There is one Lord, one faith, one
baptism…
and
One Church
founded
by Jesus Christ
“Where the bishop is,
there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church”
-Saint Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 1st c. A.D.
A site for
Christians willing to consider the compelling scriptural and historical
evidence for the Catholic faith.
Questions
about the Catholic Church and its teachings are most welcome.
visits
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND
MORE...
Commentary
In the
Letters
"...fight hard for the faith" (Jude 3 NAB)
My blogs:
Crossfunction,
Happy papist, StraightDope
SCRIPTURAL APPETIZERS...
Scriptural
quick reference
"Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account
for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1
Peter 3:15 RSV)
-Bible passages useful to Catholics explaining the faith of Jesus' Church.
"And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." Rev. 21:14 RSV
"You form a building which rises on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone." Ephesians 2:20 RSV
"...the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth." 1 Timothy 3:15 RSV
"So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter." 2 Thessalonians 2:15 RSV
"And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." Acts 2:42 RSV
DISCOVERING THE CHURCH
FOUNDED BY CHRIST...
Where
is the Gospel?
"Hold fast to the traditions you received from us, either by our word or
by letter." (2 Thessalonians 3:15 NAB)
Did apostolic
authority end in the first century?
"His office let another take." (Acts 1:20 RSV) ...and so
Matthias did... And Clement... And Linus... And John Paul II.
Did the
Church Fathers lose their "focus"?
-Did the later Church Fathers forget about the Gospel? No.
Answering
objections against Peter and the Keys
-Did Jesus call Simon "rock" or "a stone"? And
to whom did Jesus give "the keys"?
Historical evidence on the canon of Scripture
-Did the Catholic Church really add books, or are Protestant Bibles missing a
few? In this case, bigger IS better!
DISCOVERING THE TRUTH OF
CHRIST THROUGH THE
The Apostles'
Creed
-Do you believe what the Apostles taught and the early Christians believed? If
you profess the ancient Apostles' Creed you're off to a good start!
Justification
-Are you saved the Bible way? Find out!
Baptism
"Baptism... now saves you" (1 Peter 3:21 RSV)
The Body
and Blood of Christ -really present in the Eucharist
"Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples
and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body.'" (Matthew 26:26 RSV)
"This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it?" (John 6:60 RSV)
Can the
Church forgive sins?
"If you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them..." (John 20:23
NAB)
Can
the saints in heaven help us?
-Does the Bible teach that the saints in heaven participate in our
prayers? Yes!
Purgatory
"If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he
himself will be saved, but only as through fire." (1 Corinthians 3:12-15
RSV)
"...we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trumpet." (1 Corinthians 15:51-52 RSV)
Hell
-Scripture emphatically teaches that hell is "eternal" and
"everlasting".
Brothers
of the Lord
-Does the Bible teach that Jesus had siblings? Definitely not.
Brothers
in the New Testament
-How does the New Testament actually use the Greek word often translated
“brother”?
Until divorce
do us part?
"...he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery." (Matthew
19:9 RSV)
Is
contraception really immoral?
-All Christendom condemned artificial birth control -until 1930! Did artificial
birth control suddenly become OK with God?
The Sabbath in
the light of the Gospel
-Either you accept the doctrinal authority of the Catholic Church, or you
should be keeping the Saturday Sabbath.
Slavery
-What does history show about the Church's position on slavery?
MORE SCRIPTURAL
TIDBITS...
"For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body..." 1 Corinthians 12:13 RSV
"...one Lord, one faith, one baptism..." Ephesians 4:5 RSV
"And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets... Are all apostles? Are all prophets?" 1 Corinthians 12:27-29 NAB
"Moreover, we [the apostles] possess the prophetic message which is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it... Know first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation." 2 Peter 1:19-20
"In them [Paul's letters] there are some things that are hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures." 2 Peter 3:16 NAB
"Brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you,
which you received and in which you stand firm. You are being saved by it at
this very moment if you hold fast to it as I preached it to you. Otherwise you
have believed in vain." 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 NAB
FOOD FOR THOUGHT...
"A Catholic who does not work at the growth of the body to the extent of his possibilities must be considered useless both to the Church and to himself."
Second
"I could not understand why these romancers never took the trouble to find out a few elementary facts about the thing they denounced. The facts might easily have helped the denunciation, where the fictions discredited it. There were any number of real Catholic doctrines I should then have thought disgraceful to the Church... But the enemies of the Church never found these real rocks of offence. They never looked for them. They never looked for anything... Boundless freedom reigned; it was not treated as if it were a question of fact at all... It puzzled me very much, even at that early stage, to imagine why people bringing controversial charges against a powerful and prominent institution should thus neglect to test their own case, and should draw in this random way on their own imagination... I never dreamed that the Roman religion was true; but I knew that its accusers, for some reason or other, were curiously inaccurate."
G.K. Chesterton - The Catholic Church and Conversion
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God bless you,
©2010 by John Robin. The writings on this site were
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