Catholicism used to give me the creeps. Then I discovered the Church Fathers and my eyes were opened...

[Michie]

Creepy Catholics​

It couldn’t have happened at any other point in my life. Let me explain. For most of my adult life, Catholicism had given me the creeps. As a young man of twenty-nine, fresh into ministry, I was privileged to take a mission trip to Campinas, Brazil. While there, our interpreter was kind enough to show us some of the local sites, including the Metropolitan Cathedral. As a budding young Baptist minister, I simply had no box for what I encountered there. The church was very large and magnificent. The outside was topped with impressive statues of I knew not who, and the inside was filled with intricate wood carvings, statuary, and even items of gold. There were also niches, each with its own statue, before which were prostrated several poverty-stricken old women weeping, praying, and burning candles.

Everything about this scene offended my Protestant sensibilities. I was a mission pastor whose first assignment had been to preach in a two-bay volunteer fire station to people living in a small rural subdivision that was interspersed with mobile homes, assorted livestock, and no small amount of junk. I had made significant sacrifices to take this assignment. In fact, I was barely scratching out a living at all.

A kind gentleman with ties to the mission had allowed me to park our mobile home on top of a small quarry in the subdivision that he sometimes used to mine material for his construction projects. It had electricity and a water well, and he allowed us to live there for free. Unfortunately, the water was not potable and contained such high levels of sulfur that many days you could smell the odor of someone running bathwater all the way into the living area. So, the opulence of this church turned me off. I couldn’t understand how a church could spend so much on accouterments while being filled with people who were clearly enduring grinding poverty.

Continued below.

The Perfect Storm - The Coming Home Network

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