I was brought Up Catholic(chrisitan)an though i stuggle with many of the issues you all mentioned here i still consider myself chrisitain even before i had a so called born agian experience becuase i was taught from an early age that Jesus and jesus alone was my savior and he died for my sins.
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that this too is a Catholic teaching. I used to go to many protestant churches and there were always people there that used to be Roman Catholic. The usual reason they gave for becoming protestant wasn't so much that they didn't know that Jesus/God alone was their Savior but that they didn't see how important a relationship was with their Savior. This is often a semantics problem. People would say, 'when I was a Catholic, I had religion. When I became a Methodist etc. I had a relationship.'
But what is a relationship?
People have such a stigma when it comes to that word, 'religion'. But religion is relationship. At the same time, in the way people mean religion they often are referring to a time when people had to sprinkle everything with blood. Religion in the way they mean religion is that time when the blood stood in as a shadow and copy of the things above and the curtain was not yet torn. Informed Catholics both RCC and Orthodox realize that Christianity is the end of all religion.
So when a protestant says that against a Catholic in regards to religion/relationship what they are actually saying is that they don't see any value in rituals and formality - externals. Protestantism seems to spiritualize everything. Everything becomes mere symbol and it's the invisible spirit world wherein there is benefit. It's a disembodied experience. Whereas in Catholicism it's often that they consider everything to be, despite being material and formal, an agent through which even the material and the formality become spiritual (provided it is done so in faith.)
So while Protestantism rightly puts a lot of focus on the internals, Catholicism sees the externals as a reflection of the internal and those externals must be entered into out of faith.
On the inside and a little on the outside, a protestant's relationship with Christ looks very similar to a Catholic. They maintain their relationship in a very similar way. To have a relationship, you love (an action) religiously (often), you pray religiously (with an aim to do so without ceasing), you read your bible religiously (if you're literate), you seek God in all you do, religiously - often.
I currently go to a medthosist church and am a member but i also go to catholic mass and let me tell you god speaks to me more in mass that he does in that medthodist church or any of the baptist or penticostal churchs i've been to over the years.
Yeah, that was one of the bizarre experiences I had. I was raised agnostic and didn't walk into a church until I was much older. I had a ton of questions and what I loved about the Protestant churches is that each sermon pretty much explains (tries to anyway) what a certain verse means or how better to live your life. It reminded me of therapy. You sit there and cognitively attempt to get what you can out of each sermon. You Amen the stuff you agree with and remain silent and try not to judge when the message is off.
I never liked the protestant worship songs so I would always take that time just to pray to Him ( I got tired of trying to figure out which parts of the song being sung was biblical and which parts shouldn't be sung.) But when it came to the sermon, I sat down, grabbed my bible and the mental karate began. At the end of the service I'd decide if it was a good message or take an inventory of the things that I could glean out of the sermon. These bits and pieces of things I knew to be true were like puzzle pieces and I looked forward to more in hopes to get a fuller picture.
And while I took what I gleaned to be from God as one does when they receive something to eat, I later found myself attending an Orthodox service. The average liturgy service has about 119 bible verses in it. In the Orthodox service, you stand almost the entire time because you stand in the presence of God. And you sing these crazy prayers and the theology in those songs seem as deep as the mystery of God. We sang about Pentecost being the reversal of Babylon and my whole perspective on my faith shifted.
I couldn't explain it b/c I always disliked the worship songs at the protestant churches and felt quite alone in praying to Him while everyone else was singing. But here I found myself actually singing along. We'd sing entire psalms to a completely unfamiliar tune. For the first time in my life it felt and looked like true worship. There was no focus on myself. I didn't have to worry the content because it was basically the bible. I couldn't differentiate the line between singing and prayer, myself and the person next me. It was as if I didn't matter. I was invisible. Transported somewhere. and All I could hear was His voice.
Are there problems with the catholic church yes, they are just men and if you ask them they will tell you that.Do i agree with everything the catholic church teaches of couse not ,but if you looked into it you wolud see a wide varity of belief within it.As i siad it matters what you do with jesus
Finally catholic mass has most scripture and bible in it than you can shake a stick at in fact it's mostly scipture from being to end and the foucs is on that not the father(or priest, by the way i wrote that on purpose to get some of your goats,oh no he called the preist father ahhhhh)and then comunion.
Someitme protastism is not good either in my mind i refer to it as the land of the mini popes but a lot of these pastors rule their church like they claim the pope rules the catholic church and the parishners are not allowed to question either so as i was reacent told by a new freind of mine if you look at men its gonna trip you up.
Yeah, the Orthodox liturgy is centered entirely around the Eucharist (which I won't get into, in Orthodox tradition there is no transubstantiation) but it's basically communion with God which is basically the purpose of Christian living - to be in complete union (communion) with God, which is only possible through the Son.
Every liturgy is pretty much designed to transform a group of individuals into a sum greater than its parts and then transport that sum into His joy whereby you find yourself in the Kingdom of God, doing as the entire family of God is doing as we speak - worshiping Him who IS and shall ever be, Holy, Holy, Holy.
In Christ,
Ryan
That's all I have to say about this topic, I know how ''heated'' it tends to get, so God bless!
