{"id":178,"date":"2005-04-12T10:46:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-12T10:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eclecticamateur.wordpress.com\/2005\/04\/12\/is-apologetics-pointless"},"modified":"2005-04-12T10:46:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-12T10:46:00","slug":"is-apologetics-pointless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/is-apologetics-pointless.html\/","title":{"rendered":""Is Apologetics Pointless?""},"content":{"rendered":"

… asks Fr. Sibley.<\/a><\/p>\n

My response:<\/p>\n

\n

Don’t discount the value of apologetics. It will never be sufficient apart from a lived life of love in Christ, but it can be a powerful tool.<\/p>\n

Take it from someone who is coming from the “other side” — as a “fundamentalist” Protestant, I was raised (a) with a profound ignorance of Church history, and (b) impressed with the meme that “Catholicism is un-Biblical”.<\/p>\n

So, the viewpoint is that where Protestants differ from each other, it is because we interpret the Bible differently. Where Protestants differ from Catholics, it is because we<\/i> follow the Bible and they<\/i> do not. :-\/<\/p>\n

It can be a worldview-shaking thing, then, when one finally encounters the (too-rare) Catholic who knows, not just the content of the Church’s teaching, but why<\/i> the Church teaches what she does, and can match with “chapter and verse” (Matthew 16:18! Isaiah 22:15-24! 2 Thess. 3:6!). It’s like meeting a unicorn or gryphon or faerie<\/a> — such creatures are not supposed to exist!<\/p>\n

Writers like Mark Shea<\/a>, Steve Ray<\/a>, and Scott Hahn<\/a> do a tremendous service here — by knowing the “chapter and verse” and being able to translate Catholic teaching into “evangelical-ese” so that it is comprehensible.<\/p>\n

And yes, you will find that it is more often than not water off a duck’s back. And even with those who have “ears to hear”, it is likely to be a slow process — I’ve been “apologized” to for lo, these ten to fifteen years now, and I still<\/b>, though I’ve moved much closer theologically and philosophically to Rome, have not swum the Tiber.<\/p>\n

Yet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… asks Fr. Sibley. My response: Don’t discount the value of apologetics. It will never be sufficient apart from a lived life of love in Christ, but it can be a powerful tool. Take it from someone who is coming from the “other side” — as a “fundamentalist” Protestant, I was raised (a) with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sZgq-2S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.znfrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}