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Posted on 08/09/2020 7:46:24 AM PDT by MurphsLaw
We should stop trying to evangelize Protestants, some Catholics say. “Let’s get our own house clean first, before we invite our fellow Christians in,” someone commented on a recent article of mine that presented a Catholic rejoinder to a prominent Baptist theologian. Another reader argued that, rather than trying to persuade Protestants to become Catholic, we should “help each other spread God’s love in this world that seems to be falling to pieces before our eyes.” As a convert from Protestantism, actively engaged in ecumenical dialogue, I’ve heard this kind of thinking quite frequently. And it’s dead wrong.
One common argument in favor of scrapping Catholic evangelism towards Protestants is that the Catholic Church, mired in sex-abuse and corruption scandals, liturgical abuses, heretical movements, and uneven catechesis, is such a mess that it is not, at least for the moment, a place suitable for welcoming other Christians.
There are many problems with this. For starters, when has the Church not been plagued by internal crises? In the fourth century, a majority of bishops were deceived by the Arian heresy. The medieval Church suffered under the weight of simony and a lax priesthood, as well as the Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism, culminating in three men claiming, simultaneously, to be pope. The Counter-Reformation, for all its catechetical, missionary and aesthetic glories, was still marred by corruption and heresies (Jansenism). Catholicism has never been able to escape such trials. That didn’t stop St. Martin of Tours, St. Boniface, St. Francis de Sales, St. Ignatius Loyola, or St. Teresa of Calcutta from their missionary efforts.
The “Catholics clean house” argument also undermines our own theology. Is the Eucharist the “source and summit of the Christian life,” as Lumen Gentium preaches, or not? If it is, how could we in good conscience not direct other Christians to its salvific power? Jesus Himself declared: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53) Was our Lord misrepresenting the Eucharist?
Or what of the fact that most Protestant churches allow contraception, a mortal sin? Or that Protestants have no recourse to the sacraments of penance or last rites? To claim Protestants aren’t in need of these essential parts of the Catholic faith is to implicitly suggest we don’t need them either.
* Moreover, in the generations since the Reformation, Rome has been able to win many Protestants back to the fold who have made incalculable contributions to the Church. St. John Henry Newman’s conversion ushered in a Catholic revival in England, and gave us a robust articulation of the concept of doctrinal development. The conversion of French Lutheran pastor Louis Bouyer influenced the teachings of Vatican II. Biblical scholar Scott Hahn’s conversion in the 1980s revitalized lay study of Holy Scripture.
Another popular argument in favor of limiting evangelization of Protestants involves the culture war. Catholics and theologically conservative Protestants, some claim, share significant common ground on various issues: abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, religious freedom, etc. Secularism, the sexual revolution, and anti-religious progressives represent an existential threat to the survival of both Catholics and Protestants, and thus we must work together, not debate one another. “Let’s hold back any criticism of them,” a person commenting on my article wrote. “Believe me, in the times that we are in, we need to all hang together, or we will definitely hang separately on gallows outside our own churches.”
This line of thought certainly has rhetorical force: we don’t have the luxury of debating with Protestants when the progressivists are planning our imminent demise! Ecumenical debate is a distraction from self-preservation. One problem with this argument is that it reduces our Christian witness to a zero-sum game – we have to focus all our efforts on fighting secular progressivism, or we’ll fail. Yet the Church has many missions in the public square – that Catholics invest great energy in the pro-life movement doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also focus our efforts on other important matters: health-care, education, ensuring religious freedom, or fighting poverty and environmental degradation. All of these, in different ways, are a part of human flourishing. Even if we consider some questions more urgent than others, none of them should be ignored.
Besides, there is a vast difference between mere polemics and charitable, fruitful discussions aimed at resolving disagreements. The former can certainly cause bad blood. The latter, however, can actually foster unity and clarity regarding our purposes. Consider how much more fruitful our fight against the devastation of the sexual revolution would be if we persuaded Protestants that they need to reject things like contraception and the more permissive stance towards divorce that they have allowed to seep into their churches. Consider how non-Christians could learn from charitable ecumenical conversations that don’t devolve into name-calling and vilification.
Finally, abandoning or minimizing the evangelizing of Protestants is to fail to recognize how their theological and philosophical premises have contributed to the very problems we now confront. As Brad Gregory’s book The Unintended Reformation demonstrates, the very nature of Protestantism has contributed to the individualism, secularism, and moral relativism of our age. A crucial component to our Catholic witness, then, is helping Protestants to recognize this, since even when they have the best intentions, their very paradigm undermines their contributions to collaborating with us in the culture war.
I for one am very grateful that Catholics – many of them former Protestants – persuaded me to see the problems inherent to Protestantism, and the indisputable truths of Catholicism. My salvation was at stake. I also found and married a devout Catholic woman, and am raising Catholic children. The Catholic tradition taught me how to pray, worship, and think in an entirely different way. It pains me to think what my life would be like if I hadn’t converted to Catholicism.
Why bother to evangelize devout Protestants? Because they are people like me.
Oh; HE will have; if it’s OK with Mary!
No; it's not.
Call Peter pebble, sand, rock, cobble, stone, boulder or mountain - it STILL will not place him as the head of any supposed church that Jesus started.
26. "Gens quæ non servierit illi, peribit; gentes destitutæ tantæ Matris auxilio, destituuntur auxilio Filii et totius curi’‘ coelestis."— De Laud. B. M. I. 4.
Cardinal Hugo http://fatima.org/crusader/cr38/cr38pg3.asp
Translation: "that those who do not serve Mary will not be saved; for those who are deprived of the help of this great Mother are also deprived of that of Her Son and of the whole court of heaven."
WOW!
Is this guy a HERETIC or WHAT?!?!?
You ready to go virtual on the Bible? or ignore those pages that would diminish Rome's power over the ignorant?
I guess it was Rome's first pope; Peter; that taught at LEAST seven different versions of it to seven churches in Asia.
Revelation chapters 1-3
And just why does God allow His created church to elect men like your current pope to run it?
HMMMmmm...
That is the argument, about what Peter/rock means, as you indicated in your comment. I’m only pointing the issue out, not taking sides.
The more interesting interpretation is the Hebrew word for interpreting/solving... a very play on the name Peter, hence the link to that verb.
You forgetting or purposefully omitting the power he gave go the Apostles after the Resurrection in the upper room. That is exactly where the sacrament was first born.
Your belief matches what Jesus’s enemies said about him.
Keep reading past rock. You’ll see that he does build his church on his rock, Peter.
“ You forgetting or purposefully omitting the power he gave go the Apostles after the Resurrection in the upper room. That is exactly where the sacrament was first born.”
.....
Read the passage in Greek, and you will learn it says something very different from what you claim.
Your question;”And just why does God allow His created church to elect men like your current pope to run it?”
Good question, but Jesus works with the poor, sinners and the least of us to accomplish his goals. Jesus has patience and so we need to wait and see the results.
God allows His Revelations to be fulfilled in a way that man does not expect or manage to anticipate.
Jesus is angry at the sinfulness of man and as well as at those that have abandoned their faith. He is warning us that the Divine Word of Sacred Scripture has been profaned and the Commandments of God’s laws are easily forgotten and easily falsified.
Evil is becoming manifest even more in the world as the demonic hosts cling to those who welcome them.
7 churches in the prophecy as “7” symbolizes the totality, completeness and is addressing the entire church.
I’m Protestant and believe the Lord’s Supper is spiritual, as in “God is spirit,” and so not merely symbolic according to the ordinary use of the word, which commonly means the figures of speech devised by the natural man in uninspired writing.
God doesn’t borrow from nature, after all, to say that His children are like sheep and His Son is our Shepherd, but He created sheep expressly to show us what we’re like in our relationship to Him. Same thing with how the incredibly beautiful and awesome dove represents the Holy Spirit, and so on.
In John 6, what Jesus says is spiritually true. But what Roman Catholics ignore is that Jesus revealed truths to believers, including also taking His disciples aside at times. Here He is speaking to people that He knows are hardened unbelievers and it’s time to demonstrate them as being so. They’ve seen His miracles but still have worldly motives and want to dictate to Him what they want from Him.
Similarly, earlier in John, Jesus calls Himself the temple when speaking to those in hardened unbelief. That isn’t meant fully literally in the natural sense of the word either. And the gospels describe Him as speaking in figures and parables so that those who reject Him don’t understand.
Then, too, there’s the matter of the Catholic belief on faith and works, which reminds me of restoring felons’ voting rights because they’ve supposedly “paid their debt to society.”
Merely serving out a prison sentence, which is likely against one’s will, at great financial cost and burden to society, while one is doing nothing to even try to repair the damage one’s done to victims and society, to the extent that might even be possible, all the while perhaps not even being truly repentant, does not in and of itself mean one has truly and fully “paid one’s debt to society.” It merely means one has completed a prison sentence without new charges to keep him or her in prison longer on a new sentence, and society is now allowing that person an opportunity to live as law abiding once again. And it’s similarly error to consider that crime can be morally purchased like legitimate products if one is willing to “do the time” to “pay for it”. There is no work that we can do, ever, to in any way earn our salvation, in whole or part, which makes God a debtor to us after we have sinned and rebelled against Him. To be reconciled to Him and do His will is just what’s truly best for us, and what brings us true happiness, even in that we get to fellowship with Him, and merely our “reasonable service” as well. Giving up our rebellion towards Him, being able to serve Him, and being delivered from Hell eternally, aren’t sacrifices on our part.
There aren’t tens of thousands of Protestant denominations. The primary source for that false claim also says there are over 200 Catholic denominations.
On the Lord’s Supper, how much sense does it make to think that the Lord would reveal doctrine to hardened unbelievers, casting pearls before swine? Over and over the gospels say that Jesus responded to those He knew were unbelievers in parables and figures, not explaining things to them because of their unbelief.
Well stated. Amen!
Okay, I reject the Roman Catholic's interpretation/version of Jesus' teachings and, according to your OWN Catechism, I should follow the dictates of my own conscience. Or do you also reject your Catechism?
It is in line with Jesus style of teaching, that of using metaphors to explain spiritual truths to those following Him.
Don’t forget that He also told us that we had to take up our cross daily and follow Him.
Should we then be literally crucified on a literal cross every single day, just as He was?
What about cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye if they offend you or cause you to sin?
Do you expect people to literally HATE their mother and father, sister, and brother, and even their very own lives?
Interesting, a non-Christian Org religion is wondering if they should try to pull born agains away from the Spirit of God abiding in their born again spirits.
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