Featured Catholic Magical Mystery Tours

Photos look like everyone was glad to be there and having a good time.

 

No, Jesus was there.

 

The churches may be dwindling where you live but they are THRIVING here. In my old home town of Visalia, Ca. the new church of St. Charles is the largest in the nation and the other Catholic churches in Visalia are so overflowing that they have people standing outside during mass. The largest churches where I live are Catholic. The Baptist churches have handfuls of people in churches built for hundreds. Yes, many people coming to Christ in Catholic churches whether you believe it or not. The photo's you posted are wonderful. Like it or not, statistically the Catholic Church is fastest growing Christian church in the world

 

Lol. yea, I can believe the influx is mostly from south of the border!

 

I don't know about 'mostly;, the majority of the masses are in English, but I'm not denying that it is a factor.

 

We send many missionaries to RCC countries, not to compete with them, but rather to bring salvation.

 

'Nothing like idolatry on display'?. I was in a Baptist church where the pastor was kneeling down before a folded chair with a bible sitting on it. Was he worshipping the chair or the bible???? You don't know what anyone is worshipping or venerating. You don't know what I worship. Even though I KNOW I worship Jesus Christ, you have no way of knowing unless you were to observe the fruit coming from my Christian walk.

Nothing like Catholic bigotry on display

 

My sister went to Mexico as a Baptist missionary years ago. She is now a Catholic still living in Mexico and spreading the love of Christ.

 

This guy gets it, even if it’s such a short video, it says a lot. Why it’s so important to understand history.

 

A couple of things @Cathode. We used Francis Chan's "Crazy Love" years ago in a men's Saturday morning study in a Reformed Baptist church. He's an interesting guy. He's always on a quest, always changing, and I mean in a sincere way. And he's so charismatic that he could buy a Toyota Corolla and explain his new purchase in such a way that you would soon find yourself weeping over the fact that you have a different car.
But I wouldn't be surprised if next week he isn't an Anglican or a Methodist. I actually agree with a lot of his video above but I would point out that in his longer, more fuller version he comes short of claiming transubstantiation. He is certainly at least where the Lutherans are. But I do question his charge that somehow centering preaching over sacramental style worship is wrong or not original. Preaching "Christ and him crucified" and working this gospel into every preaching service is what 1000's of Baptist churches do every week and it is a huge overstatement to think that because they don't center everything around a ceremony means they have gotten it all wrong. I think that someday those preachers that put a pulpit up in front of the people so the people would understand why it's so important to "do this in remembrance of me" will not be judged harshly compared to those who encased the elements in an ornamental container and paraded it around in front of everyone.

 

I’d never heard of Pastor Chan, sounds like he’s on journey.

For us the preaching is not central and not worship, the Eucharist is central because it’s Jesus Himself and He is Worshipped.

He is right that for the first 1500 years the Eucharist was understood unanimously to be literally The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was Zwingli that first asserted the tradition of men that the Mass was not sacrificial and the Eucharist merely symbolic.
He said he was not an innovator but that he was only following the Scriptures, but this is what every innovator says he does. Every arrogant innovator cites scriptures to support his beliefs.
Zwingli had founded a new doctrine and human tradition that had never been known or believed in all Christian history and was not Apostolic.

Luther’s arrogant innovation of “ Scripture alone “ was the enabler of every other arrogant innovator after him, and Luther soon found himself in conflict with innovators like Zwingli all lawyering their doctrines from scripture.

Zwingli had scriptural innovators and dissenters form against him on believers baptism and he was behind the expulsion of those that refused to baptise infants, and later the death penalty for those that practiced adult baptism.
The Conrad Grebel and George Blaurock innovating from scripture further novel doctrines.
Felix Manz one of the dissenters was executed for rebaptising adults breaking his solemn oath not do re baptisms.

All these human founded traditions cited scripture to justify their heresies and departure from Apostolic teachings.
These are all new human traditions in origin, not the ancient inspired Apostolic Tradition.

Protestantism is a cascade of innovation and dissent that has no memory of ancient truths which it sees as alien and strange when it encounters it.

 

I think he is a good guy and by being so open about his thoughts on things he opens himself up to a lot of criticism. Look. I disagree with you on a lot of your post. I don't want to get into the "quote mining" that people tend to do to support their views but I have read enough of the Church fathers to know that it's one thing to say they believed in a "realness" of Christ being present in the bread and wine but they did not all believe the wine and bread literally became the blood and body of Christ. If you read Thomas Aquinas, who, of course not an ECF but was before Zwingly you will find he objected to the idea of a literal transubstantiation based on a detailed discussion of the nature versus literal substance.

There are genuine concerns about the worship of the host which does seem to occur in some groups. As for the idea that we must have the shedding of Christs blood as the centerpiece of all Christian life I agree. To charge that we as Baptists miss that though is a false charge. I was a deacon for years who was in charge of preparing and serving during communion and there was no deficiency in the seriousness or understanding of what we were doing.

If, in your own conception of this, you wish to view Jesus himself as spiritually being with you or even in the wine and bread I have no problem with that. But recently I even had a newly converted Roman Catholic explain to me much like Aquinas, that this is not quite literal. So my only caution would be not to worship the actual elements which is a type of idolatry.

 

It may be. But as the name says, it's also a protest and correction of serious errors that occur always, in the endeavors of men. The fact is, Lutherans believe Christ is in the bread and wine, so do the Presbyterians in a more vague sense. The Church of Christ does communion every week based on many of the same reasons you give. The Baptists, mostly do this less frequently because we realize the tendency of men to make the familiar and routine non-serious. And the other tendency is to worship the substance or the ceremony more than that which it signifies. In other words, it is an aid in remembrance - not that that is not important. But Jesus himself is the object of our thoughts or we fall into idolatry. We do well to look at the ECF's which many are doing nowadays if for no other reason than to refute Calvinism. But the ECF's have a lot of errors too and it is hard to fit together all that they were doing in the times they lived.