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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chris land who wrote (22640)	11/27/1998 9:43:00 AM
From: Emile Vidrine	Respond to of 39621

As I reflected on your thoughts, they carried back to my many years of experience evanglizing among Catholics. I thought of the magic scapulas that gurantee salvation if worn at the moment of death, the vodoo novenas that gurantee answers to prayers if repeated nine times, the crowning of a statue as the queen of heaven after it is marched around the community, and many more absurdities too numberous to name. These, and the many less tangible but more insidious doctrinal flaws, fanned what seemed at one time, a holy hatred for the "great whore". The fluff and external trimmings of a two thousand year old sister Church hs obfuscated the treasures at the center of her heart. Her history has seen dozens of schisms and hundreds of heresies. She has survived hundreds of attacks from pagan forces and well meaning Protestant , but she continues to sail and carry her precious cargo. In the sixteenth century this wrinkled and scarred old maden docked at the ports of Protestanism delivered the pure and Holy Word of God to her ungrateful Protestant brethren. Along with the Holy Word, she gave them unchanged the treasures of fifteen hundred years of Christian writings from her holy saints. She delivered the Liturgy of the hours, the hourly prayer life of the holy saints for the first fifteen hundred years (the liturgy of the hours are the prayers that Christian Cahtolics pray every hour of the day around the world. They are taken from the Scriptures and the life experience of all the Saints of the Church.) She delivered the calender of the Church that sanctifies time by commerating the central events from the life of Christ. Pascha (Resurrection), thd Incarantion, the Ascension, the Birth of Christ, and many others. She delivered to us our spiritual "genealogies", our roots in Christ. She delivered to us the records of our family history, our as the people of God in Christ Jesus. She has wrestled with Satan for 2000 years, taken direct hits to her hull, appendges torn from her body, absorbed ungly doctrinal sharpnel in her body, sometimes taken on the stench of her adversary, but still smiles triumphantly as she offers from the center of her being Christ Crucified for the sins of mankind. Jesus is still at the center of her heart, despite the many heretical diseases she has developed in her flesh. The joy of her celebrations during Pascha Sunday, Christmas, the Incarantion, Ascension etc., testify to her inner spirit. Rather than call her a whore, we Protestants need to nurture our elder sister back to full heath with the ointment of love by helping her heal her doctrinal maladies . In so doing, we may heal ourselves and unite the Body of Christ. In Christ, we are one body united, one holy people offering praises to God. In the love of Christ and for the unity of all those in Christ. Emile