Script for A Catholic Priest is Biblically
richard...@austin.rr.com
Dear Brother,
Somehow the text of my short testimony was not attached. It is now both below and attached. (Also the URL to the Video is again attached)
Please share this with your family and friends, especially with Catholics, even Priests and Nuns.
Yours in the love and grace of our Father,
Richard
A Catholic Priest is Biblically Saved
In the year 1972 I was 34 years old, for 9 years in the Catholic priesthood. On March 16th at I thanked the Lord that I was such a good priest and requested that if it were His will, He humble me that I might be even better. Later that same evening I had a freak accident, splitting the back of my head and hurting my spine in many places. In the suffering that I went through in the weeks after the accident I with great fear considered just what would have happened to me if I had of died. So for the 1st time in my life I began reading the Scriptures to see how one is right with God. I read such as the Gospel of John, and why I do not know, some days I would read Ephesians Chapters 1 and 2 ten to twenty times. This was a shock for me because in the Catholic Church I had always been told that salvation was in a person’s heart, salvation inside oneself, and by the sacraments. I was utterly surprised salvation was spoken of 42 times as being in Christ. Thus as Catholic Priest for 9 years I read and pondered, Ephesians 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”
Early life and Seminary
I grew up in a devout Catholic family and at the age of 18 decided to become a Catholic Priest. In the Dominican seminary to prepare for the priesthood I did many strange self inflicted sufferings. I had memorized part of the teaching of Pope Pius XII in which he said,
“...the salvation of many depends on the prayers and sacrifices of the mystical body of Christ offered for this intention.”
This idea of gaining salvation through suffering and prayer is also the basic message of Mary’s claimed apparitions at Fatima and Lourdes; as a consequence I sought to merit my own salvation as well as the salvation of others by suffering and prayer. In the Dominican monastery just outside Dublin, I performed many difficult feats to save souls, such as taking cold showers in the middle of winter and beating my back with a small steel chain. With rigor and determination, I studied, prayed, did self inflicted sufferings, tried to keep the Ten Commandments and the multitude of Dominican rules and traditions.
Thus I was 9 years a Catholic Priest reading and praying about Ephesians 2 8-9 where I saw it written, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Priesthood
I was ordained a Priest in Dublin in 1963 and was sent a Dominican Priest to Trinidad WI in 1964. First years in Trinidad I remember in vivid detail what a difficult time I had with the Saturday confessions. Each Saturday from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., many Catholics queued up outside the confession box waiting their turn to enter to tell us their sins. I recall how profusely I sweated in those days, not just because I was living in the tropics, but rather it was the first time in my life that I was experiencing how horrific it is to have peoples’ sins poured over oneself, sometimes in intimate detail, for three hours at a stretch. Now I read in Ephesians 1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”
I discovered as did 50 former priests in this book that claimed salvation by Mass, sacraments, good works, accumulated merit; veneration of Mary and the Saints is a wasteland before the All Holy God. It is utterly different from salvation directly from God in Jesus Christ applied to person who is conscious that he is a sinner, in the words of Ephesians 2:1,“dead in trespasses and sins.”
We personally to see in the words of Ephesians chapter 1 “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, We understand that Christ Jesus substituted Himself in the place of believing sinners and satisfied the law in their behalf. In becoming the substitute for His people Christ Jesus we see the absolute truth of Ephesians 2: 8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Where there is true faith and love of the Lord there is in the midst of all things, a joy unspeakable and full of glory. In Catholicism, all of this inner foundation of a deep inner fellowship with the Lord is missing. The rituals and pomp, the fine architecture, and captivating music, the mysticism, charismatic experiences, visions and apparitions cannot fill the void that was meant to be filled by a Person, the Spirit of the living God. Catholicism can deceive peoples and nations no further and no longer than God will permit. The folly shall be finally manifested, it shall appear that it is the supreme example of “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof”. (2 Timothy 3:5) Many thousands of us have come out of Catholicism to normal Christian life. It still happens each year and in most nations.
God is the only All Holy One. His holiness is the distinguishing factor in all His essential characteristics. This is the reason why we need to be in right standing before the one and only All Holy God on the terms He prescribes. God’s truth, as we seen Scripture, makes it clear you cannot be right before God and remain true to Catholic teaching, since they contradict and oppose the truth of the Bible on the essential factor of how we enter into a relationship with Him. You may cling to such teachings and traditions to your own eternal peril. Or you may do what so many of us have done before you. Turn to God in faith alone for the salvation that He alone gives, by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, based on Christ’s death and resurrection for His own, and believe on Him alone, “to the praise of the glory of his grace” ( Ephesians 1:6)