If you are a Protestant Christian desiring to convert to the Catholic Church and you feel that your salvation, in-filling of the Holy Spirit and marriage are valid, why does the Catholic Church require you to validate these things? 

If Peter accepted Cornelius’ conversion (Acts 10), why doesn’t the Church acknowledge this in a Protestant who believes that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ?

Yours,

Phil Lephtaut

You’ve answered your own question. 

In Acts chapter 10, we read that Peter was amazed to see Pentecost happening to un-baptized, non-Jewish Romans. He didn’t say, “Well, these goyim obviously have the Holy Spirit, There’s no need to baptize them.” No, he said “Oy! These goyim have the Holy Spirit! We’d better baptize them.” (This is admittedly a very loose translation of the text.) 

He validated their experience by means of sacraments.  Experience is not a sacrament and a sacrament is not necessarily an experience. 

I know a pastor who preaches the same old tired sermons to his patient congregation. He is fond of saying that “Sacrament is a Latin word that means ‘oath to the death’.”  His poor parishioners must be tired of hearing it, but he has a point. A sacrament is a covenant. 

Let’s look at marriage. “We love each other. Why bother with a ceremony. After all, it’s just a piece of paper!”  If your current love interest says that to you, you’d darn well better get it in writing before you have a joint bank account. Public declaration is a necessary part of any covenant, and a covenant ends only with the death of one of those who declare it. Love may be only a feeling until it becomes a covenant. When it becomes a covenant it leaves the world of feeling and becomes real. Feelings come and go. 

Sacraments are recorded in Heaven as well as on earth. The Church doesn’t deny your experience with Jesus when you took Him as your Lord and Savior. The Church doesn’t deny the beauty of your encounter with the Holy Spirit. We just say that those were gifts of love from our Heavenly Father, signs of His goodness to you. Isn’t it about time you made a covenant with God since He offers it to you?

Some people think that Catholics don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. On the contrary! Nothing is more personal for us Catholics. We are human persons who come to know the divine persons of the Trinity intimately through the humanity of Jesus the God-man. What could be more intimate than Holy Communion?  

The difference is this. Our relationship to God is personal, not private.  He is OUR Father, not just my Father. It is a public, covenant relationship. To make it truly public, it is very important to have the right steward of the covenant (or more commonly put, minister of the sacrament) to receive your covenant oath. 

If you were baptized in a valid formula, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we don’t re-validate your baptism, though we may do what is called a conditional baptism if there is some doubt about the manner of that first baptism. Any baptized Christian can be the minister of the sacrament, though a deacon or a priest is the regular minister. 

As for marriage, the bride and groom are the ministers of the sacrament, so if the marriage of a person coming into the church was valid, having no impediments, (for instance a valid former marriage), we respect that marriage. Exceptions can be made for the good of the person coming into the Church, but a non-Catholic marriage is respected even after entry into the Church.

The real rub is that even though you have come to believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist and you long for that intimate communion with Him, you can’t legitimately stroll down the aisle and take Holy Communion until you formally enter the Church! 

This makes so many people  mad. 

“Why can’t Catholics be nice like the Methodists who say ‘Let all who love the Lord come forward?’ It just proves that Catholics are narrow-minded and judgmental.” We say, “Let all those who have made the public covenant  to live and die for the Lord and His Bride come forward." (This of course means that you are living for the Lord in a state of grace.)

We are trying to spare you a curse. 

Remember that St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians that it is possible to receive Communion unworthily and so doing to come under a curse!  Communion is an oath to the death. It isn’t just an experience. It is a gift from God, but it is also my gift to God, if I do it right. I offer my life as He offered His every time I take Communion. It was for His Bride, who we call the Church, that He offered his life. Are you really willing to love Her as He does? 

Communion is not just about my relationship to Jesus, The Bride is an essential part of true Communion. Is it possible to love a man and at the same time hate his wife? She may have issues, but he loves her and if I don’t love her, I must think that , in loving her so, he is a bit off his rocker. If I hate your spouse, eventually I will part company with you! If you are ready to offer your life for the bride, why do you hesitate to join her? 

Perhaps it’s time you swore the oath and publicly join the Covenant.  

Come on in. The water’s fine!

Yours,

Rev. Know-It-All