A Fundamental Difference

One thing you get when you come down with COVID 19 is a great deal of time to spend in your house.  For me, that meant a great deal of time watching YouTube.  I do not necessarily recommend this but it was an emergency after all. The past week I have spent watching a great many videos about the Catholic Church, Catholic Theology, and I even took in a few fundamental Protestant views of the Church. I really do not know what made me more sick, COVID or listening to some really flawed logic about my Church.  Then I thought, I would write this story about my experience.  There are two things I would like to mention.

First, YouTube puts out a great many anti-Catholic videos.  It would appear that these videos would not meet the standards that YouTube has for hate speech but this will be a whole other story.  The common denominator for these videos is the belief that Jesus Jesus somehow established the Church, then let men hijack the Church, only to let another man or group of men reestablish the Church. Now, listen carefully to what I am about to explain here.  Jesus came to establish His Church.  If Jesus established it, how can any man change it?  If Jesus did not do this, then the whole thing is a lie, including what you believe in.  In a real bad flawed logic, the minister on YouTube would tell everyone that the Catholic Church was not Christian because they did not believe what he believed.  I have four words- “Thank God For That.” Simply put, if Jesus did establish the Church, no man can do the same.  Therefore, no man on this earth would have the authority to establish the Church or change the Church from the teachings of the Apostolic Fathers.  If they did they would be wrong and we should not follow.  If they were wrong, then we should not follow them.  Collectively the only thing that rings true is that they are wrong in either case and should not be followed. 

Second, they try to explain or justify their disdain for the Church through the use of some Bible verses.  They fail to understand exactly what the Bible is and how the Holy Bible came about.  The Bible is a collection of books put together by great councils of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.  The old Testament was about the people of the tribes of Israel.  These were people that made a covenant with God.  Jesus was Jewish and he came to earth to be the Messiah of the Jews.  Today we have a remnant of Jews who are descendants of these people and descendants of people who did not accept Christ.  However, what they did not tell us is that many of the Jews did accept Christ.  Some of the largest Jewish cities in the Roman Empire quickly had Christian congregations.  Where did these people come from?  They have converted Jews.  They made up the largest part of the early Christians in Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. For example, why did Paul write the Epistle to Rome if there were no Christians there already?  Where did these Christians come from?  Have they not converted Jews?   The problem here is how they use the Bible.  Instead of explaining what the Bible was or is, they said the Bible was the word of God and they could use these words to prove the Church was wrong.  Okay, here is a little secret, if the Bible is the word of God, how can a man take away certain books of the Bible?  Does this not make man greater than God?  How can you have the complete Bible when you only have part of the Bible?  How can you seriously try to pick and choose Bible verses from an incomplete story to try to prove that their story is correct?  All of this being said, they really do not include the entire story.  Why?  Could this be because the Bible actually backs up the Church?  The next time a person tries to say that the Bible proves the Church wrong, ask them this question, “ Why do you say that the Bible proves the Church wrong when your Church took it upon the word of man to take out books from the Bible.  Does this not make Man greater than God? “  Then wait for their answer.  Actually, you might have to wait a long while.  The Maccabees is the name of the book that proves the fallacy of their belief.  The Maccabees led a revolt against the Greeks who were trying to take over the Church.  If the Greeks would have won this struggle-the Jewish Church would have disappeared off the face of the earth.  Without the strength of the Maccabees, there would have been no Jewish Church left.  Therefore, would it not be important to learn about this family?  This becomes another fallacy, the people who hate the Church have pointed out that sometimes people in the Church have acted poorly.  This is true, so what?  People are people and people are not perfect.  The Church is like a hospital.  If you are sick you go to the hospital to get better.  If you are trying to get to know God, you go to Church.  Would it surprise you then that people who are just people are not perfect?  They try to hold the Church up to this perfection standard and fail to explain that people are not perfect, only God is perfect. However, when you closely look at this you will also see that they do not meet their own standards.  How can you attack a Church founded by Jesus for not being perfect but then substitute it with a Church founded by man to be better?  If you do believe this, are you not putting man ahead of God? Is this not exactly what the Greek King tried to do to the Jews in the Book of the Maccabees?  Could this be the real reason why they do not want their members to read that book?

The effects of COVID will eventually leave a person, but the effects of this faulty logic brought out by the people who put themselves ahead of God have not changed.  Prepare brothers and sisters, we are in troubled times and do not be confused, confounded, or dismayed because God is here for us yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever.