USU78 Posted July 24, 2019 Posted July 24, 2019 41 minutes ago, bdouglas said: Then why waste time bothering to comment? It is something why wife (a Catholic for 25 years) and I talk about over dinner. And that, good sir, is entirely fair. Yours obediently will bow out.
bdouglas Posted July 24, 2019 Author Posted July 24, 2019 1 minute ago, USU78 said: And that, good sir, is entirely fair. Yours obediently will bow out. My apologies to USU78 if my reply came across as curt. To my thinking, the OP is relevant to any LDS who are interested in missionary outreach among Catholics. How many of the world’s 1 billion Catholics are, right now, in the midst of a faith crisis? Now it is not necessary for a missionary to understand what clericalism is or what the origins of priestly celibacy in the Catholic priesthood are, anymore than it is necessary for a missionary to have read “Lehi In the Desert” to teach from the BOM. But it might help. (And, apart from all this, I am simply interested in the Catholic church.)
USU78 Posted July 24, 2019 Posted July 24, 2019 (edited) 24 minutes ago, bdouglas said: My apologies to USU78 if my reply came across as curt. To my thinking, the OP is relevant to any LDS who are interested in missionary outreach among Catholics. How many of the world’s 1 billion Catholics are, right now, in the midst of a faith crisis? Now it is not necessary for a missionary to understand what clericalism is or what the origins of priestly celibacy in the Catholic priesthood are, anymore than it is necessary for a missionary to have read “Lehi In the Desert” to teach from the BOM. But it might help. (And, apart from all this, I am simply interested in the Catholic church.) No problem and no apology necessary. A quick story, to let you know about my past with Catholicism. I was in Austria 1973-75 (you know why), and it was a tough time, as we came up on the 20-year anniversary of when the Russians were supposed to have left (they still had a significant presence both on the border -- military -- and inside the borders -- not so military, except for the statues to Stalin and honoring the Red Army). I had the happy task of teaching a Guest Worker Yugoslav family at one point, and they were RC. On one teaching visit we were greeted by a Jesuit who had invited himself to the meeting. He took over the whole thing and went on the attack, mostly on our credentials, including our lack of a Masters in Greek, as he had. My response was my typical response when such a statement was made: "Did Peter go to college? Did Peter have a Masters in Greek?" His response was to rip up the Book of Mormon we'd left with the Yugoslav family and order us out of the house. Of course we left, my companion weeping, me numb because I had seen such things before and they didn't pierce through the armor I'd acquired. The father of the family followed us out, bewildered that the Jesuit's actions had obviously caused my companion such pain. I mumbled something about "When it means so much to you ..." and thanked him for the time we had previously spent with him. The RC was not kind to us in Austria, and I'm including the members with the missionaries, though the state had given the Church official status in the pre-war years. There were other matters during my life. None of them really matter now, but I had to learn to make peace with it, because I've known so many fine Catholics along with the sometimes jerky clerics, and I didn't want to be "that guy" who despised the RC for St Bartholomew's and such things. Edited July 24, 2019 by USU78 1
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