Memo
From: Josh [ThePope@Vatican.va]
To: Msgr. Xavier O'Brien, SJ [XO@vatican.va]
RE: Ecumenical Explanations to Evangelicals.
In my recent meetings with high ranking American Evangelicals, I was faced with the following comments.
“I heard the Catholics don't believe that Jesus is their savior, their only way to heaven.”
“I was raised in a fundamental belief that the Bible is the only real truth, basically. That it's infallible.”
“I don't know the difference between Roman Catholics and other Catholics.”
“Sounds like a lot of idolatry to me, to be frank. Praying to saints, praying to Mary, instead of praying the the one intercessor between God and man, the Man Jesus Christ.”
I got my point across by the end of the meeting. However, that was dealing with higher ups in their faiths. We should probably have something easily and succinctly understood on hand for.... I believe the phrase you use is “mass market consumption.”
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From: Msgr. Xavier O'Brien, SJ [XO@vatican.va]
To: Josh [ThePope@Vatican.va]
RE: Ecumenical Explanations to Evangelicals.
I will only remind Your Holiness that the first time reconciliation with the Protestants was made shortly after Martin Luther died. That fell apart because THEY couldn't agree on anything long enough for an actual conversation to begin.
However, if you insist....
1) I will start with the Bible as the only “real truth”.... I dislike the phrasing, since, well, isn't gravity a truth? It's really sort of there. Come to think of it, are there truths that aren't real? If they wish to say that the Bible is infallible reflection of EXACTLY what happened, then ask them things like: “What were Jesus' last words?” since there are different variations per Gospel author, which one is the “real truth.”
Anyway, if you want to confuse the heck out of any Christian who isn't a Catholic, point out any reference to Peter as the rock upon which Jesus built the Church; then point out the nice, neat unbroken line from Peter to you. Either they'll drop the subject, or spend so much time tap-dancing that they'll forget the topic.
Seriously—I have nothing better than any of the above. You could tell them to look at both the entering of Joshua into the Promised Land, killing “all” of the local pagans, and then ask where all the pagans came from that the Judges needed to deal with.
You might just wish to say that while the principles of the Bible are infallible and true, the Bible was compiled by men over a period of centuries, and the New Testament compiled over a period of decades. If you want more detail to the answer, the Old Testament was passed down in an oral tradition, and only codified by the Jewish community about a thousand years after Christ....
Something you DO NOT want to point out is that, in addition to Martin Luther being a bad translator, that he used the later, “Post Christ” Hebrew scriptures. Especially when you consider that there were readings and books that weren't used by the Jewish community because Rome was using them as a lead in to Jesus. I don't think that would go over well with some of them.
2) With Jesus Christ, the savior.... I am sorry Your Holiness, but my first reaction is “Duh. Christ-ians. People who follow Christ.” In your cast, just go into your Greek, and translate Christ as coming from “Christos,” meaning “the savior.” Short version: Yes, Christ is the savior-- it's implicit in the title. Potential problem: How many of our own laity think that “Christ” was the last name of Yeshua Bin Joseph, commonly referred to as Jesus.
Before you say anything in reference to that, consider that you are dealing with American Catholics. At least with the Europeans diss us, they generally know what they're complaining about.
3) Which segues nicely into the various “types” of Catholics. We could go into de facto versus de jure—If we were being technical, there's only the Roman variety. De facto, it's more like "Roman, American, European, etc." However, since de jure doesn't translate as well as de facto, simplify it as: “Hyphenated Catholics all follow the same creed, but they express it in different ways. The wailing and wearing black of an Italian Catholic funeral differs from the parties thrown in Irish Catholic and New Orleans Catholic funerals, but they are still the same faith. ”
4)Well, saints are just people whom we're certain are in Heaven and can be held up as role models. Not to mention that they're more relatable to most people than Jesus is. For example, I can relate to Thomas Aquinas since he, too, was an intellectual and lived inside his own head. Praying to saints is along the lines of talking to a deceased loved one—one naturally assumes they are in Heaven, and if a resident of Heaven can't have a conversation with the Lord God, then there's something off about the great hereafter. The same is true with a saint—someone who can be talked to, and we can usually assume that a saint can talk with God.
5) And Mary is just the ultimate saint. Given the time and the place, she risked community alienation, stoning, and being rejected by the husband already arranged for her in a time period where that sort of thing meant total ruin. A lone teenager risked all of this to bring a savior into the world; not to mention that she had to bear the burden of his ministry and death. Any mother who has had to bury a child will usually describe it as having been killed themselves—in the case of Mary, Our Lord, her son, was beaten before her eyes, humiliated on the long march to his place of execution, for a manner of death that was long and torturous. It may be blasphemous to say that Our Lord had it easy—for him, it ended with death. Mary had to bear with it for, at minimum, three days. We think that's worth a few statutes and a prayer.
As far as saints go... we don't think they directly perform miracles. The mechanism of action is more a matter of, if I pray to this person, and if this miraculous result comes about, it's because this person had a chat with God on the matter. However, since that would take a lot of words, we just attribute the miracle to the saint and move on.
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