I don't know how to answer your question. I don't say that to try to evade it.
I think that it is not a question that is easily answered following the Great Schism and the Reformation. Separation is now a fact, and doesn't seem amenable to much real progress. Heading for the old battle lines will not work.
I think that in those communions where the Creed (Apostles and Nicene) are taught and believed, the members of the Body of Christ dwell. The sacraments are important but if people have an innocent misunderstanding of them, God will not punish them for that. He may even count the will for the deed, for all I know.
Jesus' call for unity was a call for unity in truth.
While I truly don't know what judgement will fall upon me, I have a sense of assurance or more accurately I'm not troubled by my lack of knowledge concerning my judgement. God is just and he is merciful. As Hermann Sasse noted, we forget what a terrible thing it is to fall into the Hands of the Living God. And yet, I have confidence in the Living God, supreme confidence, even if I battle from time to time with bouts of doubt and unbelief. I can't imagine I'm the only one who does.
This has been a tremendous year for me in so many ways. And I'm thankful for it. And thankful to God for granting me the Grace to know just how much I don't know.
I love the German philosphers that I have read. Sasse knows Jesus and knows how to convey Him to others. May Sasse rest in peace with the Lord. Barth (may he rest in peace with the Lord as well) said the following, and this is the best way I know how to answer your question, A.
“Strange as it may seem, it is still true, that those who fail to understand other churches than their own are not the people who care intensely about theology, but the theological dilettantes, eclectics, and historians of all sorts; while those very men who have found themselves forced to confront a clear, thoroughgoing, logical sic et non find themselves allied to each other inspite of all contradictions, by an underlying fellowship and understanding, even in the cause which they handle so differently and approach from such painfully different angles. But the cause, it may be, is nothing less than Jesus Christ and the unity of the Church.” —Karl Barth
I want to own my faith, not just rent it, and that's going to take me some time and cost me effort. And what's wrong with that? I have to be free to follow where my mind and heart lead me. And I don't think for one minute, that I'm a heretic. It may be that I'm in error, I boast no pretensions to my own infalliblity, but error is not sin, it is just error. I am no enemy of the Living God, and those who would imply that I am, I just want to stay away from.
I appreciate your honest answer. It seems to me that there are two conceptions of ideal Christian unity. One is that all Christians should agree on essentials, and cooperate in social causes. The other is that all Christians should also belong to one visible body, unified not only in doctrine, but receiving the same sacraments and under the same authority. For a long time, I held to the former conception of ideal Christian unity. The more I meditated on John 17, however, the more I came to the belief that the unity Christ desired all Christians to have was more than mere agreement on essentials and collaboration in social endeavours. It was supposed to be a unity like that of the Trinity.
That's when my question (Which Church is the one true Church, the Church Christ founded?) started coming to the surface. Did the Church Christ founded disappear? If so, then the gates of hell would have indeed prevailed against it. But if the gates of hell didn't prevail against it, I thought, then one of the existing Churches must be the one true Church into which all Christians should be incorporated.
So I asked myself, which of the existing Churches can make such a claim, to be the Church that Christ founded. (I'm not talking about any local church, e.g. "the church at Jerusalem"; I'm talking about the *institution* constituted of local churches.) The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, for example, was founded in 1936. The Presbyterian Church in American (of which I was a member for a number of years) was founded in 1973. No such denomination was even a candidate. The only real candidates that could claim to be the Church Christ founded were the Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church. Reading the fathers, especially what they said about the nature of the authority given to Peter with the "keys", and reading Soloviev, helped me come to the conclusion that it was the Catholic Church.
I knew that the kind of unity that Christ was praying (in John 17) for all His followers to have could only be present where the authority was unified. If the authority was a plurality or disunified, the Church structure could not 'hold' the kind of unity Christ desired. Moreover, I saw in John 17 that the unity of Christ and the Father is *hierarchical*. Christ obeys the Father, even though Christ is equal to the Father. The unity we see in the Trinity is a *hierarchical* unity. Therefore, since that is the kind of unity that Christ is praying that we [His followers] would have, and since there is no greater unity than the unity of God, therefore, the kind of unity Christ's Church must have is one in which there is a hierarchy with a unified head.
That is a complete contrast to the individualistic form of Christianity in which the believer submits only to his own interpretation of Scripture. That form of Christianity can never achieve the unity that Christ prays (in John 17) for His followers to have. That individualistic form of Christianity will continue to fragment into as many 'churches' as there individuals, as each person follows his own interpretation, and does what is "right in his own eyes".
That's a brief overview of what I've learned in this process of answering the question I asked you. I don't know if it could be helpful to you or not. I know you have some (almost self-described) 'baggage' from your Catholic past. I didn't have any of that, and so it was much easier for me, I think, to come into the Catholic Church. I pray that God continues to bless you and guide you as you work out all these things.
-A8
"Strange as it may seem, it is still true, that those who fail to understand other churches than their own are not the people who care intensely about theology..."
Do you think the Protestants with whom you've been corresponding on these threads "fail to understand" Roman Catholicism?