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Notes -
What I mean is they Protestants are not intellectually serious, and that most of the claims keeping people in their church don’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
“The Church is hiding the Bible from you they don’t want you to read it only WE have the true words of god!” was a convincing argument when it wasn’t easy to find out that this is just very literally not true.
As far as conversation to Protestantism being unserious: not only could I become a Protestant tomorrow if I wanted to, I could become a Protestant pastor, and so could Vivek.
Vivek Could announce tomorrow that he is starting a church, could call it a “Christian” church, and go around trying to convince people in Ohio that he’s a very serious Christian if some kind.
But this would all take 5 minutes, and be meaningless.
If he wanted to become Catholic, there’s a process to it, he’d need to get his marriage convalidated, baptize his kids, etc. If he wanted to become a priest (to contrast this with the seriousness of becoming a Protestant pastor), it would take him around a decade of philosophy and theology classes, he’d need to leave his family, etc.
That’s the point I’m making. It Vivek went through OCIA, got confirmed, convalidated his marriage, went to mass at least weekly, and baptized his kids, I think people would see it as more likely to be genuine.
If he showed up at some mega church or revivalist thing a few times and bought a Bible, I think it would read as performative.
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