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12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 11

Because suffering, from the Catholic perspective, is a "Win-Win"

One of the things I enjoy most about being Catholic is that once you understand the Catholic view of redemptive suffering it's a "Win-Win". Yes, it was finished with Christ and what is finished is finished. Nevertheless the Holy Scriptures show us that Jesus has chosen to have us partake in his body in a mystical way, and therefore in his suffering in a mystical way. St. Paul tells us:
For him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ9and be given a place in him, with the uprightness I have gained not from the Law, but through faith in Christ, an uprightness from God, based on faith,10that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection, and partake of his sufferings by being molded to the pattern of his death,11striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead.12 Not that I have secured it already, nor yet reached my goal, but I am still pursuing it in the attempt to take hold of the prize for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Philippians 3:8-12

As Catholics when we share in the joys of life, we share in Our Lord's joy; when we share in the pain and sufferings of life, we then share in his sufferings. Unlike other faiths, the Catholic view of suffering is not meaningless, but cleansing and redemptive. Suffering burns away the self-love we have committed by sin. But what if suffering comes our way when we are in a state of grace and living a holy life? Is that suffering in vain? Not from the Catholic view. We believe not only in the Church on earth {the Church Militant}, but also the Church Suffering {in Purgatory} and the Church Triumphant {In Heaven}. It is these points in time where we can offer our sufferings for the Church Suffering in Purgatory. We are a family on earth, in Purgatory and in Heaven. Just because we have a personal relationship with Jesus here on earth doesn't exclude a family relationship with others in the Church weather it be with the Church Suffering or Triumphant.

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 10

Through the Eucharist, the Lord Jesus allows me to work with him.

Through the Eucharist, the Lord Jesus allows me to work with Him to bring all mankind into the fullness of truth, the fullness of salvation, the fullness of love. These aren't my works. No, these are the Lord's works, working through my body and mind in a similar way that The Lord uses the priest's body to consecrate the sacraments of the Church. I am NOT divine in nature, but God allows me to partake in His Divine work of saving mankind through the various ministries He calls me to work in.

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 9

We have splendid heroes and heroines as models of holiness to follow

Catholics have an array of heroes and heroines to follow going all the way back to the Early Church Fathers who lived from 33AD to 800AD. All one has to do is read what they taught and preached to find out.... IT WAS CATHOLIC! ............ WHERE ARE YOUR MENTORS PENTECOSTALS

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 8

There is a ministry and place for everyone in the world.

I have been in three to five different parishes since my youth. One thing I've noticed in each parish are the myriad of ministries. The Catholic Church has a ministry for every calling anyone has in the world.

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 7

The Church is a human family so we have our share of tensions, family fights and scandals, but The Faith remains pure.

This may seem odd, but I relish an image of Church like a huge tent or umbrella under which everyone can fit. Sometimes we seem to be splitting our seams, but we all still stay because this is where we belong; this is home. It is a tension into which we can relax, a struggle that can be lived.

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 6

We care for the poor and needy. UNLIKE THEM MONEY GRABBING PASTORS

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 5

We draw on a rich spirituality
I know of no other tradition that celebrates the sacredness of the ordinary as we do. All our sacraments name and claim the divine depth that sustains ordinary life. So our symbols that speak most eloquently are drawn from the most usual earthy things: wheat and vine, water, oil, touch. Such a sacramental theology says that even when we are not aware of it, a wondrous grace and mystery surround us always.

A Church that puts the Eucharist at its center and, for those in a state of grace, rewards the seeker, the hungry, those who don't have their acts together, who don't know all the answers, but who need to come back and are always invited to return to the altar of the Lord.

Part of this rich spirituality consists of the various religious orders within our Church. Contrary to what some Christians have been told, these are not divisions within the Church.

No, these men and women have decided to live their WHOLE life for Our Lord Jesus by following an excellent model of Jesus' holiness. Some of these saints include:
St. Benedict (The Benedictines {OSB} )
St. Dominic (The Dominicans {OP} )
St. Francis (The Franciscans {OFM} )
St. Augustine ( The Augustinian's {OSA} )
St. Alphonsus ( Redemptorists { C.S.S.R.} )
The Church declares these saints to be excellent models of holiness and encourages the faithful to follow their pattern of living. These saints and founders set forth a different path of holy living with Jesus being the ultimate model, NOT the saint or founder.

Some decide to live there live out in an order dedicated to Our Blessed Lord or Our Blessed Mother:

Our Lady of Mount Carmel ( The Carmelites {O.Carm.} )
Legionaries of Christ - dedicated to Jesus ( {LC} )
The Jesuits - another order dedicated to Jesus ( {SJ} )
The Marists - An order dedicated to Our Blessed Mother ( {SM} )

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 4

Catholics always have something to celebrate:

Catholic Education Week in January
St. Joseph in March
Our Blessed Mother Mary in May
The Sacred Heart of Jesus in June
The Precious Blood in July
Guardian Angels in October
The Communion of Saints in November
Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Guadeloupe
St. Nicholas and Santa Lucia in Advent
Mardi Gras, "burying the Alleluia" on Ash Wednesday
Resurrecting the Alleluia on Easter
Pentecost
The Marian feasts -- the list seems infinite.
I would say that on out of 365 days in a year about 80 percent of them, we honor some Saint. For me personally, if no Saint is being honored by the Church, I go back to my pre Vatican II Tridentine Calendar and celebrate the Saint on that calendar.

I have vivid memories of retreats to my Benedictine friends in Harvard, Massachusetts. I was always impressed with the amount of partying these monks did after the Easter Vigil Mass. They had people, sandwiches, drinks, and desserts. These guys knew how to celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord! One year I remember going to bed at 4:00am on Easter Sunday morning!

Even now where I'm a parishioner at St. Patrick's. We are blessed to have Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, day and night.

The simplest way to put it is:

"Catholics, day and night, are just party animals on Earth AND in Heaven!"

This is in contrast the Jehovah Witness members who are not allowed to celebrate Halloween, Christmas, or even their own birthdays. What a dreary, gray existence without a feast of fast to brighten up life!

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 3- Catholics make bold claims .... and they are true!
The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
The Church is infallible on issues of faith and morals because the Holy Spirit protects the Church from officially teaching error.
Our Blessed Mother is our spiritual Mother because St. John represented mankind

Sometimes these startle people of other traditions. "Who do you think you are?" they might ask. We answer, seriously and repeatedly, that we are Christ's full and complete presence on earth today. We cooperate with God to build God's kingdom in this world. In the Eucharist, we consume the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ and so partake in Divine nature. We may sound arrogant, but this is what Jesus meant when he said, "You will do greater things than I have done." How's that for a bold claim?

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 2- Catholicism has universality

We Irish have our gifts, but mariachi music isn't one of them. So I've been grateful to the people with Spanish and African-American backgrounds for the richness, the color, the vibrancy they bring to our faith. No one tradition has the resources to meet the challenges of the next century. Yet in the Church, we find the pluralism that the human race will need to survive.

What universality means in practical terms is that on Wednesday night I can visit a poor parish where the people come through pouring rain to sit on folding chairs in a gym with a leaky roof. Then on Saturday, I can fly to a mega-church which cost millions, a parish with the highest concentration of M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s in the country. In both places, we explore the same, unchanging Sunday Gospel and re enter into that ONE unbloody sacrifice of Calvary, that crosses all the differences.

Whether a Catholic is in the USA, Spain, England, Italy, Russia or anywhere on the face of the earth, generally, one hears the same gospels and enters into the same unbloody sacrifice of Calvary. Whether one attends an Ordo liturgy or Tridentine liturgy, it is the same worldwide for that type of liturgy; it is universal, it is Roman Catholic!

A range of liturgies in different languages makes the universality of the Church visible. Within that universality, you will find the liturgies of the Church celebrated in:
French
Italian
Portuguese
Vietnamese
Polish
Creole/French-Creole
and others

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 2- Catholicism has universality

We Irish have our gifts, but mariachi music isn't one of them. So I've been grateful to the people with Spanish and African-American backgrounds for the richness, the color, the vibrancy they bring to our faith. No one tradition has the resources to meet the challenges of the next century. Yet in the Church, we find the pluralism that the human race will need to survive.

What universality means in practical terms is that on Wednesday night I can visit a poor parish where the people come through pouring rain to sit on folding chairs in a gym with a leaky roof. Then on Saturday, I can fly to a mega-church which cost millions, a parish with the highest concentration of M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s in the country. In both places, we explore the same, unchanging Sunday Gospel and re enter into that ONE unbloody sacrifice of Calvary, that crosses all the differences.

Whether a Catholic is in the USA, Spain, England, Italy, Russia or anywhere on the face of the earth, generally, one hears the same gospels and enters into the same unbloody sacrifice of Calvary. Whether one attends an Ordo liturgy or Tridentine liturgy, it is the same worldwide for that type of liturgy; it is universal, it is Roman Catholic!

A range of liturgies in different languages makes the universality of the Church visible. Within that universality, you will find the liturgies of the Church celebrated in:
French
Italian
Portuguese
Vietnamese
Polish
Creole/French-Creole
and others

12 REASONS I ENJOY BEING CATHOLIC

NUMBER 1-We are the community that remembers Jesus

I see this especially in the surrendered lives of those who show us Christ's face, His hands and eyes and words and compassionate touch. We call it the Mystical Body, but it means that we recognize Jesus in the laughter and voices of those around us; little kids, retired folks, teenagers, all those in whom Christ continues to take flesh.

While all Christian communities remember Jesus, Catholics do so in a particular, liturgical way. When someone we love has died, we usually try to recapture memories of that person through our senses. We remember Grandma's tortillas, or the song that Grandpa sang off-key. One of my friends whose husband died broke down when she smelled his after-shave lingering in his shirts.

We remember Jesus in the same way. We remember Him as we enter into the un-bloody sacrifice of Calvary in daily Mass:

the sound of His voice telling stories;
teaching us through the Word of God read to us
His words as He breathes onto bread and wine which transforms them into His Own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
In Scripture, we find him still in the simplest human activities, eating and drinking, gathering with friends and telling stories.

Personally, I set a reminder every Friday at 3:00pm. When that reminder goes off, I say a small prayer of thanksgiving or I say one decade of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy ( it takes less than a minute to complete! )

BigBabyJesus: Catholicism: virgin goddess and fagg0t priests.

PROTESTANTINISM

a. false pastors
b. money grabbing pastors
c. lucrative business
d. poverty stricken members who contribute every thing to a lost cause

should i continue?

manuelzz: But bros,what has the whereabout of the pastors and protestants got to do with the content of the bible? Did the catholic church write or inspire the writing of the holy bible?

YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED MY QUESTION. IT IS A SIMPLE ONE SENTENCE ANSWER. DO NOT ANSWER A QUESTION WITH ANOTHER QUESTION...UNLESS YOUR CLUELESS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE...STUDY YOUR HISTORY PLS...

manuelzz: That's cos in the bible,christ's apostles prayed for peeps...but i just can't happen to find where exactly the bible encouraged us to ask mary to do so...

READ AND UNDERSTAND!

Those who criticize Catholics for praying to saints have no problem whatsoever, with asking a co-worker, a family member, or a neighbor to "keep me in your prayers." After all, Scripture is very clear that the "prayer of a righteous man availeth much". God is pleased when we turn to one another and join together in our prayers. We are members of the same body of Christ (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:25-27) and of one another (Eph. 4:25), and the Church refers to this mystery as the "communion of saints".

Yet notice the contradiction. If I asked my Baptist friend to pray for me, he would never think of responding, "Why are you asking me to pray for you when you could spend that time praying straight to God." However, when we pray to saints, this is all we are doing. We are saying, in essence, "St. Joseph, I have a problem. Would you keep me in your prayers." Switch St. Joseph's name with that of any living relative, and the request sounds pretty normal, doesn't it? Let's apply some math. If I ask for Mary to pray for me - even though this takes a few moments that I could have prayed straight to God, himself, suddenly I have two people praying for my situation. And if I take a moment to ask St. Francis to pray for me - even though this takes a few moments that I could have prayed straight to God - suddenly I now have three people praying for me. Suddenly, for every prayer I've offered to God, I know that Mary and St. Francis have offered their own on my behalf, just as if I had walked around the office and asked my co-workers to pray for me.

It isn't that I am praying to the saints INSTEAD of Christ. Rather, we are all praying to Christ together, and for each person I ask to join me (whether living or dead), I have multiplied the prayers to Christ for that intention, not reduced them. And think about it - the prayer of a righteous man availeth much ... and who is more "righteous" than those who have already entered Heaven?

Scripture is full of examples of people interceding for others, and of God acting on one person's behalf because of the requests of another. Christ helps the wedding party (despite his inclination to remain private in his ministry) because of Mary's request (Jn. 2:3-5). In the Old Testament, the Queen Mother of the Davidic Kingdom serves as a counselor to the king (Prov. 31:8-9; 2 Chr. 22:2-4). Children have guardian angels who protect them (Mt. 18:10). Onians and Jeremiah intercede for the Jews before the resurrection (2 Mac. 15:11-16). Paul tells us to pray and make supplications for the saints (Eph. 6:18). The angel Raphael said, "I can now tell you that when you, Tobit, and Sarah prayed, it was I who presented and read the record of your prayer before the Glory of the Lord; and I did the same thing when you used to bury the dead" (Tobit 12:12).

But wait a second - its fine and good to say that praying to the saints is like asking our friends to pray for us, but aren't they dead? How could they hear us?

"As for the dead being raised," Christ says in Mk: 12:26-27, "have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, 'I am the God of Abraham, [the] God of Isaac, and [the] God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the LIVING."

After we die, while our physical bodies must await the end of time, our spirits are very much alive in Christ. We are still part of the body of Christ. Some will object that only God is omniscient, so only he can hear all these prayers, but Scripture tells us that the saints share in God's divine knowledge (1 Cor. 13:9-12) and his divine authority and power (2 Tim. 2:12, Rev. 22:5; Rev. 2:26-28), and in the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19; 1 John 3:2). Saints can hear our prayers because God invites them into his beautific vision, and through his power, they are become that "great cloud of witnesses" that oversee all that we do (Heb. 12). We can see this most clearly in Rev. 5:13-14, when John writes, "And I heard every creature in Heaven and on earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, 'To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!'" Obviously the "elders", or saints, in Heaven also heard all of this praise from earth, because they fell down and answered, "Amen!" John, in his vision of Heaven, and the elders that resided there were made aware of the praise from all of existence through their closeness to God's omniscience.

In fact, despite objections to the contrary, there are actual examples in Scripture of the saints hearing and answering our prayers.

In Jer. 31:15-16, Rachel intercedes for her children after her death (Jeremiah was written hundreds of years after Rachel died, yet her "voice was heard". Rev. 5:8 tells us that "the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each of the elders held a harp and gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones."

Now think about this verse from Revelation 5. The elders are offering up the "prayers of the holy ones". Some of Revelation is symbolic. I'm sure that the saints will not carry actual bowls of incense. However, the truth that shines here is that they are offering the prayers of others to God.

As Catholics, we must never be ashamed of the fact that, even after they have passed on, we embrace our fellow Christians. And we must never shy away from asking our brothers and sisters, these "righteous" men and women, to offer their own prayers to be joined with ours. On earth or in Heaven, they are part of the mystical body of Christ, and their intercession is part of God's plan for the unity of his communion of Saints.

manuelzz: Bros,that the bible was conpiled by the catholic church dosn't in any way mean it was written or inspired by the catholic church.....

where were the pastors and protestants when the bible was complied!!! pls answer the question...Thank you!

so no protestant wants to quote my conversion stories....lmao! r u guys scaredhuh always running away from the truth!!! smh

so no protestant wants to quote my conversion stories....lmao! r u guys scared always running away from the truth!!! smh

kingthreat: Catholics are Mary worshipers.
Christianity is based on Jesus the way to God. Worship of any other is idolatry. May the good lord have mercy on your sould. Read your bible to expose your ignorance.

THE SAME BIBLE THAT WAS COMPLIED BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH!!! LOL..... READ YOUR HISTORY PLS...

PENTECOSTAL MINISTER ALEX JONES CONVERTED TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ALONGSIDE HIS FOLLOWERS!

When Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church this past Easter he was not alone. He brought much of his congregation in with him.

When Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church this past Easter he was not alone. He brought much of his congregation in with him.
When Detroit-born Alex Jones became a Pentecostal minister in 1972, there was little question among those who knew him that he was answering God's call to preach.

Now, many of his friends and family have dismissed the 59-year-old pastor as an apostate for embracing the Catholic faith, closing the nondenominational church he organized in 1982, and taking part of his congregation with him.

At this year's April 14 Easter Vigil, Jones, his wife, Donna, and 62 other former members of Detroit's Maranatha Church, was received into the Catholic Church at St. Suzanne's Parish. For Jones, becoming a Catholic will mark the end of a journey that began with the planting of a seed by Catholic apologist and Register columnist Karl Keating. It also will mean the beginning of a new way of life.

Jones first heard Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, at a debate on whether the origins of the Christian church were Protestant or Catholic. At the close, Keating asked, "If something took place, who would you want to believe, those who saw it or those who came thousands of years later and told what happened?"

"Good point," Jones thought, and tucked it away. Five years later, while he was reading about the church fathers, Keating's question resurfaced. Jones began a study of the Church's beginnings, sharing his newfound knowledge with his congregation.

To illustrate what he was talking about, in the spring of 1998 he re-enacted an early worship service, never intending to alter his congregation's worship style. "But once I discovered the foundational truths and saw that Christianity was not the same as I was preaching, some fine-tuning needed to take place."

Soon, Maranatha Church's Sunday service was looking more like a Catholic Mass with Pentecostal overtones. "We said all the prayers with all the rubrics of the Church, all the readings, the Eucharistic prayers. We did it all, and we did it with an African-American style."

Not everyone liked the change, however, and the 200-member congregation began to dwindle. Meanwhile, Jones contacted Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary and was referred to Steve Ray of Milan, Mich., whose conversion story is told in Crossing the Tiber.

"I set up a lunch with him right away and we pretty much had lunch every month after that," said Ray. He introduced Jones to Dennis Walters, the catechist at Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Mich. Walters began giving the Pentecostal pastor and his wife weekly instructions in March, 1999.



Crossroads

Eventually, Jones and his congregation arrived at a crossroads. On June 4, the remaining adult members of Maranatha Church voted 39-19 to begin the process of becoming Catholic. In September, they began studies at St. Suzanne's.

Maranatha closed for good in December. The congregation voted to give Jones severance pay and sell the building, a former Greek Orthodox church, to the First Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.

Father Dennis Duggan, St. Suzanne's 53-year-old pastor, said the former Maranatha members and their pastor along with about 10 other candidates comprise the 750-member parish's largest-ever convert class.



Unity and diversity

Although not all parishioners at predominantly white St. Suzanne's have received the group warmly, Father Duggan, who also is white, said he considers the newcomers a gift and an answer to prayer.

"What the Lord seems to have brought together in the two of us — Alex and myself — is two individuals who have a similar dream about diversity. Detroit is a particularly segregated kind of community, especially on Sunday morning, and here you've got two baptized believers who really believe we ought to be looking different."

Father Duggan hopes eventually to bring Jones onto the parish staff. Already, he has encouraged Jones to join him in teaching at a Wednesday night Bible service. And, he is working on adapting the music at Masses so that it better reflects the parish's new makeup.

The current European worship style at St. Suzanne's has been the most difficult adjustment for the former Maranatha members, Jones said, because they had been accustomed to using contemporary music with the Catholic prayers and rituals. "The cultural adaptation is far more difficult than the theological adaptation," he said.



Protestant Issues

Jones said the four biggest problems Protestants have with Catholicism are teachings about Mary, purgatory, papal authority, and praying to saints. He resolved three of the four long ago, but struggled the most with Mary, finally accepting the teaching on her just because the church taught it.

"It is so ingrained in Protestants that only God inhabits heaven and to pray to anyone else is idolatry. ... The culture had so placed in my heart that only the Trinity received prayer that it was difficult."

He is writing a paper on the appropriateness of venerating Mary for a class at Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary, where he is taking prerequisite courses for a master's degree in theology and pastoral studies. He also is writing a book for Ignatius Press and accepting speaking engagements through St. Joseph Communications, West Covina, Calif.

Jones, the father of three married sons and grandfather of six, is leaving the question of whether he becomes a priest up to the Church.

"If the Church discerns that vocation, I will accept it. If not, I will accept that, too. Whatever the Church calls me to do, I will do."

Although he has given up his job, prestige, and the congregation he built to become Catholic, Jones said the hardest loss of all has been the family and friends who rejected him because of his decision.

"To see those that have worshiped with and prayed with me for over 40 years walk away and have no contact with them is sad."

It was especially painful, he said, when his mother, who had helped him start Maranatha, left to go to Detroit's Perfecting Church, where his cousin, gospel singer Marvin Winans, is the pastor.

Neither Winans nor the pastor of the church that bought Maranatha's building would comment on Jones' conversion. Jones also is troubled that those he left behind do not understand his decision.

"To them, I have apostasized into error. And that's painful for me because we all want to be looked at as being right and correct, but now you have the stigma of being mentally unbalanced, changeable, being looked at as though you've just walked away from God."

Jones said when his group was considering converting, prayer groups were formed to stop them. "People fasted and prayed that God would stop us from making this terrible mistake. When we did it, it was as though we had died."

He said Catholics do not fully understand how many Protestants see their church. "There's this thin veneer of amicability, and below that there is great hostility."

But he remains convinced he is doing the right thing.

"How can you say no to truth? I knew that I would lose everything and that in those circles I would never be accepted again, but I had no choice," he said.

"It would be mortal sin for me to know what I know and not act on it. If I returned to my former life, I would be dishonest, untrustworthy, a man who saw truth, knew truth, and turned away from it, and I could just not do that."

PENTECOSTAL MINISTER ALEX JONES CONVERTED TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ALONGSIDE HIS FOLLOWERS!

When Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church this past Easter he was not alone. He brought much of his congregation in with him.

When Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church this past Easter he was not alone. He brought much of his congregation in with him.
When Detroit-born Alex Jones became a Pentecostal minister in 1972, there was little question among those who knew him that he was answering God's call to preach.

Now, many of his friends and family have dismissed the 59-year-old pastor as an apostate for embracing the Catholic faith, closing the nondenominational church he organized in 1982, and taking part of his congregation with him.

At this year's April 14 Easter Vigil, Jones, his wife, Donna, and 62 other former members of Detroit's Maranatha Church, was received into the Catholic Church at St. Suzanne's Parish. For Jones, becoming a Catholic will mark the end of a journey that began with the planting of a seed by Catholic apologist and Register columnist Karl Keating. It also will mean the beginning of a new way of life.

Jones first heard Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, at a debate on whether the origins of the Christian church were Protestant or Catholic. At the close, Keating asked, "If something took place, who would you want to believe, those who saw it or those who came thousands of years later and told what happened?"

"Good point," Jones thought, and tucked it away. Five years later, while he was reading about the church fathers, Keating's question resurfaced. Jones began a study of the Church's beginnings, sharing his newfound knowledge with his congregation.

To illustrate what he was talking about, in the spring of 1998 he re-enacted an early worship service, never intending to alter his congregation's worship style. "But once I discovered the foundational truths and saw that Christianity was not the same as I was preaching, some fine-tuning needed to take place."

Soon, Maranatha Church's Sunday service was looking more like a Catholic Mass with Pentecostal overtones. "We said all the prayers with all the rubrics of the Church, all the readings, the Eucharistic prayers. We did it all, and we did it with an African-American style."

Not everyone liked the change, however, and the 200-member congregation began to dwindle. Meanwhile, Jones contacted Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary and was referred to Steve Ray of Milan, Mich., whose conversion story is told in Crossing the Tiber.

"I set up a lunch with him right away and we pretty much had lunch every month after that," said Ray. He introduced Jones to Dennis Walters, the catechist at Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Mich. Walters began giving the Pentecostal pastor and his wife weekly instructions in March, 1999.



Crossroads

Eventually, Jones and his congregation arrived at a crossroads. On June 4, the remaining adult members of Maranatha Church voted 39-19 to begin the process of becoming Catholic. In September, they began studies at St. Suzanne's.

Maranatha closed for good in December. The congregation voted to give Jones severance pay and sell the building, a former Greek Orthodox church, to the First Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.

Father Dennis Duggan, St. Suzanne's 53-year-old pastor, said the former Maranatha members and their pastor along with about 10 other candidates comprise the 750-member parish's largest-ever convert class.



Unity and diversity

Although not all parishioners at predominantly white St. Suzanne's have received the group warmly, Father Duggan, who also is white, said he considers the newcomers a gift and an answer to prayer.

"What the Lord seems to have brought together in the two of us — Alex and myself — is two individuals who have a similar dream about diversity. Detroit is a particularly segregated kind of community, especially on Sunday morning, and here you've got two baptized believers who really believe we ought to be looking different."

Father Duggan hopes eventually to bring Jones onto the parish staff. Already, he has encouraged Jones to join him in teaching at a Wednesday night Bible service. And, he is working on adapting the music at Masses so that it better reflects the parish's new makeup.

The current European worship style at St. Suzanne's has been the most difficult adjustment for the former Maranatha members, Jones said, because they had been accustomed to using contemporary music with the Catholic prayers and rituals. "The cultural adaptation is far more difficult than the theological adaptation," he said.



Protestant Issues

Jones said the four biggest problems Protestants have with Catholicism are teachings about Mary, purgatory, papal authority, and praying to saints. He resolved three of the four long ago, but struggled the most with Mary, finally accepting the teaching on her just because the church taught it.

"It is so ingrained in Protestants that only God inhabits heaven and to pray to anyone else is idolatry. ... The culture had so placed in my heart that only the Trinity received prayer that it was difficult."

He is writing a paper on the appropriateness of venerating Mary for a class at Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary, where he is taking prerequisite courses for a master's degree in theology and pastoral studies. He also is writing a book for Ignatius Press and accepting speaking engagements through St. Joseph Communications, West Covina, Calif.

Jones, the father of three married sons and grandfather of six, is leaving the question of whether he becomes a priest up to the Church.

"If the Church discerns that vocation, I will accept it. If not, I will accept that, too. Whatever the Church calls me to do, I will do."

Although he has given up his job, prestige, and the congregation he built to become Catholic, Jones said the hardest loss of all has been the family and friends who rejected him because of his decision.

"To see those that have worshiped with and prayed with me for over 40 years walk away and have no contact with them is sad."

It was especially painful, he said, when his mother, who had helped him start Maranatha, left to go to Detroit's Perfecting Church, where his cousin, gospel singer Marvin Winans, is the pastor.

Neither Winans nor the pastor of the church that bought Maranatha's building would comment on Jones' conversion. Jones also is troubled that those he left behind do not understand his decision.

"To them, I have apostasized into error. And that's painful for me because we all want to be looked at as being right and correct, but now you have the stigma of being mentally unbalanced, changeable, being looked at as though you've just walked away from God."

Jones said when his group was considering converting, prayer groups were formed to stop them. "People fasted and prayed that God would stop us from making this terrible mistake. When we did it, it was as though we had died."

He said Catholics do not fully understand how many Protestants see their church. "There's this thin veneer of amicability, and below that there is great hostility."

But he remains convinced he is doing the right thing.

"How can you say no to truth? I knew that I would lose everything and that in those circles I would never be accepted again, but I had no choice," he said.

"It would be mortal sin for me to know what I know and not act on it. If I returned to my former life, I would be dishonest, untrustworthy, a man who saw truth, knew truth, and turned away from it, and I could just not do that."

BE INSPIRED ALL!!!
'CONFESSIONS OF A MEGA CHURCH PASTOR'


Conversion Story of Allen Hunt


Allen Hunt

3 Treasures of the Church

by Allen Hunt

My friend, Sean, watched his father, Henry, die. Henry had been a WWII hero, a flying Tiger. Henry radiated Yankee independence, frugality, and self-sufficiency. He built his own house in Connecticut. He loved time in the woods. He raised his children well. But now he was gone.

Sean’s mother, Mary, continued to live in their family home for the next few years, until she chose to move to Florida. My friend, Sean, helped her clean out the decades of belongings and collections from the family home so she could sell it and relocate. Fifty years of memories had accumulated in that old house.

On the last day of moving out of the old house, Sean took one last walk-through, just to reminisce on years gone by and also to look for any possessions that had been missed in the packing. In his parents’ bedroom, Sean noticed an odd screw in the ceiling, an object that had never before captured his attention. Sean knew his dad and knew that the screw surely had some purpose, so he stepped on a stool to look at the screw in the ceiling. When he removed the screw, a panel slipped out of the ceiling. Behind the panel rested two Folger’s Coffee cans, each of which was filled with cash. The thought occurred to Sean that, if his father had hidden cash in one place, there might be others, so Sean soon discovered screws, panels, and coffee cans in holes in the wall all around that old house. By the end of the hunt, Sean had found more than $5000, hidden years before in the old house by a Depression-era man who knew what we all now know: you cannot always trust banks. Instead of using banks, Henry had carefully hidden his treasure in the ceilings and walls of his old house.

For the first thirty+ years of my life, the Catholic Church was just an old house. Having grown up Methodist, the descendant from at least five generations of Methodist pastors in the South, the Catholic Church existed in my world simply as an old house. The Catholic Church was old and historic, often architecturally remarkable, but never something that attracted my attention in any real way.

Even in my nearly twenty years as a Methodist pastor, I neither liked nor disliked the old house of the Catholic Church. It meant nothing to me; I had no reason ever to notice its existence. It was just an old house, with some old rituals, old buildings, and old ideas.

Along the way, however, God began to reveal to me the treasures hidden in the life of the old house known as the Catholic Church. Over time, as I discovered those hidden treasures, they proved so powerful and meaningful that they led me home to the Catholic Church.

Six hidden treasures, in particular, I discovered in the Catholic Church, but three stand out most of all. And I found them in various parts of the house.

CONTINUE STORY BY OPENING THIS LINK: http://chnetwork.org/2011/11/3-treasures-of-the-church-conversion-story-of-allen-hunt/

Allen Hunt served as a United Methodist pastor for nearly twenty years. He now hosts a nationally syndicated talk radio show on mainstream news/talk stations. The show focuses on “where real life and faith come together,” and can be heard on 75 stations each weekend. He speaks and teaches at churches and meetings around the country and also serves on the Board of Overseers at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. Allen was received into the Church on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2008. He and his wife, Anita, have two daughters, ages 19 and 17. He was a guest on the Journey Home program in April 2009. You may contact Allen at:

BE INSPIRED ALL!!!
'CONFESSIONS OF A MEGA CHURCH PASTOR'


Conversion Story of Allen Hunt


Allen Hunt

3 Treasures of the Church

by Allen Hunt

My friend, Sean, watched his father, Henry, die. Henry had been a WWII hero, a flying Tiger. Henry radiated Yankee independence, frugality, and self-sufficiency. He built his own house in Connecticut. He loved time in the woods. He raised his children well. But now he was gone.

Sean’s mother, Mary, continued to live in their family home for the next few years, until she chose to move to Florida. My friend, Sean, helped her clean out the decades of belongings and collections from the family home so she could sell it and relocate. Fifty years of memories had accumulated in that old house.

On the last day of moving out of the old house, Sean took one last walk-through, just to reminisce on years gone by and also to look for any possessions that had been missed in the packing. In his parents’ bedroom, Sean noticed an odd screw in the ceiling, an object that had never before captured his attention. Sean knew his dad and knew that the screw surely had some purpose, so he stepped on a stool to look at the screw in the ceiling. When he removed the screw, a panel slipped out of the ceiling. Behind the panel rested two Folger’s Coffee cans, each of which was filled with cash. The thought occurred to Sean that, if his father had hidden cash in one place, there might be others, so Sean soon discovered screws, panels, and coffee cans in holes in the wall all around that old house. By the end of the hunt, Sean had found more than $5000, hidden years before in the old house by a Depression-era man who knew what we all now know: you cannot always trust banks. Instead of using banks, Henry had carefully hidden his treasure in the ceilings and walls of his old house.

For the first thirty+ years of my life, the Catholic Church was just an old house. Having grown up Methodist, the descendant from at least five generations of Methodist pastors in the South, the Catholic Church existed in my world simply as an old house. The Catholic Church was old and historic, often architecturally remarkable, but never something that attracted my attention in any real way.

Even in my nearly twenty years as a Methodist pastor, I neither liked nor disliked the old house of the Catholic Church. It meant nothing to me; I had no reason ever to notice its existence. It was just an old house, with some old rituals, old buildings, and old ideas.

Along the way, however, God began to reveal to me the treasures hidden in the life of the old house known as the Catholic Church. Over time, as I discovered those hidden treasures, they proved so powerful and meaningful that they led me home to the Catholic Church.

Six hidden treasures, in particular, I discovered in the Catholic Church, but three stand out most of all. And I found them in various parts of the house.

CONTINUE STORY BY OPENING THIS LINK: http://chnetwork.org/2011/11/3-treasures-of-the-church-conversion-story-of-allen-hunt/

Allen Hunt served as a United Methodist pastor for nearly twenty years. He now hosts a nationally syndicated talk radio show on mainstream news/talk stations. The show focuses on “where real life and faith come together,” and can be heard on 75 stations each weekend. He speaks and teaches at churches and meetings around the country and also serves on the Board of Overseers at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. Allen was received into the Church on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2008. He and his wife, Anita, have two daughters, ages 19 and 17. He was a guest on the Journey Home program in April 2009. You may contact Allen at:

pretty stacy: God bless you, thanks for elucidating. If only the antics wil be patient enough to read through this piece.

thank you stacy. there is really no need to fight them back with insulting words. just give them what they need...PROOF!

I need to ask the Pentecostals one simple question!!!1

WHY IS IT THAT WHEN THE CATHOLICS GATHER TO PRAY OR EXPRESS THEIR FAITH, YOUR BODIES WILL BE PINCHING YOU AND BITING YOU??

ask yourselves!!!

CAMEROONPRIDE: Happy day my Catholic brethren. Let's commemorate the holy virgin Mary , mother of God in peace , which means please ignore these people called protestants ,Pentecostals or whatever rubbish name they call themselves.


I will end. With

Holy Virgin Mary, mother of God ,pray for us ,sinner ......

Free2rhyme your mum is a useless prostitute, in fact she's just a mere appendage. How does it sound?

Bunch of fcktards

do not hurl insulting words at the ignorant.

the lord will guide them to the universal church one day.

no matter how many haters, the catholic church still stands to be the longest living church till date. other churches come and go but the catholic church still remains as one!

Mother mary...pray for us!

Efiko: God has not charge; He is still the same jealous God of Exodus 20:
The 2nd commandment states clerly:

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above (including Mary in heaven) or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

Praying/Bowing down to Mary or Saints (Dead or Alive) is 1st degree idolaty.

The word "worship" has undergone a change in meaning in English. It comes from the Old English weorthscipe, which means the condition of being worthy of honor, respect, or dignity. To worship in the older, larger sense is to ascribe honor, worth, or excellence to someone, whether a sage, a magistrate, or God.

For many centuries, the term worship simply meant showing respect or honor, and an example of this usage survives in contemporary English. British subjects refer to their magistrates as "Your Worship," although Americans would say "Your Honor." This doesn’t mean that British subjects worship their magistrates as gods (in fact, they may even despise a particular magistrate they are addressing). It means they are giving them the honor appropriate to their office, not the honor appropriate to God.

Outside of this example, however, the English term "worship" has been narrowed in scope to indicate only that supreme form of honor, reverence, and respect that is due to God. This change in usage is quite recent. In fact, one can still find books that use "worship" in the older, broader sense. This can lead to a significant degree of confusion, when people who are familiar only with the use of words in their own day and their own circles encounter material written in other times and other places.

In Scripture, the term "worship" was similarly broad in meaning, but in the early Christian centuries, theologians began to differentiate between different types of honor in order to make more clear which is due to God and which is not.

As the terminology of Christian theology developed, the Greek term latria came to be used to refer to the honor that is due to God alone, and the term dulia came to refer to the honor that is due to human beings, especially those who lived and died in God’s friendship—in other words, the saints. Scripture indicates that honor is due to these individuals (Matt. 10:41b). A special term was coined to refer to the special honor given to the Virgin Mary, who bore Jesus—God in the flesh—in her womb. This term, hyperdulia (huper [more than]+ dulia = "beyond dulia", indicates that the honor due to her as Christ’s own Mother is more than the dulia given to other saints. It is greater in degree, but still of the same kind. However, since Mary is a finite creature, the honor she is due is fundamentally different in kind from the latria owed to the infinite Creator.

All of these terms—latria, dulia, hyperdulia—used to be lumped under the one English word "worship." Sometimes when one reads old books discussing the subject of how particular persons are to be honored, they will qualify the word "worship" by referring to "the worship of latria" or "the worship of dulia." To contemporaries and to those not familiar with the history of these terms, however, this is too confusing.

Another attempt to make clear the difference between the honor due to God and that due to humans has been to use the words adore and adoration to describe the total, consuming reverence due to God and the terms venerate, veneration, and honor to refer to the respect due humans. Thus, Catholics sometimes say, "We adore God but we honor his saints."

Unfortunately, many non-Catholics have been so schooled in hostility toward the Church that they appear unable or unwilling to recognize these distinctions. They confidently (often arrogantly) assert that Catholics "worship" Mary and the saints, and, in so doing, commit idolatry. This is patently false, of course, but the education in anti-Catholic prejudice is so strong that one must patiently explain that Catholics do not worship anyone but God—at least given the contemporary use of the term. The Church is very strict about the fact that latria, adoration—what contemporary English speakers call "worship"—is to be given only to God.

Though one should know it from one’s own background, it often may be best to simply point out that Catholics do not worship anyone but God and omit discussing the history of the term. Many non-Catholics might be more perplexed than enlightened by hearing the history of the word. Familiar only with their group’s use of the term "worship," they may misperceive a history lesson as rationalization and end up even more adamant in their declarations that the term is applicable only to God. They may even go further. Wanting to attack the veneration of the saints, they may declare that only God should be honored.

Both of these declarations are in direct contradiction to the language and precepts of the Bible. The term "worship" was used in the same way in the Bible that it used to be used in English. It could cover both the adoration given to God alone and the honor that is to be shown to certain human beings. In Hebrew, the term for worship is shakhah. It is appropriately used for humans in a large number of passages.

For example, in Genesis 37:7–9 Joseph relates two dreams that God gave him concerning how his family would honor him in coming years. Translated literally the passage states: "‘[B]ehold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered round it, and worshiped [shakhah] my sheaf.’ . . . Then he dreamed another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, ‘Behold, I have dreamed another dream; and behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were worshiping [shakhah] me.’"

In Genesis 49:2-27, Jacob pronounced a prophetic blessing on his sons, and concerning Judah he stated: "Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall worship [shakhah] you (49:." And in Exodus 18:7, Moses honored his father-in-law, Jethro: "Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and worshiped [shakhah] him and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare, and went into the tent."

Yet none of these passages were discussing the worship of adoration, the kind of worship given to God.



Honoring Saints

Consider how honor is given. We regularly give it to public officials. In the United States it is customary to address a judge as "Your Honor." In the marriage ceremony it used to be said that the wife would "love, honor, and obey" her husband. Letters to legislators are addressed to "The Honorable So-and-So." And just about anyone, living or dead, who bears an exalted rank is said to be worthy of honor, and this is particularly true of historical figures, as when children are (or at least used to be) instructed to honor the Founding Fathers of America.

These practices are entirely Biblical. We are explicitly commanded at numerous points in the Bible to honor certain people. One of the most important commands on this subject is the command to honor one’s parents: "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you" (Ex. 20:12). God considered this command so important that he repeated it multiple times in the Bible (for example, Lev. 19:3, Deut. 5:16, Matt. 15:4, Luke 18:20, and Eph. 6:2–3). It was also important to give honor to one’s elders in general: "You shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord" (Lev. 19:32). It was also important to specially honor religious leaders: "Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron [the high priest], to give him dignity and honor" (Ex. 28:2).

The New Testament stresses the importance of honoring others no less than the Old Testament. The apostle Paul commanded: "Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due" (Rom. 13:7). He also stated this as a principle regarding one’s employers: "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ" (Eph. 6:5). "Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed" (1 Tim. 6:1). Perhaps the broadest command to honor others is found in 1 Peter: "Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor" (1 Pet. 2:17).

The New Testament also stresses the importance of honoring religious figures. Paul spoke of the need to give them special honor in 1 Timothy: "Let the presbyters [priests] who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching" (1 Tim. 5:17). Christ himself promised special blessings to those who honor religious figures: "He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward, and he who receives a righteous man [saint] because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward" (Matt. 10:41).

So, if there can be nothing wrong with honoring the living, who still have an opportunity to ruin their lives through sin, there certainly can be no argument against giving honor to saints whose lives are done and who ended them in sanctity. If people should be honored in general, God’s special friends certainly should be honored.



Statue Worship?

People who do not know better sometimes say that Catholics worship statues. Not only is this untrue, it is even untrue that Catholics honor statues. After all, a statue is nothing but a carved block of marble or a chunk of plaster, and no one gives honor to marble yet unquarried or to plaster still in the mixing bowl.

The fact that someone kneels before a statue to pray does not mean that he is praying to the statue, just as the fact that someone kneels with a Bible in his hands to pray does not mean that he is worshiping the Bible. Statues or paintings or other artistic devices are used to recall to the mind the person or thing depicted. Just as it is easier to remember one’s mother by looking at her photograph, so it is easier to recall the lives of the saints by looking at representations of them.

The use of statues and icons for liturgical purposes (as opposed to idols) also had a place in the Old Testament. In Exodus 25:18–20, God commanded: "And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end; of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be."

In Numbers 21:8–9, he told Moses: "‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live." This shows the actual ceremonial use of a statue (looking to it) in order to receive a blessing from God (healing from snakebite). In John 3:14, Jesus tells us that he himself is what the bronze serpent represented, so it was a symbolic representation of Jesus. There was no problem with this statue—God had commanded it to be made—so long as people did not worship it. When they did, the righteous king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kgs. 18:4). This clearly shows the difference between the proper religious use of statues and idolatry.

When the time came to build the Temple in Jerusalem, God inspired David’s plans for it, which included "his plan for the golden chariot of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered the ark of the covenant of the Lord. All this he made clear by the writing from the hand of the Lord concerning it, all the work to be done according to the plan" (1 Chr. 28:18–19).

In obedience to this divinely inspired plan, Solomon built two gigantic, golden statues of cherubim: "In the most holy place he made two cherubim of wood and overlaid them with gold. The wings of the cherubim together extended twenty cubits: one wing of the one, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and its other wing, of five cubits, touched the wing of the other cherub; and of this cherub, one wing, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and the other wing, also of five cubits, was joined to the wing of the first cherub. The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits; the cherubim stood on their feet, facing the nave. And he made the veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and worked cherubim on it" (2 Chr. 3:10–14).

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