7. Unhelpful Antagonism and Unhealthy Courtesy
The Protestant Reformers did not intend to separate from the Roman Catholic Church. They wanted to reform it in the sense of bringing it back to its original purity. But the Roman church resisted this effort with vigor and, frequently, violence.
Today, nearly half a millennium after Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses, Christians are beset on all sides by the forces of atheistic secularism, newly militant Islam, the New Age Movement, and a pluralistic multiculturalism that does not believe in truth at all. Without denying or minimizing the real differences that still separate us, Protestants and Catholics alike would do well to acknowledge and build on the substantial things we have in common.
ESSAY 7
UNHELPFUL ANTAGONISM AND UNHEALTHY COURTESY
Harold O. J. Brown
When old-fashioned, biblical Protestants and Roman Catholics encountered one another in past decades, it often was as the worst of enemies—each side had very clear doctrines that conflicted at important points with equally clear doctrines of the other side. When liberal Protestants and modernist Roman Catholics meet today, however, it often seems to be as the best of friends. Critics will explain that this is possible because neither side has clearly held doctrines that it deems important enough to fight for. But what happens when the modern representatives of Protestant orthodoxy (usually styled evangelicals, sometimes fundamentalists) meet Roman Catholics of what used to be the standard variety (now called “traditionalists” to distinguish them from their more “flexible” or liberal fellow-Catholics)?
What can we make of a position that says it is necessary to be subject to someone called the “man of sin” in order to be saved? What is the source of this conundrum? It is based on two statements, published by the highest authorities of the Christian churches of an earlier day. “It is absolutely necessary for every human creature for salvation to be subject to the Roman pontiff.” So wrote Pope Boniface VIII in his Bull Unam sanctam (1302).
Who calls this Roman pontiff “the man of sin and son of perdition” described in 2 Thessalonians 2:3? None other than the authors of the Westminster Confession (1648), long the confession of faith for English-speaking Presbyterians.
Catholics and Protestants did not take their religious differences lightly in the seventeenth century, nor were they to do so for most of the next three centuries. There had already been religious conflicts in the sixteenth century, but the seventeenth was worse. The Westminster Confession was written in the aftermath of religious conflict in England, at a time when the European continent was licking its wounds from one horrible war—the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)—which devastated Germany, the heartland of the Reformation. Almost immediately afterwards another murderous conflict arose farther east, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—which was then the largest countiy in land area in Europe. The Cossack rebellions and associated conflicts, which Polish history calls the Deluge, had begun when the formerly tolerant Polish monarchy attempted to force its Ukrainian and Cossack subjects to abandon Orthodoxy for union with Rome; at the same time the German-speaking Protestants in Prussia and the Lutheran Swedes attacked the Commonwealth from the northwest. It left Poland-Lith-uania reduced in size and deprived of most of its Orthodox and Protestant population, with repercussions that have continued right up to the present. In other words, conflicts of doctrine, practice, and jurisdiction between confessional bodies, both claiming Christ as their Master and the Scriptures as their sole or principal source of spiritual knowledge, engaged in fratricidal warfare for several generations.
How can adherents of these radically contrasting positions, which have so often resulted in violent conflict, even be civil to one another, let alone cooperate in religious activities? We see them doing it; in fact, many of today’s readers are probably involved in such cooperation. How is this possible, when one side denies to the other the possibility of salvation and the other identifies its chief adversary as a manifestation of the Antichrist? Protestants and Catholics gave up righting each other, at least on the scale of the Thirty Years’ War, partly because the warring factions had simply worn each other out. Little energy was left to continue the fighting. Additionally, the conflicting religions had managed to sort themselves out geographically, such that most people resided in territories of only one religion.
The cooling of warlike passions, in which we ought to rejoice, was inevitably accompanied by, and partly caused by, a weakening of doctrinal commitments. Because of fiercely-held dogmatic commitments, the wars had broken out between groups that both called themselves Christian. Consequently, many people drew the plausible conclusion that commitments were bad and began to take a more tolerant attitude toward doctrinal differences. The great philosopher and mathematician Leibniz, who was one of the two inventors of calculus, sought to bring the confessions into harmony, but without much success. Then the Age of Reason, the so-called “Enlightenment,” began. Intellectuals claimed that man was “coming of age” (G. E. Lessing) and had outgrown the need for special divine revelation—such as the Bible claims to be and as Roman Catholics believed they had in “holy tradition”—and that religion could be found within the limits of reason alone (Immanuel Kant).
Thus, one way that civility and cooperation have been made possible is by simply overlooking the traditions—and convictions—of fellow-believers of the past. Today Roman Catholics generally disregard the papal bull of Boniface VDI. The more traditionally inclined claim that it was not an ex cathedra pronouncement on a matter of faith and morals, as the (first) Vatican Council of 1870 specified in order for a papal declaration to be deemed infallible. Thus, it would not belong to the “deposit of faith,” which must be accepted by all Catholics. Less traditional Roman Catholics simply disregard it and all other Catholic statements that say extra ecclesiam nulla solus—no salvation outside the church, by which, of course, the Roman Catholic Church is meant. Curiously enough John Calvin, the father of the Reformed tradition, agreed with extra ecclesiam nulla salus,1 and so do the confessional Lutherans.2 Of course, both of them define the church differently than the Catholics.
For the Lutherans, one is saved by faith and is made a member of the invisible church, the body of Christ, by that same faith. Hence, it is impossible to be saved without at the same time being brought into the church by one’s faith. Calvin taught a kind of practical necessity of belonging to the church in order to be saved, for it is within her that (Hie hears the gospel, and it is at her breast, to use Calvin’s picturesque image, that the “babe in Christ” must be nourished and taught.
THE HARD-LINE APPROACH
For centuries, relationships between Catholics and Protestants were dominated by what we may call the hard-line approach. Today, they have been transformed—partly for good reasons, partly for poor ones. Pope Boniface VIII had very good reasons—at least from his own perspective—for practicing the “hard approach,” that is, telling people that everyone must submit to the Roman pontiff in order to be saved. Roman Catholics, like all Christians through the centuries, have understood that it is necessary to be “born again.” However, Catholics, unlike many other Christians, tie the transformation we call the new birth directly to the sacrament of Baptism, a sacrament properly administered only under church auspices—Roman Catholic auspices, to be precise. Baptism was regarded as absolutely necessary for salvation, based among other things on the longer ending of the gospel of Mark: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16).
But here a qualification is in order. Because it was seen as such an absolute necessity, unlike the other sacraments, even Penance (now called Reconciliation) and the Eucharist, Baptism had to be made as accessible as possible. This was accomplished in two ways: (1) broadening the number of those who could administer it, and (2) by defining as Baptism things that we might not ordinarily consider such. In the Roman Catholic view, it is not necessary that Baptism be performed by a recognized Catholic ecclesiastical authority or functionary. Virtually anyone, male or female, can baptize, provided that he or she uses the correct trinitarian formula and intends to confer Christian baptism. For this reason, even “heretical” baptism, by Lutherans, Baptists, and so on, can be accepted as valid. When a baptized Protestant enters the Roman Catholic Church, he or she will not be rebaptized, although sometimes the candidate may be baptized “conditionally,” in case the prior baptism was not properly performed.
But, of course, people do die with no baptism of any kind; sometimes converts were martyred for their faith before having an opportunity to be baptized by anyone at all. Therefore, Catholic theology provided a couple of escape clauses, as it so often does: it established the concepts of “baptism of Wood,” which occurs when one dies for the faith without having been previously baptized, and also “baptism of desire,” in which one is unbaptized but seeks God and deeply desires to do whatever God requires, if one only knew what it is. Such a person would desire to be baptized and would indeed be baptized, if he or she knew that God requires it; hence, “baptism of desire” is said to have taken place, and such an individual has the possibility of getting to heaven and entering the presence of God. Thus, the church was able to define baptism as absolutely necessary for salvation without automatically placing all those who had not been baptized in eternal exile from heaven.3
Any concession that traditional Catholicism seemed to be giving by permitting anyone to perform the sacrament of Baptism was effectually taken back by the doctrine of the necessity of other sacraments, particularly Penance and the Eucharist. Baptism cleanses the soul of sin and places the recipient in the state of grace, making salvation possiWe. However, if one sins seriously after Baptism, then one loses erne’s access to salvation. The sacrament of Penance is all but necessary to return to the state of grace. (We must write “all but necessary” because here too Catholic theology provides an escape clause—“perfect contrition,” as explained below.) Baptism places an individual in the state of grace, which is a prerequisite for performing meritorious works. But even mote significantly, it is a necessary prerequisite for salvation/ If c»e sins mortally after Baptism—as indeed each of us does—then one falls out of the state of grace, and if one were to die in that condition, one would be condemned to hell. But how is one to regain that state of grace? Theoretically, one could regain it by “perfect contrition,” defined as an utterly selfless repentance, done because one regrets having offended the gracious God, not because one is in any way afraid of punishment in hell. Perfect contrition, however, is very hard to achieve. Who among us can say, when repenting, that he or she is not the least bit concerned about the fact that the alternative to conversion and repentance is eternal damnation?
Because perfect contrition is so hard to achieve and because one cannot really be sure that one has in fact attained it, the Roman church offers baptized believers its sacraments—which it believes were authorized and established by Jesus Christ Himself. In the sacrament of Penance, the repentant sinner is restored to the state of grace and thus once again capable of being saved. The sacrament of Holy Communion—the Eucharist—is of inestimable value as well. Both Penance and the Eucharist are administered exclusively by the Roman Catholic Church, and if one is to belong to that one true church, one must be in submission to Christ’s appointed head of the church, namely, to the pope. Hence, Boniface’s bull may be seen less as an expression of a papal thirst for power than an expression of concern for the salvation of all, for without a proper relationship—submission—to the pope, no one can expect to be saved. But Pope Boniface seems to have meant even more: refusal to submit to the pope demonstrated a lack of faith and an unwillingness to obey God’s commands, therefore virtually guaranteeing that anyone adopting that attitude would be damned.
>Kfe should bear in mind that Catholicism, partly because of its commitment to the use of reason—which the Reformers thought was an abuse of reason—always provided an escape clause, of which “baptism of desire” is but one example. Unfortunately, such escape clauses were more difficult to find and had harder and more stringent requirements than the prescribed way of the Roman Catholic Church; they really hold good only for those who are not consciously using them, for to know about an escape clause presupposes knowing Roman Catholic doctrine, which means that one knows enough to submit to the pope and therefore has to be disqualified from resorting to the clause.
Based on these considerations and many others, Roman Catholics have traditionally considered membership in their church a virtual if not an absolute necessity for salvation. The so-called Uniate churches, which recognize the authority of the pope but adhere to rites of Eastern Orthodox type, were safe havens, and even the Eastern Orthodox churches—which do not recognize papal authority—could dispense the necessary means of grace, despite being schismatic. But when one comes to the Protestant churches, the situation deteriorates rapidly. The Church of England and the Lutheran Church of Sweden preserve, or claim to preserve, the apostolic succession of priests and bishops—priests being ordained and bishops consecrated by bishops standing in an unbroken line of succession back to the Lord’s apostles. But the other “churches” did not even pretend to have it, because they had quite a different concept of the gospel ministry. Indeed, in 1896 the pope declared “Anglican orders”—ordinations and consecrations of the Church of England—invalid, and the line of apostolic succession broken, regardless of who had ordained whom, because the Anglicans did not share the Catholic understanding of the priesthood; the Anglicans did not intend to ordain sacrificing priests and, consequently, cannot be thought to have done so.
Whatever the merits of these arguments, it seems self-evident that the various Protestant groups, if they claim to be faithfully following Jesus Christ, are placed in a situation where they must deny that Catholics in the tradition of Pope Boniface are also faithfully following Christ. Indeed, this hard-line approach forced non-Catholic Christians to take the position so vigorously expressed in Article XXV of the Westminster Confession, calling the pope a usurper and more or less identifying the papacy with the Antichrist. By claiming authority that Christ never conferred, or even suggested that He desired to confer, the papacy in effect set itself up against God (2 Thessalonians 2:4). There is no easy way, in fact, no way at all, out of the impasse created when one party says, “It is absolutely necessary to submit to me,” and the other party calls him “the man of sin.”
But today the hard line has been abandoned on both sides: the pope no longer demands submission, and Protestants—or at least most Protestants— no longer call him the man of sin. There was one advantage to the hard-line position, however, which has now been sacrificed by both parties. The claims of Boniface VEI, although they were so extreme that they embarrassed many Catholics even in his own day, follow with a certain consistency some of the basic principles of Catholic theology as it was developed over the centuries. The Protestants’ counter-arguments, harsh though they sound, follow logically from the Protestant understanding of justification by faith and scriptural authority. When one abandons the conflict, it may be hard to do so without losing some of the fundamental points of belief that one had thought firmly established and on which one had come to rely.
Inasmuch as we have now abandoned the conflict in its harsh form, on both sides, both Protestants and Catholics are confronted with the problems that arise when the “sound doctrines” on which one’s confidence in salvation were based, appear to have slipped. How can we be kind without being foolish? How is it possible to relinquish some of the fighting words of the past without losing the fundamental faith principles behind them?
TWO LEGAL CONSTRUCTS—OR FICTIONS
Much of the Christian world—Roman Catholic and Protestant alike—has sought to escape from this impasse by adopting two legal constructs or, as the cynically inclined might say, legal fictions. The Catholics, especially since the time of the jovial Pope John ΧΧΙII (1958-1963), developed the concept of “separated brethren.” According to Pope John, Protestants who acknowledge and worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior must be accepted as brothers in Him, although separated from the fellowship of the true mother church that He established. Unfortunately for this theory, Vatican II (1962-1965), which Pope John convened, and during which he died, in the document Lumen Gentium, “The Light of the Peoples,” called the Constitution on the Church, expands what it calls the circle of salvation so much that virtually everyone in the whole world is taken in, even atheists, unless they deliberately refuse to believe in God against their own knowledge and judgment.5 Thus, Catholicism has moved from saying “no salvation outside the circle of the church” to saying, “no one outside the circle of salvation.”
Protestants have their own legal fictions. If we consider liberal Protestants, most have become more or less conscious universalists. In other words, they postulate, often in a vague sort of way, that ultimately all people will be saved. Not so long ago—less than half a century—liberal Protestants regularly considered the Roman Catholic Church their enemy, regarding it as no better than fundamentalism, which of course they detested. The fault, in both cases, was exclusivism. Fundamentalists insist that conversion and a personal relationship with Christ are essential for salvation; those who refuse Him will be left out, or, to put it more forcefully, damned. Roman Catholics demand—or used to demand—membership in their church and adherence to its doctrines and practices. Those who insist on remaining outside the church in this life will be left outside of heaven forever; indeed, they put it more strongly: they will suffer eternally in hell. Now that Roman Catholicism as a whole has wavered so much in its attitude of exclusivism, however, the old hostility of the liberals has all but vanished. It resurfaces when Catholics—often including the more liberal ones—once again join ranks and resist moral evils, as in the case of abortion and sexual immorality.
The difficulty with this flexibility about salvation and with the reluctance to suggest that anyone can be damned is that they are fictions. It is true that they have reduced the old hostility between the confessions, but unfortunately, in order to hold them, as both of these groups—liberal Catholics and liberal Protestants—do, one has to ignore some of the most explicit teachings of Jesus Himself. Consider, for example, John 3:36, where we read, “Whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him. ” If we are required to forget what Jesus so explicitly taught in order to have peace between confessions and denominations, it would be better to go on fighting.
TWO KINDS OF “REACTIONARIES”
We are thus faced with a problem almost as difficult as that with which we began, the impasse between “submission to the Roman pontiff” and “the man of sin.” If we want to have perfect peace between the Christian confessions, we can easily have it, but at the cost of ignoring some veiy fundamental teachings of Jesus Himself. If we want to hold mi to the reliability of the words of Jesus, and of the teachings of Scripture as a whole, we cannot altogether avoid conflicts. Both Protestantism and Catholicism have their “reactionaries,” folk who insist on believing the truths as their confession used to teach them and who therefore still bump heads with one another.
Not all Roman Catholics, by any means, accept the universalistic tendencies of Lumen Gentium. For those who do take the warnings of Jesus Himself seriously, Vatican II's Constitution cm the Church represents a grave threat. When a declaration of this sort is handed down by the magisterium, the highest teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, it places the Catholic who thinks it wrong in a worse situation than that of the conservative Protestant who thinks that his liberal church leadership is teaching false doctrine.
The Protestant comes from a tradition where the individual is expected to stand for his own convictions regardless of what the “authorities” say, just as Martin Luther did at the Diet of Worms. “Here I stand” may not be Luther’s precise words at Worms, but they certainly express the great Reformer’s conviction that the believer has to stand upon the Word of God, no matter what human authorities, even church authorities, may say.
The Catholic, by contrast, and especially the loyalist or traditionalist Catholic, is used to trusting his church to remain faithful to the teachings of Christ and to be careful and precise in expounding them. For such a Catholic to have to oppose the direction his church leadership is taking is to question his own justification in remaining Catholic, since Catholicism has obedience to the church as a fundamental principle of its existence. The conservative Protestant “reactionary,” if we may call him that, can take comfort in the fact that in trusting Scripture, as he understands it, rather than church authority, he is in the best tradition of Protestantism. The Catholic “reactionary,” by contrast, is in the awkward situation of rinding that he can hold to what he considers true only by opposing the institution that was supposed to be the guardian of truth and that by so doing he is involuntarily imitating the rebellious attitude of the Protestants he had always believed to be wrong.
The kind of Christian with which we have to do in these pages is basically the “reactionary” kind. In other words, these Christians react against the tendency of their churches and church leaders to “drift away,” as Hebrews puts it, and to ignore the salvation that is offered exclusively to those who receive Christ and believe in His name (Hebrews 2:3; John 1:12). The term “reactionary” is generally considered a bad one. However, we all recognize that in many situations, the right reaction, and fiequendy a very quick right reaction, is vital for survival. Every driver knows that it is essential to have the right reaction in a tense situation on the highway. If a reactionary is one who reacts, sometimes it is important to be a reactionary; that can be true in church life as well as in other situations. However, if one is nothing but a reactionary, only reacting to challenges and threats and never going on to develop something positive, one may avoid harm but is not likely to accomplish much good. If one is to be a Roman Catholic today, it is good and necessary to be a reactionary, in the sense in which we are using the term.
The same thing might be said of being a Protestant, were it not for the fact that the term Protestant, unlike the word Catholic, has become so pale and colorless that fewer and fewer Christians in the Protestant tradition are willing to use it of themselves. From the perspective of conservative Protestantism (call it evangelicalism or fundamentalism), it is better to be a “reactionary” Catholic than a “progressive” one, for the reactionary still holds to many central truths of the Christian faith that the progressive seems to have abandoned. In a real sense, it is only the reactionary Catholic whom an evangelical Protestant can accept as a Christian brother or sister, but at the same time it is only that type of Catholic who will stand up against evangelicals and evangelicalism, attempt to refute them, and in some cases pursue policies in public life designed to thwart them and ruin their plans and hopes.
Perhaps a humorous example from recent history may be offered: Boston’s Park Street Church, built in 1810, when churches did not require much office space, was renting rooms in the 1960s from an adjacent fur store for some of its office and Sunday school needs. Park Street was vigorous in its attempts to evangelize and sometimes specially targeted Catholics, who, as it happens, make up the majority of the population of Boston. The store owners had several times refused to sell the building to Park Street Church. Meanwhile, a few doors farther up Park Street, the Roman Catholic Paulist order erected a beautiful Catholic Information Center. The Paulists, be it noted, were founded in the nineteenth century for the express purpose of winning Protestants to Rome. Suddenly Park Street Church learned that the store owners were about to sell their building to the Catholics, who predictably would have dumped the Protestants’ offices and Sunday schools into the street. At the last minute, after much arm-twisting, the frirrier sold the building to Park Street Church. Of course, such shenanigans are a far cry from the destruction of the Thirty Years’ War, but it does illustrate the persistence of Catholic-Protestant rivalry right up to the era of Vatican II.
Even within the last quarter-century, well within living memory, there have been examples of mob action or police repression of evangelical Christians incited by Catholic clergy and activists. The country of Columbia and the province of Quebec come to mind, but there are other examples as well (and the less common but equally unchristian example of Protestant ministers stirring up their people against Catholics, as has happened and continues to happen in Northern Ireland).
It is not necessary to act as though doctrine itself were the be-all and end-all of Christian faith to recognize that unless one learns and accepts the faith that certain important doctrines expound, one cannot be said to be a Christian and cannot expect to be saved. It is out of the fundamental importance of true doctrine that one kind of antagonism between Protestants and Roman Catholics arose. This is an antagonism between what we might call the “better sort” of Protestants and Catholics—the more serious ones. There has, of course, been much antagonism that is based on nothing more honorable than racially or culturally motivated mistrust and dislike. Sometimes this latter kind is easier to heal, as ordinaiy people are frequently willing to give up their prejudices when close contact reveals to them that those they disliked are not so different and bad after all. It is harder—and properly so— to get theologians to give up their doctrines.
ANTAGONISM AND OPPOSITION
It is important to recognize that Protestantism, like the early Christian church itself, began in an atmosphere of institutional hostility. The Jewish community in which the early church originated was hostile and created problems; indeed, it forced a number of Christians to give their lives for their faith. However, the Jews did not have a nation, and even in Palestine they lacked the authority to impose the death penalty. Consequently, antagonistic Jews stirred up government authorities against the Christians. Of course, this was only the beginning, for the imperial Roman government, alarmed at the rapid growth of a sect whose members it considered potentially or actually disloyal, began persecutions on its own in earnest.
This is rather like what happened when Protestantism arose. At first, actions were taken primarily by church authorities loyal to Rome—as had generally been the case when the established church confronted heretics in earlier centuries. But soon it became evident that the ecclesiastical authorities were not powerful enough to handle the growing Protestant rebellion. Consequently, the church began to use its influence with governments in the attempt to stamp out Protestantism. The stories of Catholic persecution of Protestants are chronicled in the classic work, Fox’s Book of Martyrs.6 In principle, neither the Lutherans nor the Calvinists of continental Europe sought to persecute Catholics. They were actually much harder on other Reformation movements, especially the Anabaptists and the antitrinitarians. Catholics, however, seldom scrupled to use the power of the state against Protestants.
A notable example was furnished by the Catholic daughter of Henry Vin, Queen Mary (1553-1558), called Bloody Mary for her zeal to kill Protestants. Consequently, from the time of Queen Elizabeth I, English sovereigns have been required to be members of the Church of England. James II, who converted back to Catholicism, was pushed out of power by the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
As a consequence, whenever Protestants had the civil power in their hands, they tended to try to stifle the Catholics—although seldom resorting to the kind of bloodshed that characterized the Spanish in the Netherlands, for example. The population of the American colonies at the time of Independence was almost entirely Protestant, and largely Protestant of a Calvin-istic streak. Only Maryland was founded on a principle of tolerance. But because Catholics were few in number until heavy waves of immigration came early in the nineteenth century, there was little scope for anti-Catholicism.
Traditional Protestants, raised on stories of the Protestant martyrs, were apprehensive about the entry of a large group of Catholics into the United States. Images of the Inquisition and of papal tyranny were evoked. Catholic worship was conducted at peculiar hours in a foreign language and did not involve good Bible preaching and teaching. Much of the Protestant leadership in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century was affected by the liberalism and secularism that was increasingly prominent in Europe. The suspicion and resentment of the common Protestant people across the nation were consequently reinforced rather than damaged by the supercilious disdain of the Northern intellectuals for the pope and those who followed him in his religion of obscurantism and superstition.
UNEASY COLLABORATION
During the years when Park Street Church and the neighboring Catholic Information Center could carry on a kind of semi-serious guerrilla conflict, it was apparent that both parties believed that they had the truths people need to know and accept in order to be saved. They could, and occasionally did, collaborate on issues of common concern. The abortion decision of 1973, Roe v. Wade, and particularly the educational efforts of the late Francis A. Schaeffer, stirred up evangelical Protestants and brought them into the political arena, where the battle for the lives of unborn children had for some time been waged almost exclusively by Catholics. However, at precisely the time the Catholics were beginning to join with Protestants in this way, Catholicism was beginning to lose its clear profile, thanks to the mento (modernization) launched by Pope John ΧΧIIΙ and Vatican II. In other words, Catholics began to seek alliances with Protestants and to join forces with them when they were no longer as serious about the truths of their faith as they had been. At least some Catholics were saying, in effect, “We can collaborate with you now, for, you know, doctrines don’t matter very much.”
Of course, many evangelical Protestants, especially those from churches with a lively memory of Roman Catholic oppression, were reluctant to cooperate in any way with those who had once seemed so determined to exterminate all traces of the churches that believe in justification by faith alone. Fundamentalists are by definition interested in the clear, literal meaning of Scripture, and for many of them Catholic doctrines and practices appear to be in such dramatic conflict with Scripture that it is not possible to consider Catholicism a true church through which one can learn those things necessary for salvation. Cooperation of any kind with Catholics seemed to some to compromise the gospel and to suggest to Catholics that they were cm the way to salvation. Thus, some fundamentalists refused to cooperate in projects such as the March for Life because it implied being “unequally yoked together” with unbelievers. Could evangelicals accept Catholics as cobelligerents, as Francis Schaeffer urged, when these doctrinal differences remained?
Collaboration on a practical level between Roman Catholics and Protestants was possible in part because the major burden of the struggle was borne by members of the laity, the rank-and-file, not the clergy and hierarchy, especially on the Roman Catholic side. As laity, they were not necessarily well-informed on disputed points of doctrine that the hierarchy considered important. The experience of cooperation, of standing shoulder to shoulder, sometimes in literally bloody conflicts with the forces of abortion (as when Operation Rescue members suffered mistreatment and physical abuse), Catholics and Protestants alike lost some of the mutual suspicions that a theoretical knowledge of their doctrinal differences and of their historical conflicts might otherwise have kept alive.
There have been notable examples of Protestant leaders who have made a sincere and vigorous effort to collaborate with Roman Catholics on issues of mutual concern. For example, in the struggles over a “gay rights” ordinance in Chicago, Pastor Erwin Lutzer of Chicago’s famous Moody Church joined the Roman Catholics in opposing the proposed legislation and defeated it in the first encounter. Unfortunately, when the ordinance was proposed a second time, Chicago’s Reman Catholic archbishop, Joseph Cardinal Bemardin, abandoned the struggle and left his former ally, Pastor Lutzer, to bear the wrath of homosexual activists alone. (In a rather bizarre twist in 1993, the Cardinal was charged by a young man with having sexually abused him as a teenager. It seems that even his volte-face on the gay rights issue was not sufficient to protect Cardinal Bernaidin from slander by someone from the homosexual community. The accuser subsequently dropped the charge.)
Evangelicals in the pro-life movement, too, have felt themselves abandoned and their efforts undercut by political maneuvers on the part of members of the Catholic hierarchy. The Human Life Bill, proposed in 1981 by the late Senator John East of North Carolina, appeared headed for passage until it was derailed by the lobbyists of the National Catholic Bishops’ Conference. This sort of thing has made evangelicals suspicious of alliances with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but at the same time it has strengthened their sympathetic attachments to pro-life Catholic laity, who often have felt the same way about their leaders. Probably it is the crisis of conscience among American Christians caused by Roe v. Wade that has, as much as any other factor, led to the growing rapprochement between Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants. There can be no doubt that standing together on the front lines, being insulted, spat upon, arrested, and sometimes brutalized as they attempt to witness to the divinely ordained value of each human life, unborn as well as born, have brought former antagonists together.
THE BLURRING OF LINES
Once again, as for a time in the eighteenth century, cooperation between Catholics and Protestants is growing, but this time for different reasons—no longer because of battle fatigue and skepticism, but because both groups have recognized that they confront a common enemy and have come closer to seeing themselves as committed to one and the same divine Lord. As the proverb says, “There are no atheists in foxholes,” and there is not much doctrinal controversy on the picket lines, especially when people are being roughed up or dragged off by the police.
From the point of view of an evangelical Christian who has himself been in the front lines in a conflict with evil, the support of courageous Catholics, whether they are evangelically inclined or old-fashioned traditionalists, is always welcomed. But some suspicion remains. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill said that he would accept the devil himself as an ally. Once Hitler was defeated, it became apparent that the Soviet Union was no longer a comfortable table companion for her former Astern allies. If the united efforts of conservative Christians—Protestants and Catholics—should succeed in defeating some of the force of evil that currently threatens to destroy everything we call Christian civilization, is there not a danger that the old differences will once again give rise to interdenominational conflicts?
Questions remain. Sharing a motel room with a Catholic pro-life leader after a fatiguing and frustrating day on the picket line, one evangelical was told, “Well, as least we are saving our souls.” No evangelical believer will accept the idea that good deeds, however desirable, bring salvation, but it is hard—and not necessarily productive—to launch into a doctrinal dispute with a fellow-soldier under such circumstances. Cobelligerency, standing together against the same enemies, to use Francis Schaeffer’s term, has made it hard for both evangelicals and Catholics to maintain the attitudes of hostility and suspicion that were still so common in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the common danger is not the only thing that is now bringing Catholics and Protestants closer to one another. There are also theological and, above all, sociological factors that have led to more dialogue and discussion between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. In the 1960s it became evident that Schaeffer was right when he said that the foundations had been eroded and that America’s apparently Christian society was really a house of cards that a little nudge would topple. The Vietnam War gave more than a little nudge, and the apparently Christian structure of the nation was suddenly revealed as rotting and near the point of collapse. As late as 1965 universities and colleges around the country separated the sexes in dormitories as a matter of course and had rather strict visitation rules. Within the space of a few years, even months, these structures toppled, and, whereas prior to the 1960s it had been hard for college students to find a way to engage in premarital sexual encounters, by the end of the decade it was hard for those who did not wish to do so to find a dormitory situation where such things were not encouraged.
A recognition that “modernity,” or militant secularism, was much more of a threat to the fundamental faith and basic morality of Christians of all kinds than the doctrinal differences between them led serious Christians of various groups to interact with one another in theology and worship as well as in public protests and social action. When we say “modernity,” what is really meant is the increasingly militant, increasingly anti-Christian secular culture, which is in effect determined to extirpate serious Christianity of all kinds, beginning with fundamentalism and traditional Catholicism, not omitting such trivial things as Christmas carols and creches on public property. (In Waukegan, Illinois, the local atheist gadfly has begun a campaign to remove two crosses from a centuiy-old public cemetery.)
Modernity is a militant adversary of Christianity; yet it must be distinguished from the current movement known as postmodernism. When literature scholars and others talk of postmodernism, that should not be taken to mean that the modernity that attacked Christianity has been overcome or superseded. Modernity contends that Christian truth claims are false, but it believes that they are false because certain contradictory claims are actually true. One can argue with modernity and possibly refute it and persuade its advocates to accept the truth of Christianity, just as a Protestant controversialist would argue with a Roman Catholic and hope to persuade him or her of the truth of the evangelical position—and, of course, vice-versa. Postmodernism hardly believes that truth exists or can possibly be known. Postmodernism is therefore inimical to Christian faith.
These and other factors promoted a new and, frequently, healthy kind of ecumenism (although, as we shall see, not one that is totally without dangers). During the student rebellions of the late 1960s, a spiritual renewal began among young Roman Catholics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It had a strongly charismatic flavor and sought to reaffirm the fundamentals of the Christian faith as they have always been formally professed (but far from central) in Catholicism. It soon attracted members and clergy of mainline and independent Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches, including noncharismatics as well as charismatics. It brought together numbers of mostly young Christians, first in Ann Arbor and subsequently in other centers, and established ties to ecumenically-inclined renewal movements in other countries, such as the Protestant Marienschwesterschaft (Mary Sisterhood) in Germany. Structurally, it led to the foundation of the Center for Pastoral Renewal, the journal Faith and Renewal, and the publishing house Servant Press. The modus vivendi of these collaborating Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christians has been to stress those central things on which they are in agreement and to leave aside those on which they continue to disagree.
SUMMING UP
The great German church historian Karl Heussi listed a number of reasons why the Christian church grew so rapidly in the Roman Empire, despite the official hostility of the government and frequent persecutions. Among others he cited the fact that the early Christian churches were flexible on the margins but firm on the central convictions of their faith, as well as in their moral and social practices. The later Roman Empire was a time of immense—but not unparalleled—social and moral degeneracy, as well as of active government opposition to biblical religion. In 1950 one could have described the later Roman Empire as a time of “immense and unparalleled social and moral degeneracy,” but that cannot be said today. In modern America our social and moral degeneracy is reaching a level that would have shamed even the Romans, at least those in the smaller cities and rural regions outside the capital. Modern America has not yet attained all the features of Roman degeneracy—for example, we do not have gladiatorial games—but our mass media spread the degeneracy that we do have into every nook and cranny of our land so that there is no region, town, or locality that can be considered free of its taint.
“In my Father’s house,” said Jesus, “are many mansions” (John 14:2 kjv), to use the older language. Usually this is taken to refer to heaven, as is apparent from the context. But perhaps it may be permissible to allegorize a bit and think of these “mansions” as houses of worship. Evangelical Protestants have learned to work, pray, and worship in consort despite the fact that they have some substantial doctrinal differences—differences that are not likely, in human terms, to be cleared away before Christ returns. We see even greater differences with those who call themselves Catholics. But we are also seeing agreements and commonalities, especially when the fury of the anti-Christian forces around us deprives us of leisure for intra-Christian polemics. In any conflict, it is important to know one’s enemies, but it is also very important to know one’s friends. Perhaps the very intensity of the opposition to Christianity in our aggressively secularistic culture can be used by God to help us see that what unites us—or better, the One we call Lord— is more important than the things that divide us.
Notes
1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, 1:4.
2. Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, Part II, Art. 3.
3. Traditional Roman Catholic theology maintained that those who remained unbaptized, no matter how flexibly one defined baptism, could not enter the presence of God, but under certain circumstances morally good people, as well as unbaptized infants, might be admitted to a place called limbo, where they would enjoy “natural blessedness” but would not enjoy the “Beatific Vision”—that is to say, they would never see God.
4. Evangelical readers should bear in mind that salvation in the Roman Catholic understanding is something that can take place only at the end of one’s life, at the Judgment Seat of Christ. That is one reason why Roman Catholics find it presumptuous when an evangelical Christians says, “I was saved,” using the past tense, and can even give the day and the hour when that happened, “once for all,” at a certain time in the past.
5. Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council //, rev. ed. Vol. 1 of The Councillor and Post Councillor Documents (Northport, N.Y.: Costello, 1988), 365-68.
6. Fox's Book of Martyrs, edited in 1978 by W. B. Forbush, is currently available from Zondervan Publishing House.