Monday, November 11, 2013

What does "Do this in remembrance of me" really mean?

I was listening to a CD in my car today. It was entitled The Eucharist: Our Very Life. It is given by Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald from Canada. He was talking about the Eucharist being the very body and blood of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist is not just a memorial service. It is a re-enactment of calvary which we do at every Mass. This part I understood, but then he went on to the words, "Do this in remembrance of me." He said when you go back to the original Greek translation of "Do this in remembrance of me," it actually means "Bring this back to life again!!!" Jesus is asking the apostles to do what He just did for them. This is Christ's body and Christ's blood and He wants His apostles to "bring this back to life again!!! I thought this was so amazing and beautiful. Just wanted to share!

Sunday, November 10, 2013

A book called Roman Catholicism

Is anti- Catholicism still out there? Since the late 1970's several new anti-Catholic organizations have been founded, and some older ones have sprung up again. Some of these organizations are Chick Publications, Mission to Catholics International, Lumen Productions, Osterhus Publishing House, and Bob Jones University Press. All together, they turn out more anti-Catholic tracts, magazines, and books than ever before....millions of copies each year.

Most of these organizations put out similar messages and the same points are used. A lot of their material comes from a book written by Loraine Boettner published in 1962 by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing of Philadelphia. The book is called Roman Catholicism.

Boettner quotes at length from a speech alleged to have been given in 1870 at the First Vatican Council where papal infallibility was formally defined. The speech was said to have been given by Bishop Strossmeyer. In this speech, the bishop said that he read the New Testament for the first time shortly before he gave the speech and found no mention at all of the papacy. The speech then concludes that Peter was given no greater authority than the other apostles. The trouble is that the speech is a well-known forgery!!!!  Bishop Strossmeyer did not make that speech and when it was being passed around by a disgruntled former Cathlolic, the bishop publicly denied that it was his. This gross error has been repeated by many of the anti-Catholic groups that rely on Boettner.

In Boettner's book on the chapter of Mary he claims that "The phrase 'Mother of God' started in the Council of Ephesus in 431. When he claims that a doctrine is not taught until it is defined in a council, one could say that no one believed that Jesus was God until the Council of Nicea defined the matter in 325. The divinity of Christ was taught centuries before Nicea, and also the phrase "Mother of God" was printed all over the writings of the Church Fathers long before Ephesus.

Many Protestants look to the book Roman Catholicism for their arguments against the Catholic Church. They should maybe take into account how inaccurate this book is and look into real Catholic teaching by real Catholic writers.

One of the reasons I am writing this post about this subject is because of what I received in the mail. About a year and a half after Gary died, I got a letter in the mail addressed to Gary Herrmann. There was no return address and it was sent from Cleveland. Inside the envelope was a Chick Publication cartoon that was entitled "This Was Your Life". I just started shaking all over. I was thinking was this some sort of sick joke or what? I didn't know what to think. So I called Chick Publications and told them this story and that my husband was dead and if I was on some sort of list to take me off!! Later I looked at their website and saw that they have many anti-Catholic publications.

One of the most famous Catholic leaders in American history, the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, once warned, " The acceptance of the fullness of Truth will have the unfortunate quality of making you hated by the world... If the grace of God did not give me the fullness of Truth, and I were looking for it, I would begin my search by looking through the world for a Church that did not get along with the evil in the world! If that Church [were] accused of countless lies, hated because it refused to compromise, ridiculed because it refused to fit the times and not all time, I would suspect that since it was hated by what is evil in the world, it was therefore good and holy; and if it is good and holy, it must be Divine."