Help Me Please

[cathoholic_anonymous]

Hello pham,

A couple of months ago an evangelical pen-friend in Japan asked for my address. I know her through the Internet forum of a suppport group I run for young people with autism and related conditions. This American lady is a teacher to autistic students in Japan.

I gave her my address. A lot of people in that support group write to me, so I didn't see anything odd in her request, although I did have an inkling of what was about to occur. I read her blog; I know what kind of church she attends. Today the letter arrived.

A large manila envelope crammed with loving but patronising...misinformation. (I was going to be uncharitable and say 'tripe', but this woman is my friend and I would like her to stay my friend.) She has even included a tract. It is not as bad as a Chick tract, but it is getting that way. And it is longer. She has felt the need to reinforce the message of 'For My Catholic Friends' with twelve pages of A4 (typed 12pt) in her own words. This was a bit heavier than I was expecting. It is also a lot more condescending - she is talking to me as if the soteriology of fundamentalist Christianity should be a complete revelation to me. She also presumes to know more about Catholicism than I do. She has rebuked me for worshipping statues.

Even though I knew it was coming, I still feel...violated. It's odd. This is why, when I evangelise, I follow the maxim of St Francis ("Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words") and wait for people to come to me if they want to know more. As a result, two of my friends from the ASD support group have converted to Catholicism, thanks be to God, and another two on their way. (This woman only knows about one of them, but I am tempted to announce the news about the others triumphantly on my blog. Sadly that would probably get her sending 12-page missives to them, too, and I don't think they would thank me for it.)

My mother has counselled me to just ignore her. She thinks that if I replied I would just get swamped in more letters and tracts and I can't afford that with my exams just round the corner. What should I do? Should I write a reply as soon as my dissertation is finished? Should I send her a copy of [i]Surprised by Truth[/i]? Should I simply pray and let it go?

[Starets]

O my

Well, first of all, I much prefer St. Francis' evangelization method to that of american fundamentalism, with its implied souls quota!

I suspect that your mother is right. You have enough stress right now, given exams and such like. maybe just a polite acknowledgement would be best. A proper refutation could well take twice as many pages. [b]Surprised by Truth[/b] is certainly good, but I would recommend a book called [b]Where is [i]THAT[/i] in the Bible?[/b] instead It is a short roughly duodecimo sized paperback dealing with 45 questions in about 175 pages. Don't expect a great deal of detail per question, obviously, but it might help!

[N/A Gone]

Or you could read thru it, go point by point through the arguments. Ignore the rhetoric and present the arguments here and we can deal with them.

I love apologetics

[thessalonian]

St. Francis made a good point but lets not overdo it. We need to give reason for the hope that is within us (1 Pet 3:15). If there is some humility in this person you at least need to pick out some that you can hit out of the park and knock her down a peg or two. Let her know that maybe she doesn't know as much as she thinks she does. You may not get the satisfaction of her telling you she made some mistakes. But you can plant some seeds that may germinate later in her life and then give it over to God in prayer. That's my advice. Detachment is always key. Don't let these things upset you. She is in ignorance. She doesn't know what is right and her head has t be filled with something so it is anti-catholicism. She truly means well for you I am certain. Smile, and be charitable toward her. Believe me I know how hard that is to do and have not always done it.

Though I do think just sending her SBT is a good route to go also, with perhaps a short letter.

Blessings

Edited April 18, 2007 by thessalonian

[cmotherofpirl]

You can tell her you are a bit busy right now and she will have to wait a bit.

You can take the fist point and address it, the rest will be taken up as time goes by.

You can send her a book [[i]Catholicism for Dummies[/i] comes to mind]

You can invite her to phatmass

[cathoholic_anonymous]

Thank you for your advice, everyone. I'm not sure that I will even bother to reply, as the tract she has sent me is insulting beyond belief. I had to say a prayer of reparation as I read every other page. I will write a response and then decide whether to post it. I may just put it on my blog and let her take the hint.

Here is what I have so far. Please correct me if I have made any theological mistakes or shown temper. Also, could someone find me the precise scripture references for 'I am saved, I am being saved, I will be saved'? I know the names of the books where these ideas appear, but I can't remember the verse numbers.

Dear C,

Thank you for your long letter. I was touched by the effort you had put into it and the kindness of spirit that motivated you to write. However, you were right in what you said in your first paragraph – you don’t know me that well. If you knew me better, you would be familiar with my history, and you would know the reasons why I chose Catholicism. It was a choice, and an educated one at that. Several Evangelical Christians whom I’ve met just assumed that I was brought up in Catholicism, that I wasn’t familiar with ‘Bible Christianity’, and that I needed them to explain to me what I must do to be saved. They are always surprised to learn that I’m extremely familiar with the Evangelical concept of salvation – and that I chose Catholicism anyway. This is presumably because they can’t see why anybody would freely and knowingly choose to be a part of the Catholic Church.

They would be right – if the Catholic Church inside their heads existed in reality. But as Archbishop Fulton Sheen once stated, “There are not a hundred people who hate the Roman Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church.” This sprang into my mind when I opened the tract you sent me and found the author accusing Catholics of praying to statues. I don’t pray to the photo of St Therese of Lisieux that hangs by my bed any more than I pray to the photo of my parents or my best friend. Catholics don’t believe statues to possess any supernatural powers and idolatry is forbidden. The Church also draws a sharp distinction between the use of religious images and their worship. A quick reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Summary of Catholic Beliefs and Doctrine could have cleared up the tract author’s misconception on this point – as could a glance at Exodus 25:18-20, where God commands the Israelites to decorate the Ark of the Covenant with statues of angels. Statues and religious artwork have a place in Catholic worship, but that doesn’t mean that they are the objects of our prayer.

This is just one mistake, but it is indicative of the quality of the booklet. The tract does not represent Catholic teaching. It represents what the author believes Catholic teaching to be, and that is not the teaching that I follow.

The ideas in your own letter are based on the principles of sola scriptura and sola fide. I don’t accept either of those principles, because I see them as contrary to Scripture, the nature of God, ecclesiology, and even plain logic. You wrote: “Vicky, I know that you love the Bible, I know you go to church frequently, I know that you love God, I know that you care about others, and I know that you pray. But…have you been saved?”

My response: “Why are you separating love of God and love of your neighbour from redemption?” When Simon the Pharisee was thinking spiteful thoughts about the woman who had crept in to bathe Jesus’ feet with her tears, Jesus rebuked him with these words:

[quote]“Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”[/quote]

The intriguing ambiguity of this passage caused our Bible study group to spend a long time discussing whether love precedes forgiveness, or forgiveness precedes love. We concluded that the two are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to say which comes first. Both are inspired by God’s grace; this is all I need to know. But the symbiotic relationship between love and forgiveness is denied by the contractarian nature of the theology that you advocate – the idea that ‘being saved’ is like a business deal drawn up between you and Jesus, independent of the rest of your life. Not only is this unscriptural, it is illogical. The Catholic Church describes salvation as ‘the most excellent work of God’s love – the merciful and freely-given act of God which takes away our sins and makes us just and holy in our whole being’. If we accept that salvation is God’s love at its most sublime, there is no way it can be detached from our actions, prayer, or relationships with others…because God’s love holds all those things in being.

Secondly, growth in love is not a one-off event. It is a journey. Any married couple or pair of good friends would say the same thing. The wedding may mark the point where you begin your married life, but there would be something wrong if your relationship didn’t progress beyond that point. It is the same with salvation. The Bible makes this clear:

I am saved.
I am being saved.
I will be saved.

The passages you quoted to try and show that salvation is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence all deal with the crucifixion itself, and not with its effect on us. All Catholics will quite happily agree that the crucifixion only happened once. But while an earthquake always has a fixed epicentre at a precise moment in time, it gives birth to a ripple effect. The cross, ‘the still point in a turning world’, makes itself felt in our lives in much the same way. For Catholics, the redemption is a transformative process – and this is where we begin to differ sharply from Protestants.

As I have already written, Catholics define salvation as a merciful gift ‘which takes away our sins and makes us just and holy in our whole being’. Calvin and Luther, the two main figures in the Protestant Reformation, didn’t agree that salvation has any transformative effect on the soul of the person. Luther wrote that even the redeemed Christian is ‘a dung heap covered with snow’. According to this approach to salvation, the blood of Christ is the snow used to disguise humanity’s inherent wickedness. When God looks at Christians, He ignores the dung beneath. He looks at the covering of blood – the snow – and accepts the Christian for that reason alone.

But there is a logical flaw here. God can’t look at something intrinsically evil and label it good. That is contrary to His nature and the divine order that He has established in the universe. According to Catholicism, the blood of the cross isn’t just theatrical makeup used to disguise our flaws. We believe that mankind is tarnished by sin, but nothing we can do can change the fact that we were made ‘in the image and likeness of God’. We are tarnished, yes, but not totally depraved as Calvin taught. Instead, we are on a journey to total holiness. God will bring us into Heaven when we are ready to be there from the inside out.

For us to achieve this state of holiness, God has blessed us with His sacraments. The word sacrament literally means ‘sign of grace’. All the sacraments have their origins in the Bible. When some Protestants look at Catholic believers receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, going to Reconciliation, being blessed and anointed when they are seriously ill, and participating in the other sacraments, they see a group of people who are frantically trying to buy God’s approval through the use of certain procedures. But when I participate in the sacraments, I am not giving anything to God. It is the other way round. He is giving everything to me.

[thessalonian]

THAT IS AN EXELLENT RESPONSE. My vote. SEND IT!

[cathoholic_anonymous]

It's nowhere near finished yet. I have to refute [i]sola scriptura[/i] and finish my defence of the sacraments. Twelve pages is a lot to answer. However, it isn't as formidable as it looked in the beginning - the bulk of her letter consists of quotations from Scripture that don't really have any connection with what she is trying to say.

[Budge]

Your friend tried, I have witnessed to friends and sent them letters and packets.

I am glad she was thinking of you. Can you at least realize she has concern for you on a certain level even if you disagree?

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote]Can you at least realize she has concern for you on a certain level even if you disagree?[/quote]

Yes. This is why I began my letter with following words:

[i]Dear C,

Thank you for your long letter. I was touched by the effort you had put into it and the kindness of spirit that motivated you to write.[/i]

I am grateful that she is concerned for me and I have asked God to bless her for it. But as I also wrote in my first paragraph, she doesn't know me that well - partly because she has never met me in real life, and partly because ever since she found out that I was Catholic she hasn't been looking at Vicky, but at a Roman Catholic soul that needs winning.

[Starets]

Great response even so far, and a charitable one at that. One quibble though. At no point did Luther ever say that the Christian was a "dung heap covered in snow". Maybe that line could be changed to say something like "the famous saying attributed to Luther...". Here is a link to a blog written by Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong, where he discusses this very point. Dave's pretty thorough and I hae confidence in his analysis:

[url="http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2005/10/has-martin-luthers-snow-covered.html"]The most famous thing that Luther never said [/url]

[thessalonian]

[quote name='Budge' post='1250684' date='Apr 20 2007, 08:09 PM']Your friend tried, I have witnessed to friends and sent them letters and packets.

I am glad she was thinking of you. Can you at least realize she has concern for you on a certain level even if you disagree?[/quote]

I think she already did a marvelous job of that. Perhaps you didn't read her reply so far.

[cathoholic_anonymous]

Thank you, Staretz. I enjoyed that article very much. I am going to chase up some of the authors mentioned in the footnotes.

I showed my friend's letter and the tract to the student chaplain today. (I'm now back at university.) He said that I shouldn't give any response, but just send a simple card that says, "Thank you for writing to me and thank you for praying for me." He believes that my friend is the kind of person who is unlikely to see me as anything other than a poor lost soul with the IQ of a teaspoon. "You haven't got time to respond to all this now that your exams are so close. In any case, it wouldn't be fruitful."

Father is a very shrewd and prayerful man. I trust his judgement. I will also pray for guidance when I go to Confession in a few minutes.

[Budge]

I have Catholic friends I know well that I know from college--thats a long time ago for me, I am talking to them about the gospel. One is very liberal, proabortion, belives all religions lead to God.

Too bad you and her dont share a very close friendship but Im glad you realized she cares about you.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Budge' post='1251754' date='Apr 21 2007, 01:05 PM']I have Catholic friends I know well that I know from college--thats a long time ago for me, I am talking to them about the gospel. One is very liberal, proabortion, belives all religions lead to God.

Too bad you and her dont share a very close friendship but Im glad you realized she cares about you.[/quote]
Budge, please do us the favor of showing your friend that his/her views are incompatible with Catholicism. Thanks.