Can’t you just accept Jesus, be born again, and be saved? Why should we go further and become Catholic? Tim Staples, a former Protestant pastor, explains why the question of authority ultimately brought him into the Church established by Jesus.
Caller: I became a born-again Christian three years ago—I’m 47 years old, so it’s quite late on in life, I was 44—with an evangelical church. And after I became born-again, I became very active in the pro-life movement which is mainly Catholic-led, so I know a lot of Catholics. So my question is: why would I be a Catholic, given that I’m born-again? I know Jesus, I know I’m saved, why be a Catholic?
Tim Staples: Adam, great question. I can tell you from my own perspective—because as you know, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior when I was 10 years old at Boulevard Baptist Church in Falls Church, Virginia, changed my life. I wanted to be a preacher from the time I was 10. I later became a minister in an Assembly of God community, loved Jesus, became a good old Pentecostal preacher.
And so I asked basically the same question you’re asking me, I asked of a young marine about 34 years ago. And basically the answer is: I became Catholic, first and foremost, to save my soul. Because see, I believe, Adam, that you can be as born-again as you want to be born-again, and we believe you’re born again in John 3:5 through baptism—of course, faith and baptism. We believe that’s what Jesus is talking about there, and it’s very clear when you look at the context that he’s talking about being born of water and spirit, that it’s referring to baptism, which is the instrument whereby we are brought into Christ.
As Romans 6:3-4 says, we’re buried together with him him through baptism. 1 Peter 3:21 says “baptism does now save us.” Acts 22:16, Ananias says to Paul “Why tarriest thou? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” So baptism is the instrument of salvation. “What must we do?” they said to Peter in Acts 2:37. “Repent, and be baptized each one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins,” right?
So you can be as born-again as born-again can be, but you also have to obey Jesus. You can’t just go out and start your own Church. That’s so contrary to everything in the New Testament. The idea—for example, Martin Luther, to start his own Church, the Lutheran Church—where in the world is that in the Bible? Jesus, my brother, is the only one who has the authority to start a Church, and he did that two thousand years ago. When Luther and then Calvin and then Knox and then Zwingli, and now we have thousands of different men and women, have started their own churches, that is outside of the will of God. And I had to realize that.
I’ll tell you, Adam, I was asked the question: why was I Assembly of God? And I had to: “Oh, okay, well why am I Assembly of God? Well, I like the 16 tenets of faith of the Assembly of God— oh, well, actually I disagreed with two of them—but I liked 14 out of the 16!” Right? And so I really had to scrutinize: “Okay, why am I?” And then I had to say “Well, why am I, why am I, why am I?”
Until finally what you end up doing is, if you ask the question: okay, what would you have been if you were around in, let’s say, oh, 1450? Right? There was no Protestantism. It didn’t exist. I would have been Cath—well, maybe I’d have been Orthodox. Okay, well, what would you have been in the year 900? There was no Orthodox. And ultimately, Adam, it goes back to the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.
And I found out, as an historical fact, that Jesus Christ really did establish one church, and that is the Catholic Church. And we, as a historical fact, can trace all of the ordinations of all of our bishops from all around the world back to the apostles. Every bishop in the world that is Catholic is a successor of an apostle. And of course our popes are successors of Saint Peter. Now that I found to be fascinating. I found it entirely biblical and historical. But I still had the problem, Adam: I disagreed with a lot of the doctrines of this crazy Catholic Church. And I will tell you, I went from doctrine to doctrine to doctrine and I hammered it out. From the papacy, you name it.
But ultimately, I think the first thing that really got me moving—I mean, there were moral issues, there were lots of things, but the thing that was really kind of the earthquake under my feet was the issue of authority. Because what I find in the New Testament is: the Church established by Jesus Christ has infallible authority. Because, Jesus says concerning his church: “If they hear you they hear me, if they reject you they reject me.” In Matthew 10:40, Luke 10:16, Matthew 18:18, right? “Whatever you [the Church] binds on earth is bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.” That is divine authority that Jesus gives to the apostles and the apostles’ successors, the Church!
And when I looked around at all the protestant communities, what I saw is a bunch of men giving you their opinion of what they think the Bible says. And that was a big problem to me, because if you can’t speak in the name of Jesus—that means speak infallibly— well then you’re not the Church that Jesus established. This whole cacophony now of protestants, everybody’s saying “Oh, I know the truth!”
Evangelicals, you talk about. Well, they disagree with each other on matters so essential like we were talking about earlier: predestination, salvation, can you lose it, right? Is baptism of sacrament is marriage is sacrament—we could talk about every doctrine from the trinity to the hypostatic union, every doctrine, and you have disagreements among Christians today, those who who name the name of Jesus Christ.
It is the Catholic Church alone, my brother, that has presented one Lord, one faith, one baptism for two thousand years, never contradicting a definitive teaching. No pope two thousand years ago has ever contradicted on a definitive matter a pope like Pope Francis who is the Bishop of Rome today. To me, there was no human explanation even for the existence of the Catholic Church.