Everyone was brought up under, or developed his or her own set of beliefs, depending on personal situations. This discussion, in the form of letters, attempts at confronting these religious beliefs with the Truth using facts, logic and reasoning.
Letter to my Catholic Brothers and Sisters
This is probably the most difficult letter for me to write. As a former Catholic, I see why God would preserve the Catholic Church despite its imperfections and misinterpretation of His word. But now, in this information age, the church must align with the scriptures or irremediably perish.
The problem stems from the more than a thousand years, during which the illiterate faithful depended on the priesthood for the reading and interpretation of the word of God. During that time the church developed a dogma that essentially replaced the Bible. In a way, this was done to attract the diverse pagan cultures within the Roman Empire. This same technique was used some five hundred years ago to Christianize the people of the New World. The result was that the church’s dogma became as important if not more important than the word of God. I think most Catholics do not believe the Bible is the actual word of God and instead believe it to be a guide of sorts, a nice place from which priests can pick and choose readings and prayers for Sunday Mass. Very few Catholics read the Bible. Very few priests urge people to read the Bible. Most Catholics know of the Bible from the three excerpts read during each mass events. How can you call yourself a Christian if you have not even read the Bible at least once? OK, at least the New Testament… In fact, a Christian is one that is familiar with, that treasures, that is eager to know the words that Jesus himself quoted many times and the words that He spoke. A Christian is someone that has a relationship with Christ. How can you have a relationship with someone that you do not know? Once you know someone, you must maintain contact; you have to read the Bible daily and pray every day. Do you think the devil takes a break? It is constantly lurking for a sign of weakness in us. The only way to counter him is by reinforcing our faith. Even Jesus quoted the Scriptures to counter Satan. What makes Catholics believe they do not need to read and study the word of God?
Few priests emphasize that Jesus is our salvation. The church, by over emphasizing its dogma, believes that if someone has been baptized, that person is already saved and therefore assumed to know that Jesus saves. That is not biblical, and it is not logical. Baptism is a symbol of our shedding, drowning or washing of our old self into a new self. It must be a conscious action in which we realize we do not want to continue being in charge of our life and in fact “drown” that old self and come out of the water a new self, having Jesus in charge of our life. This is what Jesus was telling Nicodemus when He was saying through John 3:3 “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”. You are required to have a renewed spirit to be allowed into Heaven. At that point, when you surrender yourself you open the door for the Holy Spirit to dwell in you. The key fact that Jesus is our personal savior is seldom in the homily. It is read in mass as part of the Mass script, but never emphasized as a key fact in Catholicism. This is totally wrong. This must change. How do we know that we have received the Holy Spirit in our lives? Easy, our life changes completely. It is really a miracle what a simple but heart felt prayer inviting Jesus into our lives can do for us.
Not many Catholics know how the church came into being. History reveals how the Roman Empire hijacked Christianity from Christians, creating what we now know as Catholicism. Up until 313 AD Christianity was an underground religion based on “the Gospel of the good news”. Christians were true to their faith because they believed in The Word even though it could cost them their life. The knowledge of the early Christians may have been a little fragmented because it was probably based on limited information, such as one Gospel or even a few Epistles, as information or copies of the other Gospels were not easily available (remember, there were no printers back then and books had to be copied by hand on parchment or papyrus paper, and this was an expensive endeavor).
Early Christian rituals were centered in gathering together on Sundays (the first day of the week, the day Jesus resurrected and the day He first appeared to His disciples) in someone’s house and sharing the breaking of bread while reading The Word. Being a Christian meant living to love God with all their love, all their soul, all their mind, and all their might as well as loving their neighbors as themselves. Constantine, by declaring Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, essentially forced the entire population, who was deeply immersed in pagan idolatry and superstition, to “accept” Christ. Most people, probably including Constantine, did not have the slightest idea what Christianity was really all about. We know that his mother Helena was a convert, but there are indications that Constantine himself only converted at his agony. As a result, the Roman Empire created a new religion that was the result of a mixture of Christian values with pagan rituals.
Being Catholic is often like a membership that one passes to one’s descendants and, in order to maintain membership, one has to fulfill certain requirements or “sacraments”. A real Christian is one that openly and constantly seeks Christ and shares Christ with others. Catholics need to go back to their Christian roots by familiarizing with the Bible, which is the word of God. Once The Word is known, many of the remnant pagan rituals and other non-Biblical beliefs will be obvious and will be placed into context.
Some of the Catholic beliefs that are not supported by the Bible include the veneration of the Virgin Mary, sainthood appointed by Rome, and the priesthood as a career. There is nothing wrong with paying homage and admire the Virgin Mary, but this admiration must be placed in context with the essence of Christianity, that is; Christ must always be the center of our attention because it is through him and only him that we attain salvation and everlasting life. He is the one who loved us so much that suffered and died a horrible death for all of our sins. The instant we confess with all intent He is our Lord, He sends His Spirit to dwell in us. We do not need an intermediary. If we think we need an intermediary to “sponsor” us in Heaven, it is because we are still trying to gain Heaven by our own self-righteousness (by our own works). Even in our best self-righteousness we are like dirty rags to God and we know it. That is why we intuitively know that we do not deserve to be next to God. But once Christ washes us with His blood, our souls are clean and deserving of Heaven not because of our works, but because of Christ’s grace. To show Christ our appreciation, we must do what he asked us to do; be humble, abstain from the things of this world, grow continuously in holiness, use our God-given gifts to help others know Him, have child-like good intentions, and be promoters of peace among mankind and between God and man. This is what we know as the Beatitudes.
The Scriptures are very clear about who are considered saints; it is whoever accepts Christ and follows Him. Saints were never associated with miracles. God makes the miracles not men. It is our faith, if in coincidence with God’s will, which produces the manifestation we call “a miracle”. No person has the power to produce that manifestation without God’s consent. Therefore, the church should cease the semi-pagan practice of assigning sainthood to individuals. Leave that to God. This politicized practice of assigning sainthood to heighten religiosity in particular regions of the world is not needed at this time and age. This is not in accordance with the Scriptures and is totally wrong. This must change.
The Apostle Paul mentions in his first letter to the Corinthians that it is best to stay celibate to be more effective in serving the Lord. Of course, Paul is looking at it from the vantage point of spreading the Gospel to the entire pagan world. Imagine that task! He hardly had time to take care of a family. If he was not traveling, he was busy preaching, or was persecuted, beaten, and put in prison. The Catholic Church finally settled the issue of celibacy of the clergy in the Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215. Celibacy is a personal choice and depends on how committed one is to the spreading of The Word. It should not be forced as a requirement otherwise you attract the wrong people for the job (e.g. gays and child molesters). The job of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ should not be a career. No one can be formed in a seminary to have faith and to share it and divulge it to others. The seminary is good to instruct people about the Scriptures, the original languages they were written in, translation issues, and the history behind them. But if the seminary does not attract people with faith, it is not effective at forming priests worth the while. Celibacy is not a good test of faith. Celibacy must not be a requirement and only people with true faith in Christ (not faith in the Church) should enter the seminary to become “shepherds of a flock”. This must change.
I pray that Catholics focus their attention and faith in Christ as supposed to “the Church”. The Church will not save their souls, as it is composed of filthy rags as any human organization is (specially as politicized as the Catholic Church is), but Christ, on the other hand, does save. Christ does not need an organization to be effective. Christ did not come to start a new religion, but to engage us in a relationship with Him. Christ only wants us to gather in His name to show our appreciation for what He has done for us, to act more like Him, and to commune around Him. Go back to your Christian roots and do what is pleasing to God according to the teachings of Christ which were written in what we know as the New Testament. Jesus said through Luke 19:46: “My house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves” as He kicked out the money exchangers and those that sold animals for sacrifice in the Temple. Just as Jesus was opposed to the Jewish religion of that time, do not be misguided by legalistic and mindless rituals and go back to the word of God. Change the Catholic Church by shedding all that is impeding your spiritual growth. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.