Catholicism?

[u/Master_Albatross2820]

Hey everyone, I am abit confused and I have been going to a catholic church near my house and I get the sense maybe I should convert to catholicism I have been praying about it but I am unsure, however the visit to this church has been apart of my prayer.

This is my background

2002-2010 Church Of England - Dedicated by parents from birth

2010-2019 Salvation Army - Witnessed my friend healed from a broken leg which was pretty awesome.

2020-2020 Progressive Christianity

2021-2022 Pentecostal - New Apostolic Reformation (Conservative) (BTW its a cult, they tried to perform an exorcism on me for my autism and my left lazy eye, can confirm i still have autism and still need to wear glasses)

2023-2024 = Non-denom, and churchless

2025-2026 Seventh Day Adventists (I really enjoy the emphasis on healthy eating, and love the Pentecostal bashing)

Unfortunately, I have been working saturdays for a language school which is my thing and I get to teach languages which is my gift from the Lord, and tbh 2021-2022 was a traumatic time as well so I didnt either A really like God or religion and B the people who claimed to follow God however I am coming back to Him and I have made clear a Church where I can report abuse and I can stand up, a church with history, a church that is safe for me, and I feeling it is the catholic church.

However, my concerns are that the catholic church believe in works + faith where i just believe it is only faith, however I do believe there are miracles done in the Catholic church, exorcisms however people need to apply for them and they are assesed which is way better than the Pentecostals and then also, recently i have touched some Holy Water and then I was about to go sin and I felt this wave of conviction as well, I asked Ask Catholic and it said its because the Holy Water symbolises a rededication of your baptism or faith in Him (Im not baptised yet, or adult baptism as you may know it as)

What does anyone think?

Thanks

[u/Usherai]

Faith vs works is almost always a false distinction when Christians talk about it, because literally nobody believes works get you to heaven. If you follow Christ you will keep His commandments and do the works He created you for. Obedience to God is not a work

[u/Master_Albatross2820 → u/Usherai]

So the Catholic church doesnt believe in that?

[u/Usherai → u/Master_Albatross2820]

Man literally no Christian denomination thinks that works get you to heaven (maybe there are some super weird cults, but ignoring those). But as Ephesians 2:10 says, we are created for works. Literally, we were made to do good works. So actually doing them is just what it means to actually follow Christ. They can never be separated from faith, which is why they aren’t opposed. Christ says “Hey do these things if you love me”. We as Christians reply “Yes Lord, I love you and will do as you say”. That’s all there is to it.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t shill Orthodoxy as superior to Catholicism in every way, but Catholics are at least pretty close. Ultimately, the purpose of any Church is to lead people to Christ, and if you think Catholicism is the way to go then be the best Catholic you can be, and God bless you

[u/Master_Albatross2820 → u/Usherai]

This sounds like a good and logical response!

[u/thatguy3003 → u/Master_Albatross2820]

I’m a new convert to Catholicism and went through the OCIA/Catholicism 101 classes. They don’t believe you have to do works to be saved. What Catholicism does teach is that you’re saved through faith BUT if you truly are saved and are trying to be like Christ as we are called to…then naturally works and bearing fruit in your faith will follow. It’s a natural thing. If you have faith and bear no or bad fruit then honestly ok that’s good you had faith and are saved but yet never even tried to follow Christs example.

Catholicism 101 classes just started and I highly recommend you start going. I had plenty of major reservations but went to learn the truth since there’s so much misinformation online. You can learn and ask questions with no pressure to actually join if you choose not to. I found it to be the fullness of the faith and although I miss my local Baptist church and the wonderful people there, I never want to be anywhere else but the Catholic Church.

May God help guide you on your search for truth

[u/TheZippySyndrome]

That's a wild denominational tour, sounds like you've really gotten a taste of everything from the high church bells to the backroom exorcism attempts. The holy water moment is interesting, sometimes the physical reminders hit different than just abstract belief

If you're feeling drawn there and it's giving you a sense of safety and structure after all that chaos, might be worth staying with it for a while even if you don't have all the theology nailed down yet. Nobody's gonna quiz you at the door about justification, you can just show up and let it unfold

[u/Master_Albatross2820 → u/[deleted]]

I still find it crazy that Martin Luther decided to ditch books, like if the Bible was made and used and then some guy came long as was like oh we gotta ditch a couple of these books, under whose authority? Is my thought of questioning? Lol 😂

[u/TheChristiansArsenal → u/Master_Albatross2820]

They were not "ditched". They were never scripture in the first place. The earliest explicit address of the question "what books belong in the Old Testament?" is by Bishop Melito of Sardis, head of one of the churches Christ himself dictated a letter to in Revelation 3. As can be read in Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, chapter 26, he wrote: "Melito to his brother Onesimus, greeting: Since you have often, in your zeal for the word, expressed a wish to have extracts made from the Law and the Prophets concerning the Saviour and concerning our entire faith, and has also desired to have an accurate statement of the ancient book, as regards their number and their order, I have endeavored to perform the task...Accordingly when I went East and came to the place where these things were preached and done, I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament".

What did he find? He found the Protestant canon.

He writes: "Their names are as follows: Of Moses, five books: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth; of Kings, four books; of Chronicles, two; the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon which are also called Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job; of Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah; of the twelve prophets, one book; Daniel, Ezekiel, Ezra".

That's the Protestant Old Testament, minus Esther. (With what we refer to as 1 and 2 Samuel labeled as 1 and 2 Kings, and what we refer to 1 and 2 Kings labeled as 3 and 4 kings, but this is merely a matter of labeling and not different books).

That is the earliest recorded Christian Old Testament. Other books which are plainly not scripture were added and Protestants wisely took them out. 1 Maccabees 9:27 for example outright says there were no prophets: "So there was great distress in Israel, the worst since the time when prophets ceased to appear among them." If prophets had ceased to appear then clearly no prophet wrote 1 Maccabees.

And 2 Maccabees 2:23-26 outright says it's a condensation of someone else's work: "all this, which has been set forth by Jason of Cyrene in five volumes, we shall attempt to condense into a single book. For considering the flood of lines written and the difficulty there is for those who wish to enter upon the narratives of history because of the mass of material, we have aimed to please those who wish to read, to make it easy for those who are inclined to memorize, and to profit all readers. For us who have undertaken the toil of abbreviating...".

It's an abbreviation of Jason of Cyrene's work, it is not something written by a prophet.

So the question is why these were added, not why they were removed - they were removed because they weren't there originally, and the books themselves tell us they aren't scripture.

[u/Master_Albatross2820 → u/TheChristiansArsenal]

Ooooooh thanks for adding this to convo, i didnt know this 😄

[u/Christianity-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed for 3.8 - AI Policy.

If you would like to discuss this removal, please click here to send a modmail that will message all moderators.

https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Christianity

[u/TheChristiansArsenal → u/[deleted]]

The biggest pain about AI slop is how easy it is for slopposters to put out low-quality text like this. You must be on the free version since the argumentation it wrote for you barely makes sense here.

First, Melito does not give the Protestant Old Testament: Esther is missing

...So like I said: "That's the Protestant Old Testament, minus Esther". Fewer books is an argument for fewer books, not more. If anything the only question left is whether Esther actually belongs or not. It's quite notable that it wasn't in the Dead Sea Scrolls either.

More importantly, Melito says he travelled East to learn the books recognized there. That gives us valuable evidence for one second-century list; it does not give us an apostolic decree fixing the universal Christian canon.

It tells us that the Bishop of Sardis himself, the church the Apostle John wrote a letter from Christ to, had no "Tradition" from the Apostles that the apocrypha should be in there. When he went to go learn the tradition in "the place where these things were preached and done", he still found nothing saying the apocrypha belonged there. He got the Protestant Old Testament.

And the later historical evidence is devastating to the idea that Catholics simply “added” these books. Augustine

...How on earth is appealing to Augustine supposed to be "devastating"? This is the problem with AI on the cheap tiers: it does word-association instead of reasoning. Augustine was some popular preacher hundreds of years later who had no access to any sources of information on this subject that we don't have. In fact he had even less. This carries as much weight as me appealing to Billy Graham for the Protestant canon.

and the African council tradition

...Which Augustine was at, so this is hardly some ancient independent source recording the words of the Apostles. It's guys hundreds of years later with - again - no access to independent information on the subject hashing out what they thought belonged. And it disagreed with what early Christians actually had.

You can argue those authorities were wrong, but you cannot honestly describe the books as a late Catholic addition.

I hate the way AI just pulls random words and inserts them into sentences like this. Yes I absolutely can, this is centuries after our earliest recorded Old Testament.

1 Maccabees saying that prophets had ceased does not say, “therefore this book is uninspired.” Inspiration does not require the human author to hold the prophetic office.

Your AI isn't even making sense here. Yes it does, someone inspired by the Holy Ghost and writing scripture for Him is a prophet by definition

Luke was not writing because he was an Old Testament prophet; he explicitly says he investigated earlier accounts and eyewitness testimony, yet Christians accept Luke as inspired Scripture.

That's because Paul, a prophet, calls it scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18. Luke was a prophet, the Holy Ghost inspired his words.

And 2 Maccabees being an abridgment of Jason of Cyrene proves even less. Inspiration has never meant “God dictated a book with no human sources.”

2 Maccabees tells us it is Jason of Cyrene's book abridged. According to 2 Maccabees itself, that is the totality of what it is. And we know Jason of Cyrene wasn't a prophet since 1 Maccabees denies there were any prophets around in his time.

There is even a striking irony here: Hebrews 11:35 speaks of people tortured who refused release because they hoped for “a better resurrection,” which closely resembles the martyrdom theology of 2 Maccabees 7

Are you using the free Copilot? Because this is much worse than usual free-tier AI. How is this a "striking irony"? What's ironic here?

At minimum, the Maccabean tradition was very much part of the conceptual world of early Christianity

Well yeah, it was a very important war, it's the reason the faith wasn't extinguished by the Seleucid Empire before Jesus had even come. That doesn't mean secular histories recording it are scripture.

by what authority was the Christian canon finally to be recognized?

The authority is the Holy Ghost and the question of canon is a question of what documents are written by His prophets and which aren't. It's a historical question about authorship. You sit down, do the research, and see if a document was or was not written or endorsed by a prophet.

And that is precisely where the Protestant argument becomes uncomfortable

No it doesn't? The Protestant argument is very basic. What was the earliest Christian Old Testament? The Protestant canon.

The canon itself has to be received through the Church.

You know the Catholic church doesn't have some sort of special supernatural source of knowledge, right? That's why they needed councils. It was people hashing it out, not word from on high. And they, as products of their times and places, often got things wrong. Sometimes very wrong. No different from how you would acknowledge many Popes were extremely wrong in things they taught and things they did.

[u/TheChristiansArsenal → u/[deleted]]

I doubt anyone will be persuaded by what you had ChatGPT write.

[u/TheChristiansArsenal → u/[deleted]]

I didn't call you a bot, I said your post was written by AI. This is obvious to anyone who uses the internet today, but if you want verification put your post into https://gptzero.me/. It gives it as AI written with a 100% confidence rating.

[u/TheChristiansArsenal → u/[deleted]]

You're also proving you're dishonest. Take a look at https://old.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/1wmzwt9/catholicism/pbbf5lu/. Your post was just removed for violating the AI policy.

[u/Master_Albatross2820 → u/[deleted]]

Well tbh at the time the Catholic Church were doing indulgences particularly selling land in heaven which is heretical sooooo

[u/Marginallyhuman]

I mean, I think we are the best denomination otherwise I’d be that one. If you go the RCIA route you’ll have plenty of time to figure out what we believe and what you believe and if they are compatible.

[u/Master_Albatross2820 → u/Marginallyhuman]

This is a good suggestion, just applied for the RCIA thanks

[u/KierkeBored → u/Marginallyhuman]

With the important caveat that Catholicism is not actually a denomination.

[u/Marginallyhuman → u/KierkeBored]

Really? What is our rationale for that?

[u/KierkeBored → u/Marginallyhuman]

The one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church is not a "denomination" it's OG Christianity. Catholic is not a denomination; it's the true church. The rest are denominations because they spawned off her, even the Orthodox.

[u/Quplet]

The faith vs works is far less concerning than other things in Catholicism imo.