But I’m A Good Catholic!

A hypothetical conversation between a true Christian and a devout Catholic about salvation.

Christian: When you die, do you know for sure if you will be in heaven?

Catholic: I think so, I’m a good Catholic.

Christian: But you don’t get to heaven by being a good Catholic, and not by being a good “anything” for that matter.

Catholic: What?

Christian: That’s right.  Jesus said you must be “born again” to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Catholic:  Well then I’m OK, I guess.  I was “born again” when I was christened (baptized) by the Catholic church as an infant.

Christian: That’s not what Jesus meant by being born again.  Being truly born again requires a supernatural act of God.  God puts his Spirit in you and you become what is called a “new creature in Christ”.  You start to really hate sin and love holiness.  This is what makes you fit for heaven.  You will want to be there and you will enjoy being around a holy God for all eternity.

Catholic:  So are you saying that all my dead Catholic relatives, all my deceased loved ones who were such good people and such faithful Catholics are in hell now?

Christian: Its not what I say that matters.  Its what God says.  And God is not the least bit impressed with how good a Catholic a person is or was.  Nor is He impressed with how good a Baptist or Methodist you are or how good a Muslim or Hindu.  To God, all of us are ungodly prideful sinners who think we have the right to determine if we are fit for heaven or not.  And we are all self-righteous rebels who think we have the right to determine if God is fair or not.  God’s standard of goodness is infinitely higher than our standard. In fact, God says: “They are ALL gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is NONE that doeth good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:12). You can whine and complain about it til the sun goes down or even until the earth passes away, but it will do you no good.  You are still at God’s mercy and still a spiritually lost, hell-deserving, idol-worshipping Catholic to the God who rules heaven and earth.

Catholic: That’s just your highly biased brain-washed protestant opinion.

Christian: It’s not just my opinion.  I was once a Catholic and as lost and deceived as you.  God really does condemn idolatry and idolators and there is probably no greater group of idolators than the Catholic Church, which displayed one of the most extreme examples of rebellion against God when they threw out the 2nd commandment (which says that thou shalt not make any graven images nor bow down to them).

Catholic: The Catholic Church still has ten commandments.  How can you say they threw out one?

Christian: After they threw out the second commandment they split the 10th command into two parts creating an additional commandment to make up for the missing 2nd commandment.

Catholic: What are you talking about?

Christian: The 10th commandment says thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife, nor his servants nor any of his possessions. Its in the book of Exodus, chapter 20. Look it up in your Catholic bible. Its still there but its not what they teach their people when they teach the ten commandments.  The Catholic church took this long commandment about coveting and created a 9th commandment that states, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife”.  Then the remainder of that commandment is the new Catholic 10th commandment which states “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s goods”.  But throwing out the 2nd commandment is not the worst thing the Catholic Church ever did.

Catholic: What do you mean?

Christian:  Well when Jesus came to earth, it was as God’s one true High Priest, who came not only to fulfil the role of the Jewish Temple’s high priest in offering up a sacrifice for the sins of God’s people, but also to BE the sacrifice, as John the Baptist stated when he said: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”.

Catholic:  So what does that have to do with anything bad the Catholic Church did?  We Catholics believe all that stuff.

Christian: The abomination of all abominations that the Catholic Church committed, was to establish its own priesthood and the sacrifice of the mass.  This was a tremendous act of rebellion against God and an enormous insult to the glorious sacrifice of Christ on the cross, whose death, burial and ressurrection marked the END of the sacrificial system and the COMPLETION FOR ALL TIME of God’s work of redemption – God’s plan of salvation – whereby all the sins of all God’s people were placed on God’s Son Jesus Christ.  And God’s Son, paid the COMPLETE PENALTY for all those sins of all those people.

Catholic:  We as Catholics believe that too, that Jesus died for our sins.  But that’s not a free ticket to heaven.  We still need the Church plus the sacraments, penance, the merits of the “saints” and purgatory to get us ready for heaven.

Christian: And that is where you and the Catholic Church go wrong. Christ did it all at Calvary.  As he died on the cross he cried out “It is finished”, marking the completion of the payment of the penalty for sin for anyone who will ever enter the gates of heaven. We who have been redeemed by Christ’s precious blood, owe him a debt that we could never possibly repay.  No amount of penance, no amount of sacraments, no amount of time spent in an imaginary place called purgatory could pay for a single sin.  You may think it can. You may hope it can, but God says differently.  He declares in Isaiah 64:6 “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”.

Catholic: I don’t want to hear any more of this protestant nonsense.  You’re lucky that the Inquistion is not still going on.  They would burn you at the stake.

Christian:  You are probably right.  So great is the Catholic Church’s hatred for the true God and His followers, that they would undoubtly have done their best to silence me and others like me, as they did with many dear believers who spoke out against the evil teachings of the Church of Rome during the early years of the Protestant Reformation.

So are YOU a “good” Catholic?

Jesus said:

“There is none good but one, that is, God.” [Matthew 19:7]

Trusting your soul to your own self-righteousness, your own merits, the merits of others, or the sacraments of some church is a sure way to Hell.  Those who will end up in Heaven are those who are only trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and His full payment for their sins of the cross of Calvary.  If you could get to Heaven by your own good deeds then Jesus died in vain.  He never said he was going to the cross to help pay for your sins.  He said he was dying to make a ransom payment for all those He came to save:

“For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” [Mark 10:45]

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