Best one paragraph to promote the church?

[jswranch]

If you had an opportunity before open minded non-Catholics to profess why Catholicism is the one single best faith above all others through all time and could only use one paragraph, what would you say?

[dspen2005]

the Prologue of the Gospel of John!

[jswranch]

[quote name='dspen2005' post='954998' date='Apr 20 2006, 09:50 AM']
the Prologue of the Gospel of John!
[/quote]

Yes, but does it show Catholicism is better than Anglicanism?

[rkwright]

its not one paragraph... but there was something AMAZING myles posted on here a while back... I saved it... I really like this... totally his though! I hope he doesn't mind me reposting it, maybe have to pay royalties.. way to be myles!

[quote]I heard Fr John Corapi say the other day that when you know what you've got in the Church you wouldn't leave and boy isnt it true. Our friends sentiments are on the right track but its because He doesnt understand true religion.

Lets look at Our Lord. God who proclaims that He is He who is. Do you understand whats being said therein? Have you dwelt on Exodus 3:14. Have you let yourself ruminate upon it, absorb it, be lost in it, lost in the fact that God by definition is 'to be'. In Himself He is, needing nothing, encompassing more than is. Whatever similarities we share are so far dissimilar to what He truly is as to negate that similarity. He is utterly transcendent and yet....

...God creates.

Now chew on this. God who is complete beyond our concept of completion beyond our comprehension of the concept of completion in our created essence, that God, He creates. Why? Why does the Lord make when He has all that He needs in Himself. Unlike us who are driven by psychology and biology the unconstrained, unrestrained, utterly transcendent and perfect God decides to make something outside of His own utter unity. Why? The New Testament makes it clear in statements such as this:

QUOTE
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her Ephesians 5:25


In our own time it has been common to query whether there can be such a thing as an unselfish act. The post Freudian world has become very cyncical about the idea that good acts can be truly unselfish in that it is percieved that good actions make the actor feel good about themselves. But in God, the one who says 'my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways' (Isa 55), we see the exact opposite.

God being perfect and complete in Himself and it being of no benefit to Him to go beyond Himself in anything creates man so that He can share His very nature with man, so that within the depth of man's heart He can know God. So that man can become a partaker in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) and children of God by God being within us (Jn 14:20).

Moreover, when man who was lifted up from the dust to be in fellowship with God broke His fellowship with God did He abandon man? Would it have cost anything to God to abandon man? Man is made for God and His heart seeks out the infinite love of God leaving him restless and needing an eternal amount of worldly pleasure to compensate. Yet God needs no compensation, needs nothing beyond Himself? But did He abandon man? When man who by His finite nature cannot repay the infinite penalty of sinning against the infinite God broke His relationship did God what was God's response..?

QUOTE
Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Philipians 2:6-8


That was God's response. To come from infinity, to commit a perfect act of selflessness, condescending from His transcendence to take on the nature of a broken fragile creature and restore to Him the dignity for which He was created for:

QUOTE
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16


Eternal life being the very divine life itself dwelling within the soul through the Spirit of God. And this Spirit when we loose touch with it, when we deny it by our sins, does God stop loving us, does God stop chasing us? No. He lets us confess our sins and be healed, He gives us a guarantee of it through the power of the Presbyterate (1 Tim 4:14) that when we confess we are truly forgiven and there is no agonising, no worry, no need to fret. When the priest says 'therefore I absolve you...' everything is wiped clean, all tears are wiped away and it doesnt matter how many times. God forgives endlessly.

Now think on this friends? Have you ever known someone to constantly do wrong against their lover without any repercussions? Yet God who is the husband of His people, the bride of the lamb (Rev 20) does He hold grudes? Does He bring up old wounds and old arguments? Even though we sin daily does He condemn constantly? No. Even though He is infinite, even though He is beyond needing anything, even though He has taken on our nature to share His with us, He doesn't stop there. No, for God there are no limits. He holds out His hand again and again and again. His love is peerless and without compare, He loves us like nobody else can and His love calls out to us as we sty with the pigs eating their food.

And above all else in the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist God shows the depth of His love. For He does not merely appear as a man who can speak the all powerful Word but places Himself under the appearance of a thing which cannot speak at all. Just as He was before the Sanhedrin, Christ in the Eucharist is silenced before those whom He rightly has the power to judge. He places Himself at our mercy to be devoured like a lamb amongst wolves saying:

QUOTE
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. John 6:54-56


So that as Scripture tells us we become "sons in the son" to borrow an expression from St Athanasius Contramundum. God gives us all this and He does it through the Church, through religion, through the Sacraments that we recieve ever making Himself present like a source on tap to show us to give us a sign to draw us to Himself. Therefore the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church from Vatican II rightly calls itself 'Light of the Nations' for thats what the Church is: A lamp that no bushel can cover.

Our friend is right to give love such centrality. But He divorces love from its proper context. For love is best percieved through true religion, through Catholicism. Through not merely knowing in a gnostic way but hearing and seeing...hearing and seeing the priest absolve you with the confidence that it is not the priest but God absolving you ex opere operato. Hearing and seeing the priest carry out the Mass knowing it is not the priest but God making Himself present ex opere operato. It is not without religion but through the practice of true religion that the love of God is best known. For in condescending Himself to do all of these things God proves and demonstrates that which He neednt do but does because He is the only one who really can: love truly, unselfishly and infinitely, always forgiving, always seeking us out, placing Himself entirely at our mercy so that we little creatures can have a share in His infinity, so that in the depths of our hearts we can know true love as it lives and grows within us.[/quote]

[Charms717RM1]

[quote name='jswranch' post='955070' date='Apr 20 2006, 11:30 AM']
Yes, but does it show Catholicism is better than Anglicanism?
[/quote]

How about "our Church was founded by the Incarnate Word of God instead of a king who made policy decisons by thinking with his gonads?"

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

One of the creeds: Apostles', Nicene, or Athanasian.

[ironmonk]

[quote name='jswranch' post='954933' date='Apr 20 2006, 10:25 AM']
If you had an opportunity before open minded non-Catholics to profess why Catholicism is the one single best faith above all others through all time and could only use one paragraph, what would you say?
[/quote]

The Catholic Church was founded by Christ on Peter (St. Matt 16:18-19, St. John 1:42, St. John 21:15-17) with Christ Himself as the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). Christ promised that the Church would never be overcome (St. Matt. 16:18), that the Church is the salt of the world and it would be like a city on a mountain for all to see (St. Matt 5:13-15), and that He would guide them in all truth (St. Matt 28:18-20, St. John 14:16-18,26). Christ told the Church that all who reject her, reject Him (St. Luke 10:16). Christ and the Apostles warned us that all who leave the group would be wrong to do so and they do so to their own destruction (Acts 20:29-30, 2 Peter 3:16). Christ tells those who disagree to take it to the Church because the Church is the authority and will be correct (St. Matt 18:17). The Apostles then go on to say that the Church is the Pillar and Foundation of Truth (1 Tim 3:15). St. Paul also tells us to be faithful to what we have learned because from whom we learned it (2 Timothy 3:14), which means to start in the beginning for the True faith. If we learn the faith from someone who contradicts the first group or left the first group, then we have learned error.



God Bless,
ironmonk

[jswranch]

This is good stuff. Keep it rolling

[Fidei Defensor]

[quote name='rkwright' post='955193' date='Apr 20 2006, 12:51 PM']
its not one paragraph... but there was something AMAZING myles posted on here a while back... I saved it... I really like this... totally his though! I hope he doesn't mind me reposting it, maybe have to pay royalties.. way to be myles!
[/quote]
I saved that same post. It is truly beautiful

[jasJis]

would I win a prize?