It Came From The Roman Church: Catholic horror stories told by Evangelicals & how to respond

This Rock/ Catholic Answers via Petersnet ^ | David Mills

[Polycarp]

Title:	It Came From The Roman Church . . .
Author:	David Mills
Title:	It Came From The Roman Church . . .
Larger Work:	This Rock
Pages:	12 - 15
Publisher & Date:	Catholic Answers, Inc., San Diego, CA, April 2002
Includes:	Identical text with no graphics.
Description:	Catholic horror stories told by Evangelicals (and ex-Catholics) and how to respond to them.

"It Came From The Roman Church . . . "

Don't Flee From Catholic Horror Stories

By David Mills

In the brief time since my family became Catholics, some of my Evangelical friends have gone out of their way to tell me Catholic horror stories. They will tell me about some near-pagan example of Catholic folk religion they once saw, or an oppressive priest (reactionary or liberal) they once knew, or a Catholic family next door who went to Mass regularly but didn't know anything about the Bible and the faith, or a married friend who happily carried on a long affair supposedly by going to confession after each visit to his girlfriend.

Some of them like to talk about "recovering Catholics" who were supposedly so horribly damaged by growing up Catholic that they just had to become Protestants. (They are always surprisingly unskeptical about these stories.) These people suffered by being made to feel guilt and shame about everything they did or to feel that they could not ever satisfy all the rules God insisted they obey before he would love them.

This is both a personal and an evangelical problem for Catholics. Almost any Catholic who talks very long to a serious Evangelical will be told in some way that though the Pope is a wonderful man, and some Catholics really love the Lord, and thank God for the Catholics in the pro-life movement, the average Catholic parish is either a den of iniquity or simply dead spiritually.

The Evangelical will often claim, by contrast, that Evangelical churches are alive, and, since our Lord said we shall know them by their fruits (Matt. 7:16), Evangelicals are the real Christians. (This ignores, of course, that what Jesus said applied to individual teachers, not to movements or theological systems.) The implication is that if you're a Catholic you've been had.

It is probably worse for a convert, because his friends sometimes speak as if he were either a dullard who hasn't noticed the problems or a romantic who refuses to see them. "You won't live in Rome, you know," one close friend told me — meaning, I suppose, that the Catholic faith I would encounter wouldn't be pure — as if this would be shocking news to me, the mere stating of which would bring me to my senses.

What To Think

How can one respond to this line of argument?

First, you must admit that the Evangelical has enough facts to make a reasonable charge. The truth is that many Catholics do not lead a visibly faithful life. Most, for example, do not obey the Church's teaching on contraception. Few (amazingly to me) go to confession.

On the other hand, many Evangelicals and their churches appear to be models of faithfulness. They study Scripture, try to order their lives by its teaching, share their faith with others, and at some sacrifice minister to the world in many ways. We can learn much from them.

Second, you must listen with sympathy yet question the horror stories. Most of us have trouble doing this, because something in our culture trains us to accept any story of suffering without question and to assume that the Church must have been guilty of almost anything it is accused of.

Take the stories of "recovering" Catholics. Of course, some people have suffered real abuse and have been treated badly. But most of these stories I have heard from the allegedly "recovering" Catholics themselves do not ring true.

What I hear, beneath the emotion and the anger, is usually one of two things. The first is an unwillingness to grow up and forgive what seem to be the sort of offenses we have all suffered from parents or teachers or pastors. The second is an unwillingness to live the Catholic life, leading to a desire to blame the Catholic Church rather than admit this. I say this because the offenses they describe were often surprisingly minor, even trivial, and were often simply attempts — some clearly clumsy or unkind, but some apparently not — to get them to live a fully Catholic life.

For example, many (I do not know how to put this delicately) left the Church when they wanted to remarry after a divorce, and the conjunction of their remarriage and their enlightenment is too convenient for me to accept the latter at face value. (In my experience, it is rare to find an ex-Catholic in Episcopal churches who is not divorced and remarried, and friends tell me that this is also true in many Evangelical churches.)

And of course the Catholic life is a difficult one to live and some people do not want to try. My wife works a few hours a week in the nursery of a budding megachurch nearby, and several of the other women she works with were once Catholics. They have all told her they left the Church because they "found Jesus" elsewhere. I suggested she look them in the eye and say, "You're using contraception, aren't you?" (She didn't.)

Now, I do not mean that you ought to tell the "recovering Catholic" that you do not believe his story. That would be unkind and perhaps drive him yet further from the Church. I suggest only that you have a mental reservation, based on a reasonable reading of the evidence.

Hard To Argue With

Third, you must remember that the Evangelical has a different idea of the local church. He is comparing apples with oranges and complaining that the oranges aren't red enough.

For the Evangelical, the local church is primarily a gathered community of those of like mind and social class that forms a fairly complete alternative community for its members. For the Catholic, the local church is primarily the place we — people of different minds and classes — gather to meet the Lord in the Mass and from which we go out to exercise our vocations in the world.

The Evangelical church will therefore produce lots of public ministries, from Bible studies to short-term mission trips. The Catholic church may or may not have a lot of these ministries, but in either case they are not essential to its life and not stressed in the way they are in the Evangelical church.

The time and energy Evangelical put into their churches' public ministries Catholics may be putting into other, less visible religious activities. They may go to daily Mass when the Evangelical would go to a midweek Bible study, but for some reason going to Mass is not counted as a sign of "life."

Fourth, you must remember the practical differences between Catholics and Evangelicals. There is less attachment to a particular local church in Protestant circles because these churches are more transitory: They get created, split, and cease to be much more regularly than do Catholic parishes.

The Evangelical church therefore has to provide its people with the nourishment that deeper roots provide those who have lived there longer. The type of social interaction that the Catholic may have in his extended family the Evangelical may have to find in his church. The Evangelical church will seem livelier, though it is only giving its members what the Catholics have already. Its social homogeneity helps a great deal as well. There is more potential for interaction among its members due to greater similarities, interests, goals, et cetera. More diversity — which you find in many Catholic parishes — means less potential for interaction.

Because the two churches are different in theory and in practice, the Evangelical church can be presented as livelier than the Catholic church next door, because its life is much more public, while the life of the second is largely hidden from view. The Catholic parish may be producing saints by the dozen, but it may not produce enough visible efforts to get credit for "life."

Fifth, you must remember that as a Catholic you are tied down in a way the Evangelical is not. Anyone who doesn't meet the standards of holiness or zeal required in a particular Evangelical church may either leave or be disinvited to attend. The Evangelical can simply declare that the offender is not a "true Christian." But Catholics cannot disown bad Catholics. A Catholic is stuck with every other Catholic in the world, no matter how badly he behaves.

Besides this disadvantage, the Catholic Church does not even get to claim her own saints on her own behalf. Because they feel any good Christian must in some sense be one of them, Evangelicals will often adopt a Mother Teresa as a sort of honorary Evangelical and try to take credit for her as well. (This, I should make clear, has happened to me in discussions with my Evangelical friends.)

The Evangelical World

Sixth, you must realize that though there is much to admire in Evangelicalism, things are not exactly as they seem. A Catholic will have to note that even the most conservative Evangelicals have capitulated completely to the contraceptive mentality and for the most part to the divorce culture as well. Almost all neglect the sacramental life, and though they all recognize the authority of Scripture, they are enmeshed in intractable disagreements over what it means.

And even one of their own pollsters, George Barna, has found that they are doctrinally a confused body. Over one-third do not believe in Jesus' physical Resurrection, and over half do not believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit. About two in five "born again" Christians believe that "it does not matter what religious faith you follow because all faiths teach similar lessons about life," and from half to three-quarters believe "there is no such thing as absolute truth."

I bring this up not to put down our Evangelical brothers and sisters, who on most issues are our closest allies and often are models of faithfulness. I bring it up only to encourage those who have been left tongue-tied by the sort of argument I've described. Out of charity, you should not be quick to quote these statistics in return but will, I hope, be able to listen with some serenity to someone put down the Catholic Church as inferior to Evangelicalism.

A Sign

Finally, you must see that realism about the Catholic Church implies a surprising proof of her claims. My Evangelical friends think that comparing lax Catholics to lively Evangelicals will make me an Evangelical. Their horror stories may be disturbing to me personally, but not to my faith. They do not make me doubt the claims of the Catholic Church. Fallen men in groups rarely keep a high standard and almost never do so over any length of time.

As a barely Christianized teenager, listening to classmates in my social studies class sneer at Christianity because the Allies and the Germans both sang hymns as they killed each other, I thought that such a thing was only what one would expect. That Christians in 1915 thought that God was on their side did not seem to me to have much to do with the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God who rose from the dead almost nineteen hundred years before.

Laxity seems to me almost inevitable in something as big and as old and as embedded in the culture as the Catholic Church. But I do not suggest that Catholics console themselves with a realistic view of the Catholic Church as a human institution, because in the body of Christ sociological inevitability does not have the last word.

I began to love the Catholic Church in part because she kept reviving when she seemed to be dying and men of the world were writing her obituary. Time after time, when sociologists predicted her death, she exploded into new life. These revivals have always seemed to me a sign of her unique divine life. We are, I think, at the beginning of such a revival even now.

What To Do

But what to do, when a friend tells you Catholic horror stories? It is trying, being treated as a dolt or a fool. I have found the best way to respond is simply to say, gently, "I'm not stupid, you know." This will usually send your friend into retreat — though not always, I've found. While he tries to apologize you can begin to tell him about the one Church whose status is not affected by her members' sins and failings.

And then you can admit that most Catholics are not perfect Catholics and explain that in the Catholic Church you have found all the graces by which God will help you pursue God. You can say that you love and respect your Evangelical brothers and sisters, but only in the Catholic Church are these graces to be found in their full range and power — which is why all the horror stories in the world will not discourage you.

David Mills is the author of Knowing the Real Jesus (Servant/Charis [2001]) and a senior editor of Touchstone: A Magazine of Mere Christianity.

©2002 by Catholic Answers, Inc.

[Salvation]

So much of the rest of Mass is from scripture.

ALL of the Catholic Mass is from Scripture! Ask your priest to let you look at the Lectionary sometime. Every line has a Biblical reference, no kidding!

[Salvation]

If they really believed sola scriptura, their preachers would just step up to the pulpit, read some scripture, and then sit down.

ROTFLOL!

[Desdemona]

Sal, I know. I know. I know.

I've found every doggone quote at one time or another.

[Polycarp]

and did not let other MEN influence me

Oh, sure you did. Its all about interpretation. I followed the interpretation of scripture of the earliest Christians. You followed a later interpretation of men who came along 1500 years later.

Neither of us simply read scripture and decided its proper interpretation ourselves. We both had guides, whether we admit it or not. Mine were early Christians. Yours were reformers (whose interpretations were in large part antithetical to the interpretations of early Christians.)

No one is so naive as to think the way they interpret scripture is based only on their reading of scripture alone. It is always colored by the interpretations of those they trust for guidance.

I don't trust the reformers, you do. That is fine, but don't try to tell me your interpretation doesn't come out of the protestant reformation, because prior to it your interpretation simply did not exist.

[SoothingDave]

You know, Dave, I don't think Catholics my age and younger know enough about the Faith to teach it. Everything has been so dismantled, a lot of people know "Don't eat meat on Fridays during Lent" but not why. Everyone goes to Mass on Ash Wednesday and the number that actually think it's really a Holy Day is astounding. The concept and real reason for Reconciliation (sp?) has been so distorted as to make it unrecognizable. I'm tell you guys, I'm learning a lot here.

My family always went on Ash Wednesday, it wasn't until I looked at a calendar a few years back that it struck me that it wasn't "required." I don't know your age, but I am a mere 33. I have learned tremendously in just the past few years.

SD

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

In your opinion:)

Becky

[Right_Wing_Mole_In_Seattle]

If they really believed sola scriptura, their preachers would just step up to the pulpit, read some scripture, and then sit down.

The concept of preaching during worship is well laid out in scripture. You see that's what sola scriptura means. That scripture is the standard. When we apply this standard to worship it means we don't:
- worship Mary or idolatrous icons,
- pretend to sacrifice Christ again and again,
- add unbiblical sacraments,
- pray to "saints" instead of God,
- etc., etc., etc...

[sitetest]

Dear allend,

LOL!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!

My wife and I got a very big laugh out of that one!

sitetest

[Desdemona]

"I don't know your age, but I am a mere 33."

I'm almost there. Nine more days. Scary.

[malakhi]

Lost souls.

Uh huh. What happened to the concept of "invincible ignorance"? Is the reasoning of CCC #838ff. just trotted out for public consumption, and extra ecclesiam nulla salis reserved for Catholics speaking among themselves?

You could cut the sanctimony in here with a knife.

[malakhi]

You could cut the sanctimony in here with a knife.

I'd like to add that this tone dissipated after the first 20 or so posts. I'm not trying to tar everyone here with this brush.

[RobbyS]

I suggest you read, The Book, a History of the Bible by Christopher de Hamel. It is about the way the Bible was brought together as a book. What suprised me was how available the Bible was from the 13th Century On. Portage Bibles (roughly 8x12) in very small print (with the aid of magnifying glasses) on very thin parchment were distubuted by the thousands. What is new is that these are all complete Bibles. Until then complete Bibles were rare and very large. "Most biblical manuscripts in general use had until non been separate volumes, or sets of volumes." The model for the new portable Bible was the "Paris Bible," which organized the books of the Bible in the order we now know. The new format was taken by by the friars and carried it around in their pockets and used it to preach from. "A 13th Century Bible might have 500 or so leafs but yet be no thicker than many paperbacks today." The Bible was frequently the companian to a breviary, which was about the same size.

I found this paragraph very interesting:

The Paris Bible [expecially] appealed to the Friars [because] it was definitive. This was especially relevant to the Dominicans, who were fouinded to stand against heresy. Pope Gregory IX charged them with the rooting out of the Albigenses, the hererical movement...that denied the literal truth of the Bible, especially the Old Testament.The Bible of the 1230s had brought all of established Scripture into one book. The friars immediately saw its value as a symbol, a physical three-dimensional object which represented and enclosed the totslity of the Word of God. It was the Dominicans who introduced the Correctiones, not exactly corrections but an attempt to bring comprehensiveness and consistency. Europe was facing internal heresy for the first time. the friars response was a book, the Bible, which defined authority. They must have traveled with it, shown and shaken it, and doubtless thumped their pulpits with it. This brought the defibition of the Scriptures as a single and sacred entity into almost every village of Europe, and that legacy is still with us. "

The Paris Bible was also a study Bible, easy to research. The Dominicans at St. Jacques devised a vast verbals concordance based on it. All medieval sermons are based on Bible readings and quotations. "A friar..standing the marketplace and preaching to poor people, needed to invoke Scripture by more than general allusion. Doorstep evangelists do the same toiday: urgently piling one scriptural citation upon another...."

Anyway one thinks that the people of the Middle Ages never heard the Bible preached has been misinformed! Furthermore, every literate person--that is anyone who read Latin-- could buy a Bible from the booksellers. This is to leave aside the picture books that told the Bible stories and the windows and murals in the churches, and the mystery plays. The average townsman of the late Middle Ages knew the Bible much better than the average university student today.

[Polycarp]

And of course, as a former Catholic and practicing Jew, you are completely objective in your sanctimonious evaluation of this room too, huh?

[SoothingDave]

Uh huh. What happened to the concept of "invincible ignorance"? Is the reasoning of CCC #838ff. just trotted out for public consumption, and extra ecclesiam nulla salis reserved for Catholics speaking among themselves?

Invincible Ignorance is not a catchall which excuses everything. It explains that certain people may be saved by this reason, it does not ensure that every person who is not a Catholic qualifies.

Think about it. Not only do you need to be "ignorant," which is utterly lacking in knowledge and understanding, you also have to possess this ignorance in an "invincible" way. Any given person is not guaranteed to meet either of these requirements.

Culpability remains.

You could cut the sanctimony in here with a knife.

I'm sorry you don't approve of Catholics sharing information.

SD

[Polycarp]

unable to distinguish your interpretation of scripture from scripture itself

The fatal error of all "sola scriptura" Christians. They honestly think that their own personal interpretation of scripture is the only proper understanding of scripture, and thus take upon themselves the mantle of infallibilty that they so loath in Roman Catholicism.

[SoothingDave]

I'd like to add that this tone dissipated after the first 20 or so posts. I'm not trying to tar everyone here with this brush.

Sorry, I didn't see this part.

SD

[malakhi]

And of course, as a former Catholic and practicing Jew, you are completely objective in your sanctimonious evaluation of this room too, huh?

I am entitled to my opinion. Read replies 1-20, and contrast the tone with 21-40. Big difference.

[Polycarp]

When we apply this standard to worship it means we don't ... etc., etc., etc...

Please read and learn:

"I soon saw that [my brother, professional anti-Catholic] James [White] was fighting a caricature of the Catholic Church: his arguments attacked a misinterpretation of Catholic teaching. He did a great job destroying teachings he wrongly ascribed to the Catholic Church, but his anti-Catholic rhetoric left the real teachings of the Church unscathed... [just as you have done here, Right_Wing_Mole_In_Seattle] Rather than turn me away from the Catholicism, my brother’s books only confirmed and deepened my interest in it."