Steve in Van Horn, Texas, listening on 89.9. Steve, you are on with Tim Staples.
Yeah, why can't the Catholic Church-- I would love for Pope Francis to do
this--why can't the Catholic Church have a foot-washing service where they invite
all denominations of Christians so we can be the female submission to Christ that we're
supposed to be? I'm not a Catholic, but I'm part of the Church, and therefore I
am a Catholic. I'm just not a Roman Catholic. And then, so abortion will
be stopped, divorce will slow down, because a house divided against itself
cannot stand. This is what Abraham Lincoln spelled out. We,
the United States, is what the Catholic Church and all Protestant churches are
supposed to be. One. Can we see victory, because Jesus commanded it. Right.
Jesus commanded it in John 17. Well let me toss out an idea to you here: I believe
we already have exactly what you're talking about in the Catholic Church. We
are one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. In fact my friend, what I--Steve, what I
discovered when I was a Protestant who studied Catholicism really critically
trying to disprove it, is I discovered this unity, this--just the fact, Steve, that
we have one Lord, one faith, one baptism. The same Eucharist that we teach today
has been taught for 2,000 years. The seven Sacraments, the primacy of the
Bishop of Rome the Pope, Apostolic succession, we could go down the list of
doctrines that were around...Steve, think of this: 1,500 years before Luther
was even on the scene, we already have that one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
Unfortunately though, my friend, what's happened is we have individual people
like Luther--Calvin, Knox, Zwingli--and we could go down a couple hundred years to
Wesley, the Wesley brothers, and on down till today, men have
established their own churches not founded on Jesus Christ but founded on
the personalities of individual men, and that's why we have over 30,000
denominations today that has introduced the confusion that you are talking about.
This is why, Steve, we are here at Catholic Answers Live to help people to
see we have a unity that the United States cannot even dream of, my friend.
The United States that exists today is a shadow compared to what it was in 1776.
Imagine, we've slaughtered tens of millions of babies in the womb. Do you
think George Washington would approve? Abraham Lincoln would? Of course not. The
slaughtering of innocent children, the unjust wars, we could go on and on with
the problems we have in the United States, and yet--again, I'm an
American citizen, I love my country, but I have to acknowledge that the United
States in these ways I mentioned and many more we could talk about has
devolved over the last couple of hundred years. Now there are some things
certainly we have improved on, to be sure; the treatment of our African Americans,
absolutely, we went from slavery to free. That is huge. But we have problems as
well, my friend. The legalization of pornography, divorce, you know, we could go
on and on and on. But the bottom line is, my friend, the Catholic Church has this
unity, in Word and in Sacrament, that has given birth to thousands and thousands
and thousands of saints all around the world that has literally transformed the
world. I'd like to invite you to check it out, my friend, because when you dig deep
into what the Catholic Church actually teaches, you are going to find the Church
that Jesus established.