MONTGOMERY, Ala. – As president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, John Giles is no stranger to a pew. Yet he remembers well the time he got lost in a Roman Catholic church.
“I couldn’t even follow the order of service, it was so foreign to me,” Giles says of that day some six years ago.
Since then he’s found his way and a new home in the Roman Catholic church – a home that might seem foreign to the overwhelmingly Protestant church population of Alabama.
“I have to admit to you that the whole time that I was in that church service, I was reduced to tears, and I couldn’t explain it,” Giles said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.
“In fact,” he jokes, “you would have thought I had been spending the whole weekend down at the House of the Rising Sun down in New Orleans, that I had all this sin in my life that I had to get out.”
In any case, Giles and his wife, Deborah, were received into the Catholic Church at St. Peter’s Parish in Montgomery on Easter Sunday.
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Alabama… hmm… that’s where EWTN HQ is.
“We hope that we could have a small contribution to building bridges where there weren’t bridges,” he says. “Because Christians are Christians. There’s no such thing as Christians and Catholics.”
Well, he got things to learn. Catholic is the true Christian. The others are just immitating.
beng: i undertsand Giles’ statement. nothing chaps my hide like a catholic who, when confronted with the question, “are you a christian?” replies, “no, i’m catholic.” i wanna box their ears and ask “THEY’RE THE SAME THING YOU DUMBUNNY!”
Ditto smockmomma. Here’s a great conversation line I heard awhile back. A fellow who was known to be Catholic was in a polite conversation with a friend. The friend said the he attended a “non-denominational” Christian church. The Catholic fellow smiled and replied, “So do I”.
All Catholics are Christians.
Not all Christians are Catholics.
Not all ‘Christians’ are Christians.
Beng,
While the Catholic Church is the fullness of Christian truth, we do not want to make the same mistakes of others who will denigrate other Christian groups by saying they are not included under the title Christian.
We should acknowledge what we truly share, but not to minimize our differences.
When my mom went to buy a pocket Bible for my graduation (and entry to bootcamp) she went to the christian store about fifty miles away and looked around. Couldn’t find anything but KJV. Finally, she asks the lady at the counter if they had any Catholic Bibles.
The clerk gave mom a nasty look and informed her that “this is a CHRISTIAN bookstore!”
Mom (very calm, her most terrifying mood.) explained the history of christianity and hasn’t been back since.
The Catechism teaches us that there is a fellowship of all the baptized, even if we cannot all share the communion cup.
I imagine that some of Mr. Giles’ friends were surprised that he did not sprout a tail upon converting to Catholicism. Hopefully his conversion will help to break down misconceptions about Catholics and allow for greater Christian unity as we continue to confront the anti-Christian efforts of the secular-fundamentalists of the left.
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