By JOHN YOUNG
“When you take the protest out of Protestant, there’s not much left.” I read that statement by a renowned Catholic apologist many years before Vatican II, a priest who was a convert from Anglicanism and who was instrumental in bringing many people into the Catholic Church.
If his statement were made today it would be seen as grossly offensive; when it was actually made it probably caused little offense. But was it true? We’ll come back to that.
In discussing Catholicism and Protestantism we must neither gloss over the differences nor exaggerate them. If there was a tendency in the past to exaggerate the differences, the fault today is in the opposite direction: obscuring the differences by speaking in vague and ambiguous terms.
For example, regarding the Eucharist there is an irreconcilable difference between Catholic dogma and Protestant understandings. Among Protestants there are different ways of understanding the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but transubstantiation is rejected, whereas it is infallible Catholic teaching.
So we might expect that in Protestant/Catholic dialogue the Catholic position would be clearly stated and defended; but that is usually not the case. Instead, vague statements are made that can be understood in more than one sense. Even worse, a Catholic spokesman will sometimes deny that transubstantiation is an unchangeable teaching of the Catholic Church.
Purgatory is another example. The Catholic teaching is that we must make reparation for our sins after they are forgiven by God. If this is not done in the present life it must be done in Purgatory after death. The Protestant position, on the contrary, is that when God forgives sins He does not require atonement from us: Christ made full atonement on the cross.
This disagreement should be honestly discussed, but instead it is usually glossed over. The same applies to the numerous other areas where Catholic and Protestant positions differ.
Too often in the past the differences were overemphasized and exaggerated, but today the opposite distortion prevails, with differences soft-pedaled or even denied.
The reality is that the Catholic Church was established by Christ Himself, and is the fullness of Christianity. Other churches are Christian to the extent that they agree with the Catholic Church, and depart from the fullness of Christianity to the extent that they disagree with Catholic teaching.
Further, there is an inherent instability in the churches separated from Rome, for they lack the doctrinal authority with which Christ has endowed His Catholic Church. An example is the general acceptance within these churches of the right to use contraceptives, despite the fact that contraception was opposed by the Protestant churches until the 20th century.
Obviously that does not mean that Catholics are necessarily better than non-Catholics: Many who follow Christ but are not members of the Catholic Church are holier people and closer to their Savior than are many Catholics.
Evangelicals in particular are a great force for good. According to Pew Research Catholics favored Donald Trump by seven percentage points: 52 percent voted for him and 45 percent for Hillary Clinton. White evangelicals, however, voted for Trump by a remarkable 81 to 16 percent.
We must not water down the truth, yet we must be careful how we present it; otherwise we will often be misunderstood or will upset people without intending to. However, the big problem today among Catholics is that they do water down the truth — often because they are uncertain of it themselves or even deny essential truths of Catholicism.
The 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is being celebrated, including a common prayer with Pope Francis. But the prayer has a number of disturbing features.
It thanks God for the “many guiding theological and spiritual insights that we have all received through the Reformation,” which seems to imply that these insights were not present in Catholicism before the Reformation, an implication which is incorrect.
The prayer continues: “Thanks be to you for the great transformations and reforms that were set in motion by the Reformation or by struggling with its challenges.” That is only true in the sense that the Reformation motivated the Catholic authorities to institute long overdue reforms required by Catholicism itself, for example regarding the abuses that had crept into the practice of indulgences.
“Thanks be to you for the proclamation of the gospel that occurred during the Reformation and that since then has strengthened countless people to live lives of faith in Jesus Christ.” It is true that many Protestants, in the 16th century and since, have led exemplary Christian lives through the proclamation of the Gospel by Protestant preachers.
However, the fullness of Christ’s Gospel is to be found in the Church that He founded: the Catholic Church. In the 16th century this fullness of the Gospel was obscured by many in the Catholic Church, notably by bishops and priests and even some Popes. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other reformers were instrumental in shaking up the Catholic authorities, who finally undertook the work of genuine reform that they had long neglected.
Vatican II, in its Decree on Ecumenism, notes concerning the Christian communities separated from Rome: “The Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church” (n. 3). But it adds, a few lines later: “It is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is ‘the all-embracing means of salvation,’ that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation.”
So we must avoid minimizing the holiness and Christian endeavors of many Christians separated from Rome. We must also avoid minimizing the chasm between the fullness of truth and grace found in the Catholic Church compared with the churches separated from Rome.
Back to the quotation at the beginning of this article. It is literally true, because if the fullness of truth is found in the Catholic Church, then any “protest” against this must be an error. But if we expressed it in those terms we would be misunderstood and would not further the cause of ecumenism.
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(John Young is a graduate of the Aquinas Academy in Sydney, Australia, and has taught philosophy in four seminaries. His book The Scope of Philosophy was published by Gracewing Publishers in England in 2010. He has been a frequent contributor to The Wanderer on theological issues since 1977.)
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