Posted on 01/24/2014 3:54:59 PM PST by ebb tide
What has intrigued me most about Pope Francis is not the way in which Catholics -- well, most of them, anyway -- have embraced him but the way in which countless Protestants have moved into his fan club.
More is at play here than simple celebrity in our overwrought pop culture. At least, I hope so.
The Protestant fascination with him hasn't broken down the many theological, liturgical and structural barriers that still exist between Protestantism and Catholicism, but it has softened them a bit and it has caused some Protestants to want to figure out what makes Francis tick, what Jesuit theology is all about and what ground we Protestants might share in common with Catholics.
My own congregation is a good example of this phenomenon. Our pastor, Paul Rock, recently began a sermon series he's calling "Jesus, the Pope and a Protestant Walk Into a Bar." His sermons, which started Sunday, can be found here [1].
To alert people to this series, he posted this short video [2] on our church's website [1]. As Paul says in the video, "This is a pope who has become the people's pope. ... The fact that Pope Francis has been an inspiration to both Catholics and Protestants I think provides us a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at this Catholic-Protestant divide."
I suspect that the intense Protestant interest in Francis is a sign that deep in our protesting marrow, there is a yearning for unity and a latent sense of regret that it had to come to all that division in Martin Luther's time and that the divide has never been healed.
For good and sufficient reasons back then, insistent Catholic reformers broke away from Rome in what became known as the Protestant Reformation, and although countless feelings were hurt and vicious charges traded, it was surely a reluctant parting. The Luthers, the Ulrich Zwinglis and the John Calvins of the time first sought to fix what they thought had gone wrong in the church. But failing that, they felt they had no choice but to leave.
So off they went in a huff while the Catholics they left behind mostly shouted after them not to let the door slam them in the butt on the way out. It was sad, though perhaps avoidable, but we can't rewrite that history now.
No divorce happens because of what just one of the partners does, thinks or says. It's always a group failure, as it was in this case. But it's also true that no divorce happens without some residual regret.
Some of that residual regret is helping to fuel the Protestant fascination with Francis. Whether it will mean anything in the way of reconciliation over the long haul is unknown. But it's certain that no reconciliation will be possible if both Protestants and Catholics continue to deny the regret they feel and their hope for a different future.
To Protestants, one of the most attractive things about Francis is his humility, his willingness not to rely on, defend and protect all aspects of the hierarchical system of polity that has marked the papacy, especially in the time since Pope John XXIII. That system, at least to Protestant eyes, seems to be in tension with the idea straight from the mouth of Jesus that true leaders must first be servants.
Now Francis not only is saying exactly that, he's acting as if he believes it.
Protestant polity usually is more decentralized and democratic than the Roman system of governance, but that doesn't mean some Protestant leaders don't also fall into the trap of being insufferable monarchists and worldly kingdom-builders.
Today, however, when Protestants set aside that nonsense and focus on humbly seeking to follow the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ, they find they have been joined by a fellow pilgrim, Francis. And we should welcome each other on the journey.
[Bill Tammeus, a Presbyterian elder and former award-winning faith columnist for The Kansas City Star, writes the daily "Faith Matters" blog [3] for the Star's website and a monthly column for The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book, co-authored with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn, is They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust [4]. Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com [5].]
And Pope Francis hopes to drag the Church closer to the Protestant model. No wonder so many seem to be dazzled by him.
Quite a presumptuous statement for one who doesn't pray the Pater Noster.
“Most of the Catholic Church has voted with liberal Protestants and atheists for decades”
1956 - Eisenhower won the Catholic vote
1972 - Richard Nixon won the Catholic vote
1980 - Ronald Reagan won the Catholic vote
1984 - Ronald Reagan won the Catholic vote
2004 - George W. Bush won the Catholic vote
2012 - Obama won the Catholic vote 50% to 48%
over a Morman Republican, smallest winning
margin in the history of presidential politics.
That is correct, and the Catholic Pater Noster doesn't include that last line. So your complaint is unfounded.
Thanks for admitting it.
You skipped quite a few election cycles. Any reason why?
This is the sophomoric stuff that low-information Protestants spew out. You see, they simply can’t digest the intellectual, historical, and liturgical practices of the early Church or its early hierarchal structure to present a ONE single truth as given by Christ in the Great Commission to Peter and His disciples. The great works of Augustine, Aquinas, St. Ambrose, Cardinal Newman (a Convert to Catholicism); Benedict XVI, or Richard Neuhas (The late Great American Lutheran theological scholar who converted to Catholicism) simply goes over the heads of low-information Protestant Christians.
Protestant theology today is reduced to bits and pieces which any FourSquare Church corner street pastor from Rev. Wright to Joel Osteen to Jimmy Swaggart is allowed to pick up and promote as “the” truth when it fact it is “their “ own personal version of the truth.They crack open the Bible and do a “Billy Graham” and say they found the truth. At last count some 35,000 different denominations and expanding. These are all the wild and poisonous mushrooms that scatter around the great Mustard Tree.
"This is the sophomoric stuff that low-information Protestants spew out"...ah, the chance to impress those beneath his opinion of himself, has come. And gone. And we are left with a fleeting moment of comedic craving. Such as the fireplace suddenly losing a log as it rolls toward Steelfish's priceless rug, only to have him stomp out the sparks with his tawny taupe driving moccassins. While in desperation he pours his snifter of brandy onto his shoes and watches in horror as they poof straight out of existence. Never one to find the humor or irony in a situation he has claimed as the moral high ground, he grasps aimlessly toward the front door, smoke billowing and Bach just a distant memory. Asking us to find our own way out, he collapses into a corner, cursing the low-information Protestant Christians for not knowing the basics of fire prevention and sharing with him. After all, he cannot know everything. He was prepared to share his intellectual, historical, and liturgical practices with the heathens. The least they could have done was bring a fire extinguisher. Must he do EVERYTHING?
Thanks for the verification on how the members of the Catholic church, vote with the pro-abortion left.
Take the illegals out of the equation and Romney would have won the Catholics going away. Romney beat Obama by 19% among Catholics that actually go to church on a regular basis, as in white Catholics.
The Fishwrap? Usually not worth reading?
Thanks.
You’re pointing to 6 Presidential elections in the last 56 years, and there’s a lot more to it than Presidential elections. In Congressional elections Catholics go for Democrats or moderate Republicans. The excitement for Rick Santorum wasn’t from Catholics, but evangelicals. Democrats weren’t at all nervous about him getting the nomination and drawing away Catholics from their party.
LOL! You haven’t discovered the search feature on FR?
Neither is the USCCB junk that some people post.
Petty comment.
Obama got 76% of the low information hispanics that identify as Catholic, who no more have been catechized and know the doctrine of the Catholic Church than the man in the moon. They vote for whomever can promise them the most and spout off about wanting to tear down the borders so granpma Maria, grandpa Juan and uncle Mario can join them in the states. And the vast majority of them are family-oriented who definitely do not believe in aborting their children or homosexual “marriage”. They will vote for whomever promises them the most and that is always democrats. How many times have you heard a republican say that hispanics should be in the republican party because by and large they are social conservatives. That’s why you have the Christies, Ryan, Boehner and Juan McCain’s of the world pushing for amnesty. They want that vote and they could care less how many illegals flood the United States.
In other words, more than 40% of faithful, white, church-attending Catholics are still abortion-advocating Obama supporters, rendering them latae-sententae excommunicated right out of the gate. What percentage out of 70 million do you think remains? I arrived at a figure of 7%.
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