A Catholic Looks at Calvinism Part I

I was raised a pretty standard Southern Baptist in north Louisiana. We went to the main Southern Baptist Church that was THE Church in town. There were the Methodists and the usual Other main Baptist Church ,but we were the movers and shakers.

Back then if you had asked the average joe in the pews of the First Baptist Church of Homer what TULIP was likely he would have responded a flower. YES I KNOW IT IS A HERB. If you had asked about predestination, he would have responded was that was something the Presbyterians did down the street.

I remember in my high school algebra Class the teacher brought up predestination one day(it was a private school). She was a great teacher and she was one of the those Presbyterians down the street. In my town the Presybterians were all educated, seemed to have wealth, sent their kids to great colleges like Rhodes, and had decendants that have been in the Parish since Moses. They were the elect so what would you expect :). Well the class ,of mostly Baptist and Methodist variations ,looked at her like she was explaining some new variation of the big bang theory. Some of us ,concerned that we were destined to be damned and there was not a flipping thing we could do about it, consulted the Methodist English teacher later in the day. She said no that was a Presbyterian thing and don't worry we could just accept Jesus and we would be fine. Well I was relived and proceeded not to think about it for years.

How times have changed. The issue of Calvinism is starting to cause big problems in the Southern Baptist Church. Churches are splitting over it in fact

Calvinism is a part of basic theology for many protestants even though some are not aware of it.It is not just a Presbyterian thing of course. Various strains of it come up every few decades in many unexpected places. Some are extreme Calvanist. Like the preachers that will not tell their children God loves them because they don't know if he does.

However, Catholics would make a mistake not to think that the terms that often are associated with Calvanist thought such as elect and predestination have no place in Catholic theology. They do but at times we look at them differently.

At this point I would like to introduce a Anglo Catholic(Episcopal) from my neck of the woods whose blog is called In hoc signo vinces. He is my second Episcopal/Anglican blogger I am putting on my blogroll. There is a reason for my interest in the Anglican Communion in which I will explain in a post later. There are big things happening in the Episcopal Church and we should all be praying for them.

Anyway he had a excellent post on this issue that does a nice job giving a into.

I will explore Calvinism and how a Catholic looks at the issues involved later on.

IF you can't wait go to this excellent Catholic's thoughts and debates on the issue.