freyatlast:
invisibleforeigner:
freyatlast replied to your link: Too Catholic to be Catholic
i personally think this is a silly argument which fails to take seriously a lot of history and theology, but this isn’t to say i didn’t want to believe it at a certain point in my life. i’m not sure tumblr is the best place to discuss it all though..
Did you read the whole thing? I’m not saying I buy what he’s saying, but it’s at least worth thinking about imho.
Yeah, I did — and my comment sounded more glib than I would have wanted, but the dumb character limit got me…
Basically I see him saying the following: (1) I love liturgy and theological tradition, but only up to the point that I like it; (2) I love the idea of historical continuity of the Church’s authority, but only up to the point that I agree with it; (3) I love my Protestant friends and worship and my role in it and I wouldn’t want to give the impression that it’s not just as good as the tradition I agree that they stem from; (4) I believe my service to the Church’s unity is best served in the tradition where I currently belong.
I accept 4, but the other three seem self-serving to me. Just to me -- I think when it comes to this, so much of it depends on where you currently are, and certainly there was a chunk of time in my life where this was totally my line. Although I do think there was a big difference for me in that I went from my non-sacramental, non-hierarchical, attempted-ahistorical church that I grew up in straight across the Tiber. There was a period of three or so years where I considered worshipping as a high-church Anglican or Presbyterian — as a free-agent evangelical by birth, I never thought in terms of “joining” these churches — but I never developed a love for any of the liturgical Protestant traditions because I was never in them. I think that makes a huge difference because (may I say this?) there is less in non-sacramental evangelicalism to love. That said, I felt a huge backlash against the Catholics I first met when they seemed to go around demeaning my own tradition without even thinking twice.
But basically my problem with this line of thought is that it builds on some principles I don’t accept: (A) it’s a terrible thing to think any one tradition or Christian might be less-than; (B) unrestricted communion is a sign of catholicity (I mean what?!); (C) our differences in belief are just meaningless hindrances, but none of us must be encouraged to change them; (D) I don’t want to feel separated from others who believe in Christ, so I’ll assert that I am not separated from them. I’m not saying Leithart would defend those statements outright, but I feel like they are the emotional background to his reasoning.
When the truth is that ecclesial-questioners have to face hard questions with hard answers, and not because they particularly want those answers. Maybe you can imagine what it was like when I really began having to question God’s presence (sacramental or otherwise) in my childhood. But for me, that was perhaps less of a conflict because the tradition I grew up in didn’t claim as much. Today, I am not in sacramental communion with my family (outside of my twin). But in fact, my family doesn’t believe in sacramental communion — or baptism or ordination, or any of the sacraments as such. If I decided that the sacrament of communion worked in a different way than described by the RCC — if I thought my family church participated in sacramental communion by virtue of their being really sincere Bible-believers — this belief wouldn’t bring us any closer to a real union because they wouldn’t want anything to do with it. I’m not saying that it’s exclusively or even primarily unity of belief that constitutes Christian unity — I think the backbone of the Church’s unity is the sacramental life itself! But to cut the sacramental life *away* from unity of belief and worship and obedience is also no solution. And if his problem really is that the Catholics and Orthodox are particular about who participates in their sacramental life, if his problem is that some people are “out of communion,” I suggest he is not all that lower-c-catholic at all, cause that crap has been around a looooong time. Comparing them to closed-communion sects is so disingenuous.
Ultimately, for me, the question had to stop being “what do my actions represent to the wide world of Christendom which is watching my every move to see whom I support or decry,” and start being “what do I need? where do I need to be? where is Christ?” Because it’s a bit scary to say to oneself, “I could never really change, because it would be like saying that I have Christ less-than.” To be honest about ecclesial disunity, we all have to have the courage to say, “maybe I have less-than.” It’s especially ironic for a Protestant to support the status quo, when the tradition they want to conserve essentially exists because of a radical rejection of the prevailing ways that God was disclosed to a united Church. The Reformation is neutralized even as it’s said to be a tragedy and a shame.
The first concern of a human being is their soul. This is not selfishness but a reflection of God’s love for us. If someone can be troubled about Christian unity but not about how our disunity might affect their soul, then they are not troubled in the first place. I completely understand that Leithart might be reluctant to convert for all of those reasons, but to me, they are do not cut deep enough. Now, his rejection of various traditions as “idolatry” and so on is a different story.
Thanks for the thorough response. I think you’re right about some of your suggestions of his thoughts, especially that at some level he is clearly reluctant to change the active role he plays in his faith tradition.
I’ve been thinking about this post all day, and I guess my hunch is that Leithart is on to something. Not that the objections he lists are insurmountable, but he cogently sums up many of the main Protestant issues with claims of Catholicity.
I do take exception to some of his arguments, including this paragraph:
Certain Catholic teachings and practices obscure the free grace of God in Jesus Christ; prayers through Mary and the saints are not encouraged or permitted by Scripture, and they distract from the one Mediator, Jesus; I do not accept the Papal claims of Vatican I; I believe iconodules violate the second commandment by engaging in liturgical idolatry; venerating the Host is also liturgical idolatry; in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, tradition muzzles the word of God. I’m encouraged by many of the developments in Catholicism before and since Vatican II, but Vatican II created issues of its own (cf. the treatment of Islam in Lumen Gentium).
I don’t want to give the impression that I support those arguments against Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. But the deeper point, which he makes repeatedly throughout the post, is that closed communion is antithetical to the unity of the body of Christ. He compares it to Peter’s hypocrisy surrounding eating with Gentiles, which is a fairly serious charge to make.
I serve communion a lot, and one of the expectations at my church is that all of the people who partake are baptized. But there really is no mechanism for checking that, and the baptism expectation does not differentiate between infant and adult baptism. As a Baptist-ish evangelical, I got dunked in a pool of water when I was twelve, and never went through confirmation or anything, but no one has ever made a fuss about it.
But I see the value of closed communion; it does lead to such priestly abuses like being denied communion publicly and other scandals we’ve seen recently, but it also enables there to be an expectation of social cohesion, that the people partaking of the body and blood of Christ are adhering in some fashion, however brokenly, to the major confessions of the faith.
Furthermore, Leithart’s comparison of Catholicism to closed sects is really odd. He says that “Size and history apart, how is Catholicism different from a gigantic sect?” When of course I would suggest that history, if not size, are everything. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are able to stake a claim to history that Protestant sects, no matter their size, are not. That actually makes an important difference when trying to evaluate their claims to the truth, I would argue.
But the value in Leithart’s argument, at least for understanding a Protestant stance that cradle Catholics might otherwise not be able to see, stems from his assertion that the church (the church universal) in the future is going to look a lot different from the way it does now. His point about the global South is well-taken. Within a few generations, there will undoubtedly be a pope from the global South; it’s one of the only places where Catholicism is not dying. The probable next Archbishop of Canterbury was born in Uganda. The Protestant landscape is going to look a lot different as well, with the population shifts in the mainline and decreasing religious involvement in the U.S.
I understand his desire to love people where he is and to sit tight while he sees what the next few decades will bring. And while I agree with your criticism that, at least in this post, he appears to suggest that all Christian groups are created equal, or that there aren’t insurmountable doctrinal differences between them, I understand where he’s coming from. The direction the Catholic church is heading is somewhat disheartening for me, at least, and it’s getting harder to imagine converting.
Invisible Foreigner
