Protestantizing the Faithful

I discovered this notice in a parish bulletin just this last Sunday:

Simulcast with Beth Moore and Travis Cottrell Sept. 15, 2012

Please join us for a day of live music, worship, inspirational teaching by Beth, lunch and fellowship with ladies in our community and from our neighboring towns! Get ready to refresh and recharge spiritually!

Tickets go on sale August 19th at our church office, [and other locations].

You can probably guess just from the little bit of information presented in the bulletin blurb that this is a Catholic speaker!

According to Wikipedia,

[Beth Moore] is an American evangelist, author, and teacher. Moore founded Living Proof Ministries, a Bible-based organization for women, in 1994. It…focuses on aiding women who desire to model their lives on evangelical Christian principles. Travis Cottrell leads worship at these conferences.

So…a local parish is encouraging Catholic women to attend a “simulcast” with a Protestant self-proclaimed “Bible teacher” and listen to contemporary Christian music in order to “recharge spiritually”.

But just try to introduce the Traditional Latin Mass in this parish, or even Gregorian chant in the Novus Ordo Mass…or even the Simple English Propers!

There is just something inherently wrong with this picture.

Is it any wonder our Catholic identity is slip-sliding away?

Before I was received into the Catholic Church, I was a “holy roller” myself (see my conversion story). I was even an officer in the local Aglow chapter. But I knew there was something different about Catholicism. I knew instinctively that if I went to the weekly intercessory prayer meeting and suggested we all pray the Rosary, the idea would not be met with enthusiasm. I resigned my office after deciding to become Catholic, and phased out of the whole Aglow enterprise. It just didn’t match. Now, if I sensed that before I was even in full communion with the Church, and before I even knew there was a GIRM and papal encyclicals and Canon Law…well, why don’t cradle Catholics know it?

Shortly after deciding to become Catholic, I was at a “nondenominational” Bible study. Someone brought up John 6:53, where Jesus says, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” – an quickly added that this was merely “symbolic”. The only other Catholic woman present at the meeting nodded in agreement. I sat there dumbfounded, wondering how she could do that, because that was pretty much the basis on which I was coming into the Church. Oh, I had investigated the Catechism of the Catholic Church to a degree, but I was sold on the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. That’s why I was becoming Catholic – because I couldn’t receive that Real Presence in the Pentecostal church I was attending.

So…been there, done that. I know that what is taught in Protestant Bible studies does not always reflect Catholic teaching!

And so it continues: the Protestantization of the Catholic Church in Eastern Oregon.