Is it Coincidence? The Iglesia ni Cristo® is in the 'Darkness'?

The Iglesia ni Cristo^® (INC) was founded by Felix Manalo in 1914.  But there are somethings that most of us may not notice. Here they are:

First temple was founded in SANTA ANA, Manila in 1914.

Santa Ana or Saint Anne is the mother of the BLESSED VIRGIN MOTHER!

Their INC Dome is located in SANTA MARIA, Bulacan

 Santa Maria or Saint Mary is the MOTHER OF JESUS, the Savior and Lord God!

But where is their Central Office located?

The INC's Central Office is located in DILIMAN, Quezon City.

"Dilim" in Tagalog is DARK so if you put the prefix 'KA' with 'diliman' (KADILIMAN) it means "DARKNESS".

Taxpayer sues PHLPost over Iglesia ni Cristo postage stamp

Again, the Philippine Inquirer nailed the facts that FELIX MANALO is the FOUNDER of the Iglesia ni Cristo^®

Centennial Commemorative Stamp from PhilPost featuring INC's Founder and First Executive Minister Felix Y. Manalo.

MANILA, Philippines—A taxpayer has taken legal action against the Philippine Postal Corp. or PHLPost for its issuance of postage stamps marking the 100th founding anniversary of Iglesia ni Cristo, saying that public funds should not be used to benefit a religious group.

Renato Peralta of Las Piñas City filed for injunction last week in the Manila Regional Trial Court to stop PHLPost, a government-owned corporation, from paying for the printing of the INC centennial postage stamps and to stop their distribution.

“Coming up with the commemorative stamp of the INC is tantamount to sponsorship of a religious activity” which is prohibited by the Constitution, Peralta said.

Reached by the Inquirer for comment, Peralta said he was a court employee and a member of a Christian group. He said the issue was the use of public funds when “there is no legitimate government activity.”

There will be a hearing on July 4 at Branch 33 of the Manila Regional Trial Court, he said.

The INC will mark its 100th year of registration in the Philippines on July 27. The postage stamp shows the INC Central Temple and a portrait of the late Felix Manalo, founder and first executive minister...

Read more: NewsInfo.Inquirer

AP issues massive correction on Ireland child burial story

The Irish flag. Credit: Michael Care Andersen (CC BY-NC 2.0)

By Matt Hadro
Dublin, Ireland, Jun 24, 2014 / 12:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Associated Press has retracted key claims from its reports of an Irish Catholic home for unwed mothers supposedly burying hundreds of unbaptized infants in a septic tank.

A correction issued June 20 explained that “the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the [septic] tank contains, if any.”

In addition, the AP said that it had wrongly reported that many of the children were unbaptized according to Church teaching.

“The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching.”

The organization also acknowledged that it had incorrectly identified the year in which the orphanage in question had opened.

On June 3, the AP had broken a story claiming that a researcher had discovered the remains of hundreds of infants in a mass grave by a former home for single mothers near Tuam, Ireland that was run by Catholic nuns.

The story had provoked widespread anger, and the local archbishop said he was horrified by the reports and encouraged a government investigation into the matter.

However, critics of the report quickly began surfacing, claiming that the story was distorted and exaggerated.

AP’s own source for the story, researcher Catherine Corless, lamented to the Irish Times that her work “has taken on a life of its own,” and said she never used the word “dumped” to describe the bodies being buried.

In a June 22 opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, commentary writer T. Becket Adams slammed the AP, saying that it “did the public and the Catholic Church in Ireland a major disservice.”

“The AP undoubtedly duped thousands of readers – readers who likely won’t notice the little-publicized correction – into thinking that a handful of Irish nuns behaved like monsters,” Adams stated.

Muhammad in the Bible? Oh come on...

East Tennesseans converting to Catholicism on the rise

By: Melissa Lee

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- When you think about religion in East Tennessee, Catholicism probably isn't the first that pops into your mind. That could soon be changing with the Diocese of Knoxville ranked among the top in the nation for conversions.

Georgetown University actually ranked Knoxville 10th in the nation for conversions.

Father David Boettner at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville says, “When someone converts in the Catholic church, they're not just joining this church or that community, they're joining the universal church throughout the entire world.”

That's part of the reason Father David says more people are becoming attracted to the Catholic faith.

“People realize they're joining something much larger than themselves."

Pope Francis may be another reason. He captured the attention of most of the world, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but doing it in a way some have never heard before.

“He's very approachable and it's easy for people to identify with him, almost like a grandfather that they feel very close to him and he really loves them,” says Father David.

For Dave Wells, it wasn't Pope Francis who impacted his decision to convert.

"I did a lot of reading, I was a History major, I read a lot of church history, a lot of theology, that's kind of what led me to come into the Catholic church,” says Wells.

Wells grew up, like a majority of East Tennesseans in a Protestant church, and says as he got older, was looking for something deeper. In 1996, he was called to the faith.

"It's not something you can do automatically overnight, there's a lot that you have to learn"

In Tennessee where less than 10 percent of people are Catholic and 75 percent are Protestant he says he didn't give anything up.

"I just grew in my understanding of faith."

It's understanding he says he gained through the Catholic church teachings.

Father David says non-Catholics marrying Catholic spouses also has something to do with the increase in people converting to the Catholic faith. Sacred Heart Cathedral opens its doors to the public. They have mass available in Korean, Spanish and Tagalog.

A Former "Heretic" on Trinity Sunday by Rachel Lu

A former Mormon explains what being Catholic means to her.

By Rachel Lu; Article from Aleteia.com

Last week the Mormon missionaries stopped by looking for me. This hadn’t happened in awhile, but it’s not an unfamiliar experience. Five years ago I formally petitioned to have my name removed from the LDS Church’s membership records, and after that I didn’t hear from them for a while. But eventually the mail started coming again. And now there were these white-shirted 20-year-olds on my doorstep asking for me.

I invited them in. They declined, citing the “three man rule”. (They’re not supposed to be alone with women unless another man is on the premises.) So we stood awkwardly in the doorway while I explained that the reason they never saw me at church was that I had apostatized from the Mormon faith some years before, and was now a practicing Catholic.

They asked why and I briefly explained. (I believe that Rome, not Salt Lake, is rock on which Christ’s Church is resting.) They challenged me to read the Book of Mormon and I cheerfully declined. (I’ve read it twice before, but now I have other reading priorities.) In their final go-for-broke play, they read me a three-verse passage from the Book of Mormon, and urged me to ask God directly about the truth of the Mormon faith. I gently explained that this would not be appropriate, because it isn’t a question that I have anymore. When God has already answered the deepest question of your heart, the correct response is to embrace the truth gratefully. It would just be churlish to keep pestering him about it.

After that I stood patiently and let them have the final word, accepted their phone number (on condition that they wouldn’t return unless I called it), and wished them a pleasant day.

How A ‘Pagan Feminist’ Became Catholic

Regina Interviewer Christine Niles interviews Catherine Quinn, a self-professed former ‘man-hating, radical feminist’ who discovered the beauty of the Catholic faith and was forever transformed.

Listen to her story of abuse from an early age, how she fell in with the ‘wrong crowd,’ and how God’s grace rescued her.

“I was a pagan, hedonistic, man-hating feminist, but now I’m Catholic; this is my story”

I Was a Pagan, Hedonistic, Man-Hating Feminist. But Now I’m Catholic. This Is My Story.

Story of Catherine from ALETEIA: Christine Niles hosts ‘Forward Boldly,’ an online radio show where she interviews some of the most fascinating people in Catholicism today.

Growing up, I wasn't exposed to God, or the Catholic Church. I knew that my grandparents were Catholic, but no one talked about this, and I didn't know what "Catholic" even was.

Due to terrible abuse, I was removed from my home at nine. I lived in an asylum for a weekend, an orphanage for eight months, and then once a space became available in a foster home, there until I was twelve.

The courts ordered my mother to take me, and this was how we met. After moving in with her, I came across a group of Christians in the park one day. They said nothing, but simply invited me to Church. Curious, I went. I met the pastor's wife, and she told me about Jesus. At this time, I didn't even know what a Protestant was. I didn't know what an atheist was, but when I came home and told my mother about Jesus, I found out right away that she did not approve of God - at all.

Despite continual ridicule, I continued to go to church. I was mesmerized, and so happy in God and had hope I would be able to press past my bad experiences at home. I wanted to hear more no matter what.

Catholic converts on the rise: East Tennessee among nation's top 10 growth areas

Faithfuls gather in St. Peter's Basilica during Pope Francis' mass of Pentecost, at the Vatican on June 8, 2014.
Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Times Free Press - There was the man inspired by the written words of Pope Francis. There was the agnostic professor. And there was the widow of a Baptist preacher.

All of them Tennesseans, and all of them recent converts to one of the world's oldest Christian faiths.

In the South, Catholicism is growing. The Diocese of Knoxville was recently ranked among the top 10 in the nation for its rate of adult conversions.

All Southeast Tennessee Catholic parishes, including Chattanooga's, fall under the umbrella of Knoxville's diocese, one of 195 in the United States. A diocese is a geographic collection of parishes grouped together under the governance of a bishop. And many of the dioceses producing the most converts to the church are right here in the South, according to a recent study by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Rates of Catholicism have always been strong in the Northeast and Midwest. But not in the protestant-heavy South.

So it's no wonder that Catholicism is growing faster here.

The Western Church is Gaining members...

Olalla Oliveros, the 36-year-old Spanish model stunned Spanish society by becoming a nun of the semi-cloistered Order of Saint Michael [Photo Source: JesusCaritasEst]

IS SPAIN REGAINING ITS FAITH?

AND WHY ISN’T ANYONE ELSE?

by Filip Mazurczak from First Things

Like Quebec, Ireland, or Boston, Spain has epitomized the fading of Catholic faith. In the twentieth century, religious practice in Spain fell sharply, especially as the country transitioned to democracy and resentment of the Church’s support for Franco’s dictatorship surfaced.

Recently, however, the downward trend has stopped and is recovering. According to Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), the proportion of Spaniards attending Mass has increased from 12.1 to 15 percent between 2011 and 2012. In absolute terms, the number of Spanish Catholics attending Mass weekly grew by an astonishing further 23 percent between 2012 and 2013, according to CIS. Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2013 the number of Spaniards contributing part of their taxes to the Church rose from eight to nine million.

Not only are Spaniards attending Mass more frequently, but also youths are rediscovering the priesthood and religious life. In 2013–2014, the number of Spanish diocesan seminarians increased for a third consecutive year to 1321, a steady growth from 1227 in 2010–2011. Active female religious orders are also vibrant—each year, about 400 Spanish girls become non-cloistered sisters, a slowly increasing number. The number of women at the Poor Clares Convent of the Ascension in Lerma has surged from 28 in 1994 to 134 in 2009. One of the Lerma nuns, Sister Verónica, created her own community, Jesu Communio. The Vatican approved the rapidly growing order, known as the “sisters in jeans” because they wear denim habits, in 2010.

Immigration cannot explain this growth in monastic and priestly vocations. Today, young Spaniards are leaving the country for the more prosperous parts of Latin America (especially Chile) and for Germany and Britain. Considering Spain’s massive youth emigration and the fact that the country has one of Europe’s lowest birth rates, Spain’s youth population is shrinking, so this vocations rebound is more impressive.

Perhaps no one puts a more attractive face on Spain’s return to Catholicism than Olalla Oliveros. Last month, the 36-year-old Spanish model stunned Spanish society by becoming a nun of the semi-cloistered Order of Saint Michael. Perhaps Oliveros did this out of frustration? On the contrary, she was at the height of her career and was recently offered a lead role in a big-budget film. Oliveros experienced a conversion several years back and made her decision after much thought.

Some would dismiss these recent developments as resulting from the economic crisis. Currently, unemployment in Spain is almost 27 percent; in the European Union, only Greece suffers from a worse jobless rate. Spain plunged into recession in 2008, with anemic GDP growth in recent quarters. Perhaps Spaniards are rediscovering the pews and seminaries because economic hardship is leading them to look for a last resort in religion?

The Rise of Catholicism in the Middle East where it was born! (Protestants and other non-Catholics should be thankful to the CATHOLIC CHURCH for paving the way to Religious Tolerance in the Persian Gulf)

The Proposed "Our Lady of Arabia Catholic Cathedral" in Bahrain [Photo Source: Hermit Brother Blog]

Religious Tolerance Surges in the Persian Gulf
Cathedral dedicated to Our Lady is being built.

BY VICTOR GAETAN, SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER

AWALI, Bahrain — Over the last six years, religious tolerance has increased in the cradle of Islam, the Persian Gulf, according to clerics who live there as well as academic observers.
On May 31, a brick from St. Peter’s Basilica, which is being used as the foundation stone for the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia in Awali, Bahrain, was blessed by Bishop Camillo Ballin, apostolic vicar of northern Arabia.

The blessing ceremony marked the start of construction on a cathedral, pastoral center, guesthouse and car park — on land donated by King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa — to serve the faithful in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

King Hamad met Pope Francis May 19 at the Vatican and presented the Holy Father with a red box containing a scale model of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, which will be the largest Catholic church in the Persian Gulf.

Driving this positive trend are the increased numbers of guest workers who are Christian — primarily from the Philippines and India — and initiatives by wealthy rulers to open up the region to the world.

Foreign workers in the Persian Gulf are employed mainly in construction, domestic service, energy and health care. "Immigration started when the oil was discovered, around 40 years ago. It is always increasing, for the necessity of manpower," Bishop Ballin, 70, explained to the Register via email.

And the numbers are mindboggling: In Qatar, for example, more than 1.3 million foreign nationals work for a Qatari population of only 280,000 citizens. Kuwait has about the same number of visiting workers but a larger local population of 2.2 million.

Bishop Ballin said more than 350,000 expatriates in both Qatar and Kuwait are Catholic, about evenly divided between Indians and Filipinos.

Who says that the Catholic Church is dwindling in the West?

The Iglesia ni Cristo^® founded by a fake messenger with revived Arianism teachings is living in a dream. When a Catholic church (small letter 'c') would go bankrupt, they would conclude that the Catholic Church is "dying" in the West just as this one Minister had claimed before "Ang Iglesia Katolika ay Tuluyan nang Bumagsak sa Kanluran".

But here is the proof that it's not!

A Catholic Cathedral Rises Again in the South

Raleigh’s new cathedral is a testament to a diocese that has rapidly grown in 90 years through faithful evangelization.

by PETER JESSERER SMITH from National Catholic Register

A view of the exterior of the proposed
Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral

RALEIGH, N.C. — Few could have imagined back in 1924 that the newborn Diocese of Raleigh would take root in the soil of North Carolina and become a Catholic powerhouse in the nation’s South.

Ninety years later, and rapidly expanding, the diocese is home to the only Catholic cathedral currently under construction in the United States, a testament to the vibrancy of its people’s faith.

Bishop Michael Burbidge announced the construction of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral at a press conference in May.

Noting the rapid growth of the diocese, the bishop said it is his “hope, dream and prayer to build a mother church, to build a cathedral” to replace the existing Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown Raleigh.

Sacred Heart Cathedral has a capacity of 320 people and was originally completed in 1924, when the Catholic population of the state was just 6,000. Today, however, the cathedral has burst its seams, serving a parish base of 3,000 Catholics in a diocese that is home to almost half a million Catholics, or 4.8% of the state’s population.

“We have people literally out in the street,” the bishop said, pointing out that Christmas and Easter celebrations see typically 13-14 Masses, with overflow locations at the cathedral-school basement and local Clarion hotel unable to serve the influx of worshippers.

Bishop Burbidge told reporters that the cathedral helps the bishop “gather the faithful of the diocese to worship as one.”

WHY I BECAME CATHOLIC (AND NOT BUDDHIST)

by: Misty [Source: Catholic Sistas]

Misty converted to Catholicism from atheism 10 years ago, just a week after becoming a mother to her first child. Prior to becoming a stay-at-home mom, she worked full-time as a magazine writer and editor. She has been married to her best friend for nearly 15 years and looks forward to many more decades by his side. Her days are now spent cooking, doing laundry, freelance writing, and homeschooling her four children. After spending so much of her life in spiritual darkness, she revels in the joy of being Catholic. Without a doubt, the Lord’s greatest gift to her has been saving her from a life without Him.

One of the questions I get most often when people hear I’m a convert is, “Why did you choose to become Catholic?” I’ve been asked this question by Jews, Baptists, Mormons, atheists, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses. The person who asks the question never says the rest of it, which is, “Why did you choose to become a Catholic INSTEAD of what I am?” These are people of genuine faith, who believe they have found and are living by The Truth. So naturally they want to understand how someone educated and sane could believe so differently.

It’s always a hard question to answer, because I’m sensitive to that unspoken part. I don’t want to insinuate–even accidentally–that they are less intelligent, less holy, or inferior to me as a Catholic. I usually give the “safe” answer, and talk about how my husband and I were drawn continuously to Jesus in the Eucharist. But part of me always yearns to say what G.K. Chesterton said so beautifully:

The difficulty of explaining “why I am Catholic” is that there are 10,000 reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

I never wanted to be a Catholic. I never even wanted to be a Christian. When my husband convinced me to join him on a quest through major and minor religions nearly 15 years ago, I did it mostly to humor him. I had lived as an avowed atheist for more than a decade and couldn’t imagine that The Truth even existed, much less it could be found. Especially when I couldn’t even accept that God was real.

Finaly, NHCP rejects change of street name in Lucena City to the Founder of the Iglesia ni Cristo®

Previous News: A Catholic Bishop stands against Philippine Politicians Passing Ordinances renaming historical Streets and Avenues to the FOUNDER of a multi-million RELIGIOUS DYNASTY Corporation in the Philippines – the MANALOS!

GMANetwork News, LUCENA CITY -Stepping into the controversy involving the change in name of one of Lucena City’s longest streets, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) has officially objected to the city council’s decision, citing historical and practical reasons.

Ordinance No. 2517, which the city council approved in a special session on May 6, renamed a portion of Granja Street into Felix Y. Manalo Street after the founder of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), one of the country’s influential Christian denominations.

Letter to councilor

The street was originally named after Fr. Mariano Granja, OFM, the first Catholic parish priest of the city.

In a letter to Councilor Benito Brizuela, chair of the city council’s committee on tourism and cultural affairs, Maria Sereno Diokno, the NHCP head, said Granja Street was appropriately named after the priest based on an 1879 document titled “Guia de Forastero,” which made first reference to Lucena.

Diokno said the integrity of the street, which includes the portion proposed to be renamed, “has been sanctified by usage and therefore has attained a degree of historical association and importance in the community.”

The NHCP, which is the government agency responsible for the conservation and preservation of the country’s historical legacies, does not allow such renaming “if it would tend to disrupt the continuity of the street name,” she said.

Diokno noted that a pioneer English writer in the country, Paz Marquez Benitez, who was born in Lucena in 1894, also “makes special mention of Granja Street in her memoirs.”

A portion

The NCHP letter to Brizuela, dated May 12, was received by the city council on May 30, according to a staff of Councilor Rhaetia Marie Abcede-Llaga, who gave a copy to the Inquirer. Llaga, who was the lone opposition to Ordinance 2517 among 11 councilors was also furnished a copy.

Brizuela, one of the main authors of the ordinance, told the Inquirer that he and the other city officials would revise the measure to instead just “name” a portion of the street.

But this would be “the same thing,” Llaga said. “I will still oppose it. I will stick to my original stand that it is still renaming because there is already a name of the street and that is Granja Street,” she told the Inquirer.

Brizuela, 68, insisted that the 170-meter stretch of Granja from Lagos Street to the back gate of the INC chapel is just an “extension” and not part of the original Granja Street. “I should know because we used to live there when I was a small boy,” he said.

Longtime residents of the middle-class neighborhood, however, belied the claim.

“My parents were natives of this street, I was born in this place and this street had long been named and identified as Granja Street and not Granja Extension,” said a 70-year-old man, who introduced himself as a member of the Alzaga family, one of Lucena’s pioneer clans.

‘Pogi’ points

Diokno debunked Brizuela’s argument in his letter to the NHCP dated April 3 that the portion proposed to be renamed was opened only in the 1960s. “It still is considered as having been sanctified by usage,” she explained.

Lucena Bishop Emilio Marquez, one of the fiercest critics of Ordinance 2517, said by phone that he was happy with Diokno’s decision. He had earlier branded the proponents as “Judases” out to earn “pogi points” from the INC for their reelection.

Brizuela and another author, Councilor Rey Oliver Alejandrino, reacted by asking the bishop who between the two Judases in the Bible they had been likened to: “Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, or Judas Thaddeus, patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes?”

But Marquez said: “I will leave the interpretation to them.”

Brizuela stressed that despite the bitter exchange of words, he would continue to remain a Catholic and loyal to the bishop.

Diokno suggested to the councilor that Manalo could still be honored by naming a structure after the INC founder.

INC ® Founding Anniversary in July 27, 2014 - a Non-Working Holiday

2,000 Jubilee Year of the Catholic Church of Christ

Dubbed as the “largest independent Christian church in Asia” Eduardo Manalo and his apparent heir-to-the-throne enjoys a unique privilege of being the “Little Pope” to this ‘Revived-Arianism’ which had been condemned by the Catholic Church since 325 AD. Their ‘independence’ from mainstream Christianity REDUCED their teachings often criticized doctrines to be ‘unorthodox’ and ‘unbiblical’ considering that they do not have Ministers who are Bible scholars and RELIED heavily on Catholic and Protestant Bible versions which the INC^® founder, Feilx Manalo branded as “AGENTS OF SATAN.”

Among it’s many HYPOCRISIES, the INC^® of Felix Manalo strongly denies the “authority of the Pope” in relations to Catholic teachings yet the MANALOS are playing the ROLE of a pope by making themselves the FINAL ARBITER in many disputes between members in matters of moral teachings, denying the Divinity of Christ while raising Felix Manalo, their founder, into the likes of Angels, prophets such as Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and even John the Baptist.

Founded in July 27, 1914, the Iglesia of Manalo will celebrate its 100TH Centennial this July 27, 2014 held at the ‘World’s Largest Dome’ the ‘Philippine Arena owned and managed by the Iglesia ni Cristo^®, built at the “CIUDAD DE VICTORIA” (English: CITY OF VICTORS; Tagalog: LUNGSOD NG MGA MANALO).

GMANetwork News, MANILA - The Senate on Monday passed a resolution declaring July 27 this year as a non-working holiday to commemorate the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC)'s centennial. 

The INC, which practices bloc-voting during elections, has an estimated five to eight million votes out of the 52 million registered voters nationwide. The INC's support is much sought-after by politicians during elections. 

Eighteen senators voted to approve House Joint Resoultion No. 12 declaring INC's centennial year celebration next month as a holiday due to "the massive scale of the vent." 

The resolution was filed by House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales Jr., Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora and Bacolod City Rep. Evelio Leonardia.
The resolution described the INC as "the largest entirely indigenous Christian church in the Philippines" and as "the largest independent Christian church in Asia." -NB, GMA News

ULF EKMAN: He discovered the TRUE CHURCH, what's keeping you from converting?

"We have seen a great love for Jesus and a sound theology, founded on the Bible and classic dogma. We have experienced the richness of sacramental life. We have seen the logic in having a solid structure for priesthood, that keeps the faith of the church and passes it on from one generation to the next. We have met an ethical and moral strength and consistency that dare to face up to the general opinion, and a kindness towards the poor and the weak. And, last but not least, we have come in contact with representatives for millions of charismatic Catholics and we have seen their living faith.

"I discovered how little I really knew about [Catholics], their spirituality and their beliefs. Unconsciously I carried many prejudices and bad attitudes and have been quick to judge them without really knowing what they actually believed. It has been good to discover and to repent from nonchalant and shallow opinions, based not on their own sources but on their opponents, and to discover a very rich heritage, a strong theological foundation and a deep love for Jesus Christ among them. -Sweden's Pentecostal Megapastor Converts to Catholicism - Ulf Ekman stuns his Word of Life megachurch in Sunday sermon: He's crossing the Tiber.

Former Protestant Pastor Ulf Ekman's Facebook page

“It really challenged our Protestant prejudices, and we realized that we, in many cases, did not have any basis for our criticism of them. We needed to know the Catholic faith better. This led us to the realize that it was actually Jesus Christ who led us to unite with the Catholic Church.”

Episcopalian Blogger Converts to Catholicism

WAYPOINTS by Greg Griffith - A Conversion Story

Thanks to Creative Minority Report for introducing his blog to the world

After more than ten years on the front lines of the Anglican wars, I have made a major change. This past Easter vigil, my family and I were confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s a measure of what a long and strange journey it’s been for me over this past decade that I’ve even had to entertain the question of what kind of reaction this might cause among people I’ve never even met, or the political ripples it might send out through the various quarters of my allies and opponents.

I was raised in a straight-from-central-casting, large Southern Baptist church: The building occupying an entire city block, the Sunday service televised, communion (as it were) once a year, consisting of saltine crackers and Welch’s grape juice.

After about a decade as a more or less unchurched young adult, I married a Catholic girl, in the Catholic church, but due to a dismal experience in pre-marriage counseling classes, we quickly drifted away from the church. Following her parents - who reconciled a Catholic/Methodist marriage by joining the Episcopal Church - within a few years we were also received into the Episcopal Church. Nearly a decade of quiet, uneventful participation was followed by another decade of, shall we say, intense participation, beginning with the fallout from the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 : Before that, I was sitting quietly in the back pews. Soon after, I was one of the most visible Anglican laymen on Planet Earth.

On Whose Authority? – Conversion Story of Father Raymond Ryland

Article from COMING HOME NETWORK INTERNATIONAL

Please share directly from the site.

“How can you go into that darkness, once you have known the light?” In deep anguish, my mother-in-law asked my wife and me this question when we told her we were going to enter the Catholic Church.

There was a time when the thought of becoming Catholics would have caused us even greater distress than our news caused her. Now, however, we were near the end of a sixteen-year pilgrimage. We could finally see the Tiber ahead, and we were eager to cross.

For many years, we had known ourselves as seekers. Now we realized we were pilgrims. The difference? Pilgrims know where they are going.

Whatever its hidden roots, the “seeking that was a pilgrimage” began not long after Ruth and I married. While the initiative was largely mine, all those years we traveled together: reading, praying, discussing, at times arguing — always just between ourselves.

Yet we never walked in lockstep. Sometimes one of us would go ahead, and the other would insist on a spiritual rest stop. (I did most of the darting ahead and the chastened retracing of steps.) But we were always together. For that, we are forever grateful.

During much of our pilgrimage, we knew that we were wrestling with the problem of authority. How does one know Christian truth with certainty? We saw with increasing clarity that this issue underlies all the divisions among the thousands of competing Christian traditions.

We also began to recognize that the issue of authority is at root a Christological question: What has God done in Christ to communicate His truth to the world?

How a Protestant spin machine hid the truth about the English Reformation

By Dominic Selwood
The Telegraph

if Catherine had borne Henry a son, everything would be different…

...May 23, is the anniversary of King Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon —­ the event which started the English Reformation.

In 2003, Charles Clarke, Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for Education and Skills, expressed strong views on the teaching of British history.

I don’t mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no reason for the state to pay for them.

In response, Michael Biddiss, professor of medieval history at Reading University, suggested that Mr Clarke’s view may have been informed by Khrushchev’s notion that historians are dangerous people, capable of upsetting everything.­­­­­

In many ways, Khrushchev was correct. Historians can be a distinct threat —­ both those who create “official” history, and those who work quietly to unpick it, filling in the irksome and unhelpful details.

Rulers in all ages have tried to control how history sees them, and have gone to great lengths to have events recorded the way they want. The process is as old as authority itself.

The result is that generations of people learn something at school, only to find out later that it was not so. For instance, children brought up in the communist countries of the 20th century have little idea of the indiscriminately murderous mechanics at the heart of their founding revolutions. More recently, in the United States, anyone young enough not to have lived through the two recent Iraq wars might, if they only read political memoirs, actually believe that the wars were fought to root out al Qaeda.

So what about England? Has our constitutional monarchy and ancient tradition of parliamentary democracy protected our history from political manipulation? Can we rely on what we are taught and told, or are there myths we, too, have swallowed hook, line, and sinker?

Where better to start than with that most quintessentially English of events ­— the break with Rome that signalled the birth of modern England?

For centuries, the English have been taught that the late medieval Church was superstitious, corrupt, exploitative, and alien. Above all, we were told that King Henry VIII and the people of England despised its popish flummery and primitive rites. England was fed up to the back teeth with the ignorant mumbo-jumbo magicians of the foreign Church, and up and down the country Tudor people preferred plain-speaking, rational men like Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin. Henry VIII achieved what all sane English and Welsh people had long desired ­– an excuse to break away from an anachronistic subjugation to the ridiculous medieval strictures of the Church.

We are brought up to believe that Catholicism is, well, un-English

For many in England, the subject of whether or not this was true was not even up for debate. Even now, the historical English disdain for all things Catholic is often regarded as irrefutable and objective fact. Otherwise why would we have been taught it for four and a half centuries? And anyway, the English are quite clearly not an emotional race like some of our continental cousins. We like our churches bright and clean and practical and full of common sense. For this reason, we are brought up to believe that Catholicism is just fundamentally, well … un-English.