{"id":8474,"date":"2002-12-29T17:24:34","date_gmt":"2002-12-29T22:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2002\/12\/29\/i-was-overjoyed-to-find-that-the-catholic-church-had-read-the-bible-too\/"},"modified":"2002-12-29T17:24:34","modified_gmt":"2002-12-29T22:24:34","slug":"i-was-overjoyed-to-find-that-the-catholic-church-had-read-the-bible-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2002\/12\/i-was-overjoyed-to-find-that-the-catholic-church-had-read-the-bible-too\/","title":{"rendered":"I was overjoyed to find that the Catholic Church had read the Bible too!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The title line is from Peter Kreeft&#8217;s conversion story <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.peterkreeft.com\/topics\/hauled-aboard.htm\" target=_blank>Hauled<br \/>\nAboard the Ark<\/a>. The following is an excerpt from this article:<\/p>\n<p><font color=#3333ff>Perhaps, I thought, these good Protestant people could<br \/>\nworship like angels, but I could not. Then I realized that they couldn&#8217;t either.<br \/>\nTheir ears were using crutches but not their eyes. They used beautiful hymns,<br \/>\nfor which I would gladly exchange the new, flat, unmusical, wimpy &#8220;liturgical<br \/>\nresponses&#8221; no one sings in our masses\ufffdtheir audible imagery is their crutch. I<br \/>\nthink that in Heaven, Protestants will teach Catholics to sing and Catholics<br \/>\nwill teach Protestants to dance and sculpt.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font\ncolor=#3333ff>&#8230;Then one summer, on the beach at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I<br \/>\nread St. John of the Cross. I did not understand much of it, but I knew, with<br \/>\nundeniable certainty, that here was reality, something as massive and positive<br \/>\nas a mountain range. I felt as if I had just come out of a small, comfortable<br \/>\ncave, in which I had lived all my life, and found that there was an unsuspected<br \/>\nworld outside of incredible dimensions. Above all, the dimensions were those of<br \/>\nholiness, goodness, purity of heart, obedience to the first and greatest<br \/>\ncommandment, willing God&#8217;s will, the one absolute I had discovered, at the age<br \/>\nof eight. I was very far from saintly, but that did not prevent me from<br \/>\nfascinated admiration from afar; the valley dweller appreciates the height of<br \/>\nthe mountain more than the dweller on the foothills. I read other Catholic<br \/>\nsaints and mystics, and discovered the same reality there, however different the<br \/>\nstyle (even St. Th\ufffdr\ufffdse &#8220;The Little Flower&#8221;!) I felt sure it was the same<br \/>\nreality I had learned to love from my parents and teachers, only a far deeper<br \/>\nversion of it. It did not seem alien and other. It was not another religion but<br \/>\nthe adult version of my own. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The title line is from Peter Kreeft&#8217;s conversion story Hauled Aboard the Ark. The following is an excerpt from this article: Perhaps, I thought, these good Protestant people could worship&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}