Oh! Blessed Day of the Lord God, Abba Father Almighty! During Lunch, I met an old working colleague, now a Life Bible Presbyterian Pastor with Master Degree and currently doing his Doctorate of Ministry. The moment I told him I just came down to the coffee shop after Holy Mass service at St. Mary of the Angels Church, he immediately rattled: "Why you Catholics worship Mary? - a very topmost usual "attack" question from fundamentalist Christians, very anti-Catholic, particularly the Presbyterians. I simply asked him why he thought we Catholics worship Mary as I do not know of any practising Catholics that do so and neither it has been taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd Question: Why Catholic Bible edition has "added seven more books"? I asked him whether he knew how the Hebrew bible canon developed for political and nationalistic reasons, and very seriously damaging to the Jews the Christians were fast expanding and they used the LXX Scripture. He was very surprised that Jesus and His Apostles drew 300+ O.T. references out of 350 from the LXX Greek Septuagint Holy Bible and therefore only 50- from the Hebrew scripture which excluded the 7 Deuterocanonical books for obvious reasons. Bcos Luther had translated the Holy Bible into vernacular German (there were many other earlier vernacular Bible), he deliberately inserted "alone" into Romans 3:23 "faith" to become "faith alone", and rejected the James, Hebrews, Jude and Revelation and the Deuterocanon. Under the heavy protestation of his lieutenants, he had to reprint and add back the 7 deleted Deuterocanon and the 4 N.T. books but to the Bible appendices. 3rd Question: why Catholics believe in works alone? I asked him to read James 2:14-26 to understand why both faith and works were intricately intertwined and cannot be one without the other. What he misunderstood that Catholics believe in works alone was totally a fabrication. In fact, the Lutherans, the Methodists and the Anglicans and the Catholics have in recent year jointly agreed that faith without accompanying works activated by grace arising from faith was dead as per James 2. So too conversely works without being moved by faith were dead too. I invite him to meet again and discuss and share what exactly are being taught biblically and apostolically by the Catholic Church for the past 2,000 yrs. He agreed. Upon returning home this late evening, I spent 2+ hrs reading the Presbyterian statements of faith, teachings, Qs & As etc.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:47:21 +0000
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