Is it OK to visit a Catholic church?

Great advice.

Baptist and most protestant sources on Catholicism are more often than not incorrect about their views on Catholicism and will go to great lengths to mischaracterize Catholicism so that they can be right.

I don't agree with alot of what the Catholic church does either, but I don't need to be dishonest to be in this disagreement. To the OP, find out what Catholics really believe. Their Catechism is avaible online.

 

Craigbythesea

I do not understand your post about Bart. Specifically, I do not understand the why behind it.

Are you asking us to pray that Bart might be delivered from bondage? Unto salvation? From Independent Baptists? From hate?

 

For a good while I was active in the pro-life movement, which is largely made up of Catholics. As a part of a local group, I sang with a band that played at large demonstrations and at masses. We sang only music with a decidedly "Christian" content, exhorting God as the giver and sustainer of life. At masses we sang what is referred to as the "mass parts" - Gloria, Lamb of God, Alleluia, etc. And usually a special song at communion. In this band, I was the only non-Catholic. I felt my presence was beneficial both to me, because I got to sing praise to my Lord in a manner I could not do at my church at the time, and to them, by showing them that Baptists were not "wierd" or "odd" just because they were not Catholic. We talked of spiritual things often at our rehearsals. They were all very committed to the Lord, and even admitted to me that it was "commitment to Christ that mattered," not whether one was Catholic or Baptist or whatever.

But as others have warned, when fellowshipping with Christians of other traditions, you need to be firmly grounded and secure in your own, what you believe to be true, so that you do not falter in doctrine, and that you may be a witness to others of the truth. And do it all in love.

 

Debby,

The way in which Catholics are educated in the faith is called catechesis. Really it is just a fancy word for Christian instruction. Shortly after the Second Vatican Council some priests and laity in the Catholic Church got it into their head that the Council was all about "change, change, change" instead of what it really was, that is, a call to holiness through a variety of means including liturgical reform.

A man named Thomas Groome in the 1970's came up with a program called Shared Christian Praxis which caught on like wild fire in the United States. The basis to the program was to take the systematic and theology out of systematic theology. The content of the program taught the teachers to have the students share their story and the teacher share his or her story and expect that through sitting around talking about nothing they would become solid Christians. It clearly didn't work. Rome caught on to what was going on very early on and published the "General Directory for Catechesis" among a number of other documents.

Unfortunately very few people in the Church listened.

Today though there is a strong push to renew education in the Church in America and it is working, so you will meet many younger Catholics who are solidly grounded in the Christian faith. An average of 50-100 new Catholic Catechists (Christian educators) are put into the field each year, many coming out of a famous university in Ohio. These young men and women are solidly formed in the Bible and Theology, understanding that it is Jesus Christ who is the very center and cornerstone of the Christian faith.

Here is a small part of the General Directory, which is available off of the Vatican website:

"Jesus Christ not only transmits the word of God: he is the Word of God. Catechesis is therefore completely tied to him. Thus what must characterize the message transmitted by catechesis is, above all, its "christocentricity". (310) This may be understood in various senses.
– It means, firstly, that "at the heart of catechesis we find, in essence, a person, the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth". (311) In reality, the fundamental task of catechesis is to present Christ and everything in relation to him. This explicitly promotes the following of Jesus and communion with him; every element of the message tends to this.
– Secondly, christocentricity means that Christ is the "centre of salvation history", (312) presented by catechesis. He is indeed the final event toward which all salvation history converges. He, who came "in the fullness of time" is "the key, the centre and end of all human history". (313) The catechetical message helps the Christian to locate himself in history and to insert himself into it, by showing that Christ is the ultimate meaning of this history.
– Christocentricity, moreover, means that the Gospel message does not come from man, but is the Word of God. The Church, and in her name, every catechist can say with truth: "my teaching is not from myself: it comes from the one who sent me" (John 7,16). Thus all that is transmitted by catechesis is "the teaching of Jesus Christ, the truth that he communicates, or more precisely, the Truth that he is". (314) Christocentricity obliges catechesis to transmit what Jesus teaches about God, man, happiness, the moral life, death etc. without in any way changing his thought. (315)
The Gospels, which narrate the life of Jesus, are central to the catechetical message. They are themselves endowed with a "catechetical structure". (316) They express the teaching which was proposed to the first Christian communities, and which also transmits the life of Jesus, his message and his saving actions. In catechesis, "the four Gospels occupy a central place because Christ Jesus is their centre". (317)"