Why Evangelicals are Returning to Rome

The February 2008 edition of Christianity Today ran a cover story about evangelicals looking to the ancient Roman Catholic Church in order to find beliefs and practices.1 What was shocking about the article was that both the author of the article and the senior managing editor of CT claim that this trip back to Rome is a good thing. Says Mark Galli the editor, “While the ancient church has captivated the evangelical imagination for some time, it hasn’t been until recently that it’s become an accepted fixture of the evangelical landscape. And this is for the good.”2 Chris Armstrong, the author of the article who promotes the trip back to the ancient church, claims that because the movement is led by such persons as “Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, and living and practicing monks and nuns,” that therefore, “they are receiving good guidance on this road from wise teachers.” This he claims shows that, “Christ is guiding the process.”3

Apparently, contemporary evangelicals have forgotten that sola scriptura (scripture alone) was the formal principle of the Reformation. Teachings and practices that could not be justified from Scripture were rejected on that principle. To endorse a trip back to these practices of ancient Roman Catholicism is to reject the principle of sola scriptura being the normative authority for the beliefs and practices of the church. In this article I will explore how modern evangelicalism has compromised the principle of sola scriptura and thus paved smoothly the road back to Rome.

Today at least three large movements within Protestantism claim to be new “reformations.” If we examine them closely we will find evidence that sola scriptura has been abandoned as a governing principle—if not formally, at least in practice. To have a new reformation requires the repudiation of the old Reformation. That in turn requires the repudiation of the formal principle of the Reformation. That’s where we’ll begin.

Robert Schuller and Rick Warren In 1982, Robert Schuller issued a call for a new Reformation with the publication of his book, Self Esteem: The New Reformation.4 Schuller issued this fervent call: “Without a new theological reformation, the Christian church as the authentic body of Christ may not survive.”5 He was apparently aware that his reformation was of a different type than the original: “Where the sixteenth-century Reformation returned our focus to sacred Scriptures as the only infallible rule for faith and practice, the new reformation will return our focus to the sacred right of every person to self-esteem! The fact is, the church will never succeed until it satisfies the human being’s hunger for self-value.”6 The problem is that Schuller based much of his self-esteem teaching on psychological theory and did not provide a rigorous Biblical defense of the idea. Thus his reformation was a de facto denial of the Reformation principle of Scripture alone.

For example, Schuller criticized the Reformation for a faulty doctrine of sin: “Reformation theology failed to make clear that the core of sin is a lack of self-esteem.”7 But Schuller does not discuss the many verses in the Bible that define sin. For example: “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness” (1John 3:4). It is not hard to see that Schuller’s reformation constituted the abandonment of sola scriptura as a formal principle.8

In one sense, since Schuller’s call for a reformation based on self-esteem was made 26 years ago, one could argue that it never happened. Of course the idea of self-esteem is still around and taught by many evangelicals, but it never became the one key idea of the church. In another sense, however, Schuller’s reformation was broadened and transferred to others. In 2005 Schuller claimed the following as noted alumni of his institute: Bill Hybels, John Maxwell, Bishop Charles Blake, Rick Warren, Walt Kallestad, and Kirbyjon Caldwell. Bill Hybels himself credited Robert Schuller as a key person who influenced his ideas.9 Though Rick Warren disputes Schuller’s influence on his theology, he has carried forward Schuller’s idea of creating a church that meets people’s felt needs and thus attracts them.

But what interests us here is that Warren is now proposing yet another reformation:

And we've actually created what we call clinic-in-a-box, business-in-a-box, church-in-a-box, and we are using normal people, volunteers. When Jesus sent the disciples – this will be my last point – when Jesus sent the disciples into a village he said, “Find the man of peace.” And he said, “When you find the man of peace you start working with that person, and if they respond to you, you work with them. If they don't, you dust the dust off your shoes; you go to the next village.” Who's the man of peace in any village – or it might be a woman of peace – who has the most respect, they're open and they're influential? They don't have to be a Christian. In fact, they could be a Muslim, but they're open and they're influential and you work with them to attack the five giants. And that's going to bring the second Reformation.10

The problem is that solving the world’s five greatest problems as Warren defines them11 using anyone willing to help regardless of religion, cannot be justified on Biblical grounds. If sola scriptura were the formal principle in Warren’s theology, then he would provide vigorous, Biblical analysis using sound exegesis to ground his reformation on the authority of Scripture. But his teachings and public statements are not characterized by sound Biblical exegesis.

As I documented in my book on the Purpose Driven Movement, Warren’s reformation compromises sola scriptura in many significant ways.12These include the use of loose paraphrases that go so far as to change the meaning of various passages, the integration of unbiblical, human wisdom, serious misinterpretation of Scripture, and an unbiblical philosophy of ministry. Warren has an orthodox statement about the authority of Scripture on his church Web site. In fact, most evangelicals other than those who convert to Roman Catholicism do not overtly reject Scripture alone. But is it practiced?13

There is reason to believe that Warren’s reformation is the continuation of Schuller’s in a modified form. Warren has made finding one’s purpose the lynchpin of his teachings and practices. Finding purpose may not be identical to finding self esteem, but the idea is at least a first cousin. Also, both concepts derive their power from outside Scripture.

Another proposed reformation of the church is C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation. As I argued in a recent CIC article,14 Wagner sees the presence of apostles who speak authoritatively for God as the key to the church fulfilling her role in the world. He even speaks approvingly of the “apostles” of the Roman Catholic Church. Wagner and the thousands of apostles and prophets in his movement have shown as little regard for sola scriptura as any non Roman Catholic Christian group apart from the Quakers. So their reformation is a de facto repudiation of the Reformation. Their writings and messages show little or no concern for sound, systematic Biblical exegesis. If they were to adopt sola scriptura as a formal principle and rigorously use it to judge their own teachings and practices, their movement would immediately come to an end.

The third (if we count Warren’s reformation as a current replacement for Schuller’s) proposed reformation is that of the Emergent Church. In their case sola scriptura dies a thousand deaths. As we saw in the previous issue of CIC, Rob Bell denies it using the same arguments that Roman Catholics have used. The Emergent Church and its postmodern theology is noteworthy for being a non-Catholic version of Christianity that forthrightly assaults the type of use of the Bible that characterizes those who hold sola scriptura as the formal principle of their theology. The Emergent Church adherents reject systematic theology, and thus make using the principle impossible. For example, defending the doctrine of the Trinity using Scripture requires being systematic. I have read many Emergent/postmodern books as I write a new book, and each of them attacks systematic theology in some way.

The Emergent Reformation rests on the denial of the validity of foundationalism. Gone are the days when Christians debated the relative merits of evidential and presuppositional apologetics—debates based on the need for a foundation for one’s theology. Either one started with evidence for the authority of Scripture and then used the Bible as the foundation of one’s theology; or one presupposed the Bible as the inerrant foundation. But today both approaches are mocked for their supposed naïveté. To think that one can know what the Bible means in a non-relativistic way is considered a throwback to now dead “modernity.” The Emergent mantra concerning the Bible is “we cannot know, we cannot know, we cannot know.” Furthermore, in their thinking, it is a sign of arrogance to claim to know. For the postmodern theologian, sola scriptura is as dead and buried as a fossilized relic of bygone days.

So the Protestant (if the term even means anything today) world is characterized by reformations that have either rejected or compromised sola scriptura as the formal principle for their theology. No wonder few voices of concern are raised at Christianity Today’s proposed trip back to Rome to find beliefs and practices. Once sola scriptura has been rejected, there remain few reasons not to go back to Rome. If religious traditions can be considered normative, then why not embrace those with the longest history?

The cover of the CT article reads, “Lost Secrets of the Ancient Church.” It shows a person with a shovel digging up a Catholic icon. What are these secrets? Besides icons, lectio divina and monasticism are mentioned. Dallas Willard, who is mentioned as a reliable guide for this process, has long directed Christians to monastic practices that he himself admits are not taught in the Bible.15 Willard pioneered the rejection of sola scriptura in practice on the grounds that churches following it are failures. He writes, “All pleasing and doctrinally sound schemes of Christian education, church growth, and spiritual renewal came around at last to this disappointing result. But whose fault was this failure?”16 The “failure,” according to Willard is that, “. . . the gospel preached and the instruction and example given these faithful ones simply do not do justice to the nature of human personality, as embodied, incarnate.”17 So what does this mean? It means that we have failed because our gospel had too little to do with our bodies.

The remedy for “failure” says Willard is to find practices in church history that are proven to work. But are these practices taught in the Bible? Willard admits that they are not by using an argument from silence, based on the phrase “exercise unto godliness” in 1Timothy 4:7. Here is Willard’s interpretation:

“Or [the possibility the phrase was imprecise] does it indicate a precise course of action he [Paul] understood in definite terms, carefully followed himself, and called others to share? Of course it was the latter. So obviously so, for him and the readers of his own day, that he would feel no need to write a book on the disciplines of the spiritual life that explained systematically what he had in mind.”18

But what does this do to sola scriptura? It negates it. In Willard’s theology, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Biblical writers, forgot to inspire them to write about spiritual disciplines that all Christians need. If this is the case, then we need spiritual practices that were never prescribed in the Bible to obtain godliness.

Having determined the insufficiency of Scripture, Willard looks to human potential through tapping into spiritual powers: “It is the amazing extent of our ability to utilize power outside ourselves that we must consider when we ask what the human being is. The limits of our power to transcend ourselves utilizing powers not located in us—including of course, the spiritual—are yet to be fully known.”19 So evidently our spirituality is to be discovered by various means that are not revealed by God in the Bible.

If the Bible is insufficient in regard to the spiritual practices that we need in order to become sanctified, where do we find them? Here is Willard’s solution: “Practicing a range of activities that have proven track records across the centuries will keep us from erring.”20 This, of course leads us back to Rome. Catholic mystics spent centuries experimenting with spiritual practices without regard to the Biblical justification for such practices. If evangelicals are going to join them in rejecting Scripture alone, AGAIN they might as well not reinvent the wheel—go to the masters of mystical asceticism.

Willard admires the monastics and suggests that solitude is one of the most important disciplines. He says, “This factual priority of solitude is, I believe, a sound element in monastic asceticism. Locked into interaction with the human beings that make up our fallen world, it is all but impossible to grow in grace as one should.”21 If it is impossible to grow in grace without solitude, why are we not informed of this fact by the Biblical writers? In Willard’s mind sola scriptura is a false idea, so therefore God failed to reveal to us the most important way to grow in grace! Willard says that solitude is most important even while admitting that it is dangerous:

But solitude, like all the disciplines of the spirit, carries its risks. In solitude, we confront our own soul with its obscure forces and conflicts that escape our attention when we are interacting with others. Thus, [quoting Louis Bouyer] “Solitude is a terrible trial, for it serves to crack open and bust apart the shell of our superficial securities. It opens out to us the unknown abyss that we all carry within us . . . and discloses the fact that these abysses are haunted.”22

This danger was shown by the early desert fathers, some of whom came under demonic torment in their solitude. Before following people whose practices are dangerous and not prescribed in the Bible, wouldn’t we be better off sticking to the safe ground of revealed truth?

The fact is that the various ancient practices of the Roman Catholic Church were and are not unique to Christianity. The meditative techniques that make people feel closer to God work for those who do not even know God. Thomas Merton (who is recommended by Dallas Willard) went to the East to find spiritual practices. They work just as well for those who do not know Christ, probably better. Many ancient Roman Catholic practices were invented at times when many illiterate pagans were ushered into the church, sometimes at the point of a sword. Those pagans were not exactly the type to search the Scriptures daily in order to find the things of God.

But why are literate American Christians running away from sola scriptura at a time when searching the Scriptures (especially using computer technology) has never been easier? On this point I am offering my opinion, but there is good evidence for it. I believe that the lack of gospel preaching has allowed churches to fill up with the unregenerate. The unregenerate are not like “newborn babes who long for the pure milk of the word” (1Peter 2:2). Those who have never received saving grace cannot grow by the means of grace. Those who are unconverted have not drawn near to God through the blood of Christ. But with mysticism, it is possible to feel near to God when one is far from Him. Furthermore, the unconverted have no means of sanctification because they do not have the imputed righteousness of Christ as their starting point and eternal standing. So they end up looking for man-made processes to engineer change through human works because they have nothing else.

Those who feel empty because of the “pragmatic promises of the church-growth movement” as the CT article calls them, may need something far more fundamental than ancient, Catholic, ascetic practices. They may very well need to repent and believe the gospel. Those who are born of the Spirit will find that this passage is true: “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2Peter 1:3).

Perhaps the best antidote to rejecting sola scriptura and going back to Rome would be a careful study of the Book of Hebrews. It describes a situation that is analogous to that which evangelicals face today. The Hebrew Christians were considering going back to temple Judaism. Their reasons can be discerned by the admonitions and warnings in Hebrews. The key problem for them was the tangibility of the temple system, and the invisibility of the Christian faith. Just about everything that was offered to them by Christianity was invisible: the High Priest in heaven, the tabernacle in heaven, the once for all shed blood, and the throne of grace. At the end of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews points out that they have come to something better than mount Sinai: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24). All of these things are invisible.

But the life of faith does not require tangible visibility: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The Roman Catholic Church has tangibility that is unmatched by the evangelical faith, just as temple Judaism had. Why have faith in the once-for-all shed blood of Christ that is unseen when you can have real blood (that of the animals for temple Judaism and the Eucharistic Christ of Catholicism)? Why have the scriptures of the Biblical apostles and prophets who are now in heaven when you can have a real, live apostle and his teaching Magisterium who can continue to speak for God? The similarities to the situation described in Hebrews are striking. Why have only the Scriptures and the other means of grace when the Roman Church has everything from icons to relics to cathedrals to holy water and so many other tangible religious articles and experiences?

I urge my fellow evangelicals to seriously consider the consequences of rejecting sola scriptura as the formal principle of our theology. If my Hebrews analogy is correct, such a rejection is tantamount to apostasy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Armstong, “The Future lies in the Past” in Christianity Today, February 2008. I wrote a critique of Armstrong’s article here: http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/3174/Bob_DeWaay Mark Galli, “Ancient-Future People” in Christianity Today February 2008, 7. Armstrong, 24. Robert H. Schuller, Self Esteem The New Reformation, (Waco: Word, 1982). Ibid. 25. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 98. I wrote an article some years ago about Schuller’s self-esteem reformation: Robert Schuller, Your Church as a Fantastic Future, (Ventura: Regal Books, 1986) On pages 227, 228 Hybels testifies of Schuller’s influence. http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=80 page 16. [Accessed 8/27/2005] The five are spiritual darkness, lack of servant leaders, poverty, disease, and ignorance. Bob DeWaay, Redefining Christianity—Understanding the Purpose Driven Movement, (21st Century Press: Springfield, MO, 2006). My claim is that sola scriptura no longer serves as the formal principle of their theology in practice. This is seen whenever important religious claims (such as the need for a reformation) are not accompanied by rigorous, systematic, Biblical exegesis on the topic at hand. I say that because by implication, Scripture alone means that beliefs and practices are normative if—and only if—they can be shown to be Biblical. Binding and loosing have to be in accordance with the teachings of Christ and His apostles. Warren’s practice belies his statement of faith.

http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue103.htm I critique Dallas Willard’s theology as taught in his popular book The Spirit of the Disciplines in CIC Issue 91: http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue91.htm Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Understanding How God Changes Lives, (HarperCollins: New York, 1991). 18. Ibid. emphasis his. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 158. Ibid. 162. Ibid. 161.

Yes, for who can forgive sins but God alone.

I keep forgetting that a priest pronouncing absolution can be seen(and in fact IS seen) by some as somehow NOT God forgiving through the ministry entrusted by Him to his Church. I do not see a conceptual contradiction between a priest pronouncing forgiveness and God forgiving. Not only do I get this from my church tradition but from being a deputy. The Sheriff is on the hook for anything the deputies do.

Just curious, how do you see the issue of our forgiving others, when the other is unrepentant and does not ask for forgiveness?

Is this question addressed to me? Forgiveness has a giving and a receiving side to it. Remember how obnoxious it is when somebody "forgives" you for something you didn't do. That would be a case of a bad offering of forgiveness, yes?

So I can indicate that forgiveness is available but in general I don't see how it can mature into reconciliation until the forgivEE acknowledges his fault and is "contrite" - and, that implies, is willing so far as in him lies to give "satisfaction", to make up for it.But in our own lives, I think we became aware of total forgiveness BEFORE we understood in how much debt we were. So I guess we can lean to be patient.

Leaving aside the process of becoming "fit matter" for heaven, in which nothing impure or unclean can enter, I think that I can do much good to someone who already owes me an apology and satisfaction. I can be courteous, express an interest in his situation, help if help is needed, etc. But HE stands in the way of his enjoyment of full forgiveness if he does not acknowledge his need for it.

One way, therefore, to look at "The purgatorial function" is that it is a kind of healing and stengthening in which we learn to love God more than our grudges and to love one another as He loves us.

I insist, that purgation is therapeutic not punitive, and that is partially why in Dante's Purgatorio everyone is happy to be there. They're getting better and stronger and they're full of hope.

The forgiveness is there. To take it to ourselves, we may have to let go of something else. I THINK I would say that God will teach us and enable us to do that, while I think you would say that God would just take our resentments from us.

That is perfectly fine if they believe that their Christian ways are the only true Christian ways.
Make that "only fully true ....

Plus, it wouldn't seem fair to anyone then or now who was raised as a Catholic without the real opportunity to choose. Totally out of my control, I COULD have been raised in a practicing Catholic home. That would make me a schismatic today, and presumably in worse shape than I am in now, as it turned out. :)

The mind reels! :-)

I'm getting that from your POV the condition of lots of "denominations" is a good thing. I'm guessing that this is part and parcel of the "invisible Church" line of thought.

I say this because from my POV lots of denominations is a bad thing. It might help that I generally have been a "bloom where you're planted" kind of guy as far as parish membership is concerned. I now only drive PAST one RC parish to go to my current place of worship because I was administrator at the nearer church and I think former administrators should disappear. (The fact that I much prefer my current parish -- and I preferred it before I left the other, is just a happy thing.) Since I trusted in the sacramental ministrations of the nearer church as much as I do in the farther one, I was willing to look at the rest of what was there as a call from God for me to help. I wasn't there, outside of the sacraments and worshipping with bro's and sis's, for what I could get, but for whatever adventure happened to come my way.

He above most very learned theologians SHOULD know that to deny a Christian his church is to publicly deny his very faith in Christ. That's PERSONAL. :)

This blows what used to be my mind.

I would say, "I hope what I think about 'God 'n Jesus ' stuff' is right, but I seek to pray to God not as I think He is but as He knows Himself to be."

Even as enthusiastic a Papist as I knows that we are more wrong in our personal thought than we are right, that there are touchstones - sacraments, precepts, basic dogmata, but even those I scarcely understand or appreciate and that the wonder of God as He is will make me, like some guy in Dante whom I forget who was a theologian and when He got to heaven he found out he was wrong, and he laughed and laughed!

I keep thinking about Ps. 50, where God pretty much mocks Temple worship -- and that's to the GOOD guys! "If I were hungry, you think I'd tell YOU?"

I still don't understand the NEED to put us down publicly. (Was there a scare that Protestants were converting Catholics in large numbers or something?)

It was Tammy Faye's eyeshadow. That and the snakes.

Well, I think I was trying to say that this was about what we could and could not bring to the table in Ecumenical efforts. But I don't really know the sitz-im-leben of DI. I will find out somehow, and report back.

But one of the things we stand FOR is an ecclesiology which asserts an important, ah, coincidence between the Body of Christ and those groups in communion with the See of Rome and possessing Apostolic succession.

As far as the not-going-to-confession lady, I'm not defending her. I'm just reporting. The "Real" dynamics of the situation are complex.

You MAY be underestimating the important of "full knowledge and deliberate personal choice". I think the occasional inadvertent "hubba hubba" is venial. It's almost hard-wired. Going girl-watching and engaging in a full, rich fantasy life which implies total de-valuation of the babe in question as a person for whom Christ was content to die .. now we're getting to mortal sin territory, especially after someone has explained to one what is wrong about that, and maybe even given some hints about how to avoid falling into that.

THIS is the critical point to my whole prior post. By your above, does God NOT tend to give graces if one confesses directly to Him?

Degrees and subtleties and whatnot.

For me to apologize to God quietly in my room about, say, checking out a porno site is one thing. Actually to say that to another human type being whom I can imagine reacting and everything as I speak (or in my case, since I do the face-to face thing and not the hide-behind-a-screen thing, SEE reacting .... only they never do, they've heard it 1000 times) well, that calls on more from me. I've already had to commend myself to God's Love and Forgiveness before I stagger into the itty-bitty room. And the experience is correspondingly more powerful.

I know people who say, "But AM I forgiven?" and when you assert all the full 8-cylinder, ninety-to-nuthin' Gospel say, "Yes, I KNOW that, but AM I REALLY forgiven?" That happens a lot less in my (limited so much as to be scarcely useful for any reliable conclusion) experience. You don't run across that as much in people who made a real, live, real-time confession to an official holy-dude, Father so-and-so who is visiting from East Overshoe.

I think that in general we often get "Solid" knowledge of grace and love when God brings them to us through people. He is content even to work through such as you and I are.

Again, there's an understanding of "priesthood" which is not confined to "holy orders". If you were to visit me for a week, and assuming you aren't already way better at this than I am) I could teach you how to make a good pastoral visit to a hospitalized person. And you would find that by listening lovingly and by offering in prayer little more than what the patient told you was on his mind, you would have been at least a catalyst to that patient's finding himself to be in God's presence. Sometimes it just takes another human being to do whatever it is that leads to the person experiencing the Love of God.

I don't try to explain this. But the tears and smiles and increased confidence and peace persuade me that we ALL have a priestly ministry and, if the word MUST be used", "power".

So I find that taking it a step further to official ordained type guys is not a big leap for me.

blah blah blah.

from New Advent:

The Albigenses asserted the co-existence of two mutually opposed principles, one good, the other evil. The former is the creator of the spiritual, the latter of the material world. The bad principle is the source of all evil; natural phenomena, either ordinary like the growth of plants, or extraordinary as earthquakes, likewise moral disorders (war), must be attributed to him. He created the human body and is the author of sin, which springs from matter and not from the spirit. The Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to him; whereas the New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God. The latter is the creator of human souls, which the bad principle imprisoned in material bodies after he had deceived them into leaving the kingdom of light. This earth is a place of punishment, the only hell that exists for the human soul. Punishment, however, is not everlasting; for all souls, being Divine in nature, must eventually be liberated. To accomplish this deliverance God sent upon earth Jesus Christ, who, although very perfect, like the Holy Ghost, is still a mere creature. The Redeemer could not take on a genuine human body, because he would thereby have come under the control of the evil principle. His body was, therefore, of celestial essence, and with it He penetrated the ear of Mary. It was only apparently that He was born from her and only apparently that He suffered. His redemption was not operative, but solely instructive. To enjoy its benefits, one must become a member of the Church of Christ (the Albigenses). Here below, it is not the Catholic sacraments but the peculiar ceremony of the Albigenses known as the consolamentum, or “consolation,” that purifies the soul from all sin and ensures its immediate return to heaven. The resurrection of the body will not take place, since by its nature all flesh is evil.

A neo-Manichean sect, it could even, I suppose be considered not Christian at all, much like many consider the LDS to be not Christian.

1Ti 2:5-6 : 5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

No disagreement from Rome either, despite what others say of us.

Yeah, but I think that the others can be legitimately unsure of what Catholics believe based on what Catholic theologians say. For example, here is an excerpt from the article: Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces by Father William G. Most. I looked him up and he appeared to have been a well respected priest, author and professor: (all emphasis added)

To begin, we can say without doubt that the title "Mediatrix" is justified, and applies to all graces for certain, by her cooperation in acquiring all graces on Calvary. The Second Vatican Council (Lumen gentium ## 61-62), said:

... in suffering with Him as He died on the cross, she cooperated in the work of the Savior, in an altogether singular way, by obedience, faith, hope, and burning love, to restore supernatural life to souls. As a result she is our Mother in the order of grace.

This motherhood of Mary in the economy of grace lasts without interruption, from the consent which she gave in faith at the annunciation, and which she unhesitatingly bore with under the cross, even to the perpetual consummation of all the elect. For after being assumed into heaven, she has not put aside this saving function, but by her manifold intercession, she continues to win the gifts of eternal salvation for us. By her motherly love, she takes care of the brothers of her Son who are still in pilgrimage and in dangers and difficulties, until they be led through to the happy fatherland. For this reason, the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adiutrix, and Mediatrix. This however it to be so understood that it takes nothing away, or adds nothing to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator. For no creature can ever be put on the same level with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer...."

We notice that Vatican II did not add the words "of all graces." However, as many papal texts point out, Mary's role in dispensation flows logically from her role in acquiring all graces. Further, the Council itself added a note on the above passage, in which it refers us to the texts of Leo XIII, Adiutricem populi, St. Pius X, Ad diem illum, Pius XI, Miserentissimus Redemptor, and Pius XII, Radio message to Fatima.

Leo XIII, in the text referred to, spoke of her, as we saw above, as having "practically limitless power." St. Pius X said she was the "dispensatrix of all the gifts, and is the "neck" connecting the Head of the Mystical Body to the Members. But all power flows through the neck. Pius XII said "Her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion." These and many other texts speak in varied ways of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces, so often that the teaching has become infallible.

This author appears to acknowledge openly that Mary was a co-Mediator, the apparent contradiction of the Vatican II statement notwithstanding. If Mary is the "neck" and all graces go through her, then so does salvational grace. Co-Mediator. Then, Father Most goes on to address Protestant objections. This one involves our instant text:

Protestants object to this , saying that there is only one mediator: 1 Tim 2:5. We agree that there are many ways in which Christ is the only mediator between God and man. 1) There is only one mediator who is such by very nature, being both true God and true man. 2) There is only one mediator whose whose work is necessary, without whom, in God's plan, there could be no salvation. 3) There is only one mediator who depends on no one else for power.

IMO, these are extremely weak arguments. First, he parses the Biblical text into different WAYS of being a mediator. The Bible makes no such distinction. To me, the first answer above is the same as saying that Jesus is the only Mediator in that He was the only left-handed Mediator. Mary was a co-Mediator, but she was right-handed so this does not violate scripture. A similar argument wipes out numbers 2 and 3 above. Father Most makes artificial distinctions where none are present in the text. The Bible says "ONE MEDIATOR". It doesn't say one mediator who was necessary, or one mediator who doesn't depend on anyone else, etc. Those are obvious work-arounds to accommodate the Church's view of Mary.

Father Most concludes: (emphasis added)

So we answer, since Mary was associated with her Son in acquiring grace for us, she will also share with him in distributing that grace to us. This fits well with the words of the Popes, who call her the administra of grace, meaning that she administers or dispenses it. So Pope Leo XIII, Iucunda semper, said:

"... when He [the Father] has been invoked with excellent prayers, our humble voice turns to Mary; in accordance with no other law than that law of conciliation and petition which was expressed as follows by St. Bernardine of Siena : 'Every grace that is communicated to this world has a threefold course. For by excellent order, it is dispensed from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin, from the Virgin to us.'"

Without meaning to brag, it took me all of three seconds to find this article on Google. There are TONS just like it. Now what are we poor Prottys supposed to think when we see this stuff? :)

I have no problem understanding God’s word and I don’t need the pope to think for me.

Good for you.

Our problem though is like this: Even WITH the Pope doing our thinking for us (If that's what you want to think, you go right ahead, I can work with it) there are plenty of disagreements and grey areas and such. Even among Catholics who think they are being loyal to the Magisterium and all that, there can be some pretty exciting disagreements. In a group I am involved with, for example, there is a disagreement about whether a politician's being pro-choice automatically makes him ineligible for a Catholic's vote.

WITHOUT some court of final doctrinal appeal, what it looks like to us is: Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Mennonites, D of C, Christian Missionary Alliance-ites, Quakers (of various stripes and inclinations), Holiness churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Moonies, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists (forsooth!) -- ALL telling us they have no problem understanding God's word and they don't need a pope to do their thinking for them.

John 16:13 is Jesus talking, NOT before a crowd as in the Sermon on the Mount, but in a room with the Apostles. The text by itself does not necessarily or conclusively demonstrate that The Spirit will lead us one by one without the ministry and Spiritual gifts attendant upon the ecclesia as MORE than one person alone.

Clearly there has to be some, as it were, personal attention, some individual guidance. And over the centuries God has raised up some pretty amazing individuals, clerical, "religious", AND lay.

I take you to be offering Matthew 18:19-20 in support of some spiritual gifts or graces, important ones, which are present in any small group of our Lord's followers. But I say again that the remark requires a group and some togetherness. AND our Lord's presence in that group gathered in His name is not clearly His presence as teacher.

And there's I Cor 12. I mean no offense, but sometimes the argument of some Protestants seems to be like the foot saying, "I AM an eye. I am the entire organism, I myself have all needed functions." Or maybe it's more on the order of a group of toes saying, "We need no eye or stomach, we ourselves can do all that must be done for a body to be a body."

Is it nor true that by far the majority of groups calling themselves Christian Churches "set apart" people for ministries, including for preaching and teaching ministries? What shall we make of this is everything we need can be found in a random assembly of two or three gathered in His Name?

I think the interesting part of your post is that it started by quoting a "slam" (whether right or wrong is not important) on "modern day Protestants" and you responded with a statement about yourself individually and your personal or individual ability to understand God's Word. That right there, the relationship of the individual, the assembly, and God, is where I think the interesting questions are to be found.

Short answer, rhetoric confrontational not for confrontation but for brevity.

We disagree about "in" (as Paul and John use the word). We disagree about the fullness of Grace and the wonder of God's promise. And maybe some other stuff.

YOU are a mediator and co-redeemer (IMHO) and on my good days so am I.

Here's how. (Just some examples) You forgive your wife, your kids, maybe your parents when she or they wrong you without insisting on being made whole. You suffer pain and sometimes financial loss that others may be assisted or helped. You pray for others. Sometimes you sit with others in their pain and because you do, you suffer some of their pain.

All this work, offered to God in Jesus, and done by one who is "in Christ" and therefore a new Creation, one who himself has died and now you live, yet not you, but Christ lives in you .... ALL this, by the Grace of Christ is incorporated into his atoning work as an avalanche grows as it races down the mountain side.

This is, I think, part of a MAJOR attitudinal difference between us feelthy Papists and you all. We contemplate that part of the shaken down, pressed together, running over always a gazillion times more than we could ever have thought Grace of God is what our Greek brothers call theosis.

But I would say that while the END (culmination, perfection, accomplishment) of theosis may be some 'better than acid' experience of union with God, God works with us and, amazingly, almost incomprehensibly, allows us to work with Him.

Your challenging me as you do is not your work, lest you should boast, but the Spirit of God in you, calling forth my best efforts to report and articulate how things look from my part of the front. You are part of God's drawing me closer to Him.

Now for some observations about Mary:

Nothing Mary has is hers. It is all (you may have heard me say this once or twice) GIFT!
Nothing Mary "currently has" will be denied all the holy redeemed. They will all be sinless; they will all be crowned, they, with her, will all be drawn ever closer to the heart of God.

Yes, Mary is, as it were, Prince, first among the redeemed. (I have said somewhere else, the Second fruits. And the difference between first and second, while it may be evanescent (analogy with limit theory), is ontologically HUGE

And I quite get that some Protestants have a rigorously egalitarian view of the bliss of the blessed, and here we will disagree. I can go only this far: Each of the redeemed will be as happy as he can be, but some have are given a greater capacity for happiness. And, of course, my "system" needs this for there to be the possibility of a "prince".

It is MY opinion (I cannot speak for the Church; I don't know enough) that we absolutely hafta gotta understand and take as overriding principles these things:

All that Mary has and is is gift and none over-rides the fundamental distinction between creator and creature, between redeemer and redeemed.
God shares, (see my Col 1:24 line) His work with the holy ones. He does it in and through them.
The Work God does in and through the holy ones, not only the "great saints" but the lady at the coffee urn who has a smile and a kind word for everyone, should by no means be undervalued. The tear of a forgiving spouse is united (By His grace) with the blood which dripped from Christ in Gethsemane and shares (by His grace) its redemptive power.
What actually happens is important.

This last is important. As I said in another post, I would not normally consider giving birth to be "dispensing", as though mothers were flesh-and blood PEZ toys. But Jesus is the sum of the Grace of God and is all our hope. And Mary, ah, dispensed Him. So, in a kind of mickey mouse way, that makes her the dispenser of all hope and grace.

But it gets less Mickey Mouse when one considers the wonder of a good relationship between mother and child.

Because the husband is Italian and wants his children to have a rich experience of Piemontese culture, a couple I know and love travel often to the husband's home. About a year ago, the wife had to come back to the US to do her work (she's a vet), and the children stayed with the husband and his massive huge populous family on their farm in in the Italian Piedmont. The husband reported that one night the son, missing his mother, fell asleep with a picture of her in his arms. And of course the mother looked at pictures of her children a lot and thought of them often.

We long for God only sporadically and our prayers are often cold, wandering, half-hearted, mechanical. Imagine if God were your son. Just imagine! What would your prayers be like then? What would your closeness, your experienced closeness to God be like then? Is it reasonable to suppose that the gift of such longing, such intimacy would not be followed with other gifts?

Sure, mere propinquity and contact with the body of Jesus is no guarantee of anything, yet even a Roman soldier first crucified Him and then acknowledged Him to be the Son of God. What can we reasonably expect to be the outcome of a normal and benign mother-Son relationship when the Son is the Son of God?

Now with respect to the language about Mary at the Cross, I ask you to go back to the beginning o this rant and to my claims about how you are involved in the mediating and redeeming work of Christ. I mention this again because this sort of tracks a part of my developing devotion to Mary. As a hospital chaplain assigned for the majority of my time in Pediatric services, I often was little more than a feckless and murmuring presence at the die of suffering Christs. (YES I know there is only only Christ, but I think I am to view His brethren and things done for them as things done for Him.) Other hospital people DO stuff. Part of the mojo (from a psychological POV) of a chaplain is that he is the one guy in the room who is not there to "Fix" anything about the patient. If the patient is happy, I am happy. If (as happened) the patient wants to watch the Watergate hearings today, I will sit with him for a while and watch the wonderful Senator Sam. If the patient weeps, well I won't splash my tears on her, but I will suffer with her. And if the patient wants to talk baby-talk and play peek-a-boo ... well, that's one of my favorite games. The only "active" thing I will do (most of the time) is offer the entire encounter to God for His work to be done in it.So I came to see my work as a kind of pantomime or shadow play of Christ's work: I entered the patient's world (his room) to be with him, to suffer with and for him. AND I came to see it also as work like Mary's, when I thought of the patient as Christ's being present to me. This just kind of "came to me", and comes to me now. It wasn't the result of some pious exercise, but just a "Oh! Mary too stood by and suffered!"

(You know, I could actually get something done in my life if you'd stop asking these exciting questions.)

I am not going to give the end of your post the attention it deserves. Let me sweep it all under this rug. Again, this is for me, I can't claim to be representative (though, of course, any Catholic of intelligence would see that I am, as usual, entirely correct.)

I think the language is scandalous and perverse UNLESS one contemplates and "hopes all things" about the glorious graces of God in Christ Jesus. It simply cannot be tolerated that Mary or any other creature be understood to have or dispense or enact ANYTHING at all unless God is at the back of it (and in the middle and at the end as well).

I am daring to guess that most theologians who talk about Mary are assuming this. In any event, I am assuming this. I cannot properly see (or speak of) Mary, or Paul, or Dominic, any of them and the angels as well UNLESS I think of them, understand them, and view them in their Context, which is (i may have already said this) the grace of God, which always exceeds or expectations.For a flat and unsatisfactory conclusion: the minute, the second what we say of her is NOT understood as depicting and astonishing array of graces, it is dreadfully and perilously misunderstood, and it sounds tawdry and sentimental.

My favorite Marian "antiphon" is (already posted somewhere)

Rejoice, Queen of Heaven, Alleluia!
Because He whom you were worthy to bear, Alleluia!
Has risen, just as HE said. Alleluia!
Pray to God for us. Alleluia!

Now if you think that we think that Mary on her own toot was worthy to bear Christ, well, we don't. We just don't.

Look for the paperback edition of this tirade in junk book stores near you!

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