The Liberal Protestant Future of Catholic Dissent

One of the many memorable scenes in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago features Zhivago’s family fleeing the ugliness and brutality of Moscow after the Bolshevik Revolution for the tranquility of the family’s country estate in Varykino. Upon reaching the estate after an arduous journey, Zhivago’s father-in-law, Alexander Gromeko, finds the main house boarded up, with a notice affixed to the door. After reading the notice, he cannot contain his exasperation: “A body, styling itself the Yuriatin Committee of Revolutionary Justice, has expropriated my house. In the name of the people. Very well. I’m one of the people, too!”

In this, Schuller is following in the well trod footsteps of liberal Protestantism. Nothing in Schuller’s talk indicated that he would disagree with anything found in liberal Protestantism, and in Austria he has advocated freely giving Communion to Protestants. Liberal Protestantism began, in H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous words, with the belief that “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Its logical culmination is found in the likes of Gary Hall, the Dean of Washington’s National Cathedral, who just told The Washington Post that “I describe myself as a non-theistic Christian.” Since there is no sin in the world of liberal Protestantism, except maybe holding unfashionable political opinions, and no beliefs that are necessary for salvation, except maybe the current editorial position of The New York Times, denominations that embrace liberalism have a hard time convincing people to get up early on Sundays and go to church, even though they have done everything Helmut Schuller wants the Catholic Church to do. The United Church of Christ has lost half its members since the early 1960s, even though the overall US population has doubled during the same period of time, the Episcopal Church has lost nearly a quarter of its Sunday communicants in the last decade, and the established Protestant churches in Europe have fared even worse. As measured by demography, liberal Christianity is a clear failure.

NKP_Vet, is there a difference in your mind between "Protestantism" and "Liberal Protestantism"?

Alex - I think the author of this critique was clearly differentiating liberal Protestant denominations from the more traditional Christian faiths. At least, tht is my interpretation.

For me, as a Catholic, I can understand the position of the previous poster, but I also am willing to acknowledge the enormous differences between the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the ELCA, Unitarians, etc. and the conservative Protestant groups. There is a reason why this article specifically uses the term “liberal” Protestants. They do not seem to hold many Christian doctrines to be the entire truth - more like lifestyle suggestions.

“To me it’s one in the same. Protestantism is belief in one’s self. Pick and choose what you want to believe in the Holy Bible, and disregard the rest.”

Protestantism is the belief in the sufficiency of Christ’s work on the cross. Catholicism is predicated on a denial of that sufficiency, requiring extra works to be added to grace for to earn salvation. In brief, Catholicism is belief in one’s self.

“Only the Catholic Church has a written doctrine handed down through the ages. It is based on the Word of God. The truth. Not a show of hands.”

You should try reading Augustine’s work on the Predestination of the Saints, his manual to Laurentius, Grace and Merits, and all the rest of his works, to realize that the Papists don’t have so much as a doctrine handed down, but more of an evolving myth and revisionist history that ignores sound Biblical exegesis in favor for more modern theology that is simply a throwback to the condemned heresy of Pelagian.

To me it’s one in the same. Protestantism is belief in one’s self. Pick and choose what you want to believe in the Holy Bible, and disregard the rest.

Actually, Schuller appears to be like Rome or liberal Prots, presuming to be able to call his own ethos the word of God by holding Scripture as less than the wholly inspired and basically literal word of God, and as subservient to himself.

Contrary to your characterization of Protestantism as the presumptive exaltation of individuals and liberalism, the historical Prot. belief in the supremacy of Scripture exalted the author of it as defined by His unchanging literal word, and resulted in conservative views overall. And even today evangelicals, despite their different tribes, testify to greater conservative unity in basic faith and moral issues than those Rome counts as members. Meanwhile, her own scholarship largely leans to the left.

In contrast, it is under sola ecclesia (the church is supreme thru its magisterium) that we see the greatest presumptive exaltation of the individual, as this is what cults operate out of, while autocratic popes presume unique assured infallibility (according to a scope and subject-based formula) as individuals, and even when they are not they can lead most of a church into believing error. One century they can sanction torture and the killing of theological nonconformists and another century can tell us it is intrinsically evil. Etc.

It is revealing and ironic that the very church that TRC (traditional RCs) defenders would have conservative evangelicals submit to does little to nothing to censure those like Schuller, who even went on a 15-city U.S. tour in the US this summer, and count and treat such as members in life and in death. But it is when such convert and become conservative evangelicals that they are seen as enemies and real concern is shown for their soul. For the primacy of Rome and not liberalism is the real priority of TRCs. If the show fits, wear it.

Only the Catholic Church has a written doctrine handed down through the ages. It is based on the Word of God. The truth. Not a show of hands.

No, it is based on what Rome decrees the word of God to consist of, which is not simply Scripture, but oral tradition, out of which she channels doctrines not found in Scripture, as the veracity of her claims do not depend upon the weight of scriptural substantiation.

Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. Which may be efficient, and dictatorships are, but Rome's basis for her claim to such power is not.

“I am very familiar with that particular Catholic saint.”

Is your CHURCH aware of their wayward Saint?

“But these brethren of ours, about whom and on whose behalf we are now discoursing, say, perhaps, that the Pelagians are refuted by this testimony in which it is said that we are chosen in Christ and predestinated before the foundation of the world, in order that we should be holy and immaculate in His sight in love. For they think that having received God’s commands we are of ourselves by the choice of our free will made holy and immaculate in His sight in love; and since God foresaw that this would be the case, they say, He therefore chose and predestinated us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Although the apostle says that it was not because He foreknew that we should be such, but in order that we might be such by the same election of His grace, by which He showed us favour in His beloved Son. When, therefore, He predestinated us, He foreknew His own work by which He makes us holy and immaculate. Whence the Pelagian error is rightly refuted by this testimony. But we say, say they, “that God did not foreknow anything as ours except that faith by which we begin to believe, and that He chose and predestinated us before the foundation of the world, in order that we might be holy and immaculate by His grace and by His work.” But let them also hear in this testimony the words where he says, “We have obtained a lot, being predestinated according to His purpose who works all things.” (Ephesians 1:11) He, therefore, works the beginning of our belief who works all things; because faith itself does not precede that calling of which it is said: “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance;” (Romans 11:29) and of which it is said: “Not of works, but of Him that calls” (Romans 9:12) (although He might have said, of Him that believes); and the election which the Lord signified when He said: “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” (John 15:16) For He chose us, not because we believed, but that we might believe, lest we should be said first to have chosen Him, and so His word be false (which be it far from us to think possible), “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” Neither are we called because we believed, but that we may believe; and by that calling which is without repentance it is effected and carried through that we should believe. But all the many things which we have said concerning this matter need not to be repeated.” (Augustine, Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints, Chp. 38)

Is that what your religion teaches?

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