2. Why the Catholic Church? Wouldn't Orthodoxy have been a possible alternative?

Undoubtedly, the Orthodox Church is a possible alternative to my Protestant faith rather than the Catholic Church. I do not deny that this was one of the alternatives that presented itself before me, given that I do have a fascination with Eastern theology.

However, I had three reasons for choosing to become Catholic:

i) my thorough belief in the doctrine of original sin as taught by St Augustine, which is absent in Eastern theology;

ii) my thorough belief in the primacy of the Petrine ministry exercised by the Catholic Church; and

iii) my deep agreement with the catholicity / universality of the Catholic Church as opposed to the ethnic-specific configuration of the Orthodox Churches with which I could not identify.

3. There are so many denominational churches today in Malaysia (and more are forming). Would you comment on this growing trend to “form a new church”? While we strive towards ecumenical closeness, there is a lot more ground to cover with this mushrooming.

The Protestant communities consist of some 40,000 denominations worldwide and continue to grow in that direction. One major development in these Reformation-based communities in the recent decades is the swift emergence of independent congregations which do not place themselves under the leadership of any denominational structure. They often see the historical denominations as a thing of the past, whereas the Holy Spirit is developing a “new wineskin” now in the form of independent ecclesial communities.

It is true that the growth of these newer forms of Christian communities poses a greater challenge to the ecumenical priority of the Catholic Church. But to begin with, the current ethos of Protestantism itself already makes the ecumenical priority difficult enough.

To cite a case in point, the Catholic Church reached a consensus in 1999 with the Lutheran World Federation on the doctrine of Justification by Faith. To be sure, this consensus represented an agreement on the part of the Catholic Church. But how binding was it upon all the Lutheran denominations around the globe? There was not an embrace of that consensus in unison as far as concerns the Lutheran denominations, let alone on the part of other denominations which are offshoots of Lutheran Protestantism.

What I am saying is, this is not a new problem; it is an intensification of an old problem.