{"id":54595,"date":"2014-09-03T00:52:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T07:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=54595"},"modified":"2014-12-28T21:06:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T04:06:53","slug":"why-be-catholic-when-ive-been-baptized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2014\/09\/why-be-catholic-when-ive-been-baptized.html","title":{"rendered":"Why be Catholic when I&#8217;ve been baptized?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>A reader writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have a friend who is an Evangelical. Over the years she has gone from verbally attacking the Church, to being more silent on the subject, to being somewhat accepting of our existence. Now, she asks me the question\u2014\u201cIf I believe in Jesus and who he says he is, and I have already been baptized in the name of the father, son and holy spirit, why should I convert to Catholicism? I have an answer but am not sure it is the correct one. What would you say if you found yourself in similar circumstances?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If I have a picture of the woman I love and several of her letters, why should I marry her and live happily ever after?<\/p>\n<p>The faith is the <em>fullness <\/em>of what Jesus wants to give us.  Why settle for less?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reader writes: I have a friend who is an Evangelical. Over the years she has gone from verbally attacking the Church, to being more silent on the subject, to being somewhat accepting of our existence. Now, she asks me the question\u2014\u201cIf I believe in Jesus and who he says he is, and I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-54595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mailbag"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why be Catholic when I&#039;ve been baptized?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A reader writes: I have a friend who is an Evangelical. Over the years she has gone from verbally attacking the Church, to being more silent on the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2014\/09\/why-be-catholic-when-ive-been-baptized.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why be Catholic when I&#039;ve been baptized?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A reader writes: I have a friend who is an Evangelical. 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