Where Have All the Protestants Gone?

Has anyone noticed the almost complete disappearance of Protestants from our nation? "What!" I can hear my readers exclaim, "Storck has really gone off his rocker this time. Why, just down the street there's an Assembly of God church and two or three Baptist churches and the Methodists and so on. My cousin just left the Catholic Church to become a Protestant and my niece just married one. Moreover, evangelical Protestants have many media outlets of their own and they have great influence in the Bush Administration. They're everywhere." All this, of course, is true. Except that for some time, they no longer call themselves Protestants, but simply Christians, and increasingly they've gotten Catholics to go along with their terminology.

I recall over 10 years ago when I was a lector at Mass, for the prayer of the faithful I was supposed to read a petition that began, "That Catholics and Christians…." Of course, I inserted the word "other" before "Christians," but I doubt very many in the congregation would even have noticed had I not done so. Just the other day I saw on a Catholic website an article about a Protestant adoption agency that refused to place children with Catholic parents. The headline referred not to a Protestant adoption agency but to a Christian one. And how often do we hear of Christian bookstores or Christian radio stations or Christian schools, when everyone should know they are Protestant ones?

Now, what is wrong with this? Well, it should be obvious to any Catholic -- but probably isn't. Are only Protestants Christians? Are we Catholics not Christians, indeed the true Christians? About 30 years ago, Protestants, especially evangelicals, began to drop the term Protestant and call themselves simply Christians as a not too subtle means of suggesting that they are the true and real Christians, rather than simply the children of the breakaway Protestant revolt of the 16th century. This shift in Protestant self-identification has taken on increasingly dramatic proportions. A recent Newsweek survey (Aug. 29-Sept. 5, 2005) found that, between 1990 and 2001, the number of Americans who consider themselves "Christian" (no denomination) increased by 1,120 percent, while the number of those who self-identify as "Protestant" decreased by 270 percent.

But perhaps I am getting too worked up over a small matter. After all, are not Protestants also Christians? Yes, I do not deny that. But usually we call something by its most specific name.

Protestants are theists too, but it would surely sound odd if we were to refer to their radio stations and bookstores as theistic radio stations and theistic bookstores. Language, in order to be useful, must convey human thought and concepts in as exact a way as it can. And, in turn, our thoughts and concepts should reflect reality. As Josef Pieper noted, "if the word becomes corrupted, human existence will not remain unaffected and untainted."

Moreover, words often convey more than simple concepts. A certain word may seem only to portray reality, but in fact it does more. It adds a certain overtone and connotation. Thus, it is not a small matter whether we speak of "gays" or of homosexuals. The former term was chosen specifically to inculcate acceptance of an unnatural and immoral way of life. When I was an Episcopalian, I was careful never to speak of the Catholic Church, but of the Roman Catholic Church, as a means of limiting the universality of her claims. I always called Episcopal ministers priests, again as a means of affirming that such men really were priests, in opposition to Leo XIII's definitive judgment that Anglican orders are invalid and thus that they are in no sense priests. Perhaps because of these early experiences, I am very aware of the uses of language to prejudge and control arguments, and I am equally careful now never to call Episcopal ministers priests or refer to one as Father So-and-So. And I think we should likewise not go along with the evangelical Protestant attempt to usurp the name Christian for themselves. They are Protestants, and public discourse should not be allowed to obscure that fact.

Apparently, though, it is the case that some Protestants call themselves Christians, not out of a desire to usurp the term, but out of an immense ignorance of history. That is, they ignore history to such an extent that they really don't understand that they are Protestants. Knowing or caring little about what came before them, they act as if their nicely bound Bibles had fallen directly from Heaven and anyone could simply become a Christian with no reference to past history, ecclesiology, or theology. The period of time between the conclusion of the New Testament book of Acts and the moment that they themselves "accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior" means nothing. Even Luther or Calvin or John Wesley mean little to them, since they can pick up their Bibles and start Christianity over again any time they want. These souls may call themselves simply Christians in good faith, but they are largely ignorant of everything about Church history. They do not understand that Jesus Christ founded a Church, and that He wishes His followers to join themselves to that Church at the same time as they join themselves to Him. In fact, one implies and involves the other, since in Baptism we are incorporated in Christ and made members of His Church at the same time.

So let us not go along with the widespread practice of calling our separated brethren simply Christians. They are Protestants. Let us begin again to use that term. It is precise. It implies Catholic doctrine in the sense that it suggests that such people are in protest against the Church. Moreover, it forces them to define themselves in terms of, rather than independently of, the One True Church. And if we do resume referring to our separated brethren as Protestants, perhaps a few of them might even be surprised enough to ask us why -- and then, behold, a teachable moment!

Sorry Dave Now you are lying !

It was corrected and retracted in #1471.

Post 1471:

XS>CtId confuses church with His roman Church. He thinks of Church as a man-made corporation headquartered in Rome.

Chuck, it's still a lie to say Citd or any Catholic thinks of his Church as "man made" or a "corporation."

You believe that. It is a lie to say that we do. And you said:

He thinks of Church as a man-made corporation headquartered in Rome.

That is untrue.

Dave; it is not a lie. It is simply imprecise. Allow me to make it more precise :

He thinks of Church as the man-made corporation headquartered in Rome.

I will have to give you a "D" in linguistic parsing none the less.

1,471 posted on 02/23/2006 3:00:09 PM EST by XeniaSt

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Nowhere is this post did you retract your false statement that this Catholic (ctid) thinks of the church as a "man made corporation."

I've told you many times that is not how Catholicss think of the Church. We do not think of it as "man made." We do not view it as a legal entity (corporation).

When you retract your false statement I'll stop calling you on it.

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Here is a section of the Baltimore Catechism:

136. What is the Church?

The Church is the congregation of all baptized persons united in the same true faith, the same sacrifice, and the same sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him.

137. Who founded the Church?

Jesus Christ founded the Church.

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Right here. First two questions. Shows you the Catholic teaching on what the Church is. It is the congregation of all baptised persons. (i.e. not a "corporation.") And it is founded by Jesus Christ (i.e. not "man-made.")

Hello Full Court,

I admire your zeal and passion for religion, that is a tremendous gift. I also admire your respect for Scripture.

I can certainly see that your belief that Jesus had brothers is entirely reasonable. After all, that's what the Word of God literally says, at least in my translation! One thing, however, is that none of us in this discussion believe that verse to be precisely true. We are all reading into that Scripture something else beside brother.

Some are reading it to mean half-brothers. That is, they had Mary as a mother, but not God as a father. To interpret it to mean full brother, the plain meaning of the text in translation, would mean there are multiple messiahs. None of us believe that. Now to believe that the term brother actually means "half-brother," children not born of God and Mary, but rather of Joesph and Mary is entirely reasonable, but it's good to recognize that we are reading something into Scripture that it does not actually say. To support this argument, we would have to argue pretty much in the same way that many have done on this thread, and say that the Greeks or Jews simply didn't have a word for half-brothers, although with a distant history of polygamy and concubinage among the Israelites and the Roman practice of serial monogamy, they may have had an intuitive understanding of the concept. The problem with this interpretation is that, according to Scripture, some of the people listed as his brothers appear to not have had the same Mother as Jesus.

There are of course other possible speculations besides interpreting this to mean that there were literally multiple Christs born of God and Mary. For example, we might believe that Joseph was a widower who had children from a previous marriage, and that these were the brothers spoken of in the text. A fine theory, but it's entirely speculative, as Scripture never says this is the case. Another problem with this theory is that the Mother of two of these brothers is still alive at the time of the Crucifixion, which would mean that Joseph either divorced Mary later on, was actually a divorcee at the time of his espousal to Mary, or that Joesph was married to more than one woman. Those are all problematic contingencies if we attempt to force them upon Scripture.

Another interpretation is that these "brothers" were cousins of some sort or other. (First cousin, second cousin, third cousin two times removed....) It's not an unreasonable argument, in that Scripture often mentions brothers and sisters when it is in fact seems to be talking about some other relationship. There are manyf examples of this, but one is the following:

"So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. (John 19:25)

Now, we can see that there were a lot of Marys at the foot of the Cross with Jesus when he was dying. The Scripture I would like to call your attention to, however, is "standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary...." Now, if we take this translation in an entirely literal sense, Mary has a sister named Mary. That would be sort of like George Foreman's family, everybody gets named "George," So you have a George 1 and George 2, and George 3, and however many other sons named George that big George actually has. (I'm not making this up.) Perhaps a more plausible reading of this verse is to say that the language used in this Scripture did not distinguish between sister and cousin or other relative, even though our language forces us to translate in such a way as use a word that either conveys one class of relationship or the other. It's sort of like my Thai friends who's language specifies maternal vs paternal relations. As I understand it, if all I say to them is "my aunt," they are left in a pickle when they translate it, because they have to translate it into a word that means either "maternal aunt" or "paternal aunt," and they don't have enough information to do that.

Another problem that we Catholics have with the Scriptural reference to the brothers and sisters of Jesus is that Scripture else were tells us that at least two of them were not his actual brothers, so we have to assume that at least two of his presumptive (half) brothers are in fact cousins or other relatives. Scripture says His brothers' names were "James and Joseph and Simon and Judas." (Mark 6:3) Elsewhere, however, we learn that Joses and James actually had a different mother. (Mr 15:40, Mr 15:47.)

Paul describes James as the brother of our Lord. (Gal 1: 19) Jude describes himself as the brother of James. (Jude 1: 1) Luke describes Jude as the son of James (Luke 6:16, Acts 1:13) Clearly, Scripture is not using the same degree of precision in describing relations that we typically use in English. And Scripture was not written in English.

When it gets right down to it, Full Court, we simply don't have any Scripture which says that Mary had any children besides Jesus. The broader context of Scripture insists that we believe that at least some of the people who are listed as brothers of our Lord in fact had a different Mother. Any claim that Mary had other children is in fact an inference, and not something that is actually stated in Scripture. Although you may reasonably believe the assertion that Mary did not have other biological children is unwarranted in Scripture, the Scripture never tells us that Mary had other children, and to believe that Mary had no other biological children is not a contradiction of Scripture.

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