Christians & Protestants

My Third son John has discovered denominations and is fascinated about what different Christians believe. This developing interest has led us on a bit of a journey over the last few months.

After Mass this morning, we drove past a Congregationalist chapel. "con-greee-gaT-on-el" enunciated John, trying to get his tongue around the unfamiliar word. "Are they popular Dad?". John knows how to ask a question in a way which puts me least at ease. I don't know what the Church attendance is like there, but it is one of four chapels along this short stretch of road in Leigh, famously densely populated with religious communities of all persuasions. Given the proliferation of alternative religious options versus the number of potentially attending human persons in Leigh, I find it difficult to imagine they have anything more than a handful of devoted attendees.

"They're Protestant, right Dad?" Is John's next enquiry. 

"What do you think that means, John?" I retort.

"Well it's a kind of Catholic, isn't it?"

"Quite the opposite actually John, it is a Christian who defines their faith by the fact that they are not Catholic, that is what they are protesting about, hence Protestant.

"But I don't believe that many of the people who go to these chapels would define themselves in those terms John. I don't think many Christians do today. They are not Protesting, they are just Christians."

My mind runs to a conversation I had in the pub on Thursday night with a dear friend: "I'm not a Baptist, I'm a Christian who attends a Baptist church". This comment came from my friend Paul, he is one of the most Christian Christians I have ever met. At ease in the thick of it, unflustered by the world yet operating on another dimension entirely: Paul walks with Jesus, and Jesus walks with Paul.

My friendship with Paul and his community has enriched my own faith and been a source of great comfort to me in a time which, to me anyway, seems to be close to the total obscuring of the Catholic faith, with a Pope who is cosying up the proponents of the New World Order, population control and literal idol worship whilst attacking faithful Catholics with every weapon he can muster.

This friendship has taken me back to my great love for Sacred Scripture and re-focused me on the centre of my faith: Jesus Christ.

These people, like many people out there have discovered Jesus through His Word and love what they have discovered. They do not have all the wonderful gifts that we have as Catholics: the beauty, the Fathers, the Saints, the Catechism, the Eucharist. |Despite this they are alive in their love of Jesus and their passionate desire to share Jesus in the community and in our wider community and I say all power to them for that. 

The Magnificat reflection for Friday was The Mystery of Belonging by Father Richard Veras. When I spend time with my Baptist friends, I recognise their longing for Jesus and I long for them to know Him in the Eucharist. I find myself talking about the Eucharist a lot with them. I feel that we are all Christians, we all want to be disciples of Jesus, but as Catholics we have so much more good stuff. I want to share that good stuff with them all. I shared this with them this morning as a). it is about belonging to the body of Christ and b). it is about the Eucharist:

In a scene from the film version of Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place, Corrie's sister Betsie is exasperated on her work detail in a concentration camp and utters a prayer, "Jesus, show me how to live in this place!" Another prisoner, a stranger, overhears and whispers to her, "you, too, love Him!" Betsie is visibly relieved as she receives in this new friend a response to her prayer. In the camp, Betsie and Corrie became members of a new family, a community of Christians in their barracks who were thankful to have discovered each other.

In the news, we hear about families, even siblings, finding each other through ancestor tracing or DNA services. Perhaps similarly to Betsie and her friend, they are surprised to discover a relationship between them and someone who had previously been a stranger.

On our summer travels, we will be at Mass in Parishes where we are strangers. Let us be grateful for, and perhaps even wonder at, the fact that we are in communion with these "strangers". We are praying with others to whom we could say "you too, love Him!"

We are members of the same Body of Christ, sharing in the same Eucharist, being nourished by the same precious Body and Blood. Our belonging, our bond with "strangers" in faraway parishes, or in our own parish, is more profound, and more mysteriously alive, than the closest bond of blood or DNA.