Tag Archives: Catholicism

The Scholar’s Prayer

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Saint Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas. Detail from Benozzo Gonzolli, The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1471), Louvre Museum, Paris.

Creator of all things,
true Source of light and wisdom,
lofty origin of all being,
graciously let a ray of Your brilliance
penetrate into the darkness of my understanding
and take from me the double darkness
in which I have been born,
an obscurity of both sin and ignorance.
Give me a sharp sense of understanding,
a retentive memory,
and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally.
Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations,
and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm.
Point out the beginning,
direct the progress,
and help in completion;
through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Patron saint of scholars

What was I before?

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I’ve been doing some reading lately. Feeling slightly ashamed, I used to admit to my Catholic friends that I was reading a Protestant book, but I don’t anymore. No one has ever said anything. Whether a book is Catholic or Protestant has little bearing on its read-worthiness; both Catholics and Protestants have worthy things to say about God.

Belatedly (posthumously?), I’ve been boning up on my Protestant theology. When I was a Protestant, I had little understanding of theology, and little patience for its uncertainty — with all of the voices disagreeing, interpreting Scripture differently, how could I possibly find the truth in that muddle? But now that I’ve found an absolute certainty in the authority of the Church and Magisterium — now that I have a firm foundation on which to base what I believe — then I am better able to comprehend and consider the ideas of others. It’s ironic that the very cornerstone of the Reformation, sola scriptura, the Reformers’ very attempt to find a bedrock of authority, proved to be my greatest stumbling block.

My theological underpinning was never strong to begin with. Growing up, I never had any formal catechesis on Christian doctrine or theology. What I knew, I knew by osmosis, more from the culture around me than from any teaching or preaching: Jesus died to forgive our sins that we might have eternal life. Beyond that basic truth was muddiness. I had heard of Martin Luther as the heroic Reformer, and of John Calvin as “that guy who believed in predestination, and we don’t believe in that” — but we didn’t seem to be following in either of those traditions. Who were we? Where did we come from?

It wasn’t until late in high school, when we reading The Scarlet Letter, that I first learned the differences between Calvinism* and Arminianism. And I realized that we at Calvary were essentially Arminian, a term I had never heard before. Predestination (election), grace, and human nature just weren’t talked about at my church, ever. In my thinking, our salvation depended on us, on our choosing to follow God in faith. God wasn’t compelling us by His grace, snatching us up against our will, or damning others to the fires of hell. Neither was He denying that we had free will at all. And we could certainly backslide and walk away from God. I had this crude, misshapen conception of Reformed theology for years.

* Some of my Reformed friends have taken exception to the term “Calvinism,” preferring instead “Reformed” theology or even simply “doctrines of grace.” I use the term “Calvinism” both out of grammatical expediency and an aim for doctrinal clarity, to refer to those doctrines taught by, in line with, or in the tradition of John Calvin and his followers, and not to convey any negative connotation. Because there is more than one “Reformed” tradition, and more than one understanding of the “doctrines of grace.” I’m talking about the Calvinist one.

As I grew older and attempted to educate myself more, I became more and more frustrated by theological confusion and my lack of foundation. And I eventually decided that it didn’t really matter anyway, that God loved us all no matter what we believed about Him, that there was no way to find the truth in all the mess. It was a position of thoroughgoing ecumenism, or worse, doctrinal agnosticism. I have met so many Christians at this same point, eschewing labels and denominations and formal doctrine in favor of terms like “nondenominational Christian,” “mere Christian” (I preferred that one, after C.S. Lewis — but Lewis never intended in that book that anyone should remain a “mere Christian”), or “Jesus follower.”

But the more I read, the more I see that labels and denominations and doctrines do matter. In one sense I believe I was right, and still maintain, that all orthodox believers are followers of Christ and should strive to find our common ground rather than be continually divisive in our disunity. But in another, what we believe about God and about salvation profoundly affects how we view God and ourselves and our relationship to Him, how we view the world around us, how we view our neighbor and our mission as Christians on this earth. Just looking around to what different Christians do attests to this. Some emphasize world missions, devoting money and time to spreading the Gospel and ministering to the needs of regions of our world stricken with poverty, disease, and strife. Others are more focused on caring for the needy in their own back yard. Some are ardently evangelical, canvassing cities with tracts and distributing Bibles, warning of the immediacy of death apart from salvation. Others are more reflective and calculated in their evangelism and outreach, preferring their lives and their works to be their witnesses. Still others, perhaps the majority, don’t do anything at all. It’s not so much about labels as about lifestyle.

I never thought much until recently about the differences between how Christians view the Christian life and Christian piety. In my Pentecostal upbringing, as I’ve written, the focus was on the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, and on personal piety, Bible study and “quiet times” of private devotion. Other Christians around me just didn’t seem to care about that, and I must confess, I wondered, especially when I was younger, if they were “bad” Christians, if they didn’t care about God or their relationship to Him. But no — the book I’m reading pointed out that this understanding of a personal, private relationship with God is essentially an evangelical one — that some Christians, especially Reformed (as the book is treating), but just as well Catholics, see the heart of Christian life in public professions of faith, in liturgy and the Sacraments, and most of all in service. That doesn’t diminish the importance of personal piety and personal faith at all — but it’s what we do in the light that makes us Christians (John 3:19-21).

I’ve always struggled with the terms “evangelical” and “fundamentalist.” So do a lot of people; there have been whole books written on the difference. I am not convinced the distinction is really very helpful: most evangelical Christians believe the “fundamentals,” and most fundamentalists are evangelical in outlook or piety; the difference, especially to the secular world, often seems to be one of the degree of fervency or severity, and especially the latter label is often used pejoratively. It seems clear (I now realize fully for the first time) that Reformed (Calvinist) Christians are not evangelicals. And it also seems clear to me that I as a Protestant was an evangelical, because of the emphasis on a personal conversion experience and personal relationship with God, and a Charismatic and a Pentecostal (the latter is a subset of the former), because of the emphasis on miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. And, I would argue, because of the emphasis on personal, emotional experiences of God, on sensation and feeling over reason and doctrine.

A friend of mine, a convert to Orthodox Christianity, shared something while I was converting that I didn’t really understand until I reached this point. She wrote that her identity as an Orthodox Christian doesn’t erase or overwrite her identity as a Protestant or evangelical, but that deep down she will always have that and be that. I feel that about myself, too, as a Catholic. In converting, I didn’t cease to be something I was, but became something more. The butterfly still has the genes of the caterpillar. Though my feelings toward the faith of my youth are often ambivalent, I have taken many things from it that I will always carry with me as a Christian, that I believe are good things: devotion to private prayer and Bible study, a commitment to regular tithing of my income, and love for praise and worship music. So no, reflection on Protestant things is not “posthumous” at all or even retrospective. I am sure there are many other fruits of my Protestant identity that will continue to come to light.

Emotion and the Leap of Faith

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I wondered if receiving the Real Presence would feel any different than any other time I’d taken Communion in my life.

Eucharistic adoration

I wondered if the Sacrament of Confirmation would evince any inward or outward change in me — if I would feel that, too.

Through the years of confusion I experienced as a Pentecostal, I learned to be very distrustful of my emotions. If I feel a sensation, I wondered, can I rightly ascribe it to God? By what justification? How do I know it’s God, and not my own self-stimulation? Because I know well how easy it is to drive myself to feel, even to believe, things that I dearly want to feel and believe. How do I know if it’s real?

It all, of course, comes down to faith. What can be observed empirically and proven objectively about God never quite reaches all the way across the chasm of unbelief. There has to be a leap of faith* — and I’m pretty sure this is by design. No matter how much God reveals about Himself, He always leaves that ever-so-slight gap, foiling any attempt at absolute proof. Because of what value would faith be if everything about God could be explained and proven — if the existence of God and the truth of Christ were as certain as the physics of the sun and the moon? How could believers be a people set apart if every scientist and every joe on the street had to believe, however grudgingly, or if God were as obvious and as commonplace as Barack Obama? How could we trust God with faith like a child if we could pin Him to a specimen board and probe Him with all our powers of scientific observation?

(* I am told Kierkegaard wrote about this “leap of faith” and in fact coined the phrase, but I’m not much of a philosopher and haven’t read Kierkegaard — though I’d like to.)

And this is where, I think, there’s room for experience and emotion — especially for people like me who experience strong emotions. I cannot found my faith on emotion — this for years has been my greatest fear: to build my faith on the shifting sand of emotion, and to have it all collapse out from under me yet again. But if emotion, deep feeling, sensibility to the stirrings of the heart, is a gift that I’ve been given — can it not be another set of eyes, one more lens to edge me yet a little closer across that chasm?

I also have a rational brain and acute intellectual tools — but these are faculties I’ve had to build and cultivate and train; my natural inclination is to follow my heart. I have had to discipline my heart and my mind; temper my strong emotions with the moderation of reason. I hear so many reactionary Christians lash out against academia and education in fear and anger — but this is what the academy has done for me: not destroyed my faith, but given me the implements to build a sturdier and more secure foundation for God to base my faith on. My faith is stronger and more unshakable, by worlds, than at any moment of the fervency of my youth; and paradoxically, by equal measure, it’s also more passionate and deeply felt. When I believe with my reason that the object of my faith is real, then I am free to feel with my heart all the love and joy and peace with which I have been blessed. When my faith is founded upon what I know and can observe and can reason, then emotion becomes the beautiful and glorious ornament built on top that reaches even higher: all of my most soaring effluences of feeling become exultant spires raising to the heavens.

So did it feel different? Yes, it did! I went back to my pew, ruminating on what had just happened: I had just consumed, taken into my body, the true, real, physical Body and Blood of my Redeemer. I had joined my flesh to His flesh and my spirit to His Spirit; I had communed in His very elements; I had been touched by God. And it felt like the most intimate thing I had ever experienced. The most beautiful, most precious feeling I had ever felt: a feeling of total love and absolute acceptance.

Holy Spirit as Dove

And my Confirmation: “Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit,” Father Joe spoke. The Sign of the Cross on my forehead: the oil of chrism marking me as Christ’s for all eternity. It was the sweetest smell I had ever smelled in my life; I didn’t want to wash my face that night, but even after I did, I could still smell it. I could still feel the mark there; I still can. It felt like the most precious kiss of heaven: a sign, both temporal and eternal, of love and belonging and protection; a brand identifying me as Christ’s and binding me to His Church, a member of His flock for all time. Now, I believe I have known the Holy Spirit for quite some time: but this most certainly marked a fresh and special outpouring; a total immersion in His grace. And I feel like a completely different person.

Hallelujah!

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Happy Easter! He is Risen! Hallelujah!

For as much as our culture has used and abused this piece, I encourage every person to stop a moment and let these strains wash over you. (Be sure you have some good speakers or headphones.) Even if you’re not a Christian — this is one of the most powerful musical expressions of triumph and joy ever composed.

The Passion of the Lord

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Diego Velazquez, The Crucifixion (1632)

Diego Velazquez, The Crucifixion (1632).

The liturgy of the past two days has been intense, emotional, overwhelming — more moving than any Christian service I’ve ever been a part of. I have been in some truly ecstatic, sensational services in my day — experiences routinely described by the people around me as “powerful” and “awesome” — but even then, it always felt somehow empty to me. When the ecstasy passed, the power faded and there was no change. All along this path, I’ve been saying that one of my main reasons for being drawn in this direction is a desire to get away from that empty emotionalism of my youth, to base my faith on something more than that. So it’s ironic that even not looking for it or expecting it, I’ve discovered a deeper and fuller and truer wellspring of emotion and faith and devotion than I ever could have imagined.

Because Christ is really there. In His Body and Blood, He is there. One can speak of a “move of the Holy Spirit” all one wants, and raise one’s arms and dance in the aisles and weep for joy — and I do not disparage those experiences or doubt that those people are genuinely moved — but when Christ is really there in the elements; when our entire liturgy is based on the Word of God; when what we do and what we celebrate is more than a symbol, but spirit and life — then the move of the Holy Spirit becomes tangible, visible, sensible. We partake of Christ and share in His divinity; we join in Holy Communion with God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and all the saints. There is substance in that, more than ethereality and ephemerality.

And I haven’t even come to the table yet. I know that tomorrow will be even fuller.

I want to share the experiences of the past two days, but I know that I can capture only fleeting glimpses. I fear overscrutiny and oversharing will demean them. This is my moment with Christ; not the end of my journey but the beginning. Last night, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper: praying and worshipping, I had the overpowering sense, more than ever before, that Jesus was really there at the table breaking Bread. The humility and service of seeing Father Joe, who in so many ways has become Christ to me, kneel down and wash the feet of the men of the church. The cantors’ stirring and unexpected (for I am new to this) rendition of Mozart’s Ave verum corpus — which has long been a favorite piece of mine, but I had never before realized its true import and meaning in its proper context — it hit me like a flood. The crushing moment of Christ’s betrayal, hitting me in the gut, as the Host processed around the Stations of the Cross to rest in repose, knowing all the times that I have betrayed Him, too. The altar stripped bare; the Tabernacle flung rudely open and empty. Tarrying an hour with Him, realizing more fully than ever the weight of what He did for me.

Tonight, the Passion of the Lord: the austerity and emptiness of the altar; the sight of the ministers lying prostrate. The Adoration of the Cross: kneeling to kiss that instrument of torture and execution, knowing that Christ’s death and sacrifice is my life; adoring that terrible and blessed device, like swallowing a bitter pill or drinking the cup of pain, as Christ did for me. Seeing the Cross lifted even to the lips of young children, who even in their youth owe everything to Christ and to the Cross, and who too have crosses to bear. The distribution of Communion: knowing that when it was gone, there would be no more, as Christ gave His very broken Body and poured out His very last drop of Blood for us.

Tonight, He lies in the tomb for us. Sunday, his glorious Resurrection — and our rebirth into His new life. And I will come to the Lord’s Table, and to His Holy Church.

Nearing the Altar

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Tomorrow begins the Triduum, the three days leading up to Easter: Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday), Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And then, the Easter Vigil — at which I will be initiated into the Church through Confirmation and receive my first Holy Communion.

It seems surreal that this moment has come. All of the long years that have brought me to this point have been a blessed romance, in which God has slowly shown me more and more pieces of the puzzle. These months that I have actively been seeking have been a long engagement, as the picture finally began to come into focus. And now, I am nearing the altar. This week has felt so much like the long-awaited arrival of a wedding — my wedding, at which I’ll be introduced into the most holy mysteries of Christ; at which I’ll partake most intimately in the Body and Blood of my Lord, my Creator, my Savior.

And yes, like any blushing bride, I have cold feet. I’ve had nagging thoughts over the last few days that I’m not ready, that I’m not feeling it, that I need to back out, put this off another year. All of the things that I’ve had a difficult time grasping — Mary, the saints, Purgatory — I realize that I still haven’t fully embraced; I still haven’t warmed up to them.

My feelings haven’t warmed up. But this journey has been about more than feeling; it’s been about conviction, intellectual and spiritual. A faith based on and bound by emotion is what I’m leaving. And I am here. I have arrived. The Communion I have been longing for so long is a few breaths away.

My Lord Jesus, guide me into Your Church; make me ready to receive You. Holy Mother, pray for me; embrace me; guide me.

Wisdom and the Deuterocanon

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I’ve never read much of the Deuterocanon (also called the Apocrypha by Protestants) before — just the occasional Mass readings from those books. I’ve been unsure of their role in the canon. Catholics attest to their canonicity and divine inspiration; but then, why did Protestants exclude them? (I know, for one thing, that the Deuterocanon contains the scriptural foundation for the Catholic beliefs in prayer for the dead and Purgatory. Were the Reformers so petty as to exclude books because they didn’t like what they said?)

This passage came up in Mass reading last week — and it bowled me over:

“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
We are considered by him as something base,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.
Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.”
—Wisdom 2:12-20 (NRSV)

Can anyone really read this and maintain that this book doesn’t belong in the Bible? This is clearly a Messianic prophecy. The ever-academic New Oxford Annotated Bible doesn’t comment on that, but points out that it is similar to Isaiah 52-53. But this passage goes further than any other Old Testament Messianic prophecy that I’ve seen:

  1. The “righteous man” would oppose the actions of the ungodly, reproach them for “sins against the law,” and accuse them of “sins against their training.”
  2. He would “profess to have knowledge of God” and “boast that God is his father.” (I don’t think the Messiah’s claim to be the Son of God is made this explicit in other prophecies.)
  3. He would be “insulted,” “tortured,” and “tested”: “For if the righteous man is God’s child, He will help him, / and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries” (cf. Matthew 27:39-40, Mark 15:29-32, Luke 23:35-37, for exact parallels).

Community and Communion

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In the year or so before I moved to University, I began making an earnest, systematic effort to find and join a church. I wrote a lot of lists to myself about what I was looking for in a church (I am a maker of lists). And always near the top of the list was community: people in the church with whom I had something in common; people with whom I could have fellowship and share my faith; a vibrant, living, growing community. The primary reason for the church, I reasoned — for having us hang out in groups, and not sit at home doing it sola scriptura — was community: to provide a structure for the support of the fellowship of believers.

The first time I visited the Catholic Church here, I was decidedly unimpressed. Nobody greeted me warmly, introduced themselves, or even spoke to me. I had to track down someone after Mass to even get a visitor’s card. I didn’t feel particularly welcome, and felt more than a little put off. It wasn’t until six months or so later that I visited again with my friend Audrey. At least then I didn’t feel entirely alone and foreign, but I remained unimpressed. Where were the Sunday school classes and fellowship groups? Where, besides Audrey, were the people of my age and situation? Where was the community?

It wasn’t until I had been attending Mass for a month or more that I found it. It’s in the Eucharist, I realized one Sunday with an epiphany. Community is in Communion. Kneeling there during the Eucharistic Prayer, focusing intently on Christ’s sacrifice, I was enveloped by the sensation that I was not alone: that all of us there in that room; all of the faithful throughout the world praying that same prayer; all of the believers through all the ages who had prayed it — were united there in that moment in one Spirit, with Christ himself. It was the feeling of a whole and complete sharing, an absolute universality; I felt I would never have to feel lonely again. It’s a feeling I’ve felt many times since. And I had never even taken the Sacrament, and still haven’t — merely been in its presence. It was a feeling, yes: and I have striven not to build my faith on feelings. But it was a feeling supported by everything that Catholics believe about the Eucharist. Truths that I was only nascently beginning to understand were speaking to me. I had found community: not the kind I had thought I was looking for, but the kind I most desperately needed.

Catholics are often not very good at building the other types of community. I read an interesting piece in the National Catholic Register that underscores everything I’ve experienced in the Catholic Church. Protestants do, as I had been thinking, go to church with fellowship in mind. Salvation itself is assured; Scripture and faith are enough; so the reason for going the extra step and being a part of a faith community is largely social. But for Catholics, participation in the Sacraments is obligatory, a necessary part of salvation. Because it’s an obligation, many people — even those who genuinely and deeply love the Lord — naturally tend to slip into habit or complacency, and do what they have to do, and then leave. Salvation is the prime motive for going to Mass, not fellowship — and so it tends to slip away.

Our parish is much better about community than many others. We are comparatively small, with a large contingent of students, so an active campus ministry and fellowship among the college-aged come easily. We have weekly spaghetti suppers that involve everyone, not just students; Friday fish fries during Lent; the St. Joseph’s Day celebration; and other important community events. There are adult faith formation groups, and a youth ministry, and service groups like the Knights of Columbus, and really much more active a community than I recognized at first. We do seem to be more laid back about it than most Protestants, though.

It wasn’t until I started attending daily Mass last summer that I truly found my community — the kind I initially thought I was looking for, and which I still very much needed. Attending every day, I gradually began meeting, one or two at a time, the others of the much smaller group of faithful that attends every day. And I’ve made some very dear friends, of the kind I’ve always longed to have, fulfilling friendships that are slowly building and growing, built on love and shared faith — the "super friends" of the article above. I’ve met a number of fellow graduate students of my age and situation. I met the dear man who will be my RCIA sponsor, and his lovely wife. I spent a blessed evening a few nights ago having dinner in their home, an authentic Italian dinner and a conversation that went late into the night.

They, cradle Catholics who’d spent their whole lives in the Church, with little contact with the evangelical world, and I, having journeyed far from there but still with so far to go in understanding the Catholic faith, found a common ground in the middle on which to share and learn from each other. The Protestant concepts I take for granted, they knew little about, and I tried to explain; and the Catholic concepts with which I am still struggling, they explained so easily as if they were the most natural ideas in the world. I saw, through their eyes and Catholic understanding, how far-fetched some Protestant ideas seem to be; but also how much Catholics and Protestants really have in common.

And I feel loved. For the first time in my whole life, I truly feel I have a church home, where I am loved and embraced and accepted; where I can have fellowship and community with beloved people of like mind and like faith, and Communion in the Eucharist with all the Church and with my Lord Jesus Christ.

The Onus of Reunification

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One of the biggest questions in my Catholic journey has been this: How does God view the Catholic and Orthodox and Protestant churches, and their schism with one another? God desires unity in His Church. St. Paul writes to us, “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10 ESV). The very fact of our disunity attests to our sinfulness: We have all fallen short. We have all failed to preserve the unity of His Church. We all share part in the blame — even those of us alive today, we who perpetuate the division and fail to ardently seek reunification.

I’ve come to believe, in my journey, that the Catholic Church holds the treasury of apostolic faith, the fullness of truth having been passed down; that it is the One (unus, single, undivided) Holy and Apostolic Church founded by Christ and the Apostles. Studying the history of the Church, I have come to see that the traditions of the Church are not accretions or inventions as I once thought, but have persisted through the great men of faith of the Middle Ages, through the great Church Fathers, all the way since the beginning, the faith of the Apostles. I believe that the Catholic Church represents an unbroken continuity of belief and tradition, from the Apostles to the present day.

Unbroken, that is, except for those who have broken away.* Being raised a Protestant, I always admired and celebrated the great Protestant Reformers. I still do — they were courageous men passionate about God and willing to stand up for what they believed. I cannot, even as a Catholic, paint the Reformers or the Reformation black. The Catholic Church certainly needed to be reformed in many ways — and in fighting back against that reform, she must share a part of the blame for the schism that ensued. I now consider that schism one of the most heart-wrenching and tragic events in all of history — the rending of Christ’s Holy Church, his Spotless Bride.

(* I am not abandoning Eastern Orthodoxy, either. I am only leaving it out of this discussion for simplicity’s sake, because the majority of us Christians in the West are Catholic or Protestant, and because I know comparatively little about the Orthodox churches.)

Protestant churches have borne much good fruit. Christ continues to be active in them, in teaching, love, service, and salvation. There have been many great Protestant thinkers and theologians — and I do consider their thought and theology great; they are worthy and useful ways for thinking about God and our life in Him. There have been many good and holy Protestant servants of Christ, who have fed the hungry, clothed the poor, bound up the wounds of the hurting, and won many souls for His kingdom. God, without a doubt, uses, ministers, and saves through Protestant churches.

So God is merciful and forgives us of our sins — even the great sin of breaking His Church into fragments. But is that enough? Is it enough to accept His forgiveness, accept the fact of our division as final and irrevocable — that what’s been done is done, and we can’t go back? That this is the way things are now? That our churches can’t break bread together, and that’s okay? To most Protestants (to me as well, not that long ago), the thought of rejoining with the Catholic Church is unthinkable. To many, it is outright offensive. To them, the Catholic Church had sinned and been corrupted; it needed to be re-created. But even supposing that were true — the fact remains that the Christian Church — the Body of Christ — is fragmented. Are we going to allow this to persist?

There have many efforts over the years at ecumenism. Mostly in recent times, this has consisted of getting some members of the various churches together to share and discuss what they have in common and worship together. I applaud this, and think there needs to be more of it: the more we all talk to each other, the more we’ll realize that we all share the same Christ, and that He doesn’t want us to be divided. Others, however, continue to attack our differences, and decry any ecumenical efforts. How can this be what Christ wants? Can any of these people really sit down with faithful Catholics and continue to believe that Catholics are not Christians? How can anyone believe that our God is so small as to exclude large bodies of believers from His Kingdom because of minor doctrinal differences?

I feel that the onus is on us to seek not just dialogue, but reunification of Christ’s Church. As we ever approach the end of the age, we will need each other — we will need to be One and whole as a faith — more than ever. Recognizing this need for reunion is one of the many reasons for my decision to join the Catholic Church. History has failed to prove to me that the Catholic Church has ever been “wrong” or “corrupt” to the point of justifying a break (everyone sins; but she has never departed from the Truth); and so, if she was not “wrong,” then she must still be “right.” And the onus is on me to do what I can to make reparation for my ancestors' mistakes (this probably applies to my ancestors other mistakes as well). I am just one lonely pilgrim, but in returning to Rome, I am doing what I can. And I am a part of an ever-growing wave. And I believe as this wave gains momentum, it will sweep up more than only individuals. I truly have hope to see whole churches, even whole denominations, return to communion with Rome. I truly have hope to see, in my lifetime, a reunification of all Christians.

Just as the blame for our division is shared among all Christians, I believe that in reunification, some ground must be given by all. I’m not an expert on this — more learned people than I have written whole books on the problem of reunification — but the baseline for communion with Rome would have to be, I think, accepting the authority of the Pope and Magisterium, and belief in the Sacraments. I think the idea of accepting an institutional church authority at all will be most difficult for many Protestants — but I’ve come to see that it’s necessary. From Rome’s position, I think there is plenty of ground to yield regarding practice: just as Rome is embracing many Anglicans and allowing them to preserve their Anglican identity and heritage, and just as the Eastern Catholic Churches are embraced in all their differences, even a “Baptist rite” or a “Presbyterian rite” could be accommodated. I can quite easily imagine the liturgy of a Baptist church that embraced Rome and the Sacraments, while still remaining essentially Baptist.

We are all Christians, after all. We all worship the same Triune God. We all believe the same things about Christ. We all adhere to the same creeds†, whether we proclaim them or not. Regarding the Sacraments, our differences of opinion are more minor than most people recognize. Unity is within reach — if only we are willing to reach out. The onus is on every one of us.

† Obviously, I am excluding those who don’t — Sorry. Y’all come on back now, too.