Posted on 07/29/2008 4:39:52 PM PDT by annalex
Evangelicals have been going through a major change of heart in their view of Catholicism over the past 15 years or so. In the 80’s when I was in college I lived in the Biblebelt and had plenty of experience with Evangelicals–much of it bad experience. The 80’s was the height of the “Are you saved?” question. In Virginia, the question often popped up in the first 10 minutes of getting to know someone. As I look back, Isurmise that this was coached from the pulpit or Sunday school as it was so well coordinated and almost universally applied. It was a good tactic for putting Catholics on the defensive even before it was known that they were Catholic—”ummmm, uhhh, well no, I’m not sure, I’m Catholic.” Then a conversation about works righteousness or saint statues would ensue. Yeah, nice to meet you, too.
Thankfully, those days are pretty much over. We now have formerly rabid anti-Catholics apologizing and even praising the pope. Catholics and Evangelicals have both learned that we have much in common and need each other to face the secular culture with a solid front. But, where did this detente come from? I think there is a real history to be told here and a book should be written. Let me give my perceptions of 7 major developments since 1993, which I regard as the the watershed year for the renewal of the Catholic Church in the United States.
1. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1993. When this document came out, it was uncertain that even Catholics would read it. We should have known that something was up when the French version hit the top of the bestsellers charts in France and stayed there for months. The English version did the same in the US. Catholics were reading the Catechism, forming study groups and challenging errant professors in the classroom.
2. World Youth Day, Denver 1993. Catholic youth and youth ministers woke up. Suddenly, Catholic youth ministers realized that the youth loved the pope. And they loved him all the more because he did not talk down to them or water down the faith. He challenged them. Gone now were the pizza and a video parish youth nights. Furthermore, youth and young adults took up the challenge to evangelize. One of those youth heard the message and started a website, New Advent. Catholic youth were now becoming zealous for the Catholic faith in its fullness and were not going to be swayed by an awkward conversation that began with “Are you saved?”
3. Scott Hahn. While the Catechism is great for expounding the Catholic faith, it is not a work of apologetics itself. It is not written to expose the flaws of Evangelical theology. It is not written to defend the Church against the attacks of Evangelicals per se. It just would not let them get away with misrepresenting the Catholic faith. But Scott Hahn hit the scene at about the same time with Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1993). I first heard his testimony on cassette tape in 1996. It blew my mind. Suddenly, Catholic apologetics, which is as old as the Catholic Church itself, got a leg up and there was an explosion of books, magazines and websites that effectively undercut the arguments of the 5 Solas. For the first time, there was a cadre of Catholics well enough informed to defend their faith.
4. The Internet. The Net started exploding from 1993 to 1996. I had my first account in ‘94. Compuserve was horribly basic, but by ‘96 I had AOL and the religion debates raged instantly. Catholics who had just been given the most powerful weapon in the arsenal in the war against misinterpretation of their teaching were learning to type on a forum while balancing their catechisms on their laps. Of course, online versions came out, as well. But, no Evangelical bent on getting Catholics out of the arms of the Whore of Babylon could expect to do so without himself have a copy of the Catechism, knowing it inside out and pouring over it for the errors and horrors he would surely find. Evangelical apologists were confronted with a coherent and beautiful presentation of the Catholic faith that they were ill equipped to argue against. They learned that Catholics, too, loved Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The Catechism had arrived providentially just before the internet and had turned the tables in just a few short years. With the apologetic movement hitting at the same time, Evangelicals were also confronted with Catholics who could argue from the Bible defending their faith and demonstrating the weaknesses of Evangelical interpretations of scripture.
5. Early Church Fathers. One fruit of the Apologetics movement has been a flowering anew of Catholic interest in Patristics. This is happening at every level from armchair apologists to doctoral studies. It is suddenly all about Patristics, whereas in the 70’s-90’s the academic focus had been on Karl Rahner and Liberation Theology.
6. Evangelical Third World Experience. Evangelicals have had a field day in Latin America among the poor who are not part of the internet conversation and are distant from the study of apologetics. But, Evangelicals have learned from their experiences abroad an essential aspect of the Gospel they were missing: the Works of Mercy. Once haughty with their criticism of “works righteousness,” they have learned one cannot attend to the spiritual needs of the poor without attending to their bodily needs. Catholic have always understood this. Now, the Evangelicals are coming around. I haven’t heard an Evangelical Televangelist speak on works righteousness in many years.
7. Secularism. With the collapse of the Mainline churches as the backbone of American religion over the past thirty years (since about 1975), Catholics and Evangelicals are the only ones left standing in this country to present the Gospel. Secularism is on the rise and is ruthless. Evangelicals are now learning that only Catholicism has the intellectual resources to combat the present secular age. And, with the pope, we have a pretty effective means for communicating the faith and representing it to the world. There is nothing an Evangelical can do that will match the power of one World Youth Day.
With such an array of Providential developments, Evangelicals as well as Catholics have come to appreciate the depth and the breadth of the Catholic faith. It is far more difficult for them to honestly dismiss Catholicism as the work of Satan as once they did without qualm. There have been apologies and there have been calls for a new partnership. Let us hope these developments will bring about a new moment of understanding for the Glory of the Lord.
The fact that the Evangelicals defend their counterscriptural ecclesiology by defaming His Holiness is not a bad sign at all. The curses of heretics are blessings.
Thanks for offering these FACTS about the now Pope Benedict the XVI.
Yes to a point, but look into the Great Western Schism and the struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope. The only real form of government that post Roman Empire Europe could agree on was ironically an Empire. Ironic because many of the states in the HRE came from the people that over ran the Western Empire!
Part of that system had the Pope as a major official. But whether he was supreme or not was really not settled. The French Church claimed many privileges that Rome could not infringe for centuries. Many a Pope was told to beat sand by the kings of France (which controlled the Papacy during the Western Schism), and many were pulled down.
That is not to say the Pope didn't have a lot of power. He could sanction war against you (which they did often) or even lead troops himself. He could lay a ban on sacraments which would put your people under very nerve wracking conditions. But even that was ineffective at times. The bishops in what is now northern Germany and Denmark usually just ignored it (the Interdicts happened so often, and communication was so bad, that to keep up was very frustrating and often impossible). Venice was also famous for ignoring the Pope and siding with Constantinople as often as not.
The Papacy was not as powerful as many suggest, nor as weak. Study the history, especially the times of the Western Schism (up to three Popes running around at once calling for Crusades against each other) and the Hundred Years war. You get the feeling that everyone just liked to whack their neighbor, and would use any excuse to do it.
In joyful hope, we do.
So do I. Maybe not joyfully, but with regret. That will just create more divisiveness in the religious realm and result in more amunition to be used against the papacy. One can see the pains that would hurt the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, all because of the actions of one solitary man who thinks he takes the place of Christ on earth as the head of the church of Christ - a false claim.
no matter what the pope or the Catholic Church does, it never seems to be enough ... not even here in this forum.
It takes a great amount of humility to apologize. It takes a charitable person to accept the apology. It's time to move on.
As I have pointedly declared upthread, my battle is with an errant church. if your Pope's apology extends in sufficiency to the point that the Roman Catholic Church, and it's adherents herein, admit that it was in fact, and in purpose, in error- THAT IT WAS WRONG- and that it's supposed inerrancy is in fact an error, then I will happily be done with it and move on.
Without the understanding that the RCC has made mistakes, and will make more in the future, it is only a matter of time until she repeats herself. I cannot abide that, nor allow her the reign to make her way toward that end. Because of that, I will *not* move on.
It is not the atrocities, sir (ma'am?), as I have said already. It is the lack of admission, and the foolhardy belief of inerrancy, which cannot be defended in the face of such. If not for those, the atrocities themselves are long in the past, and the apologies would not even be needed.
As to the charity, I am prone to it, but if the apology brings with it no admission of institutional guilt (error), then the charity need not extend to the institution either, or so it would seem.
Excellent observations.
As I’ve said many times, there was certainly blame on all sides and I am happy to discuss what happened (call me strange, but medieval European history is probably my favorite subject). However, the discussion must be based in VERIFIABLE FACTS, not propaganda from some anti-Catholic book.
While we do not consider it civilized today, up until a couple hundred years ago, wars were the normal method of settling political disputes.
But the overall deaths from the wars of Religion (depending on when you start and end) could possible be in the range roamer mentioned (100 million or so). If you figure the disruption war causes on any subsistence society, most of the deaths are disease and starvation unrelated to fighting. I have read those numbers also, from scholars not apologists, and they are very hard to estimate. For instance, we know that vast parts of France were depopulated during the Hundred Years war (where England was backing one Pope and France another). Population estimates from the times before the war show that possibly 1 million or more were killed or displaced in that war.
So it ends up a question of definitions. What is considered a religious war?
The Crusades — excluding the horrendous sack of Constantinople and the entire debacle of the 4th one — were simply a noble war of liberation of the Holy Land, the war that achieved its objective (the Jerusalem Kingdom expired of neglect a century after Saladin agreed to the crusaders’ demands of free pilgrimage routes) and was lead with bravery and according to the norms of military conduct of the time.
One might question the unnecessary brutality of the wars of Reformation, but then one should begin by questioning the so-called reformation itself.
The Holy Inquisition in its full vigor is something modernity sorely lacks, as the scandal of pederast priests demonstrated.
When substantive arguments are lacking, attempts to defame the winning side often ensue. It is no big deal.
It and the history of the Early Church are some of my favorite winter reading!
If you think this pope is too hard on the heresy, re-read the letters to the Corinthians, or St. Ignatius’ letter to the Smyrneans I posted at 299, and they were not even written by popes.
Some of them were. But often as not they broke down into petty arguing about who got what. After the First Crusade, they all failed because 1. There was no chain of command that was recognized by all. and 2. There were was no goal that as to what they wanted to accomplish. Many saw it as an way to make money, or adventure.
A lot of the eastern Crusades (to the Holy Land) died out because one guy wanted to attack X, and another Y, and another just to go on a pilgrimage.
We've seen the methods of war in the 20c; the 21c, from what we've seen so far is not going to be a badminton match either. I don't think we are in any position to consider what is and what is not civilized.
The execution was awful. Also, the lack of support for the Kingdom of Jerusalem once it was established is scandalous. But to use the Cruisades as some kind of a rhetorical club against the Catholic Church is ridiculous.
Precisely. The papacy may have been in the middle of the Hundred Years War, but the war was between England and France for control of French territory.
And while the Thirty Years War started as a religious war, in reality it soon became a political war between the French kings and the Hapsburgs (Holy Roman Empire).
Kings fought wars for land, because land meant money and power. They may have used religion as a pretense, but it was always about land, money and power. To believe otherwise is to ignore history.
When the Crusades started, the purpose was to secure the Holy Land for Christianity. The popes of the time realized that the kings would want something in return and they were given free rein to take whatever they wanted.
The kings dreamed of even more wealth, so they offered some of it to their noblemen, who in turn impressed peasants into fighting.
Did some go to fight for the noble purpose of saving the Holy Land? Certainly, but most went for money.
Nevertheless, to blame this on the Church is pointless, because this was the ONLY way to save the Holy Land and from the moment the Crusades started, the Church really had no control over the execution.
Excellent analysis!
Exactly! Ecumenism is one-sided. All to the benefit of the Papal churches. "Separated Christians" according to the papacy are not really "Christians", they are to be "converted" to the Roman Church model of a Christian. No wonder so many condemn your Pope's definition of Christians.
The efforts to insure that FR increasingly becomes a Vatican department seem to never end.
That is not a part of the gospel of Christ and thusly is merely the meanderings of man stating what he thinks. It is not bindable on anyone.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.