Road To Rome Update Sept 11, 2010

It’s been a busy week, we met Wednesday night with Mary Wax from Holy Apostles in meridian. We spent a good hour with her talking about my concerns and getting started in the RCIA process, which by coiincidence started the very next night. It wasn’t what I was expecting, which isn’t bad but it’s going to take me a bit to work through it all. RCIA seems to be more about the how, rather than the why. While I need to figure out the how, I’m vastly more interested in the why, the theology, the history of Catholicism and the parts of protestantism that don’t make sense when compared to Catholicism.

I’ve started reading Scott Hahn, and Karl Keating. The more I read, the more I’m having to re-think everything, Justification and the Covenant’s are foundational to Luther’s cry of ‘Sola Fide’ and actually foundational to almost all protestant faiths. But what if Luther got it wrong?, what if Hahn is right and the concept of both “Sola Fide” and Justification through the cross are different than what we have been taught all our lives?

That’s a deep question that has all kinds of ramifications, and I’m starting now to see that the idea that we exchange our sin for Christ’s righteousness may not be what I was taught. The Catholic concept of confession at confirmation starts to make sense, because what if by Grace I’m accepted into God’s family. Accepted as a child of the father through Jesus but still need to deal with my past sins?

I don’t have answers yet, but I’m digging and I’ll share as I go along.

Some time spent in prayer and doing some bible study will help, Mary explained about the Adoration Chapel on the grounds of the church. I’m going to take my Bible, do some reading and some heartfelt praying. If Hahn is right, and I suspect he is. Then everything I’ve known or thought I knew is wrong and I have to start over from scratch, it’s a scary thought and not something I want to go through right now. But I’m not sure what choice I have.

-Paul-