Sep 09 2008
Learn To Defend Your Faith
Defend Our Faith Through Scripture
Learning apologetics can help you with your faith. What is apologetics? Apologetics is defined by the Catholic encyclopedia as: A theological science which has for its purpose the explanation and defense of the Christian religion. (ttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01618a.htm) By learning apologetics one learns scripture to defend the Catholic faith. This is something that many Catholics have taken little interest in learning. It is one of the pillars of Truth to the protestant faithful, but because scripture is not a sole pillar of our faith it is often ignored. We differ with our Protestant brothers in this area, according to our faith, 1 Timothy 3:15, the pillar of truth is the church. Just knowing this fact will help you in discussions with Protestants.
This becomes of great importance since protestant churches are targeting what they call either dissatisfied Catholics or Fallen away Catholics. The Protestants would send missionaries into areas where the Catholics are losing ground. One such area is Mexico, the reason being the lack of new priest and the large amounts of Catholics. In these areas the people are poor and have not received adequate instruction about their faith.
A battle ground though does not have to be in the poor areas of Mexico. In cities such as Las Vegas, Catholics are constantly being barraged by the Protestants and the Mormons. Catholics are being attacked in all the major cities of the world. Every Catholic should be familiar with scripture and have the ability to defend the faith. If you want to learn about Apologetics and how it works go to this web site, http://www.catholic.com/library/What_Your_Authority.asp. It’s is called Catholic Answers and arms any Catholic who wants to stand up to any Evangelical attack. Catholic Answers will prepare you by giving you an analysis of their arguments and allow you to become familiar with the scripture that they will use. A good example would be the term Sola Scriptura: Which means scripture alone will be the basis of salvation. The scripture that the Protestants use is 2 Timothy 3:16: (All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- ness)
The scripture does not say that scripture is sufficient but states that scripture is profitable. This is an example of what apologetics can teach you. Many Catholics need to open their minds to scripture so that they themselves can be witnesses to scripture, and as enthusiastic about scripture as the next Evangelical Christian.
One other place a Catholic can go to load up on apologetics material, is the local Catholic book store. Two good authors to read would be Dr. Scott Hahn, who himself converted to Catholicism and author, Karl Keating, who is the President and founder of Catholic Answers.
