You Can Go Home
There's a song that asks the question "Who Says You Can't Go Home?" God certainly doesn't and as far as I know the Church I grew up in doesn't either. Some will say that it's because it's what i knew, but that's not true and anyone who knows me, knows I don't follow and have had very few life long friendships in my life because I don't follow the crowd. You can count them on one hand as a matter of fact. Why am I re-visiting the faith of my childhood?
God has been giving me Context, and Timing, while nudging me to revisit the faith of my childhood and youth. I spoke of that in my previous blog. He has now also given me the words Continuity vs. Fracture, with Continuity being the identifying mark of the Roman Catholic Church and faith, while Fracture being the mark of the Protestant faith and everything else that pulled away from the Catholic Church. As I embark on this journey of study and enquiry, I have researched a few things about the Catholic Church that I thought I knew and turns out had a false notion about, one of which I covered in my blog yesterday. Another fallacy I had to undo was the notion that the reason the church had the Bible in Latin was because they wanted to control the people, didn't want to share the Bible, the Gospel. My mom, who is 89 and grew up in Europe, came to the USA when she was in her 40's helped dispel that, as did my recent research.
Much like English is in a sense the world language today, and for a time French was, Latin was as well, with all political, and major activities conducted in that language. Even in terms of the languages of the nations Italian, Spanish, French etc... many spoke their local dialects, and many were illiterate, to where people couldn't even communicate with the person in the next village or town. It makes perfect sense that the Church would conduct all its' business in Latin. In addition, you didn't have printing presses and computers like we do today, so to be able to create the number of bibles in all the dialects to distribute to all the people would have been a major task, near to impossible, not to mention the logistics of getting them to everyone. Then supposing you got bibles into everyone's hands, then what? Many if not most people, outside of the big city, didn't know how to read or write, and if a few did, it was not beyond third grade level, so what comprehension would they have had. The Holy Spirit can enlighten, but there was so much ignorance that you would have had a worse fracturing etc.. than what you have now with all the denominations etc... The Catholic Church did what it felt was best to preserve the integrity of the Bible, the writings of the early Church fathers etc... I also discovered that the first Bibles in English were translated by Catholic Bishops. I've seen a number of modern bibles, with every Tom, Sam and Harry coming up with their take on the Bible and what it says based on what the "Holy Spirit"says, in order to justify sin and everything in between. There is so much deviation of theology within the Protestant Church it is completely contrary to what Paul and Jesus before him said. Paul said that factions and denominations were not acceptable, not to let anyone condemn based on feast days and such, while Jesus said that there would be many false Christ's, Gospels, and he also told Peter to shepherd his sheep, care for them. That tells me there is to be one Church, with one cohesive theology, doctrine, Shepard directing the flock. There is also very clear indication in the Bible that oral tradition is also to be honored and that is also very true of the Jewish tradition, something we forget, and we have our root in the Jewish faith, something we should never forget. We are Universal, Catholic, but our roots began with Adam and Eve Abraham, Moses etc...David through which came the Messiah, Jesus and among the 12, his disciples we find the one he asked to shepherd his sheep here on earth, while he would do so from heaven. That apostolic tradition has gone unbroken through the Church, the Universal Catholic Church.
Are the people perfect, no for all sin and fall short of the glory of God, every one of us. However, the cohesive theology, and continuity, is truth, is crucial truth for all humanity and necessary for civilization and addressing the whole person, the dignity of the whole person. Thus I make the journey to re-discover the Universal Catholic Church and Faith.
Shalom and Amen.
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