Stumbled across this as a Catholic. . .I will just say that (as a Catholic) this is pretty much everything I would hope that protestants will be met with from their pastors when they start looking into Catholicism. The snark, basic misunderstandings about aspects of Catholicism (that purgatory comment 😆. . .), circular protestant arguments, accusing Catholic thinkers of acting in bad faith when they disagree, and just kind of. . .a posture of not genuinely trying to know how or why other people think differently about an issue. Our parishes are full of ex-evangelicals who left after conversations like these. As an example, there was room for a fascinating discussion of what worship is, Scripturally and historically, but it was carefully avoided with a really fascinating question ("What is left in the word 'worship', here?") that was laughed at. I would've loved for at least a passing reference to, for instance, 1 Sam 24:8 and 1 Sam 15:31, which use the same word for worship in very different contexts. For some reason, it looks like the NIV translates the same Hebrew/Greek words differently in those two contexts. . . . Just an example of the kind of thing that is keeping people up at night as they slip out the back door of your evangelical communities.
Stumbled across this as a Catholic. . .I will just say that (as a Catholic) this is pretty much everything I would hope that protestants will be met with from their pastors when they start looking into Catholicism. The snark, basic misunderstandings about aspects of Catholicism (that purgatory comment 😆. . .), circular protestant arguments, accusing Catholic thinkers of acting in bad faith when they disagree, and just kind of. . .a posture of not genuinely trying to know how or why other people think differently about an issue. Our parishes are full of ex-evangelicals who left after conversations like these.
As an example, there was room for a fascinating discussion of what worship is, Scripturally and historically, but it was carefully avoided with a really fascinating question ("What is left in the word 'worship', here?") that was laughed at. I would've loved for at least a passing reference to, for instance, 1 Sam 24:8 and 1 Sam 15:31, which use the same word for worship in very different contexts. For some reason, it looks like the NIV translates the same Hebrew/Greek words differently in those two contexts. . . .
Just an example of the kind of thing that is keeping people up at night as they slip out the back door of your evangelical communities.