Is it OK to visit a Catholic church?

You need to study what they believe a little more. They believe that Mary was impregnated by God the Father....but they think that God, in his human form, came down and had physical sex with Mary to impregnate her. Yes, it is false doctrine....again, I do not think they will go to hell because they believe that.

Do you really think that you have to have all your doctrines right on who Jesus is to be truely saved?

How do you know all your doctines are right? I am sure you would say....well, the Bible says that I am right. That is exactly what many other Christian denominations, who believe different things, say. For many years, on many things, I read the same verses over and over, but since I already had a preconceived idea on a subject, the real truth never dawned on me. Do you not think you might have some preconceived ideas about Jesus that are wrong?

 

Yes.

Julia

 

What I believe about Christ is what I read in the Bible. What else can I say? How can you have pre-conceived ideas about someone when the only thing you base your beliefs on is what you read in a book written specifically about that person?

The Mormons have added to the word of God with their Book of Mormon. For example, the Bible plainly says that God is a spirit and those that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. If you don't even believe the truth about Him, how can you be saved?

Now, since you do not think their false doctrine will 'send them to hell', what exactly is/are the reason(s) that constitute(s) a person being sent to hell?

Julia

 

Visiting a Catholic Church is not the same as fellowship with a cult.

 

Yes.

Julia </font>[/QUOTE]Wow - I'm glad that's not what Paul says in Romans 10. I think about children who accept Christ into their lives. They don't know all of the doctrines about Jesus Christ. I'm 26 and a minister and I don't have it all down myself.

 

[post by non-baptist snipped; posting privileges to be suspended. I do not make idle threats to be mocked, friend.]

[ February 22, 2005, 12:02 AM: Message edited by: Dr. Bob ]

 

Please, show my where I said anything pro LDS....I continued to say they had "false" and "crazy" doctrines.

 

Yes.

Julia </font>[/QUOTE]Wow - I'm glad that's not what Paul says in Romans 10. I think about children who accept Christ into their lives. They don't know all of the doctrines about Jesus Christ. I'm 26 and a minister and I don't have it all down myself. </font>[/QUOTE]Then allow me to rephrase my answer: I do not believe that you can hold the doctrines of the LDS concerning Jesus and be truly saved.

Julia

 

I would say "NO, Do not go"!!!!!!!!!!

 

Mommyperson
About that book.
Far from Rome, Near to God.
A book full of personal accounts from former priests, nuns and members of the Catholic church.
I have never read it, but I do know that there used to be something of an American cottage industry of exposés written about the RCC by former RC 'priests' and 'nuns' who in real life never were priests and nuns. I think that that situation has improved of late, but I'll always be a little suspicious of books of that type.

 

It is sad that some would mis-represent the truth in order to make another denomination look bad.

I personally, think that we all do enough damage to Christ and the Good News without help.

But, the best book that I have read about the Catholic view of God was Augustine's Confessions. I think most Catholics do not understand their faith, just like many of us Baptists.

 

Dear mommyperson,

Not only have I read the book, I own the book and keep it on hand to help point out the pointlessness of using it. I can't refute every single story in it, it would take too long, but as a "for instance" Chapter 3 on Bart Brewer - He did not leave for doctrinal reasons, the truth is he left because he wanted to get married. If you research his original causes in the appropriate Church documents it shines out clear as day. He could have been married and remained Catholic but became angry so he "found" protestantism.

This book is a poor route to take to try to prove anything. The Catholics have three books called "Surprised by Truth" out with hundreds of stories of Protestants discovering the truth of the Catholic Church. The Coming Home Network logs over 400 Baptist Pastors who left for the Catholic Church in 2003. Does it make them right? No more so than it makes any one of the priests or sisters who left for the Protestant Church.

Thus these are very poor books to use. Any educated Catholic could rip right through both this book, Swaggarts, Greens, Boettners, and MacCarthy's books. Using expressly anti-Catholic will not get you far. And why would we even want to be anti-Catholic? This position does not make any sense to me.

 

Save_ferris
Personally I'm somewhat relieved to find out that at least mr. Brewer and the others featured are real bona fide ex-priests. That's a huge improvement over Maria Monk and Alberto rivera.

 

It is an improvement over the wonderful world of Jack Chick, a step in the right direction if you will, but none the less intellectual dishonesty remains what it is. It is a plague in the fundamental Christian world, especially in those who have deemed themselves expert anti-Catholics. You can see it in the exercises of Bobryan. I've been reading his and others posts on the Catholic Church in the Other Denomination forum and very little of what they share is accurate. It is either out of context or out of the intent of the author.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm completely fine with a person rejecting Catholicism, Buddhism, or even, yes, even Baptistism, so long as they are honest in what they are rejecting. It is why I encourage someone, if they choose to reject Catholicism, as this board seems to be predisposed to attack, to own a copy of the Catechism and if you are especially scholarly a copy of the documents of the Second Vatican Council and previous councils. I certianly could not expect the average person to learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew or be well versed in the fathers of the Eastern and Western churches, but there is a certian amount of tact that we can approach the subject with.

 

Save_ferris

Would you discuss differences of opinion with the person in that other thread?

... I have no idea what he said that you did not like

... and he probably has no idea that you disagreed

 

Don't waste your time and do your freind a favor and have him go to Church with you.I would also get really familiar with the catholic canons and creeds(providing you're even more familiar with your own).Then you can become an even more effective witness to your freind.

 

I spent several hours visiting Bart Brewer and partook of the Passover with him on that occasion. He is an exceptionally well educated man for a former Catholic Priest. I have between 3,500 and 4,000 volumes in my home library, and Bart has several times that many in his library. During a 90 minute visit with Bart in his library, we talked about his experiences as a young Catholic and he described to me the great love that he saw in many nuns. I asked him if he did not suppose that the love of the nuns was the love of Christ shining through them, and he paused for a moment, and then said that he supposed that it was. At that moment, someone knocked on the library door and told us that dinner was served. On the way from the library to the dining room, we passed by a storage room and Bart went inside the storage room, selected a handful of extremely hateful anti-Catholic literature that grossly misrepresents the Catholic Church, and handed it to a woman who was also visiting his headquarters.

I saw that Bart Brewer knew Catholic theology forwards and backwards, that he knew in his heart that true Catholics are born-again Christians, that he knew that his hate literature was deliberately deceptive and hateful, and yet he continues to disseminate that literature. I don’t know what his motive is, but I do know that both his home and ministry headquarters are in a very remote part of southern California that can be accessed only by driving through a maze of unmarked dirt roads that lead into a compound that is protected by a steel gate and fence lest some of his hatred for Catholics should bring about his demise.

I also saw that Bart is, for the most part, a man who thinks for himself. At that time, at least, he was a member of a strongly KJO fundamentalist, independent Baptist Church that did not recognize non-independent Baptists as being Christians (and even seriously questioned the salvation of other independent Baptists who attended the other independent Baptist churches in the community rather than theirs), but he himself was not KJO and did not share these opinions, and that on several issues he was in strong disagreement with the pastor his church and that he refused to be in submission to him.

Bart Brew is a very dangerous man who has done much harm to the body of Christ; please pray for him and those whom he has harmed.

 

I have been to a Catholic Mass only three times. The first two visits were one year apart and were the midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the diocese Cathedral. The bishop of the diocese preached the sermon on both occasions. The first one was on the necessity of being born again and it visibly touched the hearts of the overflowing crowd. The second one was a bomb—a great disappointment not only to me but to many others. The third visit was to a regular mass at a local Catholic Church. I found the entire service, including the sermon, to be disappointing.

However, I had the privilege of visiting the rector of the Cathedral for an hour and a half—an hour and a half that I shall never forget for that priest was everything that a senior pastor of a church should be—loving, compassionate, humble, honest, patient, tolerant, knowledgeable, understanding, highly intelligent, holy, reverent, responsible, and in control in the sense that Christ was in control when speaking with others.