Mario listening on Immaculate Heart Radio in Brentwood, California, you get to
ask the next question for Jimmy Akin. Thank you for taking my call, can you hear me ok?
If you can speak directly into the phone and loudly that will help us out.
Okay how about that right now? That's much better. By the way, just a tip for everyone in the
audience: don't use speakerphone. It will help both us and you and everyone else
much better if you just use the phone without the speaker part.
So go ahead Mario, what's your question? Okay my question is, I was talking to a
friend of mine, he was raised Catholic and now he's left the church and now
attending a Protestant community. And we were talking and he raised up the
question about me going to his church, and I said why wouldn't he come back to a
Catholic Church? And he said because he didn't find what he found in this
church, he didn't find it in the Catholic Church. Okay. So I wanted to get some kind of
advice how to approach that kind of situation. Well, the first thing I'd do is
ask him a question, and say, "What is it that you found in your new
church that you didn't find in the Catholic Church?" Because that's really
going to be the key to helping him out, is finding out what does he think is
attractive? Did he--about this new church. Did he give
you any indication on that? No, all he said was that when he was in the Catholic church he wanted to, you
know, [muffled] and he attended different youth
retreats and things like that. Although he was, he said he was open to,
you know, find Jesus, that through all things, not even that. Okay. And to what he
found out. Okay. Well, it's unfortunate he hasn't given you more of
an indication. Based on what you've said, I could imagine him saying a number
of different things. One of the things that you sometimes hear people say who
have this kind of a background is, they'll say, "Well, I didn't know Jesus in
the Catholic Church. And my new Protestant community taught me about
Jesus, so that's where I found Jesus" And frequently...I mean it can be a little
tricky to respond to this, because in fact the Catholic Church talks about
Jesus all the time. I mean, Jesus is the center of the Mass. And we, you know, we
read the Gospel story every single Sunday. That doesn't actually happen
in Protestant churches all the time. In some of them it does, but in others they
maybe, they may have one scripture reading, and it may be from
1 Corinthians or something like that. But at the Catholic Church, you're going to
hear something from the Gospels,from the actual story of Jesus, at every single
Mass, even ones that aren't on Sunday. And... so...and we even stand as a sign of
reverence for the for the Gospel of Jesus, and we have the Gospel message
about Jesus and how he saves us from our sins permeating the prayers of the Mass,
including things we, as the congregation, say; like every single Mass, we get down
on our knees, and we say, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you," so it makes it
clear, the human message--you know, the message that we humans, we're sinful, and
we're not worthy to receive Him, so it's an act of grace for Him to come into our
lives in this way. And so the Mass is really permeated with all of this, and it
can be a little uncomfortable to say it, but if someone doesn't pick up on that
if they say, "Well, I went to Mass my whole life and I never picked up on that," then
there's a question about how much they were listening at Mass, and how much they
were really paying attention to what was being done and being said, and what they
were doing and saying. Now I have to say, that's--it's not unique
to young Catholics, you know, you mentioned this guy mentioned going to
youth retreats and stuff; it's not just young Catholics that can be inattentive.
Young Protestants, and in fact young people in general, can be inattentive in
church. And so if you spend a significant amount of time in Protestant churches,
like I did before I was Catholic, you'll hear Protestants say things like,
"You know, when I was young, I went to church all the time and I never paid
attention...and then one day I had a spiritual awakening and I came to
Jesus." And all that's great, you know, and they may even say things like, "I
went to youth retreats all the time in my Protestant church, and I never heard
about Jesus, but then one day I had an awakening, I finally paid attention
and did." And it's good that they have that conversion experience and they
start being active about their Christian faith, rather than just kind of passively
letting it wash over them, but this is a human phenomenon that applies to
humans regardless of their religious background. Young people are often
inattentive to matters of faith; what's different is that they're not, in a
Protestant context, taught to blame their former Protestantism for their youthful
inattentiveness. But what can happen, when you have someone with a Catholic
background who then has a spiritual awakening in a Protestant context, is
they can be taught to blame their Catholicism, and say, "The Catholic Church
never taught me all this," when in fact the Catholic Church did, they were just an
inattentive youth. And so, because it can involve talking about "Well, you know, how
close were you really paying attention?" it can be a little delicate to discuss
that. In terms of other things he might say: he might say, "Well, you know, I just
really like the dynamic worship service that I have in my current community." And
you can point out a couple of things to that, one of them is the Catholic Church
also has some dynamic worship services. Not all masses are celebrated in the
same style, and not all worship is done at Mass. He might say something like, "Well,
I really like the Bible study that I get in my Protestant church.
And to that you can respond, "Well, there's lots of Bible study in the Catholic
Church too, it's just a question of finding it." The fundamental thing, though,
regardless of what particular thing he says, is that the issue of truth is
paramount. And it doesn't matter if you think that there's a really dynamic
worship service you enjoy, or really great Bible study that you find
interesting in this new context; the question of truth is paramount.
Jesus said, "I will build my Church." Not "my churches." So there's one Church
that Jesus established. And He said, "the gates of Hell will not prevail against
it." That means His Church has existed since the 1st century. And while they
have lots of elements of Christian truth in them, the Protestant churches don't go
back to the first century, they only go back 500 years. So if you really want to
take Jesus seriously, if you really care about the truth and what
Jesus's will for us is, you're going to need to identify which church is His;
it's going to need to go back to the first century, and also it's going to
need to be founded on St. Peter and that's a subject that we have a lot of
resources at Catholic.com to help show your friend that as well, because he's
likely, coming from a Protestant context, to have some questions and concerns
about the role of St. Peter in the Church. Thank you very much, Mario, I hope
that helped. I can't imagine how it didn't; that was an extraordinary answer.