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Not long ago, I was invited to appear on Cross Examined—the podcast of Protestant apologist Dr. Frank Turek—to talk about issues that many Protestants misunderstand about Catholicism.
It was very kind of Frank to invite me on his show, and we had a really cordial discussion! Here’s a taste of what a gracious host he was!
Frank: Today we want to talk about what Protestants may misunderstand about Roman Catholicism.
Now, I’m not a Roman Catholic, although I came out of Roman Catholicism. Jimmy was a Protestant and became a Roman Catholic.
In fact, Jimmy, this is odd that we’re even doing this show. If anybody should be a Catholic apologist, it should be me, a guy from New Jersey who went to Catholic high school, and you should be the Protestant apologist because you grew up in Texas and yet you’re a Catholic apologist.
How did you become a Catholic? Let’s just start there.
I had a really great time speaking with Frank! He was a really great guy! And I want to compliment him on what a good host he was and what a great exchange it was!
Never Hearing About Grace?
I thought that today I’d follow up on one point that he raised, which is one that we sometimes hear from people who used to be Catholic and have become Evangelical. Here’s how Frank put it.
Frank: Now, as I said, brought up Catholic. I went to Catholic high school, and this is just anecdotal, it’s not data, right? It’s just my perspective. And I wonder if this is one reason why it seems that many Roman Catholics don’t know much about grace. I never heard the word grace from a homily.
I never in hundreds of sermons ever heard Jesus died for your sins. And by trusting in him you’re justified—until the last Mass I went to. And that was my father’s funeral, when the priest came.
Jimmy: I’m glad you heard it there.
Frank: Yeah. The priest came out and said, “I talked to Frank the other day and he’s accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior, so he’s in heaven now.” And I’m just wondering, just from, again, it’s just my perspective, why don’t we hear more about grace? Why don’t we hear more about what Christ has done in the homily?
I really appreciate how Frank said that this was just anecdotal information—just his perspective. But it is something that I’ve heard from other former Catholics, too.
And I appreciate how serious Frank and other former Catholics are about this. Hearing the message of Jesus, grace, and forgiveness is essential!
Of course, I responded at the time, and you can watch the full interview to see what I said. We’ll have a link in the show notes below.
This view isn’t anything unique to Frank. It’s something that many former Catholics who are now Evangelicals say, so it’s good to know how you can respond when you encounter it.
Poor Homilies
One of the first things I’d do is to acknowledge that the quality of homilies at Mass can vary. Just like Protestant preachers, some Catholic priests are better preachers than others, and some have favorite themes that they stress or that they avoid.
I’d actually say that—these days—one of the themes many avoid is the negative side of the good news. The fact that we are sinners who need God’s mercy, and that we can even be lost if we don’t.
I’d say that the problem is the reverse of what some think it is. If anything, I’d say that there’s too much emphasis on God’s mercy and grace in many Catholic churches, and not enough emphasis on God’s justice or Christ’s role as a judge.
The Church Steps In
It’s true that the quality of homilies can vary, but the Church knows that. That’s one reason why Catholic teaching isn’t limited to the homily. It’s actually going on throughout the Mass, because the Church wants to make sure that you get the message!
This is something that may not be as obvious to our friends in the Evangelical movement, because in Evangelical churches, the homily—or sermon—has a different role.
In fact, the sermon is frequently the largest single element in many Evangelical services. Some have even spoken jokingly of their services as a “hymn sandwich”—that is, a sermon sandwiched between a few hymns. So in Evangelical circles, the sermon or homily has to bear the full load of the teaching that happens in the service.
But in the liturgies of traditional Christians—whether they’re Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian, or even if they’re from some of the more historical Protestant groups like Lutherans and Anglicans—the homily is just one part of the service, and it doesn’t dominate the service as a whole. So it doesn’t need to bear the full load of the teaching that happens.
In fact, the proclamation of the Christian message happens all the way through the liturgy, and—in part because the Church knows that the quality of preachers varies—the Church has written the key parts of the Christian message into the structure of the Mass itself.
And not just into what the priest says, but into what you yourself say as an ordinary Catholic at Mass.
Interpreting Our Past Experiences
One of the things I pointed out to Frank is that there’s often a difference in how Evangelicals and former-Catholic Evangelicals speak about their younger days.
In both the Catholic and the Protestant communities, there are people who are very serious about their faith as adults, but they look back on when they were younger and not as serious about it.
If the person is a Catholic who became serious about their faith as an adult, then they generally accept responsibility for their lack of seriousness as a young person. They will say, “I was a reckless young person who didn’t really pay attention to what I was being taught, but then I had a conversion and got serious.”
And you hear the same thing if the person was a Protestant who had a religious awakening as an adult. They also will say, “I was a reckless young person who didn’t really pay attention to what I was being taught, but then I had a conversion and got serious.”
However, the situation is different if the person was raised Catholic and then became serious as an Evangelical. In that case—because of lingering tensions from the time of the Reformation—they aren’t taught to accept responsibility for their younger days.
Instead, they are taught—consciously or unconsciously—to blame the Catholic Church for their former lack of seriousness. So they don’t say, “I was a reckless young person who wasn’t paying attention.” Instead they’re taught to say things like “The Catholic Church never taught me about grace,” or “The Catholic Church never taught me about sin and my need for forgiveness,” or “The Catholic Church never taught me about Jesus and the gospel.”
But are those things really true?
What You Hear and Say at Mass
Let’s take a look at what you hear—and say—at every standard Sunday Catholic Mass.
I think it will be an instructive exercise to remind former Catholics of what they themselves used to hear and say at every Sunday Mass they attended. I think that—in the time since they ceased going to Mass—they have likely forgotten some of this. Or at least that they haven’t thought about what they heard and said and what it means.
Because—as we’re going to hear—the Christian message is really and profoundly present, both in terms of what they hear the priest say and in terms of what they themselves said.
Now, there are certain parts of the Mass that you hear basically every Sunday. They’re sometimes called the “ordinary” of the Mass because they’re what you ordinarily hear and say when you go. In contrast—for example—to the “proper” of the Mass, which are those elements that are proper to particular days of the year, and you only hear them then.
So let’s go through the ordinary for a typical Sunday Mass and look at what you hear and say.
Mass Begins
The Mass typically begins when the priest makes the sign of the Cross and says:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.
So that gets the topic of grace on the table right out of the gate. Frank said he’d never heard the word grace in a homily—at least as far as he remembered—but the priest actually begins the Mass by talking about the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit.
But what about the idea of sin?
We now turn to the penitential act, where the priest says:
Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins,
and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.
So the priest is telling you that you need to acknowledge your sins to properly worship God, which is true. If you thought you were sin-free and didn’t need to recognize your own faults, you wouldn’t be properly worshipping God.
After the priest gives this instruction, everybody—including you—then says:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done
and in what I have failed to do,
And, striking their breast, they say:
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
So—wow—we’re really serious about the fact that we’re sinners. You’re confessing that fact to almighty God and to all of your fellow Christians in church. You haven’t just sinned—you’ve greatly sinned. You’ve sinned in your thoughts and in your words. You’ve sinned in what you’ve done and in what you’ve failed to do—so both sins of commission and sins of omission.
Then you strike your breast—typically 3 times—and you take full ownership of what you’ve done, saying you did it through your fault, through your fault, through your most grievous fault. So you’re not just acknowledging your sins, you’re really most sincerely acknowledging them!
The priest then says:
May almighty God have mercy on us,
forgive us our sins,
and bring us to everlasting life.
The people reply:
Amen.
So the priest is asking God to have mercy on us, to forgive our sins, and to bring us to everlasting life—or save us. And—along with all the other people at Mass—you reply “Amen,” meaning that you acknowledge your need for God’s mercy, forgiveness, and salvation. This is a really clear presentation of the message of salvation!
And Jesus’ role in it isn’t neglected, because we then have the following dialogue with the priest:
V. Lord, have mercy. R. Lord, have mercy.
V. Christ, have mercy. R. Christ, have mercy.
V. Lord, have mercy. R. Lord, have mercy.
The Lord being referred to here is the Lord Jesus Christ, as is made clear by the middle reference to the Lord specifically as “Christ.”
We then typically say or sing a prayer known as the Gloria, where we give glory to God, and as part of that, we say:
Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us;
you take away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father,
have mercy on us.
So here—because you’re saying this—you’re acknowledging that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord God—he’s God himself–that he’s the Lamb of God, that he’s the Son of the Father, and that he’s seated at the right hand of the Father.
You acknowledge—twice—that he takes away the sins of the world. You ask him to receive your prayer. And you ask him—twice—to have mercy on you.
So you’ve just been really clear about who Jesus is, what role he plays in God’s plan, and your need for his mercy!
The Creed
We then hear the Scripture readings for the day, and the priest gives his homily.
Then we all stand up and confess the Christian faith together. The typical way we do that at most Masses is by saying the Nicene Creed, so you say:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
That’s a really clear profession of the Christian faith itself, and you just said it with your own lips. You acknowledge all three persons of the Trinity and that they are all co-equal. You acknowledged Jesus as the divine Son of God.
And you acknowledged his role in our salvation, saying that “for us men and for our salvation” he became incarnate, that “for our sake” he was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again, and that he will “come again in glory,” when he will serve as the judge of both the living and the dead—including you!
You also confessed the role of baptism in the forgiveness of sins, which is acknowledged by the vast majority of Christians, including Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and many other Protestants.
In any event—we’ve once again got the forgiveness of sins back on the table, and the idea that Jesus died for our sins is explicitly stated right here in the Nicene Creed, which you yourself say at every standard Sunday Mass you attend.
The Lord’s Prayer
We then begin the liturgy of the Eucharist, and the Eucharistic prayers themselves repeat the core elements of the Christian faith. Since there are several Eucharistic prayers, we won’t go through them in detail here.
However, once the Eucharistic prayer is finished, both we and the priest say the Lord’s Prayer, which means that you say:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
So here you ask God to forgive your sins, and—even though this is translated a little differently in different communities—the meaning is the same. And you’re using the very words Jesus gave us to use to ask forgiveness!
You’re also asking God to protect us from temptation and deliver us from evil.
Shortly after the Lord’s Prayer, you and the rest of the congregation then say:
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
grant us peace.
So here we acknowledge 3 times that it’s Jesus who takes away the sins of the world and that he’s the Lamb of God. We twice ask him to have mercy on us, and we once ask him to grant us peace.
Before Communion
Finally, before going to receive Communion, you say this:
Lord, I am not worthy
that you should enter under my roof,
but only say the word
and my soul shall be healed.
So here you acknowledge that you’re not worthy to receive Jesus, but he is the one who heals our souls, and all he has to do is say the word.
Now, there’s a lot more we could use to document the Christian message in the prayers of the Mass. The Roman Missal is extensive, and you’ll find the Christian message suffused throughout its pages.
But for reasons of space, we’ve only looked at what you hear—and say—at a typical Sunday Mass, and we’ve seen that the documentation of the Christian message is extensive.
Language Differences
Now, this content isn’t always expressed in the same language that’s used in the Evangelical community.
Every group of Christians has its own language—its own way of expressing things. For example, in the Evangelical community, you sometimes hear about “accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.”
Those formulas—“accepting Jesus” and “personal Lord and Savior”—are not found in the Bible. They were created in the nineteenth century by preachers as an evangelistic tool, so they’re not the language of the Bible. But they are one way of expressing the Christian message.
Evangelicals also have what they sometimes call the “Sinner’s prayer,” which is another recently created evangelistic tool.
Since Catholics are a different community of believers, they have a different history of language development, and so they have their own ways of expressing the gospel.
But we don’t need to quarrel about words. In 1 Timothy 6:4, St. Paul warns against people who have an unhealthy craving for controversy and quarreling about words, and in 2 Timothy 2:14, he commands Timothy to remind people not to quarrel about words, which he says does no good but only ruins the hearers.
So we can let each community of Christians have its own way of expressing things as long as the fundamental content is the same.
And here the content is the same: You are a sinner, you’ve sinned in bunches of ways, Jesus is God the Son, he died for your sins on the Cross so that you could be saved, you need his forgiveness and mercy, and you need to ask him for it.
The Church’s Concern for You
The Church is so concerned that you hear and accept the message of the gospel that it didn’t leave it up to the priest to mention it in the homily. They wrote it into the prayers of the Mass that the priest says, and they put it into the ordinary of the Mass that you hear at every standard Sunday Mass.
What’s more, they didn’t just leave it to the priest to say it, they wrote it into the prayers that you say with your own mouth at every standard Sunday Mass.
So—if you’re a Catholic—you yourself have said the Christian message over and over again:
Every Sunday, you confess that you are a sinner. Every Sunday, you confess that Jesus is God the Son. Every Sunday, you confess that he died on the Cross for your sins. And every Sunday, you yourself ask him for his mercy.
The only questions are whether you paid attention to what you were saying and whether you remember what you said.
Either way, the Church has done its part. Just like a Protestant preacher can’t force a Protestant young person to pay attention and remember, the Catholic Church can’t force a Catholic young person to pay attention and remember. But the Catholic Church has gone further than what happens in many Protestant churches, where the preacher does most of the talking during a service.
The Catholic Church has scripted your lines at Mass to ensure that you yourself articulated the Christian message over and over again. So if you didn’t “get” the message, you really don’t have an excuse, because you weren’t paying attention to or remembering what you yourself were saying.
So even though it’s common for formerly Catholic Evangelicals to say they never heard about sin and grace and Jesus at Mass, they actually did. They heard it, and they confessed it with their own mouths—every Sunday.
They may not have been paying attention, and the Church can’t compel people to pay attention, but it has done its part to ensure that they were exposed to the message and that they even said it with their own mouths.
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God bless you always!
SHOW NOTES:
Original interview with Dr. Frank Turek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XkLXw_bCfs
