The Appeal of Roman Catholicism

You knew I couldn’t stay away from this one, didn’t you, Tim? :)

I can’t argue with most of your points, as from a Protestant POV they make sense, and this isn’t the place to try and come up with an apologetic for the entire Catholic Church.

However, this jumped out at me: It claims to have an unbroken line of succession from the Apostles… Most Protestants are not sufficiently educated in church history to refute or even to disbelieve these claims.

Neither are most historians. In fact, barring some very fanciful fiction out there, there IS no refutation of the Church’s unbroken line of sucession. I have yet to see any credible Protestant answer to the question of when the Catholic Church lost its authority. (The Eastern Orthodox could tell you exactly when, but since they’re even farther theologically from Protestantism than Rome is, I don’t think that will cut much ice here.)

Incidentally, you mentioned harmony, and before I poped, I thought the Catholic Church did indeed have a lot more harmony than Protestant denominations. I found out in a hurry that ecclesiastical unity and harmony were a long way from synonymous.

In a less argumentative vein…

I think I may be the only Catholic convert who gets into this comment field, so I can answer a few of your points from experience. I had some rational reasons for switching feet, but some of my reasons were, well, a little more fuzzy.

Ritual, as you mentioned, was something I found very appealing. Not just a sense of gravity (that’s something you can find in Reformed churches) but the unabashed reverence of the liturgy. I had actually encountered the Orthodox Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom before I ever saw a Mass, and the former liturgy makes the Roman one look downright bland. There’s a sense that everything the worshippers have at their disposal is being turned toward the adoration of God. In its way, it’s more enthusiastic than a Pentecostal service. (And a lot less noisy.)

History was a factor in my case as well. Not just in a rational sense, the sense I alluded to in my last comment, but in a more subjective way as well. Protestantism simply hasn’t got the long, vibrant history that the traditional churches have. Then, too, it seemed to me that Protestantism required consigning thinkers like Aquinas, Augustine and Thomas a Kempis to the ash heap, which I couldn’t do. I was faced with the propositions that either (a) God left Christianity to its own devices for fifteen hundred years, during which time nothing of value was written or believed, or (b) God really was maintaining the Church before the Reformation, and inspired (in a non-Biblical sense, obviously) great men to expound on His truth. In short, if the Church wasn’t legitimate before the Reformation, then all those great writings had been so much scrap paper. I didn’t think God was that wasteful.

The ignorance factor you mentioned also came into play. I was kind of surprised to find that I wasn’t anathemized by Trent for being a Protestant. (Unless you actually read the documents of Trent, the whole thing, you really have no idea what it actually says. The anathemas are all you usually hear quoted, but they’re taken badly out of context.) They welcomed me as a Christian brother, united by baptism. Even though my baptism was done in a Baptist church, it was still the real McCoy.

I expected to see idolatrous Marian devotion pervading every fiber of the Catholic’s being, only to find that most Catholics don’t think about Mary all that much at all. She’s a much bigger deal to Protestants than to Catholics. No Catholic that I know thinks you have to earn your salvation, or lives in fear of not making the grade. The priests I’ve come to know are neither slavering perverts nor repressed tyrants. The confessional is a very low-pressure process, not the inquisition I had expected to find. And while I know some Catholics who aren’t well-versed (pardon the pun) in the Bible, it’s certainly not for lack of encouragement from the Church.

Honestly, if y’all want to keep your members from turning Romeward, you’ll have to let up on some of the more lurid stereotypes, or they’re apt to find out too late that they simply weren’t true.

But I wonder that the true gospel of Jesus Christ didn’t have much to do with your ‘conversion’, at least as I read between the lines of your last post.

Mark, that’s because I didn’t get into that aspect of my conversion. As I said, I had some solid reasons for becoming Catholic, and what constituted the true Gospel was a crucial factor. I wasn’t trying to give an explanation of my switching over, but to discuss some of the things Tim was bringing up about the appeal of Rome to Protestants, frrom the perspective of someone who’s been there.

Brian, you asked, Just curious, but if you know, who was pope after Peter? And what documents support this person as following in Peter’s authority as pope?

History records hs name as Linus, and Irenaeus (writing in the second century) specifically says that Peter and Paul handed on the episcopacy of Rome to him. I don’t know much about how ordinations were done that early, but I know that only an apostle (or his successor bishop) could ordain another bishop. The current requirement is three bishops at the ordination of another one, but I don’t know that it stretches back that far.

Honestly, I don’t understand why it should be Rome that’s the traditional See of Peter rather than Antioch, but since the Patriarch of Antioch has never made any claims to be Peter’s successor, I figure there’s probably a good reason that I just don’t know about.

I am not sure where you are looking in your Catholic church but the ones I know of are filled with Mary statues and shrines. Crowns on her head, flowers at her feet, special songs, holy days etc. Just think of how many prayers on the rosary are to Mary.

Katie, don’t confuse superficial things with doctrinal ones. My own parish has a statue of Mary inside, the Fatima image, because the parish is called Our Lady of Fatima. We put crowns on her head and load her down with honorary titles and flowers, but none of those titles is Savior, Redeemer or God. We do know which of them is the King of Kings and which is only the queen mother, and we know exactly whom to thank for our redemption, too. The role Mary played in our salvation was in her obedience to God in birthing and nurturing His Son. I’ve read some of the Catholic websites you’re thinking of, but I’ve also been Catholic for eight years and acquired some experience. To be embarrassingly honest, I strongly suspect some of those websites are written with the intention of pushing Protestant hot buttons unnecessarily. (“Co-redemptrix?” Puh-leeze. That’s a phrase meant to be misinterpreted. Why do these people want to confirm the stereotypes?)

Carrie, I’m not even going to try to justify that. Things like this list make me cringe. I pray the Rosary sometimes, but I don’t get that into it.

FWIW, Archibishop Hayes may not have approved of this list, either. An Imprimatur is simply permission for it to be published in his diocese; it doesn’t imply agreement. All it means is that he didn’t find anything directly contradictory to the faith (the Bible or sacred tradition) in it.

I don’t know what Hayes thought about that list of Marian “promises.” I only know what I think about it, and that he allowed it to be published in his see.

Folks, I’m not going to try to defend every jot and tittle of Catholic Christianity here. There are just too many Protestant objections, and many of them are valid ones. But Tim’s analysis of many Protestants’ reasons for going over to the Catholic Church is a good one, as far as it goes. it leaves aside the question that I’m not about to try to answer here: What if the Catholic Church is exactly what it purports to be? What if, in short, the Gospel as Peter, Paul and John taught it really is the one the Church still teaches today? What if it was the Reformers who were wrong, and not the centuries of Christians before them?

I know what conclusion I came to on that question, and why. I also know that nobody reading this is likely to come to the same conclusion I did, and I respect their love of God and desire for the truth. But that is the question that Protestant converts to Rome (and anybody who seriously examines the issues) eventually have to answer, and after all the surface appeal that Tim talks about has been exhausted, that’s still the question on which the Reformation stands or falls.

I am very disappointed in the amount of hatred that seems to be evident between Catholics and Protestants.

Meg, it’s not hatred of the people. I don’t think there’s anybody here who wouldn’t rather see Catholics join them in heaven. They believe we won’t, which is a whole different thing from not wanting us to.

I recently ran across a blog called CatholiDoxies that’s done by a fellow who seems to be going through the same most of us Tiber-swimmers do. His reasons don’t look all that superficial to me. (I just noticed one of his posts entitled “Orthodoxy is the passages you didn’t underline.” I found that to be very true, myself.)

…the way we classical Protestants see it is that the medieval Church is our Church which we inherited and reformed. The Roman church was the one who left the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy when she adopted Trent, so that she is the true break away (despite getting to keep a lot of cool buildings!), not classical Protestants.

Tim, that is an excellent point. I hadn’t realized how much validity there was to that perspective until I discovered Tim Enloe’s Societas Christiana blog. There’s some evidence to back up that take on history.

It’s also one of the major reasons I became Catholic, because I couldn’t pin down a point at which the Catholic Church (Roman or Eastern) had actually left the rails and abandoned orthodoxy. Almost everything Catholic that Protestants associate with apostasy is at least as old as the establishment of the canon. In any case, I couldn’t see a definitive break between the Church that ratified Nicea I, Nicea II, Lateran, and Trent. (The Schism of 1084 came between Nicea II and Lateran, true, but since nobody’s arguing for Eastern Orthodoxy, it doesn’t really apply.) I don’t see why the Church was empowered to make the one decision at Nicea, and not the others.

And we may get the cool buildings, but y’all make it up by getting all the good hymns. Have you ever heard the bilge that passes for post-Vatican-II hymnody?

although I should add that Hispanic churches have been more reverent than many contemporary American churches

Alberto, I live in a parish that has both Spanishand English masses, and I have to say I really envy the Hispanics their reverence. Our masses tend to be bland, and I think it’s because Gringo Catholics feel like they have something to prove to our Protestant neighbors. The Hispanics in our parish don’t have that problem, and they have a lot more respect for the Church than we have.

Joel H, I would recommend Why Do Catholics Do That, by Kevin Orlin Johnson. It’s not an apologetic, in that it’s not written to try to convince anybody to convert, but it’s a nice, clear explanation of some of the things that we don’t have in common with Protestants. It also manages to avoid the condescending tone that apologists like Scott Hahn tend to fall into. That bugs me no end.

Michael, I’ve read many of the books at the page you linked, and I’ve got a copy of the Boettner book. Literature like that is exactly what Tim is referring to when he says, “There is startling ignorance among Protestants about what Catholic theology and practice. Many Protestants are taught things about Rome that are simply not true.” If you want to keep people from Rome, falsified apologetics and straw men are the wrong way to do it. Eventually they’ll see through it, and you won’t have enough credibility to make honest arguments. Keep it truthful and you’re more likely to convince folks.

(I do have to give Boettner credit, for being able to pack more falsehood mixed with half-truth into a single paragraph than anybody I’ve ever read. Made reading his book slow-going, but it’s a work of art in its own way.)

Apart from the fact that Peter was married, (he did have a mother in law), which would contradict some of the basic tenets of Popeship…

Wouldn’t have mattered at all. Episcopal celibacy didn’t becoome standard for at least another century, although there were people like Paul who practiced it independently.

Some answers I should hagve given earlier: Sewing, you said: Would it be fair to say that it all went wrong with Constantine? Was he doing the adversary’s work by co-opting the church

No, because everything that Protestants find wrong with the Church predates Constantine, and the same teachings that we have today were the norm in Christian churches outside his influence, in India and Ethiopia. Constantine legalized Christianity, but he wasn’t even baptized himself until he was on his deathbed.

Going from “not thinking about Mary much at all” to putting crowns and flowers on her statue is quite a shift in position, don’t you think?

No, I don’t. The crowns and titles are entirely optional, and most people just don’t bother anymore. We still can, and some people honor her more than others, but I haven’t seen it nearly as much as I expected to.

Brian, you said, I would say that we believe in justification by faith alone and you don’t, but I must be honest with myself and say that a great number of professing protestants probably don’t even know what justification by faith alone really means anyway. My guess is that the same is true about typical catholics.

No, we do believe in justification by faith, just not by faith alone as Luther and Calvin meant it. The trouble is that the terminology is just too easy to use at cross-purposes. The actual documents of Trent (not just the anathemas) are a good source for the Catholic position on it. But make sure not to skip over to the things that confirm what you already think; that’s a very common mistake with Trent.

Matt, you said: Joel, what keeps you in the RC church?

You’ve validated the view that Rome became apostate at Trent, you admit to schisms within Rome, and you’ve shown that you may not have put a lot of thought into the rosary. Just curious.

What keeps me there is that I believe it’s exactly what it claims to be: the Church that Jesus promised the gates of Hell wouldn’t prevail against. I stay in spite of dull liturgies, short sermons, abominable music and friends and family who think I was nuts to switch over. I stay because Jesus is there, and I don’t see how I can ever leave Him.

I didn’t say any of the other things you listed; in fact, I said the opposite about Trent.

Pilgrim said: Whether there is or not—so what? Are all the men who followed faithful? Is it a succession of men or of faithful adherence to truth & the gospel? I think it would be one of men only. So the truth of it matters little—especially since the Scriptures are silent on it.

I can see the logic in your statement about adherence to truth, but it seems to me that having that without having a visible agency along with it wouldn’t fit God’s modus operandi. In the OT, God didn’t just give the world a law and leave it at that; he also chose a people to guard it. And when they did badly at it, He didn’t just chuck them and start another. Likewise, I don’t think God would just give us a book and leave us to our own devices after. I think a human, authoritative Church is necessary.

Please give me some examples of the “startling ignorance among Protestants about Catholic theology and practice.” So far it seems like you have either dodged questions or chalked up bad Catholic practices on misguided Catholics not really following what the church actually teaches.

Katie, I don’t think I’ve either dodged questions or played the “misguided Catholics” card. I’ve given honest answers the best I know how.

I hesitate to put my own conversion story up here, because I don’t have any wish to have it dissected. Some of my reasons were doctrinal and historical, and some were frankly emotional ones. And some of it was just the Lord leading me, although it was hard to see that at the time. If you’re interested, I’ll discuss it by e-mail. I’ve posted some of it on my own blog. But I don’t want to out it out here to be torn apart.

It was Tim who brought up the startling ignorance phrase, and with good reason. Much of what’s written about us is deliberate distortion, if not out-and-out falsehood.

It would take very little research to find out how we really handle Mary. Or indulgences. Or papal infallibility. And it may well be that you would disagree with the reality. I can respect someone who does that research and still disagrees. But many Protestant writers, in their zeal to show how awful the Catholic Church is, fall back on distorted descriptions of our practices. They reinforce each other enough that their assertions are accepted as fact because they’ve been said so many times. (A good example is the excerpts from Trent that are used to show that we condemn anybody who believes in justification by faith. The actual documents say the opposite, if you read them in context. But that one anathema is quoted so much that many people think it’s the final word.) So when a person who has relied on that information goes and finds that, say, we don’t believe we earn our salvation, he’s liable to wonder what else he’s been told about the Church that isn’t true.

Something I’m noticing is that when people here speak of Catholics becoming Protestant, it’s because they found the true gospel there, while when they go the other way, it’s for superficial reasons. Not everybody who becomes Catholic is returning; I wasn’t. They’re not all ignorant of the scriptures; nobody would call Scott Hahn or Francis Beckwith unfamiliar with the Bible. We converts aren’t all dilettantes or church-hoppers. And some people who leave the Catholic Church for Protestantism do so because they find an emotional fulfillment that has nothing to do with doctrine, as well. It works both ways.

As I said earlier, at some point you have to ask yourself if the interpretation of the Bible put forth by John Calvin and his successors really is the only possible valid interpretation. You have to ask if “The Gospel” and “Protestantism” are in fact synonymous. It’s a difficult assumption to get past; even Catholics get used to hearing the word “Christian” applied primarily to Protestants, and then to others whom Protestants deem similar enough to themselves.

I do believe that the Catholic Church teaches the true Gospel, and that John Calvin did not. I believe that the Church’s interpretation of the Bible is, in fact, what it means. I’ve found that if I read the Bible at face value, it verifies Catholic teaching, whereas I have to do some cut-and-paste to make it come out Protestant. There are some things I don’t like about the Catholic Church, but then, God never asked my opinion about it.

I don’t expect anybody else here to come to the same conclusion I have. But I do want to make clear that not everybody who is Catholic, or even who becomes Catholic, does so for superficial or fallacious reasons. There are valid arguments to be made for the Church, and valid questions to be asked about the Protestant gospel. And if you ask those questions, you have to be prepared for the possibility that the answers won’t be what you hoped they would be.

Katie, I’m not deliberately dodging anything. If I’m speaking in generalizations, it’s because I’m not trying to justify any particular Catholic teaching or practice here. That’s a whole ‘nother job, and one that I could use up a lot of comment box space on. My point is not that the Catholic Churchis correct on any specific point (although obviously I believe it is), but that Protestants who become Catholic do so for reasons that are valid (even if misguided). Those reasons vary, but most of them are not drawn solely by the superficial, any more than you were when you became Protestant. I posted some of my reasons here and here if you’re interested.

If you’ve been Catholic (and presumably taught adequately), then you know that, for instance, we believe in salvation by grace. We differ from Protestants on the exact roles of free will and faith, IOW on how God goes about saving us, but we still acknowledge it as a free gift. Yet we’re portrayed as believing that we can somehow earn it, and that’s repeated so many times that it becomes “common knowledge.” (I’m giving that as an example; there are other areas in which our beliefs are distorted. I got a little hot under the collar about it here, again if you’re interested.)

If you want specifics, I’ll discuss them by e-mail: jbmartin [at] nwi [dot] net. I don’t want to turn this thread into an apologetics forum. As I say, my point is a general one: that we become Catholic because we believe it’s true, and the truth or falsity of it isn’t as axiomatic as many Protestants think it is. “Biblical” and “Protestant” aren’t necessarily synonyms.

Um, wrong—Mary’s assumption doesn’t.

Pilgrim, I stand partly corrected. The earliest written reference to the Assumption was in the fourth century. However, unless that writer thought it up in a vacuum, it had to have been believed at least by some Christians before that time. However, you are right, and I hadn’t thought of that example in my statement.

Things don’t become “official” in the Catholic Church, usually, unless there has been some dispute over them. That’s when councils get called. The Assumption is an exception to that, but even being ratified in the 20th century, the belief was clearly old enough to have become well-established. Honestly, my faith doesn’t stand or fall on anything about Mary, but I find the Assumption the easiest thing to believe about her.

I still stand my my assertion that, if not all, then at least most of the things that you would consider marks of apostasy were standard beliefs in the Church before Constantine. Certainly the Church prior to his reign can’t be perceived as teaching the same things as today’s Protestant churches. So if the Church was originally Protestant in doctrine and later abandoned the gospel, it had to have done it before Constantine.

I didn’t bring up Hahn for his ex-Presbyterianism, but because whatever else you can say of him, he’s certainly not ignorant of the Bible. I find his manner annoying myself, and I agree with him theologically. If I were Protestant, he’d bug the heck out of me. But he obviously didn’t pope because he wasn’t familiar with the Bible.