Question:

A friend of mine just switched from an Evangelical Free church to a Catholic church. She is being "bashed" by a lot of friends for this. I would like to understand it). Could you please clarify some things for me?


Answer:

Happy to answer: There are a number of churches that consider themselves "catholic" ...

In addition to which there is the Roman Catholic church, which considers itself to be the only true, catholic and apostolic church. It helps to know what these terms mean.

"Catholic" means universal, and refers to the belief that the Church, which is the Body of Christ, is manifested through the whole company of all Christian people in all times and places. To Catholic belief, an individual congregation is only a small part of the Body of Christ, and cannot rightly discern doctrine for itself independent of the rest of the Body. To most catholic churches, *all* Christians -- even those who consider themselves Congregationalist -- are part of that Body. That is, the catholic Church includes all Christians, even those who don't consider themselves catholic. In contrast, *Roman* Catholics consider only those churches who are obedient to Rome to be part of the catholic Church (technically, they consider the rest of us to be heretics, but now-a-days they politely avoid calling us that to our faces, except in papal encyclicals).

"Apostolic" means that we consider the authority of the Apostles, which the apostles received directly from Christ, to have been passed down Apostle to Bishop, and then Bishop to Bishop, until it rests on our present-day Bishops. Most catholic churches believe that each Bishop is personally responsible to Christ for the churches under his care; the Roman Catholic church believes that the bishops are responsible, through arch-bishops and cardinals, to the Pope, who is then responsible to Christ.

Catholics also believe in "the Communion of Saints". Saints are all devout Christian believers. We believe that, whether alive on earth or gone home to Christ in heaven, we are spiritually joined to one another -- like arms and legs are members of the same Body. Death has no more dominion over us. So, just as I can feel the prayerful love and support of my husband or a dear friend, I can feel the prayerful love and support of my grandmother-in-law who died a decade ago, or of Julian of Norwhich, who died centuries ago. Just as I ask my friends to pray for me when I need support, I ask members of the Church in Heaven to pray for me. This kind of request to departed Christians is what is often misunderstood to be "prayers" to the Saints. They are "prayers" only in the archaic sense of "I pray thee to remember me to our Lord in Heaven", meaning "I *ask* you to pray for me".

We see baptism as God's act of *adopting* us into God's own family. Nothing we can do of ourselves can bring about our own salvation -- not even rationally reaching the age of reason and rationally deciding for ourselves to accept Christ. Salvation occurs when *God* reaches out to us. If we think that God, who numbered the stars in the skies and made the deepest places of the ocean, really cares about the difference between the limited understanding of a tiny baby, and the not-quite-so-limited understanding of an adult human, then we're being pretty arrogant. God's grace is so much more than we can ask or imagine, that "mature understanding" is pretty meaningless before God. Instead, we rest in God's incomprehensible grace, knowing that God is capable of reaching out to every one of us, even a tiny baby.

Probably the other big difference between catholics and non-catholics, is our attitude toward the other sacraments, especially Communion, or the Lord's Supper. For many churches, the Lord's Supper is a symbolic, or memorial act. For catholics, it is again an act of *God*, where God's power combines with human action to miraculous affect: in this case to the effect that Christ literally becomes present to us in the elements of the supper: bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood of Christ. There is dispute among catholics whether this miracle is material transubstantiation, or consubstantiation, or mystical. It is none-the-less very much more than a mere symbol; and the elements themselves, once consecrated, are very much more than bread and wine: we do not throw the leftovers in the trash, but reverently consume them or bury them in consecrated ground just as we would do with the literal remains of our beloved Lord.

Other sacraments are Orders, Confirmation, Marriage, Reconciliation, and Unction. Not all catholic churches consider all of these to be sacraments, and some theologians suggest that there might be additional sacraments. Generally, because we believe that God continues to act in the world (that is, after all, what Sacraments *are*), we do not rely on the Bible to be the "last word" on all things. We consider *Christ* to be the Word of God incarnate. Also, because our doctrine has been past down through the culture of churches that trace their practice back to the Apostles, we consider Tradition to be an important source of revelation. Thus most catholics do *not* ascribe to literal inerrancy, and many use Bibles that include books that evangelicals would be unfamiliar with. Sometimes this is referred to as the "three-legged-stool" of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.

Does that help? It might also help to know that well over half of the world's two billion Christians are "catholic" as I've defined it above. The "bible-based" churches that are so prevalent in the United States actually represent a very small proportion of the whole Church.

Question:

Could you could elaborate a bit more on which doctrines do you think can be traced back to the apostles? I am a Christian who looks to the Word of God only -- the written Word, and the Word incarnate.

?


Answer:

I think all of us, as Christians, look only to the Incarnate Word , but we see the Word through a variety of lenses.

The Great Commission is very clearly a call to give *personal* witness. Christ did not say "Go ye therefor into all the world and hand tracts -- or even Gideon Bibles -- to all nations". Paul uses the terms "witness" or "testimony". We Christians are not, as the Muslims say of us, "a People of the Book", but a people of a living relationship with the living and immanent God, who is Christ, the living Word.

How do we recognize Christ, in order to form such a relationship? In my travels, when I meet one of my e-friends in real life, I tell them "I have greying hair, I'm short, and I'll be wearing a blue dress with a purple scarf". When they come to my hotel they look around the lobby and compare what they actually see, with the description they have received.

When Christ speaks in our hearts, we compare the Word with the witness given by our evangelists. If my faith were only about a relationship between Christ and me, I could perhaps rely on the static pages of the Bible and the intellectual understanding of the written word to recognise the living Word. But, in turning to Christ I become a "*member* of Christ" -- one among many, who in aggregate *are* the Church. These other members, living and dead, are the witnesses who help me recognise the Word. The Old Testament is the witness to God's faithfulness culminating in the gift of Jesus, the New Testament is the Witness of the Apostolic Church, and Tradition is the Witness of the continuing Church. There is no conflict between Tradition and Scripture.

As for which doctrines can be traced back to the apostles, well, the doctrinal answer would be <g>, *all* of them. But the significant ones that set catholicism apart from congregationalism are probably the authority of Bishops, and the nature of Sacrament. I'm not sure what you mean by "Catholic (universal) vs. Jerusalem Church (local)", but as far as the difference between *RCC* and "catholic" I see RCC as just another denomination, whereas "catholic" is a particular understanding of the Body of Christ -- an understanding that has additional implications regarding our understanding of other things. Some writers distinguish between "catholic" and "Roman Catholic" by rigourously using a small "c" for the former, but that breaks down when one is using formal Victorian and older patterns of capitalization, so for clarity I try to use small "c" for the generic form, and the specific modifier "Roman" for the denominational form.