Journey Home - Former Church of Christ Minister - Marcus Grodi with Bruce Sullivan - 09-13-2010

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program this is the beginning of our 14th year of this program Wow that's a lot of Converse of the church reverts those that have come back to the church thank you for faithfully watching this program all these years what we do on this first well this is merely first money the mother first live show of the month is we use more of your phone calls and emails than the general journey home program and for that I invite back a former guest whose story he's already told on the on the air if you want to hear the full description of my guest story into the church it's available on EWTN comm you can you can find least the audio version of the old program but our guest tonight is Bruce Sullivan a good friend former Church of Christ minister he's come down from Kentucky where he lives with his family as I said Bruce's story is on ewtn.com wanna know the full version or in his book which I'll mention a little bit later but again your phone calls and emails are essential for tonight's program so if you'd like to give us a call 1-800 two two one nine four six Oh outside North America two oh five two seven one twenty nine eighty or you can send us an email at journey home at ewtn.com and just let me remind you Bruce is a former Church of Christ minister and and now al a Catholic and so that will prime the pump for any of your questions that have to deal with his journey of faith the difference between where he came from where he is now maybe what he's found since he's become Catholic and give us a call Bruce welcome back to the journey home program thanks for having me it's good to have you back as I mentioned a bit ago we want to make sure I mention your book Christ in his fullness which is coming home Network published for you but I want reason I mentioned that is often when people talk about the journey of Protestants of the katha Church they're thinking Protestantism Catholicism but Protestantism isn't that unified and so your unique book talks about the journey of a Church of Christ minister the unique issues that a Church of Christ person would go through and also the unique barriers that they would encounter in thinking about the Catholic Church but I'm going to ask you to give a quick summary of that just a reminder audience of your journey basically I was raised a Southern Baptist when I came to college at Auburn University here in Alabama War Eagle I ended up joining the Churches of Christ I was attracted to their plea about what they consider to be nondenominational Christianity upon graduation from Auburn I went to a Church of Christ school of preaching with my heart set on being a missionary particularly to Latin America to reach out to Catholics who I thought were not really Christians and that specifically your your yeah Genda my agenda because I was going to save the Lost the save the law but well the lost Catholics I mean tomato tomahto you know but basically what we did was some years after graduating from the seminary I came across a Catholic family that I tried to convert and in the course of our tussling back and forth they gave me Carl Keating's Catholicism and fundamentalism to read and which really kind of rocked my applecart turned it over and got me thinking about things I hadn't thought about before particularly pertaining to the issue of authority which was the primary driving force in my conversion particularly canon how did I know as a Church of Christ preacher that there were really just 27 letters in the New Testament why not 29 and two are missing and or why not 25 and two shouldn't be there that issue of Canon was something that really kept me awake at night but then a crucial juncture my conversion to the Catholic faith though was the first ever coming home network's retreat in Steubenville Ohio at Franciscan University in December of 93 the reason I said was crucial I'd studied the Catholic faith then for several months intellectually trying to pick it apart trying to analyze it trying to come up with the right answers but conversion is not just an intellectual pursuit grace is involved and at Franciscan University at that coming home network retreat god gave me some graces that I needed when I attended Mass for the first time without the intention of critiquing it but of observing it and asking myself questions you know what if what the Catholic Church says about what's happening here is actually happening what if that man the priest is who they say he is what if what they say is happening Christ coming down on the altar of body blood soul and divinity well that's true and those questions resulted in a confirming miracle in my conversion because I was rendered speechless that's what people who know me well said that that's quite miraculous and I left that conference knowing that one day become Catholic and then thanks be to God about a year and a half later I was received into the Catholic Church in 1995 and my wife Gloria who was a lifelong Church of Christ a member in fact at least five generations of Church of Christ in her background received four years later in 1999 and my oldest daughter now just finished up two years at Franciscan University of Steubenville which has become a very important institution in our family you again the audience give me your phone calls and email so give us a call here there's so much I'd love to talk to Bruce about we could talk for hours and hours on things because that's former clergy both of us we've seen it from both sides and we see that the church sometimes the struggles in the church often I get questions from Catholics about well what is it the Protestants believe about this or Protestants believe about that yeah and that's a hard question to answer talk about that a bit from your particular sliver of Protestantism yes in other words a Protestant is not a Protestant is not a Protestant in fact some Protestants deny they are Protestants in the Church of Christ they deny they are a Protestant denomination in fact one of the most famous tracks that they circulated in their history is called neither Protestant Catholic nor Jew because they were just Christians the Christians you read about in the Bible and there are certain similarities in the Church of Christ to the Catholic faith and certain dissimilarities the similarities kind of acted like a bridge between my evangelical upbringing and eventually becoming a Catholic for example the Churches of Christ that taught me that baptism is for the remission of sins that's a very Catholic idea but it's not a very Baptist idea the Church of Christ taught me that Christ established a visible identifiable institutional church that too is a very Catholic idea but not a very Baptist idea they also taught me that justification was not by faith alone but by faith working through love again a very Catholic idea but not a very evangelical idea and so there are many things about the Catholic about the Churches of Christ are very similar to the Catholic faith that kind of acted like stepping stones but where they departed I've always thought of the Churches of Christ being like a watered down Catholicism in a sense yes baptism is for the remission of sins but Churches of Christ limited strictly to the total submersion of a penitent believer someone who's got attained age of reason well that's the Catholic Church does not believe that baptisms are limited only to submersion and neither did the early church for that matter the Catholic Church does believe in a visible identifiable institutional church but the Churches of Christ think that their it but they came along 2,000 years too late basically or 1,800 years so there were similarities and dissimilarities and like you say you can't lump all Protestantism under one umbrella yeah and I would say that and I think this is something you brought up big in your book if I remember that the issue of the sacramental sacrificial aspect of worship or the Eucharist was not a part of the Church of Christ theology at all so right not really it's something that they had it's kind of interesting how you can have the sacraments or at least the appearance of them you know baptism with water or have the Lord's Supper with bread and fruit of the vine etc and see that yes the Lord gave you physical signs but still miss the sacramental dimensions that that know what the Bible shows us is something that that these signs are not just visible signs they're efficacious signs they actually accomplish what they signify in Churches of Christ kind of see that with baptism but they missed it with the Lord supper and you know the priesthood and all that let me ask you I it's one thing to ask you what a Church of Christ folk thought about Mary or Blessed Virgin Mother okay I mean that's it that's a question but how would you as a Church of Christ minister have responded if I said that even though the church hasn't declared it to be Jew the church believes that Mary is the meteor attrex and co-redemptrix that would have sounded like blaspheming and na because it's not it's not it's not understood for example how do you view the word Co does does Co meant in terms of equal or as Co meant in terms of like cooperator and and so working together with and in the Church of Christ you asked how do we think about Mary well not very much she wasn't given a whole lot of attention to things on that but I want to make note of I remember when I was still preaching the Church of Christ but studying the Catholic faith one time during Advent I had a chance to fill in for a little country church of christ at which i gave a sermon on the devotion of Mary not to marry yeah I didn't even run out of town on a rail the devotion of Mary and it was very well received by the women because they had very few if you will you know female saints to look up to and they really appreciate that that homily another thing I have a friend of mine one time who was having a discussion with a teacher at a Church of Christ college and the my friend said well you guys are an historian and he said no we're not and so my friend said well do you believe that Mary's the mother of God absolutely not but we're not historians it's a you know all the news I was a bad thing he wasn't one but in reality they haven't they don't give much thought to write a Blessed Virgin and I didn't intend for us to get a big discussion about Mary co-benefits Media actress tonight with the bottom line of that is that Jesus in I mean that God intended Mary yes she wasn't an accident some random woman that God used and then cast aside but that she was a necessary intended part of salvation that's basically what the church's has always taught but as a Protestant oh I didn't think that and it's maybe I didn't just think about it but it's but if you put it that way to most Protestants the idea that she was obviously there's nothing quote accidental and God's plan of salvation but I would say the the lack of emphasis is the lack of attention given to various topics is due simply because those topics are identified as being Catholic and since Catholics say this about it we kind of distance ourselves from the topic altogether and that's I believe a lot of it many times you've been on the program a few times so I will admit that you know I'm looking forward to that the emails and questions we get about the usual different issues that will come up and you've covered those a couple times and but I want to ask another question you've been a Catholic now for about 15 years 15 years juniors and I mean there's the issues that were a barrier to become a Catholic an issue that drew you in dealing with the differences between what you believe is a Church of Christ and now Catholic but now you're Catholic I've found it sometimes it takes a while being a Catholic to even discover some of the more important differences distinctions the aspects of of the benefits of being a Catholic you what I'm saying I mean the real blessings it's it's more than just the intellectual learning but it takes a while is that true for you and definitely you know when you first come into church it's all been about arguments about particular doctrine issues and so you can almost say it's apologetics well then eventually the spiritual life consists of more than apologetics and for me one the most beautiful things I've been discovering more as a Catholic is over the past year particularly is the prayer life of the Catholic Church the spirituality of Prayer this past Lent one of my resolutions was to do the Magnificat every day well they say if you do something for 30 days it becomes a habit well thanks be to God ever since that time I've been doing the morning prayers from the Divine Office and trying to the evening prayers and getting my family started on comp line but in other words the the prayers of the church you know as a Protestant we we prayed but prayer was viewed as something that was always extemporaneous which as you know you can only be so fresh you know saying a lot of the same things and we thought form prayer was was dead and stale now as a Catholic the rich prayer life of praying the Psalms of praying the Divine Office and the realization that there are men and women out there holy men and women that have given themselves to doing nothing but praying for me and for the church I've got a special group of nuns sisters backing up Whitesville Kentucky the passion of nuns of Whitesville that that I've been praying for me all day long and I go there for retreats and the idea they give themselves sacrificially to pray and encourage readers actually listeners to actually check out their website at passionate nuns or passionate nuns org and and see you know what the life of a contempt of is like I've heard that there are some Protestants like one confronted me a couple years ago that believe for example that not only are liturgical prayers inappropriate you know squelching but that you shouldn't say the Lord's Prayer everyone honored that on the dream I have encountered that I encountered one man even recently who told me that Christians shouldn't say the Our Father because in it you ask God to forgive us our sins as we forgive those get forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and they said he said well Christians have already been forgiven so that prayer is an affront to God because you're denying the finished work of Christ yet this is a prayer from the lips of our Savior that the disciples said teach us to pray and this is what he said to say he said when you pray pray like this you know but I've encountered that no I mean it just again to me that's an example of when you cast aside the teacher that Christ gave us in terms of how to understand the Scriptures and you leave it up to yourselves your own interpretation then you can take a verse like that and I mean I hadn't heard that particular angle and I prayed over two other people say there are reasons for not praying the Lord's Prayer but there's another one somebody came up with a refreshment and any probably everyday there's a new one coming up with some slant on Scripture I think we've got an email or a phone call coming in let's go with our first phone call tonight sue from Wisconsin hello what's your question hi good congratulations Marcus on all the years I've watched every one of them um I would like to ask the ex minister what how did his parishioners his congregation feel about him becoming Catholic seeing as you avoided Catholic everything Catholic at the time and seemed like you're very anti Catholic all right thank you sue short answer is they didn't like it I'd already I was no longer the full-time minister of a particular congregation I was serving as an itinerant one at that time but I had lots of friends in the area who preachers and and and and uh members of the Churches of Christ and they were concerned they were concerned for my soul in fact one man wrote a letter to me fellow preacher who was trying to psychoanalyze because in their mind and their mind the case against Catholicism and the case for their beliefs they thought was so strong that no one in their right mind could ever make that decision so he was trying to find some type of psycho like psychological reasons for that and I kind of told him that it's really kind of insulting that no I've really come to believe I believe what the Catholic Church teaches I don't believe everything that you teach you have to accept that since that time I've continued friendships with many of them and you know we've learned to disagree but also I'll say this many of them have come to see the Catholic faith in a different light because of our discussions where in discussing their objections of the Catholic faith addressing what is so often the problem and that is misconceptions about the Catholic faith most people are entertaining misconceptions where they think the church teaches as opposed where the church actually does teach let's take this email bill from Wisconsin our college from Wisconsin is there there must be the sonomas already hit they've got nothing else to do up there all right but he it's a good question that follows up on what we just talked about bill writes in choosing to become a minister did you not discern call quote to the ministry and do you feel that that call to have been truncated to any extent by joining the laity and not the priesthood of the Catholic Church in other words don't you miss being a minister bill thank you for that evening to put Bruce on the spot that is a very very good question and the way I view that yes I did believe at the time when I was a Protestant that God was calling me to ministry looking back now I believe God was calling me to a deeper relationship with him and that in the setting which I was at that time well ministry was the expression of that okay your Protestant you want to go deeper you want to take your faith to the next level you want to show your commitment okay I'll be a preacher I'll be a missionary felt God was calling me to that I look back now and believe honestly that the training the opportunities the experiences God gave me were specifically to help me be a good Catholic layman you know so that now my parish I've been our high school catechists for 14 years and what do I draw upon I draw a lot upon what I learned as a Protestant in terms of the sacred scriptures etc now however in the light of the Catholic understanding of them so I don't I don't I don't feel like I've been truncated or ripped off and I don't miss being my own Pope not not for a moment it's a rough road to go that's a great question bill I really prefer us because in the work in the coming on network which you helped us with to of course yeah you're on our board now that we're we're constantly having to help clergy converts as they come into the church understand this very issue did I miss here God back then I so loved him I knew he called me to seminary and whatever and now I'm discovering the beauty of the Catholic Church well did God miss hearing me did I miss hear him was he not leading me was I wrong and then now what or they're more convinced the other way this is exactly what God called me to do back then which means it's exactly he's called me to do now as opposed to being open to the continual leading of God and recognizing that God was always guiding but that sometimes we we may not know exactly why he's calling us a do things and we have to be careful when we we put a box around God you know it rinds me of the story of Apollo's in acts 19 he knew only the baptism of John it says but he was preaching Christ powerfully and Aquila and Priscilla took him aside and taught him the way of God more fully and so I look at this I look at everything I was doing as a Protestant it was taking me deeper into the word which is to go deeper into Christ and Jerome ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ and so the more I learned from scriptures and wild learning about Christ which is the more I learned about Christ you are getting closer to the fullness of the Catholic faith so that today even what continues to happen to me it happened a couple three weeks ago is I'll be doing something maybe bush hogging on my farm or something and all of a sudden a passage of scripture goes through my mind that I learned as a Protestant there all of a sudden I see the Catholic implications of it that I never saw before and that's what you've done on the on the radio that verses I never saw on deep in Scripture you know the verses that were there all along we memorized even but didn't really see them what they actually meant well the danger in this I put a challenge out there they are Protestant viewers is to take a step back and and ask yourself when you look at scripture to what extent is your particular denominational glasses through which you look causing you to read that scripture in a different way than it was intended in a different way then it fits within the entire book the entire new testament the old entire Bible the early church fathers I mean that's one of the keys understand a bigger tradition and I know that I was and I'm assume you were too were blind to the way that you look through it the Church of Christ classes and I did to Presbyterian glasses and as a young Lutheran I looked at in that way let's gold another email Laura skew-t she writes I've been a Catholic for a year and a half now and my parents have accepted my conversion but my mother has a tendency to argue for the quote cafeteria Catholic how do I handle this other than telling her mom just because someone does or believe something does not make it right I have told her that if one believes our professors to believe a faith they ought to believe it fully Thank You Laura the first question the first thing I can question it is Laura from Wisconsin oh wow she did the Deneb aha okay I thought were only taking calls from Wisconsin you know as I understand her question as being that her parents are arguing against the Catholic faith by drawing attention to quote-unquote cafeteria Catholics the first thing that comes to my mind is there's a story told in 19th century I forgot who it was in England about an Anglican convert who's coming into the church and he told his friends Catholicism is exclusively for saints and sinners for respectable people Anglicanism will do and the whole idea being that look the church is not about necessarily always respectable people faithful people the church is exclusively for saints and sinners and all the sinners in the church are supposed to become Saints and that in reality all she's doing is pointing out the failings of individual Catholics and one thing also say if you go and you pick up the book of Revelation and read the first three chapters in the seven churches of Asia Minor four of them are chastised and so I draw a conclusion from there that says this if your church doesn't have a fair amount of scandal in it it ain't the Church of the Bible the church in the Bible had some problems that's not making a lot of scandal it's it's underscoring the fact that the church while the Holy Spirit is her is her her soul and while this while she is holy and while she is a saint making machine and makes us holy her members aren't always holy and and also one of the things Selah Lewis said this one time and mere christianity when people point at Christians and say well look at that guy he's not what he's supposed to be you don't know how bad he would be if he didn't have what he did have in there because there's always cafeteria Catholics who that we call him who knows what they would be like you know there on the fringe right there and who knows what God's grace will will do for them in the future they may be Saints someday we don't know yeah we need to pray for one another that we are all growing and the fullness of the faith and not being picking and choosing what we feel comfortable with let's take our next caller Joel from New York hello Joel what's your question hi Marcus my question is from mr. Sullivan when he was a former certified minister did he believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and the resurrection and who was his favorite thing alright Joe thanks a lot okay absolutely yes to the first two Churches of Christ believe and believe in the virgin birth they believe in the resurrection and that and that makes one point come out here there is a domination called the United Church of Christ which is a very liberal denomination we call the Church of Christ in the South is uh is a very conservative denomination in that regard and yes we believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ and the actual virgin birth and in regard to my favorite Saint my list of saints as a church Christ Minister was very very very short confined strictly to the New Testament so most would say be Paul that's like his we didn't have a long list to choose from because we believe fundamentally that the Lord established a church in the 1st century and then by the time the 2nd century came along it was gone it had advocated it apostatized and didn't have to me see did the Church of Christ believe that Campbell and and the other particularly ders that they had rediscovered the church after 1,900 years of of its apostasy is that the way you would looked at it you know I've read their writings and it can be a little bit hard to discern exactly what they were thinking sometimes in a certain sense they I get the impression they would have been abhorred by the idea that they had quote-unquote re-established the church because they would say the church could only have been established one time but they had in fact uncovered and rediscovered true authentic biblical Christianity in its pristine form that had been buried under the accretions of Romanism etc for the past eighteen hundred years and that Lutheran caused a crack in that accretions but hadn't brought it all the way back yet when we studied a church history at the school I went to they're kind of kind in a way towards the Protestant reformers in the sense that Leo Luthor at least you know give gave the Catholic Church a good swift kick in the shins but he didn't go far enough you know he you know so he wasn't a New Testament Christian by their standards today but he was on the right path that's how they viewed it was as a progress bringing it back bringing it back bringing it back and then when they when then when they came on the scene it was brought back all right here's an email from Jennifer from Cleveland thank you Bruce for sharing your journey my question for Bruce is that once you became intellectually and emotionally convinced of the truth of Catholicism did you or do you still have lingering uneasiness about some of the cultural aspects of the faith for example things like the monstrance relic statues when I was a president I had a visceral animosity towards these kinds of things how do you conquer these kinds of feelings even if you have an intellectual conviction your gut reaction can be very real and very deep thank you and god bless you both thank you Jennifer for that question that's a very good question that Jennifer asked because I think every convert that comes into the church you can't destroy who you were in the past you can't you can't totally make your emotional being or your fight with the fiber of your being and there were things that I found difficult culturally as she's saying I well I might have accepted the veracity of the Marian doctrines it could be that some of the devotional expressions would make me feel a little uncomfortable not because they are necessarily wrong but because they I was not familiar with them yeah and and you'd have these little inclinations to jump to conclusions say what do they mean by that what do you mean by that that's when the blessings my children I think have my children have grown up praying the rosary praying the hail holy queen having brown scapular they're not going to have those knee-jerk reactions and I suspect one eye may continue to have some knee-jerk reactions sometimes to some things cultural but I also know this you've always heard the phrase time heals all wounds well for 15 years I've been coming more acculturated to the Catholic faith and I have very few things like that that bother me anymore very few I've used the prayer that remember the father who Jesus says do you believe I can heal your son and the father answer's yes you know I believe help my unbelief yes and I think that's a prayer that many converts have to continue to pray it I believe it now it's going to take me a while to fully realize what it is in its meaning and the problem is not the devotion so the problems me right exactly and I'm glad you brought that prayer up that's a prayer I share not only with people on the journey to the Catholic faith but with Catholics because Catholics even can sometimes find their own faith being challenged I know this is what the Church teaches I believe it go sit before the Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance and say lord I believe help thou my unbelief that prayer itself is an expression of faith they'll bring down Grace's the result in even more faith because all the Catholic spiritual writers have taught that you believe that you might understand exactly not the other way around which I think we as Protestants often thought it was you understand first and that's what fits the foundation for you believe but to make it the other way around basically to reduce our faith into an intellectual pursuit in which I could pat myself on the back for having figured it all out being so smart no faith is a gift so I believe so I might understand excellent I'm going to take a break come back in a moment your questions for Bruce Alden Oh you welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi our guest tonight Bruce Sullivan there's a couple things I want to remind you that on Wednesdays 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on EWTN radio I host a radio program called deep in Scripture and this Wednesday our guest is Gary Masuda he's come back for two weeks in a row he's he's the author of a book on why our Catholic books bigger than Protestant Bibles our Catholic Bibles bigger than Protestant Bibles and he focuses on the Deuter canonical books and it's available on ewtn religious catalogue but remember that's deep in Scripture on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time also want to remind you that Bruce's book Christ in his fullness a Protestant minister discovers the fullness of Christ in the Catholic Church it's a great book particularly those that come from a similar background that Bruce comes from the Church of Christ and if you're interested you can go to EWTN religious catalogue the phone numbers 1 888 NS family celebrations want to remind you that but each year we focus on history it's called the deep in history conference it's this year it's on the weekend of October 22nd through 24th at the Hilton in Columbus Ohio if you're interested in that you go to CH network.org and find out about how to sign up but Bruce you're a speaker at the conference this year the theme is on Scripture what's your what's your talk for this year my talks going to address the Catholic teaching on the inerrancy a sacred scripture namely that the fact that the Catholic Church presently teaches has always taught and will continue to teach that the Scriptures properly understood are free from all error of any kind and that's we'll be looking at well that that that phrase properly understood is key to that exactly but and that's what sets it off different between the way you understood it as a Church of Christ and I as a presbyterian and now as yes as Catholics yes I understand you Nancy so if you'd like to come find out more about go to our website which you'll see on on the monitor later CH network.org alright we've got a bunch of emails and phone calls let's go to father McKee in Montreal hi Marcus as a Catholic priest I am curious to see how a Protestant joining the Catholic Church would react to discovering something called canon law such a thing as a church law must be quite foreign to a Protestant of the Church of Christ thank you for requesting father McKee thank you for that great question that thank you for that curveball father that's an interesting question but he's right especially coming from the Church of Christ background and reclaimed the Bible alone is all you needed and it was like a blueprint and what's this incredibly cumbersome thing called canon law all these made up man-made rules but then in reality in reality it's not such a strange thing after all the Catholic Church is a large organization and canon law are simply the the rules if you will the policies procedures set up for the governing of the church and its everyday affairs and you know even little country churches of whatever stripe you're talking about whether it's written or not have their own canon law it may not be written but they have their policies and procedures if you will about how they conduct business how is a decision made about whether we're going to build or not to build to support this missionary is going to be the majority rules ever how we can do that there whether it's written or not written there's a certain polity involved and so while the Catholic Church being a global 1 billion membered organization spanning 2,000 years is going to have maybe more things defined in it that just underscores the fact that she also touches every aspect of human existence every church has some kind of canon law written or unwritten let me just add to that because I was originally ordained a Congregationalist right after seminary and within a year I wanted to move on to press materialism because Congregationalism every individual church is autonomous in terms of canon law it can be redefined by that little congregation voting whatever it wants the head office wants nothing to do with major decisions may at the local level it's that little group wherever two or more gathered my name that's a church try so the canon law is with those two or three or five decide and the presbyterian church has a book of order which is basically their canon law that's been passed on but what we found is a presbyterian each individual church could either follow it or not who is going to stop it there was always this independence and again like Brutus I appreciate the beauty of the wisdom of our canon law not left just for the local priest and his church to decide how to follow it but recognising the authority of the Magisterium in union with Peter not it wrong so okay our next caller Mary from New Jersey hello Mary what's your question hi good evening Marcus love the show my question is basically asking for an explanation of why some Protestant groups because I have heard this periodically through the years still teach I know we were it originated I believe in the 16th century with Luther that that the Pope is an antichrist it's such a painful thing to Catholics to hear this sort of thing you know why does it still persist to this day and you know could you just clarify that I'll hang up and listen excellent question sir thank you thank you Mary the fact there's two levels to a question like how does it originate and then why does it still persist now 500 years later after the Reformation you know I I know like in in the Church of Christ the reason they would insist that the Pope in a sense was an antichrist is because they believe that one what he teaches is not the doctrine of Christ the doctrine of Christ is what they believe and and since it doesn't match with what the Catholic Church teaches they think that the the Pope is an antichrist in that sense they also think that his office is a presumption that he's presuming to you know that they make more out of what the Petron office is they make it out to be that he's somehow supplanting Christ in fact when I was first studying the Catholic faith one of my teachers came flew in from Lubbock Texas and one of the questions he asked me that night was it for evac he opened our discussion with this question are you prepared to make the Pope your substitute for Christ because that's what the word vicar means it means substitute I'm thinking I start stammering a little bit I was it well yeah it means substitute but it's substitute in the sense that like an ambassador we are ambassadors for Christ but he was implying he was trying to imply that Catholics don't think they need Jesus because well they've got the Pope and so their views are invariably based upon distortions of what the Catholic Church actually teaches about the papacy yeah in the book of the Presbyterians at the book of order and then they had the book of their Creed's and one of the Creed's which is maybe the most influential on these conservative Presbyterians is the Westminster Confession and the Westminster Confession which was written in the 1650s right after the English Civil War I think I got the date right but that's exactly what it says it says in the Creed that the catholic pope is the antichrist and it was believed in new england for a hundred and some years passed on and on where there weren't even a catholics in new england he just had learned it and learned it and not examined it and passed it on and what you're pointing out there underscores what can be a factor in this and that is that for many well just the term protestant itself protestant is is is defining oneself as protesting what the catholic faith and so for many their anti-catholicism earth other anti pope stance is it a fining mark for them and enter to forsake that or to let that go is to change their identity in essence all right let's take this email this comes from Mindi Duran Garden City Kansas City a friend is that right hello Marcus and Rosa first let me say thank you to you both for being a major factor in my conversion to Catholicism Bruce why is Church history basically ignored in the Church of Christ in my 34 years as a Church of Christ member I never remember anyone teaching about history of course this is the area that got me going down the path to becoming Catholic how can I talk to others in the Church of Christ about history in order to try to open them up to the truth Thank You Mindy yeah hi Mindy basically Churches of Christ and I'm gonna be a little bit facetious here they don't totally ignore church history but it just is kind of truncated Christ established a church we read about in the book of Acts it fell away and the prosper vult occurred and then Alexander Campbell came along and voila we now have our present movement so it's very truncated and with a 1500 year gap or so there but they actually believe that church histories are relevant many times because they say it's just a matter what the Bible says but we're church history in my opinion comes into play and it's very important in talking to say a Church of Christ member or some fundamentalist as this the whole argument is this is the Catholic Church is the Catholic Church who she claims to be or not if the Catholic Church is who she claims to be then what she presently teaches should be what she has always taught and church history is valuable because I can show that in the 20th century 18th 16th 14th all the way back to beginning that the Catholic Church has been there institutionally and in her sacraments teaching the same fundamental faith and history is important in witnessing to that fact in order to settle that idea of is the Catholic Church who she claims to be or she's something that came into being with Constantine you know and so it is important and I would I would approach it that way to show my non Catholic friends that continuity that history bears witness to the fact that for 2,000 years there has been a church teaching the same fundamental faith growing an understanding of that faith but teaching that same faith with an unbroken succession of bishops and that's why history is important just of Christ folk believe you need to be a Church of Christ to be saved yes the short answer okay so if Jesus established a church and then quickly it went apostate Luther helped it a little bit but it wasn't fully restored until Campbell so for those eighteen hundred years they basically believed that no one was saying they would fundamentally believe and I said they believed yet to be the Church of Christ member they believed anyone who is saved isn't member the Church of Christ you know by definition so but basically Vader entertained one of two ideas either one there weren't Christians in that time which case yeah the dismal prospect that you just described or two by faith believing that well yeah they were always there somewhere hidden and like many non Catholics who believed in the apostasy of the church they'll latch hold of guys like Waldensian and Alba Jenson's and anybody who you see in history that was a anti-catholic or had at odds the Catholic Church he must have been one of us or at least a sympathizer with us and so the or they'll believe they're there they're just hidden someplace in the background maybe the Catholic Church just wiped out the memory of them but so they're grasping at straws there in essence all right phone call from Rita from Florida hello Rita what's your question hello Marcus abridge thank you for taking my calls I don't really have a question I have a statement regarding the caller that asked about the cultural conversions of the Catholic Church I'm a convert also and for me I think the reason for the knee-jerk reaction comes more from the misconceptions and on truths that I learned and heard and internalized as a Protestant more than anything else it was just it just kind of became part of me and and there wasn't that church doctrine or the truth the teachings that I really was reacting to but the thing is that I had learned before all right Rita I mean you do I agree with that you know the knee-jerk reactions come from the fact that you had entertained misconceptions about the Catholic teaching and that even though now you know the true teaching it's still back there a little bit you know and so I'd agree with her yes yeah very much so and I do too it just takes a while and I've used this example on the program before that you know you and I Bruce could go word of France and maybe go through the the program and become Frenchman in a year right but how many years would it take for a Frenchman to mistake you and I as if we were a lifelong Frenchman exactly it's never going to happen maybe especially in France you know but it takes a long time to fully understand the beauty of our faith I've been in Kentucky now for nearly four 20 years and I have yet to be mistaken for native as hard as I try I have not been able to fool anyone well it's because become Catholic along the way yes all right although some of the earliest followers of Kentucky were deeply committed Catholics in Maryland so I mean you have a good heritage in Kentucky okay email Ryan from North Carolina were there any particular doctrines or practices of the Catholic faith you had to overcome prior to your conversion my struggle has been with understanding quote outside the church there is no salvation unquote how would you explain this to a Protestant Thank You Ryan for this easy question for rubriz yeah the first part of the question were there any doctrines all of them you know basically in regards to the outside the church there's no salvation it really as the Catechism States it you know to understand that teaching positively it's saying that all salvation comes to the church and it makes sense if the church as the Catholic Church teaches is the mystical body of Christ and if salvation is through whom through Christ salvation comes from Christ and Christ in his mystical body are inseparable to church and Jesus Christ then yes salvation comes to us through the church because it's the church we have the fullness of teaching we have the sacred scriptures we have the sacraments all those means of salvation come to us through the church and so in that sense how can there be salvation apart from the church that's not saying that someone who doesn't have a formal by formal Association identity with the Catholic Church is not saved it is saying though that if they are saved whether they understand it or not it's through the church that Association that mystical association with the church because what they have in their own faith came to them through the church the biggest problem with that doctrine was the church still teach is is our misuse of it exactly use it as a cudgel to judge where somebody else is going whether to heaven or hell are there saved with anti-catholic sentiment no we have no right to do that with anyone I can't even judge that of you I mean it's between the Lord and I and in my heart but what we're called to do is if we see someone that isn't in the fullness our responsibility is to tell to tell if that's our responsibility not judge but tell in love and that Church's position on this as you read the Catechism about that teaching it makes sense because it goes on to say that someone therefore who knows that the Catholic that church is established by Christ and necessary for salvation but refuses to either remain in her or to enter her they cannot be saved but it makes sense because it's saying the person who knows but then refuses now it's description of the will in other words it's the idea of are we acting in good faith towards God can I be a Protestant and at this moment be acting in good faith towards God yes I can be can I be a Catholic be acting in bad faith yes I can be God's will holds accountable for how we respond to what we know very good all right Lou Lou Ann writes hello my question is that as a former preacher and now Catholic convert and currently a catechist to teens how do you feel about cradle Catholics and young Catholics attending Mass on holidays only and what do you teach the kids to get them to be more active and faithful as opposed to how their parents practice their faith thank god bless you both LuAnn how do I feel about it but words about can't heart records in young Catholics attending Mass on holidays only and what do you teach the kids to get them to be more active I guess I should say you know thank God that they attend Mass then yeah because when they do they're in the presence of Christ and their graces that could come to them but it's heartbreaking them to realize it to realize it they are like Esau who traded off his birthright for a bowl of pottage whatever that is and the whole idea being that they're their recipients of riches that they're well they're rich kids and serve their inheritance and and don't appreciate it and don't know what they're missing and I see this happening I see this happening where there's Catholics that are cradle Catholics that are so close you know that they didn't baptize they go to Mass on occasion they they would they know a lot of things about their Catholic faith but it's not the driving force in their life and guess what they suffer divorces like everybody else out there and etc the faith is not impacting their life because Catholics sometimes are need of conversion to Christ they haven't made Christ the Lord of their life yet and yet as a Catholic they've got the perfect means to do that through the sacraments and the fullness of teaching to the church in regard to helping teens get more deeper into their faith I'm starting something new this this year my catechism class beginning Wednesday two days from now we have a 90 minute session every Wednesday night we're going to begin with Vespers we're going to close with Kampf line you know the liturgy hours the prayers of the church because just as important as conveying facts to them is teaching them prayer the printed which is the primary font of grace in your life is prayer that all of us have access to that so I'm hoping the kids learn how to pray it seems like two things at least that when people don't go to Mass for mr.john is on the one hand they don't appreciate their faith enough the powers of the sacraments and all of that doesn't appreciate the spiritual battle they're in their bloodiest to it yeah they don't know how much they need they don't procedurally get their Bolivia's yeah both sides and so the devil laughs exactly got a phone call Fred from New York hello what's your question for us uh yes good evening first I just want to quickly thank Mother Angelica for causing me to become Catholic and now my question is I was an Anglican and I've recently converted to the Catholic Church all right but I've come to notice you know with most churches it's like where the way where how you're supposed to be the other churches are wrong so here I am a new Catholic trying to learn everything and what aren't curious about it how do I know that the Catholic Church is the true way and I'm not just chasing my tail and maybe five years down the line I'm going to go to know some other church how do I know I'm really home Fred thank you first welcome home and our prayers are with you in that struggle which is not necessarily uncommon as people are on the journey yeah you know the you know for me I can only speak for myself you know what I find to be convincing and and the reality that scripture history and in my opinion sound reason all converge in one place the Catholic faith that for 2,000 years there's been this church teaching the same thing having that unbroken succession apostolic succession for 2,000 years that it alone addresses all the issues of life in a way that touches topics that other people in touch with the ten-foot pole the and then and then on the experiential side once someone becomes a part of the sacramental life of the church and has the Eucharist has confession sees the transformation in life then you've got in a sense the Holy Spirit bearing witness with what they discovered intellectually you know of that historical reality of the Catholic Church but seeing it alive and working in them to bring them into a deeper relationship with Christ in a way that they didn't find possible before it reminds me of that incident in CS Lewis's Crete Screwtape Letters and the Screwtape Letters you know are his fictional description of a head demon and a young demon who are in the spiritual battle trying to keep somebody from becoming a Christian well at one point he converts and so after the young demon is chastised for letting it happen then the first thing I do is cause doubt and cause them to look around and look at the people that are supposedly Christians and aren't and look at their lives and so you're in a spiritual battle thread and we understand that I guess my just to add on to something you said there there too is that I remember asking questions that are often in here that you don't express or when you're on the journey the devil is trying to get you to challenge you and all the voices of world the flesh and the devil and I think again it was going sometimes going all the way back okay where's the authority I don't even know what's true you know is it the Bible alone is it whatever tradition that's out there that seems to be tempting why the catholic tradition looking at the early church fathers looking at the history looking at the foundation john 14 15 16 did Jesus just give the spirit to everybody yeah or did you give it to the Apostles so they would know what's true and without the church the Bible has no authority because it was that inspiration of the Holy Spirit with those apostles and their successors that gives us the Bible to trust apart from that it's just a book it's like I told you before we went in the air tonight one of those little flashes where I had a Bible verse that I was accustomed to but hadn't saw the Catholic insights to it just the other day after discussing this very topic with somebody else first John chapter 2 verses 18 and 19 went through my mind where he talked about the Antichrist and he says that they went out from us so that it might be shown that they were not of us if they had they had been of us they would not have gone out from us and the whole idea there the Apostle John st. John is is using the church the community as the reference point he didn't say we know these were false believers because they left the teaching of the Bible that still leave a debate for what the teaching the Bible is it says no they knew who the heretics were if you will because they went out from us they left the church and so it comes back to that continuity of the church or 2000 years which comes back to what did you say authority that's right Bruce thank you for a witness you want to give any final greetings to your any Church of Christ viewers out there real quickly I don't love him watching that and where they are young howdy ha ha all right but thanks for your witness thank you and your constant your book Christ in his fullness and you're also commitment to serve as a layman in the church I mean that's a really important witness using all the gifts you had as a pastor and recognize there still it was not a mistake it was to train you so you can be a more deeper follower and teacher for Christ today and rest of your light so thank you for is thank you for joining us on tonight's episode hope it's been an encouragement to you and our prayer especially go out for those of you are on the journey those who are struggling with your faith this is a great church we've been given and our reason for having this network is that we can do whatever we can to help you discover the beauty and the fullness of the Catholic Church so god bless No you Oh you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 59,195

Rating: 4.0694184 out of 5

Keywords: Journey, Home, Former, Church, Christ, Minister, Marcus, Grodi, Bruce, Sullivan, Catholic

Id: Ev40dzl-35o

Length: 56min 32sec (3392 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/pops9935]

The very point he raises is what started my journey of questions and led to my eventual leaving the church of Christ for Eastern Orthodoxy. This is worth considering honestly.

[u/ThisIsMe1119]

What part?

[u/dubl0dude]

When he got to the section on history I cringed so hard I nearly broke my teeth. History does not bear kindly to behavior of the Catholic church or their, as he claims, consistent doctrine.

It's also a little bit silly to take the position, as it seems Bruce is, that if you don't agree with the Catholic doctrine, then you simply misunderstand it.

I'm saddened that anyone can decide the church which our Lord built is what the Catholic church is. Their doctrines are distinctly different in a number of ways. This man has not found the truth, he fell away from it.

[u/Jawn_Bartlebee]

Yeah, former Church of Christ preacher decides to worship with the Catholics? Nothing terribly original there (I stopped watching when he started talking about his personal discomfort at Marian devotional activity.)

What was surprising?