Are Catholics 'saved'

Its been about ten days since I've blogged, but I am going to be blogging a number of times in the next couple of weeks on an interesting topic: Are Catholics 'saved?' Many denominations believe that publicly proclaiming Jesus as your 'personal Lord and Savior' ensures that you have salvation However, they also believe Catholics are damned for not having this belief. I am having an ongoing discussion with a person who has come to me wanting to better understand the Catholic faith. He admits that he is interested in becoming Catholic but that his pastor at the church to which he belongs has told him that he is damning his soul to hell if he becomes Catholic. Right now, he is just curious and expects to defend his faith to prove that the "beliefs of our faith have already saved him and that Catholics are lost" to quote his pastor.

Before I begin describing our discussions, I want to make three things clear. 1) I specifically asked this man's permission to post our conversations on my blog after he expressed interest in hearing the opinions and insights of other and learned that I had a blog. 2) I have changed his name and will not mention the name of his denomination anywhere in this discussion as per his request. 3) Our discussions  have been open conversations and he does not consider them spiritual direction or any other form of confidential discussion. He will be reading the blog entries but will not respond to them on the blog itself. Rather, he has asked that I clarify any information he believes is incorrect regarding our conversation and present for him any comments he wishes to make.

What I am going to post over the coming weeks are basically transcripts of our conversations. I took notes during our conversation - again at his request - so that we would have a record of where our conversation has been going and what we have discussed. He is very open to new ideas and the views of the Catholic Church but also is still strong in his beliefs as well. Lastly, he really does want comments, insights and opinions of my readers (this is specifically why he was so open and excited about my posting this to my blog) so I highly encourage my readers to post comments. He was very clear that he would not be offended in any way by the comments that were posted.

With that said, I will make the first entry with the opening of our conversation tomorrow. Until tomorrow...God bless.

posted by: crossman at 09:45 | link | comments |
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