Hi Alan Ford, I am so glad you posted this and my description of it and my response to it is not to you but to the pope. His adherents call him “His Holiness” and they call the cardinals “His Excellence”, but the only thing they are excellent at is hypocrisy. So, I’m going to use my bible decoder ring to decipher in modern language what his message really is. If Catholics convert it is evangelize but if non-Catholics do it it is the bad “proselytize“. And since the Catholic church has been accused of accepting paganism then let’s add that label to the bad proselytize. Proselytize is PAGAN!!😲 But evangelize is christian!😇
Now let’s look at what the bible actually says. Oops! We don’t find proselytize nor evangelize in the NWT. Wow. However, we do find “proselytes” and “evangelizers”. Doesn’t having proselytes imply there were those who proselytized? Could they be the same as the evangelizers? Every bible comes complete with a decoder ring for hypocrisy and that is probably why the Catholics discourage bible reading. Sorry that was fun to me.
I agree they are hypocrites, they are like Pharisees. They like their rings kissed and enjoy their authority. They like to be called father. They leave a lot to be desired. Now regarding the word "proselyte", I've looked up in NWT and all of the occurences refer to those who converted to Judaism.
According to Strong's Concordance
Original Word: προσήλυτος, ου, ὁ
Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine
Transliteration: prosélutos
Phonetic Spelling: (pros-ay'-loo-tos)
Definition: one who has arrived (at Judaism), a proselyte
Usage: (lit: that has come to), a proselyte, that is a non-Jew, who has been circumcised and has adopted the Jews' religion.
According to modern translation, a person who turns from some other religion to Christianity is a convert or proselyte.
In WT there is a
quote from
Catholic World Report which states: “Under the steady hammering of Orthodox complaints, ‘proselytism’ has taken on the connotation of
forcible conversion.” It also says that witnesses do not practice it:
"Pressuring people to change their religion is wrong. Certainly, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not act in such a way.
b Hence, they do not proselytize in the modern meaning of the word."
I guess his point was to let Holy Spirit work and draw people to God (or to Catolic church, as it may be in this case). I think it's about the way someone becomes a Christian (or Catholic in his case). Now it's a different story altogether whether they act according to what they preach...
In JW world there are a lot of parallels to this because they try to win over people with arguments and their knowledge of Bible. Basically weaponizing it. And once they start studying the indoctrination starts and in that way they become "subjugated." That doesn't leave a lot of room for Holy Spirit to work, does it?
You're right when you say it's not black and white, there is a lot to unpack here.
