On life, apologetics, and Reformation

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted, so I wanted to give you an update.

Hamster

Finally free from the wheel!

I graduated in December with my latest degree, in computer science. I’ve gone to work as a research scientist in information technology for a research center at my university. For the first time in my life, I consider myself gainfully employed, and it’s a good feeling. Work keeps me busy, not in the same, 24/7, constant-crisis mode of being in school, but in a consistent, rewarding manner that brings new challenges and opportunities to research and learn every day. I really love my job. I’m engaged to be married. Life is moving forward, after years of feeling like I was running in a hamster wheel.

The Great Courses: The History of Christianity

As part of my daily commute, I started listening to audiobooks a year or so ago. I listened to Stephen King’s epic The Stand three times in a row — it being the only book I had at the time and an enthralling one. Then I subscribed to Audible.com, where I can get new books every month. After a couple of abortive forays into other fiction, I began listening to audio courses in history through Audible and The Great Courses. I listened to an outstanding history of Christianity by Professor Luke Timothy Johnson; now I’m about halfway through another great history of Christianity in the Reformation Era by Professor Brad S. Gregory. What I have learned is inspiring and challenging.

The Great Courses: The History of Christianity in the Reformation Era

The truth is, even with my history degrees, I’ve felt my foundation in the history of the whole of Christianity was weak, especially in the Reformation era. I took one survey course in the history of Christianity years ago with Dr. G, and it was life-changing, but it stopped short of the Reformation. I took several other courses in medieval European history, but never took Dr. G’s Renaissance and Reformation course, which I’ve always regretted. I had one graduate course in early modern European historiography which touched on some Reformation topics. Beyond that, my only contact with Reformation history as a whole was in the broad European survey courses I took as an undergraduate and helped teach as a graduate.

St. Augustine, Lateran fresco

The earliest known portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th-century fresco, Lateran, Rome. (Wikimedia)

I’ve written here how history guided me to the Catholic Church. It’s true, what I learned of the Catholic Church in especially Dr. G’s surveys, and of the great Church Fathers, bishops, popes, and theologians, was something to fall in love with. As I approached the Church later, what guided me most was my own study of the Church Fathers — realizing that the faith and Church of the Fathers did not at all resemble anything in the Protestant world, but rather instead gave the foundations and antecedents of the Catholic Church. This was enough to convince me that this course is right, but it gave a rather lopsided view, especially coupled with my immersion in Catholic apologetics.

My reengagement with history has been sobering. Rather than the triumphalism of apologetics, I am coming to see that the Church has had many faults and foibles. Christians have done wrong, committed sins, or otherwise fallen short of the glory and calling of the Gospel of Christ. Doctrines and traditions have accreted, built up and calcified in not a glorious way, but at times a constrictive way, impeding people from coming to Christ rather than bringing them to Him more ably. I see that reform was desperately needed — as it is always needed. Just as in our individual lives, we must constantly reform ourselves and turn again toward Christ, so as a Church we must constantly be reformed and refreshed and renewed. There were glories of the medieval Church, but there were also failures. Semper reformanda.

Protestant iconoclasm

Protestant iconoclasm.

That is not to say that I’m a fan of the Protestant Reformation, either. From chapter to chapter, my emotions have ranged from disgust and revulsion, to horror, to deep depression at the extreme actions and reactions of Protestants. Yes, reform was needed; yes, the institutional Church was slow to embrace it; but no, not only Protestant theology, but especially the way in which Protestant reforms were carried out, was deeply wrong and destructive. Daily I struggle to understand how so many Christians raised up in the traditions of the Church, even those educated as ministers, could so vehemently, viciously, and hatefully turn against her and reject her.

Burglechner, The Council of Trent

Matthias Burglechner, The Council of Trent, 16th century (Wikimedia Commons).

More than anything, I am seeing how it is only by the grace of God that we have a Church at all; how He holds us up, even in our weakness and failures. Triumphalism in apologetics bothers me almost as much as falsehood. It is misleading to present that the Church was always right and that Christians have never made mistakes, or that the way things are now is the exact same way they have always been. I have struggled for a long time to understand Protestant arguments, to understand how, presented with the same Catholic arguments that I have found so convincing, others do not. I’m convinced now that a good apologist must acknowledge faults, but present how even despite them, God has used the Church. The strongest argument of all to me, now, is that despite all the ways humans have screwed it up, despite the “idolatry” and “apostasy” the Protestants who abandoned her charged, God did reform the Catholic Church and continues to use her, even more ably than before, as a vessel of salvation. It’s a testimony, too, that the Protestant enterprise was not wholly corrupt, but that Protestants and Protestant churches have continued to be used for God’s glory, and that they too can change, be tempered, and be reformed. The greatest truth, I’m convinced, lies somewhere in our reconciliation and reunion.

May we all be reformed and renewed in this journey of Lent toward the Resurrection. I hope to write more about these reflections soon.

[Oh, by the way, my site (and my whole hosting account) was recently hacked. I believe it’s fixed now, but please let me know if you see anything suspicious.]

Reformation Day: Reflections on the Heritage of the Protestant Reformation

Ferdinand Pauwels, Luther Posting the 95 Theses (1872)

Ferdinand Pauwels, Luther Posting the 95 Theses (1872).

Today, October 31, is the 499th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation, the day Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church door, the beginning of the “protest” — celebrated as, in Lutheran and Reformed churches, Reformation Day. Yesterday was known in those churches as Reformation Sunday. I, for one, celebrated Reformation Sunday by welcoming a Protestant brother into full communion with the Catholic Church. And today I am reflecting on the troubling celebration of “Reformation Day,” on the heritage of the Protestant Reformation, and on my own Protestant heritage.

Confirmed in Faith

Joseph Richardson, Jason Parker, Bishop Baker

(Left to right) Joseph Richardson, Jason Parker, Bishop Robert Baker.

Yesterday my friend Jason Parker was confirmed in the Catholic Church by our bishop, the Most Rev. Robert J. Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama, at Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Huntsville. Jason was raised Southern Baptist, but as I was, had been being drawn for a long time to the history and liturgy of Catholic Church. I met him about a year ago, working at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he has been my officemate. I can’t take much credit for converting him: he was already very far along his journey when I met him, and only had some nagging questions I was able to help him through.

Jason’s Baptist family, by all appearances, was remarkably supportive of his decision. About half a dozen of them turned out for the Confirmation Mass — a Tridentine High Mass, at that — including parents and grandparents. It testifies to me, and rightly so, that faith in Christ is the highest treasure, whatever form that faith might take. My own family and friends have also been very supportive of me. On my own road to the Catholic Church, the friend whose opinion I was most concerned about was my good Baptist friend Josh’s — but when I confessed my inclinations to him, he most graciously told me that wherever God was leading me, he would support me.

Protestant Heritage

There were some moments, during my own journey, when I felt real concern for what my ancestors must think of me. As someone very close to my roots who has been involved in researching my genealogy for the past twenty years, I often feel I know my ancestors personally, and it is easy to think of them looking down on me. And it is a certain fact that especially in generations past, Protestants viewed Catholicism with even more suspicion and mistrust than they do now, if not outright judgment.

Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Mobile, Alabama

Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Mobile, Alabama (Wikimedia).

What would they think of me, these men and women who lived their whole lives believing in Protestant churches? Was I betraying my heritage? Was Protestantism in my blood, a part of who I was, the religion of my people and region and culture? Growing up in the Southern United States, I thought, and there is still the perception to some, that Catholicism is a “Yankee” phenomenon. And it is true, thanks largely to Irish immigration in the nineteenth century, that there tends to be a higher concentration of Catholics in the northern states. But the truth is, some of the earliest beachheads of Christianity in America were Catholic and in the Southern U.S., at New Orleans and Natchez and Mobile and Pensacola and St. Augustine. Catholics are much more of a minority in the upland South from which I hail, but even in my own backyard, German immigrants established a Catholic stronghold in North Alabama at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman; and Mother Angelica built a global fortress at EWTN in Irondale. Catholics have been making inroads here: in every parish of which I’ve been a part, we have seen a bumper crop of new converts in RCIA. And it so happened that I stumbled into perhaps one of the most proudly Southern Catholic parishes around: St. John the Evangelist in Oxford, Mississippi, home of “Ole Miss,” the University of Mississippi, and Southern Fried Catholicism.

Rev. William Warren Aldridge (1861-1958)

Rev. William Warren Aldridge (1861-1958), my great-great-grandfather, a Methodist minister.

I have some half a dozen Protestant ministers in my ancestry — four Methodist and one Baptist that I can think of, off the top of my head. They seem to have been good men full of faith. One of them, through a weird trick of God’s Providence, is buried in the cemetery of my Catholic parish today. That fact, more than any other, confirms me in the conviction I eventually came to: that if it is true, as I believe, that the Catholic Church teaches the fullest, clearest, most faithful presentation of the truth of Christ, then my loved ones in heaven, my faithful ancestors, surely now understand the truth. Coming to perfect knowledge in death, believers are surely undivided in Christ in heaven.


Gloating in Division

Georg Heinrich Sieveking, Execution of Louis XVI (1793)

Georg Heinrich Sieveking, Execution of Louis XVI (1793) (Wikimedia).

One of the things that bothers me most about “Reformation Day” celebrations is the triumphalism: the proclamation, even in this day, that the Reformation was about “the rediscovery of the Gospel from the darkness of man-centered righteousness!,” to quote a friend’s Facebook post. This is the popular narrative, seemingly immutable, in some Protestant churches, especially those of the Reformed variety. It amounts, in my view, to dismissing the Catholic Church as a dead and lifeless corpse, gloating in our division of the Body of Christ, and laughing mockingly on the gallows of our matricide.

I strive to point out, to anyone who will listen, that the idea of the Catholic Church as having “lost” the gospel or of teaching a “man-centered righteousness” is mostly an historical and theological myth, rooted almost solely in the polemical writings of the Reformers and in the continued distortion and misunderstanding of Catholic theology. The Catholic Church does not teach, and has never taught, that our righteousness or our salvation is based on our own works.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine (c. 1645-1650), Philippe de Champaigne.

The suggestion that the Catholic Church had “lost” the gospel is deeply troubling, and it is bandied around without appreciation of its implications. Did Christ really allow His Church to fall into apostasy? The gates of hell to prevail against her? The light of truth to depart from the world? Did He really allow generations of believers to believe in vain and to be condemned? These charges of a “lost gospel” are usually not fleshed out. What is it, precisely, about Catholic teaching that allows the gospel to be “lost”? For how many centuries was the earth without the gospel? It is a polemical, divisive, and ultimately unjustifiable point.

Luther as an Augustinian Monk

Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther as an Augustinian Monk (after 1546) (Wikimedia).

Of course, in Protestant mythology, the idea is that the Catholic Church was never the One Church of Christ at all, that it was merely a human institution and usurper to the name “Church,” that the true Church exists as an “invisible” body in the hearts of true believers, and that there have always been “true believers” apart from the Catholic Church. Thinking thus, the idea that the “Roman Catholic” Church could “lose” the gospel is not so profane a thought. Such thinking invariably requires believing facts not supported by the historical record, or else ignoring the historical record altogether.

The schism of the Reformation happened. I don’t believe it was God’s will (although God has made the most of it, despite our human failures). We allowed petty human disagreements and politics to rend the Body of Christ, when Christ prayed “that we might all be one, as He and the Father are One” (John 17:21). Yes, there were some corruptions in some sectors of the Catholic Church — as there almost always are, where sinful people are involved. Yes, the Church is always in need of spiritual renewal and revival. But the tactics of various Reformers, a wanton disregard for Christian unity or reconcilation, did much more harm than they possibly could have done good. Reform was possible without schism. Regardless of Protestant insistence that Luther and other Reformers were seeking reform within the Church and did not seek to found their own churches, Luther made little if any conciliatory effort toward the established order of the Church: If he was seeking reform on his own terms, then schism is what he actually sought, and schism is what he got.

The Heritage of the Reformation

I do become angry and indignant at such arrogant assertions as these. But as I’ve said many times before, I’m very thankful for my Protestant upbringing and for my Protestant heritage. There have been positive fruits of many of the various Protestant traditions. I would like to briefly recall a few.

Scripture Study

Codex Vaticanus

A leaf from Codex Vaticanus, one of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.

It is true, I believe, that the Protestant Reformation brought about a much-needed renewal. Its emphasis on the written Word of Scripture — combined with, and fueled by, the recent invention of movable type — certainly put the Bible in the hands of many believers who previously could not read it for themselves, and in the vernacular languages known to them. There is a lot of Protestant mythology, too, about the Catholic Church striving to keep the Bible from the hands of believers, which simply isn’t true. But the wide availability of Scripture in vernacular languages, and the ability for believers to draw closer to God through Scripture study, is certainly in part a fruit of the Protestant Reformation.

Reform of Corruption

Sale of indulgences

The sale of indulgences.

Some of the charges of the Protestant Reformers, about corruption in the Catholic Church, were on target. I do not believe, and the historical record does not support, that such corruption was as pervasive or widespread as the polemics of the Reformers would have us believe. But it is true that many pastors and even bishops were ignorant or uneducated and not equipped to faithfully teach the truth of salvation to their flock. The true teaching of the grace of Christ, then, may indeed have been neglected from the popular piety of many. There was certainly political corruption, especially in the leadership of the Church, in simony, the buying or selling of ecclesiastical offices or benefices; pluralism, the holding of more than one church office, and not doing any of them very effectively; and absenteeism, the holding of a church office, but not living in or being involved with its ministry. There were indeed abuses of indulgences, that had been known for a long time but little had been done to correct them. These and other matters were certainly reflective of a need for reform.

Renewal

Burglechner, The Council of Trent

Matthias Burglechner, The Council of Trent, 16th century (Wikimedia Commons).

Perhaps it is true that the Church was slow to reform herself — but these and other matters of concern raised by the Protestant Reformers were dealt with at the Council of Trent and implemented by the Catholic Reformation. The Protestant Reformation did eventually spur this reform — but the way it was carried out put the Church into an immediate crisis mode and probably delayed meaningful reform by a generation. A more graceful and patient reformer, I believe, could have worked within the Church to bring about this reform without schism.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897): “Everything is grace.”

I also suspect, having come from the Protestant camp, that Catholic doctrine, worship, and practice has benefited a lot from its interplay with Protestantism. Prior to the Reformation, Catholic theology certainly held that salvation was by grace, through faith. Luther “discovered” nothing, except a novel and unprecedented interpretation of Pauline theology. But in the Catholic teaching of grace, its immediacy and intimacy may have been obscured by endless, scholastic, theological inquiry and speculation. I don’t know much about what would have been taught to lay believers in parishes at this time: but I am sure that the concerns of the Protestants did bring about a renewed focus and a reemphasis on grace.

I am glad, personally, for the emphases in my faith that my Protestant upbringing taught me. I am glad for the emphasis on an intimate relationship with Christ (though this is certainly not unique to Protestantism); I am glad for the emphasis on personal Bible study. I am glad for the faith of my parents and grandparents that brought me to know the Lord. But I pray every day that divided Christians can draw closer together, come to better understandings of one another and forgive each other, and take steps toward working together for the gospel of Christ, and ultimately toward the restoration of the united Body of Christ. “Reformation Day” can be useful to celebrate the heritage of the Protestant tradition, but as a celebration of disunity I find it only harmful.

Catholicism and Assurance of Salvation

My next post in the current series is already queued up and scheduled; but I think I’m going to delay it for a timely reflection that turns out to be quite apropos. [Part one. Part two.]

Baptism in Kansas (1928), by John Steuart Curry

Baptism in Kansas (1928), by John Steuart Curry (WikiPaintings).

Last night I gave my testimony to a room full of Baptists. On Wednesday nights I attend a home care group at the home of my dear friends Josh and Wendy, ardent Christians and faithful Baptists. I grew up, and my faith was formed, among Baptists, and even now as a Catholic, I have a great and growing love for the Baptist tradition. And last night, we went around the circle as each member of the group shared his or her Christian testimony. As I closed mine, apologetically thanking my friends for their love and acceptance of me, “even though I’m a Catholic now, in a room full of Baptists,” one man spoke up and noted that we were a room full of Christians.

First Baptist Church, Lincolnton, N.C.

There’s one note that was a refrain through many of the testimonies of my Baptist friends, and I don’t wish to speak critically of it, but it made me thoughtful, and I thought I would comment on it from my own testimony: the quest for “assurance of salvation.” Baptists believe one can have assurance of one’s eternal destiny, “eternal security,” a faith that one’s eternal salvation is certain and cannot be taken away. But it seemed that for several of my friends, the search for this assurance was a struggle with uncertainty and doubt, until finally each received a confirmation. Several of them were raised in Christian homes and in church, and grew up knowing of the gospel; several of them had journeys of faith, even serving in the church, only to drift away or fall into sin, or later otherwise realize that they were “lost.” They then had dramatic moments at which they were “saved.”

Caravaggio, Conversion of Saint Paul (1600)

Conversion of Saint Paul (1600), by Caravaggio.

But I know well, from my own life, the inconstancy of human flesh. I too was raised in a godly home, by godly parents, in a godly church; I knew the Lord from an early age; I grew up walking with Him; as a young man I was “on fire” for Him; and though I was immature and there was much I didn’t understand, I can say with fair certainty that I did know the Lord, that I trusted in Him and followed Him, and in the manner of speaking of Evangelicals, was “saved.” And yet I did fall away; I fell into serious sin; I walked away from God for a number of years. Was what I had before, then, as a young man, not real? Later on God called me back, and I did have dramatic conversion experiences, more than one of them; and yet that wasn’t the end of the road for me, either. I still struggled with sin, even fell in deeper than I ever had before, until I had an even further and deeper conversion to the Lord: not a single moment, but a highway landmarked with monuments of faith.

The road to Rome

So it presents a number of questions: When was I “saved”? Did I “lose my salvation” those times I fell away? Did I never have “assurance” to begin with? My friends’ stories were each framed around the premise that there was a single moment at which they were saved, at which they received assurance; and yet I heard evidence that these people were following and serving the Lord even before those moments. And I seriously wonder that if any of them were to fall again into serious sin — a danger that I am sure they would admit — if they should “backslide” or fall away from the Lord — that they wouldn’t then have further and later moments, and that they wouldn’t then frame their testimonies around them, supposing that that time is when they were truly “saved,” or “recommitted” their lives to Him. Even the language and narrative of Evangelicals seem to admit that “salvation” is a journey, an ongoing conversion, even despite their conventions and focus on single moments.

Despite any assurance of salvation that one might hold at any given moment, it is possible that that person might backslide or fall away — and if he were then to die, at that point there would be uncertainty among those who knew him: Was he truly saved? Did he ever really have a saving faith? One camp, the Reformed, would say that his falling away was evidence that he didn’t; and whatever assurance he had at one time would seem to count for very little. Others, more Evangelical-minded, might say that because he did have assurance of a saving faith at one time, he must have been saved in the end. And yet that saving faith was not saving him toward the end of his life or bearing fruit.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, by Smith Catholic Art

Sacred Heart of Jesus, by Smith Catholic Art (prints available).

The standard Evangelical evangelistic question is, “If you died tonight, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven and be with Jesus?” I am glad that nobody asked me that question last night, because as a Catholic, they wouldn’t have liked my answer. No, I don’t have absolute assurance; but I stand in good company, and answer with the words of Paul: “I do not even judge myself; it is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4:3–4). I trust in the promises of my Lord: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:54). I know Him and trust in Him and have faith that “He who has begun a good work in [me] will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). I have assurance that my Lord “will never leave [me] nor forsake [me]” (Hebrews 13:5, etc.); if there is any doubt, it is not in the Lord, but in my own fragile humanity. He gives us the grace in Him to stand and to abide; but He also gives us the free will to stand with Him or to walk away, to choose sin and death or His eternal life (Deuteronomy 30:19, Sirach 15:17).

Much ink has been spilled over the centuries over the question of whether we can be certain that we are in a state of grace, that we are justified and forgiven of our sins; and this doubt coincides with the doubts of “assurance” that I heard from my friends last night. But faith is from the Lord (Ephesians 2:8–10), and He does give assurance and confirmation in that faith that we are in Him. In that faith, I know that it is never God who will let go of me; and I can say with abiding faith that I will not let go of Him between now and the moment of my death, especially were that to come tonight. Now, then, and always, I can only throw myself upon His boundless grace: “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Reading Church History as a Protestant: The Early Church, Apostolic or Apostate?

Duccio, Appearance of Christ to the Apostles (1311)

Appearance of Christ to the Apostles (fragment) (1311), by Duccio. (WikiPaintings.org)

I suppose there are only two or three ways for the Protestant reader of Church history to understand the Early Church (by which I mean the subapostolic Church, the Church of the first several generations of Christians after the Apostles). The inherent thesis of the Protestant Reformation is that the changes brought about by the Reformers in the sixteenth century were a reformation of the Church, a return to the true faith and doctrine of Christ that had been lost. So then, in reading the history of the Early Church, the Protestant can either view it as apostolic in nature: as the true, original Church, essentially as it had been received from Christ and the Apostles only years before, alive and vibrant in freshness and purity of belief, practice, and doctrine. Or, if the Protestant reads this Church and finds that it does not resemble his own church at all — that it is not the Church to which the Reformers believed they were reformingthen he must assume that the Early Church had already fallen away from the Truth; she must have already lost the true faith.

An Un-Protestant Church

El Greco, St. Paul and St. Peter

St. Paul and St. Peter (c. 1595), by El Greco.

The problem with this latter proposition is that even the earliest documents of the Church present a very un-Protestant Church. The very earliest Christian writers after the Apostles express faith in a sacramental economy, in the necessity and efficacy of baptism, in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They appeal to authority not in Scripture alone, but in an apostolic succession of bishops and a faith having been received by tradition. They evince trust from the very beginning in the intercession of saints, the primacy of the bishop of Rome, the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary. So if the Protestant cannot discover a time when the Church did not clearly hold these doctrines the later Reformers considered “corruptions” — what does this mean for the belief that the Reformation was a return to a lost “purity” of faith?

The Protestant, not finding Protestant doctrine in the Early Church, must then ask: Did the Early Church fall away from apostolic truth immediately? — before even the earliest extrascriptural Christian writings? To assume this begins to stretch the limits of historical credulity. If not a single extrascriptural writing clearly supports one’s interpretation of Scripture, and one must conclude that the Church apostasized even before this time — then the Protestant is forced to denounce the earliest Christians, and every Christian since, as unfaithful to the teachings of our Lord: so unfaithful, in fact, as to have turned aside from the plain teachings of their apostolic teachers before even the death of the last Apostle. (The Apostle John is believed to have lived until around the turn of the second century, while the earliest extrascriptural documents can be dated to the A.D. 70s.) In this extreme case, is it not more feasible to consider that one’s interpretation of Scripture might be mistaken?

Looking for Proto-Protestants

Saint Augustine in His Study, by Botticelli.

Saint Augustine, a favorite candidate for being a proto-Protestant.

I do not think many Protestants come to these conclusions — that is, and remain Protestant. The far more common tack is to equivocate: to avoid reading very deeply into the Church Fathers, and when one does, to gloss over the differences; to evade the necessity of declaring either that the Fathers were explicitly Protestant (which they clearly were not) or that they they were distinctly un-Protestant. Instead, the Protestant looks for seeds of Protestant belief: if the Church Fathers were not full-blown Protestants, then they must have at least been proto-Protestants, holding nascent doctrines that would someday flower into the Reformation — in a way suspiciously similar to the Catholic conception of the development of doctrine which the Protestant would otherwise reject. Protestant apologists have collected an arsenal of quotations, taken out of context, that appear superficially to support such doctrines as sola scriptura and sola fide — and this is an easy matter to do, since both doctrines take genuine truths that were always present in the Church and carry them to unwarranted extremes. Certainly Sacred Scripture is the very, infallible, inerrant Word of God, and the Church has always held it as the highest authority; but she never held it to be an authority to stand alone. Certainly justification is by faith, and no human work can merit our salvation or even bring us closer to God apart from His grace; but no Church Father ever held that we could be justified by faith alone, with no works accompanying. Since the Fathers often emphasize both the authority of Scripture and the power of saving faith, it is an easy matter to find isolated quotations and read these errors back upon them. But no one could ever come to the conclusions of these doctrines by reading the Fathers in their full context.

A Gradual Decay

St. Vincent de Paul

St. Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), a great Catholic saint of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A more moderate understanding of the Church’s corruption is similarly equivocal: the reader imagines that the corruptions of doctrine that brought about the Reformation were gradual, subtle, and evolving — a view that is supportable, since, it’s true, doctrine did develop. This allows the Protestant to admire and keep the many great Christians of the ages, all the martyrs and theologians and Church Fathers — finding in them many virtues and qualities of true faith, even if, and despite, their doctrine being gradually corrupted. The problem, then, becomes one of demarcation: When, if ever, did the Church become so corrupt as to be no longer viable as Christian — as to warrant a radical schism? Was it after the second, or third, or fourth ecumenical council? Was it after Saint Augustine, the doctor of grace? Or after Saint Bernard, the last of the great Church Fathers? At whatever point the Protestant draws the line, he must reject all else that follows. The earlier he draws the line, seeing less and less Protestant sentiment and more and more corruption — just as the Protestant who decides the Church was apostate from the very beginning — the more praiseworthy Fathers, teachings, and events he must cast away. The later he draws the line, the more and more development he must accept as validly Christian, the closer he brings this corruption of the Church to the time of the Reformation, and the more he must wonder why such a Reformation was justified at all. If, mere centuries or decades prior to Luther, the Church was still bearing good fruit in holy men and women, bringing them in faith to sanctification and glory, thriving in good works, even if only at the branches — what could justify uprooting and rending the entire tree? Once again, most Protestants who take this view equivocate: since they are unable to draw the line at all, they mentally place it sometime “after the last great Catholic Christian” and “before Luther.” Realizing that there continued to be great Catholic Christians complicates the Protestant’s justifications even further.

Ultimately, the Protestant is forced back to the initial question: was the Early Church apostolic or apostate? If, embracing the many great Church Fathers, he accepts that the Early Church was apostolic, then eventually he is forced to admit that the doctrines of the Reformation, to which the Reformers claimed to be returning the Church, were never apostolic at all — in which case, to what did the Reformers turn her, if not to innovation?

The Work of Christ, an Abject Failure

Christ on the Cross (1665), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Christ on the Cross (1665), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (WikiPaintings)

If, on the other hand, the Protestant believes that the Church was apostate from the very beginning, he is forced to question the fundamental nature of the faith he has received: If this Jesus is God Incarnate, how could His Church — against which He promised the gates of Hell would not prevail (Matthew 16:18); which He promised His Spirit would guide into all truth (John 16:13) — have fallen away so completely and immediately from the faith having been delivered to the saints (Jude 3)? If we are to believe that Jesus the God-Man took on human flesh to live, die, and be resurrected for the salvation of all humanity, and returning to the Father, charged His Apostles to make disciples of all nations — only for those Apostles and their disciples to immediately abandon His saving messagewe must, in all honesty, call our Lord’s salvific mission — foreordained from the beginning of the world; the culmination of ages of preparation and prophecy — a complete and utter failure. And how can we ascribe such an abject failure to God Himself?

I have heard many a Protestant claim that even though the Church of God fell into apostasy, God always preserved His true and untarnished Word in Scripture. But that begs the question: through whom did God preserve Scripture? How can the Protestant in good faith believe that the Christian Church faithfully preserved and transmitted the Scriptures, free from error and corruption, for 1,500 years, if she could not even faithfully keep the purity and sanctity of Christ’s doctrine of salvation? And if God could miraculously preserve the truth and indefectibility of Scripture for all that time, even in the hands of such a corrupt institution — why could He not also have preserved the Church?

Farewell to a Brother Pilgrim

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This past Thursday morning, one of my dearest friends and brother pilgrims, Sam Campbell III, passed away.

I met Sam some ten years ago during my travels on LiveJournal, as a fellow Christian journeying on this road. Over the years we grew close, sharing in some of the same struggles, grappling with temptations, and grasping for an intellectual understanding and faith in God, and for His peace. Sam has been one of the gentlest, humblest, most caring souls I’ve ever encountered. He has looked out for me. From time to time, particularly if I’d gone silent from the online world for a while, he would drop me a line to ask if I was okay, to let me know he was thinking of me and praying for me. We’ve shared a love for Star Trek, Tolkien, hobbits, Linux, and so many other things; I could always be sure he would get my wry jokes and references. I never got a chance to meet him in person, but I felt as if I knew him so well: he was always there close by.

Sam was deaf and blind, and experienced so many sufferings in this life, but I never heard him complain. This week as we reflect on the Passion of our Lord, I’m reminded how willingly and patiently Sam took up the cross he had been given; how freely he gave of himself and made sacrifices for the sake of love, moving halfway across the country to become a loving husband to his wife Noelle, and a father to her two children. He was a good man, one of the best men I’ve ever known. I loved him a lot, and I’m going to miss him terribly.

I remember this week, too, that in the suffering and death of our Lord — though wrenching, painful, and sad — He purchased Resurrection and eternal life for those who trust in Him. Parting with those we love is sorrowful, but death from this life is but for a moment — the road goes ever on and on. Farewell for now, Sam. I look forward to the day when our paths will cross again.

Requiescat in pace, frater peregrine. Vale, dum coeamus iterum die illa.

A patron I never knew I had

St. John-Baptist de la Salle

St. John-Baptist de la Salle.

I’m frankly ashamed of myself for how little I knew about St. John-Baptiste de la Salle, whose feast day is today, a patron saint of teachers and founder of the Christian Brothers — especially given that his is one of the relics in the altar of St. John the Evangelist in Oxford, Mississippi, where I entered the Church, where I worshipped for two years — and that I knew and posted about that fact two years ago. Today, hearing that he was a patron of teachers, he grabbed my attention; and reading about him, he grabbed my heart; and I thought he seemed a little familiar!

And it also so happens that today is the two-year anniversary of my entrance into the Church. I entered the Church on the very feast day of the saint whose relic I’d been praying before; the very saint who is patron of my chosen profession. And I never knew! This blessed man, I have no doubt, has been thinking of me and praying for me all this time; and only now do I learn about him — only now, in the very time when I’m seeking employment as a teacher. St. John-Baptiste de la Salle, pray for me!

Reading Church History as a Protestant: The Catholic Church, Dead in “Religion”

Clio, muse of heroic poetry and history, by Pierre Mignard, 17th century.

Clio, muse of heroic poetry and history, by Pierre Mignard, 17th century.

Cardinal Newman famously stated, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” If any single sentence could sum up the reasons for my conversion, that would be it. Yet there are many, many well-educated and thoughtful Protestants, who seem thoroughly versed in the facts of the history of the Church, for whom that hasn’t been true. I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately, how and why that could be, but have up till now refrained from writing, fearful that I might stray into polemic. I pray now that God give me the graces to consider it fairly.

Learning History

My first inclination is to say that as a history major in college, I had a fairly secular and unbiased education — but I’m not sure that’s true. I did attend a public, state university, and at least in the beginning, was prescribed standard textbooks of Western Civilization, which presented a fairly balanced account of Church history. But as I progressed, most of my tutelage came under Dr. G, a dyed-in-the-wool Lutheran and a medievalist, with a flair for the great men of history, who simultaneously held as heroes Luther, Erasmus, Bernard, Abelard, Peter Lombard, Gregory the Great, and Augustine. That is the stump from which my developing view of the Christian Church sprang, and if there was any self-contradiction in it, I didn’t realize it then. Dr. G also loved the great historians, and looking back, many of the ones he had us read were anything but favorable toward the Catholic Church: Gibbon, Burkhardt, Huizinga. But we also read the Catholic Friedrich Heer, and Arnold Toynbee, who probably better than anybody represents where I eventually found myself: loving and admiring whatever was great in all Christianity and every religion. (And recounting all of this makes me want to dust off my old history books.)

Martin Luther

Martin Luther (1533), by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

I grew up a Protestant, so naturally I viewed the Protestant Reformers as heroes, as having accomplished something good; and in Dr. G’s accounts of Luther, he confirmed me in that. But the more I studied the early and medieval Church, the more I fell in love with the Church Fathers. And the more I read of the Church Fathers, the more I longed for the order and consistency of the Early Church, the sure orthodoxy each of these men affirmed and upheld, and the coherency and unity with which they viewed themselves and the whole Christian world as “the Universal Church.” Those things were clearly lacking from the churches I knew in my day. Where had they gone? I presumed, as a Protestant, that they had been lost somewhere over the ages, along with the true faith that Luther and the Reformers later sought to recover; I believed that they had been destroyed and were irrecoverable. I knew nothing of the modern Catholic Church then; I was only vaguely aware of it, that there were Catholic churches and there was a pope. I presumed, as a Protestant, who in my own upbringing had been taught a distaste for “dead religion” — that is, the regimented and ritualistic and institutional; anything that would impede a “relationship” with Christ — that “dead religion” is all that was left of the Catholic Church; that all the spiritual life had been choked out by dogma and rote and rituals and rules; by scholastic definitions and speculation.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine (c. 1645-1650), Philippe de Champaigne.

I wonder if this isn’t the view that many Protestant historians of the Church have: even if they have an admiration for the Early Church, their understanding of what the Catholic Church became being rooted in assumptions and prejudices and ignorances. Of course, it is my own assumption that an historian, having studied the Early Church and the Church Fathers, must admire it! I suppose there are two understandings the Protestant historian could take of the Early Church: either as something bright and new and pure and glorious, the thing that the Church today should long for and strive to recapture; or as something gradually corrupted and misled and fallen and apostate, the thing they presume had departed from the pure (and Protestant) teaching of the Apostles.

There is a lot more coming from this vein, and hopefully soon! This one’s really gushing (I wrote this all straight through in one sitting)! Stay tuned!

Resolutions

Reni, St. Peter Penitent

St. Peter Penitent (c. 1600), by Guido Reni. (WikiPaintings.org)

Hi. No, I haven’t forgotten about blogging. I’ve been pondering it every day, wondering what I should say next. I’ve written posts several times and then decided not to post them. It’s been an intense time of growth and healing and change, being broken and rebuilt. And I’ve come to a few resolutions for this new year.

I’ve been increasingly convicted about the polemic tone my blog has taken. I set out to show the world the reasons for my faith, how the Lord had guided me to the truth, and all the beautiful and glorious things about the fullness found only in the Catholic Church. But especially in the past six months or so, I’ve taken more to attacking what others believe, particularly Protestants, my brothers and sisters in Christ. I do believe that in some respects they’re wrong — but the right of Christ’s love, which we share, outweighs by worlds the wrong of their sometimes errors in doctrine. And I am put here to show that love, to love, above all, my own brother and sister, that the world may know that we are Christ’s and that He is sent by God.

So from now on I will strive to emphasize what is good and true and right about Catholicism. That will sometimes entail demonstrating what is wrong with opposing views, but I will always strive to do so in love, and to present what can build up rather than merely tear down.

Oh, and my thesis is done and approved. I defended it now about a month ago. New things are coming in my life. And it’s time to return to blogging. This morning as I was lying in bed, the Lord gave me several posts to start brewing — likely to be series, given my penchant for words. I want to pick up the Sacraments with a post on the sacrifice of the Mass. There’s still more to talk about with Baptism, and then I want to talk about Confession and Anointing of the Sick and Holy Orders. And I have the next post in my conversion story brewing. Stay tuned!

A Note on “Hebrew Roots” or “Messianic” Christianity

(Here is a note that originated as a comment to a friend on Facebook, voicing my concerns about something I’ve never spoken about here before: “Hebrew Roots” Christianity or “Messianic Judaism.”)

Arch of Titus Menorah

An image from the Arch of Titus in Rome, commemorating the Roman sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

I have mixed feelings about the Messianic and “Hebrew Roots” movements. (I don’t know if it’s fair to lump those together or not. I think the two have different origins, but work from similar principles.) I think it’s definitely valuable to understand the Hebrew context and roots of the Christian faith, to seek to recover valuable traditions — but at the same time, many of the people I’ve talked to tend to be anti-traditional and iconoclastic in the opposite direction, toward all established Christian tradition, both Protestant and especially Catholic.

Christianity has come down to us by way of a 2,000-year-old tradition — 2,000 years of faithful men and women who have believed and followed God and preserved and handed down the faith. And if one isn’t careful about it, this “Hebrew Roots” movement implies a renunciation of all that. It seems to be the extreme end of the attitude that was born in the Reformation: let’s go back and recover the original Christian faith; let’s find a “pure” faith, and throw away anything else that’s been added.

Reformation iconoclasm in the Netherlands.

Reformation iconoclasm in the Netherlands.

But I think it’s dangerous to separate faith from history and tradition. I think it was dangerous (and harmful) for the Protestant Reformers to separate the faith from so much of the tradition through which they had received it — so many babies thrown out with the dirty bathwater — and Protestants have been lacking some necessary elements ever since. The Protestant notion of sola scriptura put forward the idea that all one needs to have Christian faith is “Scripture alone,” so it’s only logical to suppose that if we strip away all the tradition, even the Protestant tradition, we’ll end up with what we were originally supposed to have. But that presumes that the Protestant idea was correct in the first place. I get the feeling that much of what is driving this movement is frustration with the disorder and fragmentation the Protestant tradition is in — it was the same frustration that has led me and many others to rediscover the Catholic Church — but that disorder ought to be an indication that something has gone wrong in the principles and premises of Protestantism, not in the whole of Christian tradition. It seems to be a foregone concluson among Protestants that the Catholic Church is a corrupt and unviable option; perhaps they should take a closer look at that before they dismiss it.

de la Tour, St. Paul (1620)

St. Paul (1620), by Georges de la Tour.

Yes, Jesus and the Apostles were Jews, and the Christian faith is the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy and the culmination of Hebrew tradition. Yes, the earliest Christians were all Jewish and sought to preserve their Jewish identity in addition to being followers of the Messiah. But Protestants, especially those in this “Hebrew Roots” movement, presume that the historic, Catholic Church unfaithfully put aside those Jewish traditions or overwrote them with syncretistic or pagan or otherwise compromised doctrines. And separating the faith from history, presuming that Scripture is the only source one needs, makes it easy to believe that.

But the fact is that history presents a very different story. By the beginning of the second century, mere years after the deaths of the Apostles, the Christian and Jewish traditions were already parting ways. The Jews rejected Christians as anti-Jewish heretics, and Christians came to reject Jewish traditions as subversive and anti-Christian. Christian worship on the Lord’s Day (Sunday) had been a practice since the Apostles themselves (which Scripture itself supports), and the growing Church, as Christians were expelled from the synagogues, soon fell away from also celebrating Jewish worship on the Sabbath.

To sever faith from history forgets all of that and denies it happened. To cast away the Tradition of the Church loses the whole context of the New Testament and the Early Church, and with it the authentic teaching of the Apostles on how Christian worship was to be conducted. The liturgy of the Catholic Mass even to this day clearly follows the forms of the Jewish synagogue liturgy. The “Hebrew Roots” of Christianity are not lost; they merely grew into full-grown oaks.

Hebrew Roots

On the other hand, “Hebrew Roots” and Messianic Judaism in fact adopt a fabricated tradition — an invention of someone or another’s subjective conception of how early Jewish Christians would have worshipped — since no authentic tradition of Judaic Christianity descends to us. It takes on a false form of ancience and tradition, and in fact “adds to the faith” as much as Protestants have ever accused Catholics of doing, only adding genuine novelty and invention rather than what they only presume to be. It tends to be based on a very Protestant reading of Scripture (it doesn’t cast away that tradition wholly), and suffers from the same basic fallacies: by ignoring the received tradition of the Church, it misses many of the crucial understandings and connections which early Christian writers and the Church Fathers realized and retained and have handed down to us. Even more troubling, I’ve encountered advocates of Christians returning to the observance of the Torah, the Jewish Law, when Scripture is quite clear that this is opposed to or even negates faith in Christ.

Ribera, Saint Paul (1637)

Saint Paul (1637), by Jusepe de Ribera.

Scripture is clear that followers of Jesus, particularly Gentile believers, were under no obligation to observe the Torah or maintain Jewish practices, and if anything, even for Jews, these distracted from the fulfillment and revelation of Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that God, “in speaking of a new covenant, treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13). Paul told the Colossians to “let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath [the principal elements of Jewish observance]. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16–17). In fact, the whole message of Paul against the heresy of the Judaizers was for Christians not to allow themselves to again be placed under the yoke of the Jewish Law, to seek justification with God through religious observance and not through faith in Christ. “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4).

Why I am not a “Roman” Catholic

St. Peter's Basilica at Night

St. Peter’s Basilica (Wikimedia). I love her, but she’s not my home church.

This is something that’s been eating at me for a while, in my conversations with Protestants: I am not a Roman Catholic.

I’m not even Roman! To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t a bit of Roman heritage within at least the past millennium. I come from good, British stock — mostly English, Scottish, and Scotch-Irish.

But when I’m talking to Protestants, they invariably refer to me as “Roman Catholic,” and my Church as the “Roman Catholic Church.” And I realize these terms are technically correct, according to popular nomenclature; but in my view, they are inappropriate, and here’s why.

I am, first and foremost, a Christian. By nativity, residence, and heritage, I am an Alabamian and a Southerner and an American; by education, I am an historian; by avocation, a blogger and would-be theologian and apologist. This is how I identify myself. I don’t generally think any clarification to my Christian identity is immediately necessary, but when it becomes relevant to conversation, I give it: I am a Catholic Christian of the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis. He is my universal pastor, and I love him, and I am faithful to him — but I’m not a member of his diocese.

So why do people feel the need to label me as a “Roman” Catholic? There is almost always a note of unpleasantness in their tone when they say this: Dismissiveness? Incredulity? They speak as if there were more than one Catholic Church, and the “Roman” one is only one among many; or as if the “Roman” Catholic Church is only a pretender to the title “Catholic.” There is a sense in which my Church and my Christian heritage is indeed Roman, but that is seldom if ever the sense in which anyone uses the term. And so I reject the label. I am not a “Roman” Catholic.

The particular Church of which I am a member, the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama, is a member of the Latin Rite of Christianity. Latin, the ancient language of Rome, is our primary liturgical language, even if in practice we speak more English these days. My bishop, the Most. Rev. Robert Baker, is in communion with the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis. But I am not a member of the Church of Rome.

Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council, assembled in St. Peter’s Basilica. That’s a lot of bishops!

There are more than 2,000 bishops and dioceses (Latin dioceses, Greek διοίκησες, “administrations”) worldwide who, like mine, are in communion with the bishop of Rome. Collectively, these dioceses are often referred to as the Roman Catholic Church, it’s true — but the fact is, only one of those dioceses is actually Roman, the Diocese of Rome, of which Pope Francis is the ordinary. The fact is that these dioceses are distributed among every country and nation on earth, speak nearly every vernacular language, and are made up of Christians of every ethnicity and heritage and background. Only a minuscule fraction of these Christians are Roman in any way. Each diocese is a particular Church of its own. These Churches are not all part of the Latin Rite: there are twenty-three different rites represented by these Churches in communion with the bishop of Rome, some of them having little resemblance or relation to the Roman one: the Byzantine, the Melkite and Maronite, the Syro-Malabar, the Coptic and Ethiopian Catholics, just to name a few. Christians of these Churches would no doubt be offended to be called “Roman” Catholic. But when I say that I am Catholic, I mean that I am in communion — in a Christian unity — with all of these people.

Duccio, Appearance of Christ to the Apostles (1311)

Appearance of Christ to the Apostles (fragment) (1311), by Duccio. (WikiPaintings.org)

The four marks of the true Church of Christ put forward by the Nicene Creed are that she is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. There are other Christian communities in the world that claim themselves to be “catholic” — universal — but there is only One to whom the term truly applies. Speaking practically, no other Church has as many members worldwide — over 1.2 billion — in as many places, among as many groups of people. No other Church is united in oneness by such universal bonds of communion: even the next largest Christian groups, the various Orthodox Churches, and those of the Anglican Communion, are united more by association than communion; the vast majority of other Christian communities have been hopelessly splintered by schism and disunion, to the degree of some 40,000 Protestant denominations today (and that figure is not even to mention “non-denominational” Christians). No other Church manifests more fully the Apostolic faith represented by the New Testament and witnessed forward through the ages by the Church Fathers. And in an age increasingly rocked by moral disintegration, only One Church continues to consistently stand apart in holiness against the evils of abortion, euthanasia, contraception, and immoral sexuality. Only the true, historic, Catholic Church embodies the Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity of the Church founded by Jesus 2,000 years ago, which He promised would forever stand against the powers of death. And this is what I mean when I say that I am Catholic.