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L e t t e r s
Why Prevent Folks From Leaving?
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This Rock
Volume 3, Number 12
 December 1992 
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I left the Catholic Church in 1983 and am very happy with my growth as a follower of Christ in another church. I do not understand why your aim is always to prevent Catholics from leaving the Catholic Church. One should go where he is led.
What is important is that one grows in his relationship with the Lord. Let us not compete with each other. We should direct our attention to those who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord in their lives--the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Eastern sects, New Agers.
Let us not try to convince one another (Protestants vs. Catholics) which one is right. Belonging to a denomination is not what counts. Whether you are Catholic or Protestant, only one question need be answered, "Do you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?", and all its implications as taught in the Bible, which both of us believe is the Word of God.
One should go and fellowship with believers whom one thinks can make him or her grow in the Lord, so that Christ will become more and more manifest in his or her life.
I left the Catholic Church I had been going to because, when I accepted the Lord (while I was still in the Catholic Church), 42 years after I was baptized as an infant, I still had a strong hunger for the Word of God. I felt that I was not getting fed with the true "bread of life," the Word of God. So I joined a church that teaches and expounds the Word of God.
I admire your work in Catholic apologetics, but it seems to me that you are spending so much energy trying to be defensive. Why don't you explain to Catholics the real meaning of Christianity? Why don't you show Catholics how the Word of God can be applied to their everyday struggles in life? Why don't you educate some of your priests to learn how to really make the Word of God come to life in the lives of their congregations? Why don't you emphasize Jesus Christ our Lord in your teachings, homilies, CCDs, rather than the heroes of the Church?
Catholics and Protestants will have differences which will probably be difficult to resolve. But whatever you are, only one thing counts--Are you a follower of Jesus Christ?
Ramon S. Quesada
Northridge, California
Editor’s reply:
Thank you for your frank comments. I hope you won't mind if I'm just as frank.
1. The Bible nowhere says all we need do to be saved is to "accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior." That catchphrase suggests an individualistic Christianity: "me and Jesus." In only one place does Paul say "Jesus died for me." Everywhere else he writes about the corporate nature of Christianity. We should take a cue from this.
2. You apparently equate "Word of God" with Scripture. Scripture itself doesn't do this. The primary, the basic sense of "Word of God" is--Jesus himself. (See John 1:1.)
3. You say "one should go where he is led." Who does the leading out of the Catholic Church? Not Jesus, since he set up that Church as his body (Matt. 16:18-19, 1 Cor. 12:12-13); he did not set up a multiplicity of denominations, each disagreeing with the other on some doctrinal or moral point. If Jesus set up a Church at all, he set up only one. If he didn't set up a Church, he was a liar, and you shouldn't join any denomination. (Actually, if he was a liar, you shouldn't be a Christian at all. Why follow a liar?) If Jesus did set up a Church, it must be the Catholic Church; there is no alternative. I propose that Jesus leads people into the Catholic Church and that he never leads anyone out. They lead themselves out, or someone else leads them out, and that someone may be a natural or supernatural being. Many people--this may or may not include you--feel "led" to leave the Catholic Church because they are confused or find some sort of religious satisfaction outside of it. I don't deny the reality of that confusion or satisfaction, but I deny that God is doing the leading.
4. If someone really "accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior," he will do everything Jesus commands. One of those things is to "eat my flesh and drink my blood." This is not possible in any of the Protestant denominations, since they each deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. (Many of them even deny there is a Eucharist at all.) If the church you now belong to does not proclaim that it gives you (and does not in fact give you), each Sunday, the real (not merely the symbolic) body and blood of Christ, then you are disobeying one of Jesus' commands. (Please read John 6 carefully.) To the extent you disobey Jesus, you fail to follow him.
5. You say, "One should go and fellowship with believers whom one thinks can make him or her grow in the Lord." If you mean we should be willing to learn from the good spiritual example of others, even those who may believe some things erroneously, fine. We can learn from everyone. But if you mean by "fellowship" that we should engage in worship with them, then you and I part company. It is one thing to share a prayer service. It is something quite different to engage in formal, corporate worship which, by its internal structure, denies essentials of the Christian faith.
6. You have reduced the Christian religion to the Bible, saying you left the Catholic Church because the Bible was not preached to you enough. I sympathize. The Bible is used poorly, if it is used at all, in most Catholic homilies. You had a legitimate complaint, but the wrong solution. In order to hear more of the Bible read out to you, you left the one Church established by Christ, which means you left much Christian truth behind you (most of the sacraments, for instance). You could have turned to the Bible yourself while staying in the Catholic Church. Granted, that would not have been the ideal solution (the ideal solution would have included homilies more biblically based), but to increase one good you have jettisoned other goods--a poor trade off, I think.
Plain Speaking Still Pays
Enclosed is $300 in the form of a postal money order. I'm sending this because of the courageous reply to the Santa Rosa, California correspondent on pages 3-4 of the August 1992 issue. Thank God a few people are still willing to say, in print, that contraception and homosexuality are wrong and that the nature of the priesthood means that it is open to males, not females. God bless the work that you do.
Marie Wolf
Prosser, Washington
Holy Babylon!
On a recent Oprah Winfrey show, three young men told how they were molested by Roman priests. All over the audience men and women stood up to report that they also were molested. It is a worldwide problem, not just America.
Most American Catholics have already voted in polls for a married priesthood. Since there is no democracy in Catholicism, large numbers of Catholics will continue to exit from the Church. Corruption begets corruption! I pray that the Holy Spirit of God will move you, and all of the staff of Catholic Answers, to get out of Holy Babylon. The sooner the better. Millions of Catholics have already left.
I thank God that millions of Catholics in America had a chance to see Oprah's show on nationwide TV. I hope all the talk shows do it. Rome can no longer hide it. Do you have any answers for this problem?
Leonard Ostrom
Melrose Park, Illinois
Editor’s reply:
The solution I prefer:
1. Church authorities shouldn't try to "solve" the problem by shifting erring priests from one parish to another, by sending them out of state for counseling for a few months (only to reinstate them), or by transferring them to another diocese. These priests should not be "protected" at the expense of the Catholic laity.
2. A priest guilty of pederasty should be defrocked immediately. No second chances. Such a priest's consequent unemployment is his own problem, brought on by his own actions, and is a smaller problem than the scandal (and danger) caused by keeping him active in a capacity that may involve working with young people.
3. But that's not enough. A pederast priest should be turned over to the civil authorities for prosecution.
God's Justice to God?
Antonio Fuentes' article on Romans in the September 1992 issue seems to me to miss some things on justification by faith which are advanced in Reasons for Hope, the apologetics book published by Christendom Press. It seems to me that perhaps St. Paul was terming God's knowing and loving God as God's justice toward God, whence "the justice from God" (Phil. 3:9) is a share in God's being able to know and love himself so that by it we can be toward God as he is toward himself. Such "justice" (God's justice to himself) can be ours only by gift, by continued giving. We cannot earn it, but we can lose it; the wages of sin are death.
David T. Johnson
Dayton, Ohio
Yes, Let's Be Serious, Bart
As long as you reject that Scripture is sufficient and that Christ is sufficient, you will, in the flesh, attempt to justify or excuse the Romish invocation of the saints. Let me ask you a valid question. Who gave the Church of Rome permission from Scripture to divide worship into three kinds? Let's be honest. Scripture gives no warrant. These distinctions are of Roman Catholic invention.
Let's be honest again. The practice of praying to the saints was first authorized by the Church near the end of the sixth century. In the third century the theory started to be entertained that those in heaven could help their brethren on earth by their prayers. The practice of invoking them started in the next century. At the close of the sixth century Papa Gregory the Great appointed litanies in which the saints were supplicated by name. I want to invite you to consider the origin of this anti-Christian teaching. I won't go into this now. You need to do some research. Maybe the Holy Spirit will bring you under divine conviction.
I am praying for your biblical salvation. God's modus operandi is that you repent and believe. This does not involve some superficial decision for Christ, but an understanding of your lostness (human unrighteousness or Phariseeism) and believing in Christ the Bible way as opposed to the papal way. If you believe that Christ dies for you on the cross, then sacraments have to go. Christ is no divine helper to assist you to get to heaven. He is the Savior. Please be serious about this matter.
Bartholomew F. Brewer
Mission to Catholics International
National City, California
Editor’s reply:
Yes, Bart, let's be serious. You were ordained a priest. In your autobiography and elsewhere you admit you were repeatedly unfaithful to the vow of chastity. You left the Catholic faith and joined the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, becoming a minister even though you say you didn't realize that Ellen Gould White's writings were to be considered as quasi-inspired. Later you became an independent Baptist minister and the founder of one of the chief anti-Catholic organizations in the country.
You've worked yourself into a corner. Your entire reputation, your entire life, even your family situation, rests on your continued repudiation of the Church established by Christ. Your supercilious writing ("Romish," "Papa Gregory the Great"), your committed anti-intellectualism (I recall vividly your telling me, at your office, that you prefer not to read books other than the Bible because "the Bible is all I need"), and your incessant haranguing point to serious internal problems.
You're 67 now Bart, and there's no telling how many years you have left. You don't have the time to keep playing these games. You must repent--now. But to repent you will have to repudiate virtually all your present friends, you will have to acknowledge publicly how you erred in leaving the Catholic faith and your priesthood, you will have to admit that you tried to absolve yourself by blaming the Church for your own failings.
I'm not optimistic about your reconciling yourself with God before the end, but that's because I'm looking at you through human eyes. Humanly speaking, I can't see how you can change, but, if you ask for them, I know God will give you the grace and the courage to change, no matter what the personal cost. We know you don't think our prayers count for anything since we're "Romanists," but we pray for you anyway. You're suffering enough right now. We don't want to see you suffer forever in the hereafter.
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