was praying on how to tell dad that "This is Home" came on the radio as it has every time I've wondered. Then I felt like I was in someone's way, and I turn around, Father Casey was walking behind me a bit to the right.

"Hi Father"
"Hello, see you over there!"

We had 14 people, a little over half are Catholic already just doing it to have a refresher! I'm by far the youngest, with most of the others marrying in, so to speak.

It was a good meeting, we discussed the format, introduced ourselves and such. Then there was essentially forced mingling...we couldn't tell the nuns no after they made us snacks.

Yes, Fr.'s eyes seemed to widen a bit when I said I'd been to Adoration before. Most of them however have me on going to Mass though. Mostly stories like "I went to Mass for X number of years before converting" and I'm like, "I read my way in...and then went to Eucharistic Adoration."

Overall a fun first class. He joked my resignation letter would be good weekend reading.