The recent death of Cardinal Carlo Martini, Archbishop of Milan, prompted a piece at First Things that has me wondering again about the arbitrary differences between liberal Roman Catholics and Protestants, not to mention the solidity of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the magisterium it professes to represent. (Though I must add that if gin without tonic water agreed with my tender stomach, I might be called to a communion that has a bishop named Martini.)
Here is the run down of the spectrum of thought in Roman Catholic circles, all within one high ranking official’s thought and service. First, there’s the Christocentric and exegetical side of Martini that sounds reminiscent of Luther:
At the heart of Cardinal Martini’s spirituality was an intense devotion to Christ. Understanding the Lord, drawing closer to him, and becoming his faithful servant, was what directed Martini’s exegesis. Of course, he knew that in order to be a disciple of Christ, one first had to accept the Incarnation, and truth of the Gospels, which is often a struggle for those contending with modernity. It is a trial Martini experienced himself. . . .
Longing to find the truth, Martini plunged himself into studying the New Testament, and read everything he could on “the historical Jesus”—including Christianity’s fiercest critics. Only after testing the Church’s claims against the most rigorous demands did he see “more and more clearly the solid basis for what we can know about Jesus” and that “there were significant and decisive sayings and events in his life that could not be eliminated by any criticism.” Having liberated himself from his fear of embracing Christ fully, he did so, and was inspired to evangelize others. . .
If Martini sounded like an evangelical when it came to Christ and the Bible, the other aspect of his career also echoed Protestant sensibilities (especially mainline and some born-againers):
Cardinal Martini was not merely “open” toward homosexuality, he approved civil unions for same-sex couples. He often praised the family and Christian love, yes—but did so in the context of assailing Humanae Vitae, and advocating the use of condoms to fight AIDS. He challenged the Church’s position on bioethics. Most seriously, he wrote that there was a “positive” aspect to legalizing abortion, and referred to this crime euphemistically as a “termination of pregnancy.”
The Cardinal’s defenders say these statements shouldn’t be isolated, but viewed in a broader picture, alongside his strong statements in favor of life, traditional marriage, and the papacy. . . . The biggest disappointment here is that the Cardinal’s persona as a public commentator was often at odds with his strengths as a biblical interpreter. Serving as the latter, he stressed the need for interior conversion, a renunciation of worldly values, and deeper obedience to Christ. Yet his outreaches to the world became not so much pastoral as fashionable. There was a reason he was “respected among nonbelievers and lapsed Catholics,” as the Washington Post put it, and it wasn’t because he challenged his secular audiences: it was because he accommodated them.
What is striking here is that such a prominent figure in the church was not known for defending the papacy, venerating Mary, or adhering to church tradition. Was he to Rome what Brian McLaren is to Protestantism?
Sure sounds like Called to Communion folks might want to add a page or two about the breadth and diversity of the church to which they are calling Protestants.
72 Comments
From this week’s Gospel Coalition review of Sproul’s against Romanism:
Another questionable approach concerns Sproul’s use of the present tense. He writes, for instance, that “Rome teaches” a doctrine of condign and congruous merit. Indeed, Scholastic theologians made hay with this doctrine, and it played an important role in Luther’s protest, but we must not ignore the fact that the Catholic Church long ago jettisoned these categories. In fact, they were gone by 1547, as evidenced by their exclusion from Trent’s Decree on Justification.
The question of time frame impinges on other aspects of Sproul’s argument. He corectly asserts that “[Catholics] are members of a church that has anathematized the gospel” (past tense). But does the Catholic Church currently assert this position? At the end of the day, the answer is probably “yes” after one deconstructs contemporary Catholic (post-Newman) methods of interpretation, but it is generally not by direct application of Trent’s canons from the 16th century. Recent examples include the “Annex” to the Joint Declaration (an official statement of the Church) or the pope’s recent book Saint Paul, in which he explicitly endorses sola fide.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/book-reviews/review/are_we_together
McMark,
It becomes difficult to fault the protestant if after a time he doesn’t know which target to shoot at, and what’s the official position now. It’s important to know how the anathema is constructed now, but how much authority does the ‘annex’ carry or the Pope’s book? Where do these statements of faith fit in the heirarchy of the deposit. We had CTC come in here initially and they were happy to align themselves with Trent contra Vatican II assertions on the nature of ‘seperated brethren’. This is part of the difficulty of a communion who not only says everything but also doesn’t elevate doctrinal statements or the written word to the level a protestant considers them as it applies to their faith, unless they invoke “ex-cathedra”. Rome is a bit careless quite frankly on this score. What’s ultimately important in Rome is sacerdotalism, and ontological change. This means salvation is primarily communicated through the sacraments as superintended by the priesthood. Outside of that, they make room for quite a diversity of beliefs.
Sean sez, “…What’s ultimately important in Rome is sacerdotalism, and ontological change. This means salvation is primarily communicated through the sacraments as superintended by the priesthood…”
If salvation is communicated through the sacraments then that means the sacraments represent “works” in an of themselves, as well – which is something I’ve always observed about members of the RC, too. They seem to have no problems lying, cheating, stealing and conducting their lives in all sorts of sordid ways during the week as long as they show up for the mass on Sunday (or Saturday PM) to counterbalance the effects. I used to have a co-worker, for example, who relished seeking revenge against perceived personal affronts and would go to great lengths to plot his response. Good works that affect culture in a more conspicuous way seem to be reserved for the “saints.”
Then again, what do we (prots) with the likes of Bernie Ebbers who knowingly cooked his company’s books in order to shut down his competitors, but was known as an accomplished Sunday School teacher at his local Baptist church? In some ways, there is little difference between the two, which is to DGH’s original point.
George,
I agree I think it speaks in some regard to the similarity between sinners; we all sin. But, I think it also brings in bold relief not only the breadth of belief within Rome but also the parallel between broader evangellyfish and Rome; ultimately both revolve around what’s going on within me today, tomorrow, this week. How am I doing today, am I really holding on to Jesus, maybe I need to walk the aisle again, go to mass, to really get right and fill the tub back up or get it really really right this time. Or to bring it into an even more contemporary context; WWJD. Would Jesus litter? Would Jesus’ carbon footprint be as large as mine, how much debt would Jesus accrue? Would Jesus buy the cookies from the scout troop as part of His plan to support organizations that can transform the culture? You get the idea. The protestant gospel on the other hand, is the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert. Look out from yourselves, your salvation was secured in the God-Man who died and was risen on your behalf, at the Right time; While you were still dead in your sin. Imputed righteousness. A monergistic salvation which allows me to do because I live. Not a salvation which says to me ‘do’ that you might live, and oh btw, that that you do, do perfectly. The RC doesn’t have a place in their familial scheme of salvation for a father who demanded perfection of justice. So, in Rome it’s all on a ‘curve’ from the saints, to the religious(vocational), to the slobs in the pew who are really gonna have to make a lot of use of purgatory. Rome accomodates our natural sensibilities about justice and the law of the harvest(you reap what you sow). The protestant gospel is foreign, forensic and objective and is offensive to our ‘sense’ of things until God makes us low by the law, that we might hope against hope for mercy from God which He provides in His son.
Sean, I agree with you about the “moving target”. What is the difference between “shape-shifting” and outright lying about your position? No, I never said that, no, when I said it, I didn’t mean what it sounded like, and etc….
And I very much disagree with the GC reviewer of Sproul’s book.
sean: The RC doesn’t have a place in their familial scheme of salvation for a father who demanded perfection of justice. So, in Rome it’s all on a ‘curve’ from the saints, to the religious(vocational), to the slobs in the pew who are really gonna have to make a lot of use of purgatory. Rome accomodates our natural sensibilities about justice and the law of the harvest(you reap what you sow).
I’ve been running into that very mindset with a CtCer over at GB the past couple of days on the issue of “needing to forgive in order to be forgiven by God.” When pointing out this is just another form of doing works to earn forgiveness, he says, ‘no, no… we need to forgive. God commands it. Marriage and life in general can’t work without forgiveness!” He states that God freely forgives us, but if we don’t forgive then we are no longer able to receive God’s forgiveness. So…. round and round it goes.
It seems that as long as one is in Rome, playing by the rules set down, going to Mass, no matter how poor one’s works and love, then God fills in the gaps in the lack of the Catholic’s inherent righteousness. Yet the very concept of God requires a perfect righteousness seems foreign. So, no need for the gospel. There is no good news, just the good church. Just stay in the church and meet the minimum standards and it’ll turn out ok in the end?
Jack,
That’s what sacerdotalism is going to melt down into; “I believe what the church believes”. (Bugay does a nice job of delineating this out as well). Here’s what the CTCers and Jason are engaged in ; “Basically I’m entering the protestant word based paradigm to make apologetic argument using the scriptures, then once I’ve overcome your protestant objections and you’re in Rome, what you get is a sacramental based system mediated to you through the priesthood based on an ontological emphasis of inner transformation via the infused grace of the sacraments. You never get off this system, it’s God’s metaphysical means of salvation to you. Even your scripture reading is now to be done under the supervision of your priest. This is the repudiation of the ‘solo scriptura’ characterization. For Rome, the protestants have made God a liar because God is declaring what is not righteous, righteous. Rome gets around this two ways: First, God the Father is no perfectionist task master, so strict justice never enters the picture even in Eden. Second; your ‘righteousness’ is an ontological one, (continual justification) you’re declared righteous AS you actually BECOME(aristotelian metaphysical ideas of being-natural fitness et al., otherwise known as Thomism-depending on the degree of Thomism or Aristotelian is where you get semi-pelagian or outright pelagian) righteous. Well, how do I become ontologically righteous; via the infusion of grace through the sacraments. So now my whole salvation is determined by receiving the priestly mediation of the sacraments and whatever is left undone by the end of my life is finished up in Purgatory, and let’s be honest(roman thought), who gets this done in this life?! Maybe Mother Teresa and a few magisterial types; John Paul II etc. So, once you’ve got a few years in, you’re both ‘vested’ and dependent on the sacerdotalism of Rome for your salvation. In essence, Jesus isn’t your immediate mediator but the church, the priests then the saints and Mary. The eucharist is your direct encounter with Jesus though this at the hands of the priest sanctioned by the church. So yeah, you end up on your death bed with; “I believe what the church believes”.
By the way Rome has the ‘death bed’ angle covered as well; Last Rites. It’s sacerdotalism from cradle to grave. Rome is sacerdotalism and it’s organized for this purpose.
Jack,
One more thought. Even though Vat II opened the door wide for the reading of scripture by the laity, under supervision, they don’t have a doctrine of perspicuity, so even here as they encounter the words of scripture it has to be mediated to them by the priest who is trained to co-ordinate the apparent scriptural meanings with the divine tradition. The heirarchy is; the magisterium over the deposit which is over the canon. It’s not a three legged stool as it gets practiced.
Sean,
I have a question I hope you’d be able to answer. Does Rome still acknowledge the validity of indulgences or do they at least acknowledge that they were valid at one time? If so, don’t they run into the exact same problem of a “legal fiction” problem they accuse us of having in justification? How is it that merit can be gained from the saints but the righteousness of Christ can’t be? Would they actually go so far as to argue that the merit of the saints is infused as well or am I off in just completely the wrong direction here?
Good stuff, George & Sean. Sean – You need to get the book going. I’ve got a post going on a local Baptist church’s statement on election and am going start one on a local atheist’s power-point debate presentation against Christianity. Some of this blogging/commenting could provide pretty good book material.
Drew – here was the last one, celebrated most recently at the turn of the century (the 20th, that is):
http://www.ewtn.com/jubilee/indulgence/index.htm
sean, thanks! Your explanation is clear and helpful. I, more or less, was understanding what you wrote. But it’s still a mind-bend for me to not see how the RCs actually process this whole thing.
Although I was baptized RC (my Mom was RC and Dad Lutheran), I switched to Lutheran when I was about seven and never really got a good understanding of the whole thing. What preceded changing churches was that a nun, in a catechism class, said my Dad, being Lutheran, was going to go to hell. I went home and told my parents I wasn’t going back to that church because “Dad was a good man!” (ok, my theology was a bit off). I started going to church with Dad after that until starting college when I opted out of religion. Fortunately God, in His mercy, had other plans for me and I came to faith in Christ in my sophomore year.
By the way, I just received Sproul’s book, Are We Together?, today. I’m looking forward to reading it.
P.S. My Mom’s side of the family is totally Irish Catholic.
Drew,
What I remember about indulgences, besides being rare, was they weren’t merit attributing. An indulgence essentially took time off the sentence in purgatory for expunging of remaining corruption. So you were removing time and need for undergoing ‘some’ of the temporal punishment that most ‘all’ undergo before being presented perfect before the father in heaven. Remember purgatory is making good on the becoming, it’s the finishing out of the ontological process, it’s not meritorious as a protestant talks about merit and forensic righteousness.
Jack,
Some of those nuns were brutal. I think most pew-sitters in Rome give up on trying to figure out all the Thomistic nuances. The Mass and the pageantry is much easier to embrace and makes sense. Plus, everywhere you turn in Rome, you’re being invited to entrust yourself to the church’s understanding and care. 800 pages or so of catechism is a lot to digest, and as has been shown leaves a lot of room for diversity of understandings. BTW, because of the Thomistic undergirding you don’t get the consequences of the fall, as a protestant would understand total depravity, so it’s yet another angle by which the protestant conception of strict justice doesn’t translate.
mark mcculley: From this week’s Gospel Coalition review of Sproul’s against Romanism:
GC: Another questionable approach concerns Sproul’s use of the present tense. He writes, for instance, that “Rome teaches” a doctrine of condign and congruous merit. Indeed, Scholastic theologians made hay with this doctrine, and it played an important role in Luther’s protest, but we must not ignore the fact that the Catholic Church long ago jettisoned these categories. In fact, they were gone by 1547, as evidenced by their exclusion from Trent’s Decree on Justification.
RS: But Rome never makes a mistake and so they cannot just jettison a doctrine that played such an important part in how they formulated things.
GC: The question of time frame impinges on other aspects of Sproul’s argument. He corectly asserts that “[Catholics] are members of a church that has anathematized the gospel” (past tense). But does the Catholic Church currently assert this position? At the end of the day, the answer is probably “yes” after one deconstructs contemporary Catholic (post-Newman) methods of interpretation, but it is generally not by direct application of Trent’s canons from the 16th century.
RS: But again, Rome cannot change this. Whether they assert it or not now does not mean that they have done away with it.
GC: Recent examples include the “Annex” to the Joint Declaration (an official statement of the Church) or the pope’s recent book Saint Paul, in which he explicitly endorses sola fide.
RS: But if the pope endorses sola fide and attaches the same meaning to that as Protestants do, then he is no longer Roman Catholic. After all, Trent 1 anathematized those who believe in sola fide. Until the Pope repudiates Trent 1 he cannot endorse a biblical undersanding of sola fide.
George and Sean,
Thanks, that helps.
None of us would deny that we who have been forgiven need to be forgiving. We remember the parable in which the one who was forgiven much did not forgive, with the conclusion that the one who had been forgiven was no longer forgiven. God’s law commands us to forgive. The question is why are we to forgive. Do we forgive only because of gratitude or only because of the law?
Or do we say that we are in the covenant, but can be cut off from the covenant, if we do not continue to forgive? (Of course, as Sean has so well said, nothing “strict” or perfect is ever demanded by Rome from those “in the family”. You will get more action from people if you never tell them what’s enough or if they have done enough. And of course, there’s always tomorrow–what have you done lately?)
Is forgiving others a condition for staying in the new covenant, or is forgiving others a result of assurance of being in the new covenant? (When I say assurance, I con’t mean perfect assurance.) In the hands of some preachers, that difference between condition and result becomes only a matter of semantics. Their sermon applications keep suggesting that the assurance of still being in the covenant is pretty tightly related to our daily performance of forgiveness.
I mean to say that sometimes it’s difficult to see the difference between pietism and the Romanist system. On the one hand, indulgence, you don’t need to be perfect at forgiving, but on the other, if you were really a Christian, you would be a lot better at it.
Hebrews 6 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of REPENTANCE FROM DEAD WORKS and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits. 4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
Dennis over at CTC writes in response to John Bugay;
“I grew up in the 70′s and 80′s and experienced exactly the same thing. I had 12 years of Catholic school and couldn’t understand the basics of loving Christ. It wasn’t until my twenties in the 90′s that I experienced a conversion and really started to understand what true Catholicism is. The members of the Catholic Church in the United States suffered from poor catechesis during the 70′s and 80′s.”
This is rich. It was the fault of catechesis. I’ll make sure to let all the OMI(oblates) brethren know they suck. So, Balt. Catechism, VAT I and II, was all done wrongly in America for 40 years but starting with John Paul II and now for sure with Ratzinger and putting the CDF in ‘timeout’- pesky bible readers, we’re finally getting it right again. Oh BTW, it doesn’t hurt having a few catechetically oriented former protestants walk through the door and get things headed in the right direction again. Yeesh, look anyone seriously considering the way of Rome,be wary of taking your lead from the CTCers and Jason, on their proto-catholic journey. Rome is the MASS. If you want the mass and sacerdotalism then fine. But don’t imagine this is gonna be about reading the scriptures and engaging the ‘tradition’ and finally getting the apostolic word RIGHT. My goodness I’ve heard some lines in my life, but wow.
Purgatory—hell with hope. It’s therefore something like hearing a sermon from Paul Washer or Al Martin. If we were to refuse the pope’s doctrine of the “immortal soul”, we would not have so many “protestant” fans of CS Lewis now defending purgatory.
Why throw the stone at a Roman Catholic, when an evangelical is near to aim at?
Sean,
Rome is the MASS. If you want the mass and sacerdotalism then fine. But don’t imagine this is gonna be about reading the scriptures and engaging the ‘tradition’ and finally getting the apostolic word RIGHT. My goodness I’ve heard some lines in my life, but wow.
True, Rome is the Mass, but in the CtC online monastery it would seem that they have achieved a critical mass that allows them the outlet of bible study and theological inquiry. I am not so sure the Roman hierarchy is thrilled that non-clergy is engaging in theologizing, but they’ll tolerate them, assuring them they too have a place at the Roman alter, even if they are winking and crossing their fingers behind their backs. It’s analogous to a newbie to Amway insisting that he can run his business without pestering friends and family, when all the Amway brass cares about is that they keep buying product. In the case of Rome, CtC can keep doing their thing and be tolerated so long as they stay in lock step with Roman sacerdotalism and the Mass.
Jed,
I had just that conversation on email not long ago. I know more than a few religious who appreciate the energy that they bring and really enjoy the picking off and converting of a few protestants, but they view them akin to puppies with a new chew toy. They’re waiting for them to grow up in the faith and get some seasoning. But, they’re tolerated and encouraged out on the end of the lead in the meantime.
Sean –
The Roman Catholic hierarchy in the USA is looking at groups like the Leadership Conference of Women Religious going into open schism. They have the most important financial entity, Catholic Health Association disagreeing with their interpretation of scripture / doctrine. CtC style apologetics aren’t going to bother them any.