Where do the sacraments come from?

Recently, someone stated to me that the 7 sacraments of the Catholic Church are made up and either have no foundation whatsoever in scriptures or are grotesquelly distorted from what Jesus intended. This person is extremely anti-Catholic and ocassionally approaches me with these challenges. A number of times in the past, when I have undeniabley shown that a teaching of the Church comes from Christ himself, this person has responded by swearing at me and insinuating that I am a 'minion of Satan' to use his own words. I do not take offense to his attitude. As a matter of fact, I actually kind of enjoy it because when he gets like that I know I've defended the faith to the point that he can't counter the Truth and must resort to childish insults. While, I doubt I will ever change this person's views of the Catholic faith (although God can accomplish anything if we only let him) I do feel it necessary to defend the faith because that is my responsibility as a priest.

So, I thought in the next few blogs I would discuss the 7 sacraments of our faith, their origins in scripture and how they have been a part of the faith since Christ established the Church. Because this person is an evangelical Protestant, I rely on scriptures primarily to prove the sacraments. However, when I need to, I also point out their existence since the very first faith communities were formed. I usually point this out when he cites that the Protestant church does not believe in such foolishness. I tend to counter that I can understand why they don't believe it them since the Protestant churches were only formed 400 years ago.

I will begin next time with the sacrament of Baptism, which may be the easiest to explain. Nearly all Protestant churches baptize and the Catholic Church recognizes those baptisms. Interestingly, some Protestant churches do NOT recognize Catholic baptisms. That ought to be fun to explain. Until next time...God bless.

posted by: crossman at 06:47 | link | comments |
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