Catholicism and the curse of the elder brother to the prodigal son
When I look around me, I can’t miss a Cathedral in my local or diaspora environments. My eyes open and shut to such places of worship in both local or international settings that I have known or been to. The Catholic church I must say is present in any part of the globe and has brought about many changes around our environment in terms of education, enlightenment, healthcare, water, drought management among other positive things worth a mention. I grew up in a catholic home, where my whole extended family belonged to the Catholic church including my dad. My only remaining grandmother from my mum is a staunch catholic and a member of the Catholic Women Action (CWA). As I write on this paper, it has taken me quite some years and lots of guts plus research on the few issues that remain a little unclear about my clan’s church denomination. By the way, if you didn’t know, in Africa, the family you belong to, tends to dictate religion, marriage and other important aspects of one’s life.
When I began a serious study on the Catholic church, I was a little hesitant to point finger at it because of the good things the church has generally contributed to our society in the past two or more centuries as a county and as a continent. However, I have had to seek the peace of my heart and find grace to pen down a few points that each person bound to the church needs to self-examine before calling me a heretic or before crucifying me as they did to others who had a different opinion on the church. I schooled in Catholic-sponsored schools which gave me an insider’s perspective on the things that concern me and this paper. I still have relatives who are Catholics and I would like to engage each of them at a very personal and intellectual level if not spiritually.
I titled my paper, the elder brother to the prodigal son with an intention to make us aware that Catholics are our real brothers for those who call themselves the protestants. Why is that the case? I have been convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the members of this church believe in the Lordship of Jesus and his work in this world was that of bringing people closer to God. However, we differ in principles on a few other issues similar to the prodigal son and his brother. While the prodigal son got lost outside the home of his father, the elder brother was lost while serving his father. The story of the prodigal son is a well-known parable in the holy scriptures that seeks to affirm the love God has for his people who were lost, and he waited for them to know that he was always there waiting for them.
The prodigal son asked for his inheritance from his father and left his father’s house only to squander his heritage with wayward people till he got broke and remembered that he had wronged his father. He seeks his way back and found that his father was always waiting for him, and when he came back, the father threw a party for him to show him love, and how he had missed him. He repents for his hedonic lifestyle and receives forgiveness. The drama unfolds when his elder brother who had never asked for his inheritance nor been celebrated for his hard labour comes home from his routine hard labour in his father’s field only to find a party going on for someone who deserved punishment and bashing.
The elder brother is contrasted with the prodigal son by his hard labour for the many years his brother had spent away from his father’s home, with his prodigal brother whose many years of wasting his inheritance seemed to be rewarded by a party! He got very mad at the father for throwing a party for his son who deserved to be punished and excommunicated for his undeserving acts. He is jealous of his brother as well as angry at his father. Where does the catholic church seem like an elder brother in the prodigal story to me? Well, the church that seems to have given birth to the reformation was the catholic church in the 15th century. They produced the best monks whose dedication to serving the ever-changing and dynamic God was prevalent in those days than any recorded history after the Early Church.
When I compare the catholic church with the elder son, I get emotional as they seem to work so hard to attain sainthood, yet they don’t manage that level till they are dead. The elder brother labours so hard on his father’s farm, and never asks for even a little lamb for his own good. The elder brother never owned what had been left behind while his brother went and squandered money. He never got a chance to go out since he was busy slaving it by his father’s house. Similarly, the catholic church gets tricky by being the custodians of the Christian faith since the second century, yet never enjoyed the fruit of their fellow workers, the reformers. Instead, they chose to kill them after long tussles on irreconcilable differences. Years later, they are still working very hard to remain relevant in our day.
However, there was a mishap when the reformation began to happen because the church became a hindrance to the same God they claimed to represent by excommunicating the reformers. What followed was a breakaway after a break-away into Protestantism.
Today, there are many denominations from what was the universal catholic church just because the catholic church refused to accommodate the new norms during those days. Today we still have those divisions in terms of religion as well as practice. What are some of the questionable characteristics in the catholic faith that bring a demarcation that is not found anywhere else in the so-called Christian circles?
1. Worship of saints- clearly, the first commandment warns us against that
2. Hailing mother Mary as a deity- she seems like a god for many Catholics, which is against the first commandment.
3. The fact that the Bible they use is quite different from the holy scripture with additional apocryphal books and pseudepigrapha is also questionable.
4. The Bible warns against addition into the current scripture and tells of the right thing to do; not to add or subtract, Revelation 22:18-19. It should be clear that the accepted canon was intact under the Catholic church until a few years after the reformation in the 1500s.
5. The use of rosary to make prayer-this seems a ritual that is almost cultic in nature as if it is a use of charms for witchcraft.
6. The direct persecution and execution of those who defected from the faith seem all a mystical religion. To date, one cannot be allowed to leave the church, they are bullied or sent from home because they have left the #familychurch.
7. Enchantment or repetitions of prayers which at times are made to saints or to Mary and not through Jesus is usually a weird thing for me and goes an extra mile into cultic behaviour.
8. The issuing of the elements of the holy communion is a little bit of trouble seeing that only the priest gets to drink the cup, the rest take bread alone. Contrary to the institution of the same by Christ, there is no cup for the commoners, yet Christ took the cup as well as the bread and shared it with the disciples, and commanding them to do the same in remembrance of him
9. The Vatican and Pope seem to be the foremost in leading the members astray. While we well know that Jerusalem is the holy place for Christians, but the catholic church has shifted the base into the Vatican in Rome. The pope is usually the final say in matters concerning religion. If he turns away from the truth, the rest of the members in their billions turn astray as no one can question or correct the pope. This is not a new practice it has always been since time immemorial. There was a belief that popes inherit their priesthood from the last remaining church father from the Early Church. These claims cannot be substantiated!
10. In the event that many men who sign up to be priests, are not allowed to marry, and they have messed with many ladies who are in the monasteries, there are claims of fetuses found dumped around those places where these ladies live. This was to cover up their sin, yet they could easily be allowed to marry and have families. The punitive doctrine which pressurizes men and women to sign up for such posts is already a sign that man is desperately wicked. Only a few could have the gift of celibacy, but some sign up for that role yet their human passions have played games on them. Something must surely be done on this issue in our continent before we are judged for the innocent blood poured every year or perhaps daily from irresponsible parishioners who have wooed their female counterparts into sexual immorality while claiming celibacy for the masses sake! (https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/703067602/after-years-of-abuse-by-priests-nunstoo-are-speaking-out)
The list could be longer, but let us stay here for a bit. When we look at the issue of massacre and martyrdom, we realize that the catholic church has had questions to answer in the past as they killed and torched those who went against their doctrines or those who defected from their faith. It is a time to speak the truth in love and seek the truth for ourselves. When the rest of the church is counting believers in the whole earth, Catholics are counted in there, yet the truth of the matter is unless individuals begin to seek the truth found in the unadulterated truth from the scripture, it is a bit hard to comfortably conclude that they shall all inherit the kingdom of heaven. This paper is ready for candid conversations around the topics raised herein and recommends personal stock-taking as opposed to a communal response. (http://www.tyndale.org/tsj06/daniell.html)
The church has expressed itself differently over the years such that there is no single way or religion that can claim the monopoly of how best to do it. However, there are a few non-negotiables about the whole of this matter on worship, especially when it comes to going against the Biblical truths. There is no single religion that shall kneel before the seat of judgement, but every personal knee shall bow down and confess the Lordship of Christ. As this paper began by noting, the big brother was lost not outside his father’s house like the prodigal brother, yet he was lost and didn’t know that he was actually lost. The Catholic church has preserved a lot of Christian evidence in the past. It runs the risk of being lost within the house. If reading this, you should have a catholic neighbour, sibling, parent or friend. Pray that the light of God shall dawn on them so as to make the right decision as early as possible. Let's call our elder brother back to the Father.
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