©2001 Matthew Newsome

In a search recently for Catholic Apologetic web sites, I came across one called “Fascinating Reading of the Holy Bible for Catholics”  I had to give it a look.  It was a site composed of a large number of articles, all attempting to show Catholics how various parts of the Catholic faith are not Biblical, and how our Church is a false church, etc.  What bothered me the most was not that this web site was defending the beliefs of a particular church or Christian sect, but rather that the content of the site was aimed directly at Catholics, in an attempt to turn them away from their own religion.  I looked at the site’s guest book to read the comments.  Surely, I thought, such a blatant attack on Catholicism was going to generate a few negative comments.  But no, all of the entries in the guest book were very glowing, telling how wonderful the site was, how the articles have changed their lives, even one from a “former Catholic priest” who basically said, “I agree with everything on your site,” as if that gave it credence.  I thought either the author of the site was composing her own guest book entries to make her site seem more credible, or else deleting all of the negative responses she must be getting.  So I wrote a guest book entry of my own, defending the Catholic church, just to see if it would get published.  It was only about a paragraph long.  I received a long reply from the web page author later that same day, that confirmed my suspicions about the censorship of her guestbook, and also restated that my church, the Catholic Church, was a false one.  This is my reply to her.  I have not heard back since, nor do I expect to.  The site’s author (whom I assume to be a woman, mainly because of the pink motif of the web site, though I cannot confirm that) calls herself only “dokimos.”  Quotes from her original letter to me are indented and in italics.

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In a message dated 8/9/01 4:36:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dokimos@-----------  writes:

Thank you for taking time to write, sir.

And thank you for writing back, although I note you never have used your name, so I do not know how to address you.

We do not release discouragement, such as what you wrote in our guestbook, to be published from our website.

In other words, you don't want people to express views in your guestbook that are not in line with your own. You want people who come to your site and read the entries in your guestbook to get the false impression that all of the visitors to your site are in agreement with your views, and therefore they should be, too. It is your web site and your guest book, so of course you are allowed to include or delete whatever you wish. But as long as you are aware that you are manipulating people . . .

We are encouraging people to place their entire trusting faith solely in God's Son Jesus Christ, no one and nothing else, for salvation. You contradict that glorifying your false church. Yes, to answer your question, we delete them all.

I have placed my faith and trust entirely in Jesus Christ. If I am to believe that He came to earth, and He did what the Gospels say He did, and said what the Gospels tell us He said, then I have no choice but to put my faith in the Church that He founded. I have discovered that church to be the Catholic Church. No other meets the criteria set in the Scriptures themselves. No other can truly say to be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The reason I have faith in the Catholic Church is because I have faith in Jesus Christ.

You accuse us of presenting bad and harmful information when we have presented but Fascinating Reading of the Holy Bible for Roman Catholics. Apparently, you are just looking for someone to hate.

On the contrary, I am looking to prevent people and organizations such as your web site from giving people an excuse to hate their Catholic neighbor, based on false and misleading information such as you provide.

We don't prejudge the Roman Catholic church. God will judge her as seen when the smoke of her torment will rise up forever as mentioned in Revelation. We but rightly esteem that the Roman Catholic church is a false religious system. Our site but presents Scripture.

All you have just said prejudges the Catholic Church. Are you aware that what you read in Revelation is but a description of the Catholic Mass? If you attend Mass on a regular basis and study the theology behind it, you will recognize that the last book in the Bible shows us plainly that the liturgy of the Mass is the same liturgy of the Heavens, and that through it our worship is joined with the ongoing heavenly worship of God. Nothing in Revelation condemns the Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic church came about in the 4th century. Christ's "catholic" or universal church began Pentecost 29 A.D.

I can only assume that you are asserting that the Catholic Church began in the 4th century based on Constantine's legalization of the Christian Faith. This is a very common misconception, that any reading of the first 4 or 5 centuries of church history will dispel. If what you say is true, then one would expect to find all of the particularly "Catholic" doctrines only after the 4th century, and the Protestant characteristics prior to that. Such is not the case. Every Catholic doctrine can be found in some form or another in the writings of the early Church fathers from the first, second, or third centuries. One can find ample evidence for a sanctifying priesthood, a hierarchy of bishops, prayers for the dead, veneration (not worship, as your site would have us believe) of saints, and all other "Catholic" doctrines. The myth that the Catholic church was founded in the 4th century simply cannot stand up to historic fact. Period.

You may not believe that the Catholic Church is the one true church. You may disagree with its doctrines. That's fine. But you cannot re-write history to make the church that you believe in look older than it is.

His church is universal (catholic) as it is everyone who places trusting faith solely in  His Son Jesus for salvation despite denomination. This, your false church, which came later does not believe.

The Catholic church is universal in that it is open to anyone, anywhere, who would have faith in Jesus Christ and His Church and assent to Her doctrines, as passed down from the Apostles. Not all those who cry "Lord, Lord!" will be saved. It's not enough to say you believe in Jesus. You must follow through with that belief by obedience to His Will, as found in His Church.

God's church is built on Jesus Christ as the Rock. Your church clearly and admittedly does not hold to Jesus as the Rock on which His church is built.

No, we hold to the Scriptures that tell us the Peter is the rock on which Jesus built his Church. That comes right out of Matthew. Jesus is the founder of the Church. He sent the Holy Spirit down upon the Apostles at Pentecost. All this the Catholic Church teaches. Jesus is at the center of absolutely everything we do. If you believe otherwise, you have not been paying attention.

There is no Scriptural evidence that bishops of any denomination, including yours, are some exclusive spiritual descendant of the Apostles. Our faith goes back to that of Christ and the Apostles as His church does, which is not your favorite denomination or any denomination.

What does Apostolic mean? It means that the promises that Jesus made to his Apostles, as well as the duties that He charged them with, remain with us today in their successors, the bishops, ordained through he laying on of hands. If you do not think that the gifts of the Holy Spirit can endure this way, then there is no reason for believing in any church, at all. The Christian church would have died after the last Apostle. I don't believe that. Do you? Of course not.

We follow the teachings of Christ and the Apostles as set forth in the Holy Scriptures. The Church of Rome contradicts these teachings often by adding man-made traditions and perversions of doctrine through Bible commentaries, esteeming them as suitable for doctrines of faith. Through other teachings which are neither Christ's nor the Apostles the Church of Rome finds itself in apostasy. There is much the Roman Catholic church teaches as doctrine not found in Scripture and contradicts doing this.  There are many who have followed her error.

Yes, the Catholic church has doctrine not found in Scriptures. How does this contradict Scripture? I promise you that no doctrine of the Catholic church contradicts a single thing found in Scripture. Yes, you can interpret some Scripture passages in certain ways as to make the Catholic Church appear in error (call no man Father, etc), but these are always gross misinterpretations. The reason that the Catholic Church upholds doctrines in addition to those found in Scripture is because our Faith was passed down to us from the Apostles. This is the faith that even the Protestant Churches have inherited. The doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the Scriptures. Do you believe in it? Sola Scriptura, that the Protestants uphold, is not found in Scriptures. What do the Scriptures say?

The Bible actually denies that it is the complete rule of faith! John tells us that not everything Christ taught is written down in Scripture (Jn 21:25). Paul tells us that much of Christian teaching is to be handed down in tradition by word of mouth (2 Tim 2:2). Jesus did *not* write a book. Jesus *did* found a Church. We have faith in this book because it was given to us and proclaimed infallible by His church, the Catholic Church.

The first Christians had no New Testament, they had no Bible. When the gospels and epistles were written, there were numerous other gospel stories and epistles being circulated and read at worship. Why do we not have those in our Bibles today? It was the Catholic Church that set forth the canon of books in the Bible, the Catholic Church that defended it through the centuries. Why do you trust the church enough to believe undeniably in the Bible but at the same time deny that Church? Do you think that the Bible was an accident? Or that the Holy Spirit guided the Church at this council, but no other?

And why do you think that a Catholic church, that in your opinion is unbiblical and upholds unbiblical practices, would create and preserve a book that contradicted those practices? The answer is that it did not. Nothing in Catholic tradition or doctrine is in contradiction with the Scriptures. Nothing. You have shown me no examples, nor could you for they do not exist.

The Roman Catholic church did not invent the Scriptures which were already circulated and in acceptance in past centuries. Early writers made clear what books were Scripture long before the 4th century Nicene council.

Such as? There were countless numbers of letters and gospel stories circulated prior to the Councils of Hippo and Carthage where the various books of the Bible were canonized. Why do we read today the Gospel of St. Matthew and not the Gospel of Thomas? Or various writings attributed to Mary? Or the various infancy gospels? Who decided that *these* texts were not inspired? It was the bishops of the Catholic church, acting in their capacity as descendants of the Apostles, protected from the Holy Spirit from teaching in error. You believe in the Bible because the Catholic Church tells us you should.

Protestant beliefs of justification by faith alone is Scriptural! Of course we are to have faith alone in Jesus for salvation! Who else or what else can save! Certainly not your church or any, nor works, nor penance, nor water baptism, etc. Only faith alone in Jesus Christ. We do not fall into the error which James reproves. Read this page of ours please...

Of course we are saved by Jesus Christ. That is the entire foundation of the Catholic faith, that we are sinners, and God loved us so much that He came down from heaven, took our form, and offered Himself up as the ultimate sacrifice so that we might be saved. But your notion of salvation by faith alone is false. Luther, when he translated the Bible, added the word "alone" to the text, to reinforce his notion of salvation by faith alone. That was not in the Bible. This is what the Bible says:

Philippians 2:12, "Beloved, you have always shown yourselves obedient; and now that I am at a distance, not less but much more than when I am present, you must work to earn your salvation, in anxious fear."

2 Corinthians 5:10, "All of us have a scrutiny to undergo before Christ's judgment-seat, for each to reap what his mortal life has earned, good or ill, according to his deeds."

Romans 2:6, God "will award to every man what his acts have deserved."

If you want to believe in salvation by faith alone, go ahead. But it is not Biblical. I will believe as St. Paul teaches us, that we are redeemed through Christ's blood, and must work out our salvation in fear and trembling. I will do this as the Church has taught us to to, unchanged, from the time of Christ.

There is nothing else proven to be God's word as covenant besides Holy Scripture, therefore, Sola Scriptura stands. If you have something else, you will need to present proof that something else is God's word as covenant.

But Sola Scriptura is not in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that this one book should be our sole rule of faith. So if we are only to believe what can be found in the Bible, then we could not believe in sola scriptura. The argument falls in on itself.

My arguments for Christ founding a living, teaching Church with His authority make much more sense than yours for saying we are to believe only in this book. Let me ask you this. I believe that the Bible is infallible because Christ's Church, the Catholic Church, tells me that it is. Why do you believe in the infallibility of the Bible?

The Church of Rome is full of lies. We hate this false church which has mislead you. We love the Roman Catholics but hate their church which lies to them with a false gospel which will get them into Hell.

Oh, this makes me laugh. You do realize that for 1500 years, there was only the Catholic Church, right? The Eastern Orthodox broke away in the 11th century, but they are still an Apostolic Church with orthodox teaching. But the Protestant movement that began in the Reformation has given rise to over 30,000 different Christian sects, all of which teach a different thing, some of which are only a few years old, the oldest of which are no more than 500 years old. All breaking the unity of the Church. All teaching differently. All calling themselves Christian. I am entrusting my soul to the Church that Christ founded to save us all. I think you will be greatly surprised at your judgment. Then you will understand.

Place your entire trusting faith solely in Jesus Christ to be saved today, Matthew. Thank you again for writing. Sorry that we will not post your discouragement for people to divide their faith in Jesus with that which cannot save.

Rest assured, my faith is in Christ. I am redeemed by him, and hope to continue to be saved. My salvation cannot be achieved until my death and I am judged by Him. I, too, am sorry that you choose to edit your posts so that you do not allow debate, nor defense of the Church that I love dearly.

I understand that you will probably delete this as well, and I understand that you are happy and content in your faith, and I do not hold false hopes of changing your mind. But you should understand that Catholics everywhere, myself included, who love the Church, will not stand idly by while she is attacked, and we will defend her with all of our hearts. Such is our love for the Body of Christ.

Pax,
Matt Newsome