Tag Archives: Protestants

Radical

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So, it is thirty days until Easter. Once I enter the Church, will I still be nascens, or will I be novus?

Things have been moving quickly, and I’m sorry I haven’t felt like posting, and haven’t had time. I am always having thoughts I think of sharing, but then they pass before I have a chance to sit down and write them, or my motivation flags. I’ve started and deleted this post three or four times in the past week.

Last week at RCIA, we had a lesson on sacramental marriage and Natural Family Planning with a couple in the parish, and it was amazing and invigorating and worldview-changing. I find that the more Catholic I become, the more and more my worldview changes — the more and more I feel at odds with the rest of the world.

Jesus said that the world would hate us on account of His Name; that we would be reviled and persecuted. Never before in my life as a Christian have I truly felt that pain of rejection. But in this heated political and cultural debate, I feel all of a sudden that I’ve placed myself on the front lines of the culture wars — or sometimes, before a firing squad. Many of my closest friends are very liberal. Always in the past I’ve been able to find common ground with them, and we were able to respect each other’s divergent turf. Never before have I been decried for maintaining my own, private, traditional, conservative views; but now, if I’m not openly in favor of abortion or homosexual marriage (or “women’s rights” and “gender rights”) — then I’m labeled a misogynist and a homophobe.

The Catholic Church stands, self-consciously, against the values of the modern world. Critics charge that the Church is antiquated or “out of step with the times” — but this is how it has to be; we follow Christ and not the times. We are called not to conform, but to be transformed. I’ve heard this rhetoric all my life as a Protestant, but never before have I found myself holding positions — on marriage, on contraception, on the death penalty, on service to the poor, just to name a few — that go against even most Protestants. More than any other brand of Christianity I’ve been a part of, I feel that I’ve stumbled upon radical Christianity.

Authority and the Magisterium

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I just read a wonderful piece by Bryan Cross that Kristen shared from Called to Communion (a blog I have never read before, but which I think will now become a favorite), addressing the necessity of the Church’s Magisterium and its authority through all the ages of Christian history. It very much underscores everything I believe and why I’m so drawn to the Church, and aligns with some other trains of thought I’ve been following lately.

As I addressed a few weeks ago, one of my primary reasons for being drawn to the Catholic Church is the profound frustration, uncertainty, and confusion I’ve experienced all my life in trying to discern the correct doctrine of Christianity, the correct interpretation of Scripture, among so many competing views. The authority of the Catholic Magisterium alone has the power to definitively settle such doctrinal disputes, to dictate correct doctrine. Now, anybody can claim to have authority, but in order for that authority to have any force, it must be based on something. I am pursuing the Catholic Church not just because she claims to have authority, but because her authority was established by Christ himself.

Coming from a Pentecostal background, I have written about the disorder and confusion inherent in that tradition. The author of this piece, Bryan Cross, was also raised Pentecostal. He rejects the claim, by Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, that early Christianity, from the day of Pentecost, was marked by “massive confusion.” I was particularly compelled by his assertion of the inherent order of Pentecost and the ministry of the Holy Spirit: to eliminate disorder and confusion, not to foster it.

Cross demonstrates convincingly the necessity of the Church’s Magisterium, and the fallacy of rejecting its authority while affirming the orthodoxy that it established. Without the authority of the Magisterium, we orthodox Christians today — including evangelical Protestants under that umbrella — would have no standing at all to insist that our Christological views are any more correct than those of the Arians or Monophysites or any of the other ancient heresies that have fallen by the wayside, having been rejected by the Church — or for that matter, than those of modern Christological heresies such as those of the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Without an established, ultimate authority, to claim the definitive guidance of the Holy Spirit, there is only the relativistic claim that a few people agree with each other, against everyone else — and there is enough of that in the world already.

Cum Sancto Spiritu: A First Look

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In the liturgy of the Mass, where it reads Cum Sancto Spiritu — at the end of the Gloria, where “You alone are the Most High Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father” — I have sometimes gotten the sense, from both the Latin and the English, that the tone of this is “and the Holy Spirit, too!” — as if the Holy Spirit were a tag-along, there gratuitously as a part of the Trinity, without a clear idea of what He’s doing there. Coming into the Catholic tradition, it often seemed as if the Holy Spirit was downplayed, a less important figure than in the tradition I’m coming out of. So I’m searching for the role of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic tradition, trying to understand who he is and what he does in the Catholic understanding. It seems rather more complex, and less visible, but nonetheless important.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost

The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

In the Pentecostal tradition, the Holy Spirit takes a central role in Christian life. Prayers are offered to the Holy Spirit, asking him to “fill this place” or “move in this place.” My feeling has always been that in this context, the Holy Spirit is an atmosphere of fervency and emotion that spreads and envelops. The Holy Spirit is said to have moved, for instance, after a service in which the congregation “gets lost” in emotional worship. But the Holy Spirit also fills, and overflows. He manifests himself in miracles and miraculous spiritual gifts, such as healing, prophecy, and especially speaking in tongues — the sine qua non of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” This “baptism of the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by speaking in tongues” is one of the hallmarks of the “Spirit-filled life.” This, and the moving of these spiritual gifts, define the Christian life for Pentecostals, who call themselves “Spirit-filled Christians.”

This understanding of the Holy Spirit is based primarily in the Book of Acts (especially Acts 2, Acts 10:44-46 and Acts 19) and Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 12 and 14). Being “baptized” or “filled with the Holy Spirit” is something that takes place separate from believing in Christ or “being saved,” as seems to be the case in Acts 19, in which “disciples” had “believed” and been baptized (in water) but had not yet “received the Holy Spirit.” (Another way to read this, as my ESV Study Bible notes suggest, is that these people clearly didn’t know very much about Jesus or his teachings if they had never heard of the Holy Spirit, and had only been baptized with John the Baptist’s baptism. So receiving the Holy Spirit was merely the product of receiving the fullness of Christ’s message and being baptized in his name.) Certainly 1 Corinthians 12 lists spiritual gifts, and 1 Corinthians 14 speaks at length about the gifts of prophecy and tongues. But these are the only places they are mentioned in the New Testament.

The Catholic Church, and most non-Charismatic Christians, believe that these miraculous spiritual gifts ceased with the passing of the Apostolic Age — this view is called Cessationism; the opposite view, that the gifts continued, is Continuationism. I have never read much in the way of this theological debate — like most theological debates, I’ve found it dizzying and threatening and detrimental to my spiritual health. I have a book on the debate I’ve never gotten through; perhaps I should try again. I feel that it, like most doctrinal debates, is a rabbit trail that distracts believers from more important issues of Christian life — but I am curious about the reasoning here. I wonder if there are any Catholic books on this issue?

Anyway, I’ve gotten completely off the track of the well-meaning, and I thought well-settled, outline I set for this post a couple of weeks ago. I’m tempted to delete all of the above distraction, but I think I will leave it just to illustrate how confusing an issue this is for me, and to hope that some helpful reader might stumble upon it and offer me book recommendations. It’s nearly midnight, but I will leave you with what I meant to reach: a summary of what I understood, in the Pentecostal tradition, to be the roles and functions of the Holy Spirit. (I would give Scripture references, but I’m tired and it’s late. Consequently, this list may be flawed or incomplete. So this does not represent a studied effort, just my off-the-cuff understanding.)

  1. The Holy Spirit enters the heart and life of all believers, as part of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “getting saved” — but this is different than the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.”
  2. The Holy Spirit, indwelling in one’s heart, is a Counselor. He leads the believer to decisions or courses of action, and urges him to act.
  3. The Holy Spirit is a Comforter, consoling and assuaging the heart of the believer.
  4. The Holy Spirit also convicts the believer of sin and guides him to repentance.
  5. The Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets and inspired the writers of Scripture of the New Testament also.
  6. The Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture for the believer, leading him to a correct understanding of it and allowing the Bible to function as the living Word of God and a continuing revelation.
  7. The Holy Spirit gives the believer words to say in ministry, speaking for him or through him.
  8. The Holy Spirit bears the virtuous fruits of the Spirit in the believer who walks by the Spirit (Galatians 5:13-22).
  9. The Holy Spirit moves one to zeal, joy, or other high emotion, leading one into worship.
  10. The Holy Spirit baptizes or fills a believer, granting a more intimate connection and manifesting in miraculous gifts, especially speaking in tongues.
  11. The other gifts of the Holy Spirit (all of which Pentecostals believe continue), as enumerated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, are:
    1. Word of wisdom.
    2. Word of knowledge.
    3. Miraculous faith.
    4. Gift of healing.
    5. Working of miracles.
    6. Prophecy.
    7. Discerning of spirits.
    8. Speaking in tongues.
    9. Interpretation of tongues.

Next time, I’ll attempt to tackle Catholic doctrine about the Holy Spirit. But that’s requiring a good bit of studying of the Catechism, and I’ve been busy with school. So this post has been delayed, and will probably continue to be.

Another Analogy for Church Authority

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Here’s another brief analogy I thought of for the authority of the Church:

The U.S. ConstitutionTake the United States Constitution. It’s a two hundred-year-old document that has been amended twenty-seven times, and has been subject to constant and continuous interpretation and reinterpretation throughout its history. Suppose, though, you hand it to the founders of a new republic, and ask them to re-create the American government from nothing but that document. They could probably come up with something — but it would be rough, lacking definition. The Constitution lays out the framework of government that needs to exist, but it conveys nothing of how to implement such a government. It conveys nothing of the historical context in which the document was produced. It conveys nothing of the specific interpretations and definitions that have been worked out by the courts over the years.

In the United States, we’ve inherited a rich and complex legal tradition, not just from the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, but from English common law, several centuries of statute law, and other precursors and precedents. Whatever your position on constitutional interpretation — whether you are a strict constructionist, believing that the Constitution means what it says, on its letter, and that we should follow the original intent of our Founding Fathers in writing it; or a loose constructionist, believing that the Constitution is a living document, constantly evolving with the nation’s views — our understanding of the Constitution is informed by our legal tradition. To understand the original intent of the Founders, we have to read what they wrote and understand what they believed. To understand the Constitution as a living document, we have to understand the definitions and interpretations that legal minds of the past have hammered out. To create a replica of the United States government, we would need not just the Constitution, but the web of statutes that Congress has woven to implement it.

The Supreme Court, by virtue of holding the entire, unbroken legal tradition of the United States in its hand, and of being made up of nine men and women held to be learned and capable legal minds, is the highest authority of law in our nation. It alone has the power to interpret the Constitution with binding effect. In making their decisions, the justices of the Supreme Court consider all of the resources at their disposal: case law, the past decisions of the Court, the writings of the Founding Fathers and other legal minds, just to mention a few. Those decisions and those thinkers haven’t all agreed with each other, it is true; but considering this entire body of law, the Court can arrive at the correct interpretation. The Supreme Court has the authority to interpret the Constitution because that is the authority it was given; that’s what it was created to do; that is its purpose.

The Delivery of the Keys (Perugino, Sistine Chapel, Rome)

Christ giving the keys to St. Peter.

Likewise, the Church, by virtue of holding the entire, unbroken tradition of the teachings of Christ and the Apostles in her hand, and of being made up of the body of bishops held to be learned and authoritative by their merits and their inheritance from the Apostles themselves, has the authority to interpret the Scripture and Tradition of the Church. In making her decisions, the Church considers all of the resources at her disposal: Scripture itself, the writings of the Church Fathers, the dictates of bishops and popes and councils over the ages, just to mention a few. Most of all, she prays and seeks the guidance and discernment of the Holy Spirit. The Church has the authority to interpret Scripture and Tradition because that is the authority she was given by Christ — the authority to bind and loose, to decide points of interpretation of the law with binding effect, given explicitly to St. Peter.

Handing the Constitution alone to founders of a new government, detached from its history and tradition, is like handing the Bible to a new religious sect and asking them to create a church, sola scriptura. This is essentially what many Protestant groups have done — sought to create a “pure,” “biblical” church, with Scripture alone as their guide, without any accretions of tradition. Some have taken it further than others. Most Protestants, whether they admit it to themselves or not, are as rapt followers of tradition as any Catholic: they follow, with little deviation, the traditions of Luther, or Calvin, or Cranmer, or Knox, or Wesley, or even of their own grandfathers or great-grandfathers. Tradition pervades the way they worship, the way they practice, and most of all the way they interpret Scripture. They adhere to a body of essential Christian tradition that not even Protestants have abandoned: Sunday worship; the shepherding of a Christian flock by a pastor; the liturgical practice of baptism and Communion; the celebration, according to an established liturgical calendar, of Easter and Christmas; the canon of Scripture itself. Take even a “contemporary,” “hip,” “non-denominational” evangelical “worship center.” A worship service will begin with songs, followed by a sermon, in a tradition of order as ancient as the Church, but found nowhere in the Bible. Typically such a church’s doctrine — whether it even admits it has doctrine — is loosely Reformed or loosely Arminian; relaxed but nonetheless exclusive of certain doctrines rejected by the Protestant tradition (“oh, we definitely don’t believe that“). If sola scriptura is followed as rigidly as some Protestants insist, then some practices and doctrines must be excluded because they are not explicitly described in the Bible — for example, the Churches of Christ’s insistence on no instrumental worship, or the Seventh-Day Adventists’ insistence on Saturday worship. A church that literally followed sola scriptura, with no inkling of tradition anywhere in it at all, would be a strange-looking beast indeed.

Tradition and Authority

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Eyes to SeeOne of the greatest struggles in my journey of faith has been finding a point of authority in matters of faith. Protestants stress sola scriptura as a rule of faith — that Scripture alone is their authority. Especially those Protestants of an evangelical or fundamentalist bent believe that biblical doctrine is clear on the surface of Scripture, without any interpretation. But at once this presents a problem. If Scripture is so clear, and if biblical doctrine is so self-evident, then how do various Christians and various denominations reach such diverse interpretations and such diverse doctrines? And more important, how could I, observing intelligent, rational people supporting each position, and finding merit and value with each, discern between them? What gave me, a man, the authority to dismiss some views as incorrect and declare another the right one?

This problem perplexed and frustrated me for years. It was the source of unending turmoil, every time I dared approach it. During my time in the wilderness, and especially more recently, I tried on many occasions to study doctrine and theology and Scripture, and determine, once and for all, what it was I actually believed, and therefore what church I belonged in. But I couldn’t do it. Time and time again, I reached an impasse at the point of authority.

After years of beating my head against it, I reached a solution to the problem that satisfied me, I thought. If there was no authority — no point from which to argue that any position was any more correct than any other — then they all must be equally correct. The correctness of doctrine must be relative. If God saves souls and changes lives in a variety of different Christian traditions — and this I observed, and believed, and still believe — then all of our doctrinal differences don’t amount to a drop in a bucket in God’s eyes. It was a position of thoroughgoing ecumenism, or even doctrinal relativism; a belief that all (or at least all orthodox) Christianity was equally valid. One’s choice of a church was merely a matter of preference, of what worked for each person individually. This was comfortable. I learned to respect and value all different Christian traditions, to learn from them and seek to understand them (this is a lesson I hope I never lose). Deep down, though, my position felt empty. If the correctness of doctrine was relative, then ultimately, doctrine was meaningless and inconsequential.

This was the position at which I stood when I began this Catholic journey. I had written at length to myself about the characteristics and values I was looking for in a church, and planned to go “church shopping.” My ideal looked very little like the Catholic Church — at least, not like my preconceived image of the Catholic Church. It was only by a happy accident that I stumbled onto this road. Once again, I don’t believe in happy accidents.

In the very first conversation I had with Audrey about Catholicism — the first time she invited me to Mass — I mentioned to her, off the top of my head, one of the problems I had with Catholicism. It wasn’t even the chief problem, I thought, but one that seemed innocuous enough for an initial conversation. “I don’t like that the Church insists on interpreting Scripture for believers.”

Her response was simple, rational, clear. It made sense. It didn’t sink in at the time that it was the key to unlock my riddle, or that she was the only person who could have answered it for me this way. “I see it like authority for an historian. We base our arguments on authority, on the arguments and interpretations of the past. Each generation builds on what was done before and gains a deeper understanding of the truth. And the Church has 2,000 years of authority behind her interpretation of Scripture.”

The Gettysburg Address

A primary source (the autograph of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address).

As an historian, how do I discover the truth? I go to the source: I take the testimony of the most reliable, most primary sources toward the event in question. But sources don’t speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted. No source says, “This is exactly how it happened, and these are exactly its implications” — if there were such a source, then it, too, would have to be interpreted: Who would have the authority to write in such a way, and how could they be so certain? And so historians, naturally, also look to other interpreters of a source, to understand how that source has been interpreted in the past. Due weight is given to those interpreters who speak from authority — who were closest in time to the event, who knew the people and events and circumstances involved, or whose interpretations were qualified by extensive study or academic credentials. Historians build their interpretations on these older, authoritative interpretations, creating an historiographic, interpretive tradition, with each generation adding to the store of knowledge and furthering their understanding of the truth.

Likewise it is with the Church and Scripture. Protestants may treat the Bible as a contemporary, self-evident source whose meaning is clear to the modern reader; but the truth is that it is an ancient, 2,000-year-old collection of documents. The first step in interpreting it, necessarily, has to be understanding how it was received in its own time — how the first generations following Christ received and understood his words and teachings, and how the faith of the Apostles was passed down. This tradition is the essential context to interpreting Scripture. The Church Fathers — those learned men of the Church’s first centuries — commented on Scripture at length. Their interpretations necessarily have far greater authority than mine, that of a layman 2,000 years departed.

The Council of Trent

The Magisterium of the Church, assembled at the Council of Trent.

And even more important, the Church itself claims the ultimate authority to interpret Scripture, through the Holy Spirit. The Church, because of who she is, because of the tradition she has inherited, has a far greater authority to interpret Scripture than I do. The Magisterium of the Church — the bishops in communion with the pope, as successors of the Apostles — is alone in a position to speak with true authority.

This kind of claim to authority simply isn’t present in the Protestant world. The Protestant Reformation consciously severed all ties to authority. In most evangelical churches, the highest authority in matters of doctrine and discipline is the local church: authority rests with the pastor or the body of elders. And that person’s authority is only as strong as his personal integrity and ability. If the congregation doesn’t respect it, then its members are free to — and so often do — split away to form their own churches or denominations. Since the Reformation, in the absence of any unifying authority, Protestant churches have splintered into so many thousands of fragments.

But the Catholic Church has the authority to interpret Scripture and Tradition. It has the authority to teach the truth of revelation and doctrine. When my path lacked any definition at all, the Church showed me the marked road, and gave me a compass. And this is key that has at last made sense of my journey.

Conversion

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Since I’ve been on this road, I’ve been reluctant to use the term “conversion” in referring to my becoming Catholic, since in common parlance, “to convert” connotes a changing of form or character:

con·vert (kən-vûrt´) v. con·vert·ed, con·vert·ing, con·verts v.tr.
1. To change (something) into another form, substance, state, or product; transform: convert water into ice.
2. To change (something) from one use, function, or purpose to another; adapt to a new or different purpose.
3. To persuade or induce to adopt a particular religion, faith, or belief.
. . .
[convert. (n.d.) The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2003). Retrieved October 9 2011 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/convert]

And I’ve insisted that I’m not changing form or character, or even changing faiths; I am continuing as what I’ve been all along, a Christian. In many ways, though not formally initiated, I’ve been outwardly and inwardly a Catholic Christian for a while now. I’ve preferred to say that “I’m joining the Catholic Church” rather than “I’m converting to Catholicism.” “Conversion” is a scary word; somehow it feels that if I “convert,” I will no longer be what I was before.

Though the majority around me doesn’t think in such terms, I know, I have always seen through the English to the Latin root: converto — I turn around or turn towards a new direction. I want people to see that my conversion is not a change of character, but merely a reorientation.

Last night, I read at length in the Catechism about the sacraments of penance and reconciliation. I was surprised to read of a “second conversion” — the ongoing process of a baptized Christian in growing towards holiness and eternal life — something that I’ve never heard referred to in any Protestant circle. Sure, I’ve heard of “discipleship” and “maturing spiritually,” but generally the evangelical attitude seems to be, “Poof! You’re a Christian! Now live like a Christian!” My ongoing struggle with sin, even though I was supposed to be a Christian, has been a constant source of trouble and confusion in my life. The Cathechism:

Christ’s call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, “clasping sinners to her bosom, [is] at once holy and always in need of purification, [and] always follows constantly the path of penance and renewal.” This endeavor of conversion is not just a human work. It is the movement of a “contrite heart,” drawn and moved by grace to respond to the merciful love of God who loved us first. [Cathechism of the Catholic Church, 1428]

Another name of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation is the sacrament of conversion. It is the process not only by which sinners are reconciled to God and the Church, but through which we are inwardly healed and changed; through which we turn away from sin and toward God:

Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace. [Catechism, 1431]

I want to be converted, in my whole being. Even more than converting — reorienting — toward the Catholic Church, I want to turn toward God.

The Catholic Church, through its sacrament of reconciliation, understands the need for this continuing conversion in Christians, and how it is effected. I know I have heard some Protestants, the wise ones, acknowledge that growing in Christ is a process; they surely recognize, by experience, what isn’t formally taught in evangelical churches, but should be. So much of my youth was spent in agony, needing to confess and be reconciled, but instead making the same mistakes again and again, never growing, never converting, until I became calloused and complacent.

Today at Mass, as if to confirm this was a lesson I needed to pay attention to and take to heart, Deacon Ted spoke about this ongoing conversion in his homily.

“Not much brand loyalty”

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Last night I attended our Catholic campus ministry’s weekly gathering, to hear a talk by a priest, Father Matthew, who’d been a Protestant convert. He’d spent time as a Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and had even applied for a Lutheran seminary. Describing himself, he said that he guessed he “didn’t have much brand loyalty.” He left me with a lot of food for thought. He seemed to have a good foundation in philosophy, and since he had a good view of both sides of the divide, I wished I could have talked to him longer.

He described himself as a skeptic toward the supernatural, especially toward Marian apparitions and other forms of private revelation. And it struck me how different this was from where I’m coming from. Here was a Catholic parish priest, in a small, conservative, Southern town, admitting to a room full of Catholics that there were things in his faith that he had a hard time swallowing; that his faith waxed and waned; that he even struggled sometimes with doubts about the very Mass he was celebrating. And nobody in the room batted an eye. No one criticized him or expressed disappointment or disapproval. Having doubts and questioning seemed perfectly acceptable and understandable, even for a priest. I would never have expected such acceptance or understanding from an evangelical crowd. He said that the great thing about the Catholic Church and its tradition is that every doubt has already been dealt with by somebody. The reality and efficacy of the Eucharist, he said, had nothing to do with his faith or his weakness, and everything to do with Christ.

Regarding Mary: When he encountered stories of Marian apparitions, the first thing he asked was, do they improve the life of the person? Someone in the audience asked how he dealt with the Marian dogmata in coming to the Catholic Church. He said that with regard to Mary, and to so much in the Catholic faith, you can’t really appreciate it until you’re in the middle of it. It all came down, for him, to his faith in the Eucharist and in Christ’s Real Presence; and when he believed that and longed for that, there came a point at which he had to take a jump; and then everything else followed. He said if you go deep with a belief and struggle with it, it will often end up being among your favorite things in the Church. And in my journey so far, I can certainly say that that has been my experience with Mary. He said he didn’t really know and understand the humanity of Christ until he got to know his mother.

He said that one of the greatest things that drew him to Catholicism was its appreciation for the material aspects of faith. Evangelical and fundamentalist traditions are mostly concerned with a set of beliefs that will get souls into heaven; but Catholicism values things that will bring us closer to God in the here and now, in the material world — beautiful things, such as art and architecture; intellectual things, such as history, tradition, theology. The Catholic faith is wonderfully broad — there is so much you can “do” in terms of spirituality; so many different traditions — but you can’t do everything, or you’ll never find any depth in anything. He himself has followed the Benedictine tradition. It’s a “convert’s danger,” he said, to want to dabble in so many different traditions; but he recommended that if we found something that bore fruit for us, to stick with it and go deep with it. (I know this will be a problem for me — but for now I’m going to enjoy dabbling.)

Regarding his lack of “brand loyalty”: he said that “cradle Catholics” have a deep, emotional connection to the Church, but that as a convert, he didn’t. He said that above all, his was an intellectual attachment, a conviction that the Catholic Church was the true Church of Christ, the oldest and first and the bearer of apostolic succession. “I still choose it because it’s the best among alternatives; but it’s not perfect.” For my part, I believe I will feel much more of an emotional attachment — I already do. I’ve felt an orphan for so long, and admired my Mother Church, and passionately defended her to Protestant critics, even long before I dreamed of making this journey.

Above all, he said, he became a priest because he fell in love with the Mass and wanted to enjoy it as often as possible. “Everybody who goes through RCIA wants to be pope,” he said. And I must confess that this has occurred to me.

Sin and Punishment

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Tonight I’m struggling with Purgatory.

I guess I haven’t really thought much about it before. Like Mary did, it came upon me rather suddenly. Father Joe mentioned Purgatory briefly at RCIA on Sunday. I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of salvation, and the differences between the Catholic and evangelical Protestant conceptions of it. I’ve been reading Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism, and today read the chapters on salvation and Purgatory. It’s been a helpful book. It has drawn my attention to Catholic doctrines with which I still have questions and issues, and has helped me through grasping several of them.

The trouble with Keating is that sometimes I’m not sure he understands the fundamentalist position (or evangelical — his “fundamentalists” sound like every Southern evangelical I’ve ever known) any better than fundamentalists understand the Catholic one. For that matter, I’m not sure I understand the evangelical position very well either. I come from a theologically impoverished background; I have my own “feelings” about things, that aren’t always very rational or consistent. I have been saying for years, and still maintain, that theology is only man’s feeble attempt to grasp the mysteries of God that are ultimately beyond his comprehension. Grace and salvation may themselves be mysteries we will never fully understand. Scholasticism (at least, my prejudiced conception of it) deeply bothered me for a long time; I felt that it tried to regiment and reason away even the mysteries of faith. But the further I delve into Catholicism, the more I admire its consistency. The more I study, the more I find that many Protestant doctrines aren’t baked all the way through.

This is an awfully big bear to wrestle with in one post — I know I will be making many — so let me limit myself to the topic at hand: sin and punishment. This, if I’m not careful, multiplies into redemption, justification, salvation, and lots of other things. But what I really want to talk about is Purgatory.

I bought a worship CD a year or two ago, from a band I’d never heard of before called Branch. I bought it specifically because I was looking for a cover of the Gospel hymn “Nothing But the Blood,” and liked theirs. I was struggling with sin and those beautiful, powerful words kept echoing in my head:

O precious is the flow
that makes me white as snow;
no other fount I know;
nothing but the blood of Jesus.

I liked the CD. They had some really moving, impassioned songs about redemption and forgiveness. But one day I was listening to one of them, and it struck me in a way I hadn’t anticipated:

This is redemption written in his blood
This is forgiveness, the guilty go free
This is redemption, sinners get heaven 
This is a love song for those who believe

The guilty go free? Unexpectedly, these words troubled me deeply. Is that really what my religion espouses? Murderers, rapists, thieves, liars, and con men, getting off scot-free? Is that right? Is that just? Is that really what Christ’s redemption equates to? Criminals walking out of a courtroom unpunished?

Last night, Isaiah 53 came up in my Bible reading, entirely by random coincidence (though the older I get, the less I believe there’s any such thing). This is one of my dearest, most cherished passages of Scripture in the Bible. He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. Jesus suffered and died so our sins could be forgiven. I’ve always believed as a Protestant that one drop of His blood was enough to atone for a lifetime of my sins; that no matter what I did, His blood had purchased my forgiveness.

Covering. Keating writes of Luther’s conception of grace as a cloak:

[In the fundamentalist view,] accepting Christ accomplishes one thing and one thing only. It makes God cover one’s sinfulness. It makes him turn a blind eye to it. It is as though he hides the soul under a cloak. Any soul under this cloak is admitted to heaven, no matter how putrescent the reality beneath; no one without the cloak, no matter how pristine, can enter the pearly gates (Catholicism and Fundamentalism, 167).

Is this really what I believed? No, I don’t think it is. I have never accepted that I was “putrescent” or “totally depraved.” I have acknowledged that the sinful nature of my flesh was hopelessly sinful and flawed, that I could never be holy through my own power; but I maintained that there was a lot of good in me, by God’s grace. I never believed that I would go to Heaven as a rotting, putrid mass of sin; I had faith that Christ had cleansed me by His blood. There is power in the blood to wash away sins.

There is power, power, wonder working power
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is power, power, wonder working power
In the precious blood of the Lamb.

The blood, I believed, had washed me white as snow. Sometimes, after repenting and asking for God’s forgiveness, I would truly feel in a state of grace. But then I would turn right around and sin again. Was I “white as snow”? What part of me had been washed clean?

The guilty go free. On this earth, it’s a great travesty of justice for the guilty to go free. No matter how contrite the person is; no matter if they ask, and are forgiven, by the people they have wronged; crime demands punishment. I’ve never been a great proponent of the death penalty, but it always bothered me when death row convicts would argue that they deserved to be spared because they had found grace through Christ and changed their lives. Perhaps so; but nonetheless, they committed a crime; Christ may have paid their eternal debt, but they still owed one on this earth.

“Having one’s sins forgiven is not the same thing as having the punishment for them wiped out,” writes Keating (195). Certainly in my case above this holds true. It is not just for the guilty to go free. God is a just God; it was for our guilt that Christ had to suffer. But that wasn’t enough? “It is not contrary to the Redemption to say we must suffer for our sins; it is a matter of justice” (194).

I have believed, as do Catholics, and as do the (Protestant) composers of the hymns above, that Christ washes away our sins; that he washes us clean. Maybe it’s not as instantaneous a process as I thought. But nonetheless, I will be washed clean. Perhaps Christ’s Redemption is analogous to him taking my death penalty for me: he died for my sins so I wouldn’t have to die spiritually; so I wouldn’t have to suffer eternal torment; instead, I only have to go to his prison, where daily I’ll bathe in his cathartic blood, until I really am white as snow.

Bridging the Gap

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I realized what it is I’ve been trying to do, through my constant, ecumenical assertions that “all who call on Christ’s name are Christians.” I truly believe — I have to believe — that Jesus saves those on both sides of this divide, if they faithfully follow Him and serve Him. I do not believe that He would abandon those who have fallen away from the Church and its sacraments, just as He didn’t abandon the Samaritans (John 4). I have no doubt whatsoever that my grandparents are among the saints, along with many other dearly beloved kin and ancestors. And I don’t want to abandon my heritage, the milieu I’ve been steeped in and that has shaped me. My homeland, my people, are so closely and so inextricably tied to Protestantism — and I don’t want to let go of that. I’ve been trying to bridge the gap between the two, between Catholicism and Protestantism; that by denying any difference between the two, by affirming their sameness, I can somehow remain both.

And I’m not sure I can do it. This recent, hostile conflict has caused me to reconsider some things. I think I am always going to maintain an ecumenical perspective and hope — a belief that in His infinite mercy, Christ saves all who call on His name, even those sheep who have wandered away with misguided shepherds — but I cannot insist that all churches are exactly the same. The faults in my own logic became glaringly clear as I wrote that last entry, and more and more so the more times I read it. My argument wore the thinnest, I think, in my suggestion that Protestant ministers, just by their virtue of having read the Bible, are just as much the successors of the Apostles as the Catholic bishops, whom the Apostles willfully and thoughtfully appointed.

Pope Benedict XVI has commented that Protestant churches are “not true churches” — a widely-quoted statement that deeply bothered me, and in fact turned me off from Catholicism for several years. But I hadn’t actually (and I guess, still haven’t, since this is only a news brief) read the full context of the statement until tonight:

Noting that churches and ecclesial communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church “suffer from defects,” the doctrinal congregation acknowledged that “elements of sanctification and truth” may be present in them.

“It follows that these separated churches and communities … are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation,” the congregation said. “In fact, the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.”

…

Yet, Christian communities “born out of the Reformation” do not share that union as they “do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of orders,” the Vatican congregation said.

“These ecclesial communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called churches in the proper sense,” it said.

I agree with these comments, and find them much more caring than I believed them to have been — though I think the “not proper churches” phrase was a bit careless and probably ill-advised. (The moral of the story: read more than Wikipedia when you’re examining something of such import.)

It’s history, as much as anything, that has brought me to this point. And even if my American ancestors and the people I study were by and large Protestants, in rejecting that faith for myself, I in no way want to reject theirs, or reject them. There are, without a doubt, many strands and elements of Protestant Christianity, in fact some that I’ve grown up with, that I do not hesitate to distance and dissociate myself from. I can’t, and don’t want to, hold on to everything.

It’s the core message of the Gospel, the love of God, that is universal; it’s the divine mercy of God that saves, not anything that any of us do by our own power. Even if I let go of Protestantism, I will maintain that Protestants are Christians and that many are held by God’s saving grace. I will continue to strive to bridge the gap: not by being on both sides of it, but by teaching my Protestant brethren about the Catholic faith, dispelling their misconceptions, and encouraging acceptance and reconciliation in whatever way I can.

Premises

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Today was a long day. I had several posts I spent most of the day plotting in my head, but when I got home, I was met with something far more exigent: the first real, vehement opposition I’ve met from a friend to my becoming Catholic.

She raised a valid point: To what degree have I foregone my conclusion? Have I already concluded that I am becoming Catholic? This blog is titled, “A Catholic being born.” Apparent in that is the assumption that I am in a process that will result in my conversion. Might my “delivery” still end in a “stillbirth”? It is possible; I have not closed my mind. But I have felt good about the road I am on, and until tonight have had a relatively smooth passage.

She, an ardent Baptist, had consulted with another friend who was very knowledgeable about matters of theology and doctrine. She proceeded to aggressively challenge me, making a number of mistaken assumptions about what I believe and why I am pursuing Catholicism. It was very clear that neither of us understood where the other was coming from: she didn’t understand where I stand, what I believe, or why I am approaching the Catholic Church; I didn’t understand why she was so vociferously opposed to it. She called me “ridiculous” and “unreasonable”; I do not believe I was.

So I thought it would be productive for me to try to formulate where it is I stand and what it is I believe — the premises from which I’m proceeding. Feel free, reader, to challenge me or question me — but please don’t call me ridiculous or unreasonable; I’m making every attempt not to be.

Premise: Everyone who calls on the name of Christ, and subscribes to the central tenets of Christianity, as laid out in the orthodox, traditional creeds of the Church, is a Christian.

I’ve come from an evangelical Protestant background. I’ve known and been close to many people from many different Christian denominations, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. I’ve witnessed firsthand the grace of God to transform lives and save souls, active in their lives and in their churches. Therefore, I can come to no other conclusion but that all of our differences of doctrine and practice amount to nothing in God’s eyes. Despite our human divisions, we are still, in the Spirit, one unbroken and unified Body of Christ.

Does one’s belief in the sacraments change the fact of what they are to God? Does the Catholic belief in the sacramentality of baptism create in it an efficacy that doesn’t exist in a Protestant baptism, where in many traditions, it’s considered merely symbolic? This seems not to be the case: if I become Catholic, the Church will accept the validity of my Protestant baptism when I was twelve, as my “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” This apparently doesn’t extend to marriage: the Church doesn’t accept the sacramentality of a Catholic’s marriage outside the Church.

It also doesn’t seem to extend to the Eucharist: our pastor explains to non-Catholics every week that “while we may believe in the same God and the same Christ, we don’t believe in the same Eucharist,” so they are not allowed to receive it. But, then, is Communion in a Protestant church without any efficacy at all? I don’t know that I can accept that. If we believe in the same Christ, does he not provide His Body and Blood to all His brethren? Is it the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — the participation of a man ordained as a priest, the practice of a liturgy — that makes Him really present — or does Christ Himself transubstantiate the elements?

Christ said to the Apostles, “(You) do this in memory of me.” The Catholic Church believes that all ordained priests, having been ordained by bishops, who in turn have been ordained by older bishops, are successors of the Apostles by apostolic succession. Therefore, the priest in the Mass is a substitute for Christ at the Lord’s Supper. It’s not the priest who transubstantiates the elements; it’s Christ Himself.

Protestants, on the other hand, read the Gospels, and take the passages where Christ was enjoining and entrusting authority to the Apostles, such as the Great Commission and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, not as injunctions to only the Apostles, but to all believers. Therefore, to a Protestant, any believer has the authority to baptize or cast out demons in the Lord’s name or celebrate Communion. The Protestant minister who does those things does not believe he is Christ’s substitute — but he is doing them in Christ’s name, so he nonetheless is.

But if Christ is truly present in the lives and churches of Protestants, would a Protestant minister standing in for Christ not be as valid as an ordained Catholic priest? By another tack, if a Catholic priest is a successor of the Apostles because he has been ordained by the bishops of the past, would a Protestant minister, having been taught and having received tradition from Scripture and from the Christian leaders of the past — even back to and across the chasm of the Reformation — not also be a successor of the Apostles? If Christ is truly, really present in the Catholic Eucharist, why would He not be present in the Protestant Eucharist also? Why wouldn’t He make Himself present in the crackers and grape juice of every church that proclaims His death until He comes?

I have gotten lost in a tangent I didn’t intend to go on. This is not the course I wanted this post to take. It is almost midnight, hours past my bedtime. I’ll have to collect my thoughts and try again tomorrow. Needless to say, tonight has seriously disturbed me and put me in a panic.

[Be sure to read my reflections on this subject in the ensuing days, “Bridging the Gap” and “The Historical Church.”]