"Christian is my name, and Catholic my surname. The one designates me, while the other makes me specific. Thus am I attested and set apart... When we are called Catholics it is by this appellation that our people are kept apart from any heretical name."Saint Pacian of Barcelona, Letter to Sympronian, 375 A.D..

Family Becoming Catholic:

One of the goals I had when I became Catholic was to get my mother to convert as well. She married into a Catholic family almost 35 years ago and no one has been able to get her to join the church. I have been talking to her for about three months now and finally she told me last night that she has decided to become Catholic! She will go through RCIA, and later down the road take the initiation 'grand slam' where she will be Baptized, confirmed and take her first communion. This was very exciting news, the months of praying work.

Now not only is my mother going to join the Church, my niece who is expected any moment now will be baptized Catholic and also my sister in law who once said she would never become Catholic is even considering joining the Church along with her daughter and my mother. It is great to know that the Lord used me as an instrument to introduce the peace and the joy of that Catholic Church that they will no doubt find.

Pax Tecum

Bible Alone?

From time to time I like to check out Protestant web-sites in order to get the most up to date challenges against the Church. Never surprises me the things they will come up with. Anyways one thing that stood out to me was all their statements of faith had this as their number one doctrine:

The Bible is the inspired and only infallible and authoritative Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16).

Most of these websites did not mention any Scripture to back this man made tradition up, however some did and the ones that did all quoted 2 Timothy 3:16. Have Protestants even looked at what this verse actually says? Well lets look:

2 Timothy 3:16

• All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (NIV)
• All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (NASB)
• All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (KJV)
• All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (NKJV)

Here are four examples from four different very popular Protestant translations..... Notice what is missing, the word, "alone". These Christian websites indicate that the Bible is the ONLY authority however their scripture verse used to back this up does not show that. The Bible says, and I agree with the Bible, is that it is USEFUL or PROFITABLE depending on your version of the Bible.

It is rather ironic that it is the Catholic Church that gets criticized because Protestants think that we have beliefs that contradict scripture, yet the fundamental belief, the doctrine of "the Bible alone" is not scriptural. They can offer no scriptural proof for this doctrine, only verses that allude to that the Bible is God breathed, inerrant, and valuable for teaching, reproof and instruction in righteousness, all things Catholics believe.

Further puzzling is all this quote says is that "scripture" is useful and profitable. How do we know what scripture is profitable? The Bible does not tell us what books should and should not be in the Bible, therefore how is one to tell what the author here is trying to indicate?

Now lets take this verse into context and see what the author is trying to say. One verse directly behind this states:

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15)

Scripture that you have known from childhood? What scripture has Timothy known since Childhood? Certainly not the NT, seeing as it wasn't canonized until the 4th century, the scripture that is being refered to here was the OT, so if this verse is saying anything at all it is saying to much for these Protestants. If we are to read how these Protestants are reading it, we would be commanded to take the OT as our final and only authority, which of course is silly.

There of course is much more to reveal this man made tradition, but this was just an answer to the 2 Timothy 3:16 verse which does not, no matter how much protestants want it to be, a proof for their Bible alone doctrine.

Pax Tecum

Justin Martyr on the Real Presence:

"We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these, but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151]).

Another Early Church father describing the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. It is comforting to know that the Catholic Church's interpretation of the Gospel of John regarding communion is in line with that of the early Church fathers, seeing as these men were taught by the Apostles, or people who the Apostles taught directly. The Early Church was indeed Catholic, reading the early Church fathers will vanquish all thought that it was protestant.

Pax Tecum

Ignatius of Antioch on the Real Presence:

"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1 [A.D. 110]).

". . . and are now ready to obey your bishop and clergy with undivided
minds and to share in the one common breaking of bread – the medicine of immortality, and the sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ for evermore" (Letter to the Ephesians 20 [A.D. 110]).

Notice here the date at which Ignatius said this. 110, only 80 years after Christ lived. Ignatius even states it as if it had been a very common and old belief, and in fact it is. All early Christians believe, as the Bible teaches it, in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Communion as a pure symbol is the child of the reformation. Its ironic that Protestants during the Reformation claimed to want to get back to the basics of Christianity, wanted to worship Christ how the earliest Christians did. Yet they go to the Bible, something no Christian had until the 4th Century, and deny the Real Presence, something which every early Christian confessed. So which church is more similar to the early Christians? The Catholic Church of course, but this is because it is the same church.

Pax Tecum