It is no news to the writers and readers of AATW that Christianity has an image problem. Indeed, Christianity has always had its detractors: those who thought Jesus was not God; those who thought the gods of the nations and the emperor himself should be worshipped. But today I wish to relate an experience I had in my office at work.
I had mentioned to my co-workers that I would briefly be seeing a friend at the staff canteen, who wished to give me a gift she had bought at Lourdes on her recent pilgrimage. This led to one of my colleagues relating how one side of his family was Irish and were staunchly Catholic. As a teacher of history this colleague was also interested in the history and abuses of the Church, including its role as an “institution of control”. Furthermore, this colleague, before working at the current establishment, had served as a teacher at a Catholic boarding-school, which was also a monastery.
This colleague’s opinion of the Catholic Church was not complementary. I listened to a grave list of complaints and charges of hypocrisy, which I could neither deny nor refute. Indeed, it was probably best that I simply listened for much of the time: I do not believe that a brazen attempt to “correct” him would have helped matters. Rather, I feel that would have confirmed him in his opinions. The answers that I did give were explanatory, and to some extent, taken from my own context and experience. He touched on a variety of topics, and I could not possibly give him an in-depth answer for every one, owing to the nature of the conversation. Moreover, as I am not a Catholic myself, I could not serve as an apologist for a number of his specific claims.
By contrast, he had a favourable view of the Anglican Church, for the reason that it had a much more tolerant and egalitarian view towards women and the LGBT community. At this point another non-Christian colleague joined the conversation and expressed her disgust at what she perceived as the Church’s low view of women. I was unable to ascertain at that point whether this was a long-standing position, or whether it was a response to a recent conversation I had with another Christian colleague regarding St. Paul’s command that women wear veils in corporate worship (1 Cor. 11).
The effect of this conversation was to leave me feeling sad and ashamed. Here were people who I count as friends, people I hope will one day see Christ and come to love Him and acknowledge Him as their God. But I could do nothing in that moment to get them to see past the failures of the Church – His body – and look upon His glory. I try as far as I am able to discuss my faith with people at work, but I do not “preach at them”. I know a number of evangelicals would be appalled at my “cowardice”, but I take a long-term view. As Ecclesiastes teaches, there is a time for doing something and a time not to do it. I try to respond to questions as they arise, and I try to share how I live my faith with my friends at work. This includes the struggles, doubts, questions, and temptations.
Some would say I am exposing the “underside” to people who should not see it. Maybe. But I believe honesty is important in my relationship with God and my relationships with other people. They should know that being a Christian means adopting a certain worldview, and that worldview involves difficult questions at times. I want them to see what Christianity looks like in a real person, not just as a set of propositions that they must accept.
I wish to close this post by affirming my solidarity with Catholics. This post was not intended as a criticism of you, nor as a way of separating you from the rest of your Christian brethren: what affects you affects the rest of us, and vice versa. But we do have an image problem that we need to address. The outside world is watching us: they are looking for signs of integrity (righteousness) on the one hand, and signs of true love and compassion on the other. I have always considered Jess to be an admirable example of both, and it is fitting to express this admiration for her on her blog. But above that, we are to be imitators of Christ and perhaps that is something that gets lost in a lot of our sermons and posts and dialogue. How would the Carpenter from Nazareth respond to my friends at work?
Failure isn’t failure, it’s just postponed success. Our church, liike every institution is composed of fallible human beings, yet it’s members being linked to Christ are of One Body One Spirit with Him and through Him are capable of great things. We remain fallible human beings but infused with love for our fellows we help them in every way possible. By listening to your colleagues you have found thorns in their flesh which need attention of the Master through you in the first instance (as did the man who found a stranger half-dead on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho).
Many lies are told about the Church. Other misunderstandings come from faulty knowledge and of course there are actual harms committed by people who should have known better. The Church has been the instrument of helping people become holy, steadfast and true to her Founder thoughout the centuries since He walked this earth.
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“Many lies are told about the Church. Other misunderstandings come from faulty knowledge ”
Yeah, people shouldn’t outta make up evil things about the pure and white catholic church.
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Bosco, could you tell us who, other than yourself, describes the church as ‘pure and white’?
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He might be referring to the image in Revelation of the Church/New Jerusalem as a bride adorned for her wedding day. Or to St Paul’s comments about God preserving us blameless or spotless till the day of Christ.
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I daresay, as ever, he is misreading, misunderstanding, and misrepresenting Revelation!
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That is certainly a hard book to interpret, and I am not an authority on Catholic documents, so I can’t comment on his interpretation of those either. I’m looking forward to The Bible Projects videos on Revelation when they get to it. They have been very good at engaging with academic material.
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Many of the early Fathers were against putting it in the Canon, arguing it was easily misread and misunderstood 🙂
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Yes, I understand why the Orthodox don’t use it officially in their liturgy (although bits of the liturgy taken from Isaiah etc are quote in Rev.). I think the “big picture” approach is always useful: who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys” and that’s pretty clear, even if we differ over who exactly the False Prophet, etc. might be in history.
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A sensible attitude, Nicholas.
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I think more likely Bosco means the church’s claim to be the apostolic, holy church.
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The image is sullied because foremost we have lost our understanding of what integrity implies and what is truly compassionate.
If I join a club [the Total Truth Club] and take an oath [fully understanding everything that has been revealed by this club to be objective and eternally True] and vow before God and man that I will try, to the best of my ability, to live by these Truths and to never teach Untruths knowingly, then it is expected that one does exactly what you have vowed; otherwise you are nothing short of a hypocrite and a liar. In other words the the same stick that I use to measure myself is expected to be the same stick that all the members of this club use to do the same thing. They live by it and apply these truths to new situations when they arise. There is a board of directors who will expressly define from time to time how these things should applied in the more difficult cases. So the vow needs to also accept that I will abide with the decisions of this board under the following circumstances: 1) that the board members are validly elected and appointed and 2) that no decision is clearly in opposition to an existing truth that was held by the club prior to their decision . . . for truth cannot oppose another truth and cannot be contradictory to itself.
That is problem. We have conflated integrity and compassion to embrace hypocrisy and a false compassion or mercy which presupposes that other people cannot live by the standards set forth by this Club . . . though for 2000 years many people have shown us that they can. It is a lie that this is ‘too hard’ for modern man to do. It is a lie to tell someone that their ‘truth’ or their ‘excuse’ is valid and that the rules need be changed. If you do not like the rules then you are not required to join by force. If you do join then there are expected, life changing, Truths by whic each member is [at the least] expected to abide by. If serious enough and persistent enough after counseling etc. then they should be removed from the Club so as not to create disharmony and foster dissention within the group.
If we have an image problem today it is because our leaders and our followers are much too lax in keeping their vows; they are willing to be hypocrites and they praise those who are as being compassionate and merciful . . . though, in fact, they are progenitors of destruction, weakening the very foundations that this Club was founded upon.
The answer for Catholics is simple. Apply the measuring stick to oneself and go to Confession often and ammend your life. To those outside the “Club” or the Faith, then they at least know that mercy and compassion are embodied in the very fabric of Truth and that changing ourselves in conformity to what we believe is the whole purpose of the Faith to begin with. When you start unraveling that into some sort of PC think tank, then you have overthought its purpose and its reason for being; to live the Way of the Cross and the Way of Truth. If you don’t like it then make up your own club and/or come back when you are ready to accept ALL that the Church teaches and set yourself the task of reforming your life according to principles laid out by God Himself.
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“get them to see past the failures of the Church – His body ”
The body of The Lamb of God doesn’t have failures. Man made cults have failures. Its a mistake the unsaved make to equate that most evil and vile of cults called the catholic church with Christianity.
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“he had a favourable view of the Anglican Church”
So do me and my blushing bride Flicka. We plan to(forgive the pun) get hitched in the ivy coverd august halls of my beloved Anglican Church.
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This week I have been driving my 3 grandchildren ages 9, 10 and 13 to school ½ hour there and ½ hour back. We have been working through the Lord’s Prayer, 2 words at a time, on each journey. They love it and are amazed how much information there is in each set of 2 words. It then sparks off questions and comments from them. The middle boy (10) takes his Bible to school and reads in his spare time. I asked if they talked about Jesus to other kids. They said no other kids talked about God but the 10 year old boy gave this account:
“I went for a sleep over at a friends and another friend was with us. My friend said he kept getting bad dreams. So I said you should pray to God about it for him to take them away. (My wife had prayed with our grandson over that issue and the bad dreams had stopped – his advice to his friend was a natural outcome). His friend said I don’t like to that (i.e. pray). My grandson said (and where he gets these ideas is for you to consider) “Well just imagine that there is a big hole in your bedroom and God is coming down to make everything OK. He then said that both the other 2 children then said they could saw a light shining around my grandsons head as he spoke to them.”
What do you think?
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I think that is a wonderful testimony. Thank you for sharing that, Rob.
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All 4 of our grandchildren are believers Caleb the 10 yr old seems to be remarkably spiritual. He was baptised at his own request a few months ago.
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I’ve read several books recently that has armed me to refute these common false perceptions folks have on the Church. However, most likely these folks aren’t interested in Truth, what they are interested in are convenient suppositions that allow them to enjoy the hedonistic culture of modernism. You could be polite and engage them, but it would be fruitless.
If The Catholic Church promoted his philosophy, he’d easily forgive past transgressions.
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We are called to be a light to the nations, the yeast in the loaf, the salt to the meat so we must acknowlege that Jesus is Christ, the Son of God and the Saviour of the World to all we come into contact with. He has said that if we deny Him before men that He will deny us before His Father. We are called to have Faith Hope and Trust in God and to convey this to those around us in every way that presents itself to us. Our common name is Christian – it is our identity card – our surname – may we always be faithful bearers of His Holy Name.
Soon we mayl be called to show that we are genuine bearers of Faith, Hope and Love as the world is said to be on the verge of a great test of our humanity, out of which we are promised deliverence late in 2017 as proposed to us here http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2014/12/charlie-johnston-alleged-prophet-with.html?m=1
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Your mystic of the church is a master of the obvious. I see that you really believe this stuff. Good brother David Moniker has some mystic female he rallies behind. You false religion people really go off the deep end with your mystic stuff.
I love it….according to your mystic, Mary is going to save us. So much for your big fat lip service to Jesus and the Son of God speech of yours. How about a quote?……
Charlie states emphatically that the allied countries of the West will not win the battle against China, but that they will simply endure until the great miraculous Rescue comes through the Immaculate Heart of Mary (more on this miraculous Rescue below).
“I only have eight public prophecies that I insist on. Only the visible, miraculous Rescue by Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception in late 2017, is time sensitive”
Then, after the 5 things above comes the miraculous “Rescue” through the Immaculate Heart of Mary sometime in late 2017.
Then there are two prophecies that happen shortly after the Rescue. They are the unification of the faithful into one flock under one shepherd and the building and location of the Shrine of thanksgiving for the Rescue on Mount Meeker in Colorado.
http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2014/12/charlie-johnston-alleged-prophet-with.html?m=1
Wow, who woulda known? Unification into one flock under one shepherd. Wow, he really must be a prophet. Oh yes, and the a shrine to Mary will be built in Mt Meeker in Colorado.
Yes, Mary will save you all.
Save me Mary
(;-D
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Thank you dear brotherBosco for taking the time to read it all. Whether or not anyphophet or prophesy is true or not we are obliged to be faithful to Jesus and do what he has asked of us (as Our Lady did) until he calls us home, which could be today or tomorrow. Peace be with you xxx.
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Tomorrow is promised to no man. Seek the Lord while me may be found. May god richly bless you good sister Annie.
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Well we will not have long to wait to see if Charlie is right 2017 is just around the corner. As for me I put NO store in his predictions.
If the Christian church continues to grow in China throughout this century as it is growing at the moment China is set to be perhaps the most Christian nation in the world. It may become the most missionary sending nation the world has yet seen.
China already has a state church ‘The 3 Self Church’ and I think the greatest danger to the ‘Chinese Underground Church’ as it continues to grow is that the state will recognise it and seek to incorporate it into state cultures. Persecution has not prevented church growth there and the enemy may well try an alternative tactic when and if the nation is balanced to a Christian position.
I am not a prophet and this is not a prediction – but viable alternatives based on what is currently observable.
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You don’t have to be a prophet good brother Rob. Christ is moving in that wicked atheist nation China.
Could be that the Chinese state might absorb Christianity just like Rome did. But the same as in Rome, the born again wouldn’t follow it. They never have and they never will.
Good brother Rob, heres some advice; …always use scripture to temper your beliefs. For example;…you said China might become Christian based. Weight this with scripture. Prophesy says the Kings of the East will descend on Israel and to make war with He who sits on the throne. China is building a large army, and not for show. Its going to use it soon. China might have a large born again population, but that wont stop the govt from being evil. According to scripture, even America is going to join in to fight against Israel.
Keep it scriptural my brother.
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Yes agree with scripture but there are more than 1 or 2 nations in the east. Time will tell how they develop I gave a + & – option for China. Not being a prophet that is.
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Ah yes, true, there are a few nations east of Israel. The prophesy says ….”The Kings” of the east. Plural. Personally, I don’t see what dog China has in this fight. And personally, I don’t see why America would join in on attacking Israel. But scripture, if taken literally, they will attack Israel. The older I get and longer I walk with the Holy Ghost, the more I learn to take the bible at it word…face value.
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The other point is that China does not have a king it would be a big change for them to get one.
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Want an image problem? Here….heres an image problem for you;
The catholic church has spent 2.1 million on lobbying against child protection statute of limitation laws.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/catholic-church-hired-lobby-firms-block-n-y-kid-rape-laws-article-1.2655010
Any parent that takes their kids to the catholic church should have them taken away by the state and then imprison the parents.
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NEW YORK (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced a compensation program Thursday for victims of sex abuse by priests who are willing to forego lawsuits in exchange for an award to be determined by an independent mediator.
“One sin, one crime, one scandal has gravely wounded us in the church, the sexual abuse of young people by clergy,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in unveiling the program.
Some advocates for sex abuse victims assailed the compensation plan as an attempt to quash cases quickly, before New York’s legislature acts on a proposal to make it easier for victims to sue over abuse that happened years ago.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ny-archdiocese-begins-compensation-program-abuse-victims-151220087.html
Heck no. The CC doesn’t want child abuse cases to go to court. Number one is that it will expose the priests, and they don’t want that, because they are the priests,…and number two…money. The payout is bigger if it goes to court.
These idol shepherds feed off the flesh of their flock. I love it. That’s what you get in the CC. But its not the kids fault……its the idolatrous parents fault for bringing their kids to the CC. No matter how much Father Groeschel says its the kids fault for seducing the poor ol unsuspecting pure and white priest. You guys get what you deserve.
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