Discussing with "Rocky" his criticisms of the Church

Fr. Joseph, I have been a practicing Christian since age eleven. I have studied religions at the college level and since the Internet quite extensively. It is you sir who have been misled. Jesus is presented as enough for my salvation, I do not need a church organization to usher me into traditional teachings which mislead people. I in no way believe all Catholics are non-Christian, but from a church organization I believe it to be in bed with Satan, the Islamic beliefs, are responsible for many of the atrocities which have been committed in history accredited to the Christian faith while performing a subversive agenda under that cloak of innocence--that the Freemasons, Jesuits and many more secret societies are Satan driven and that the New World Order will bring in a new Satanic religion that God will call a halt to the corruption he has allowed so those who are faithful to him will be successfully identified and surely written in the book of life.
I have walked the life of sin, know the signs of Satan in the lives of people in general, in religions in particular and many within the clergy. You have been blinded by the brainwashing of probably a life time within a church that prides itself with false beginnings, false popes, secular popes, perverted behavior which has often been covered up and are not a religion that follows God. You are more steeped in your traditions as were the Pharisees of Jesus' time so are leading people to a false relationship with God and Son.

Rocky,

Now, I won’t get into the non-sensical conspiracy theories of yours so as not to cause you embarrassment but I will comment on some of your other beliefs.

You say that I am misled but you do not give any specifics to your claim. Certainly for most of my life I was misled by Protestant teaching but I am now in the fullness of God’s truth in His own Church which is the only Church that He ever founded. The same Church that He prayed we all be one within as He and the Father are one. So surely His will is that we be unified in His Church and not in tens of thousands of schismatic churches in protest of the only Church He founded.

You say that you do not need His Church. I would guess that is because you are envious of the authority that Jesus gave to His Church. So, He is enough for your salvation without the Church that He built and founded for you based on Himself as the cornerstone and the disciples as the 12 foundation stones of the Church. That same foundation remains today with His Church and has been built on through apostolic succession. The teachers and shepherds of His Church are the valid unbroken successors of the original disciples. (See the Book of Acts). This succession has assured humanity and especially Christ’s faithful of the fullness of truth from the same spring of faith of the original followers of our Lord whose successors have passed down the original teaching without flaw or error for 2000 years just as Jesus promised. It seems that if Jesus is enough for your salvation that you would be obedient to His teaching and not be in protest of His Church. Don’t you think He founded a Church for a reason? He not only founded it so that we would have a placed with the assurance of truth but also a place where we can be ministered to so that we may endure to final salvation. He provided this grace through His Sacraments. That is why He said that unless we eat His Body and drink His blood then we cannot have salvation. He described this as the food for salvation comparing it of the same spiritual sustenance as the manna was for the Israelites physical sustenance. Only from His Church can we receive the salvific grace that His Sacraments provide. He gave the authority to His priesthood and only His priesthood to provide this food for eternal life. The Jesuits are certainly anything but a secret society of educators, missionaries and academics. Islam and the freemasons have nothing to do with the Catholic Church nor do we have association with any “New World Order”, what ever that is.

I have never lived a intentional life of sin as you proclaim but I have knowledge of people like yourself who have abandoned their sinful ways to follow Christ. I also have seen sinful people in all walks of life doing horrible ungodly things. Jesus said that His Church would be attacked from without and from within. He said the Church would contain those deceived by evil and powerless against temptation. So, being prepared by my Lord I am not surprised by these events. He also promised that the Church would not fall into apostasy despite the evil influence of individuals and I see His Church as testimony of this fact for 2000 years. I know that His Church gets its veracity from His veracity and form no other source and that is why the Church has never departed from the truth and that is truly a miracle because of the vicious attacks against it by the gates of hell. It has never prevailed and never will. No other Church has these promises from our Lord and especially not the man-made churches of the Protestant Rebellion.

There is no “brainwashing” in the Catholic Church as there is no necessity of it as we have the fullness of God’s truth in His Church and not in a man-made counterfeit. I am a recent convert to Catholic Christianity after most of my adult life of fifty years of age being an anti-Catholic. I knew all the clichés and arguments against the Church but every time I sought to prove the Church wrong biblically, historically or patristically I found out that what they taught and believed is true. Most of my Protestant colleagues who have converted came to the Catholic faith the same way. One common thread among us all was a Berean spirit. We were all disappointed to find out the faith we had nurtured and served our whole life was false. None of us wanted to be Catholic but we could not deny God’s will and we had a responsibility through our divine calling to teach the uncompromised truth. this truth is only in Christ’s own Church the Catholic Church. So, for us blinded is inappropriate but instead it is more as if we had a Damascus Road experience like St. Paul and because of His grace the scales have been lifted from our eyes and we have come into the fullness of truth in His Church. What we found is that there were no false beginnings, false popes or secular popes. Certainly there have been perverted individuals within the Church and the individuals in leadership have not always made the right decisions in retrospect but those leaders have never intended to do what is wrong. We are all human and we all sin both intentionally and inadvertently. Jesus said about this, “who is without sin cast the first stone”. But the Church in its recent scandals has given a good example to others on how these perversions and other evils should be handled. We can only pray that others and in particular our Protestant brothers follow our example and clean up their own houses instead of gloating that we have taken the focus off of their own problem which is many times greater than the Catholic Church. We have none of the traditions of the Pharisees as you claim but instead we are slaves to the Sacred Traditions of the teaching of our Lord through the teaching authority of His Church provided by apostolic succession. Catholics do not teach a false relationship with Christ but instead the corporeal relationship that He created in His Church. Only one verse in all of Scriptures speak of a personal relationship with our Lord which is important but even more important is a corporeal relationship with Him that is the consistent teaching of Scripture which come only through His Church. The visible Church represents the Corpus Christi but we do not recognize the invisible Church. But we do know that the Church is the door to salvation and no one comes to Him but through His Church whether they desire to or not. On the last day, all those that are saved are Catholic. Thank you and God bless!

In Christ
Fr. Joseph