Protestant Vocations

[laetitia crucis]

[quote name='LouisvilleFan' date='03 May 2010 - 02:28 AM' timestamp='1272864532' post='2104074']
I relate to what you're saying, though in a somewhat different way. I grew up Lutheran and attended an Episcopal church for a year or two during college. When I finally decided to pursue Catholicism and was in RCIA, I struggled to think that the Eucharist I had believed in all my life might not have been anything more than bread and wine. I came up with this theory that Christ is also present in the ways any body of Christians understand the Real Presence in order to reconcile what seems like a disconnect between Catholicism and personal experience. To think that the Episcopal church gave me an appreciation of the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian worship and the peace Christ gives in Communion, I thought it had to be more than symbolic for them. We even received on our knees at a Communion rail

After someone guided me to a more thorough understanding of consecration and how it can only occur through a validly ordained minister of Christ, I regretfully retired my pet theory. However, with time I've come to understand that even though the Catholic Church rejects the existence of Real Presence (regardless of how it's understood) in Anglican and Lutheran communions, that doesn't mean God's grace is not present and working. For one, I was right all those years to believe in the Real Presence, and any Christian who believes likewise today is [i]right[/i] to know that Christ instituted more than a symbol at the Last Supper. Only by grace can a person come to know any truth.

The distinction to draw here is between those truths I had learned by grace and those errors I had inherited from my Protestant upbringing. Does that mean God was deceiving me when I felt at peace while receiving Holy Communion on my knees at an Episcopal church? Of course not. God was working through imperfect ministers and a very broken Body of Christ to reach me. I have no doubt he's at work with countless others, including your women friends studying for priesthood in Anglican and Lutheran Communions. Is he specifically calling them to ordained priesthood? I don't believe so, but that doesn't mean the joys of pastoral work, preaching the Word of God, and celebrating liturgies are any less attractive for a non-Catholic than a Catholic. Grace extends far beyond the bounds of the Catholic Church... good news because otherwise nobody would find us! Their ultimate vocation is somewhere within the universal body God is calling all people toward: the Catholic Church.


...feel like I just wrote a TV promo
[/quote]


It makes for a good promo!

Very well said!

[CatherineM]

I just wanted to add that my cousin's parents weren't upset at her joining an Episcopalian convent because it wasn't Catholic. They were staunch Baptists, she was their only child, and she had just finished her Masters of Nursing at Johns Hopkins, so they really didn't understand her wanting to scrub floors as a novitiate.