Unity - The Only Road Leads to Rome

Be united in your love     Philippians 2:1-4

If our life in Christ means anything to you if love can persuade at all, or the Spirit that we have in common, or any tenderness and sympathy, then be united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind. That is the one thing which would make me completely happy. There must be no competition among you, no conceit; but everybody is to be self-effacing. Always consider the other person to be better than yourself so that nobody thinks of his own interests first but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead.

Let me begin by stating up-front that I am not trying to be the Catholic Gestapo, forcing people against their will to return to the Catholic Faith.  I respect our Protestant brothers and sisters and I know that many of them are much further along the spiritual trail than I am.  I know that they love the Lord Jesus and have given over their lives to Him and that they practice that commitment every day.  The mainline Protestants set good examples as to what a Christian should be in many respects.  The one charism that they cannot demonstrate, however, is that of unity.  In the sixteenth century, an unbalanced monk went off in a new direction and created a church built in his own likeness and trashing things that made the faith united.  From that day, the Church would never be the same.  For, if you could split once because you disagreed with some principle that your local preacher was committed to, well then you could split again so that your view, in your church, took precedence and your world was once again in synch with what you thought and taught.  The man in the third pew, however, has many problems with your interpretation and knows for a fact that he is right and you are wrong.  Since you won't come around to his way of thinking, he splits and creates for himself a church in his own image.  We could carry this on for quite a while if we wanted to, at least thirty-thousand times which is how many denominations of Christianity there are.

We pray for Christian unity but it is unlikely to come until Jesus does return and sets everything straight. There is only one direction that a return to Christian Unity can take and that is for the Protestants to come back home to Rome and accept the authority of the Church that Jesus founded and which bears the four charisms of the true church and that is that the Catholic Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.  It is the Apostolic charism that most Protestants have trouble with.  First, they believe that the Bible is the sole source for all Christian doctrine. At first blush, this seems like a wonderful way to make sure that what you believe is what Christ intended.  But it falls apart rather quickly when you realize that it is the freedom to interpret that has caused the Church to splinter into so many groups.  If every man can interpret the Bible himself, well then every man is his own authority.   Personal interpretation of the Bible leads to division because one person's interpretation is just as good as another's interpretation because they only have to answer to themselves.  

The Church depends on Scripture, all Catholic teaching can be found in the Bible.  If you look to the right, there is a paper you can view that shows where the teachings can be found.  Now, the Church also has teachings that are not written in the Bible.  These are the what we call the Sacred Traditions.  Please note these are not traditions like having turkey on Thanksgiving or a tree at Christmas time or having a family reunion on the second week of August.  Those are all human traditions.  Sacred Tradition, on the other hand, is the passing of our beliefs from one generation to the next.  It is rather ironic that one of the Sacred Traditions is the Holy Bible.   From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 

"In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church, the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them their own position of teaching authority." Indeed, "the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time. This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through Tradition, "the Church, in her doctrine, life, and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes." "The sayings of the holy Fathers are a witness to the life-giving presence of this Tradition, showing how its riches are poured out in the practice and life of the Church, in her belief and her prayer." -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 77-78

So, how does all this affect Christian Unity?  Well, the Catholic Church occupies the high ground.  It is she that bears the imprint of her founder, Jesus Christ.  While some would say that we could become one again if we just engaged in some give and take, in compromise.  Well, there is the rub.  The Catholic Church has maintained her doctrine unchanged and her interpretations of the Biblical truth is the same today as it was in the sixteenth century.  Protestants, on the other hand, have changed and changed and changed again and again so that with the exception of Christ, there are differences that the Protestant man or woman would not want to give up in the name of unity.  Even if one denomination gave up one of their differences, there are thousands of others that would tell the Church to go peddle fish. 

What would you have the Church give up in the name of Christian unity?  Should we strip our churches of the Crucifix in favor of the Cross?  Should we tone down our belief in what the Holy Eucharist is, namely, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ and make it nothing more than a simple memorial using saltines and grape juice?  Should we give up the Pope and institute a committee approach to church government where every man has a vote?  Should we soften our stance on abortion or homosexuality?  No, I do not see any of these things happening and these are the sorts of things that other denominations believe and allow and the Church could never compromise her teachings in the name of Christian unity.

So, it is unlikely that we will see a mass return to Rome by many of the Protestant denominations because in order for that to happen, the notion of private interpretation would have to go and they would have to submit to the authority of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and that would be impossible for them to do.  

The one hope we do have in this impossible situation is that what is impossible for man is possible for God.  So, Catholics and Protestants alike should pray for unity and God may one day move His hand. 

Are Protestants Really Christians?

©1985 by Jack T. Chick LLC
Used in this blog under the fair use clause

Okay, buckle your seatbelts, helmets and eye protection is recommended because we are about to descend into the murky anti-Catholic world of Jack Chick.  Don't worry, we are not going to hang with him long because quite honestly both your and my time is too valuable to listen for long to the nonsense he prints in his tracts. In this gem, he patiently goes through the life of a Catholic girl and comes up with reasons that although she is a Catholic, she is not a Christian. Here is a brief summary of what he says:

• She is not a Christian because she was baptized as a baby.
• She is a citizen of two countries, the USA and the Vatican.
• She goes to confession which he says is not Biblical.
• He casts doubt on priests, nuns, monks and says that these are not mentioned in the Bible.  Then again, neither is the Trinity nor is there any mention of a pastor. 
• He rejects the Real Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament in spite of the Biblical evidence in the Gospel of John. 
• Jack then condemns the Sacrament of Confirmation, the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and says that the Catholic girl is hell bound because she was never "saved." 
• Next, he accuses Catholics of worshipping Mary. He states that our affection for Mary is caused by a devilish plot to take our eyes off of Jesus. 
• Finally, he says that what we should do is to pray his version of the sinner's prayer, can't find that in the Bible, but he is okay with that and we should reject the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon. 

Good Grief!  Let's rise up out of this muck and mire and get back to the clean world!  Jack and his poison pen are tools of the devil.  It is very sad but some Catholics can be pulled away from the Church because they are not well-grounded in the truths of the faith.  It is a sad thing in this day and age that otherwise intelligent men and women do not take an interest in learning about their faith. But that is a subject for another post.  I want to tackle the question that forms the title of this post, "Are Protestants Really Christian?"

In the Bible, we are granted something amazing.  We are privy to a conversation between Jesus and God the Father.  Jesus pours his heart out to God. In this prayer, he prays that all be unified even as He and the Father are unified. At this very meal, he made it possible for us to be one with Him when He instituted the Holy Eucharist.  For over fifteen-hundred years there was no doubt about what the Eucharist was. It was believed by all Christians that it was the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. It is this sacred meal that makes us one.  Most Protestant denominations do not believe in the True Presence, they see the bread and wine (they use crackers and grape juice) as mere symbols that have no meaning outside of a memorial to Christ. The unity conferred by the Eucharist is therefore broken between the Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations.  But does this take away their birthright to be called Christian? 

Martin Luther did have a good reason for being upset at some of the practices that were going around in the sixteenth century.  The sale of indulgences by a minority of clergy was abhorrent and took something that is good, holy, and part of the treasury of faith administered by the Church and put it into a bad light. Protest against this was a righteous act and Martin Luther was right to condemn it.  However, Martin strayed into sin when he decided that it was his way or the highway.  He did no favors for the world by striking out and forming a new church. He was culpable for the sin of schism. Those that followed him away from the church also sinned by association. Once broken the unity of the Church started to run like an old sock. Today we have thousands and thousands of denominations of Christians that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church, the Church founded by Christ which is the vehicle that will help us attain salvation. 

Are the people that meet in the Baptist Church down the street or the Presbyterian Church on the next block, are they Christians?  After all, they worship outside of the unity that Christ prayed for and their forefathers sinfully split the Church asunder so can they be considered Christians?  Without a validly ordained clergy can these thousands of offshoots have any claim on being Christian? 

The answer, of course, is yes.  Those of us that call Jesus, Lord, are brothers and sisters in the Lord.  Unlike the dreary world of Jack Chick, the Catholic Church does not impute guilt to those, through no fault of their own, are born into a different Christian tradition.ey are in fact our brothers and sisters in the Lord.  They do not carry the burden of the sin of schism on their souls.  The fact is, many of our separated brothers and sisters love the Lord more than we do.  Many of them model their lives more directly akin to that of Christ than some of those born into the Catholic faith.  So, we must pray that someday, and that day may not be until the return of Jesus, that all will be one again.  The fact is simple, there will be one flock and one Shepherd.  

What about Catholics that are ripped from union with the Church by fundamentalist evangelists?  I, for one, cannot fathom why one would leave the Eucharist for the Book. The Bible is an important way to meet Christ and it is said that ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ. The fact is that people who leave the Catholic Church do so because they are not well grounded in their faith.  Every Monday night I watch a show on EWTN called "The Journey Home."  This show features former Protestants, former atheists, reverted Catholics all sharing their testimony and prove that all spiritual roads lead to the Catholic Church.  I am not qualified to say whether or not these poor people have sinned in leaving the Chruch. Perhaps it is a situation similar to the act of suicide.  In old days the souls of a suicide were consigned to hell. Today we have a better appreciation for the complexities of the human mind and very often the person doing away with himself is not able to fully consent to the act because of mental disturbance and therefore has not committed a mortal sin.  A Catholic kidnapped by the honey-laced words of an evangelical is in a similar situation.  He is unable to defend his faith because he does not have the requisite knowledge. I do not believe that our God who knows what is in our hearts would reject the hijacked should because of the soul's ignorance of Catholic doctrine.  

Finally, I do believe that there are people out there that would do anything to bring down the Catholic Church. I do not fear them because their mission is doomed to fail.  The Jack Chick's of the world base their teaching on hate and discord and it shall never, ever, prevail.  We as Catholics have a duty to remember that all that profess the name of Jesus as savior are brothers and sisters in the Lord.  We as Catholics have a duty to be willing to defend the Church from those who wish it ill.  We as Catholics have a duty to work towards the unity and brotherhood of all in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We as Catholics have a duty to learn about our faith and safeguard it as the treasure it really is.  We have the duty to evangelize our separated brothers and sister while respecting them as kindred spirits. 

Live Truth - Live Catholic.