Author
About the Author
Donum Veritatis – The Gift of Truth Ministries, Château Baptiste Publications, and the Christian Unity in Diversity Central website are Christian ministries founded by Peter William John Baptiste, SFO. His first ministry and calling is as the husband of Lorelle Baptiste, charged with doing his best (leaning on God’s Grace) to (however imperfectly) model God the Father’s Love and Truth for his five children Dantée, Pascal, Rembrandt, Galileo, and Michelangelo.
The Baptiste Family
“I have had the pleasure of knowing Bill [Peter William John Baptiste] since 1994, and have personally been witness to his journey of faith since that time. I know Bill to be an energetic, compassionate, and exuberant, herald of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”
– Ron Semenoff, SFO, Third Order of Saint Francis Fraternity Minister
His professors include noted Christian authors who wrote of his student work (now expanded as books in the Catalog):
“William is an outstanding student, who has done some extraordinary research papers … he has great potential as a scholar who could serve the Church well with his intellectual gifts.”
– Alan Schreck, author, Hearts Aflame: The Holy Spirit at the Heart of Christian Life Today; Catholic and Christian: An Explanation of Commonly Misunderstood Catholic Beliefs; many others .
“outstanding,” “excellent,” “clear, thoughtful and thorough.”
– Scott Hahn, author, A Father Who Keeps His Promises: Understanding God’s Covenant Love in the Old Testament; Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God; First Comes Love: Finding Your Family in the Church and the Trinity; The Lamb’s Supper; Swear to God; many others.
This was written about the greatly over-length research paper for Dr. Hahn which is now expanded in the Catalog as Love Unbounded: Tracing Salvation History from the Eternal Trinity to the New Covenant Church – Using Family Theology to Answer the Question How and Why Does Jesus’ Death Save Us? (That is, this was written by Dr. Hahn of the first paper using Peter William John Baptiste, SFO’s Family Theology framework for Biblical theology, built upon Scott Hahn’s Covenant Theology framework for Biblical theology).
“William has a lively intellect, and his passion to communicate sound knowledge of the faith and theology is evident … I … have found both his class presentations and papers outstanding.”
– Alan Schreck, author, Your Life in the Holy Spirit: What Every Catholic Needs to Know and Experience; The Compact History of the Catholic Church; Vatican II: The Crisis and the Promise; many others.
Dr. Schreck taught Mr. Baptiste, SFO in 3 Masters-level courses, on Church History, Church Renewal, and Vatican II – all of which are major subjects on this website!
“What an extraordinary level of scholarship you’ve brought to your study of our Mother! Superb!”
– Mark Miravalle, author, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion; The Dogma and the Triumph (with Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez); others.
This was written by a world-reknowned Mariologist of the research paper which is now expanded in the Catalog as So That The World May Believe: A Call to Christian Unity – Teaching Christians How to Restore the Lost Unity in Diversity of the Undivided Early Church Through Lovingly Seeking to Truly Understand Each Other’s Differences While Celebrating Our Vast Common Saving Christian Faith and Learning from Our Different Strengths, “So That the World May Believe” – Volume II (For Understanding Our Differences Concerning Mary) – Who is Mary in the Church ? Understanding Highly Developed Catholic Mariology and the Mediatrix of All Graces Doctrine: Linking Christ the Head to His Body the Church Through Mary, First Believer in Jesus and First Member of the Body in Ways Which Protect the Traditional Christian Fundamental Truths about Mary’s Fully Divine Yet Fully Human Son Jesus from Heresies Ancient and Modern.
This book is meant to help non-Catholic Christians truly understand and appreciate Catholic beliefs about Mary (even if they still disagree with them), so that Mary is no longer a barrier to Christian unity in diversity. It is also meant to help Catholic Christians delve deeper into the Catholic Church’s beliefs about Mary, which are all based on things Protestants/ Evangelicals already believe such as the Mystery of the Incarnation of God the Son in Jesus Christ through Mary’s Virgin Birth, and based on the insight that Mary, who believed the angel and who prayed with the Church for the coming of Pentecost (Acts 1:14), is the first believer in Jesus (therefore the first Christian), so that Catholic Christians can learn to practice and explain the Marian aspect of their faith in more precise ways which no longer contribute to Protestant misunderstandings about Mary which unnecessarily cause tension and strengthen division.
Before Peter William John Baptiste, SFO had completed his course of studies, Roman Catholic Bishop Luc Bouchard of Saint Paul, who seriously considered Mr. Baptiste for the position of Director of the John Paul II Bible College in his diocese, wrote in the name of the Board of Governors for the College (which he heads) that he was “very much impressed by [Mr. Baptiste’s] many talents and gifts and enthusiasm for Vatican II and hopes that [Mr. Baptiste] will continue to seek to serve the Lord.” Vatican Council II, the Holy Spirit’s brilliant guidance (via Ecumenical Council) for Church Reform and Renewal in the modern age, was started by Blessed Pope John XXIII, Mr. Baptiste’s brother in the Third Order of Saint Francis with its generic calling to “Rebuild” or “Renew” the Church. With the above encouragement of Bishop Bouchard, Peter William John Baptiste, SFO, has never ceased to seek to serve the Lord by working towards the full implementation of Vatican II within the Catholic Church for the salvific benefit of the whole Church and the whole world. Donum Veritatis – The Gift of Truth Ministries, Château Baptiste Publications, and the Christian Unity in Diversity Central website are the fruits of his effort. To add your own participation in these ministries as a member of the Body of Christ the Church, to make them all the more fruitful, see Prayer and Donations Support.
Peter William John Baptiste, SFO on His Personal Ecumenical Experience as a Member of All the Major Branches of Christ’s Divided Church Which Helps Him To Help Christians Love and Understand Each Other Better
[adapted from So That The World May Believe ]
This Website Intends to Aid Christian Unity by Helping All Christians to Truly Understand Each Other’s Different Perspectives on Mary and the Papacy and so on, in Terms of the Common Christian Fundamentals
To aid this mutual understanding, I present this website (especially the Three-Volume book So That The World May Believe in the Catalog) to the reader primarily for the purpose of helping all Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant – and even “Messianic Jewish”1) to understand our vast common faith and to understand each other’s different perspectives on Mary and the papacy and so on in relation to our vast common faith. I believe I am well qualified to so “translate” between Christians, because my personal Christian experience has encompassed all the major branches of Christianity. I was raised in a large doctrinally conservative “mainline” Protestant denomination and later became an Evangelical Protestant (when my “doctrinally conservative” denomination became “doctrinally liberal,” losing its grip on traditional, orthodox Christian faith and morality). Later on I came into the Catholic Church, initially through the huge Western, Roman Rite of the Catholic Church for a decade, after which I restored the Ukrainian line of my family’s cultural heritage in the smaller Eastern, Byzantine Ukrainian Rite2 of the same Catholic Church (this gives me a genuinely “Eastern Orthodox” perspective since the Eastern Orthodox Churches are virtually identical to the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church like mine but simply no longer within the ancient Universal [Greek katholikos, or Catholic] Communion of orthodox Rites or “Sister Churches,” Eastern and Western, head pastored by the pope3). Without joining it, for a year or so I attended Saturday Messianic Jewish worship services with such regularity that some assumed incorrectly that it was my main faith community and expressed concern when I began to attend less frequently. Please note that my fundamental Christian faith, articulated in the COMMON CREED, never changed as I became a faithful member of each church (and the Messianic Jewish Community I worshiped with also maintained the same faith)! The Jesus I knew and loved as an Evangelical Protestant was the very same Jesus I know and love as an Eastern Rite Catholic. And please note that the need for such “translation” regarding many issues but Mary in particular cannot be underestimated, as there are many gross misunderstandings about Mary between Christians which are quite literally related to a “language barrier,” whereby Catholic and Protestant Christians mean different things by the same words, which contributes to the misunderstandings between them. (See So That The World May Believe – Volume II, Appendix I)
1“Messianic Judaism” is a recent movement begun by conservative, fundamentally orthodox Protestant Christians of Jewish ethnicity, wherein Jews can accept Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew/Aramaic) as their Promised Messiah, understood according to the norms of orthodox Christianity, without giving up their Jewish cultural identity (as none of the Gentile Romans, Greeks, Syrians, and so on had to give up their distinct cultural identities when they became Christians through the Gospel ministry of the original Jewish Christians – their different Gentile (non-Jewish) cultures just had to be adjusted where they did not conform to Gospel values, see Acts 15:1-30). This movement is paralleled in the Catholic Church by the Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC), for Catholic Christians of Jewish ethnicity, and there is talk of re-establishing a “Hebrew” or “Jewish” Rite of the Catholic Church. The Undivided Early Christian Church called itself the Catholic Church because it was a Universal (Greek katholikos or Catholic) Communion of different culturally-based Rites or Sister Churches which mutually enriched each other (and together articulated the fundamental beliefs of orthodox Christianity) in the Early Ecumenical (worldwide) Councils of the leaders of all these different but united culturally-based Christian Churches. The overseers or bishops of the five ancient cities which were the centers of the first five nations or cultures to be renewed in Jesus – Jerusalem (Jewish culture); Antioch (Syrian culture); Alexandria (Egyptian culture); Rome (Roman culture); and Constantinople (or Byzantium, Greek culture) – were declared Patriarchs of the Universal (Catholic) Christian Church by the same Ecumenical Councils which clearly articulated and declared the above fundamental doctrines of Christianity, as a way of acknowledging that each Sister Church’s different worship and devotional customs were legitimate cultural expressions of orthodox Christianity. To see how the entire Bible leads up specifically to the establishment of the Christian Church as it actually existed in this period of the Undivided Early Catholic (Universal) Christian Church, and what can be done to help re-establish this ancient Christian unity in diversity (and what has already been done towards this in the 21st Ecumenical Council [Vatican Council II, 1962-5]), see my book The Bible’s “Big Picture”: Using “Family Theology” to Understand the Single Overarching Story Told Throughout the Scriptures, Which Makes the Bible Our Family History as Christians.
2Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople (called Istanbul after its Muslim conquest), was the center of the ancient Greek-speaking Greek culture and the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. When Rome, center of the Latin-speaking Roman culture and the Western half of the Roman Empire, fell to barbarian invaders in 476 AD, the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire lasted another thousand years until the Muslim conquest of Byzantium/Constantinople in 1453. Byzantine (or Greek) Christian missionaries spread the Gospel of Jesus to the cultures of Eastern Europe including Ukraine, which formally became Christian in 988 AD. The Ukrainian culture as transformed by Jesus was distinct from the Byzantine Greek culture as transformed by Jesus, though it still borrowed heavily from the distinctly Byzantine Greek expressions of Christianity practiced by the Greek missionaries who brought the Gospel to Ukraine. Both the Greek Church of Byzantium/Constantinople and its distinct “daughter Church” in Ukraine were still part of the unbroken Christian communion of the Undivided Early Catholic (Universal) Church. My Church within today’s ongoing Catholic (Universal) Communion of orthodox Eastern and Western “Sister” Churches collectively known simply as the Catholic Church is thus known as the Byzantine Ukrainian Catholic Church or the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, either term identifying my Church as the Ukrainian “daughter” Church or Rite of the ancient Byzantine/Greek Church or Rite of the one Universal or Catholic Church of Jesus Christ which recognizes the pope as its Head Pastor.
3Though only one quarter of all Catholic Christians were Roman Catholics in the Undivided Early Church, which called itself the Catholic Church because it was a Catholic (Universal) Communion of orthodox Christian Rites or Sister Churches (Eastern and Western), due to accident of history today the majority of Catholic Christians belong to the Western, Roman Catholic Sister Church within the ongoing Catholic Communion of over 20 orthodox Christian Rites or Sister Churches (known collectively as the Catholic Church). See So That The World May Believe Volume I Chapter 7 for a brief overview of the historical factors (many related to Muslim conquest of the East) which severely reduced the numbers of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church (and which created today’s Eastern Orthodox Churches as Churches separated from the previous Catholic Communion of East and West), making most Catholic Christians today Roman Catholics, a fact which has hidden the true universality (catholicity) of the Catholic Church even from Roman Catholic Christians who are often unaware that the Catholic Church is much more than just their Western Roman Catholic Sister Church (though there are tens of millions of non-Roman, Eastern Catholics, this number is small next to the billion-member Roman Rite of the Catholic Church – under 5% of Catholics are not Roman). This Chapter will also briefly discuss how the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, Vatican Council II (1962-5), which was the very first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church ever to formally reflect upon (with the Holy Spirit’s guidance) and dogmatically describe the ancient nature and structure of the Church of Christ, has laid the foundation for the eventual healing of the divisions which plague Christianity so that Christians may one day fully recapture their First Millennium unity in diversity among different but united orthodox Christian Sister Churches in one Universal or Catholic Christian Communion, as in the Undivided Early Church. So That The World May Believe Volume III has many more details concerning such Church reunification and Vatican II implementation.