What do evangelicals think of catholics

Luara Ferracioli. Meaning and the good life. Sooner or later we all face death. Will a sense of meaning help us?

Warren Ward. Philosophy of mind. Kristopher Nielsen. Rituals and celebrations. We need highly formal rituals in order to make life more democratic. Antone Martinho-Truswell.

Evangelicals bring the votes, Catholics bring the brains. Religion Politics and government Political philosophy. Aeon is not-for-profit and free for everyone Make a donation. Get Aeon straight to your inbox Join our newsletter. Personal knowledge of and devotion to Sacred Scripture is necessary for this transformation to occur through the obedience of faith, and there is no substitute for personal knowledge of the Bible. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. All the baptized are sent in the Great Commission to be witnesses of Christ to others and must be equipped by the Church to teach the Gospel in word and deed.

An essential dimension of true discipleship is the willingness to invite others to follow the Lord Jesus and the readiness to explain his Gospel. Connect With Us. Make a Gift. Saint Mary's Catholic Church. But one must confront Rome with a broken heart here and pray that the blessings of personal salvation with the blessed assurance which ought to accompany it, but does not always do so may be visited upon many within her system.

It is frequently announced within fragmented Protestantism today that schism is a sin. This has almost become the shibboleth of parties whose chief end is church union regardless of doctrinal considerations.

Schism is a sin. But it should not be forgotten what caused the great schism of the sixteenth century: the Reformation resulted from the Roman doctrinal emphasis. Schism is a sin—but whose sin? So long as the position of Rome on such vital matters as, for example, atonement, mediatorship, and authority, remains so extra- or contra-biblical, the sixteenth century schism must abide.

Otherwise union becomes sin. What must the evangelical in the twentieth century think and do in relationship to Roman Catholicism? First it is essential that we should love. Nearly always when my sermons must be critical of Roman Catholicism, I stress to my people that such criticism, even though valid, does not excuse us from loving Roman Catholics. The Saviour loved without distinction and so must we. It should not be necessary to point this out.

No one, be he Protestant or Roman Catholic, is going to be won to Jesus Christ by someone in whom he senses a spirit of distrust or dislike. But men respond to love, and multitudes can be loved to Christ who would remain forever unmoved by all other methods. Let us remember that we love Him because he first loved us. Second, the evangelical must endeavor increasingly to appreciate the Bible. This is the great hedge against the creeping in of any teaching which is out of harmony with the Word of God.

To this must be added the sure responsibility of evangelicals to acquaint themselves better with such neglected areas as the sub-apostolic Church and the Fathers. From the pre-Reformation period one can gain a helpful understanding of the Roman Catholic church. One learns how soon the purity of the early Church was stained, and is impressed again with the necessity of being rooted and grounded in the Scriptures as a guard against going astray.

Third, evangelicals need to recognize the need for constant restatement of doctrine. This is no confession that the basics of the faith change. Even orthodoxy must be relevantly restated. To take refuge in giants of the past is to surrender our minds instead of using them. In the last few years there has been a movement in the right direction in this regard which will increasingly win for evangelicals the respect and the ears of those whom we should want to win.

A formula statement of the biblical faith may set forth its highlights, but is no easy answer to the theological issues confronting the Church today.

Wright, James Martin, S. As he speaks, I cannot help but wish Pastor Packiam was a Catholic deacon or priest. He is kind, intelligent, passionate about his faith and gracious with his time.

Pastor Packiam played the decisive role in bringing old things, like a Good Friday service that ends in silence, to New Life. For others, it is about survival. Megachurches are big businesses with lots of people on payroll, and part of the change is about marketing, rebranding, consumer choice and retention.

You want a contemporary service? We offer that. You want traditional? We have that too. People can be entertained on devices 24 hours a day; they do not need a church for that. They need a church for silence, reverence, community, ancient wisdom, the opportunity to be of service, the real presence of God. Megachurches have realized that many are leaving to find that elsewhere.

Eighty percent of the congregation of Holy Theophany Orthodox Church, also in Colorado Springs, are converts from evangelical and Protestant backgrounds.

Their priest, the Rev. Anthony Karbo, became a Christian through participation in Young Life, a national evangelical youth organization headquartered in Colorado Springs. In the Orthodox Church I met the rest of his family, including his mother. Unlike the Catholic Church, it has not tried to seem less pagan, less foreign, less strange. It has stayed weird. The whole service is scriptural, and it centers on our unity in Christ. It floored me. No distractions. Just a dark, beautiful, candlelight service all about Christ.

Some former evangelicals used vibrant seeker churches as a stepping stone, eventually leaving for Orthodox, Anglican or Presbyterian communions. For many, leaving evangelicalism for Catholicism would mean losing careers, even family and friends. With the exception of Mr. Craycraft, no one I interviewed for this article even considered Catholicism. In part, this was because of doctrine. Mary and popes remain oddities to many.

In part, it was because of the crisis of sexual abuse by members of the clergy. And despite the interest in some Catholic traditions, many felt our Masses and parish life still were not compelling. It is easy to find both Catholics and Protestants who are starving for something less shallow, more challenging and more embodied than the typical American experience of faith.

Many Catholic parishes, too, could benefit from a renewed interest in the sacred art, music and architecture that have shaped the Catholic imagination for millennia. As the Catholic Church continues to work to keep people in and attract people to the faith, it would do well to remember that the pull of tradition can be an attractive one, even or perhaps especially for the millennial generation, which is famously interested in old things, from record collecting to jarring pickles.

Megachurches are Avarice as a shared god. I've visited them and have discovered little heart and no soul but great levels of entertainment, sort of like Jesus as a Super Bowl halftime show and nothing more. You really do attend primarily to see and be seen and in this is your identity. Again, this is exactly like attending the Super Bowl. But this is what sells and, oh, is there money to be made. A Church in Timonium, Md offered a video sermon once, a slide show with a picture of The Cross and the voiceover "Jesus saved you" with the next slide being of a collection basket with the voiceover "So you may do this.

I doubt if God is in this place!! And does anything else matter? I wonder if this is part of the reason why atheism is on the increase as individuals go to service and find no there there. Lovely to hear of this coming together, and rediscovering of the beauty of liturgy which had got thrown out.

I was amazed and delighted to see on a visit to Scotland that the local Presbyterian church the church of my childhood had votive candles, which would have been considered a Papist superstition when I was a child. Oh that we all might be one.