What Exactly is "The Church?"

About this sermon

http://www.catholic.com Tim Staples takes a detailed walk through Scripture and Catechism to explain the Church as the Body of Christ, what that means, why she has a hierarchy of members, how she distributes grace through the Sacraments, whether whether an unbaptized person can be a member, invincible ignorance, and the difference between the Church triumphant and the Church suffering. Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catholic Answers, but he was not always Catholic. Tim was raised a Southern Baptist. Although he fell away from the faith of his childhood, Tim came back to faith in Christ during his late teen years through the witness of Christian televangelists. Soon after, Tim joined the Marine Corps. During his four-year tour, he became involved in ministry with various Assemblies of God communities. Immediately after his tour of duty, Tim enrolled in Jimmy Swaggart Bible College and became a youth minister in an Assembly of God community. During his final year in the Marines, however, Tim met a Marine who really knew his faith and challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources. That encounter sparked a two-year search for the truth. Tim was determined to prove Catholicism wrong, but he ended up studying his way to the last place he thought he would ever end up: the Catholic Church! He converted to Catholicism in 1988 and spent the following six years in formation for the priesthood, earning a degree in philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania. He then studied theology on a graduate level at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for two years. Realizing that his calling was not to the priesthood, Tim left the seminary in 1994 and has been working in Catholic apologetics and evangelization ever since. If you are interested in booking Tim Staples for an upcoming event, please contact Catholic Answers at (619) 387-7200.

Topics

• Church & Fellowship
• The Church