Tell us more, please Robert.

Stephen Ray is a former Baptist..he answers all the issues that the anti-catholic book uses. he shows the patristic and Scriptural roots of what I believed was the heresy of Romanism. Vist his web site. hear Him on Cartholic Answers radio. Off to bed .I.’m in old NORTH wales!

Speaking of Ray Galea and his book…

he’s one the four speakers at the Megasurge on 1st March, looking at Faith, Grace, Jesus, Bible. This is a youth event run by Youthsurge in response to Catholic Youth Day…

Check it out at www.megasurge.com.au

Hi Stephen,

I’m very interested in obtaining a copy of your notes on Galea’s “Nothing in my hand I bring”.

I shall be very grateful if you could email them to me at
raphcheung@yahoo.com

Thank you for your kind assistance.

raphael cheung

Recently I was loaned by a close Sydney Anglican friend of mine a copy of Ray Galea’s book: Nothing in my hand I bring.

The book prompted me to write a series of notes regarding the book while better understanding and clarifying my own RC faith. I have no formal qualifications in the Catholic faith but I did the best I could with my knowledge.

I believe this discussion is important especially considering the upcoming World Youth Day.

If anyone would like a copy of my notes just send me a message with your email address (to maintain privacy), and I’ll be happy to send them to you

- Steve

Hi Ken
I understand the book of Hebrews and it in no way contradicts Catholic belief.

Using an ex-Catholic to prove a position for protestantism is a weak one.  Too many Catholics do not know their faith.  Poorer for them I say.  Some protestants knowingly are aware of this and prey on unsuspecting candidates.  Instead of proselytizing Catholics, perhaps you could ask them if they have read any good books regarding the faith.  Point them to websites you have stumbled upon.  Give them the opportunity to first be totally informed, so that in years to come when they find out the truth of the Catholic faith, they won’t regret leaving.
Kind regards
Donna

Hi all
My daughter has just brought home a copy of the book you are all talking about.  She is in hysterics about what she has read.  Her opinion is that he is extremely uninformed (like most ex-Catholics).  She feels it is not a fair representation of the CC at all.  Looks like I have more reading to do!
Donna

There may be many Catholics who don’t know their faith, but I don’t see how that applies to Ray Galea. It was only through studying Catholic doctrine and the Bible that he came to rejecting Catholicism.

Having read Ray Galea’s book some time ago, it seems to me that he has pure and not malicious intentions. However, it also seems to me Dannii, that most of the research that you are talking about, was done in preparation for the book and not while he was moving towards Protestantism. There is one scene is the book in which he more or less points to his total ignorance of Catholic doctrine as a Catholic. Quite simply, he had received insufficient catechesis as a young Catholic. To a large extent that’s not his fault, but it is deeply telling.

I think that the issue may be one of inadvertent strawman representation than deliberate distortion and misrepresentation at various points. However, I’d suggest that the more significant problems appear to be rather strange leaps of logic in his argument and the non-sequitur nature of some of his observations.

To give you an example of this, in his chapter of Catholicism and the Bible, Galea points to Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees traditions, then proceeds to suggest that all tradition is inherently bad, notwithstanding the fact that both Jesus and his apostles repeatedly speak positively about sacred tradition throughout the New Testament. He then makes the observation that because of the role of sacred tradition in the Catholic Church, it is essentially unreformable. Which, if you ask any well-informed Catholic, is precisely the point! Why would you want or need to reform sacred tradition that Jesus had entrusted to his apostles to preserve?

I also suspect that more thorough research would have helped Galea to avoid some of the more glaring errors in his book. For instance, Galea points to the practice of selling indulgences as an example of tradition being faulty. Yet, had he done his homework, he would know that the selling of indulgences was never an authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church and not tradition, as such. He would also have realised that the practice of selling indulgences was outlawed at the Council of Trent. Which, when you remember that Galea points to the unreformable nature of sacred tradition, kind of undermines the idea that the selling of indulgences were sacred tradition in the first place!

Joshua
I would agree that Ray Galea is genuine in his approach, however, you can be genuinely wrong.  I too have found some glaring errors and misunderstandings.  I am not yet finished, however, it is looking like the same old story that I have read many times before.
Donna

A bit of a tangent here.

So often when two people of opposing viewpoints discuss an issue, they both accuse the other of not understanding and/or misrepresenting the opposing point of view.

David Cloud makes this point about Calvinism. He says most Calvinists say the Arminians are misunderstanding or misrepresenting their position. But as a Calvinist [though also a Baptist and New Covenant Theologian], I have to agree with him that he and others are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the teaching about election, predestination and the like which Calvinists believe to be biblical.

How can we ensure that we are fairly representing the other person’s point of view?

Would we be more likely to have less disagreements if we could firstly come to an agreement about what the other side is saying?

I found galea’s book really irritating.  The sub title is a total misrepresentation, as the book makes absolutely no critical analysis of protestant beliefs.  Instead, it comes out of a genre of why his subsect of a particular protestant sect is right and catholics are wrong.  I think the book is propaganda for the converted, nothing more.

A couple of questions I would have liked to see galea address:

The wacking degree of glossing resorted to by protestants in any discussion re the real presence of jesus in the eucharist - this really blows me away
The tendency to idolatry in protestantism in first idolatry of a book and second in idolatry of personal experience
How do protestants reconcile the fact that the canon (and probably the writings) are based on tradition but they reject appeals to tradition as relativist and rely on the bible alone even though that rests on tradition
Internal inconsistencies in the bible itself suggesting it is somewhat different to a statute
Conflicts between scientific knowledge and a literalist interpretation of the bible
How come there are so many protestant sects if each person reaches the truth by reading the bible with the grace of god?
Why do protestants give such weight to paul and ignore jesus in the works v word debate?
How do you explain away predestination if it is all about god and nothing about you?

(When I say protestants, I probably mean hard line calvanists, don’t want to insult too many people)

cheers

John

I have some notes (which I sent to the author at his request last year and have not yet had a response to) that anyone can have if they are interested.

John, I think you’ll find answers to many of your questions/statements in other topics already. I do have a few thoughts though…

As David made the point, we should first understand each other. So what exactly do you mean by “real presence”?

In what ways do protestants idolise the Bible?

I’m not sure what you believe, but your statement about inconsistencies in scripture makes me think you don’t believe the Bible is inerrant. I think that to dicuss any of the issues properly the minimum common ground we must have is that the Bible is inspired, infallible and inerrant.

And finally you asked:

How come there are so many protestant sects if each person reaches the truth by reading the bible with the grace of god?

This is a question I’ve asked many times too. I don’t know the answer. (And neither is it only the protestant sects who have incompatible beliefs, there are many forms of catholicism too.) I think in the end the answer to this question is the same as the answer to why God allows any sin to continue at all.

While there are reputed to be more than 25,000 registered Protestant denominations, I don’t think this represents 25,000 different understandings of the Bible.

But while there is one Roman Catholic Church, there are many, many different interpretations of Roman Catholic teaching. I can’t help noticing that some Protestants seem to be beign criticised for assuming that offical Rmoan Catholic documents represent what Roman Catholics teach and believe.

Ray Galea seems to have gone to some trouble to use official Roman Catholic documents as his sources, but apparently he has still got it wrong by citing those docuemnts.

I can’t help noticing that some Protestants seem to be beign criticised for assuming that offical Rmoan Catholic documents represent what Roman Catholics teach and believe.

Where have you noticed this, David? What specific criticisms and documents are you referring to? If you’re talking about my post (among others), I pointed not to Galea’s use or misuse of official Roman Catholic documents, but his strange extrapolation of Jesus’ criticism about the Pharisees’ traditions, then his assumption that the selling of indulgences was an official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Could you please tell me where I’ve gone wrong?

Personally and for what it is worth, I think that the book does have some real value. I’d encourage fellow Catholics to read the book, if only to appreciate more deeply common Protestant stumbling blocks to the Catholic faith, either real or imagined.