A Letter to St. Jude

An appeal to my Roman brothers

I was invited by my wife to attend services at your Roman Catholic parish (whose name appears in the title) this past Sunday. The opportunity to sit in a room with pictures of Jesus all over the walls is better than some other things I could be doing on Sunday. At least that is what I told myself to justify not going to an LCMS church instead. Also I needed to keep my wife happy, and my presence does that sometimes. We also happen to be staying with her parents until we can move into our apartment in Milwaukee in a few weeks. Maybe you can picture our happy family in a pew.

I think the hardest thing Christians in this country face is that they tend to focus on the differences first, because that’s what the media and mainstream writers do. Coming out right away and saying Francis is the anti-christ would definitely not have pleased my in-laws or my wife. I took a few breaths and prayed some psalms, because I knew that wicked practices take place in that church building. I sat in the pew and had my Lutheran study bible on me. I explained to Michelle that I think there are some godly men and women in the Roman church. I took some notes.

The offering of the mass for a dead woman whose name I forget is an abomination. I think it happened at the eucharistic prayers part of the liturgy. I don’t understand why anyone is paying to have a mass said for their dead loved one, and I don’t understand why the church offers this service as a satisfaction to God to get this loved one out of purgatory or whatever reason they conjure. My beliefs are based on confessions found in Concordia that clearly denounce this practice. Also praying for the dead is strongly discouraged. They are dead. Jesus did not come for the dead but for the living. He sets our feet on a stone and makes our paths straight while we are alive. How can these manmade traditions have any place in our belief in the living God who payed the ultimate price by killing His Son Jesus on the cross for the forgiveness of all of our sins? Was His dying on the cross not good enough to satisfy the Father’s wrath? Any speculation that either praying for the dead or offering masses for saints and dead loved ones satisfies God is purely wicked because it makes man’s traditions greater than God’s. These beliefs are what make the differences in our church bodies so great. What I hope can happen is that the parish will continue to pray for good leaders and faithful church bodies that provide sound, scripture-based support in the preaching of the Word and sacrament.

Those who are baptized and believe in Jesus shall be saved. This is the statement of faith. Repent of your sins with all your heart and believe in Jesus and you will have life eternal. These are statements of faith that belong in our mouths. I strongly caution you, dear brothers who ascribe to the pope, to cease these wicked practices which only confuse the troubled spirit and make payment to the church a satisfaction to God, when Christ’s precious blood is the only true satisfaction. Do not deny the practical truth of the gospel. I beg you to read the confessions of Augsburg, the apology and the Smalcaldic works. These are historically relevant because these German men were in the Roman church up until Pope Gregory started trying to exterminate them. Please read further, dear brothers, as we discuss other notes I wrote down.

Sitting here in my in-law’s basement I am surrounded by written works influenced by the holy see in Rome. See the list below. Maybe I am just sitting in front of the catholic section, but literally I looked up to see these books:

 Rediscover Catholicism–A spiritual guide to living with passion and purpose. Matthew Kelly

 Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic. Matthew Kelly.

 Pope Benedict XVI-Jesus of Nazareth. Joseph Ratzinger.

 Catechism of the Catholic Church. Liberia Editrice Vaticana.

I could probably get a job at the archdiocese of Milwaukee and write books for the church that will hit shelves like these. All I would do is parse together some scripture and lace it with modern philosophy. I would hardline it with some woke apologist sentiment and bezahlen (get paid). The fact that in your prayers, you prayed for “Francis our lord” in Jesus’ house seems suspect to me. Isn’t Jesus the Lord here in the Holy Christian church? Brothers, I urge caution in accepting the lordship of the bishop of Rome. This parish has every ability to administer the sacraments and preach the Word of God without any input from the holy see. Remember that the one true, holy Christian church is all who confess with their mouth and believe in their hearts that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and was raised up again on the third day. Do you men believe that you are the salt of the earth? Don’t you think other men confessing this Christian faith are also the salt? To think anything otherwise would make your salt lose its taste. I urge you to entreat the idea that we are saved by our faith in our Lord Jesus and not by paying money that goes to the Vatican.

I do not think the men of this parish are wicked men. I think there are godly people in this Roman church. We reject the practices mentioned here in this article and those in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Apology and the Smalcald articles. I will do better in future endeavors to bring these in cleaner cuts to enhance the digestion. We feast together in Jesus living food and Word, forever.