How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps Quotes

“The Reformation thus does not call for celebration. It calls for sorrow, repentance, and reconciliation.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers. . . . All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“Why stash little ones away in a nursery downstairs with volunteers, who are hard to recruit and who themselves then miss the service, when they can actually be part of God’s people in worship? This can make it hard sometimes when children are acting up. But it keeps families together.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“In my experience, one of the very nice things about Catholic Churches is how diverse, ordinary, and natural they are and feel. So many evangelical churches, by contrast, seem to me to be very earnest in trying so hard to be and do something or other—to be sincere or happy or vibrant or dynamic or appealing or whatever. By contrast, in my experience, most Catholic parishes are simply unperturbed in doing the regular business of being Church. They’ve been doing it for 2,000 years and will keep doing it till Christ returns.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“The Catholic Church does not offer certainty in human knowledge in the way that some ex-evangelicals seem to want to have it. So forget about that. Learn, have faith, seek understanding, and be prepared to give an account. Be forgiven and forgive. Be formed by the sacraments and practices of the Church, particularly the Eucharist, and learn Christian love for God and your neighbor. That’s it.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“Catholics actually think about prayer a little differently than evangelicals. Prayer is not simply praise and intercession. Prayer is, first of all, “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God” (Catechism 2559). Prayer can also involve “the requesting of good things from God.” But more fundamentally, “prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit. . . . Thus, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“First, the Deuterocanonical books Baruch, Tobit, Maccabees, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom and parts of Daniel and Esther were all included in the Septuagint that Jesus and the apostles read as Scripture. Second, the New Testament itself in at least some and possibly many places references Deuterocanonical books. Heb 11:35b, for example, references 2 Macabees 7:1–19. First Peter 1:6–7 references Wisdom 3:5–6 and Sirach 2:5. First Peter 1:17 references Sirach 16:12. Numerous other similar instances can be found.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“Latria (adoration) is the worship and homage that is rightly given only to God. Dulia (veneration, devotion), by contrast, is the recognition and honor rightly evoked by excellence observed in created persons.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“How much stronger and healthier might the Body of Christ be if it was not torn into pieces? How powerful and vibrant could the Church become if in unity all of today’s separated evangelicals and other Protestants brought together in it all of their gifts, talents, energies, and devotion? We are so used to division that that is almost unimaginable.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“Protestant insistence on the written word in the Bible as the only and sufficient Christian authority for faith and practice relies on an impossible anachronism that artificially projects a modern standard of authority and means of knowledge conveyance retrospectively back into a pre-modern reality that operated by different but reliable and legitimate standards.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“Or take the belief common among some evangelicals that every individual needs an identifiable point of personal faith conversion to create a “personal relationship with Jesus.” That’s certainly a key to evangelical revivalism, and one can definitely find various Bible verses that seem to buttress such a claim. But, altogether, the direct biblical evidence for that theology and rhetoric is in fact pretty thin.”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps

“The same is true about husbands being the “spiritual heads” of their households (not one verse says that), about Sunday and not Saturday being Christians’ set-apart day of rest and worship (just ask Seventh Day Adventists),”
― Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps