Lost in Translation

This week in conversation we talked about Catholicism all week. Our teacher brings a wealth of knowledge to the table, since she is the only evangelical in her entire family and she has been discussing this topic with her students for 13 years.

We each had to interview a Catholic person and a converted Catholic. I went to the big Catholic church here in our neighborhood looking for someone to talk to. Thankfully, a cleaning lady was kind enough to put her work down and talk for about 20 minutes. When we were done, she gave me a copy of the liturgy for Easter week and two Catholic newspapers. The liturgy book contains everything the priest would say, including notes on how to arrange the different ceremonies.

I learned a ton this week about Catholicism. Here are just a couple of things. First, Catholics here are theologically conservative (with respect to their theology). In the U.S. there's a huge divide between liberals and conservatives. Not so here, because most of the priests come from Spain.

Another interesting point is that we can't just say that Catholics need a "relationship" with Christ. They have a "relationship" (from their perspective) with Him . . . they pray regularly, they think about trying to please God on a regular basis, etc. We have to probe deeper to understand what saving faith is biblically. This is where the Catholic church goes astray. Salvation comes through faith alone, in Christ alone. Justification is God declaring us righteous in Christ Jesus, not a process of making us righteous.

In my interview, the woman was very careful to explain that Catholics do not worship Mary or the saints. She seemed to have a good knowledge of the Bible. For that reason, her passing comment about the very body and blood of Jesus being in a box over in the corner was very shocking to me. It's one thing to think about their theology abstractly . . . it's another thing to have a person point to the very "body" of Christ over in the corner.

Are Catholics our enemies? Definitely not. Satan is our enemy, and he has used Catholicism to make many people think that they're doing okay before God. And that is simply not the case. Another interesting point that our teacher brought up was that Catholics have only been reading the Bible for about 40 years. Before Vatican II reading the Bible wasn't allowed. In contrast, the U.S. has a history of having read the Bible for about 400 years.