TWO QUESTIONS

Two Questions and Two Answers


Two questions from the teen who runs the hotel I stay at when I visit Idaho.



Question:

1. How would you reply to someone who said "the catholic church wasn’t the 1st, there was judaism b4 it!" ?


I would say that the Catholic Church was the first "Christian" church. A simple, objective look at history shows this to be true. No other Christian church on the earth existed before 1054 and most didn’t exist before 1520.


Question:
2. How would u reply to someone that said "jesus wasn’t catholic, he was a jew/nazarene!" ?


First of all, Jesus was a Jew but he was also the promised Messiah. As the Messiah he came to "free his people". However many missed this fact because they were looking for a messiah to free them from earthly bondage instead of spiritual bondage. Jesus’ mission was to free us from sin and establish a Church which he sent (apostolic means sent or sent with a mission) to spread this good news (gospel), administer the sacraments and teach the faithfull. This mission is summed up at the end of Matthew when Jesus tells the apostles to go to all nations, teach them all he has commanded and baptize them. So even though Jesus was a Jew, he was also the founder of the Catholic Church. When someone calls Jesus a Nazarene, they can only accurately do this in as much as Jesus was from Nazareth. If they call Him a Nazarene in the sense that they are trying to say he was a member of the current day Nazarene church, then they are in serious error and it is almost funny to hear someone say that. The current "Nazarene" protestant church has only existed for a few hundred years and it rejects much of what Jesus taught in regards to the sacraments and the authority of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Hope that Helps

Be Proud to Be Catholic

Pete