Posted on 07/29/2008 4:39:52 PM PDT by annalex
Evangelicals have been going through a major change of heart in their view of Catholicism over the past 15 years or so. In the 80’s when I was in college I lived in the Biblebelt and had plenty of experience with Evangelicals–much of it bad experience. The 80’s was the height of the “Are you saved?” question. In Virginia, the question often popped up in the first 10 minutes of getting to know someone. As I look back, Isurmise that this was coached from the pulpit or Sunday school as it was so well coordinated and almost universally applied. It was a good tactic for putting Catholics on the defensive even before it was known that they were Catholic—”ummmm, uhhh, well no, I’m not sure, I’m Catholic.” Then a conversation about works righteousness or saint statues would ensue. Yeah, nice to meet you, too.
Thankfully, those days are pretty much over. We now have formerly rabid anti-Catholics apologizing and even praising the pope. Catholics and Evangelicals have both learned that we have much in common and need each other to face the secular culture with a solid front. But, where did this detente come from? I think there is a real history to be told here and a book should be written. Let me give my perceptions of 7 major developments since 1993, which I regard as the the watershed year for the renewal of the Catholic Church in the United States.
1. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1993. When this document came out, it was uncertain that even Catholics would read it. We should have known that something was up when the French version hit the top of the bestsellers charts in France and stayed there for months. The English version did the same in the US. Catholics were reading the Catechism, forming study groups and challenging errant professors in the classroom.
2. World Youth Day, Denver 1993. Catholic youth and youth ministers woke up. Suddenly, Catholic youth ministers realized that the youth loved the pope. And they loved him all the more because he did not talk down to them or water down the faith. He challenged them. Gone now were the pizza and a video parish youth nights. Furthermore, youth and young adults took up the challenge to evangelize. One of those youth heard the message and started a website, New Advent. Catholic youth were now becoming zealous for the Catholic faith in its fullness and were not going to be swayed by an awkward conversation that began with “Are you saved?”
3. Scott Hahn. While the Catechism is great for expounding the Catholic faith, it is not a work of apologetics itself. It is not written to expose the flaws of Evangelical theology. It is not written to defend the Church against the attacks of Evangelicals per se. It just would not let them get away with misrepresenting the Catholic faith. But Scott Hahn hit the scene at about the same time with Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1993). I first heard his testimony on cassette tape in 1996. It blew my mind. Suddenly, Catholic apologetics, which is as old as the Catholic Church itself, got a leg up and there was an explosion of books, magazines and websites that effectively undercut the arguments of the 5 Solas. For the first time, there was a cadre of Catholics well enough informed to defend their faith.
4. The Internet. The Net started exploding from 1993 to 1996. I had my first account in ‘94. Compuserve was horribly basic, but by ‘96 I had AOL and the religion debates raged instantly. Catholics who had just been given the most powerful weapon in the arsenal in the war against misinterpretation of their teaching were learning to type on a forum while balancing their catechisms on their laps. Of course, online versions came out, as well. But, no Evangelical bent on getting Catholics out of the arms of the Whore of Babylon could expect to do so without himself have a copy of the Catechism, knowing it inside out and pouring over it for the errors and horrors he would surely find. Evangelical apologists were confronted with a coherent and beautiful presentation of the Catholic faith that they were ill equipped to argue against. They learned that Catholics, too, loved Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The Catechism had arrived providentially just before the internet and had turned the tables in just a few short years. With the apologetic movement hitting at the same time, Evangelicals were also confronted with Catholics who could argue from the Bible defending their faith and demonstrating the weaknesses of Evangelical interpretations of scripture.
5. Early Church Fathers. One fruit of the Apologetics movement has been a flowering anew of Catholic interest in Patristics. This is happening at every level from armchair apologists to doctoral studies. It is suddenly all about Patristics, whereas in the 70’s-90’s the academic focus had been on Karl Rahner and Liberation Theology.
6. Evangelical Third World Experience. Evangelicals have had a field day in Latin America among the poor who are not part of the internet conversation and are distant from the study of apologetics. But, Evangelicals have learned from their experiences abroad an essential aspect of the Gospel they were missing: the Works of Mercy. Once haughty with their criticism of “works righteousness,” they have learned one cannot attend to the spiritual needs of the poor without attending to their bodily needs. Catholic have always understood this. Now, the Evangelicals are coming around. I haven’t heard an Evangelical Televangelist speak on works righteousness in many years.
7. Secularism. With the collapse of the Mainline churches as the backbone of American religion over the past thirty years (since about 1975), Catholics and Evangelicals are the only ones left standing in this country to present the Gospel. Secularism is on the rise and is ruthless. Evangelicals are now learning that only Catholicism has the intellectual resources to combat the present secular age. And, with the pope, we have a pretty effective means for communicating the faith and representing it to the world. There is nothing an Evangelical can do that will match the power of one World Youth Day.
With such an array of Providential developments, Evangelicals as well as Catholics have come to appreciate the depth and the breadth of the Catholic faith. It is far more difficult for them to honestly dismiss Catholicism as the work of Satan as once they did without qualm. There have been apologies and there have been calls for a new partnership. Let us hope these developments will bring about a new moment of understanding for the Glory of the Lord.
Thanks for the clarification.
The LCMS is the best of Catholicism and the best of Protestantism. It's Catholicism without the "made up stuff" and Protestantism without the non-creedal, anything goes, pseudo-Baptist, non-denominational, Emergent rubbish.
As for the Marian doctrines. As a Lutheran, you can hold to the perpetual virginity of Mary, and Luther himself leaned very close to Mary not committing any particular sin (but not free from Original Sin). In many European Synods, that is considered “in bounds”, and used to be in the ball park for what is now the LCMS until the decree on the Immaculate Conception of Mary (which was not a doctrine at the time of the Reformation). Some of the other Marian doctrines such as the Assumption were not thought of, as they were not very popular in Northern Europe at that time.
Of interest, Ordination can be considered a Sacrament according the Book of Concord (forgive me, I forgot the citation). And in fact some of the Scandinavian synods like the Finnish one have a valid Apostolic Succession (which most of the mid European countries can not have due to the 30 years war and the disruption it caused). However, this is not considered a Sacrament in the LCMS (though a Rite, which is at times very close to the RCC view of a Sacrament, much like Confirmation).
Got to go. My pregnant bride is calling!
Praise be to God. This is a very interesting and needed read.
I’ve only read up through the first 50 posts, but some of the best Prot/Cath posts I’ve read in a long time.
There is a deep spiritual need for all Christians, despite our diffeneces in doctrine, to come together for three reasons:
1. Christ would want us together, despite differences, standing in harmony together as Christian brothers and sisters.
2. Christ would want us to fight the strong pervasive secular sentiment against Life, and indeed God Himself.
3. God is Light, Truth, and Good. Our world has a lot of darkness, deceit, and evil. I’m not talking about social gospel, but the Full Gospel of Jesus Christ. What we Christians know is Christ’s real Mission.
I hope that we can make distinctions between our doctrinal combat, where we each believe we are right with God, and feel compelled to defend and persuade; and our overall rightness in walking in Christ, together against literal Satanic evil that is enveloping the souls of our nation and world.
It's still in the confessions because Luther and the early Reformers were all ex-Catholic monks and such, and didn't let go of their upbringing easily. But scripture plainly shows that we confess our sins to God, and he is just, and will forgive us. In fact, they use one of the Psalms (see what you quoted) to support the stance that one cannot enumerate each and every sin. It's this part of Catholicism that causes such terrible guilt in most Catholics. We live by grace, we are justified by Christ. We don't live under sin any longer.
What drove Luther from the church was that he could not understand how one could be forgiven and yet still feel such constant, oppressive guilt. He was going to Confession so many times a day that the priest acting as his confessor once said to him, "Brother Martin, it is not necessary for you to confess every fart." It was this that made him turn to the scriptures and find there the simple message - we are saved by grace, through faith, not by how good or bad we behave - we cannot save ourselves through trying to be "good enough" - we can never be good enough. And before you lob out the antinomian argument, I suggest you read the Lutheran Confessions and the history of Luther's argument, because you can find all the details there that I don't have time or energy to even begin to start reiterating here. But Luther knew that "even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Brothers and sisters argue, sometimes heatedly, but they still love each other. I will argue points of doctrine no end, but I will never suggest that a Catholic is any less Christian than I consider myself to be. People who say silly things like "Catholics are not Christian", are simply fools. Heaven is not filled with only Catholics, or only Lutherans, or only Baptists, or only...(but I'm pretty sure there won't be many Episcopalians there...)
That is a sin of presumption: refusal to believe in sacramental absolution. Related to that is apparent Luther's scrupulosity. Should every compulsive sinner start his own church, or was Luther somehow special?
I meant ordering as to mean compiling. Quite a bit is here, though I will have to dig through my stacks to find it again, The rest will largely come from a friend's library in Chicago. Sources will be attributed, naturally.
As far as what I have had to this point, I suspect you refer to "Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and later"by David Plaisted, which I posted some little while ago. If you can offer a reasonable refutation other than "it's anti-Catholic", you are welcome to. With the exception of his rather presumptuous extended extrapolation wrt the Waldensians, it is a rather good piece, and is attributed for your perusal.
Precisely why the citation from Psalm 19 is in the Augsburg Confession's section on Confession.
Should every compulsive sinner start his own church, or was Luther somehow special?
We are all compulsive sinners, according to Romans 7. Indeed, the teaching of simul justus et peccator ("simultaneously justified and sinner", or sometimes condensed to "justified sinner") is one of Lutheranisms doctrinal gifts to Christendom; and, like some other gifts, one that is misuderstood both by extreme Catholics who have trouble grasping the full import of Justification and by extreme Calvanists/fundamentalists who have trouble grasping that the truly redeemed can ever sin.
Luther was somehow special in that he enjoyed the protection of a German Prince--otherwise he would have met the same fate as John Huss.
I don't understand what you are trying to say.
Good points . . .
Though I don’t think the ship is all that tightly ran . . . on the whole.
Hmmn... but the Church of Rome, as founded by Leo IX in AD 1054, has erroneously departed from the Gospel of Christ. Specifically, the novelties of salvation by works and the sacrifice of the mass twist the Gospel almost beyond recognition.
What an absolutely HORRIFIC history.
What is it with this RC edifice obsession with
the dead/graduated?
Only the LDS seem more obsessed with the dead/graduated!
LOL
I don't know what that is.
I'm talking about the Catholic Church.
You have completely misunderstood, and/or misrepresented, the evangelical position on the "literal" interpretation of Scripture. Evangelicals adhere to the historical-grammatical interpretation of Scripture: Scripture taken in its historical context, with attention paid specifically to the literally genre of any given passage: poetry is interpreted differently from historical narrative, etc. You have created a straw man argument that does not apply to what evangelicals actually believe. Further, dispensational theology believes you must distinguish in the way in which God rules in this world or the economy by which He mediates His rule in this world at different points in time.
... counters secularism because it shows a moral social model independent of it and indifferent to the secular world.
Except that there is nothing biblical about the monastic life...and there is no way that a "secular" society will see it as a model for themselves. It is viewed by the secular world as an aberration, and certainly of no value whatsoever to them.
Only reference to priests is in chapter 13, and the subject is prophets being treated as "high-priests".
I think you're assuming that it is addressed to priests but the content and context doesn't support that assumption.
So, it's an instruction as to how to baptize but it's not specifically directed to priests.
Looks like a difference to me. Then: any Christian could baptize. Now: Roman Catholic priest baptizes.
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