Religion Confusion, Part 4

Protestant Christianity

This is perhaps the biggest part of the problem (especially in the Western world) since it represents division within Christianity itself which, as we have seen, was intended by Christ to be the definitive witness to the truth throughout the whole world until His return at the end of time.

Indeed, in the generation following the Resurrection of Christ, as the Church was just beginning to set its theological “ducks in a row” (formulating ways to convey the truths of the faith in an ordered and systematic fashion), St. Paul (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) made the astute observation that Christ’s Church had, in a mystical (not just metaphorical) sense, all the essential characteristics of a living human body (cf. 1 Cor 12:4-27). The Church, quite simply, is the Body of Christ on earth (and more besides). Christ’s body, once raised from the dead, cannot die again. And so the Church, established as it is by the eternal Son of God to be His presence and witness in the world and to speak with His full authority until the end of time, is indefectible: the Church cannot be destroyed, either from without or from within (many have tried to do so, all in vain), and will stand forever. This is accomplished not by the resourcefulness, ingenuity or efforts of any of her members, but solely by the power of God maintaining her in existence. (Indeed, it has been observed by many a saint that the Church continues to exist, not because of her human members, but in spite of them.)

Christ Himself prayed to the Father, in what is called his High Priestly Prayer (Gospel of John, Chapter 17), for the unity of the Church (Jn 17:9-23; see especially verse 21). He prayed not for Christians as individuals (so any particular Christian can, by his own choosing (free will), sin and fall away from faith in Christ), but rather for the Church as a body, as an organic whole. And if you read this passage carefully, moreover, you will notice that the kind of unity he intends is not merely a cordial agreement on a few points of doctrine, but the intimate unity of the Trinity Itself. Even as Jesus and the Father are One in the bond of love which is the Holy Spirit, so is the Church called to be One. Indivisible, by Christ’s own word!

Is it possible that Jesus Christ prayed in vain to His Father? Is He incapable of keeping His Church unified in the Truth? Did he not already know the shortcomings of man, their weakness, self-centeredness and pride? Didn’t He know what the future would hold? Is He not God? It is absurd to believe in the divinity of Christ, to believe the words of Sacred Scripture, and at the same time to think that the Church He established could ever be divided or destroyed.

So what are we to think of all the Protestant “churches” that abound today? Are modern day Protestants considered “heretics” by the Catholic Church? No, they are not. While some of their doctrines are objectively heretical [i.e. incompatible with Apostolic Teaching], Protestants themselves are not considered heretics since they never held the fullness of Catholic faith to begin with. Theirs is not a formal denial of something they once professed as true. People who were raised Catholic, on the other hand, and who chose to abandon Catholicism for a Protestant denomination are heretics in this formal sense, but most Protestants never knew the truths of the faith firsthand and so cannot be faulted for their separation and God does not hold them accountable for this kind of ignorance. (For this reason the Church prefers the term “separated brethren.”) Most Protestants learned about Jesus and the Bible as children from their parents and teachers and have grown through their lives in the love of God and have benefited spiritually through their fellowship with other Christians. All this is very good!

But there is a fly in the ointment. Through no fault of their own, they lack the fullness of the truth and the means of grace promised by Christ to the members of His Body the Church.

Can Protestants get to heaven? Absolutely! (But so can a pagan who tries to form his conscience and follow it in accordance with the Natural Law (cf. Rom 2:13-16) through his cooperation with the actual graces God sends to every human being which confirm him in the love of his neighbor and guide him to his final destiny of union with God.) Protestants have much more going for them spiritually than the “good pagan,” since they already know and love God and His Son Jesus Christ, revere His Word in the Bible, and have the sacramental graces that come to them through baptism. But by the same token, they have the greater responsibility to follow the graces they have received out of obedience to God’s will (to whom much is given, much more is expected), even if these lead somewhere they might not want to go.

Can Catholics go to hell? Absolutely! Just because someone lives amid the fullness of truth and grace present in the Church, he may not avail himself of these gifts and wind up neglecting the condition of his soul, choosing instead to pursue the fleeting pleasures offered by the three sources of temptation: the world, the flesh and the devil. If he does not repent before he dies, hell will be his final destination.

Be that as it may, objectively speaking there can be only ONE Church in any Biblical sense. Those entities referred to as individual “churches” in the New Testament (e.g. “the churches of Galatia” (Galatians 1:2)) are what today are called local dioceses under their respective bishops—which even Canon Law today calls “particular churches” (can. 368ff). These New Testament churches were founded in various cities by the Apostles and their collaborators in spreading the gospel, and they were all unified in faith, governance and worship; they were NOT some ancient analogue of today’s Protestant denominations, each believing its own set of doctrines and “doing its own thing.”

The One Church must also be the Original Church, the one that was there at the beginning when Peter spoke to the crowd from the upper room (Acts 2), not one that came into existence at a later time. It is a fact of history that every church that is acknowledged as Christian must eventually trace its origin back to the Catholic Church. At some point in time its founders broke away from communion with the Catholic Church (or from some other church that itself broke from the Catholic Church). (The original Church founded by Jesus was known as “catholic” at least by the beginning of the 2nd Century as indicated by the Letter of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, ca. AD 107.)

But why would anyone who claims to believe in Christ, desires to follow and obey Him, and who believes in the inspired word of the Bible, want to break away from unity with the Church Christ established? (I am not speaking here of those who were brought up as Protestants, only those who originally broke away.) Jesus told his original disciples that they spoke with His own authority, and that those who refused to listen to the Church were to be considered as heathens (i.e. outside of the Church) (cf. Matt 18:17). St. Paul said that “the pillar and foundation of the truth” was, not Scripture, but “the Church” (1 Tim 3:15). The Bible, indeed, comes to us through the Church. So anyone who says, “I can’t trust the Church, I only trust the Bible,” doesn’t really know the Bible. What he is actually doing (probably without realizing it) is setting himself up as a judge of the Church, favoring his own personal interpretation of certain isolated passages of the Bible as alleged evidence of the defection of the Church from the truth given by Christ and the Apostles. But nowhere does the Bible—even remotely—make any provision for anyone to judge the Church. It’s always the visible Church who passes judgment on her members, not the other way around (e.g. Matt 18:17 and Acts 15, especially verses 19, 22 & 28).

Peter himself informs us, “No one can interpret any prophesy of Scripture by himself,” and that the Scriptures “contain some obscure passages which the ignorant and unstable misinterpret to their own ruin” (2 Pet 1:20; 3:16). It is for the Church as a body (under the authority of Peter and his successors, the popes) to interpret the Scriptures and formulate doctrine (cf. Jn 21:15-17). Individual Christians (even priests and bishops) lack this authority and presume upon it “to their own ruin” and that of anyone else who follows their erroneous teachings. To be sure, individual Christians are strongly encouraged to read and understand (interpret) the Bible, but only by the principles and within the bounds or limits set down by the Church’s ordinary teaching authority (magisterium). They are to read and interpret the Bible with the Church, not “by themselves” (formulating their own novel interpretations that are incompatible with what the Church has already laid out).

So what gives; what’s behind it all? Well, certainly the issue of ordinary human pride comes into play. After all, who really wants to submit to the authority of another person if he can avoid it? But that’s just the point, isn’t it? Jesus knew that no one would obey the Church over the long haul unless he knew he was under a divine command to do so. The temptation to say “I’ve got a better idea: I’ll just do it my way” is just too great for us fallen creatures.

Understanding human nature as He does, Jesus also knew that without a single, living, identifiable, “final authority” for settling the inevitable disputes, anarchy and error would soon erupt and destroy His Church. So He set up his Church with an identifiable and unmistakable visible hierarchy (human structure) with a single living head, and endowed the Church with the gift of infallibility (“the Spirit of truth” Jn 14:16-17) so it could not officially proclaim as truth what is actually false, so no one could say “Gee, I didn’t know.”

But sometimes people have been known to give in to the temptation to intellectual pride and the illusion of moral autonomy and say, “I don’t care. I still say I know better than the Church and I’m prepared to suffer the consequences.” And they do suffer eventually, which is fine for them, but what about the other people around them? Such doctrinal mavericks set a bad example for everyone else, saying by their actions that rebellion is OK after all. This is where the seed of confusion is first planted.

Without going over the whole 500 year history of Protestantism, I think it’s fair to say that it engenders a particular attitude and mindset that says, “I’m my own boss, and I don’t have to follow anyone I don’t want to. Heck, I can read the Bible can’t I? If I disagree with my pastor about what it says, I’ll just walk away and find another church I like better, or even start my own church, just like good ol’ Martin Luther did!” Setting aside the fact that that’s not quite how it went down in the 16th Century, I think this fairly describes what’s behind the “Protestant mentality” at the heart of our American experience. You know, that “rugged American individualism”? It’s partly rooted in the fundamental attitude of the Protestant founders and pioneers (etc.) of our country who figured that “just me and my Bible” was a satisfactory basis for discovering the truth.

But even Martin Luther realized by the end of his life that he’d made a catastrophic mistake when it became painfully obvious that “everyone is now his own pope!” But by then it was too late to close the barn door—the horses had escaped. Once the authority of the Church was jettisoned (in favor of “the Bible alone”), Luther discovered that there was no longer anyone to whom the ex-Catholics (fledgling “protestants”) could appeal to settle disputes of doctrine or practice (since not everybody was going to just settle for his personal interpretations any more than they’d settle for the old Catholic ones) and he saw that the inevitable result was the endless splintering off of denominations we see today. No unity, not even agreement as to what things are “essential” and what things are “OK to disagree on.” There’s nothing in the Bible that says anything like that indicating that such an approach is even acceptable (much less desirable), yet they still claim they only believe what’s in the Bible. Curious, no?

So today we have countless denominations and groups of various sizes—and even a few “lone rangers”—all professing faith in and wanting to follow Jesus, and all claiming the “Bible alone” as their final authority, yet each person surely realizing in the back of his mind that “the Spirit of truth” Christ promised to the Apostles could not be leading them all in such divergent directions, revealing to them all contradictory “truth.” It makes no sense!

And these are just the ones who call themselves Protestant. Adding to the confusion, there are also those thousands of “virtual Protestants” who disagree and demur (dissent) on any number of points of Catholic doctrine, and even dogma (i.e. infallibly defined doctrine that every Catholic is required to believe) yet still publicly claim to be Catholic. Today we call these folks “cafeteria Catholics” (because they pick and choose what they will put on their plate of personal belief, and pass on what they don’t like), but they are in fact “Protestant” in their overall attitude because they set themselves up as the final judge in matters of faith and morals, rejecting the divinely established and appointed public authority of the Church and its chief guardian, the pope.

Of course there are people who will say, “Once Catholic, always Catholic,” but that’s true only in the sense that the character of sacramental baptism is indelible. Since there is only “one baptism” (Eph 4:5), everyone who is baptized is baptized into the Catholic Church, whether he realizes it or not (sorry if that upsets anyone). But we don’t say that every baptized Protestant is Catholic, do we? No, because what they profess is not the fullness of the Catholic faith. True, they profess elements of it, but some truths are missing, some truths are categorically denied and some of the things they believe are entirely false. The religion they profess is a different thing, although they are still connected to the Church by virtue of that baptism and the elements of belief that they still hold in common with Catholic teaching. Their communion with Christ’s Church is, in a formal sense, imperfect. (I will discuss this further in Part 5.)

But what’s the big deal about that? So what? Who cares?

Hilaire Belloc explains why it’s such a “big deal” on page 91 of his book The Great Heresies: “Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe. The decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it—we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today [he wrote this sometime between 1936 and 1938]. The bad work begun at the [Protestant] Reformation is bearing its final fruit in the dissolution of our ancestral doctrines—the very structure of our society is dissolving” [emphasis added].

This is an apt description of the process we know as secularization, a ball that was set in motion by the Protestant Reformation. In my view, secularization is simply the internal logic of Protestantism playing itself out. What we commonly refer to as “the Reformation” was in fact nothing of the sort. It would more accurately be called the Protestant Rebellion. A true reformation (such as was accomplished in the Carmelite order by Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross in the late 1500s and in the Church at large by the Council of Trent over the course of many decades after it concluded in 1563) is a return to the foundational principles of the organization in question: a Re-Formation. What the Protestants of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries did (albeit inadvertently) was start a process of rending and fragmenting the Body of Christ. Although Luther never intended to break with the Catholic Church, by refusing to submit to its authority (and I admit that there were most probably serious abuses of that authority on the Catholic side), giving in to pride rather than cultivating humility, he wound up “creating a monster” he was unable to control.

He didn’t do it all on his own, of course. There WAS terrible corruption at work in the members and institutions of both the Church and secular society at the time, and the political situation was a powder keg just waiting for a spark to set it off. The chief civil authority (the emperor) was distracted with fighting the Muslims who were invading Europe through the Balkans and was unable to give the grievances of the German peasants the attention they deserved (etc., etc). Europe was a mess and everybody agreed that something had to be done, but open rebellion never solved a crisis.

Today you have secularists, pagans and all the other non-Christians pointing at (1) the sinful behavior of Christians (always a problem!) and (2) the irreconcilable differences of teaching and belief among the Protestants (both the explicit and virtual types) and saying, “See? If that’s what Christianity is all about, I don’t want any part of it!” Now, it is possible (even likely) that they’d want no part of Christianity even if these problems didn’t exist (and they’re just using it as an excuse not to join), but even so it’s a real good point they make.

Except for one thing: that’s not what Christianity is all about. But with all the conflicting chatter, who can tell, right? It’s a doctrinal “Tower of Babel.” But what should be obvious by now is that Protestantism is conflicting and divisive by its very nature and from its very inception. Catholicism, by contrast, has Unity as one of its four identifying Marks. A Catholic is one who is baptized and acknowledges the pope as the Vicar of Christ, successor of St. Peter, head of the college of bishops, and the visible head of Christ’s One True Church (Christ himself being the invisible head of the Church, His Body). Everyone who is baptized and professes (at least implicitly) the same faith as the pope is a member of the One Catholic Church. That’s not too hard is it?

But if a non-Christian looking at it from the outside is so confused that he can’t tell what real Christianity is, isn’t that just the opposite of what Christ wanted His Church to be? That’s not a “city on a hill that cannot be hidden,” not a “lamp on a lamp-stand that gives light to all in the house” (Matt 5:14-15), but rather an obstacle, a stumbling block, a source of confusion and an invitation for discord, a tacit admission that “if you’re looking for the real truth, you won’t find it here. We’re not even sure ourselves.”

In Europe at the time of Luther the lines between “church” and “state” were much less clearly demarcated than they are in America today. The rejection of the generally recognized authority of the Church led eventually to an erosion of people’s attitudes about authority in general. When legitimate authority is scorned and everyone seizes on an alleged “right” to be his own final judge in all things, the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion is anarchy, where the only “leaders” are the ones with the most guns and the biggest guns (either metaphorical or actual) and the will to use them on anyone and everyone. The only rule anyone understands at the end of this logical trajectory is the rule of force, not the rule of reason, and people get so tired of having the proverbial “gun pointed at their heads” all the time and become so calloused that, at the end of the day, hardly anyone values life or anything else.

Nowadays, road rage is all the rage and juveniles and young adults prowl city streets in gangs looking for someone to beat up, just to amuse themselves. No remorse, no acknowledgement or perhaps even awareness that they’re doing anything wrong; it’s just “fun.” Abortion is considered “normal” and euthanasia is making serious inroads into “mainstream” thinking and attitudes. Death becomes the pat answer to every problem, from financial difficulty and social embarrassment to boredom.

Not that Martin Luther could possibly have predicted this logical trajectory, mind you. It took centuries for it to work itself out, but it did work itself out, and it's not finished yet.

But the One Church established by Christ to be His witness to the truth is always there, still standing like a rock in the storm—the winds of error and the waves of chaos always crashing against it—still telling the same truth it always has, even when no one else is listening or even cares. “Truth? Who can say for sure what is true anymore?” Hmm… How about returning to the One authority established and appointed by God for the express purpose of bearing witness to the truth until the end of the world?

I know it sounds crazy, but it just might work!