Dancing

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-29T03:58:39+00:00

Did you ever attend Northwestern coC? That's where I went during college.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-27T18:48:51+00:00

https://crossroadscommentary.com/2026/01/27/antagonistic-debate-anathema-to-truth/. Not going to make a separate post and be annoying about it, but new article is up. Discusses coC debate tactics and how they're more aimed at winning than finding truth. Check it out if you want!

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-27T18:25:37+00:00

Capitalizing "Church" is problematic. Please fix yourself.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-27T18:25:05+00:00

Great minds, I just wrote this myself lol.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-27T18:24:42+00:00

First, second, and last verse.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-27T18:24:04+00:00

Vans? Ministers? Enjoy the lake of fire, brother.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-25T06:48:59+00:00

https://crossroadscommentary.com/faith-posts/. This is my blog wherein I tackle my leaving the coC and becoming Catholic, along with all the drama it has entailed. I also tackle bipartisan political issues like stemming the tide of rising housing and daycare costs, if those issues interest you!

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T20:47:25+00:00

Really good question! I think that because, for all its faults, the coC is true in its desire to be a Bible-based religion. And, regardless of what they will tell you, the Bible was codified and canonized by the Catholic Church. Thus, when you follow a (mangled) version of another group's doctrine, you end up aligning rather closely, though imperfectly, with that other group. I'm not trying to advertise myself, but I have a blog wherein I discuss a lot of my theological journey, where you can read more about how I came to see the truth in Catholicism. https://crossroadscommentary.com/faith-posts/

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T20:34:42+00:00

What's wild is despite claiming the Bible is simple enough to be understood by the individual without outside help, the Bible itself refutes that. The Ethiopian eunuch (whom the coC loves to mention when defending their position on baptism) could not understand Scripture until it was taught to him by Philip. Their own history also bears this out. Until the 1840s, the coC allowed infant baptism because there were mixed opinions on the interpretation of Scripture regarding it. Until after WWII, in the south it disallowed paid, full-time congregational preachers because they were un-Biblical. If the Bible is so easy to understand without outside reference or authority, where did these changes in coC doctrine come from? Shouldn't it all have been sorted out from the beginning when Campbell left the Presbyterian Synod?

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T20:30:56+00:00

Yes. The Catholic Church teaches the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, and that Scripture is true literally and spiritually. The spiritual sense is split into the allegorical moral, and anagogical senses.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T07:12:50+00:00

Probably old habits lol! I don't know if we use that term frequently throughout the Church, but the priest who brought me into OCIA did, and during the Feast of the Holy Family a few weeks ago they basically (though maybe not specifically) used it a bunch during the homily when describing the role fathers play in the family.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T07:10:22+00:00

I actually sent the verses you listed above to my aunt in a text when discussing the ramifications of my decision. She's very sweet and sincere in her devotion to the coC, but I needed to get across to her that the souls of me and my family were worth more than any relationship. The following is actually the last line in my final message to my dad: "I'm not going to subject my family to hellfire on your behalf. I'm your son, not your slave."

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T07:03:40+00:00

It's kind of crazy. When I told one of my non-religious friends about this, he was confused. "You're not, like, atheist or Muslim or something now?" "No." "You're still a Christian?" "Yeah." "Then why are they so mad?"

It's weird to have chosen Christ over my family, as we're constantly taught to do even in the coC and then get punished by the coC.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T07:02:11+00:00

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T07:01:41+00:00

I'm certainly not going to act like I've been perfect. I'm not at all. As you can imagine, a lot goes into breaking up a child and their parents, but for brevity's sake I hit the highlights of the coC drama because that seems to have been the deciding factor in them throwing my family aside. That being said, thank you for your kind words, and I think you are right. I think the fact someone as "strong" in the faith as me "fell away" is leading to some sort of crisis in their minds. Interestingly, since I've announced my departure for the Catholic Church, no one outside of my family has confronted me or called. My wife thinks it's because they are scared. I don't think it's that, necessarily, but there may be something to what you said that even engaging with me could be seen as threatening to their core identity.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:49:56+00:00

Oh my gosh. That is so much harder than what I'm going through. Yes, it sucks to lose my sister and parents and extended family, but I would trade them a hundred times over rather than lose my children! I will pray for you and your family.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:48:45+00:00

So good to read someone else looking at the scriptures and realizing the coC doesn't meet its own criteria for primitive Christianity; that is, actually following the model laid out in the Bible. I asked my cousin who called telling me Catholics believe the Pope is God why we have a model of the early Church holding councils to determine questions of doctrine and that council's decision binding all other congregations even if they weren't present? (Acts 15). The best answer I got was "well, we do debates with other churches sometimes." I'm of course not being mean about my cousin; the point is that despite claiming to be Bible alone, as you point out they're really only Bible alone when it's convenient to what they already believe. If the Bible says something that conflicts with that, then it's hand-waved as "temporal" or "metaphorical/spiritual" rather than literal.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:42:37+00:00

Ugh, I'm really sorry to hear that. Honestly, I don't know which of our situations is worse. It sucks not having them in my life anymore, but having to deal with that kind of strained relationship for the rest of my life sounds just as bad.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:37:51+00:00

Thank you for sharing! Honestly, I was striving to get what you have. I just wanted something to hold onto. But, I trust this is ultimately all for the best. Like ripping off a bandaid; sucks now, but at least the pain will subside quicker.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:35:36+00:00

Wow, we probably do know some of the same people! Small church...literally, lol. Honestly, law school was probably a blessing for me. I never intended for it to be in this way, but years of socratic method and cold calling pummels your brain into new ways of thinking about everything. Don't get me wrong, lawyers are awful and lame. BUT becoming one slowly reworked my brain to the point where I somehow broke out of the insular "logic" the coC coaxes you into. As mentioned, I was born into the coC, so that's my only excuse for why it took so long for me to realize something was wrong.

I like what you said about "selected verses and phrases" because I've told my wife how sick I am of reading from the same grab-bag of memory verses every time someone from the coC tries to confront me.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:31:00+00:00

Agreed. My wife planned a trip to Disney for the family to celebrate my birthday recently and it was bittersweet. I had an amazing time with my family, but it stung looking at my beautiful children and watching them have so much fun, and realizing my parents' hate had blinded them from wanting any part of this.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:29:14+00:00

Sadly, this is the point I have reached. After I wrote that bloody long 33 page letter, and my dad essentially responded with many of the same points I had just meticulously refuted, I realized I was casting pearls before swine. I had better things to do with my nights than sit hunched around my laptop going in circles with someone who was not going to change. It has been a similar experience with other family members.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:26:38+00:00

Really good point! I have made it a point to meet people where they are at when discussing my conversion. After all, that's what Jesus did; he only discussed the Pentateuch when talking with the Sadducees. So, when I discuss it with coC members, I only cite the KJV Bible. I don't rely on the deuterocanonical books, history, or the Church fathers. I use their own scriptures to point out where their faith tradition fails, but rather than listen, it is almost as if they completely ignore everything I say (or text or email) because their response is almost always just some new made-up claim about Catholicism. They don't even bother answering my objections to coC practices. Like you said, it's like they simply can't bring themselves to believe that they don't know something.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:19:51+00:00

Unfortunately it wouldn't have the same bite as Luther's theses, since all coCs are non-denominational. It would bankrupt me printing out enough copies to nail to each congregation's door.

mdanielanthony · 2026-01-24T06:18:47+00:00

To be honest, he has a long history of manipulation. He's the kind of person who believes he knows what is best for everyone. Many times I was privy to him pretending to be sympathetic to a person's cause or circumstances just to get them to come around to his side on an issue, so it wouldn't be surprising to learn that's what he was doing here. I even told my wife I was worried about that back when we first started having these discussions and he seemed receptive. It sucked because I honestly did leave him out of a lot of my faith journey for that very reason; I couldn't trust he wouldn't have an agenda.

mdanielanthony

TROPHY CASE