Posted on 06/18/2004 4:44:35 PM PDT by tlrugit
Bush Brought a Gift for the Pope: The Alliance Between Catholics and Evangelicals
It is an absolute novelty in the history of the United States, and has been consolidated with the present administration. The key role of Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus in the inner circle of the White House
by Sandro Magister
ROMA – The June 4 meeting in the Vatican between George W. Bush and John Paul II brought together noticeably the positions of the two sides: even in the matter of Iraq, over which there was a serious division a year ago. The speech given by the pope is evidence of this.
But there is also underway a noticeable drawing together between Bush and Catholics in the United States. In the surveys for the November presidential elections, a majority of Catholics favor the reconfirmation of the incumbent president. And this in spite of the fact that he is a Methodist, while his opponent, the Democrat John Kerry, is a Catholic.
That’s not all. An even more relevant convergence is underway, the one taking place between Catholic Americans and their most heated religious rivals: the evangelical Protestants. This convergence is an absolute novelty in the history of the United States. And it has consolidated with the Bush presidency.
In the United States, Catholics make up a fifth of the electorate. Traditionally, they have always supported Democratic candidates rather than Republicans. And they have always had the evangelicals against them. In 1960, when the Catholic John F. Kennedy was running for the presidency, the evangelical preachers spouted fire and brimstone. For them, electing Kennedy was like handing over the White House to the Vatican, which they equated with the Antichrist.
Today, everything has changed. There are bishops who refuse to give communion to Kerry, because of the support he has given to abortion rights. At the same time, a growing number of Catholics are making common cause with the evangelicals, in support of the Republican, Bush.
There is an episode that gives a striking illustration of this proximity. Seven days before his meeting with the pope, Bush met in Washington a panel of religious thinkers brought together by “Christianity Today,” the magazine founded by the most famous of the evangelical preachers, Billy Graham. There were two highly influential Catholics among the group: the editor of “Crisis,” Deal Hudson, and the editor of “First Things,” Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (in the photo).
The interview lasted a few hours, and the complete transcript was posted to the online edition of “Christianity Today.” Bush was questioned on every topic: Iraq, Israel, the pope, Islam, Cuba, terrorism, torture, the family, school, prayer. And it emerges from his responses that he has a simple and consistent vision of things, with a strong religious imprint.
One of the interesting details is that the present convergence between Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism is reflected in Bush’s personal experience.
In the interview, Bush said that he reads each morning a page from the writings of Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), one of the most popular evangelical spiritual teachers of the past century. He said he is an assiduous reader of the writings of another evangelical, a former chaplain of the United States Senate, Lloyd Ogilvie. He said he is preparing to re-read the entire Bible in the span of a year, as he has done several times since he attended Donald Evans’ Bible school from 1985-1986.
Bush is himself a born-again Christian. Jimmy Carter was another one. But Bush is the first president who, in two key posts in his administration, wanted other evangelicals close to him: the attorney general, John Ashcroft, member of the pentecostalist Assemblies of God, and Condoleezza Rice, the daughter of a Baptist pastor.
The novelty is that, for some time now, the most inner circle of Bush’s collaborators has included a very authoritative Catholic priest. He is Fr. Neuhaus, a former Lutheran pastor, who converted to Catholicism in 1990 and was ordained a priest the following year by the archbishop of New York at the time, John Cardinal O’Connor.
Fr. Neuhaus is among the most respected theologians. Even better: he is both a theologian and a political analyst, a bit like Reinhold Niebuhr was for Protestant Americans during the mid-twentieth century. He directs “First Things,” the leading magazine for Catholic neoconservatives, whose regular writers include George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Avery Dulles, all three of whom are well-respected in the Vatican. Weigel is the author of a monumental biography of Karol Wojtyla, much appreciated by the pope himself. Novak studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and still teaches in the theological faculties of Rome; last year, Bush sent him to the Vatican to illustrate the theological justifications for his decision to go to war in Iraq. And Dulles, a Jesuit, was made a cardinal in 2001; he is also a convert, and comes from a family of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) establishment: his father, John W. Foster Dulles, was secretary of state during the Eisenhower presidency, and his uncle, Allen W. Dulles, was head of the CIA.
During his interview for “Christianity Today,” Bush addresses only one of the eight panelists confidentially, and by name: Fr. Neuhaus. And he does this twice, to attest to his great respect for him.
On one occasion, Bush recalls being indebted to Fr. Neuhaus for everything regarding the battle over the valuing of marriage and the family, a central feature of his domestic policy.
And on another occasion he says of him: “I need Father Richard around more, he helps me articulate these things.” The “things” are the religious sense of his mission as president, and more particularly the nexus between his responsibility for the nation and the prayers that the citizens offer to God on his behalf.
The conjunction between evangelicals and Catholics, in the United States, began ten years ago with a joint document with an unequivocal title: “Evangelicals and Catholics together.” For the former, at the head of the dialogue there was Charles Colson, a former assistant to Nixon and destroyed with him by the Watergate scandal, then born again in the faith. For the Catholics, there was Fr. Neuhaus, with the support of cardinal O’Connor and the future cardinal Dulles.
A book by Neuhaus had made a great impression on the evangelicals: it was “The Naked Public Square,” an analysis of the growing disappearance of religion from public life. The book brought to light the fact that there are many traits common to both Catholic and evangelical thought, and that some of them can be put into practice.
Since then, the evangelicals have made great progress. They are the fastest-growing Christian group in the world. In the United States, they now make up 43 percent of the population, according to a survey by Gallup. Their influence has been decisive in many of the choices of the Bush presidency: from support of the family to the fight against abortion; from the defense of religious liberty in the world to the battle against the modern slave trade; from peace in Sudan to the war in Iraq and more decisive support than ever for Israel. In foreign policy, within the historic confrontation between the “realists” and the “idealists,” they have aligned themselves with the latter. The doctrine of the exportation of democracy is typically evangelical. And Bush is evangelical when he says, “I believe freedom is the Almighty God’s gift to each man and woman in this world.”
And so, slowly, the evangelicals have met and associated with the neocons, with Jews like Michael Horowitz, a great defender of persecuted Christians throughout the world, and with Catholics. Or better, with a current of Catholicism that was marginal at first, but is now more consistent and authoritative.
In an interview with Laurie Goodstein of the “New York Times,” on May 31, 2004, Fr. Neuhaus said: “It is an extraordinary realignment that if continues is going to create a very different kind of configuration of Christianity in America.”
Meanwhile, the pope of Rome is no longer the Antichrist for the evangelicals of the United States. In a recent survey of them, John Paul II won first place for popularity, with 59 percent saying they view him favorably, ahead of Pat Robertson, with 54, and Jerry Falwell, with 44 percent.
And the pope returns the affection, with an eye for the November presidential election. In the June 4 edition of “Corriere della Sera,” Luigi Accattoli, the Vatican journalist who most faithfully reports the views from the pontifical palazzo, wrote that the pope has already decided: he prefers the evangelical Bush to the Catholic Kerry. And “he wants to help him with the Catholic voters.”
__________
The complete transcript of the interview in “Christianity Today” with the president of the United States, May 26, 2004:
> Bush Calls for “Culture Change”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/121/51.0.html
Proud to be a Calvinian Sectarian.
You sure got that right.
Wow, I'm surprised Pope Pius II hasn't been declared a saint, given that he died in 1464, fully forty years before Martin Luther got rolling -let alone, Calvin.
I don't believe Matthew 16:18 establishes Peter as "first pope".
And my Christian roots are simply not Catholic.
John Kerry claims to be a Catholic, and Bill Clinton claims to be a Southern Baptist.
So we Catholics and Evangelicals can definitely empathize with each other in this regard. :-)
Condi is a Baptist? :-)
Where'd you read/hear that?
I don't understand any of this! Are you actually claiming that the Waldensians are an offshoot of the Ambrosian-Rite Catholics? That doesn't make any sense, it's like saying the Calvinist descended from Dominicans! The Ambrosian Rite was just a "Rite," it wasn't a sect, it was a form of the Litergy like the Byzantine Rite or the Mozarabic Rite, but still fully "Catholic" doctrinally. Your statement (assuming you can prove that some modern Protestant sects can be traced to the Waldensians, which they can't) still says the same thing as AlbionGirl, i.e. the line of descent would still place Protestantism as descendant from Catholocism. Protostant sects ===> Waldensians =====> Ambrosian Rite (which is Catholic).
I'm afraid you are mistaken. Not all protestant denominations trace their roots to catholicism. Most of them trace their roots to the Protestant Reformation.
Yep you are right. I will never accept the Catholic system. The word tells us to separate ourselves from the world and false teachings. I fully intend to keep it that way. All is going as planned for that one world religion where all are joined based on a fuzzy feeling and not what the word of God says.
I have strong differences with Catholic teaching, but these differences are not enough to keep me from working with or even electing Catholics who are committed to fighting against the increasing secularization of America. Persecution will come.
I do worry about the next pope. Will he be a traditional conservative Catholic or an apostate? I've heard even Catholics worry about this, which makes this topic even more intriguing. What do traditional Catholics believe about eschatology? I remember reading one Catholic publication that stated the next Pope would be apostate and allied with the anti-Christ (I thought Catholics were amillenial?), related to some prophecy given by a pope long ago.
Myself, I believe that true Christians, both Catholics and Protestants will be persecuted in the Great Tribulation period by the One World Apostate Church (which will be both Catholic and Protestant, and in fact view all religions as equal). You can see this happening more and more with the ecumenical movement and multiculturalism being pushed in our society.
I agree with you to a point. I still feel Catholics and Protestants can work together on moral and cultural issues and that there are Catholics who are truly saved. One doesn't have to have a perfect understanding of theology to have a relationship with Christ. But as a system, I must state that I believe the Roman Catholic church is a false one that has given false hope to multitudes and is responsible for the blood of many saints.
LOL.
Aschroft responds: "Forget all of this theological side issue stuff! The real question before us is, "Have you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues, since you first believed?"
"'If I'm not mistaken, all sects trace their roots to Catholicism.'"
"I'm afraid you are mistaken. Not all protestant denominations trace their roots to catholicism. Most of them trace their roots to the Protestant Reformation."
Ummmm, the Protestant Reformation marked the break of some Western Christians with Roman Catholicism. So tracing roots into the Reformation, traces roots historiclally into Roman Catholicsm.
ALL, let me repeat, ALL Western (this excludes Eastern Othodox) Christian denominations come out of the Reformation (eventually) so by inference all came out of Roman Catholicism.
To put it another way, 500 years ago (when Luther was still finishing his education...prior to the 95 Theses) ALL (that is A-L-L) Christians in Western Europe were Roman Catholic.
No exceptions were tolerated, and dissenters were physically wiped out (usually burned at the stake)....
Yes I know there are a few unlearned folks who try to claim otherwise (like somehow baptists go back to John the B...), however they don't have history on their side. Of course there were various cults that grew up in medieval times---but until Luther, every one of them was brutally surpressed and destroyed.
Most current Protestant groups were breakaways from the first Protestants, which were originally Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, and Anabaptists(=all others). Strangely enough, the modern Baptists trace their roots back into Anglicans, not Anabaptists.
I too share trepidation in getting too cozy with Rome. The council of Trent documents still stand (which explicity condemn Protestants and their beliefs) and I'm afraid many evangelicals are confused about doctrines of justification and imputation--key areas of difference with Rome.
Apologies for the Anachronism.
EXPLANATION: Aeneas Sylvius (later Pope Pius II) was one of Rome's chief 15th-Century Inquisitors against the proto-presbyterian Waldenses of Bohemia. Aeneas Sylvius indentified the Waldenses of Bohemia as affirming:
Thus, it is most correct to say: Aeneas Sylvius brought the Persecution of Rome against the Bohemian Waldensians, whom were a few years later Covenanted to the Calvinist Reformation.
No, you are mistaken. Please READ the Link which I have so generously provided. Here it is again, for your benefit: The Covenant Line: From Eden to Independence Hall
The Ambrosian Church of Northern Italy was not merely another "Catholic Rite"; rather, the Popes of Rome themselves ADMITTED that the Ambrosian Church was utterly and entirely independent of Roman Jurisdiction and Domination until well into the 10th Century. (Check the Link)
Late in the Tenth Century, the bulk of the Ambrosian Church was, at long last, brought under the iron heel of Papist Domination. But the fire did not die completely... from the Tenth Century onwards, the Remnants of this NON-ROMAN Western Christian Faith Tradition maintained their Ancient, Venerable, Apostolic, Predestinarian, and utterly Independent Churches in the mountain redoubts of the Alps, under the name "Waldensian" -- until such time as they were joined in Covenant by the Northern European Reformers at the Angrogne Confession of 1532.
Having thrown off the shackles of Papist Domination, the Reformers sought to Covenant themselves to an Equally-Ancient and Venerable Church -- but a Better Church, a More Biblical Church, a More Christ-like Church than the Papacy which they had left behind.
And by the Grace of God -- THEY FOUND HER. A Church with all the Apostolic Credentials of Rome -- but Scriptural, Presbyteric rather than Papal, Predestinarian, and Independent. Not quite dead, despite centuries of Roman Persecution. Not quite dead, they found her -- and Covenanted themselves unto her.
A manifold interest belongs to the meeting of these two churches. Each is a miracle to the other. The preservation of the Vaudois Church for so many ages, amid the fires of persecution, made her a wonder to the Church of the sixteenth century. The bringing up of the latter from the dead made her a yet greater wonder to the Church of the first century. These two churches compare their respective beliefs: they find that their creeds are not twain, but one. They compare the sources of their knowledge: they find that they have both of them drawn their doctrine from the Word of God; they are not two Churches, they are one. They are the elder and younger members of the same glorious family, the children of the same father. ~~ (Wylie, “History of the Waldenses”)
Likewise also the Presbyters of Iona -- another Independent ond NON-ROMAN Western Christian Faith Tradition -- enjoying Apostolic origin, and only subjugated by Rome centuries after its greatest flowering (and yet still maintaining traces of Independence until the Age of the Reformers).
You have been Taught that there is no Christian Faith Tradition in the West, save that of Rome. You have been told that the Claims of Rome must be True -- for after all, from the Beginning of Christianity, there is ONLY ROME.
Right?
Right???
WRONG.
From the earliest Beginnings of Christianity, there has been preserved an Apostolic, Ancient, Venerable, Predestinarian, and utterly NON-ROMAN and Independent Christian Faith Tradition in the West; a Tradition which was later joined by the Swiss Reformers -- and which has since been identified by the Apologists of Rome under a single, descriptive nomenclature, encompassing both the Independent Apostolic Christians whom Rome failed to subjugate, and their Reformation Heirs:
We've been here since the beginning: "Calvinism did not originate in Geneva; it is found in Eden. God's people, the covenant line, would henceforth be the people redeemed by Him to live, once again, in terms of His Word." ~~ Messianic-Jewish Presbyter the Rev. Steve Schlissel, “The Synagogue of Christ”
Even our Enemies know it: "Their greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have admitted their antiquity, and stigmatised them as "the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient." ~~ (Wylie, ibid.)
And we're here to stay, for the Glory and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom.
But with utmost respect towards that great Papist, Hilaire Belloc... Methinks he wrote his "Eulogy for Calvinism" a bit too soon.
Belloc is dead. But Calvinism is, as always, despite centuries of Romish persecution... Not Dead Yet.
best, OP
No, Analog... Respectfully, you are wrong, wrong, WRONG.
The following Map details the Preservation of Christianity amongst the Pre-Reformation Waldensian Christians:
The Christian Church preserved among the Waldenses
If it is true, as you say, that "ALL (that is A-L-L) Christians in Western Europe were Roman Catholic", then exactly whom was Rome burning at the stake all those years?
If, as you suppose, EVERYBODY was "Roman Catholic" in those days, then against whom did Rome prosecute the anti-Hussite and anti-Waldensian crusades?
Their greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), had admitted their antiquity, and stigmatised them as "the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient." (Wylie, ibid.)
So what was this "most dangerous, and most ancient" of all Anti-Roman "heresies"? After all, if "No exceptions were tolerated, and dissenters were physically wiped out" (AnalogReigns) -- exactly what "exceptions" and "dissenters" are we talking about?
We're talking about these dissenters:
There can be no question that the Waldenses were Calvinists from the time of their earliest contacts with the great theologians of the Protestant Reformation. The 1532 confession of faith at Angrogne, which resulted from those contacts, contains these clear statements of belief:
It is NOT TRUE that all of Western Europe was "Roman Catholic" during the Pre-Reformation Later Middle Ages.
The fact is, there were "exceptions" and "dissenters", whose Beliefs were essentially proto-Calvinist.
In other words, there were not just "Roman Catholics".
There were also those whom we would today define as "Calvinists". Described as "heretics" by Rome, yes; but Scriptural, Predestinarian, and Independent -- and Rome was killing them.
best, OP
Unlikely at best.
"Peter Waldo" (Peter Valdes, "Peter of the Valley Christians") was simply the greatest of the "Barbes" or Presbyters of the Vaudois Christians -- hardly their founder.
After all, even Roman Catholic sources admit of the Total Independence from Papist Domination of the Northern-Italian/Alpine Church until well into the Tenth Century; and even Roman Catholic sources admit the Protestations of the Eleventh-Century Alpine Christians in favor of Sola Scriptura and the Symbolic Character of the Eucharist and against the Ecclesial Hierarchy of Rome (i.e., Berengarian and Paterine sentiments).
Thus we see an organic continuum -- Northern-Italian/Alpine Christianity was utterly and entirely independent from Rome until well into the Tenth Century; and even thereafter, from the Eleventh Century until the Reformation, the Alpine Christians continued to Protest in Favor of Sola Scriptura, the Symbolic Character of the Eucharist, Presbyteric Church Government, and Absolute Predestination.
But I should ask you -- If I were to select the most Self-Serving, the most Duplicitous, the most Apostate Roman Catholic Bishop as an exemplar of "Roman Catholicism" -- would it be too difficult for me to construct a Case that Roman Catholics have entirely forsaken all the Law and the Gospel?
In like manner have the Roman Catholics attempted to re-write the history of their Enemies -- enemies because, they showed the Rot of Romanism for what she is.
But when read in their own words, it is clear that the Waldenses were simply Theological Calvinists -- Sola Scriptura, Presbyteric, Symbolically Eucharistic, Predestinarian, Independent of Rome... "the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient."
best, OP
The article says, "Condoleezza Rice, the daughter of a Baptist pastor." While I realize there are no assurances I think it is a safe assumption that being the daughter of a Baptist pastor she must be a Baptist.
For the most part, yes, I can agree with you on your point. There are "saved" catholics. I've actually met a few who deny the sovereinty of Mary, the saints, and the other idolitrous practices of the RCC. I believe there are gonna be a lot of shocked catholics when the Rapture hits and they are left standing saying "Doh!"
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