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.
