Atheist Penn Jillette Receives Bible

The Anchoress brought to her readers attention a YouTube clip by avowed atheist Penn Jillette. Its seems that after one of his shows someone handed him a Gideon Bible or New Testament. In the video, Penn is clearly emotional as he describes the event. Penn, the brilliant man that he is, says something extremely succint and profound, that one expects only from the likes of a G.K. Chesterton:

"How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that?"

Let that sink in for a moment. An atheist is asking how much Christians have to hate non-Christians to deliberately not tell them the gospel. Penn's reaction is similar to one that a gay Jewish friend once had. My friend was so touched that I loved him enough to be concerned about his salvation. I provided books and patiently answered his many questions over a period of years. He now considers himself to be a Hebrew Christian, much like the early Jewish converts.

Its a short video. Penn remains an atheist, but you can see that the seed has been firmly planted and awaits the nurturing of the Holy Spirit.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3hM

Knowing the power of God, I wouldn't be surprised to one day read that Penn is not only Christian, but Catholic or Orthodox. Similar fates have occured to other atheists.

Please pray for Penn and all atheists.

"Always be prepared to make a defense of anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence."
1Peter 3:15

UPDATE

My critique of the video doesn't seem to be too far off-base. Baptist Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research posted the video. Among the 35 comments was one about the "seed being planted".

Related Posts:
Evangelism Explosion Among Catholics
The Church in China today
Why People Leave Church

Source: Penn Jillette; slouching toward Bethlehem

Evangelism Explosion Among Catholics

One of the better Baptist blogs is Timmy Brister's Provocations & Pantings. Timmy describes himself as "a Christian who finds his passion around the gospel of Jesus Christ and communicating Christ in our culture."

In one of Timmy's recent posts, Timmy discussed "the work of exegeting culture, especially in regards to church planting." Timmy briefly described how he uses demographic research to determine where to plant churches. We critiqued Timmy's math and proposed an equation that might provide more accurate numbers on which to base church planting decisions. In response, Timmy asked me to summarize Catholic efforts "evangelize the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ". Our response to Timmy was as follows:

>Timmy Brister: "I would be interested in hearing what Catholics are doing to evangelize the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you mind sharing?"

Sure, But I don't know if I can do the topic justice as U.S. Catholics only make up about 4-5% of the worldwide Catholic Church. I only know a little about what's going on in our 5% of the Catholic Church.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops coordinates evangelization through their Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.

The primary Catholic agency conducting most of Catholic evangelization in the U.S. is Glenmary and their Glenmary Research Center. Glenmary compiles most of the maps and data used not only by Catholics, but by other denominations as well.

Catholic Church: Adherents as a Percentage of Total Population

U.S. Counties With High Percentages of Unclaimed/Unchurched

U.S. Counties With Low Percentages of Catholics

U.S. Counties With Mission Need

Based on the mapping, Glenmary missionaries have been working largely in the Southern and Midwestern U.S. on church plants and other missionary activities. You can find reports on their missionary activities on the Commission on Evangelization site. Its chock full of resource on evangelization, discussion starters, reaching out to seekers, etc. They also have an article on "Why Catholics and Baptists Should Evangelize Together",.

Another Catholic evangeliztion group, to which I belong, is the Pope John Paul II Society of Evangelists and School of Evangelization. The immediate goal of the Pope John Paul II Society of Evangelists is to recruit 69,000 members, who are committed to winning at least one soul for Christ and His Church each year. All baptized Catholics who are fourteen years of age or older, who are in complete harmony with all the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Magisterium, are eligible to become members. There are no fees or dues of any kind. The Society has an online library of reprintable apologetics pamphlets and tracts that we download and pass out during our day to day activities. There are also free Catholic apologetic and prayer CDs, which you are most welcome to order.

In addition to these two major Catholic evangelization ministries, Catholics now have their own cable channel Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), thanks to Mother Angelica in Birmingham, AL. EWTN offers 24-hour Catholic programming to most major markets. A lot of unchurched, unclaimed, and non-Catholic Christians are watching EWTN and realizing that most of what they have been taught regarding Catholicism is wrong and they are converting.

Catholic radio has been growing every year with more and more Catholic stations standing up. Catholic Answers LIVE, a 2-hour apologetic program is very popular. They feature special days for only non-Catholics to call in with their questions. The Catholic Answers program is available as a free podcast, which I listen to at the office, often 2-3 times each.

In new media, Catholic Answers is THE outreach website. Catholic Answers Forums is where you find the greatest number of discussions on all aspects of Catholicism by Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and others. Catholic Answers also pubishes a great Apologetics magazine, This Rock. Furthermore, there are about 1,624 Catholic blogs as of today. Each one written by a Catholic seeking to share his/her faith with others.

Catholic institutions also play a large part in Catholic evangelization. Catholics run the largest system of schools in the nation with 6,266 elementary schools educating 1,576,301 students and 1,352 high schools educating 680,689 students. 557 Catholic hospitals treated 83,795,186 patients. More than 1,735 local Catholic Charities agencies and institutions provided services to 7,854,104 unduplicated individuals in need of help in 2004. (Catholics invented the hospital and the university)

But the best and most effective Catholic evangelists are the many Catholics who quietly go about living their Catholic faith with humility and charity. As Saint Francis of Assissi said: "Preach the gospel at all times -- If necessary, use words."

In total, Catholic evangelism is fairly effective. About 1.1 million children and adults enter the Catholic Church every year in the U.S.. Worldwide, the Catholic Church grows by about 17-18 million. That growth is about the size of the entire SBC, every year, sustained. The number of Catholic priests is increasing as is the number of nuns. Several religious orders, such as the Dominicans in Nashville, TN, are overflowing with novices.

I hope that gives you a better perspective on Catholic evangelization. With 25% of the U.S. population Catholic, we only need every Catholic to help bring just 3 people into the Church to make the U.S. 100% Catholic. Want to be one of my three? ;)

God bless...

+Timothy

BTW, while writing this comment, I received a call from a friend of mine. He was raised Baptist but converted to Judaism. He told me that as a result of our long talks that he now considers himself a Christian. Please pray for him.

UPDATE

Jim West, pastor of Petros Baptist Church in Petros, Tenn., has penned a similar, but much shorter article on Baptist presence on the web entitled, Oh What a Baptist Web We Weave. The Facebook group mentioned and linked to seems a good idea worth replicating by others.

Related Posts:
New Catholic Evangelism Video

Source: Cultural Exegesis and Contextual Research

Lutheran Church Planting

Southern Baptist Ed Stetzer points us to a recent annoncement by the The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod to plant 2,000 new Lutheran churches by 2017. A similar project was attempted by the LCMS in 1979. The 1979 goal was "to plant 1,800 congregations in 10 years, or about 180 a year. The actual number of churches started was less than 100 a year--70 to 80."

As LCMS market share does not exceed 3% in any state, the U.S. will not likely be going Lutheran any time soon. Hopefully the LCMS will target areas of the U.S. with large numbers of non-Christians and make new disciples versus just moving sheep.

Source: Church Planting

More Christianity in China

Just finished reading a very good article on Christianity in China in the English version of La STampa. I thought fellow CAS readers might like to do the same. While the bulk of the article focuses on Chinese Catholics, it provides some eye opening insights into how shallow Christianity is in China.

From the article:

"Most of the time, when asked about the meaning of the cross, the bearer will answer proudly and clearly: Yes, I am a Christian. Yet, after that, everything becomes blurred. Most people don’t know the difference between being Christian (“jidujiao,” which in China refers to Protestants) and being Catholic (“tianzhujiao”, a totally different word). Nor are they familiar with the various branches of the Protestant faith."

"In the countryside, there are also many Mormons and Evangelicals. Most just follow whichever pastor they meet out of “yuanfen,” or fate."

"Many pastors mix Christianity with Taoism and Buddhism."

"In sum, many of these new Chinese Christians are new converts to "modernity," which in China is largely tantamount to “Westernization”—or the American way of life. They pray to Jesus as they eat at MacDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken."

"In the same way they add soy sauce or rice vinegar to their food, to Evangelical faith they may add belief in feng shui ("wind and water," traditional Chinese geomancy) and the Yijing (an ancient soothsayers’ manual)."

To be fair, the article does point out that the primary reason for the shallow understanding of Christianity is due to the overwhelming force of ancient Chinese culture. With the upcoming Olympics, the article is a good insight into modern Chinese Christianity. Read it all.

Source: The Catholic "destiny" in China

Christian Apologetics Blogs

A number of visitors to CAS arrive from search engines looking for "Christian Apologetics Blogs". That behavior got me to thinking about what are some of the better, if not the best, Christian apologetics blogs. Who in the blogsphere is actively engaging atheists, agnostics, Islamists, and others in Christian apologetics? So, leaving out the polemists that engage in apologetica among Christian sects, I arrived at the following list of Christian apologetics blogs.

Steve Ray’s Blog



Source: source

The Church in China today

I listened to a very good podcast on the state of the Church in China today. It was an interview Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D., a professor of Chinese history at The University of Alabama. With the upcoming Olympics in China and all the news reports on anti-evangelism efforts, it was interesting to get first hand information from someone who has spent considerable time in China and has a good grasp of what's happening on the ground.

Some facts from the program:



Source: Catholic Answers LIVE: Catholicism in Present-Day China

The Great Commission

This past Sunday was Ascension Sunday on the liturgical calendar and the Gospel reading was the Great Commission in Matthew.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.."
Matthew 28:16-20

It occurred to me in church Sunday, while I stood and heard these words proclaimed aloud that many Christians were familiar with the first two imperatives of Christ, but few seemed to faithfully follow the third imperative. The three imperatives are:

make disciples of all nations

Overall, Christians have done well spreading the Good News and converting all nations to Christianity. However, are we fulfilling the Great commission to make disciples? Converts are not necessarily disciples. Note how often the Bible refers to Jesus and his disciples and not Jesus and his converts. Who was called a disciple in the Bible? The Apostles, not the crowds that followed. In order to make disciples, we need to be faithfully be implementing the third directive in the Great Commission.

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Catholics and Orthodox immediately recognize these words, as most are recited while making the ancient sign of the cross and recalling their own baptism. Here we have a command from Christ to baptise using a "Trinitarian" formula. Seems pretty clear to me and its also well documented in Christian writings from the Didache forward as THE words for baptism. How some congregations continue to baptise in Jesus name only, I will never understand.

teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you

When you hear someone mention the Great Commission, do you immediately think "obey everything I have commanded you"? I didn't. "Make disciples" and "baptise" are what pop into my mind. In fact Sunday, I was almost shocked to hear that there was a third part to the Great Commission.

Obey everything. Its somewhat difficult to obey everything when one may not know everything Jesus commanded. This where my beef with "sufficiency" and "essential" and "non-essential" doctrines comes from. Jesus didn't equivocate. Sufficient is not everything. Sufficient is some lower level. Ditto for non-essentials. According to this portion of the Great Commission there is no such thing as a non-essential. The third imperative is clear: "obey everything I have commanded".

So, let us all go forth making disciples by teaching them everything, so they may obey everything that Christ commanded.

 

The Pope has a Message for You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyaUNK0cgx4

Source: The Pope has a Message for You

Christian Apologetics for Muslims

VirtueOnline, an Anglican blog, has a very good post on Fr. Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest, who is having very good results with his own TV show aimed at Muslims in Arabic lands. In fact, Fr. Zakaria is having so much success that he has drawn a lot of Isamic hatred and disdain.

While many of us Christian Apologists don't have access to satelitte TV or are fluent in Arabic, we can adopt the third leg of Fr. Zakaria's system -- irrefutable polemics.

A third reason for Botros's success is that his polemical technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme -- from the pressing to the esoteric -- often expressed as a question (e.g., "Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?" "Are women inferior to men in Islam?" "Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?" "Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?"). To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes -- always careful to give sources and reference numbers -- from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet -- the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present -- the illustrious ulema.

Typically, Botros's presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open -- and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on "al-dalil we al-burhan," -- "evidence and proof," one of his frequent refrains -- not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence -- which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers.

Note that Fr. Zakaria is not attacking Muslims for worshippind a false "moon" God or for disbelieving in the triune nature of God. Anyone seeking to engage Muslims and Islamic clerics in Christian apologetics would do well to read this article and to study Fr. Zakaria's methods and arguements. The article includes a link to Fr. Zakaria's website.

UPDATE

Fr. Zakaria has a website in English. Under his Books link, Fr. Zakaria provides the text of his arguments in both Word and PDF formats. Recommend fellow Christian apologists bookmark Fr. Zakaria's site.

Source: Islam's "Public Enemy #1"

The Protestant Crisis

While researching blogs on the recent Catholic - Islam Demographic shift, I discovered a very good post at The Politics of the Cross titled The Protestant Crisis. Well worth the read as it is original material with much forethought.

Source: The Protestant Crisis

Thousands in U.S. Seek Baptism

Zenit is reporting "Tens of thousands of Americans will join the Catholic Church this Holy Saturday through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults."

The Christian community in the U.S. is about to expand by about 60-70,000 this coming Saturday, when Catholic churches nationwide baptize new adult Christians. Additionally, about 100,00 Christians will make a profession of faith and formally enter the Catholic Curch from other Christian denominations. This annual conversion of about 100,000 non-Catholics seems in keeping with the recent Pew study on religion.

The Zenit article goes on to say that "more than a million infant baptisms will take place in the U.S. during 2008." Say what you will, but the Catholic Church in the U.S. is successfully retaining its position as the largest group of Christians and slowly gaining market share.

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.
Acts 2:41-42

Source: Zenit article

New Catholic Evangelism Video

Perhaps anticipating the recent Pew study on religion, evangelical Catholics in Phoenix have started a campaign to re-evangelize the 10% of Americans that were raised Catholic, but later left their Church. If successful, the campaign will likely result in Catholics increasing to about 37% of the U.S. population. The Protestant majority would also likely fall below 50% as significant numbers of former Catholics were included in the Protestant segment of the Pew study.

In addition to a website, the group has produced three short videos and are distributing the videos via YouTube and viral marketing channels. In just one month's time, the video has already been viewed over 7,000 times. If sustained, the annual viewership will roughly equal the current number of Christians converting to Catholicism in the U.S. each year and has the potential for doubling the rate of conversion to the Catholic Church in the U.S.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLok_ACKAVU

UPDATE

Due to a copyright infringement, the YouTube version is no longer available. You may view the video named "Epic" here:

http://www.catholicscomehome.org/epic/epic120.phtml

Hopefully, the owners will realize the greater audience offered by YouTube and have a change of heart. Pray for them.

(Personally, I'd offload the bandwidth to Google's YouTube server farms, but its not my site.)

Source: Catholics Coming Home

Flowcharting the Apostles

Every now and then, one runs across a very clever idea amongst the millions of blogs. Bob Stanley, who seems to have a programming background, has cleverly applied flowcharting software to evangelization. Bob has created a series of flowcharts that aid in teaching the many truths of our Lord's Church.

One such flowchart is Bob's flowchart showing what happened to all of the Apostles and where their remains are located today. Earlier in the year, I had visited a pizza lunch at our local Baptist Studuent Union. One of the young men was very versed in soterology, but was lacking in church history. When I was telling him about Andrew planting the Church at Byzantium and how the Church at Antioch is still present today as the Melkite Catholic Church, he was enthralled. If I had Bob's flowchart of the Apostles, my explanation might have been clearer and I would have been able to leave something with the young man to guide him in his studies.

I am a big fan of mind mapping and Bob has inspired me to create some evangelization mind maps. I'll probably recreate Bob's flowchart as a mind map and include where the Apostles evangelized and which Churchs the Apostles each planted. Did you know Thomas made his way east and into southern India? That's why we need tools like Bob's evangelization flowcharts.

Source: Evangelization Flowcharts

Experiences with the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

In preparation for our upcoming visit with one or more Jehovah Witnesses this next week, I spent some time this morning doing research. I discovered that the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, the only JW authorized version of the Bible is available online. While lacking a keyword search feature, there is a nice interface that allows one to select the book, chapter, and verse to aid browsing. I set about verifying several favorite passages that I find useful in evangelical and apologetic moments.

Isaiah 55:11 - The NWT says essentially the same thing as most versions of Isaiah.

Malachi 1:11 - Again, the NWT is essentially the same, except "smoke" is used instead of "incense". This is a good finding as this prophecy of Jehovah through Malachi should prove troublesome when our JWs claim that their church is the true church. I'd like to hear their explanation regarding the daily offerings of smoke and a pure offering in all nations. To date, few Christian denominations match the prophecy of Malachi.

Matthew 16:18-19 - "Rock-mass" instead of just "rock". Jesus' quote from Isaiah 22:22 is unchanged. Ok. How do the JWs interpret Jesus re-establishing the Davidic office of Eliakim and giving Peter the keys of Jesus' authority?

Matthew 24:23-28 - Oddly, this reads fairly normally which is a surprise as JWs teach or taught about an invisible second coming of Jesus in 1914. I'll be curious to hear their explanation in light of this prophecy of a very visible second coming of Jesus.

Matthew 26:26 - "TAKE, eat. This means my body." Ah, quite of bit of difference between "is" and "means", especially when the underlying Greek verb is a form of "to be" (is). In fact, the verb here is used throughout the Bread of Life discourse above and always translated "is". Looking forward to discussing this passage.

Matthew 26:28 - "...for this means my ‘blood of the covenant,’..." Same error. "Means" instead of "is".

Luke 1:28 - Well... "Good day, highly favored one, Jehovah is with you." sounds a bit Aussie. At least it wasn't deleted. Te use of "highly favored one" should allow for discussion of the underlying Greek word and Jerome's "gratia plena" in the Vulgate.

Luke 1:42-43 - Luke 1:42 is unchanged and I was glad to find "the mother of my Lord" in Luke 1:43. JWs reject the ancient doctrine of Theotokos (mother of God) due to rejecting the divinity of Jesus. If we can prove the divinity of Jesus, Luke 1:43 should help with proving the doctrine of the Theotokos.

Luke 1:48 - "...all generations will pronounce me happy;" "Happy" instead of "blessed". Even the most rabid anti-Catholics and their Bibles translate the underlying Greek as "blessed". I'll be curious to hear why the JWs and the NWT went with "happy" considering Jerome used beatum (blessed) at this point.

John 6:35ff - The Bread of Life discourse is a fairly true translation. I suppose that since JWs reject the divinity of Jesus, this passage was not seen as against JW doctrine. I discovered minutes later that this will be an important section when discussing the Lord's Supper as the underlying Greek is also found in this section as well.

Acts 20:7 - "... On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to have a meal." Normally, this verse describes the Apostles meeting weekly on Sunday for the "breaking of the bread" or Lord's Supper, as opposed to the JWs annual memorial. The underlying Greek clearly includes a verb meaning "to break" and the noun for "bread". I understand that the JWs have a Greek-English Interlinear, so I would be interested to see what they have for the underlying Greek here. Unfortunately, their interlinear is not online.

1 Timothy 3:15 - "... a pillar and support of the truth." The Greek article tho is translated as "a" and not "the". Again why?

James 5:16 - "Therefore openly confess YOUR sins to one another..." No where in my reading the JW literature did I come across a doctrine on confession. Would like to hear an explanation of this verse and how this instruction is kept.

Revelation 12:1 - Curious as to who JWs think this woman is. As a follow-up, I also like to hear abut the crown she is wearing.

I actually looked up several more passages, but you get the idea by now. The NWT has numerous significant errors in translation which change meanings of several passages entirely. I'll have some questions for our missionaries in regards to who translated what, by what authority, and with what credentials or academic background. You might also do a little cross checking yourself using the NWT against your favorite translation. Please share your findings an comments.

Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

Jehovah's Witnesses Visit

Well, it seems that, while I was napping this weekend, some Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) came by. The last time we had a visit by JWs was about 20 years ago in Northern Italy. Two sweet little old Italian ladies, holding Italian translations of The Watch Tower, were very surprised to have the door of an apartment in a little rural Italian town answered by English-only Americans. A week or so later we came home to find some materials in English at our door.

The wife was busy so the JWs left a copy of Awake!, The Watch Tower, and a small booklet, What does the Bible Really Teach?. Someone is supposed to return mid-week to meet with us. I really am wanting to meet these folks. What Christian evangelist wouldn't?

Looking over Awake!, the issue focused on families and had nothing really objectionable in it. It appeared to be like any other magazine by any of hundreds of Christian denominations. I even did well on the Bible quiz at the end.

The edition of Watch Tower was fairly mundane and a bit of a disapointment for me as this publication usually includes JW polemics against one or more Christian and/or Catholic doctrines. This issue focused mostly on earthquakes and the end times spoken of in Daniel and Revelation. The only thing remarkable was a brief item noting that for Pope Benedict's visit to Germany the Catholic Church licensed a vendor for official memorabilia (rosaries, t-shirts, etc.) There was a brief mention of Jesus clearing the Temple with the insinuation that the souvenier sales by secular entities was somewhat equivalent. For those not familiar with the JW faith, JWs oppose any religious item, including plain crosses.

What interested me most was the booklet. Having recently read The Methodist Primer and learning much about Methodism, I was very much interested to get my hands on an official JW source for JW doctrine. The booklet is copyright 2005 and this copy was printed in 2006. All quotes are from the New World Translation of the Bible, although which version is not stated. I assume 1961.

The booklet is cleverly writen to appeal to Reformation Christians. It carefully avoids revealing basic JW doctrines like the non-divinity of Christ, disbeleief in the Trinity, annihilation of the soul, or that Jesus is Michael the Archangel. Apologetics for some of the more well known JW traditions, such as refusal of blood transfusions appear in the final chapters.

I dunno, but it seems to me, that with a belief in one God and a denial of the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity, JWs have much in common with Islam, the Heresy of the Ishmaelites.

I put together a briefing folder with some apologetics tracts on JWs for my wife to read and prepare for our meeting. I may also print up a few tracts to hand to our visitors. Being a member of the PJPII Society of Evangelists, there is a wealth of free apologetics pamphlets available for download and printing on the society web site.

Watch for a follow up post on how things went.

69,000 Evangelists Wanted

Wanted immediately! 69,000 Catholic Americans, aged 14 years and older, to begin evangelizing to Americans.

The recently formed John Paul II Society of Evangelists is actively seeking Catholics to begin evangelization projects across America. With America being about 1/4 Catholic, the society calculates that 69,000 evangelists would result in about one million adult conversions to the Catholic faith each year. That would be a ten-fold increase over the present average of 100,000 adults who enter the Catholic faith each year.

The society further estimates that if every American Catholic would lead one non-Catholic American into the Catholic faith each and every year, then America would be about 100% Catholic in just 3 years! Just in time for the 2012 Presidential election.

Southern Baptists had trouble baptising one million in one year recently. It will be interesting to see how the Catholics do at a similar goal.

Source: John Paul II Society of Evangelists