I am de-lurking as well to say thanks for being fair to the RCC and giving Pope JPII credit for leading a Christ centered life.

One area that I am curious about is your view on the sanctity of life from a Post-Evangelical/Catholic teaching perspective.
I am sure both agree on abortion and euthanasia. I am just wondering how the Post-Evangelical view would be on abortifacients like the IUD/pill and the Sin of Onan. I have come to understand most evangelicals position as clinic abortions are bad, just. don’t. go. any. deeper.

If I may, Can I suggest something for you to read?
By PJPII, Evangelium Vitae – on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life.
The text is free on-line or it can be picked up at many on-line stores. I’ll ship it to you if you like.

I went back and read one the the older posts that you wrote that talked about your reading books written by Catholics. Thank you for going to two good source materials. The Catechism, and you already had the Bible I have many friends that will gladly give me their favorite author de jour (Jabez mania, Warren, etc) but shun any book if they figure out it is written by a catholic.

Speaking of books. C.S. Lewis said that for every new book that you read, you should read 3 old books. (or something like that). I’m just hoping he was thinking Chesterton was “old”.

Wow! You have just described my life. I am a former RC, who went to a CMA denomination, then a Reformed Baptist, then an RCA church, then a Southern Baptist, and now a Vineyard Church

I have been unable to find a home in any of them. First of all, like you, I find much to value on the RCC teachings and practices. In fact, were it not for Mariology, praying before statues (no matter how you define “worship”), the infallibility of the Pope (which leads to the mandatory extra-biblical teaching of the assumption of Mary), I could probably go back. But I cannot shake that these teachings are all error and outside, if not forbidden, by the Bible.

At the same time, the Protestant churches appear just as messed up in other areas. I feel they truncate the impact and power of the sacraments, they are too individualistic, they infantize their congregations by stressing conversion over discipleship, have given themselves over to the entertainment values of a debaunched culure, etc..

So I read the Bible as best I can, learn from who I can (you being a strong guide in that direction), and become a wandering heretic between those two worlds. As my wife says, “It would be so easier if we could just forget all we know and just go along with the church crowd.” I am tempted to agree with her as I worship in yet another congregation and know ultimately I will never belong this side of the Resurrection.

It is only then that I know my wanderings will lead me to my Elder Brother. Somehow I feel you are on the same journey. How do you cope?

I’m struggling with how to properly interpret Scripture and who has the authority to provide the lens or framework to do so. My problem with the above statement is this: How can the 20,000 little popes be corrected by scripture when they all interpret scripture differently? Isn’t the correction only as good as the interpretive lens you use to view it with? Scripture, if our Protestant experience is any clue, apparently doesn’t interpret itself very well or we’d all be a lot more on the same page instead of splintered into thousands of denominations.

It helps to have you define where you stand. Still even if you’re not open to the concept of personal conversion to Catholicism I think you score very highly on the reasonable discourse scale. I think your reasoned and polite approach to those of us in other Christian Churches is in itself a kind of Christian testament. Unity is what Christ wanted, if we cannot do so in all things liturgical at least we can be unified in our charitable approach and in our respect for each other. You model this very well – and that it why I visit this site – I sense the love of God in you and in your posters.

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” St. Francis of Assisi

Do you mean this in the denominational sense, or in the individual church sense? If you’ve found a Baptist church that doesn’t have a lot of “even though the Bible only vaguely mentions X in two verses, we all know real Christians don’t do X,” please send me directions. Soon.

On the other hand, I guess I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a list of things every Baptist church in town would agree with, and that may be what you mean.

>>I sojourn with Baptists, but mainly because they confess almost nothing.

Have you heard anything about “Baptist catholicity” – and if so, does it perk your interest?

I didn’t mean that last point in a snippy way. I meant it as a compliment. Your understanding of other theological issues seems so deep and informed, the discussions of Catholic matters from your end seem thin and rife with misunderstandings – or at least incomplete understandings – in comparison. It would be a pleasure, I mean to say, to read you reflect on a deeper theological understanding of the Catholic perspective.

But, of course, that’s not your interest, so why should ya?

What I was talking about was not Pope, bishops, Calvin or Queens of England but the blogosphere. The Protestant presence on the Internet seems to me to be a cacophany of male voices who place great stock in their own personalities and identities, completely uninterested in learning from each other, but more in building themselves and their organizations up, and, with increasing frequency, “excommunicating” others. The only “others” that I see these voices open to learning from are Charles Spurgeon on one side and the latest marketing guru on the other.

I don’t get it. I don’t get where the authority to do this comes from and certainly don’t get any kind of complete sense of Christianity from any of these guys. It’s all filtered through the need to either be consistent with the Reformation Guy I Like or to be cool and relevant. It’s narrow and bizarrely ego-driven.

And while I respect you and your intellect a great deal, IMonk, your Catholic posts strike me as being a little thin in understanding. I really think that if you’re serious about commenting on Catholic theology you should give it the same intellectual attention you give the Protestant issues in which you engage. The Catechism is intro stuff. Try reading Ratzinger’s Principles of Catholic Theology, Called to Communion and The Spirit of the Liturgy. And then go from there.