I tried upload the audio of my talk on my conversion from Seventh-day Adventism to the Catholic Church, but apparently blogger doesn't have that capability, so here's the Transcript version.
Seventh-day Adventist Becomes Catholic
Praying Made Me Catholic.
Scripture and Church History Keep Me Catholic
By Justin S. Steele
TRACK 1. (5.27)
Let us begin in praying the words our Lord gave us: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our Father, who art in heaven…
Greeting
Hello. My name is Justin Steele and I was asked to tell the story of my conversion from Seventh-day Adventism to the Catholic Church. I’ve titled my talk “Seventh-day Adventist Becomes Catholic”. I’ve also subtitled my talk “Praying Made Me Catholic: Scripture and Church History Keep Me Catholic” as answered prayer brought me into the Church for a spiritual conversion while the study of Scripture and Church history encapsulate the full story of my intellectual conversion.
I prefer to say that I converted to “the Church” rather than to “Catholic-ism” because, when we understand biblical and historical ecclesiology – that is, the theology of what the Church is – when we understand ecclesiology we realize that conversion is principally to an entity, not an -ism. Granted, there are clear principles and doctrines associated with converting to the Church classifying it under its own ism, but I prefer to focus more on what the Christian Church is – that is to say, as Saint Paul did in calling the Church is “the body of Christ”, and we, as Christians, are members of Christ’s mystical body, all joined together as one living entity. As well, the Church is “the Bride of Christ” or “the Bride of the Lamb” as the Book of Revelation describes it. This is saying nearly the same thing as Saint Paul when one understands the theology of marriage, where the two become one. The Church, as the Bride of Christ, becomes “the body of Christ” through real, marital, and covenantal union with our Lord and Savior in Holy Communion – His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, as the ancient Church continually taught.
Once this biblical and historical ecclesiology is established, as one body and one bride, it is important to note the history of the Catholic Church and those who have broken away from Her, such as through the Christological heresies throughout the first several hundred years, through the Eastern Schisms in the ninth, eleventh, and fifteenth centuries, and through the breaks of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth centuries, as well as those who’ve subsequently broke from them and one another ever since.
I point these out because it is through such divisions that the Church came to distinguish itself as “Catholic”, meaning “universal” or “of the whole” as referring to the universal teachings of the Apostles spread abroad throughout the whole Church. This catholicity was of supreme importance in the early Church as it distinguished the Church with Her apostolic teachings from heresies whose teachings were non-universal or “localized” in nature. Thus heresies were distinct as they were novel ideas not shared by all Christians living in all regions evangelized by the Apostles of Christ.
The reason I start my talk mentioning such issues is due to their overarching importance in my conversion to the “original” Church, whereby learning these ancient principles and the historical record I was able to come to appreciate the Catholic Church, not as the “whore of Babylon,” as the modern novel idea asserts and many sensationalist preachers would try to lead us to believe, but rather as the Bride of Christ and the Body of Christ – the original Church before there was ever such thing as a “denomination”.
My conversion story is based on two powerful realities as gifts that God gave humanity: the gift of prayer and the gift of reasoning.
The element of prayer within my conversion to the Catholic Church, as I have related in my book Praying Made Me Catholic, came by way of my seeking God’s guidance and His clear answers that led me directly into the stability of the Catholic Church through the RCIA program, thus enabling me to begin receiving the clear and ancient teaching about Jesus Christ, about His Church, and about the sacraments of His “New Covenant”.
The element of reasoning within my conversion came by way of studying and comparing Protestant and Catholic apologetics and theologies for their respective rationales of beliefs, particularly in the areas of Scripture and Church history. Catholic apologetics is, if I may say, profoundly deeper, biblical, and importantly historical. It is one thing to claim to be “biblical” in one’s interpretation of Christianity, but it is more complete to bear a historical biblical interpretation, or rather the historical understanding of the Christian faith. For upon discovering the ancient Christian Faith as expounded upon by the Apostolic and Early Church Fathers, one moves from “interpretations” to the “classical understanding” of the Christian faith.
Since my conversion came about through as series of answered prayers that led me deeper into my understanding and appreciation of such matters, therefore, in the structuring of this talk I will begin with a brief introduction to my faith formation as a youth followed by sections paraphrasing a prayer that led me closer in my relationship with Jesus Christ.
I close the talk with how, theologically as a Seventh-day Adventist, I was finally able to resolve Seventh-day Adventism and fully embrace the ancient Catholic Church – the Bride of Christ in union with the Body of Christ.
TRACK 2. (4.16)
A Foundation of Faith
Unlike the majority of Christians growing up in the eighties and nineties, I was raised with several novel ideas about the Christian faith. First, I was taught that “According to the Bible the day of worship is Saturday, not Sunday as others believe.” Our family was taught that the “Catholic Church” had supposedly “changed” this detail, and in doing so led billions of souls into religious error.
Secondly, I was taught that God had instructed us that we were not to eat certain “unclean” foods, in particular all pork products and certain seafood. Although my father preferred to say we were “non-denominational Christians”, technically, because of our beliefs, we were theologically “Seventh-day Adventists.”
On the other hand, like thirty percent of Christians, I was also raised with a few less novel ideas about the Christian faith. First, all I needed was the Bible to know God and Jesus Christ: Though I wasn’t taught it as a doctrine, in all practicality this is the “Scripture Alone” idea viewing the Bible as being sufficient for one’s faith knowledge. As youth my mother taught my brother and me the Bible stories from Adam and Eve to Jesus Christ and the Apostles.
Secondly, I was told that though I should go to church, it wasn’t necessary, and if I believed in God, was sorry for my sins before God, and did my best in life I would go to heaven. This is essentially the “Faith Alone” idea, wherein faith was life’s motivating force, and nothing I did or participated in, such as sacraments, had any bearing on my relationship with the Lord. Concerning morality, I was raised on the standards of the Ten Commandments, but they were mere guides, where if broken I could ask God’s forgiveness on the spot. These Scripture Alone and Faith Alone beliefs meant that I was also technically a “Protestant”.
In forming my appropriate perception of God and the moral life my parents helped me to distinguish between good and evil. Evil was all around us, but there was still good in people, as expressed in their capacity to love. God was the source of good. Satan was the initial source and instigator of evil, through a rebellion against that which is good. In other words, evil and sin are not natural to the created order, but willful distortions, lies, about the good. Thus, because of the evil that Satan brought into the world, and that humanity has also taken upon itself and continues to perpetuate, there was and is ultimately a need for a Savior from sin, who eventually came in Jesus Christ.
We were also taught to pray. God was always there for us and all we had to do was talk to him. As your typical Protestants we were not used to traditional recited prayers. Ours prayers were more extemporaneous if we felt it necessary to pray. However, my mother had taught us that is was always good to at least pray at night. And if we didn’t know what to pray, the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep prayer was good as it covered the major bases. She had also taught us the Our Father.
Concerning my knowledge of the various Christian groups growing up, I knew there were Lutherans, which was my mother’s denominational background, as well as Seventh-day Adventists, as my father’s denominational background. He had attended a Seventh-day Adventist elementary academy as a child, whereby he was able to pass his religious formation on to me. I once had a conversation with a Seventh-day Adventist family member who shared his experiences of several denominations. “Pentecostals are the ‘holy rollers’. Mormons believe that one day they’ll be gods of their own planets.” He ended by explicitly saying, “Whatever you do, don’t become Catholic. Catholics worship Mary.”
In spite of my good Christian upbringing and moral education it was difficult to fight peer pressure, even though my father had explicitly told me, “Don’t let others lead you around. Be your own man.” Yet, as a teen looking to “fit in”, his advice went unheeded. The vices of the seventies of “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” had slightly altered to “sex, drugs, and gangsta rap”, and I became another victim of the nineties pop-culture. By the time I graduated high school in 1997 I had disregarded God all together and hadn’t prayed in years. I thought I wanted to live the “Thug Life” of the “gangsta” rappers.
TRACK 3. (3.48)
Prayer One: “God Help Me!”
I found a problem when “raised to know better” and yet did the opposite. It weighed down upon my conscience and naturally led to an inner-conflict. After living the “Thug Life” for just two years I was extremely conflicted, not to mention paranoid due to the partaking of certain illegal substances. I had done things that, if my family had found out, I couldn’t bear to live with the knowledge. The paranoia had gotten so bad, in fact, that I was becoming uncomfortable even around my loved ones. So I fled the life I was living in Marshfield, Wisconsin to be with my girlfriend who had moved to Madison. I thought I could get away from it all. I got a job as a logistics manager at a candy plant and tried to forget the past.
Upon becoming aware that the extreme paranoia followed me pushed me over the edge and led me to begin considering suicide. I began to plan it out. My girlfriend and I were planning a trip back to Marshfield to visit our families and I had a hunting rifle. It scared me that such thoughts were creeping into my mind. My parents had taught me that “Suicide is the unforgivable sin. If you murder yourself there is no forgiveness from God after death.” Oh yeah, “God!” I remembered God at such a critical state in life causing me to cry out to Him, and I’ll never forget it, as I was on my drive into work one morning. “God help me!” I cried out. I didn’t want to kill myself, but the thoughts of my sins were now ruling my mind.
It happened that same weekend we made plans to go to Marshfield. As my girlfriend drove I silently sat starring out the passenger window considering the thoughts of the previous days when in a split-second my sight went black and I saw the flashes of three images.
The first image was that of three angels falling backwards through blackness, covering their faces with their arms. Instantly, my heart was pierced as I realized that it was my sins that caused my condition. It caused me to recall the fall of Satan, which in turn instigated the fall of Man, as my mother had taught me growing up.
The second image that flashed in my sight was that of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross in the near distance. At that moment I was internally convicted that I had a way out of my life of sin, recalling His great sacrifice for the sin of the world. I began to weep bitterly with remorse as I came to the personal appreciation that my sins were, in part, a cause for our precious Lord’s sacrificial death.
The final image was a headshot of me, with a great smile, wearing the black shirt and white collar piece of a priest. Yet, the word “witness” was impressed upon my mind, and so I knew I had a purpose after a life of sin – to witness to the saving love of Jesus Christ. At that moment my tears of remorse oddly mixed with tears of joy. And yet it happened in a split second.
After I began bawling my girlfriend pulled the car over to ask me what was wrong. After I was eventually able to calm down I shared with her what I had just seen. Nothing was wrong with me. On the contrary, everything was now right, as I was blessed with an appreciation of the connections of sin, salvation, and sanctification.
The grace of such an experience of God turned my life upside down as it caused several changes within me.
First, it totally dissolved my suicidal tendencies, now that I understood that my problem was my own sin, that my way out of my sin was salvation in Christ, and that in Christ I had a purpose in life – as a witness, which I would later realize was my sanctification.
Secondly, I immediately returned to the Scriptures with zeal to learn more about the Christ of my youth.
Third, my prayer life was awakened remarkably as the experience gave me a profound awareness of God’s omnipresence. With this recognition of God’s presence conversational prayer became easy for me. Soon after my initial experience it would be this growing in my prayer life with Jesus Christ that would ultimately lead me into the Catholic Church.
TRACK 4. (1.42)
Prayer Two: “Lord, Reveal to Me My Errors.”
My family had listened to Christian radio from time to time when I was growing up. Our favorite preacher was Dr. Chuck Swindoll.
Having had my heart set ablaze by the Holy Spirit due to the experience of God’s freeing grace, I also sought other biblical instruction through the preachers and teachers on WNWC Christian radio in Madison. I began devoutly listening to and studying the materials of such men as Dr. Swindoll, Dr. Jeremiah, Dr. Stanley, Dr. Zacharias, Dr. Dobson and others. On my drives into work, on my drives home, and during many evenings I became more immersed in their Protestant interpretations of Scripture.
The next significant prayer arose while listening to Christian radio full-time. When listening to the program “Revive Our Hearts” the host, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, called her listeners to pray, and I paraphrase, “Lord, reveal to me all the things I’ve believed to be true that are actually false.” I did so, not realizing the effects it would bring to bear upon my life when the prayer was answered. Conflict was one of those effects that came involving me and certain family members, not to mention thirty percent of Christendom – Protestantism. But the answer to this prayer would have to wait until after the next major prayer was answered.
The conflict came when I began becoming intellectually aware that there were extreme differences between various Christian groups, not all agreeing with one another even on fundamental Christian issues. As I listened to the Bible teachers they spoke of various churches and encouraged and left it up to each Christian to make sure their church was “Bible-based.” The conflict became centered upon whose interpretations were closer to what the Bible taught.
TRACK 5. (4.33)
Prayer Three: “Lord, Just Lead Me!”
After consuming the New Testament over the next few months my mind felt much freer. It felt as though Christ had spoken to me when He told His Apostles, “Now you are clean through the word which I have spoken to you.” I would feel a joy building up inside me by the insights I was learning. Yet, there was still something lacking; something I felt as though I was missing.
One afternoon while in the warehouse at work, realizing this sense of lacking, I stopped and prayed, “Lord, I don’t know where to go from here, just lead me.”
That very afternoon I called my girlfriend on my break and she had told me that she had decided to call the Director of Religious Education of her church to ask about baptism classes for me. Of course she knew of my experience, as she was there when it happened, and that I was reading my Bible daily. She also knew that I had not been baptized, as my father left that to me when I was “ready”. Yet, she didn’t know of the prayer I had just made at work!
So when she said to me, “I called St. Bernard’s parish and spoke with Geri, the DRE. We thought you might be interested in the RCIA class for baptism” I was shocked. I instantly recognized that the Holy Spirit had just used her to answer my prayer. It was obvious as it was the call to Baptism! I recalled the preaching of the Apostle Peter in Acts 2:38: “Repent…be baptized…for the forgiveness of your sins…receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”.
Before, I didn’t know where to go for Baptism, thinking of myself as “non-denominational” although holding a Seventh-day Adventist theology. And now, when I asked God to “lead me,” it was for Baptism. But in the “Catholic” Church? That was the only thing I thought odd. For my girlfriend had been raised Catholic, and though she had invited me to go to Mass with her every once in a while, her faith had never come up in our conversations. Besides, other than what I was taught as a youth about Catholics, I never cared for the Catholic service anyhow, as I would complain about all the “up and down, up and down” that I didn’t understand. Yet, now that I was actively “seeking, asking, and knocking,” as Christ encourage, now was her moment to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit.
I met with Geri Nehls and told her of my story to that point. The first insight she taught me was that the word “catholic” means “universal” or “of the whole” concerning the Christian church and illustrated it as an “umbrella term” referring to the whole Christian Church throughout the world. “We are called ‘Roman’ Catholics,” she explained, “as we practice the ‘Roman Rite’ of the Mass. But then there are several other ‘rites’ within the Catholic Church.” From there Geri left it up to me if I wanted to join RCIA to learn more about the Catholic Church. I did indeed. My initial experience of God took place in the late spring of 2000 and by that fall I was in the RCIA classes! Later I learned the significance of that year as a “Jubilee” year. According to the Book of Leviticus, 25:10, a Jubilee year was to be a time of freedom; a time of salvation.
While in the RCIA classes the hardest thing for me to hear at first was Catholics referring to the pope as “the Holy Father”. To my yet uneducated mind that sounded surely blasphemous. I recall thinking, “God the Father is our only Holy Father! What are they doing calling a man ‘holy’?”
However, after much more study of Scripture I learned that both Jews and Christians are called to be a “holy people” and a “holy nation” before God (see Ex 19:6; Deut 28:9; 1 Peter 2:29).
Also, the angels in heaven are called “holy” (see Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; Rev 14:10). Furthermore, the Apostles of Christ are called “holy” (see Eph 3:5).
I came to appreciate the reason sinful creatures like humans can be called holy is due to God’s grace making them so. The biblical logic of being able to call the pope a “Holy Father” follows, the Apostle Peter was the first pope as history reveals (regardless that the title wasn’t used yet), and it was his apostolic office to be a spiritual “father figure” over the Christian communities (see 1 Cor 4:15). So, since Saint Peter was called “holy” by Saint Paul in Ephesians 3:5, then the popes who follow Saint Peter’s fatherly office can certainly be called “holy fathers” due to their office within the Christian Church.
Ultimately, I knew I was led into RCIA through answered prayer. So I continued to listen and learn the Catholic reasoning from Scripture and history and journeyed on toward Baptism.
TRACK 6. (12.18)
Prayer Four: “Lord, Help Me with this Conflict.”
Several months before my Baptism certain Seventh-day Adventist family members came to visit me. They heard I had begun taking my Christian faith seriously and was preparing for Baptism, yet in the Catholic Church, which concerned them. They gave me a copy of Ellen G. White’s book The Triumph of God’s Love, or more commonly titled as her famous work The Great Controversy, and a series of Scripture studies on the doctrines of Seventh-day Adventism. The book was a so-called history of Christianity basically demonizing the Catholic Church as the “Great Apostasy” and glorifying the Protestant reformers as “lights in the darkness.” The Scripture study attempted to “prove” that from Rome would come the “antichrist”, the one that would “think to change times and laws”, as mentioned in Daniel 7:25, like the Saturday Sabbath to Sunday. Their accusation was that this was fulfilled in the papacy that supposedly changed the Christian day of worship from the Saturday Sabbath to Sunday. I became shocked and concerned by what I was now learning.
The study was very compelling and convincing, using Scripture to supposedly “prove” its arguments. It caused me to wonder why God would have clearly led me into the Catholic Church if it was supposed to be the “instrument of the devil”, as Ellen G. White had suggested. This was a serious conflict of interests. I began having thoughts of personal grandeur. I shared with a devout Assemblies of God co-worker, Tim, who I had become good friends with that, “Maybe God has led me into the Catholic Church to help expose it.”
Still, I recognized the great conflict that I was now faced with. What was I to do? The only thing I could at the time. I continued through the RCIA classes while beginning to practice Seventh-day Adventism again due to new “convictions”. Yet, after several months of living this dual life I began experiencing confusion concerning this obvious contradiction. So I did what I had learned was the best thing to do. I took it to prayer. One evening at bedtime prayer I asked the Lord to “Help me understand the conflict” I was experiencing.
That very night I had a disturbing dream. It began with me, staring down a long arched corridor, with the figure of a man coming toward me. As he drew nearer a great emanation of evil surrounded him, yet he was dressed in religious garments with his head and face cloaked. I stood frozen and allowed him to pass by me. As I turned to watch him, he entered into the room I was in. With me in the room was a long table, at the head of which sat facing me was a bulky man wearing a king’s garments and crown, leaning forward on his sword. Beside him sat a woman dressed as a queen. Beside her were several other people to whom I paid no attention. Instead, I watched the being open a door on the opposite side of the room and entered temporarily out of sight. The only knowledge I had during the whole dream was, apart from what I saw, that behind that door was my “covenant”. Just as soon as the being had entered into the room behind the door it came back out, yet now in an invisible form. Immediately, it swooshed passed me, over to the king and queen, slit their throats, and fled back down the corridor as a wind. The dream ended abruptly there.
I was very disturbed as I awoke that morning, sensing that the dream was related to my prayer the evening before. Plus, though I had heard the term growing up by family as related to marriages, I didn’t really know what a “covenant” was.
I shared this dream with my work-friend Tim. He didn’t know what to say but offered me a passage of Scripture to consider – Joel 2:28 – concerning the Holy Spirit’s use of visions and dreams. After reading it I was encouraged and, concerned about being deceived, I continued to contemplate my experiences and pray for the Lord’s guidance.
During the Easter Vigil of April 14, 2001 I was baptized, confirmed, and received my first Holy Communion at Saint Bernard’s parish from Msgr. Michael Hippee.
It was not long after my Baptism, however, when randomly scanning the AM dial of my car radio I discovered EWTN Catholic radio. Now I was about to begin my intellectual advent, my mystagogue into the theology and life of the ancient Christian faith.
On EWTN I discovered programs like Catholic Answers Live and The Journey Home, both of which clarified why there are literally thousands of different denominations and why they have different beliefs. Most importantly, the scholars and theologians on such programs introduced me to scholarly accounts of Church history and the historical interpretation of Scripture. In other words, I discovered the Church Fathers and the Early Christian understanding of Scripture. As I mentioned before, I was raised believing that I was a “non-denominational” Christian, but it was through these apologetic programs that I discovered that I was still technically a “Protestant”, and what I previously described as “Christian radio” was technically “Evangelical Protestant radio”.
It was amazing to learn about the key figures of the Protestant Reformation, like Martin Luther, King Henry VIII, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and others, and how their rebellions against Catholic Church, albeit during a tumultuous time, had ultimately led to the tens of thousands of “Protestant denominations” we have today.
This is in contrast to recognizing that the Catholic Church is technically not a “denomination” as it is historically the original whole church. Catholic apologists as biblical scholars expressed Church history in a different way than Ellen White. They showed where Christ said, in Matthew 16:18, that He would build the Church expressly on a significant role for the Apostle Peter by changing His name to Rock and promising that “the gates of Hades will not overcome it,” which is to say His Church will not be overcome by corruption and death. Then, Our Lord gives Peter the “keys of the kingdom” with the authority that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,” words of doctrinal and disciplinary authority.
Later, in Matthew 18:18 our Lord gives all the Apostles, the first authoritative leaders and teachers, the collective power to “bind and loose.”
In the end of Matthew’s gospel Christ commissions the Apostles, the authorities of His Church, to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Here the Gospel of Matthew, what some biblical scholars call the Gospel of the Church, lays out an authoritative and perpetual Church, built by Christ Himself.
Yet, Catholic apologists go on further to also point out where Christ promised, in John 16:13, that the Holy Spirit would guide His Church into “all truth.”
In Acts, chapter 15, where the Council of Jerusalem is called to discuss the controversy of the Judaizers who were trying to make the Gentile converts first become Jewish through circumcision and observance to the Mosaic Law, the story illustrates the Apostles’ first act of “binding and loosing,” loosing the Church from circumcision and observance of the Mosaic Law, while binding the Church to prohibitions connected to idolatry, fornication, and blood rituals.
Now, if you take Christ’s establishment of the Apostles as the foundation of the Church, as Saint Paul called them, with His promises of its perpetual nature and its being guiding by the Holy Spirit, it’s no wonder why Saint Paul, in First Timothy 3:15 calls the Church “the pillar and foundation of the truth.” Notice that Paul doesn’t tell Timothy that the Scriptures are the “pillar and foundation of truth,” but that, as inspired by God, they are “useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Why is it that the Church is the “pillar and foundation of truth” and the Scriptures are a useful tool? Because the Scriptures, inspired by the Holy Spirit, need an interpreter, also inspired by the Holy Spirit, which is what the Church is officially through its legitimate teachers. The teachers of the Church, principally the Apostles who passed their teaching on to authorized bishops, were commissioned with this special role within the Church.
Yet, I came to also recognize that within this teaching role of the Apostles and bishops was more foundationally their “ministry of reconciliation” as Saint Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians 5:18. This reconciliation of humanity to God comes by Christ’s sharing with them His authority to forgive sins, as it makes clear in the Gospel of John 20:22-23, stating that after Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, he said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” Of course, Protestants have re-interpreted this forgiving of sins as being different from confession. However, within the words of the passage oral confession is implied since a judgment call is necessary on the part of the Apostles or their successors to be able to discern whether to forgive or not to forgive the sin, discerning the repentance of the sinner.
From here Catholic apologists move beyond being biblical scholars and become historians, pointing out the biblical references in the Book of Acts and in the writings of Saint Paul making reference to bishops, presbyters or priests, and deacons, or in modern literal translations of the Bible as overseers, elders, and deacons, and how these men who were in close ties with the Apostles and called upon to perpetuate the Church throughout the centuries. In other words, they were to be the co-workers with the Apostles in making disciples of all nations, as the Apostles clearly could not fulfill the Great Commission in their own lifetimes.
A good Catholic Scripture study on the institution of the role and authority of the Apostles, then moving into an unbiased historical study of the writings Apostolic Fathers and Early Church Fathers would be a tremendous aid in helping anyone discover the original understanding of this ecclesiology or “what the Church is.”
Over the centuries there have be many debates within the Church over the understanding of several core tenants of the Faith, such as those concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ. These are referred to as the Christological debates of the first several centuries. It has been through the official mode of Church Council, in the model of the Council of Jerusalem, with the gathering of the bishop bearing their role of teaching authority in the Church, that such debates have been authoritatively and therefore officially resolved.
Now, however, within Protestantism, where there is no central authority of the bishop to teach and safeguard the historical Faith, many Christians are left to wander within the various interpretations of Protestantism, or remain complacent in their family denominations.
Upon studying the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, for example, one finds these men, taught by the Apostles, clarifying such matters as the central role of the bishop, or overseer. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, in his famous Letter to the Smyrnaeans, has the most ancient account of describing the Christian Church as being “catholic” or “universal” in nature. Ignatius says,
Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.
Let me restate that another way. Here, you have a disciple of the Apostle John, trusted and chosen to lead one of the major Christian cities evangelized by the Apostles, describing the whole Christian Church as the Catholic Church, which he defines by the bishop, the focal point of the Christian communities. What is just as striking is that Ignatius’ discussion of the role of bishop is in the context of sharing the Eucharist – what Saint Paul referred to as the reason why Christians gather together in the first place!
In all we see that union with the Church is through union with the bishop, who then offers to the faithful the Holy Eucharist, putting Christians collectively in union with Jesus Christ and thus making them the Body of Christ.
TRACK 7. (8:06)
In studying and contrasting both the Catholic account of the Christian Faith and the various Protestant interpretations of the Christian Faith, it was also both amazing and alarming to discover how one idea – Scripture Alone as the sole source of authority over a Christian’s beliefs, as opposed to an authoritative Church that teaches doctrinal belief based upon Scripture and the Apostolic or Sacred Tradition – that this one idea has caused the mass of Christian divisions over the last five-hundred years. Why the divisions? Two reasons. First, the Protestant leaders began breaking away from the teaching authority of the Church as handed on from the Apostles to the bishops. So, as I just mentioned, there was no longer a central authority among the Protestants to bring them together on matters of faith. Secondly, thinking they could re-organize the Church, or rather their new denomination, according to their private interpretations of Scripture, they naturally had various and conflicting interpretations of Scripture.
Catholic apologists point out that the fallacy of the Scripture Alone idea is that the Scriptures are not really the “final authority”, but the ones who read them are, since Scripture cannot completely self-interpret. Sure, some things are clearer than others, but those things that are not so clear, and which the cultural and the implied contexts are harder to uncover, yet also happens to be an essential passage, they need something more to understand them. This context missing from Protestant theology is most generally called Sacred Tradition. The reality of this Sacred Tradition, also known as the Apostolic Tradition of the Apostles, is what the first Christians believed and how they worshipped with the faith they were given. Sacred Tradition is otherwise known as the Deposit of Faith – everything given to the Church by Christ and the Apostles in teaching and practice.
Much of the teachings were written down in scriptural form as the New Testament, but the New Testament wasn’t intended to be a sort of catechism for the Christian faith, as its authors were not aware that over three hundred years later all their writings would be collected together as one book. In fact, the author’s of the New Testament were writing to specific communities with specific historical circumstances. In other words, even here, the “Scripture Alone” idea fails for the first four hundred years of the Christian era when there was no New Testament.
Moreover, concerning the fallacy of being able to rely upon the Scriptures alone, it was recognized early on in the Early Church that it was the duty of the Magisterium (the teaching office of the pope and bishops, in the ordinary model of Church Council as illustrated in Acts 15 with Peter and the rest of the Apostles) that they were to use Scripture and the Sacred Tradition to clarify Christian doctrine. When studying the historical development of Church teachings one finds that there has never been anything “new” or “changed” as far as doctrine goes, as some accuse the Catholic Church, but rather doctrines have been better clarified or elaborated upon. Only spiritual disciplines have changed – not doctrines – a matter which often confuses Protestants. For example, all those doctrines which Protestants accuse the Catholic Church of later “inventing,” a knowledgeable Catholic can open the Bible and show their biblical roots.
The Catholic apologists also discussed numerous misconceptions that Protestants have about Catholics – like “worshiping Mary” – and about the Catholic Church itself – like starting in the fourth century. In all, the discovery of Catholic radio and Catholic apologetics was the answer to the prayer issued by Mrs. DeMoss to reveal to me my errors. Thank you Nancy Leigh DeMoss! Though I had just a few misconceptions about Catholics and the Catholic Church, I soon discovered that there are literally dozens of which Catholic apologists have to clarify daily.
Here, for the first time, I objectively began to study the various arguments of Catholics and Protestants. Yet, when it came down to it, the Catholic apologetic overpowered the Protestant apologetic with a freeing grace and an historical authority established by Christ.
Around the same time the Mangehra family, who had gone through the RCIA class with me, had randomly thought to lend me a tape set called “Answering Common Objections” by Dr. Scott Hahn, a minister convert of the mid-eighties who has become a famous biblical scholar over the last twenty years. Within his educational series I had discovered the meaning of my disturbing dream. Dr. Hahn discussed the role of the Seven Sacraments as the ancient signs of the New “Covenant”, the first of which is Baptism!
With other insights I had been picking up from studying Scripture and historical theology I discovered that the dream was packed with symbolic imagery I was previously unaware of. The being that emanated evil, was cloaked in religious garments, and that passed by me represented my allowance of heresy to enter my life after the Lord had explicitly led me into His Church by answered prayer. Historically, this made sense, since Seventh-day Adventism is novel in its ideas, only about 150 years old, while the Catholic Church and Catholic doctrine are nearly 2,000 years old. The door on the other side of the room behind which was my “covenant” was my upcoming Baptism. The evil being was able to “steal it” from me in that Satan was trying to lead me astray into heresy – away from the ancient Sacraments of the New Covenant. The being became “invisible” because it was an intellectual issue. The King sitting at the head of the table was Christ, the head of the Church and the Author of the New Covenant. He was murdered because I began living according to the Old Covenant which He had fulfilled, rather than by His New Covenant. Classically, “the Queen” represents the Church, the Bride of Christ, as she sat beside the King. So also, in the same sense, The Church was murdered as I had begun intellectually walking away from Her. The “others” were the authorities of The Church to whom “I paid no attention”. The evil being left the room after murdering Christ and The Church “as a wind” also represented the heretical nature of my conflict, recalling Saint Paul’s words that those who are united in Christ are no longer “carried about by every wind of doctrine”. It is the authority of The Church that stabilizes and therefore unifies Christians in a firm doctrinal faith, whereas private interpretations of the Scriptures, like those of William Miller (architect of “Adventism”) and Joseph Bates (co-founder and advocate of the Seventh-day Sabbath issue within Seventh-day Adventism), are of the “winds” of “interpretation”.
As I went on to study Catholic theology, the Catholic Church greatly strengthens my faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and continues to encourage me in following Him as Lord and Savior. For it was the Catholic Church that clarified the doctrine of the Holy Trinity before there was even a canonical “New Testament.” In fact, some of the early Seventh-day Adventists, like James White, denied the doctrine of the Trinity.
When God draws converts into a deeper relationship with Christ by revealing to them His “Original” Church, we discover that the main reason He does this is to put His authority over us. For as the Church is the Bride of Christ, She is also a loving Mother to every new Christian in every generation, always drawing them toward Her divine Spouse, Jesus Christ. As Protestants, whatever our denomination, we were the authority over our lives because we would interpret the Scriptures according to our limited and biased intellects. Yet, those of us who truly seek to make Christ our Lord relinquish our control and submit to His authority in The Church that He explicitly told us He would “build,” as the Gospel of Matthew 16:18 says, since He is the “head of the church,” as Saint Paul said in Ephesians 5:23. And as The Church – His disciples – we comprise his “one body” (see Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:27; Col 1:24). Christians are mystically joined to Christ in the “covenant” marriage of the Church. To leave the historical Church is to divorce Christ.
TRACK 8 (6.49)
I’d Like to Make a Special Note on the Religious Experiences of Christians
It is clear to me that such experiences as I have described – a freeing vision, a symbolic dream, and immediately answered prayers – are not common to many Christians, and that such experiences may even be deceptive or misinterpreted, as Scripture warns of false prophets, and some experiences can be of a psychological origin. The help of an official Spiritual Director, often a trained priest, is highly recommended. Also, by no means do I consider myself to be any sort of special “prophet”.
All Christians are prophets, meaning teachers, when they teach orthodox Christianity. Yet, I find it ironic that I come from a denominational background co-founded by a woman who claimed to reportedly have had over 2,000 visions. That would make her the greatest of all prophets! Now, after having studied the foundations of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination and the influences that William Miller, Hiram Edson, and Joseph Bates had on a group of New Englanders, I personally believe that Ellen White was one of those “false prophets” Christ and His Apostles had warned us of in her attempt to justify all these men’s interpretations. This leads me to a brief consideration of the foundations of Seventh-day Adventism.
Resolving Seventh-day Adventism
First of all, as a Protestant, Ellen White, the greatest influence in the founding and development of Seventh-day Adventism, was removed from the apostolic body of teaching of the Church, so her theology was biased in the first place. The test of orthodoxy in the ancient Church was that of union with the Apostles and their teaching. Thus First John 2:19 states,
They went out from us, but they were really not of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us.
As a Protestant, broken away from the historical Church, Ellen White had been highly influenced by the anti-Catholic and separatist rhetoric of the Protestant Reformation which sought to justify their divisions from the Church. Yet, as we see in the writings of Saint Paul, division is a serious sin, and so there was an element of spiritual warfare going on during the Protestant Reformation and every subsequent division leading to the formation of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, as well as within those around them.
A strong program within the Reformation rhetoric was to demonize the official authority of the Church centered in the papacy as the “antichrist.” To undermine the papacy, and the hierarchy in general, left Christians answerable to no one but their own consciences. Thus, with the Scriptures the elevation of the conscience, albeit necessary in due proportion to one’s faith, was now being exaggerated as the only element one could trust. Yet, Christ said we could trust His Church as it was guided by the Holy Spirit.
Individuals are sinners seeking salvation, not to mention the fact that their consciences can be malformed and biased. The Church, on the other hand, as a whole, is Christ’s instrument of salvation as it is both the perpetual Teacher of the Faith that carries out the Great Commission, and the collective of all saved souls.
Many of the later Protestant preachers became even more anti-Catholic than the original “Reformers.” This anti-Catholic legacy, referring to the papacy as the antichrist, was passed on to the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Many Protestants sought to substantiate their claims against the Catholic Church by seeking to show how biblical prophecy and Church history supposedly reveal the Roman Church was the fulfillment of the beast of the books of Daniel and Revelation. Thus it was later Protestants who began falsely equating pagan Rome with Christian Rome. Thus you have sensationalist books like Ellen White’s The Great Controversy, attempting to demonize the Catholic Church, such as through putting ill-intentions into the minds of her characters.
The first “beast” of Revelation 13 classically represents pagan Rome and its emperors who “spoke blasphemies” by applying to themselves titles of divinity. Some required worship from their subjects. One of these emperors was Caesar Nero, who not only had Saints Peter and Paul put to death, but he legendarily “had the wound of the sword and has come to life,” as Revelation says, as Nero died from a self-inflicted stab wound to the throat. A popular legend later suggested that his equally evil successor Domitian, who reigned during the time Revelation was written, was Nero who had come back to life. The “seven kings” representing “fullness,” likely refers to all of emperors. Caesar Nero is also classically understood as this beast because his Greek name in Hebrew adds up to the infamous number 666.
On top of that, any thoughtful Protestant devoted to the words of the New Testament and semi-familiar with the Catholic Church can easily discern the sheer foolishness of calling the papacy the antichrist. Unfortunately, most Protestants have never been given an accurate portrayal of the Catholic Church and its history and doctrine.
First of all, in First John 2:8, Saint John, the only one to use the term, says that “many antichrists have appeared”. Now historically, most Protestants claim the papacy began hundreds of years later than the time of John, so here the papacy and the antichrists could not be connected according to Protestant notions of Church history.
Secondly, in chapter 2, verse 22, John describes an antichrist as “whoever denies Jesus is the Christ. Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist”. Later in chapter 4, verse 3, John says that “every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong God. This is the spirit of the antichrist”. Now, with even a little familiarity with the historical teachings of the popes, we know that not one pope has ever denied that Jesus was the Christ, or denied the Father and the Son. In fact, quite the contrary is so. The history of Church Councils reveals the popes as the main defenders of Trinitarian theology! On top of that, the popes have always promoted the greatest devotions to Christ. Even devotion to Mary is a devotion to Christ, as it was Christ on the cross who gave the Church His own mother as ours, and she leads us into a deeper relationship with Her Son. Thus, to call the papacy the antichrist is to do a great injustice to what John described as an antichrist. It is to distort the Scriptures and completely ignore historical Christian teaching.
TRACK 9. (7.18)
Furthermore, the major Seventh-day Adventist doctrines on the Sabbath and dietary laws contradict principles of the New Covenant as the Sabbath and dietary laws are celebratory and sacrificial matters of the Old Covenant fulfilled in the person of Christ. The Council of Jerusalem was called principally to confront the heresy of the Judaizers who taught that Christians had to first become Jewish through circumcision, diet, and ceremonial observance. Yet, at the Council of Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15:28-29, the final verdict was:
“It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, and from unlawful marriage.”
In Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians he is in part dealing with the influence of the Judaizers. Thus in 2:16 he warns the Christians,
“Let no one, then, pass judgment on you in matters of food and drink or with regard to a festival or new moon or sabbath.”
In the theology of Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant we have, for example, Jesus Christ proclaiming Himself as the “Lord of the Sabbath,” which is to say the Lord of Rest. Christ fulfilled the Sabbath in His life and ministry by giving eternal rest to the faithful who struggle through the battles of this life and ultimately find rest in Him. By rising on the Sunday, the first day of the week, the Early Church Fathers understood this to signify the beginning of the “new creation” that Saint Paul spoke of, as well as an “eighth day” as though finally entering into that eternal rest in Christ.
Here are a few quotes from the writings of the Early Church Fathers, those men who were taught by the Apostles and became their teaching successors. The Didache, which scholars tell us was written in the late half of the first century, probably before the Book of Revelation, states the Christian practice of Sunday, or the Lord’s Day.
But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.
These words from the Didache reflect the core of what the Church’s Mass has always been about: gathering to worship God, breaking bread in thanksgiving – which in Greek is Eucharistia – and confessing our sins before God. Even confession to a priest is confession before God, as the priest is Christ’s missionary representative of the Great Commission.
Next the Letter of Barnabas, which scholars tell us was also written in the late first century, connects the fulfillment of the Jewish Sabbath to the beginning of the another world – the new creation – on the “eighth day”:
[God] says to [Israel], “Your new moons and your Sabbath I cannot endure.” (which is a quote of Isaiah 1:13) The author of the letter of Barnabas goes on to say, “You perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but that is which I have made, when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.
In his Letter to the Magnesians, which scholars tell us was written about 110 A.D. right before his martyrdom, Ignatius of Antioch, the most famous Apostolic Father, explicitly tells us that Christians have moved beyond the Sabbath into the Lord’s Day. He says,
[T]hose who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death
Such testimony as to the Christian practice within the Apostolic age of the Church we discover that the Catholic Church had not changed the Sabbath. Christ and His Apostles did. The Church merely taught the change, or rather, the fulfillment. This is the accurate way to state the matter. The Church doesn’t have the authority to change God’s commands, as She acknowledges, but can only to declare the teaching of Christ and spiritual discipline. Again, this authority is derived from the Apostolic power of the Church to “bind and loose”.
Even though Seventh-day Adventists try to get Christians to believe that the “Lord’s Day,” as spoken of by the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation, is Saturday, such peripheral resources reveal otherwise. Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John, explicitly contrasts the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. What the Letter of Barnabas calls the “eighth day” (Sunday) the Early Church Fathers took up, not merely as the first day of the cyclical week, but also as the new day of a new creation. It is a day of substantial significance, and thus Saint Justin Martyr states in his First Apology,
Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.
Concerning the dietary laws, we also find their purpose fulfilled in Christ, as they relate to representing the Gentiles as to be separated and unclean for the Jews (see Acts 10:9-16, 15:7-20). In Christ the Gentiles are “made clean” and so have been joined to the Jews in the perfect worship of God through the one Christ who redeems them all.
Ultimately, according to the New Testament’s description of the Church, I came to appreciate that the Church that Christ told us He would build Himself, as best illustrated in the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of Acts, cannot apostatize as a whole. Again, this is because Christ gave the Church, principally in Her authoritative hierarchy, the shared gift of the Holy Spirit to guide the Church, as the Gospel of John states, and to protect Her from the damnation of Hades, as Matthew states. In fact, Saint Paul tells Timothy that the Church is the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). This is because the Church, who is intimately united to Christ, in turn tells us about Christ. She does not “interpret” Her relationship with Him. She is one with Him, as Paul wrote to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, and to the Colossians. Thus there is an inherent problem with the Protestant idea of “Restorationism” within such groups as those of the Stone-Campbell movement Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ, of Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Latter-day Saints, of Ellen White and the Seventh-day Adventists, or of Charles Russell and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
TRACK 10. (2.37)
Lastly, Ellen White’s so-called visions dealing with such doctrines came after the fact, as though attempts to validate someone’s novel idea, such as Joseph Bates’ belief in the Sabbath. Thus her “visions” are highly suspect. For she was already intimately wrapped up in the excitement and zeal of the Adventist predictions of the Second Coming of Christ – which had failed three times! Yet, not being able to admit error as William Miller had, many of his followers didn’t give up. Hiram Edson claimed to have had a vision revealing that Christ did not yet intend to come back to “cleanse the earth,” as Miller had thought, but rather to “cleanse the temple in heaven,” thus giving the Adventists novel ideas of both of the nature of heaven (their “Heavenly Sanctuary” idea) and of Christ’s work in heaven (their “Investigative Judgment” idea). Ellen White then came out and claimed to substantiate his vision with visions of her own. Later, the retired sea captain Joseph Bates became convinced by a tract he had read that Christians are still called to worship according to the Jewish Sabbath. He convinced Ellen and her husband James of this, and later she claims to have had another vision to substantiate this belief. The New Testament calls such Sabbath keeping beliefs the teachings of the Judaizers, those who accepted the Christ of the New Covenant but were still partially stuck in their adherence of the Old Covenant.
As for me, I don’t expect, nor do I hope for any more such experiences. Rather, I see how my few experiences were enough for God to use them to wake me up to the reality of my sin and to guide me into His house of refuge – The Church – where He provides the Seven Sacraments of the New Covenant to empower me and free me from sin. God be praised! Unlike Ellen White, I do not pretend to have experiences in order to validate my friend’s or my own novel ideas. In his book The Rapture, Dr. Thigpen provides an outline for discerning the message and the messenger of a “private revelation”. He says the main point of discernment should always lead one to ask, “Does the message contradict clear teaching of the Church with regard to faith or morals? If so, reject it.” (The Rapture Trap, pgs. 229-235). Unlike many of those who claimed to have had visions in the nineteenth century in order to found a so-called new “church,” my experiences didn’t contradict the ancient Church but actually led me to Her so I could learn that “clear teaching”.
TRACK 11. (5.02)
Afterword
My girlfriend from earlier in this story discerned with me that we were not called to be together. For two years after parting ways with her I went on to discern a possible vocation to the priesthood, but with an official Spiritual Director assigned to me discerned otherwise. Yet, through another inspiring story of intercession through Saint Augustine I found my wife – Melissa Augustine! In other words, praying also helped me discern my life’s vocation. For the whole story, including more details on the above controversies, I humbly recommend my book Praying Made Me Catholic: With the Biblical and Historical Reasons I Must Remain Catholic published by Coming Home Resources. As of the fall of 2008 we transferred from the University of Wisconsin to Newman University in Wichita, Kansas where I am working toward a Masters in Theology. My long-term goal is a Ph.D. to teach university level, but we’ll see how the Lord chooses to continue guiding us.
Before I go, I’d like to suggest a few resources and books for those interested in learning more about the Catholic Church and its history.
First, a few quality internet sites. The radio program Catholic Answers Live archives all of their daily shows, many of which are topic based. So I would recommend going to www.catholic.com and checking them out. Another great site is the Eternal Word Television Network’s site at www.ewtn.com where one can also find archived shows of the Journey Home, hosted by Marcus Grodi, a former Presbyterian minister who came into the Church. On his show he interviews many former Protestant clergy from pretty much every denomination who have discovered the original Church. Lastly, as a solid source of CD and DVD educational materials on the Catholic faith I highly recommend Saint Joseph Communications at www.saintjoe.com.
Books: On general Catholic apologetics I recommend Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism and the Scott Hahn series Catholic for a Reason.
There are a lot of books I would recommend on intellectual conversion to the Catholic Church, so I’ll just run through several quick. Jeff Cavins’ My Life on the Rock; David B. Currie’s Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic; Timothy Drake’s There We Stood, Here We Stand: 11 Lutherans Rediscover Their Catholic Roots; Marcus Grodi’s Journeys Home; Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home; Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough; Alex Jones’ No Price Too High: A Pentecostal Preacher Becomes Catholic; Patrick Madrid’s three volume Surprised By Truth series; Stephen Ray’s Crossing the Tiber: Evangelical Protestants Discover the Historical Church; Mark Shea’s By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition; and Bruce Sullivan’s Christ in His Fullness: A Protestant Minister Discovers the Fullness of Christ in the Catholic Church.
On Church History I recommend Mike Aquilina’s The Fathers of the Church; Rod Bennett’s Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words; Harry Crocker’s Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000-Year History; Richard Hogan’s Dissent from the Creed: Heresies Past and Present; William Jurgens’ The Faith of the Early Fathers; and John Willis’ The Teachings of the Church Fathers.
On Scripture and biblical issues I recommend Dave Armstrong’s A Biblical Defense of Catholicism and his The Catholic Verses: 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants; Henry Graham’s Where We Got Our Bible, Our Debt to the Catholic Church; Patrick Madrid’s Where Is That in the Bible?; and Robert Sungenis’ books Not By Bread Alone: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for the Eucharistic Sacrifice; his book Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification and his Not By Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
Books on the Sacraments and the Mass. Mike Aquilina’s The Mass of the Early Christians; Benedict Groeschel and James Monti’s In the Presence of Our Lord; James O’Connor’s The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist; and finally some more of Dr. Scott Hahn’s books: The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth; Letter and Spirit: From Written Text to Living Word in the Liturgy; Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession; and lastly his Swear to God: The Promise and Power of the Sacraments.
Thank you very much for your time in allowing me to share how God has blessed me by leading me into the original Church.
All glory be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Catholic Church started with the Apostles as the original Magisterium, the Apostle Peter being the first “pope,” so to speak (this title was later added to his special office that Christ gave him). Acts, chapter 15, describes the first “Church Council” (Jerusalem) whereby this Magisterium exerted its authority over all the local Christian communities that the Apostles had founded. The Apostles chose men to be bishops over the local communities to take over their authoritative roles. Saint Ignatius, one of these disciples of the Apostles who they had made bishop of Antioch, has the oldest written usage of calling the whole church the “Catholic Church” (c. 107 AD). 
The Catholic Church started with the Apostles as the original Magisterium, the Apostle Peter being the first “pope,” so to speak (this title was later added to his special office that Christ gave him). Acts, chapter 15, describes the first “Church Council” (Jerusalem) whereby this Magisterium exerted its authority over all the local Christian communities that the Apostles had founded. The Apostles chose men to be bishops over the local communities to take over their authoritative roles. Saint Ignatius, one of these disciples of the Apostles who they had made bishop of Antioch, has the oldest written usage of calling the whole church the “Catholic Church” (c. 107 AD). 
“Today the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has received word of the new Provision in the form of an apostolic constitution issued by the Holy See for the reception into full communion with the Catholic Church of groups from the Anglican tradition. The USCCB stands ready to collaborate in the implementation of that Provision in our country.
