Ecumenical Dialogue - Catholic

From: Matthew Tan Yew Hock

 

---

 

 

This is a very interesting testimony - conversion story - about a couple who cruised around the invisible Church.  They were both divorced. They would have no problem getting married in any ["invisble"] Protestant churches.  Nevertheless, doctrinal problems abound.  Every protestant church seemed to be violating some key biblical doctrines.  Finally, they ended up at an Anglo-Anglican Church, was disappointed; and then again at a Greek Orthodox Church; ...And Catholic Church??? But they were both divorced and they wanted to marry?! But the Catholic Church, faithful to Scripture, would not allow validly married divorcees to remarry!

 

 http://www.chnetwork.org/cbconv.htm

 

It is pretty long.  I am giving you the sweeter parts.

 

The Visible Church
Was There All Along

by Cindy Beck

...Well, all we can do is choose the denomination that’s most faithful to the Bible.”

“So we decide what the Bible means? We decide what’s true? Then the Bible isn’t our final authority – we are.”

...As the Charismatic movement became more and more extreme, I began to distance myself, and I eventually left the church

...I started going to church again, attending a Baptist church near my home. How different it was! .... I felt so much more comfortable there.

...After our move, we set about finding a new church. We wanted to try a different denomination, as we were troubled by the “secret rapture” teaching that was so prevalent in our Baptist church, for which we could find no Biblical support.

...We eventually settled into a Reformed church.

...But it wasn’t long before another crack in my Reformed fortress began to appear. During another Bible study, a question was asked about the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25: How could we explain this passage in light of the doctrine of Sola Fide (Faith alone)? ...Here [Matt 25:31-46] was the clearest picture of the final judgment in all of Scripture, and the Lord was rewarding or condemning the people according to what they had done. As I searched Scripture, I found that this was not an isolated text (cf. Matt. 12:36-37, 13:49; John 5:28-29; Rom. 2:6-8; 2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Pet. 1:17; Rev. 2:23, 20:13).

How did all of this fit “Sola Fide”? [i.e. the Protestant theory that justification or salvation is by "faith alone"]

...“Do not let anyone lead you astray,” said the Apostle John. “He who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous” (1 John 3:7).

Luther said, “No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day” (Let Your Sins Be Strong, 1521). But the Apostle Paul warned, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the Kingdom of God?” (1 Cor. 6:9).

Was the doctrine of Sola Fide misleading countless people into a false sense of security? I remembered the Lord’s stinging warning in Matthew 7:21. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father Who is in Heaven.”

I wondered. Had Martin Luther really “rediscovered” the gospel? Or had he invented something new.

...

It began to bother me that there were so many theological differences among the CRI staff. The Lutherans disagreed with the Baptists, who disagreed with the Reformed, who disagreed with the Calvary Chapel people and so forth...we could hold so many contradicting views and yet all claim to be “within the pale of orthodoxy.” Somebody had to be wrong.

...I couldn’t stop thinking about the hopeless state of division and confusion within Protestantism. With the Bible alone as our guide, we had managed to split into nearly. How could so many sincere men of God, all claiming the Bible as their sole authority, come up with so many different interpretations of Scripture? Whose interpretation were we supposed to trust? How could we look to the Bible alone if nobody could say authoritatively what it means?

 

.... We began going on what we called our “field trips,” visiting a new church every week.

...One of the new “seeker-sensitive” mega-churches...but there wasn’t a word about sin, repentance, or Christ’s death on the Cross. Was this worship? Or was it entertainment? Was this what five hundred years of Protestantism had produced.

...We found St. Matthew’s .... And I discovered that the Anglican-Catholic Church had only been established as recently as 1978, when it separated from the Episcopal Church. It was just one more denomination, split off from yet another denomination.

 

I was terribly frustrated. Paul had warned against divisions (cf. 1 Cor. 1:10) and said that we are to watch out for those who cause them (cf. Rom. 16:17).

 

 

...

The testimony of the Fathers was irrefutable. The early Church was not Protestant. I had been taught that the Reformers restored “pure Christianity” to a corrupt Church, but I now knew that Protestantism was the corruption. The Reformers refashioned Christianity according to their own beliefs and lost the Faith of the Fathers, departing further and further from the Apostolic Faith with each successive generation of Protestant believers.

At long last, I discovered the Church that was founded not by Luther or Calvin or any other man but by the Lord Jesus Himself. That one, Mystical Body where there was truly “one Spirit … one hope … one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:4-5); where the many are made one Body, for “all partake of the one Bread” (1 Cor. 10:17).

[That was the Greek Orthodox Church.  They could have married there....]

Read on...finally they were received into the Catholic Church.  How about their marriage?