Expert: Griff Ruby - 12/15/2003

Question
I started dating a beautiful woman who happens to be Southern Baptist.  I'm a devout Catholic and though male, I have a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary and often pray the Rosary.

I never knew much about the SBC.  However, after speaking with this woman and some quick searches on the internet, there seems to be a lot of strong differences.  

My question is: Can you give me the basic details of why we are different and I guess from a Catholic point of view, why SBC isn't necessarily the religion to be in (please include misconceptions, biblical facts, etc)?  Thanks.  Any information will be helpful.

Answer
Having been in days gone by a Protestant and now Catholic, I speak from experience.
The most painful aspect of all this is that Baptists can be (typically are) really solid people of integrity and true Christian values.  So this beautiful woman is no doubt very beautiful inside as well, making having to go separate ways only all the more painful.
But the religous differences must be worked out before any workable relationship has any business getting started or it will be very difficult on the kids.  For example, do the kids go to church with mom or dad?  Especially when they are too little to choose for themselves or else their decisions end up being made on the basis of "if I go with dad, we get to eat at McDonald's afterwords," and the like.
Seriously, the doctrinal differences are many, and it shouldn't take much discussion with her to find most of them.  Some Baptists will actually hear sermons in their church about how the Catholics are "wrong" and even "going to hell" for their beliefs etc.

Here is a short list of trouble topics:

Mary - Baptists regard her as yet another fallen sinner, and most violently oppose the idea of calling her the "Queen of Heaven," citing a passage in Scripture about a pagan "Queen of Heaven" (Ashtoreth) condemned therein.
They deny her sinlessness, her perpetual virginity, her ability to intercede for us in prayer, her role as Medatrix of Graces, her immaculate Conception, and her Assumption.

Purgatory - Baptists believe the saved enter Heaven immediately, the rest are damned, and no dead need ever be prayed for.  Making sacrifices for the dead in Purgatory is unheard of with them

Saints - While Bible characters are well enough known by them (but admired only as examples, never prayed to), all other saints coming later go unsung, unacknowleged, and altogether unknown.  The whole idea of them having feast days and vigils is unknown to them

Church - Baptists have no concept of the Church as a historic entity entrusted to be the guardian of the faith and all graces of God in the Catholic sense of what that is.  To Baptists, any group of Christians coming together to pray are all the "church" that need exist or could exist.  For them, the whole idea of someone in charge of the Church, a Pope, is unheard of by them.  The visible church to them is of miniscule interest; the invisible church of "God's chosen" is all they care about or believe in or take seriously.

History - Baptists are taught that Catholics persecuted them throughout history, despite the fact that Baptists only existed since the seventeenth century or so.  They see Catholics as some false church created some long time ago, somewhere between Emperor Constantine and Thomas Aquinas (no possibility of identifying any actual point of departure from the supposed "ancient" faith which they imagine to be like theirs), and theselves as the real Christians.  Baptists (like virtually all other non-Catholics) are notoriously ignorant of Church history and of why and how it attained the answers it has today.  There is no consciousness of trying to reach the same solutions to problems the Church reached in previous centuries, no capacity to learn from the past (outside that past documented in the Bible).

Bible - For Baptists, this book alone is their only source of religous authority.  So, any Bible verse or concept which is unclear becomes "catch as catch can," and interpretations have changed though the text has not (at least not the text Baptists trust).  They have no concept of a Church authorized to arbitrate and rule as to the exact meaning of any scripture or spiritual/scriptural topic.  Their Bible also lacks several Old Testament books (Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus/Serach, Wisdom, 1 & 2 Machabees, and portions of Esther and Daniel) contained in Catholic Bibles.

Morality - a hundred years ago, Baptists were as opposed to divorce and contraception as Catholics are, but since these topics are seldom discussed in Scripture, the Christian rules in these areas have been relaxed to the point that divorce becomes readily practicable, certainly doable, and contraception becomes a "good thing."

Tradition - To a Baptist, any religious idea, notion, practice, artifact, or other detail not specified in Scripture is mere "tradition," and with very few exceptions (wedding rings for example), are all discounted and rejected as "traditions of men."

Theology - Though Baptists usually still acknowlege the Trinity, the Incarnation of God in Christ, and His redemption for our sins on the Cross, Baptist theology goes no further, knowing nothing of the Son being eternally begotten of the Father, the Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son, the two natures of Christ and his one person and one will.

Sacraments - For Baptists, the only "sacrament" is water Baptism, pure and simple.  Though they do (obviously) also have marriages, they do not regard that as a sacrament (hence their willingness to recognize divorces).  The other Sacraments are unknown to them, dismissed as mere meaningless "rituals," as if doing sacraments was just doing "good works" to save oneself.  They have no concept of the Eucharist.  To them its just bread and wine, mere symbols in some way they cannot explain, but that is all.  The Blessed Sacrament is nonsense to them, and the adoration of such in processions or benediction is utterly lost on them.  Forgiveness is a problem for them since they do not have the confessional.  They may differ markedly as to how this is to be handled.  For some, it is enough to say "forgive me, Lord," and that takes care of it, for others, even that is not necessary since we are "saved" and cannot be lost, for still others, a serious sin could mean losing your salvation with no hope of rescue, or else even having to be baptised again, and so on.

Sacramentals - Statues, blessed objects, rosaries, holy cards, crucifixes, holy water, priestly and family blessings, and so forth are all rejected as being mere "traditions of men."  Even worse, statues in particular are equated in their eyes with idols, not merely to be ignored or relegated to mere artistic status but perhaps even destroyed or desecrated.

I think you can see from that list that there is much of religous impact for you and this beautiful woman to fight over, and a decision not to fight over all these things (or any other that may come up which I have not thought of or mentioned here) would only amount to having religion cease to be of any real importance to either of you.

One other thing to take note of is that many Baptists are well-trained in using Bible proof-texts to "prove" that their religion is biblical and ours is not.  Implicit to all such "proofs" is the belief that Catholics don't read the Bible, never read the Bible, and somehow devised all their theology and traditions out of some sort of refusal to so much as open a Bible.  That of course is patently false, and none of the Bible passages cited by them, if properly understood, would contest or challenge so much as a single Catholic doctrine.  But unless one understands the meaning of the scripture (in its immediate biblical context, in the context of other biblical references to the same topic, in the context of known and documented history and archeology, science, etc., and as officially interpreted by the Church), some passages will no doubt seem quite persuasive to anyone unfamiliar with scripture.
But the Catholic Church has been around for about 2,000 years and has heard them all before and knows the answers (if only one can find where the answer is provided).  For
further understanding of why we Catholics are right about what scripture really teaches and why it cannot be validly read in the facile way protestant apologists use it against us I recommend the book (should be easy to find in any Catholic bookstore or even many other religious bookstores, or can be ordered at any bookstore or online) "Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on 'Romanism' by 'Bible Christians'" by Karl keating.
A practical suggestion, make your dates be ones on which the two of you will take some particular issue and discuss it in detail.  Take pains to bone up on it ahead of time from this book.
Other books of value here would be (all available from TAN Books and Publishers):
The Catholic Controversy by St. Francis de Sales
This is the Faith by Canon Francis Ripley
Where We Got The Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church by Rev. Henry G. Graham

I hope this all helps!  God bless!