Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part VI: The Biblical Reality

The Marian dogmas were big problems. I still thought [around 1984] the Catholic claims on Mary were outrageous. I went back and read some essays, and concluded that the Bible alone wouldn't compel acceptance of the Marian dogmas; the Bible alone wouldn't lead you to them, yet sustained theological reflection on Jesus' relationship to His mother; if you take the humanity of Jesus with the utmost seriousness, and you take Mary as a real mother, not just a "conduit," and you begin to think about motherhood and sonship, and you think about what it means to receive a body from your mother: flesh . . . God didn't make Jesus' flesh in Mary's womb; He got Mary's flesh. If God had wanted to, He could have made Jesus as He made Adam: from the dust of the earth. But He didn't. He decided He would use a human being to give Jesus His humanity. And so what kind of flesh is Jesus gonna get? If He's gonna be perfect humanity, He'd better have perfect human flesh untainted by sin. To me the Immaculate Conception, seen in that light, made sense. The Assumption also seemed to me to make a great deal of sense. There were precedents to it: Enoch and Elijah, those who rose from the dead at the time of the rending of the veil of the Temple. And if Jesus is going to give anybodye priority; if He's going to truly honor His mother and father, wouldn't He give Mary, whose flesh He received, priority in the Resurrection? So I think that's what the doctrine of the Assumption preserves. I could go on and talk forever on the distinctive doctrines of the Church.

Artificial contraception . . . Dave wanted me to go into that [I had asked a question earlier]. I had a very difficult time seeing it as good logic. The Church insists that the multiple meanings of sexual intercourse always be exercised together. Since one of the meanings is procreation and another is intimacy or the what's called the "unitive function", those things can't be separated from one another licitly. I didn't like that, because it seemed to me that if intercourse served multiple purposes, then there's no reason why, at any particular time, one purpose ought to retain priority or even exclusivity in the exercise of that act. They were both good. I think that the change came when I finally hit upon an analogy; I had to see another human act in which multiple meanings had to be exercised together, and not separately. And I thought of eating food. Food serves multiple purposes: nutrition, secondly, pleasing our senses. God likes tastes; that's why He gave us taste buds. He wants food to taste good. What do we think of a person who says, "I really like the taste of food, so I'm going to disconnect my eating of food from nutrition, and I'm just gonna taste it." Well, we call him a glutton; we call him a "junk food junkie." What do we call a person who says, "I don't care about what food tastes like; I'm just gonna eat for nutrition's sake." We call him a prude or we have some other name for him. We think that they're lacking in their humanity. That helped me in understanding sexual intercourse. I think it's sinful just to eat for the taste, or merely for the nutrition, because you're denying the pleasure that God intended for you to receive, in eating good food. I say the same thing with sexual intercourse. You're sinful if you separate the multiple meanings of it. If you procreate simply to make babies, and you don't enjoy the other person as a person, I think that's sinful, and I think that if you merely enjoy sexual intimacy and pleasure, and are not open to sharing that with a third life: a potential child, then you're denying the meaning of sexual expression. That was a continuing realization that the Catholic Church had been there before me.

When I learned that you [me] were interested in the Catholic Church, it was kind of funny, because by that time I had been pursuing this on my own, and feeling like I was a little bit odd. So it was good for me, . . . I was their pastor for a while at Shalom, and Dave and Judy and Sally and I have known each other for many years, and I've always liked Dave and Judy. We've had some disagreements at times over the years, and a little bit of even, "combat," but I always was fond of them, because I always recognized them as people who were willing to live out their convictions, and that always means a lot to me. I like to be surrounded by people like that because it's very easy to just live in your head and not get it out onto your feet. So I knew that they were committed to living a Christian life. They were interested in simple living, and interested in alternate lifestyle. They saw themselves as being radical Christians. And I always liked that. So even when we disagreed, I was always fond of them, in that I respected what they were doing. So it was heartening to me, to find that my return to the Church was in its own way being paralleled by Dave's acceptance of Roman Catholicism. It was a queer parallelism. When we went to see Fr. John Hardon that night, I thought it was interesting and odd that you were doing it, but I told you that night: "it seems to me there are only two choices: either Orthodoxy or Catholicism." It was reassuring. I met Catholics through rescue that I actually liked, and that was heartening.

I returned to the Catholic Church, because, for all its shortcomings (which are obvious to many evangelicals), both evangelicalism and Catholicism suffered from the same kind of "immoral equivalency." All the things that I once thought were uniquely bad about Catholicism, I also saw in Protestantism, so it was kind of a wash. I stopped asking myself all the so-called practical questions, and made the decision based on theology alone. That way I got to compare theology with theology. People love to compare the practice of one group with the theology of another. So you end up with the theology of a John Calvin versus the practice of some babushka'd Catholic woman. And it's just not fair. You gotta compare apples with apples. Evangelicals tolerate pentecostal superstition and fundamentalist ignorance, without breaking fellowship. So why criticize the Catholics for tolerating some superstition and ignorance? Evangelical churches are largely made up of small, dead, ineffectual fellowships. Two-, three-generation fellowships that have lost their reason for existence, and they just keep rollin' along. The vast percentage of evangelical churches are about 75 people. And they're not doin' much. So what's the problem if Catholic churches are full of dead people too? It's a wash. Evangelicals tolerate and even respond positively to papal figures like Bill Gothard, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and men whose teachings or decisions explicitly or implicitly sets the tone of the discussion and suggests and insists upon right conclusions. And these men are not just popular leaders, they are populist leaders. In other words, they often appeal to the anti-intellectual side of the uneducated. They stir up resentments between factions in the Church Politic and the Body Politic. The pope, on the other hand, is not a populist leader. You don't see the pope, in the encyclicals I've read, taking cheap shots, driving wedges between the intelligentsia and the masses; you don't see them doing cheap rhetorical tricks, like you do find among popular evangelical leaders. If the pope plays his audience, it's usually through acts of piety. He's not trying to stir up resentments.

Evangelicals are currently seeking more sense of community and international community, more accountability -- you hear more talk about confessing your sins to one another; they're looking for a way to justify the canon, visible signs of unity. Catholicism has all these things. It offers them already. And then of course evangelicals seem only to be able to preserve doctrinal purity by separating, dividing, and splitting and rupturing the unity of Christ. That's their method for maintaining the truth: divide. And that to me is the devil's tactic: "go ahead, divide 'em; it's easier to conquer them that way." Even in the area of their strength (the Bible), evangelicals are not without serious shortcomings. Matthew 16 is a great example of that. What's worse?: to omit clear biblical teaching, or to add to it? Evangelicals omit fundamental biblical teaching about Peter as the rock, about the apostolic privilege of forgiving or retaining sins. These things are not unclear. They're only unclear in the Scripture if you've adopted a certain type of theology, and then you have to dance around, doing hermeneutical gymnastics to avoid the clear intention of the verse. The binding and loosing passages in Matthew 16 and 18 are as plain as the nose on your face.

So I returned to the Catholic Church because I am absolutely convinced that the Roman Catholic Church preserves and retains (for all its shortcomings) the biblical shape of reality. It retains sacramental awareness, human mediation (which is a very prominent biblical theme which has been lost in evangelical churches), a sense of the sacred, which is present in the Scripture; and recognizes typology as having not only symbolic value, or pedagogical value, but also ontological value. It retains memorial consciousness and corporate personality, the idea of federal headship, doctrinal development. All of these things are lectures in and of themselves. But these things that people always wanna talk about (purgatory, saints, Mary), all fit into those categories. The structure of biblical reality is more present in Catholicism than any other tradition that I'm familiar with. And I'm really quite convinced that I don't have extravagant expectations, either. I think these things are really there. It's not a pipe dream.

[someone asked, "why not Orthodoxy?"]

Competing jurisdictions, which basically told me, "you need a pope." If the point is that you need a visible display of unity for the work of evangelism to have lasting success, how can you have the Russians and the Greeks fighting with one another all the time? I know conservatives and liberals fight in the Catholic Church, but it's structured in such a way as to be able to end the debate at some point. God acts infallibly through the papacy. The discussion can be settled. It can't be settled in Orthodoxy at this point. They're always fighting over jurisdictions. The laxity on divorce . . . I heard a saying recently that "your doctrine of ecclesiology will affect your doctrine of marriage, or vice versa." If you believe in divorce, then you believe in the Reformation, because you believe that Christ will divorce part of His Body. If you believe that the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church, is indivisible, then you will believe that (among Christians, anyway) marriage is indivisible. There should be no divorce. And I think that the Orthodox are lax in that area. I think that they're too ethnic - that's probably due to a type of caesaropapism, and that their views of culture don't seem to work out very well. Those are some of the reasons. Also, it just wasn't around. Where do you go? You have to work too hard to find a place, and then you have to worry about whether they'll do it in English. I went to St. Suzanne's first of all because it was around the corner, and I believe that geography has a lot to do with community.

[I asked, "what was the very last thing that put you over the edge?"]

It was very incremental. Instead of their being one moment of decisive realization, there were moments of little pinpricks of light along the way. In one sense I crossed the line when I heard Fr. Stravinskas describing the Mass as a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice, and I realized that the worldview that he was presenting was the worldview that I had believed for a long time, but had not been able to articulate. But I didn't know where to go from there. I think it was the same day that that happened, the one man who had been most influential on my thinking on the relationship between religion and culture during the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus, announced that he had become a Catholic. I said, "oh my God!" His book, The Naked Public Square, really shaped my thinking on the relationship between religion and public life.

And another one would be the Scott Hahn tapes on Mary. What Scott did for me was, he managed to draw enough suggestive biblical material, that my ideas of development now could be fed from the Scripture. You have to understand that the Marian dogmas just seemed excessive. It's not that I had any intrinsic hostility to them. I thought they were kind of nice in their own way. But I didn't see the biblical precedent to it. He gave me enough biblical material to ignite a spark of hope about them, and then when I began reading the theology on them, I said, "I can receive this now." We're talking months.

I remember now: I needed reassurance. I'd forgotten all about this. What was on my mind was the work of the kingdom, and whether I could be as effective within the Catholic Church, as I could be in the Protestant church. I hadn't nailed down everything about Catholicism, but I recognized that the shape of Catholicism was a lot closer to the Bible, than a lot of what I was seeing in Protestantism. But practically speaking, you don't see Catholic evangelists out there very much. It came down to this: what justified staying apart? "What reason do I have for not being there?"

Thanks for the openness to different POVs. There's not a lot of that going around these days.

I think I’m talking to you more than I am to my wife right now. This may have to be addressed in some type of future therapy.

LOL! Well, you see, Doc: I can always turn off my computer.....

What exactly is a Protestant?

SUCH an interesting question! In the old days I would have thought a Protestant was somebody who thought the Pope wasn't catholic (note the lower case 'c'.) But on FR some who think the Pope is wrong claim that they aren't Protestant and some who call themselves Protestants seem, as far as I can discern, to think that a "real" Protestant is mostly Calvinist, though some traces or Arminianism seem to be allowed.

I guess my 'natural' use of the term would be most elegantly defined as those who do not believe in the tactile apostolic succession. Just for convenience. It's a diagnostic rather than an essential definition, if you take my alleged meaning.

If you mean non-Roman Catholics, then what you are saying is virtually all believers outside of your own church disagree with you, which might be a pretty strong case for re-evaluation.

If I understand you, it could work both ways. I mean that IF ecclesiology is "of the essence", then one could expect that placing oneself in an adversarial relationship with 'the one true Church' (this is for the sake of argument right now; humor me and stipulate it, please) would lead to a decline in sound doctrine.

On the other hand, if one maintains that the Bible is like a jewel passed through the filthy hands of filthier men, then it would be part of that notion that the men and everything they have except the Bible is filthy. So it depends on how one reads and understands the ecclesiological parts of the NT and whether or not one thinks the historical patriarchates are organically related to the so-called 'primitive church'. It's all a package either way, as far as I can see.

As I see it, Roman Catholics ascribe God’s powers, roles, and authority to men (though the RC would say that these men are appointed by the Spirit). In essence creating gods or mediators who stand between God and man.

To get away from the spatial imagery of "between", I'd like to submit "Catalysts". For example, in priestly absolution, I, graced by God, have to "supply" the knowledge of my sins and the contrition and intention to cut them out. Without my (grace-filled) presenting of those things, the forgiveness mojo does not happen. And, of course, if no priest were around, and a tree fell on me, while Dante suggests there might be consequences, we would hesitate to say that fer shur I was shut out of forgiveness. Crudely put, the absence of priestly absolution does not mean fer shur that one is NOT forgiven. It's presence, along with the other stuff I said, means one is fer shur forgiven. That's how I think of it anyway. I'll submit to an inquisition on this (or on anything I say, now that I mention it.)

And, of course, not ALL powers, roles, and authority are entrusted (for reasons best known to Himself - I sure wouldn't have done it like that) to men. God still gets to work the weather and stuff. But, incomprehensibly, He seems to have deputized some authority and to have agreed to be in some way bound by the acts of His agents.

Absolutely, yet it is also what the Catholic Church also affirms, though with one caveat... that the Holy Spirit only (?) works and resides through members of the RC church, and especially with a ‘special’ charism which only the Pope possesses. Please correct me if I’m misinformed here. The "only' is the only (heh heh) debatable part. I am currently arguing with a priest about this, thus: I maintain that when I presided at the Eucharist as a Pepsicola priest, there was no GUARANTEE that Jesus was sacramentally present. But (I maintain) God is generous and people sincerely trusting in the validity of my orders and sincerely believing in the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, surely were not shut out of ALL the graces, uh, thereunto appertaining. The very excellent priest with whom I am arguing this, in a leisurely fashion, is not prepared to commit himself on either side.

And, as to the charism of 'Infallibility' it's more like a dead-man's switch, in my diseased imagination. I think one way to say it is that God won't let the Holy Father rear back and "declare and define" something that ain't so.

As to limiting the Spirit of God, just as I take some comfort in thinking that God is sometimes laughing at me, so I take comfort, knowing that I am wicked, in the line in the Psalms about "with the crooked you are wily."I mean that it seems to me the word of our Lord on Easter afternoon is precisely (and astonishingly) a limiting of the Spirit, at least "formally". God says what you bind on earth is bound in heaven. That there is limiting.

But, He is wily, and maybe can and does work around our crookedness.

....I have the greatest personal difficulty.

You and me both. And I KNOW (and love) some of these guys. (And most assuredly do NOT love some other of these guys! Many of us still refer to our former bishop as "Walter the Pink".)

As I said somewhere recently, being Catholic SEEMS to outsiders like it piles all sorts of stuff between us and God. But my experience is that it strips stuff away and forces me (precisely because I know some clergy and possess the common knowledge about how authority can twist men and their intentions) to trust that God will keep what I take to be His promises to the Church.

Back to confession. We all agree that in Christ our sins are put behind us, that though we were scarlet we can be whiter than snow. We agree that when the trumpet sounds, for the faithful their sins will be forgotten, unimportant, and that the most important thing about me is not me at all, but Jesus.

Still when itch comes to scratch, we find it very hard to take that confidence with us as we go to confide in someone else, even in a dark closet through an anonymity-assisting partition. We SAY we believe that the forgiveness of Christ makes our pasts unimportant, but we DO "These sins are embarrassing, and this embarrassment is so powerful, that I would just die if anyone knew them."

So, for me at any rate, the custom of going to a priest and admitting that I know, oh, what some movie star looks like with her shirt off, and enjoyed acquiring the knowledge, that's a real rubber meets the road moment about living into what I profess about the grace of Christ.

It's one thing to know the rope is strong and your knots are good. It's quite another to back off a 50 yard high cliff. But when you've rappelled to the bottom, then you really know the rope was strong enough and the knots good enough.

Sometime you ought to see how much blather I can type when I'm actually awake! Thanks for the conversation. It's a blessing.

I look at your handle and I see "Master". In the normal meaning of this word that means you are the supreme authority over something. So that means you are claiming for yourself divine honors?

No, it doesn't because the meaning of the term is affected by the context in which it is used. When I speak of a venerable old man, I do not mean that I am paying him divine honors or intending to solicit his good will as though he were a God. I may never even speak to the old codger.

Similarly, when theologians use the word "venerate" the do so, generally to distinguish it from the word "worship", which in the shift in context of years of usage has come to mean to pay honors as though to the supreme God. Though it used to mean something like "of worth", so that a cemetery is described as havng graves of many "of honor and of worship" meaning, I am told, noble men and rich men.

In de Montfort's writings Mary is called "divine". But then again the Anglican clergy of The middle 17th century are called "divines" as well. The degree I hold is that of a "Master of Divinity", but nobody thinks I am God's master, and no one thinks Anglican clergy or our Lady are divine. (well, okay, I have over heard one Anglican saying, "Darling, you look diVINE in those vestments ....)(Or as Tallulah Bankhead is reputed to have said to an acolyte with an incense burner,"Darling your dress is lovely but your handbag is on fire!"

If you want to use our language to show that we pay Mary honors appropriate to God, no amount of reason will stop you, any more than I can stop you from seeing what you see in an inkblot.

But what you see may not be what you get.

This author admits in the first paragraph that the Marian doctrines of the RCC are not biblical.

You have a unique ability to pack several errors in one terse statement.

First, he admits no such thing. He says:

The Marian dogmas were big problems. I still thought [around 1984] the Catholic claims on Mary were outrageous. I went back and read some essays, and concluded that the Bible alone wouldn't compel acceptance of the Marian dogmas; the Bible alone wouldn't lead you to them, yet sustained theological reflection on Jesus' relationship to His mother; if you take the humanity of Jesus with the utmost seriousness, and you take Mary as a real mother, not just a "conduit," and you begin to think about motherhood and sonship, and you think about what it means to receive a body from your mother: flesh . . . God didn't make Jesus' flesh in Mary's womb; He got Mary's flesh. If God had wanted to, He could have made Jesus as He made Adam: from the dust of the earth. But He didn't. He decided He would use a human being to give Jesus His humanity. And so what kind of flesh is Jesus gonna get? If He's gonna be perfect humanity, He'd better have perfect human flesh untainted by sin. To me the Immaculate Conception, seen in that light, made sense. The Assumption also seemed to me to make a great deal of sense. There were precedents to it: Enoch and Elijah, those who rose from the dead at the time of the rending of the veil of the Temple. And if Jesus is going to give anybodye priority; if He's going to truly honor His mother and father, wouldn't He give Mary, whose flesh He received, priority in the Resurrection? So I think that's what the doctrine of the Assumption preserves. I could go on and talk forever on the distinctive doctrines of the Church.

What he perhaps admits here is that if one reads the Bible without reflection, then such unreflecting man would not find the Marian dogmas there. Not exactly the same thing.

Second, your post reflects the Protestant superstition that every doctrine has to be found in the Bible. That is itself not "biblical".

Third, the entire purpose of Al talking about it is that his view on the Marian dogmas changed and came in alignment with Catholicism. You make his sound like someone who continues to think that Catholic Mariology is "outrageous" yet goes to Catholic Church ... why exactly?

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Why I Returned to the Catholic Church (Al Kresta)

Part VI: The Biblical Reality