A Response to a Very Hateful Young Lady

Want to Learn about the Eucharist?
See the Gospel of John Chapter Six

Today I was reading a news article about rule changes that Pope Francis is going to make in the annulment process.  This article as any article about the Catholic Church brought out a lot of people who really hate the Catholic Church.  The one that wrote the next paragraph styles herself as “Lovely One Jones.”  I looked up other stories she has commented on and most of her comments are tirades against the Catholic Church.  In the example she treats us to below she is quite mild compared to some of her other comments about the Church. Her rages against the Church run the gamut and normally I would just shake my head and move on but she insulted the Holy Eucharist.  She can insult the pope, claim that Catholics worship Mary, you know air out all of the Jack Chic ringers but to ridicule and mock the Holy Eucharist earned her a response.  The next paragraph is what she wrote, it is in italics.  My response follows and is in bold print.

“We Christians can tell you that Catholics are not Christians. Catholics are a strange cult, an off-shoot of regular Christianity if you will. It is similar to other cultist religions that claim to fall under our Christian umbrella. Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses do the same thing. They go around claiming to be Christians, when in fact they are just cults. Catholics worship a pope. Catholics pray to Mary and to their pope. They also pray to people called "saints". When confronted on their poly-theism, they claim that they pray to these PEOPLE to intercede on their behalf. This is just crazy double talk. The fact of the matter is that they think the saints are little tiny gods. They put little idols of their gods on the dashboards of their cars and hope that their god will protect them from getting into a crash. Catholics believe that their statues come to life and start crying too. It is also well documented that the clergy of this Christ-cult enjoys a practice called pedophilia. Yes it is true; their priests like to rape little boys. Catholics also like to eat cookies in their church and they call this cookie Christ and they think that they have Christ in their tummies and in their intestines when they leave their cult rituals. No, this is not Christianity at all. Anyone that is not Catholic can see this. They are just a strange cult, nothing more. All REAL Christians know of these truths.”

Let's address the nonsense you wrote point by point. 

1. The Catholic Church is the Church started by Christ and up until the 1500's it was one Church holding one belief. Since then besides the Church you have 30,000 or so denominations, each one claiming to have the truth. 

2. I do not know where you got the idea that Catholics worship the pope, we don't. Just as the early Church had a leader, so does the Church of today. We do not worship him - he is but a man. We believe in the promise of Jesus that He will send the Holy Spirit to protect His Church from harm. 

3. Yes, we pray to Mary and the Saints, we ask them to pray to Christ for us. If that is wrong then it is not lawful for one Christian to pray for another Christian. For example if I ask you to pray for me is that wrong? Hardly, consult Scripture and you will see we are told to pray for one another. People pray for other people all of the time. So tell me how that is wrong. Besides, we as Christians believe that death is not an end but life is changed in the twinkle of an eye. Who better to pray for us than one of God's beloved who see Him Face to Face all the time? 

4. Statues are like the pictures of loved ones that you carry around in your wallet. We use statues in a like manner to remind us of a loved one, whether that loved one be Mary or one of the saints. We know that a statue is wood, or stone and has no power at all. No sane Catholic worships a statue. 

5. Sad to say a small percentage of our clergy fell into sin, weather that is that they abused a child or children, or covered it up. There is no way to say that this did not happen. However, the Church has taken steps to insure that this sort of thing does not happen again and if it does there are procedures to be followed to expose the perpetrator and see to it that it never happens again. These things happen because humans are human and they do sin. Examine the record and you will see that there are more offenses committed outside of the Catholic Church then there ever was inside of it. 

6. I find your comments about the Holy Eucharist most offensive. People such as yourself need to study the Scripture and see what Jesus says about the Blessed Eucharist. Read John Chapter six. It is all there in black and white. The Eucharist is the way Christ decided to be with us always. The Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ as He is Today, triumphant in heaven. And yes when we receive the Sacred Body and Blood Jesus is truly present inside of us. You cannot get any closer to God this side of heaven. 

I am not naive enough to think that this short discourse will have any effect on someone such as yourself that is so full of hate for the Church. I do recognize that you are a person full of passion. I will pray that the Lord helps you to extinguish the part of your passion that fuels such hate and that you begin to learn that the message of Christ is not one of division but rather one of unification. It is sad that in the fifteen hundreds a monk pulled away from the Church and caused such disunity. Be at peace brother and may God lead you and give you light.