"The Church of Rome denies the finished work of Christ but believes in the continuing sacrifice that produces such things as sacraments and praying for the dead, burning candles, and so forth. All of these were borrowed from mystery Babylon, the mother of all pagan customs and idolatry, none of which is taught in the New Testament."
-Tim LaHaye
I like the point that the Professor brought up in class when we were learning about Hinduism. He brought up the point of judging and jumping to conclusions about other faiths we don't understand. He made the comparison between the many Hindu gods and the Catholic saints. It is so easy to condemn something we truly don't understand.It is so easy to mock something on the grounds that it is foreign to us. Over the years while studying I have wondered "why is it that we give in so easily to what we read and hear without truly verifying itfor ourselves?". It is so easy for us to misunderstand something about religion and look no further. What makes it worse is that not only do we put forth no effort to verify from multiple sources the truth of the subject but it also seems we make the mistake of then turning around and proclaiming what little we know about a religion as "undisputed doctrine"! A fine example of this is the first quote I opened up this topic with. Tim LaHaye co-author of the "Left Behind"Book series is a well-respected minister, author and judging by the 50 million plus copies this book series has sold, he has a lot of people that are willing to listen to what he says.
This creates a problem though. This is what creates the many misunderstandings and misconceptions of faith. Here we have a well-respected author with a huge audience yet every line he has writtenin that quote is filled with blunders and inaccuracies about theCatholic Faith. No I'm not arguing from a perspective of faith and Idon't have any interest in trying to sling bible passages out there to try and defend the Catholic faith in this particular writing. In fact these points can be proven purely historically that the statements he is making are inaccurate. It can be proven historically that praying for the dead is an older Christian practice than the Canon of the Bible! It can be proven historically and factually that the sacraments of the Catholic faith have no link to paganism and are completely independent of paganism. The sacraments are no more pagan than the symbol of the cross is. We know historically that the symbol of the cross pre-dates Christianity but we also would be foolish toclaim that the cross is derived from paganism. This problem has arisen partially because of what we also talked about inclass. "Fundamentalism". Tim LaHaye is a "Christian" fundamentalist. As a Catholic I deal with this type of fundamentalism constantly. Let me share another experience with you about Christian Fundamentalism
I was in a World religions class a few years back that I did notcomplete and the Professor stated in one of his lessons that "The Catholic Church added 7 books to the bible" and that was why the Canon of the Catholic church consisted of 73 books and not 66 as allprotestant Canons do. Now, again, without having to rely on faith toprove my point I knew that this was historically impossible and that there were no grounds for this claim unless one had an obscure view of history. How was it that this idea that spawned from "Fundamentalism" found its way into the very classroom of a Secular school? Another thing that struck me as odd is that this teacher was the exact opposite of Professor Lane in that he refused to take any religious topic to the controversial level. Still, the point remained. "Fundamentalism" had found its way into the Classroom out of this teacher's mouth. I raised my hand curious where he learned this information. Had the "fundamentalist" voice been so loud that it actually drowned out reality? His explanation and answer wasthat he was unclear and didn't remember the exact details but wouldlook into it. I shared what I knew regarding the Canonization of the Bible which reached as far back as the synod of Rome in 382 a.d andthen the later councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397 a.d.which listed all the books that Catholics still have in the bible.The fact of the matter is that Martin Luther removed them during thereformation in the 1500's. (There's much more detail regarding this Idon't intend to cover here) Unfortunately for the classroom, the professor brushed off my knowledge quickly changed the subject and ofcourse the class was left with the Professors "Undisputed Doctrine"to fill their minds. Christian Fundamentalism has even taken it so far as to deny that the Catholic Church had anything to do with the bible at all. Not even Martin Luther, a founding father ofProtestantism would agree with such a "deviation from history" that fundamentalism brings about. Again it doesn't take faith to prove this point as it can be understood clearly from the text of this next historical quote from one of the founding fathers of Protestantism.
"We are obliged to yield many things to the papists [Catholics]—that they possess the Word of God which we received from them, otherwise we should have known nothing at all about it."
-Martin Luther
The list goes on. We find these radical ideas in every faith if one takes a Fundamentalist approach. As a Catholic I have dealt with many Bible Christian Fundamentalists whose view of the Catholic faith is so misunderstood that it isn't even Catholicism anymore that they are disagreeing with, rather a mixture of false information projected to be Catholicism. An Archbishop by the name of Fulton J. Sheen put this reality in perspective when he said
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church-which is, of course, quite a different thing."
-Arch Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
So where do we draw the line? What are we supposed to do to protect ourselves from the Ocean of Misconceptions? I say we take ProfessorLanes advice and search for ourselves. Don't buy his or anyone's "information" without checking into it yourself. This includes what I have written here. I have quoted three different people and have given no citations to where I got these quotes from. I could be completely making this information up. Its been done manytimes in the books, magazines and the posters we read. Its done in lectures, on T.V and in Music. Don't buy it that easily.
Will we ever find the Truth? Who knows, but it doesn't hurt to try and get as close to it as we possibly can. We owe it to ourselves totest our faith, to test our knowledge and to search for the answers. Did Christians really believe Jesus was really God? Is the Book ofMormon really American history? Was Muhammad a true prophet of God? If we are going to be a member of any of these faiths we owe it to ourselves to investigate their claims. We must increase our Knowledge and understanding of different religions because without knowledge we will simply be lead to the Ocean of Misconceptions and forced to walk the Plank…
..and I don't want to Jump in that ocean without some blow up orange "floaties" on my arms
None of us should…
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