EWTN Strikes Again

Thanks to the commenters to my post below about Catholic Apologetics. Upon following one of the links I ended up at the EWTN website. They have a helpful FAQ, with actual logical reasoning no less, and an option to ask a question if you didn't get the answer you were looking for. Bless the woman who started EWTN, as it is just about the most helpful and interesting Catholic resource out there. I prefer a lot of their programing to the crap my fellow Protestants put out.

Also, it looks like I'm going to have to break down and buy a copy of the Catechism. I have a copy of Science and Health, the Bahvad Gita, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, a couple of old Watchtowers laying around, and a whole pile of other such things, but not a copy of a book that I substantially agree with. Well, I guess I am going to finally break down and remedy that oversight.

And, in case any of you out there are wondering just what I do believe, I grew up in a strict fundamentalist Baptist church, am currently nominally a United Methodist, but if I could find a socially and Scripturally conservative Episcopal church, I'd join in a heartbeat. So, we attend the church my father in law pastors (UMC) about once a month, and home church with the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer (Rite I) the rest of the time. We'd attend fil's church more often, as he basically runs it as if it were Anglican, but their worship services grate on our nerves. I'm sorry, but How Great Thou Art was never designed to have a back-beat.

My main issues with Roman Catholicism are three-fold. Firstly, I have a hard time with about half of the Marian dogma. Second is the ridgid stance on Apostolic Succession and its accompanying doctrines (ie., binding and loosing, the Sacrament of Penance, etc.). Last and most important, my husband has no intention of converting. If he were to convert, I would make a good faith effort to follow his lead.

I'm not looking to be convinced that all Catholic dogma is true (if that happens by the Will of God, so be it), but rather that a reasonable person could believe it. I'm also looking for the chain of events in the development of doctrine and ritual, what did it look like in the past, how is that different from today, and why the change occured. I'm also looking for points of agreement between our family's doctrinal stances and that of Catholicism. I've found a few that I didn't know about, which is a very good thing.