Catholics.
I read a book by a Roman Catholic lady who goes about spreading the word about ‘evangelisation’. It was a very interesting book. The title is ‘Pass it On’. I have to say that having read all the way through it I wasn’t convinced that there was a specificity to the ‘it’ of the title. Unless it was the ‘faith experience’ which one shares with another. Talking to my hosts (I was in someone else’s caravan using the electricity supply during three days of a four-day h.s. camp in Wales) I wasn’t sure that they were passing on either . The thought of Roman Catholics becoming interested in ‘evangelisation’ (why that word and not ‘evangelism’? I wondered..) was intriguing. Of course there are always those ‘lapsed Catholics’ (is there a body of folks who call themselves ‘lapsed protestants?) whom, one would imagine, would be a target for collecting up and returning to the fold, one way or another, but the idea of picking up people through street preaching (though that word wasn’t used) - well, I’m surprised. There was a quote from a pope, at the start of the book. It seems he said that the church exists for evangelisation. Bet you didn’t know that did you? According the book one just has to help a person have a ‘faith experience’ - the form doesn’t matter but it must be to do with Jesus rather than any-old-deity - I guess that’s good. However, once these people are ‘in’ they come along with their faith experience to share and bring others in. My point is that there seems little concept of TRUTH here. Can’t really bode well for the Roman church in the long-run.
I also have been listening to MP3’s on communion, the church and related issues. The churches where the pulpit was moved to the centre and where (like our church) the man up the front informs us that it is his belief that what he is going to say is GOD’ s WORD when he starts the preaching slot, are the churches which have gone liberal first. Those where (as in the Anglican church) there is a separate place for reading the word of God (why the brass eagle?) and the pulpit for the ministry of the word combined with the central feature of the reminder of the Lord’s table, are slower to go liberal. One could hypothesise all kinds of things based on these details but , for now, this will do.