Dr. J. Budziszewski

You know, the word that is used sometimes for the faithful Hebrews in the Old Testament, who weren't going herring off to worship the fertility gods and goddesses and all that sort of thing.

And...

People would say, what is your denomination?

And I would sort of get sheepish and say, well, I belong to the Christian wing of the Episcopal Church.

But it got so bad that it forced me to rethink my ecclesiology, my understanding of the church, the ecclesia, the Christ had said, the gates of hell will not prevail against your church, my church.

Well, they sure were prevailing here, or at least so it looked so.

So this, this can't be where the church is.

Even if some of, even if some of us are in, are in communion with the true church, somehow this body is not the church, um, or a part of it, or as a, as a, as a communion in, in, in communion with the true church, where is the true church?

You know, you read the New Testament and even if you haven't been very well exposed to Catholic doctrine about the church, if your eyes are open to seeing it, which earlier in my life they hadn't been, you're going to see that all of the marks of the church that are presented there, the Catholic church has and the others don't.

One, holy, Catholic, and apostolic, and...

And also, this is a big one, many of my, I have a lot of friends who are very devout and Protestants who are very insistent on remaining Protestants.

There are some who are attracted to the Catholic Church and in process of discernment.

There are some who, like me, have become Catholic.

But among the ones who have become Catholic or who are in discernment, thinking about it, almost always the last issue is authority.

The last issue is authority.

Gee, maybe I misunderstood the doctrine of justification of the Catholic churches.

Gee, I thought that they dissed scripture.

No, they don't.

I thought they worship Mary.

They worship Mary.