Note on
the Author : Salvatore Gargiulo, born on 18.2.1928 in Sorrento, graduated in theology from the theological faculty "S. Luigi" in Posillipo in 1951 and in the same year he was ordained a priest. He was in the care of souls, taught letters in the archiepiscopal seminary of Sorrento, and religion in state schools.
He preached in many churches, and several times in the cathedral of his diocese.
After the Second Vatican Council he was called to be a member of the Diocesan Commission for Sacred Art and the Liturgy, of which he was a scholar.
PREMISE
For as for us, we can
not fail to speak of the things
we have seen and heard.
Acts 4:20
I am about to recount my long journey from error to the Gospel of grace with great joy and deep gratitude to the One who, without any merit on my part, took me by the hand and directed my steps, freed me. from the yoke of slavery and brought me to him.
But when I think of the twenty-six years I spent in the Catholic Church, "I have great sadness and continual pain in my heart" (Rom. 9: 2): I see all the dear friends of yore, "blind guides of the blind" as I was I too, still "lost in vain reasoning ... with a darkened heart, they who have changed the glory of the incorruptible God into images similar to those of the corruptible man and adore and serve the creature instead of the Creator ..." ( Rom. 1: 21-25).
These lines do not in any way want to express condemnation for them, unaware victims of a religious system built with great skill by the "prince of this world". Instead, they are a warm invitation to investigate the Scriptures, as they were given to us by God through the prophets and apostles, not contaminated that is by the interpretations and manipulations of men, and to let ourselves be guided by the Spirit of God towards the liberating grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Some of my expressions seem too harsh and not in keeping with the current ecumenical climate, but ignoring the truth does not help either ecumenism or those who are still prisoners of error. Anyone who feels hurt, forgive me and know that I intended "to sadden him according to God".
With regard to Catholics, every evangelical Christian could in fact make his own the words of the apostle Paul: "The desire of my heart and my prayer to God for them is that they be saved" (Rom. 10: 1).
I WAS A BIG SIN
... but now you have obtained mercy.
1 Peter 2:10
When I testify that I have been a Roman Catholic priest for more than twenty-six years and that in the end I repented and believed the Gospel, I sometimes feel countered: "The reason for your decision lies in the fact that you were a bad priest. If you had been a good priest, you would have kept your commitments until your death: the priest is a priest forever!"
(see note 1 )
Yes, it's true, from the Catholic point of view I was a bad priest. But it gets worse. From God's point of view, I have been a great sinner!
As a member of a priestly caste, I pretended to be an intermediary between God and men, while Jesus gave the priesthood to every believer (v. 1 Peter 2: 5-9).
I taught devotion to Mary as the way to heaven, while Jesus is the only way (John 14: 6) and the only salvation (Acts 4:12).
I would pour a few drops of water on a child's head and presume to make him a lifelong child of God, while Scripture states that one becomes one only through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ (John 1:12).
I taught to recite the rosary but not to read and listen to the Word of God.
I called myself father (Mat. 23: 9) to the children who asked for bread.
From a human and ecclesiastical point of view, I could have felt satisfied with my state. But what was I before God? Nothing but a whitewashed tomb. At the bottom of my heart, I felt an emptiness, a perennial dissatisfaction. I felt the lack of something and I blamed the human shortcomings of my religious organization, although I was convinced that it was the true church, the "only deposit of salvation". I did not realize that by obeying men rather than God, human traditions rather than the Word, I had placed myself under divine condemnation and therefore I had no peace. Sometimes during the night I would wake up with a start, seeing myself already condemned to hell.
But blessed be the Lord, the God of all consolation, who has delivered me, making me discover that truth which He has revealed so clearly and which I had never had before my eyes, neither during my five years of theological studies nor after:
"For it is by grace that you were saved, by faith; and this does not come from you; it is the gift of God. It is not by virtue of works, that no one may boast ... " (Eph. 2: 8-9).
I had laid the foundation of my faith on a religious system created by men, but I could have no peace except in Christ Jesus, the living cornerstone (Eph. 2: 19-20; 1 Peter 2: 4-10).
Notes: (1) Anyone who knows Holy Scripture knows that these prophetic words of Psalm 110 refer to Christ (v. Heb. 4: 6-10). But the Roman Catholic Church, distorting their meaning, applies them to its priests.
THE HAT
Take also the helmet of salvation and the
sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
Eph. 6:17
I had been a priest for a few months. Having to go every morning to say mass in the S. Anna institute of the Sisters of Ivrea, in Sorrento, about three kilometers from my house, and since there is no bus service, I bought myself a bicycle, naturally for women because more suited to the cassock I was wearing. This reached the ears of the vicar general of the diocese, Monsignor De Martino. One morning he went to take up his post in a corner of Piazza Tasso, at the mouth of the De Maio road through which, according to the information received, I should have passed. As soon as he saw me emerge on the other side of the road, he went to stand in the middle of the road, with his arms outstretched and, before I was near him, he began to shout:
- Stop! Who gave you permission to ride a bike and "scaruso"! (ie without a hat)
- But elsewhere all the priests ride bicycles, and even the nuns, I ventured to say.
- It's not true! The priest does not ride a bicycle and always wears a hat!
He was so outraged that he did not hear the honking of the car horns that had meanwhile arrived behind him and blocked the passage.
I quickly got back on my bicycle and fled.
Beyond its grotesque, this episode reaffirmed the principles with which I would often clash in the years spent in the Roman religious organization, and which should have made me understand even then that I was not in a Christian church.
First of all, the principle of "tradition", which ranged from these trifles to the greatest heresies, presented as dogmas of faith. It was true, in the diocese of Sorrento no priest had ever ridden a bicycle and all of them had hitherto put their heads under the black hat, I had violated tradition. In my life as a priest I would always encounter tradition, and I myself would have defended it - albeit in more serious matters - as a "source of revelation" on a par with Holy Scripture. Having to justify so many things about which the Word of God is silent or which are even in contrast with it, I too would have resorted to the magic words: "the sacrosanct tradition of the church!"
Some time later Monsignor De Martino, since I persisted in going around "
- I understand that the hat bothers you in hot weather. You can then carry it in your hand, so people see that you have it ...
On the one hand the hierarchy, on the other the "people", the two poles of ecclesiastical hypocrisy. Several decades would have to pass for me to learn that the servant of God must put the helmet of salvation on his head and always have at hand the sword of the Spirit, the word of his Lord, on which alone he has to rule his life.
But we considered the Lord far from us, locked up in the church as a "divine prisoner of the tabernacle", or as an eternal child in the arms of his mother. In this matter, as in so many others, we did not think that He too had something to say to us. In place of him there was the hierarchy, strengthened by his authority "received from God", and there was tradition.
For my part, although I was the last valvassino of this colossal feudal system, I too would have put in place my arrogance, even towards the Word of God ... without "ecclesiastical approval".
THE BIBLE AT THE BURNING
... they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn to fairy tales.
2 Tim. 4: 4
In 1954 I became parish priest of Trasaella, a fraction of the municipality of S. Agnello. My concern was to enforce all "church laws and regulations". I liked that the sacred rites were carried out with order and decorum, but I didn't bother to know if those who participated were "born again", contenting me with a formal religiosity.
One day a boy told me that his family owned a "Protestant" Bible. Now the Code of Canon Law (a book that in Catholicism has more authority than the Bible itself) clearly prescribes how to behave in such a case. I still remembered that when I was a child I had heard my pastor talk about a good Bible and a Bible that would be falsified by Protestants. The good man explained that if a Bible ever came into our hands, we had to make sure that it bore the "imprimatur" in the first pages, that is, the approval of the ecclesiastical authority. Missing this, the book should have burned immediately. That was what that family did, obeying me. Nor did I worry about replacing the "bad" Bible with a "good" one for reading.
At that time in the Roman church there was much talk of the revelations made by the Madonna in Fatima, in addition to those of Lourdes. My preaching was also based on them, convinced as I was that the world would be saved and would experience an era of peace when it was consecrated to the "immaculate heart of Mary", as was promised in the apparitions of Fatima. . (see Gal. 1: 8 and 2 Cor. 11:14). For the salvation of the world I also recommended the recitation of the "holy rosary". In the Marian hymns, the only ones almost sung in our churches, it was stated:
I will go to see her one day, in heaven my homeland,
I will go to see Mary, my joy and my love ...
Or:
O my beautiful hope, my sweet love Mary,
You are my life , you are my peace!
Or again:
When I think of my fate, which I am the son of Mary,
every worry, oh my mother, then moves away from me.
And many others, all in the same style. If Mary had taken God's place, to the point of making him disappear, what importance could the Word of Him have?
Sometimes the evangelical brothers today ask me: "But how is it possible for priests to support such errors; is the Bible not very clear? How do they read it?" It is difficult to understand the spiritual blindness of the Catholic clergy if one does not keep in mind that reality represented by the "rulers of this world of darkness" (Eph. 6:12).
Hal Lindsey wrote: "Satan worships religion. He is his trump card to blind us to the truth. He is the god of all who do not follow Jesus Christ. All who worship in any religious form that does not primarily take into account. of Christ (or who takes him into account only in appearance, as Roman Catholicism does) ultimately deceive themselves ".
I could give many examples demonstrating the fact that for the Roman Catholic institution the expressions so often repeated in its liturgy regarding the Bible: "word of God", "word of the Lord", remain pure theory.
In reality, innumerable doctrines of pagan or philosophical origin have been added and then replaced to his primitive biblical faith, giving life to a philosophical-religious syncretism, the most characteristic expression of which is found in the "Summa Theologica" by Thomas Aquinas. Thomism is precisely the occult rule of the doctrine of the Roman Church and the theological formation of priests is based on it.
We are therefore not surprised if Catholics, from the earliest years, are taught that God is a severe father, but that close to Him there is a tender mother who defends and protects us if we entrust ourselves to her, that saints are our advocates and protectors and that we need their recommendation to receive graces, etc. Faced with such a castle of human reasoning and lies one cannot help but exclaim: "An enemy did this" (Matt. 13:28)!
During my five years of training in the Theological Faculty of Posillipo, I almost never needed to open the Bible. In its place, to prove the famous one hundred theses for the licentiate in theology, one had to continually have in one's hands the "Enchiridion Symbolorum", better known as "the Denzinger", from the name of its compiler, a collection of documents from the "magisterium infallible of the Catholic Church ". We did not memorize a single biblical quote, but in return hundreds of numbers of the Denzinger!
At the end of the third year of theology, with the ordination to the sub-diaconate, the breviary was placed in our hands, a kind of "soup" composed of psalms and some other biblical readings, passages by fathers and doctors of the church, lives of saints, all in Latin, to be recited every day for the space of an hour and a half, under penalty of "mortal sin". This obligation, which was fulfilled in a hurry, often at the end of the day, took away all pleasure from true prayer, and above all the desire to drink from the pure source of the Word of God.
Perhaps today the Bible is read more in theological schools and in various Catholic associations. But alas! Most of the time it is a liberal, rationalistic or political interpretation: Bultmann sat in the chair next to Thomas Aquinas, and this too is ecumenism! In the 1960s, the theory of "demythization" had contaminated me too ... But even from this outrage against the purity of his Word, the Lord would have freed me.
THE PATIENCE OF GOD
... and you believe that the patience of our Lord is for your salvation.
2 Peter 3:15
The merciful Lord used a great deal of patience with me if he had to take so many years to convince me. Thinking of Rom. 8:28, I realize that many things have worked together for my good, and God has used them to guide me towards the light.
After a first decade of dull blindness, I began to feel a certain sympathy for evangelicals. I was convinced that by leaving the Roman Catholic Church they had moved away from the "fullness of truth", but I admired their consistency (by hearsay, since I had never met any) and their love for Holy Scripture. I considered them "separated brothers" and every year I organized the week of "pro union" prayers, to ask God for their return, that is, the reconstitution of a single flock under a single shepherd (the pope!). It was the Roman conception of ecumenism. I also became a zealous propagator of a "League of Prayers for Christian Union".
But sometimes the Lord grants the very reverse of what we ask of Him. I prayed that the Protestant "sects" would return repented to the church of the "vicar of Christ", and in response the Lord would let me out too, making me find in evangelical Christians the true brothers in Christ. Alleluia!
Meanwhile the Second Vatican Council had taken place. For years I had hoped that this event would bring an evangelical renewal in the Roman organization, of which I now saw all the shortcomings, even if I persisted in believing that it was the only true church. But after so many words and theatrical ceremonies, everything had been resolved in some superficial change without consequences for the spiritual life. The same reading of Scripture, now made in the language of the people, continued to descend upon the indifference and apathy of an unconverted mass, present in places of worship "because it has always been done like this", for social convenience or for " satisfy the festive precept ". Moreover, by a hierarchy unwanted by God,(see note 2 )
My interest in evangelical churches grew, also fueled by some radio and television programs, which I followed carefully, but above all I began to discover Sacred Scripture, even if I did not read it regularly and if I was influenced by new theologies.
In August 1975 I was in Florence for the National Liturgical Week. One morning I found myself passing the evangelical bookshop in via Ricasoli. I entered it, and after a while my eyes fell on a book: "Roman Catholicism in the Light of the Scriptures" (UCEB Rome), which I bought.
In the middle school in Sorrento, where I taught religion, there was a professor of literature, Edoardo Salmeri, who also sought the truth and was disappointed with Catholicism. I lent him that book, which he read in one go; after a while he was converted to the Lord. It took me another two years. The light slowly penetrated my mind, but the Catholic heresies fell one after the other under the mighty blows of the "sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God" (Eph. 6:17). By now I was certain that only churches faithful to Scripture could call themselves Christian.
In the Roman organization I had "worshiped and served the creature instead of the Creator". Apart from mariolatry and the cult of saints and "souls in purgatory", how many times had I preached on the necessity of obedience to the pope and to his words! I considered myself privileged because as a seminarian I had been able to kneel before the "sweet Christ on earth" and kiss his "sacred ring". Those were the years in which in the seminary and in the Catholic Action gatherings they made us sing:
White father, who from Rome You
are your goal, light and guide,
In each of us you trust,
You can count on all of us.
We are daring by faith,
We are heralds of the cross.
At your signal, at your voice,
an army has the altar.
Or:
Always with the Pope,
until his death,
What a beautiful fate,
what a beautiful fate ...
At that time I knew so little about Jesus that I did not feel the stark contrast between him, poor, persecuted and killed, and his alleged vicar, head of a tiny but financially and politically powerful state, honored and protected by the great of this world.
The television medium helped popularize the figure of the "holy father" (v. Mat 23: 9). I too stayed for hours in front of the television watching the "oceanic" crowds that came from all over the world to watch him look out of a window of his palace, the pagan rites that took place in St. Peter's basilica and the various "pilgrimages of peace "made by that man. Oh! If the Lord had not intervened, now I too would find myself among all those who are manipulated and prepared to "worship an image" and then drink the wine of God's wrath (Rev. 14: 9-11) !
It was Christmas night in 1976. I sat in front of the video to watch the Christmas mass broadcast from St. Peter's Basilica. The rite began with the antiphon "Puer natus est nobis ..", sung by the choir of the Sistine chapel. They were the beautiful words of Isaiah 9: 5: "A child is born to us, a child has been given to us, and the empire will rest on his shoulders; he will be called Admirable Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace ... "
At the same time in the central nave the gestatory chair on which His Holiness Paul VI sat in rich garments slowly advanced. The choir sang a prophecy referring to Christ, but the "faithful" applauded and acclaimed not Him, but a man. That man would be the pole of attraction during the whole "holy sacrifice". Once again he worshiped and served the creature instead of the Creator.
But this time the Spirit of God made me feel all the horror of that idolatry and made me dissociate from it. People, gripped by hysterical fanaticism, kept clapping their hands; poor nuns, people of all races and ages, looked at him in delight; those closest to the barriers stretched out their arms in an attempt to touch him.
I got up indignantly and went to bed, thinking gratefully of my Savior. A few months later Heavenly Father, the true Holy Father, would finally pull me out of the darkness of that paganism.
Notes: (2) Pastor, author of the monumental "History of the Popes", called the papal succession from the apostle Peter "the greatest forgery in history".
NEW WINE IN NEW OTRI!
Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and share her wounds.
Ap. 18: 4
By now I considered myself evangelical, but I didn't know how and when I would get out of that "religion". My preaching had become biblical, and I thought I could help Catholicism from within. But this is one of the last tricks of the enemy to restrain those who have discovered the Gospel: to calm their conscience, suggesting that they put the new wine in the old wineskins. How could my sermon be biblical when I spoke surrounded by idols of all shapes and sizes? God's will is clear: "Do not place yourselves under a yoke with the infidels that is not for you; because what is the commonality between justice and iniquity? Or what communion between light and darkness? .. . and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? ...Therefore get out from among them and separate from them ... and I will welcome you " (2 Cor. 6: 14-18).
Our God does not patch up an old garment. He makes everything new (Rev. 21: 5). , and from Gen. 12: 1 to Rev. 18: 4 the command of the Eternal is always to go away, to go out. I lingered, like Lot, but the Father had already prepared the plan for years. to overcome my last delays.
I wrote a letter to the bishop to inform him of my conversion, I begged him to delete my name from the list of his "priests", "having decided to obey the Holy Spirit who was calling me to serve God in spirit and truth in the evangelical church ".
I received a note in response, in which the man said he was ready to help me (!), And invited me to go to him (but shouldn't the shepherd be the one to go in search of the lost sheep?). He also reminded me that on July 8, 1951, according to the formula of the rite, I had promised the bishop who ordained me as a priest and his successors "reverence and obedience".
Once again the man pretended to substitute himself for God. it was evident that ours would be a dialogue between the deaf. This happened in September 1977.
On 1 December of the same year, Ruth and I, a Swiss evangelical girl, were married civilly in the municipal house of Bacoli (Naples) and on the 10th of the same month with a religious rite in the suggestive ancient Protestant church of St. Légier, on Lake Geneva ( Switzerland).
On 6 December of the following year the Lord gave us our firstborn, Ishmael (= God listens).
EPILOGUE
... I will lead her into the desert, and speak to her heart.
Hosea 3:14
After the living God had manifestly intervened in my life (also with other signs that it would take a long time to tell), the time of the desert and the trial followed. I had become "a stranger to my brothers, and a stranger to my mother's children" (Ps. 69: 8). The Lord had brought me out of the field and invited me to go to Him, bringing His reproach (Heb. 13:13).
What task would I have done in his vineyard? My ardent desire was to work exclusively for him and for his gospel, which I could now finally announce in all its purity and integrity. But, looking around me, I saw no one who was willing to accompany me and guide me in the first steps, except the companion that God had given me.
But that too was in God's plan, and so I thank Him. There was in fact the danger that I, accustomed as I had been for so many years to depend on men, on "superiors", would even now expect a solution from men. Instead, the Father wanted me to learn to depend entirely on him, to respect his times, to trust him fully, and to "look to Jesus, author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12: 2). He also wanted to test our purpose, suggested by Ruth even before we were married, to live by faith. For every material need He was faithful and intervened at the right time. These two years of desert were for me a blessed period of training with the great Master.
In September 1979 we left for Switzerland, where we were expecting the birth of our second child, Sefora. This time too we had suffered a great disappointment from men. But God made use of that forced stop in Switzerland for the birth of the child, which he clearly wanted to give us, to speak to my heart again and make me understand his will: that I return to my land, to witness his grace where I had sowed the error.
From Switzerland I resumed contact with my brother Mosè Baldari. For the second time the Lord was guiding me towards this mission, which He had already made known to me in June 1979. I had learned from the radio at the time that an evangelical conference would take place in Vico Equense, in the Sorrento peninsula. I went there on the day of the inauguration, and was immediately surrounded by the kindness and sympathy of brothers of different nationalities. I had only gone there to listen to Christian messages and to be a bit among brothers of faith, and instead I had received the invitation to work for the Lord with the support and support of this mission. But at that time I already had a promise of work from a publisher in the North, and therefore I had not given an affirmative answer.
On the occasion of the European Missionary Conference in June 1979, I was able to accomplish what I had longed for: baptism. I was baptized on the morning of June 29, in the sea that washes my land. It was an event that I will never forget and that even now fills me with joy. Many of my former colleagues had already left the "priesthood", while preserving the errors of Roman Catholicism. I was the first in my peninsula to testify that by divine grace I was converted to the living God.
With each passing day I am happier for my choice, indeed for being chosen by our great God and Savior Christ Jesus, and for being so wonderfully guided by Him.
My only desire now is that His Word spread and be glorified (2 Thess."that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory and empire forever and ever. Amen." (1 Peter, 4:11).
(Testimony taken from the brochure of the Italian Mission for the Gospel - CP 1523 - Florence)
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