“Fragment of the True Cross in a Gospel Cover”
Vatopaedi Monastery, Mount Athos

Any chance of coming back before the Eucharist had vanished so I prepared for an hour of exploration in the great basilica with my little boy. At one point we made our way to the reliquary, where, for the first time, I saw a fragment of the cross upon which Christ had been crucified. My first reaction was not wonder and awe, but skepticism. The relic encased was no bigger than the point of a pen. How could anybody know if it came from the cross of Christ? As I thought through it, my rationalistic mind did battle with another part of me that was utterly fascinated with the small speck of wood. Part of me became amazed while another part refused to rejoice over what had to be impossible. Nonetheless, I couldn’t wait to show what I had found to my wife and daughter after Mass.

My wife, like me, first expressed some skepticism. We both hid this skepticism from our daughters. My five year old, however, expressed pure belief and complete amazement. She starred into the glass with a look of wonder and completely forgot everything around her. She tried to find words to communicate what she was feeling; “Daddy, it’s like really really real.” This little fragment of wood had catapulted her faith from fairy tale to concrete reality. She talked about the relic the whole way home. She told grandma and grandpa what she had seen. The cross was real, Christ was real. For her, the wonderful story of Christ’s passion had just entered a new dimension.

I thought about my daughter’s experience in December when I read Leonardo De Chirico’s Reformation 21 article, “The Vatican Files VII.” In this article De Chirico discusses the year of St. Paul, celebrated from June 28th 2008 to June 29th 2009 in the Catholic Church. One of De Chirico’s greatest points of contention is that on the one hand the Catholic Church claims to be Pauline, while on the other hand she venerates relics. I found it interesting that he would make this objection considering that some of the first relics in the Church were Pauline. In Acts 19:11-12, St. Luke writes:

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

The problem with dismissing relics is that it’s only possible to do so when speaking of relics in general. Once any particular relic is brought up, say wood from Christ’s cross, or parts of St. Paul’s handkerchief, dismissal seems sacrilegious while belief seems sanctifying. This is because every relic is connected to Christ, the divine made physical. Every relic lifts the fog of unbelief because every relic offers its own concrete testimony to Christ’s redemptive work in this world. I would like to ask Leonardo De Chirico whether or not he approves of this practice recorded in Scripture concerning Paul’s handkerchiefs. If fragments of those handkerchiefs turned up in his congregation would he want them to be taken to the sick? It would be hard to condemn the practice recorded in Acts without doing violence to Scripture or adopting a dispensational idea about the role of relics in the life of the Church.

It might be easy to dismiss relics altogether on the simple grounds that fraudulent relics have been proven to exist.  This sort of thinking, however, would never be applied elsewhere in the Christian life.  Such an idea is analogous to arguing that orthodox doctrine should be dismissed simply because heresies have been proven to exist as well.  Such an idea is absurd.  The same Church that Christ equipped to distinguish truth from error can also distinguish a true relic from a fake.  All Christians should honor true relics and all believers should mimic the faith of children.  As my daughter taught me, the Church is trustworthy, and she will lead us into a deeper knowledge and joy of the resurrected Christ.

The professors acknowledged that many Protestants simply take the wrongness of Rome for granted, unconsciously adopting a kind of “Protestant triumphalism.” As a result, they are left “complacent about the challenge that Rome can pose to us,” mistaking easily refuted caricatures of Catholic teaching for actual Catholic teaching. Regrettably, despite these observations, there are several serious misconceptions along with arguments by innuendo in this brief conversation. These include the baffling suggestion that the Pope does not do much preaching (cf. the Vatican’s collection of Pope Benedict’s homilies and other pastoral addresses), an unfortunate slur concerning what lurks “below the surface” of Catholicism, and a passing reference, drawing from a somewhat sensationalistic secondary source, to John Henry Newman’s supposed doubt and discontent after his conversion. The latter is a canard that was current during Newman’s lifetime, and easily disproved by his own testimony. As for secondary sources, the professors would have done far better to refer their listeners to the new edition of Ian Ker’s meticulously researched biography, which is imbued with Newman’s own private writings, giving us an intimate portrait of this faithful Catholic priest and Cardinal.

Although I will address a few more particular problems in the professors’ attempt to unmask Catholicism (such that by the end of the podcast they are claiming that the Catholic Church is a “false Church”), my focus will be primarily on one topic, albeit the one that runs like a thread through the entire discussion, which is the development or germination or evolution or whatever you think best describes the changes exhibited in the Catholic Church over time.

I. Emerging Catholicism

A prevailing theme of the talk was the non-primitive nature of some core Catholic institutions and beliefs. For example: The medieval and modern papacy is not exactly like the early and original papacy. Or if that characterization is considered too compliant, then you can say with the professors that the medieval and modern papacy is not much like the papacy of the ancient Roman Church, which in its turn was not much like the congregational leadership structure of the really ancient church in Rome. On their view, furthermore, neither is the early nor medieval nor modern episcopacy very much like the very early churches that the Apostles founded throughout the Roman Empire.

The professors went on to mention the fact that the seven sacraments were not specifically delineated until the Middle Ages, and not dogmatically defined (at least by an extraordinary act of the Magisterium) as to source, number, and efficacy until after the Reformation. And the very controversial definition of papal infallibility did not occur until 1870, when the Fathers of Vatican I defined the doctrine of papal infallibility. The Catholic Church’s rites, ceremonies, and devotions were also alluded to in the talk, in connection with development. Certainly these are saturated with changes. I don’t suppose that anyone thinks that the liturgy celebrated in a Jewish house church in 50 A.D. was that of John Chrysostom, though maybe some believe that it bore a striking resemblance to the liturgy that developed under the headship of John Calvin. (Tim Troutman discusses the earliest Christian liturgies in his post and accompanying podcast, Christian Worship in the First Century.)

Development has been abundant and evident in the Catholic Church from East to West. Since the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), the Church has held 21 Ecumenical Councils (by Catholic reckoning), many of these defining some fundamental matters of doctrine. As regards religious ceremony and devotion, the Byzantine liturgical (and often imperial) processions (echoed today in the various “entrances” of that Rite), the iconostasis, hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer (which blows away the Rosary for sheer repetition), the Latin Church’s Corpus Christi processions (still proceeding through the broad streets of our marvelous modern cities), the elevation of the Host, the confessional box, the Gothic Cathedral, etc. are all obvious developments. We don’t find much of this in the New Testament or the first few centuries or even the first several centuries of Church history. This list could easily be greatly multiplied. There is simply no denying the fact that the Catholic Church has changed over the course of time. The question is, how do we explain this fact?

The Catholic Church has given various accounts of the Catholic developments. As to essential things, she maintains that they have been there from the beginning, and are either clearly presented in the sources, or implicit in them, or else were known and preserved among the faithful in a secret discipline, hidden from profane eyes and the as yet not fully initiated catechumens. As to those things that are related to the essential things, but not themselves essential, e.g., the prayer beads, the processions, the elevation, the College of Cardinals, these need little more explanation than, say, the hymns of Charles Wesley, standing for the reading of God’s word, receiving the communion wine in separate, individual-sized cups, or the General Assembly. Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks–and the body aligns. The heart of Catholic worship is of course the Holy Eucharist. A large part of Catholicism’s rich liturgical heritage is but the progressive aligning of the “body” in visible forms of worship expressive of belief in the Real Presence. The relative poverty of Protestantism with regard to the visible dimension of worship is largely a consequence of denying the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass, or else redefining the doctrines such that the consecrated elements are supposed to remain or revert to bread and wine, and the sacrifice is supposed to be something other than the self-oblation of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby our sins are forgiven.

Clark and Godfrey touch briefly upon this issue, claiming that the Church Fathers were ambiguous on the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and that it is contrary to Scripture (the Epistle to the Hebrews in particular) to suppose that the church building is a temple, having a sanctuary and an altar, as we find in Catholic churches. In connection with the Eucharist, particular mention is made of St. John Chrysostom. Here the professors assume a false dichotomy between the Eucharist as the anamnesis of Christ’s sacrifice, and the Eucharist as actually being that sacrifice. Thus they suppose that St. Chrysostom, who uses both expressions, is vacillating and non-committal on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Tim Troutman has addressed these matters at some length in his articles, The Church Fathers on Transubstantiation and Holy Orders and the Sacrificial Priesthood. As Tim argues, the Catholicism that emerges over the centuries, with its variety of ritual centered upon the Eucharist, is an expression of fidelity to, rather than a departure from, the doctrine of the Church Fathers. (The same goes for the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, concerning which the professors give a hasty account, badly misconstruing the Catholic doctrine and ignoring the patristic evidence.)

The piety of the early Protestants, on the other hand, was iconoclastic, expressed by smashing sacred art, purging prayers, whitewashing church buildings, and in many cases desecrating consecrated hosts reserved in the tabernacles of Catholic parishes. (For historical accounts of early Protestant iconoclasm, see Carlos M. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580.) The result, naturally, was a wreck, followed by a blank.  That blank was bound to be, and was, written over by someone’s conception of what ought to be said and done when folks gather for worship, and this in turn was informed by what that someone believed, and perhaps just as importantly, what he did not believe. But once we admit the principle that allowed for this kind of revision, the someone who gets to do the revising turns out to be just about anyone. Eventually, schism breeds competition, competition breeds consumerism, and consumerism prompts more schisms, as well as conversions to Catholicism (getting off the wheel, so to speak).

II. Imagining the Catholic Church

The professors at one point surmised that people might very well turn Romanist because of the romantic appeal of Rome, at least as compared to the slavish contemporaneity and/or plodding iconoclasm of Evangelical and Reformed worship services. There is surely something to the supposition that people turn to Rome through a longing for romance.  But the desire of the convert is for something significantly more than vestments, chants, thuribles, and stained-glass windows. After all, as was noted in the podcast (in connection with Evangelicals’ penchant for guitar-strumming praise songs), Catholicism has of late been tainted by some of the same ills that plague Evangelicalism, including liturgical banality, architectural functionalism, and artistic modernism. These phenomena, unhappy in themselves, nevertheless serve to highlight an essential element of Roman romanticism, one that cannot be completely overwhelmed by underwhelming or even egregious aesthetics. [1] Basically, many would be converts begin by imagining the Catholic Church to be a secure haven from a rudderless and consequently fissiparous Protestantism. As they progress, they realize that the image of a haven or harbor, while certainly applicable, is not completely adequate, and must be joined by a Barque. And once one gets the picture of a ship, sometimes tossed about by perilous seas, but ever remaining intact and afloat, one is nearer to understanding that Catholicism is like a marriage, in which romance does not reduce to sentimentalism, nor prescind from difficulty and pain, but rather flows from the realities of a life shared together, come what may.

Thus the essential element in the love story that is Catholicism does not ultimately depend upon the aesthetic appeal of the concrete expressions of the Church’s piety. These do pertain to the essence, and so enter into the image that prompts and entices the convert, but the more fundamental thing, that which gives form and focus, provides sense and stability, to the “smells and bells” and proliferating forms of art and devotion in the Church, is the unity and enduring identity-in-continuity-through-history of the Catholic Church herself. Nothing is more romantic than enduring unity, which is why we are so moved by a Golden Anniversary. The convert to the Catholic Church is likewise moved. He thinks that here he has found the “pearl of great price,” the precious Bride of Christ, the Mystical Body. Of course, in the end (which is really the beginning), conversion involves an act of faith that cannot be ultimately vindicated by imagination. But as it turns out, the romance of Rome has more than a little to do with the reasons for Rome, and lies largely in the fact that Christ established one Church (Matthew 16:16-18), which is his Mystical Body, which has endured through time (according to his promise and by the power of the Holy Spirit), having visible roots in and historical continuity with Cephas and the twelve, to which the relics of Sts. Peter and Paul, the succession of Popes, and the very name “Catholic” bear witness.

III. The Image and the Essence

Such is the essential structure of the lure of Rome, that which most appeals to many would be converts. The Catholic Church’s formal unity and antiquity in (at least) material continuity with the Apostles, and through them with Our Lord Jesus himself, are all evidences of its identity as that one Church which Christ founded (cf. the quotation from John Henry Newman in this section). The professors immediately pick up on this point, and commence by asserting the necessity of the Reformation, which they maintain was the product of very talented and well-educated men, who severally came to the conclusion that the whole Church was not properly ordered according to the New Testament. Their claim is that the Catholic Church’s essence, regardless of her image, is other than the essence of the Church that Christ established. The evidence adduced on behalf of this claim is that the Catholic Church, at least as constituted sometime prior-to (and since) the Reformation, and sometime after the [fill-in-the-blank] century, is discernibly different from the original Church, which can be identified by talented and well-educated persons through critical interpretation of Scripture and history.

It is one thing to enjoy material continuity with the past, and another thing to be the same thing as that which existed in the past. The former kind of continuity is exemplified by the way that, per evolutionary theory, a modern mammal, let’s say an elephant, is related by an unbroken succession of life forms to an ancient animal that for all we know was (to paraphrase Chesterton) some kind of fish but certainly no kind of elephant. That sort of change does not constitute a continuity of essence, as does, for example, the biological process which we observe all around us and commonly call “reproduction”–elephants giving birth to elephants. The reproductive process involves identity of essence as well as the material continuity of life forms, whereas evolution only involves the latter. The professors’ contention is that changes in the Catholic tradition, including the definitions of some essential Catholic doctrines, exhibit an evolutionary kind of development, by which one thing turns into something else.

As concerns the Catholic conception of development, it is necessary to note that the Church is not best likened to either the evolution or the reproduction of a species. According to the New Testament, and St. Paul in particular, the Church exists after the manner of a living body, an individual substance having an essence, including an inherent principle of movement, which constitutes its identity-in-continuity-through-change-over-time. Staying with this “form of sound words,” i.e., the image of a living body as indicating the nature of the Church, we would expect the Church, like a body, to change according to its own inherent principle of motion, i.e., to grow and develop. This too, at least by analogy (begging no question as to the relation of the Church to the kingdom of heaven), is in accordance with Scripture, which describes the kingdom of heaven as a tiny mustard seed, which grows into a tree, becoming a home for all the birds of the air (Matthew 13:31-32).

Catholics maintain that changes in the Church, such as the accumulating definitions of doctrine, ritual embellishments in the celebration of the Sacraments, proliferating forms of religious art and devotion, and varying arrangements in the organization of the Magisterium, are like the growth and development of a living being, a quite natural and indeed indispensable facet of its life. Thus Newman remarked on the life of material beings: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Furthermore, as we know, a fully grown tree look less like a mustard seed than an elephant looks like a fish. So even from remarkable changes it does not follow that there has been an essential change. In fact, if we are thinking along the lines of an individual thing, rather than a chain of related things, then material continuity itself will strongly suggest identity, as Newman notes at the beginning of his essay on development:

Till positive reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary, the most natural hypotheses, the most agreeable to our mode of proceeding in parallel cases, and that which takes precedence of all others, is to consider that the society of Christians, which the Apostles left on earth, were of that religion to which the Apostles had converted them; that the external continuity of name, profession, and communion, argues a real continuity of doctrine; that, as Christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind, therefore it went on so to manifest itself; and that the more, considering that prophecy had already determined that it was to be a power visible in the world and sovereign over it, characters which are accurately fulfilled in that historical Christianity to which we commonly give the name. It is not a violent assumption, then, but rather mere abstinence from the wanton admission of a principle which would necessarily lead to the most vexatious and preposterous scepticism, to take it for granted, before proof to the contrary, that the Christianity of the second, fourth, seventh, twelfth, sixteenth, and intermediate centuries is in its substance the very religion which Christ and His Apostles taught in the first, whatever may be the modifications for good or for evil which lapse of years, or the vicissitudes of human affairs, have impressed upon it.

Of course I do not deny the abstract possibility of extreme changes. The substitution is certainly, in idea, supposable of a counterfeit Christianity,—superseding the original, by means of the adroit innovations of seasons, places, and persons, till, according to the familiar illustration, the “blade” and the “handle” are alternately renewed, and identity is lost without the loss of continuity. It is possible; but it must not be assumed. The onus probandi is with those who assert what it is unnatural to expect; to be just able to doubt is no warrant for disbelieving. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 5-6.)

The Catholic Church’s persistence in material continuity from the time of Christ and the Apostles is a strong indicator that she is also formally, and therefore bodily (a body being comprised of form and matter), the proper subject of the entirety of Church history. In which case, the Catholic Church is the Church of Justin Martyr and John Chrysostom, Constantine and Charlemagne, John of Damascus and John of the Cross, the Thomas Christians and Thomas Aquinas, Saint Patrick and Saint Nicholas, and of course the Venerable Bede. The professors certainly object to this claim of formal identity, but they do not, it seems to me, sufficiently take into account the force of the Catholic Church’s material continuity with the Apostles (particularly Peter), which cannot be dismissed merely by pointing out, as they do, that the Orthodox Church is also contiguous with the churches founded by the Apostles. [2] I hope that the following analogy will serve to underscore the point that Newman was making in his Essay: The Catholic Church looks upon the persons just mentioned, and their times and places, much as an experienced, well-traveled, and variously adept man looks on his own life. That man would be bemused but unpersuaded if you told him that the enormous variety of his past is evidence against the essential identity of his person.

IV. The Tradition of the Fathers

Before proceeding further in our consideration of development, I want to take a moment to clarify, or at least acknowledge, something about Tradition. The fact that Catholics refer to many of the aforementioned men as “fathers” is an indication that development is not the end all and be all of the life of the Church. Our seasoned man in the preceding paragraph might, after all, have himself converted to various incompatible doctrines concerning “essential matters” over the course of his long and illustrious life. Such a change in the Catholic Church would falsify her claim of identity in continuity through history with the Church that Christ established. There are also crucial differences between the origin of an individual man and the origin of the Church, with a corresponding difference in how the concept of growth or development applies to each. The Christian appeal to antiquity has to be understood from the doctrinal standpoint which one finds, to take an authoritative and ecumenical example, in the Nicene Creed, as concerning Jesus.

When we come, with this point of reference, to consider history, we are profoundly affected by the facts that the Apostles knew our Lord personally, and their immediate successors knew the Apostles personally. Before the second generation from Christ passed away, the Church was already referred to as “the catholic Church,” having an institutional identity that was clearly distinct from the already proliferating sects. (I don’t think that many people will disagree with this claim, though there will of course be disagreement over a host of related matters.) But this institutional identity, which (as Catholics believe) is perpetual and essentially involves a teaching authority that has been guaranteed enduring doctrinal integrity, is not opposed to a special deference and veneration for the early Fathers, who personally and/or by virtue of historical and social proximity had the teaching of the Apostles “ringing in their ears,” who, in their turn, had heard, seen, and touched the Word of Life.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, now Blessed, who is known for developing the theory of doctrinal development, is likewise known for his devotion to the early Church Fathers. Newman once wrote of antiquity, in connection with development:

For myself, hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority of the “Schola,” as one of the loci theologici; nevertheless I sympathize with Petavius in preferring to the “contentious and subtle theology” of the middle age, that “more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite Antiquity.” The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now, as it was twenty years ago [i.e., when Newman converted]. Though I hold, as you know, a process of development in Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them. (Letter to Dr. Pusey, p. 24.)

Contrary to the claim of at least one Reformed (or ersatz Reformed) Protestant, the Church Fathers were not “Church babies.” There is a sense in which the deposit of faith is better understood by latter generations who can see more of the tree, as it were, due to centuries of growth and development. However, there is a kind of concentration of the arboreal life in its earlier stages, which renders the writings of the Fathers extremely potent, such that they are rightly called fathers, to whom later generations, as faithful children, turn for knowledge and wisdom. The same goes, a fortiori, for the writings of the Apostles and their associates, even apart from consideration of the unique status of those writings as divinitus inspirata. The Church both begins from and moves towards perfection. Born from the wounded side of the Son of God (CCC 766), and from the beginning having the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), the Church “according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:16).

V. On Appealing to the Past

I can understand Protestant frustrations with what might be perceived as the Catholic’s proprietary use of the theory of the development of doctrine. Protestants introduce a new idea, e.g., justification as extra nos imputation received by faith alone, and it is called a break from the Fathers. Catholics introduce a new idea, e.g., the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as involving a transubstantiation of the elements, and it is called a development of the Fathers, i.e., explaining and completing them. As for the indisputably old ideas, Catholics take credit for holding those intact, and then accuse the Protestants, where they hold the same ideas, of being inconsistent and unprincipled. It seems like Catholics get to have their cake and eat it, and also to turn the cake into pumpkin pie and eat that too, calling it a development of the dessert implicit in the original cake. As for Protestant developments, such as Reformed ideas that are hard to find in the early Fathers, well, those aren’t dessert at all.

Catholics, in turn, experience their own frustrations with what is sometimes perceived as the Protestant’s selective application of the theory of doctrinal development. On the one hand, the theory is dismissed as an unprincipled way to account for the lack of explicit testimony in either Sacred Scripture or early Church history for some essential Catholic doctrines. But on the other hand, some of these same objectors begin to sound like development theorists when attempting to account for the continuity, or at least congruence, of Protestantism with the historical Church. Something like this seems to be going on in “The Lure of Rome” podcast. After dismissing the Catholic appeal to development as a way to gloss “radical” changes in the Church, the professors went on to account for the classical Protestant doctrine of justification relative to the testimony of the ancient Church (which lacks “repeated, clear articulations of 16th century Protestant doctrine of justification”) by claiming that the latter’s doctrine of grace “resonated in many of its parts” with the teaching of St. Augustine, which in turn is supposed to be amenable to Protestant soteriology. Thus, something like Protestantism is supposed to be implicit in parts of the testimony of the Fathers, such that the Reformers had as least as much of a claim to the mantle of antiquity as did Tridentine Catholicism. [3]

After some consideration of the professors’ manner of appealing to the Fathers, I have come to the conclusion that they are not being inconsistent or selective in their use of any one theory of doctrinal development. Rather, they are attempting to find a point or points of contact in the early Church Fathers that is sufficient, granted certain assumptions, to guarantee that the essence of the Protestant churches, or of some subset of these churches, can be found not only in the New Testament, but in the early Church, and perhaps even in the medieval Church. Such similarities are supposed to be sufficient to establish the identity of the Protestant churches with, if not the historical Church, at least the true Church throughout history. Thus, proceeding upon Luther’s maxim that the doctrine of justification is the article by which the Church stands or falls, if one can find here and there, prior to the Reformation, certain claims and practices which are maintained by Protestants, or are at least consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification, then one can reasonably conclude that the true Church might have existed at those times, although she exists more perfectly at later times, i.e., in the Protestant churches after the Reformation. The possibility that the true Church has existed throughout history is supposed to hold even if the doctrine, organization, and forms of worship and devotion of the historical Church, taken as a whole, are very different from the doctrine, polity, and piety of the Protestant churches.

The professors are attempting to maintain a middle position between Spirit-guided-development-in-continuity (ala St.Vincent and Newman) on the one hand, and outright [explicit] ecclesial deism of the Restorationist sort on the other hand. So they take a view in which the gist of the Gospel (as understood by Reformed Protestants), and with it the Church, can be glimpsed here and there, as a more or less developed instance of a discernible species, even if it is significantly different from the other animals in its environment, including its direct ancestors and direct descendants. But this method of locating the Church requires the professors to be highly selective in their appropriation of the past, which renders circular their appeals to history. They seem prepared to accept only that testimony of the early Church which conforms to their Reformed theology, in which case the obvious question is: Why should anyone be measured by the standard(s) of Reformed theology? (I discuss this question in the post, Westminster in the Dock: Reflections on the Peter Leithart Trial.) That question, in turn, leads clearly back to the many discussions on this website concerning Sola Scriptura and its non-principled-distinction from Solo Scriptura.

We have seen that, from a Scriptural point of view, the Church is not like a species, but like a substance, and particularly a living body. But this implies that the Church is visible. In consequence, we can, with Newman, locate her in space and time by tracing her “external continuity of name, profession, and communion.” Locating the Church’s identity-in-continuity-through-history, proceeding from Christ, through Peter and the Twelve, is how one identifies the true Gospel, because the true Gospel comes to us from Christ, through the Apostles, in the Church, which is visible, like unto a body. Yes, there are developments in the Church’s understanding of revelation, but whenever some such development comes to be articulated by the Church in a doctrinal definition, we know that the definition is leading us into a fuller apprehension of the truth, precisely because it is an expression of the mind of the same Church that Christ established and preserves as the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). The alternative, which no one seems to like but which Protestants cannot seem to avoid, is Solo Scriptura.

VI. The Nature of the Body

Catholics concede that the Scriptural description of the Church as a living body is something of an analogy, a form of sound words that truly but imperfectly conveys a mysterious truth. More specifically, or more literally, Catholics believe that the Church is one visible society (CCC 771), having an essential purpose (CCC 759) and structure (CCC 765), that is not reducible to the sum of its parts (CCC 835). In his encyclical on the mystical Body of Christ, Pope Pius XII distinguished this Body from both a physical and a moral or political body:

From what We have thus far written and explained, Venerable Brethren, it is clear, We think, how grievously they err who arbitrarily claim that the Church is something hidden and invisible, as they also do who look upon her as a mere human institution possessing a certain disciplinary code and external ritual, but lacking power to communicate supernatural life. On the contrary, as Christ, Head and Exemplar of the Church “is not complete, if only His visible human nature is considered…, or if only His divine, invisible nature…, but He is one through the union of both and one in both … so is it with His Mystical Body” since the Word of God took unto Himself a human nature liable to sufferings, so that He might consecrate in His blood the visible Society founded by Him and “lead man back to things invisible under a visible rule.”

For this reason We deplore and condemn the pernicious error of those who dream of an imaginary Church, a kind of society that finds its origin and growth in charity, to which, somewhat contemptuously, they oppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction which they introduce is false: for they fail to understand that the reason which led our Divine Redeemer to give to the community of man He founded the constitution of a Society, perfect of its kind and containing all the juridical and social elements—namely, that He might perpetuate on earth the saving work of Redemption—was also the reason why He willed it to be enriched with the heavenly gifts of the Paraclete. The Eternal Father indeed willed it to be the “kingdom of the Son of his predilection;” but it was to be a real kingdom, in which all believers should make Him the entire offering of their intellect and will, and humbly and obediently model themselves on Him, Who for our sake “was made obedient unto death.” There can, then, be no real opposition or conflict between the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit and the juridical commission of Ruler and Teacher received from Christ, since they mutually complement and perfect each other—as do the body and soul in man—and proceed from our one Redeemer who not only said as He breathed on the Apostles “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” but also clearly commanded: “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you”; and again: “He that heareth you heareth me.” (Mystici Corporis Christi, 64, 65; cf. Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, 10.)

It does not automatically follow from the Catholic’s conception of the Church as a society that every change in that society is a change for the good, i.e., an authentic development rather than a corruption. But on the Catholic understanding of the nature of the Church, not only is development acceptable, it is to be expected, and those particular developments that are definitive teachings of the Church are to be received with the full assent of faith, as being the correct interpretation of divine revelation, authoritative and irreformable. Newman wrote that the theory of the development of doctrine is “an hypothesis to account for a difficulty.” (If this description alone renders the theory suspect for some, they should remember that the same thing can be said of gravity.) The difficulty to which Newman refers is precisely that to which the professors point: the lack of explicit testimony in antiquity for some doctrines that the Catholic Church considers to be essential (as in part of the deposit of Faith) and for those peculiar liturgical, disciplinary, and devotional practices that pertain to the essence of the Faith, as this is understood by the Catholic Church. Conversely, the difficulty for Protestants is how to accept any doctrine defined by the Church as anything other than a mere interpretive opinion which can legitimately be discarded by talented and well-educated Bible scholars whose exegetical conclusions are not consistent with the doctrines of the Church. The professors seem not to consider, in all their talk of the changes in the Catholic Church, that that Church accepts as irreformable the doctrinal decrees of all the Ecumencial Councils, going back to and including Nicea. These doctrines do represent developments, but they are not up for debate.

Much of what the Protestant perceives to be the magical production of pumpkin pie, a veritable transubstantiation of doctrine and discipline, the Catholic receives as authentic developments in the Church’s understanding of the original deposit of Faith, even where these are not simply logical deductions from the deposit. On the Catholic view, the universal Church does not exist after the manner of an abstract entity, such that one should look for a more or less perfect instantiation of ecclesia Christi here and there throughout time and space, and set about reforming or reproducing the Church according to the image of the most favored instance. This is not to say that the Church cannot be reformed according to timeless truth, only that the Church herself is not merely a timeless truth, and her historical existence cannot therefore be understood as the iteration of an idea (e.g., locating the true Church by locating the true Gospel). Particular instances of development that cause the most trouble for non-Catholics ought to be accounted for on a case by case basis, and the Church should certainly be defended from charges of contradiction. But the phenomenon of development is in general explicable when we consider that Christ founded a visible Church, a society that is explicitly likened to a body, having an inherent principle of motion, including the power to bind and loose, whereby the whole body grows and develops in unity, according to its God-given purpose (Ephesians 4:11-16).

VII. Conclusion

We have not even begun to explore the theory of doctrinal development, so to assess whether and in what form and to what degree it is successful. At some point, we hope to do this at Called to Communion. [4] For now, I will conclude with two simple suggestions: (1) Catholics cannot in good conscience wield the theory like a magic wand, which with an elegant wave and a few muttered words renders any doctrine “historical” and “implicit in the original deposit of faith.” We must actually show how the theory makes more sense of the relevant data than does any alternative explanation. (2) Critics of the theory of doctrinal development need to get right down to it and examine actual explanations and applications of the theory, preferably those versions that are widely accepted. To this end, there is no better place to begin than the locus classicus, Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. As for the podcast that prompted this post, I will only say further that I share the professors’ interest in the phenomenon of conversions to the Catholic Church, though of course my understanding of its source and significance is fundamentally different from their own.

__________________

[1] Even though many modern Catholic church buildings and appointments rival their Evangelical counterparts for bland and boring iconoclasm, there remain in Catholicism those traditions, still represented in her rites and uses, variously inscribed in her abiding material heritage, and ever alive in the Church’s collective memory, which offer encouragement and consolation to those not determined to be dismayed. The living memory of Catholic tradition, though it may balk at more modern arrangements, is not a mere wistfulness. This memory resides in human persons, alive, active, and able to impose the Church’s aesthetic heritage upon the stuff of earth, thus giving new, concrete expression to “the beauty of holiness” after the manner of the Church’s long tradition. Just in my own vicinity, several examples of this sort of thing come immediately to mind; for a few depictions, along with some excellent explanations, see here, here, and here.

[2] Mutually exclusive claims to be the one Church founded by Christ do not in themselves constitute proof that Christ did not establish one visible Church that has endured, undivided, through time. One need not adopt an alternative ecclesial ontology (according to which the Church is not a visibly unified body enduring through history) in order account for Orthodoxy as a Church or collection of churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church. It is true that the exclusive claims of both Catholicism and Orthodoxy are the occasion, for some, of an epistemological quandry: which of these ancient churches is the Church founded by Christ? Since one cannot be in full communion with both the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, one must choose between them or else abandon either history (i.e., remain Protestant) or the historical orthodoxy of the first millennium (i.e., become Nestorian or Monophysite).

[3] As a matter of fact, the early Church Fathers did not stint in their teaching on salvation. In his article, Tradition I and Sola Fide, David Anders notes: “Although the Fathers rarely employed the term ‘justification,’ they wrote extensively on sin, forgiveness, redemption, and the conditions of eternal life.” David argues that the early Fathers’ clearly and repeatedly attested doctrine of salvation is not consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification, particularly as this is held by Reformed Protestants. The teaching of St. Augustine is no exception to this rule, being explicitly inconsistent with essential features of both the Protestant doctrine of grace (mere favor) and the Protestant doctrine of justification (mere imputation).

[4]  The Orthodox Church is well-known for its conservatism, which is supposed by some to be inimical to the theory of doctrinal development. However, as Daniel Lattier argues in “The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development” (Pro Ecclesia 20:4 [Fall 2011]: 389-410), there simply is no Orthodox consensus on the theory of development. Lattier also argues that “Newman’s understanding of doctrinal development is in fundamental harmony with the Orthodox understanding of Tradition” (Ibid. 390). This article warrants careful consideration and comment, which we hope to provide in an upcoming post.

I will say with 100% certainty that every convert that I know (perhaps up to 100 of them) have each said that Catholicism has enriched their marriage. The difference of course is that Protestantism sees matrimony as regulated by the State as a rite situated in the created order, but the Catholic Church teaches that matrimony was raised to the dignity of sacrament and that it pertains to the supernatural order. This places holy matrimony under the watch of the Church just like baptism or the Holy Eucharist.

This also entails that there is explicit theology about marriage and explicit rules about marriage in canon law. It’s not up to the local pastor to use his view of the Bible to decide if a couple can marry. Instead, canon law is used to determine everything – just like the other sacraments.

Yet this is a rather stuffy explanation. What you probably want to know is how will Catholicism change your life. Right?

Here are five ways in which it will change your marriage for the better:

1. You will be going to confession regularly and so will your spouse. Guess what? Your spouse will be confessing all the sins that they commit against you: losing tempers, complaining, not taking care of the children, fighting in front of the children, complaining about money, arguing over budgets . . . you get the picture. Meanwhile, you’ll be doing the same. The priest will be in your grill (and your spouse’s grill) all the time about it. He will know the details you reveal and he will begin challenging you (and your spouse) about it. Suddenly you have secret referees that are challenging you to be a better parent and spouse. Whenever I go to confession, I usually come out thinking, “I need to go apologize to Joy about that last week.” And my wife does the same when she goes to confession.

2. You will cease from contraception and other illicit actions. You marriage will be rightfully ordered to the procreative act. Intimacy will not be just for pleasure. This may strike you as a negative, but trust me, it will radically improve your marriage. Just ask anyone on CtC or any convert who lives the Faith.

3. You may start having more children. The old adage that you cannot take anything to heaven isn’t entirely true. You can, by the grace of God, take your children with you. Your portfolio, your house, your car, your boat, your everything will cease to be. But children are forever. Their souls will never be snuffed out. The procreative power is very powerful!

4. You marriage will become your vocation. I don’t want to make a caricature here, but my experience is that Protestants are usually very interested in their vocation being related to a role at Church – Sunday school teacher, women’s ministry coordinator, small group leader, music minister, pastor’s wife, youth minister, deacon, elder, etc. For Catholics, it is commonly understood that your vocation is marriage, which is to say, your vocation is to your spouse and children. I really do think the Catholic way expresses the Biblical notion of matrimony. Take this verse as an example:

“Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.” (1 Timothy 2:15, D-R)

As a Protestant, I didn’t know what that meant. Yet if our salvation depends on faith and works, and a married woman’s vocation (the way she primarily expresses her good works) is through being a wife and mother – then this verse makes perfect sense. On judgment day, Christ will judge a mother primarily on her work as a mother, not on her small group Bible study. The same goes for husbands.

5. Fifth and last, your children will be united to your devotion as parents. Catholicism doesn’t have the divide of “Big Church” and “Children’s Church.” The Holy Mass is for everyone. This means that babies, toddlers, children, and teens sit with their parents. They have years of seeing dad kneel, fold his hands, pray, genuflect, receive Communion, etc. It makes for a strong family.

Godspeed,

Taylor Marshall, Ph.D.

PS: This is the last one for the “Becoming Catholic Series.” Please take time to look at the other posts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

“While experiencing these days the painful situation of our divisions, we Christians can and must look to the future with hope,” Pope Benedict XVI told a packed basilica of St Paul’s outside-the-walls Wednesday evening, “because Christ’s victory means to overcome everything that keeps us from sharing the fullness of life with Him and with others.”

Source: Vatican Radio.

That from the Bishop of Rome’s address at vespers on the final day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It is fitting that this week ends on the Feast of the Conversation of St. Paul, because St. Paul never fails to attribute conversion — which is necessarily a prerequisite to unity — to God’s grace touching his life. I think that the Feast day ending this week is especially befitting to the dialogue between Reformed Christians and Catholics, here at Called to Communion. As one who spent most of my life living as a Calvinist, reflecting on the necessity of God’s grace (even for the tiny daily conversions that steer me from sin) comes more easily to me than it would if I had come from a different sect of Protestantism. Only by a dramatic outpouring of God’s grace will we end our disunity and obey the call of Christ our King, His great call to communion.

Loving God, by the infinite grace merited for us by your Divine Son, may your Holy Spirit fill us, Catholics and Calvinists, with a heart for Christian unity and a willingness to heed your call to communion.  May we learn and communicate with a desire for truth and a love for one another. May we remember to look to the future with hope on account of Christ’s victory.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Now most Protestants have seen it in movies. You go into the wooden box, a door slides behind a screen, and the Catholic says, “Bless me Father for I have sinned, etc.”

Okay, that’s pretty much how it begins, but let’s look at it from a devotional point of view – how it really goes for a Catholic.

Ideally, a Catholic makes a nightly examination of conscience every evening. This means that he prays to the Holy Spirit in order to remember his faults during the past day. He then prays an act of contrition at this moment with the intent of confessing these faults in confession.

Before entering the confessional (that is, the box), he prays to the Holy Spirit (and other saints) that he might make a good confession and be given the gift of true repentance and contrition. My practice is to ask the Holy Spirit for the light to see all my sins. Then I ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to obtain for me the grace to be truly sorry for my sins. You see, confession isn’t just about forgiveness of sins, it’s also about growing in sacramental grace.

In the confessional, there is sometimes the option to go behind the screen or face to face (I always choose the screen). The priest will recite a prayer and then you say, “Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been # weeks since my last confession and I accuse myself of the following sins.”

Next you list all your sins in kind and number. If the priest cannot hear you or understand you, he’ll stop and ask questions. When you get to the end, you say, “For these sins and all those that I cannot remember, I humbly repent and ask for absolution, counsel, and penance.”

The priest will then give you some advice or encouragement. He may make a general judgment that your struggles are related to a common vice. If you cry, he will comfort you. If you are scared to confess a sin, you say, “Father, I’m afraid to confess something.” He’ll walk you through it. If you are unsure if something was a sin or not, you ask him and talk it out. It’s very pastoral and safe. Then the priest gives you your penance. The penance is the sign that you wish to start a new life in Christ – that you’re going to make a change. The penance also shows a willingness to make reparation for the harm you’ve caused (for example, to return stolen money or apologize to a wounded spouse). A common penance is “Three Hail Mary’s” or “a decade of the Rosary” or “Three Our Fathers so that you’ll grow in the virtue of temperance.”

Then the priest says, “Now please make an Act of Contrition.” This is a prayer you say to God out loud and the priest listens to you say it. It’s proof to him that you really are sorry for your sins and not just playing “pinball Catholicism” (click here to see what I mean by that).

The Act of Contrition goes like this:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love.

I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen.

Then the priest gives you absolution: “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father and of Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The priest then tells you to go in peace and usually asks you to say a prayer for him.

After that you, leave the confessional and go into the church where you pray your penance quietly and pray about anything else that is on your heart.

That’s confession. It is certainly one of my top three favorite things about Catholicism.

Godspeed,

Taylor Marshall

PS: If you would like to read Parts 1-4 of “Becoming Catholic” please click here.

We pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For a Protestant looking in from the outside, it might appear that Catholics are mechanical about their devotional life. I remember seeing Catholicism as a giant machine with handles and levers. Catholics scurried around it pulling levers and pulling knobs hoping that grace would come out. As a Protestant, I thought that being a “good Catholic” was like working a soft-serve ice cream machine or a soda fountain. If you learned how to use the system, you can get grace and hopefully earn salvation.

More accurately, I suspected that the Catholic salvation was more like a pinball machine. The ball was grace and Catholics were constantly mashing the buttons to keep the flippers moving and the ball in play. However, all pinball players know that eventually the ball gets past you and your game is over. How could Catholics honestly believe that human effort could keep the ball in play for decades and decades of human life? Why can’t they just trust in the finished work of Christ and relax…?

So now that I’m Catholic, am I playing salvation pinball?

I don’t think so. Salvation only appears mechanistic to Protestants because they haven’t experienced it. For example, the sacrament of Penance is not at all like getting your time card punched. There is a real human being behind that screen! He asks questions. He challenges you. He loves Christ. You love Christ. You’re both praying that you will grow in Christ. It’s extremely intimate and the opposite of mechanical.

Take the Holy Mass. Most Protestants are not familiar with liturgical worship. What they see seems robotic. But when you know it, it’s like an elegant waltz. You can even do it with your eyes closed. If you don’t know how to waltz and you’ve never seen it, one might look at people waltzing and say: “This is so hard and those people are slaves to this music. How could they be enjoying this?”

Yet the couple might be having the dance of their lives…the formal aspect makes it all the more intimate.

All important things in our lives are ritualized – Sunday dinner, weddings, sports, and anniversaries come to mind. The repetition makes them more important and more intimate.

In order to understand Catholic devotion, don’t think of it as a machine…think of it as a mother. Mothers and babies seem to have a mechanical relationship. Baby sucks milk from breast. Spits up. Mommy cleans it. Baby cries. Mommy bounces. Baby poops. Mommy changes the diaper. Repeat cycle, non-stop, for nine months. But that is not all there is. They are the cues. There are the moments when the mommy gazes with love on the nursing baby. The nursing baby caresses the hair of the mother. The mother smiles and talks to the baby during the diaper change. It’s all very loving and intimate. To an outsider looking in from the outside, it could appear like an endless hell. But ask any old lady and she will tell you that those were great days. And all of us are grateful for the maternal care. None of us think of mom as “mechanical.”

Of course, you won’t ever experience this if you don’t become Catholic so you won’t ever really understand. I hope that if you’re reading this, you’ll take a moment and pray to Christ and ask Him to give you special gifts of the Holy Spirit. You have to deal with the Catholic question, so you be sure that you pray to Christ at every step of the way.

Please read Taylor’s Parts 1, 2, and 3 on “Becoming Catholic” by clicking here.

ad Jesum per Mariam,

Taylor Marshall

Our thanks to Catherine Rose, author, revert, brave mother and devoted daughter of Christ, for accepting our request to write a prayer for this occasion.

For others the most difficult part of Catholicism is losing their job or their career if they are employed by a Protestant congregation. I’ve been there, too. Perhaps I’ll share some personal thoughts on that in the days to come. Today, I want to focus on family. I get emails and phone calls from Protestants considering conversion. I’d say that most of them experience difficulties with their families and usually with their spouses.

I’ve also noticed that some people have difficulty with how their parents will perceive them if they are Catholics. Cradle Catholics (those raised as Catholics from the cradle) might find this odd. What they do not understand is that Protestant denominations have their own customs and expectations when it comes to holidays, meals, and important life events like marriage…and the Catholic Church has her own customs.

Let me give just ten examples that will likely come up. If you have others, please share them in the comments:

1. At Christmas and other holidays, you will have to go Holy Mass with your family. This creates problems with scheduling wider family events on Christmas.
2. When you pray at meals, your family and children will make the sign of the cross. This will startle your extended family.
3. When the grandparents pray with your children, your children will at some point innocently and rightly start praying to Mary or to some saints. That might cause grandma to go into a conniption.
4. You won’t contracept. This means you’ll start having lots of babies. This means your family will constantly say things like, “Aren’t you finished?” or hurtful things to your wife, “Don’t you want to do something more important than have children and pack lunches?”
5. You will have a crucifix in your house which will draw comments.
6. Marriages will be Catholic and Catholic only. That means no weddings at the family’s favorite chapel.
7. You won’t be able to attend a family wedding if Catholics are getting married in Protestant chapels and in sometimes in difficult situations where there is divorce.
8. If you’re practicing, you’ll be praying the Rosary daily. I invite Protestant family to join us, but that may not be comfortable for everyone.
9. On Fridays, especially on Fridays during Lent you’ll have to ask questions about dinner before accepting an invitation, because you cannot eat flesh meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc.)
10. You’ll have one family member who is very aggressive and challenging. They’ll be playing Johnny Apologetics every time you gather as a family. There will the be uncomfortable debates about sola fide, sola scriptura, Mary, the Pope, Catholic history, and more.

Hard words, I know. Yet when we consider the gift of the beatific vision of God’s essence and our union with Him for ever, all created happiness and goods fail to compare. Everything is worth it. Catholicism is the pearl of great price. Also, think of it this way. Early Catholics struggled with becoming martyrs. When they were martyred they offered their deaths for the conversion of their accusers and enemies (St Stephen martyrdom and St Paul’s conversion is an example).

Today we do not worry about martyrdom (yet), but we do worry about the disgrace we will experience from our families. That is a small price when you think of it. Moreover, whenever your family ridicules your mocks your for being a Catholic, you can offer that pain for their conversion. It might be the trigger that releases graces upon their souls.

To read the two previous posts about becoming Catholic, click here.

ad Jesum per Mariam,

Taylor Marshall

The Annunciation

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word….”

Merciful Father, grant us an increase in humility, a humility likened to that of our Blessed Mother. May we be quick to respond joyfully to Your voice, Your call, Your leading. May we humbly recognize when we are following our own voice, our own call, our own leading. Grant us the grace needed for the virtue of humility that through it we may ever strive for the perfect unity for which our Lord’s suffering Heart longs….

The Visitation

“Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country…and greeted Elizabeth.”

Gracious Father, we ask You to increase charity in our hearts so that we would truly love others. May we desire the Good for them always. As our Blessed Mother joyfully brought Christ to Elizabeth, help us to determine to bring Christ, the true Good, to those about us. Forgive us when we act contrary to charity and grant us the grace to do this no more.

Nativity of the Lord

“And she gave birth…and laid Him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the Inn.”

Loving Father, help us to recognize our poverty. Our lowly hearts are like the poor stable that received the Infant Jesus. We have so little to give. We humbly acknowledge how poor and unadorned is our soul – so unfit to house the Blessed Trinity! Keep us ever mindful of our poverty that we may receive the grace of depending on You always. In our poverty alone, we would drive others away. But by Your grace, we can be one body, adorned with glory and ready to meet You when You come again.

Presentation of the Jesus in the Temple

“they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord …”

Holy Father, we desire to live always in Your perfect will. As Mary and Joseph joyfully obeyed the law and brought the Christ Child to the temple, may we experience the joy of obedience to You, never counting the cost, never mindful of the sacrifices, but ever ready to do what You command.

Christ Among the Doctors

“After three days they found Him in the temple….”

Glorious Father, so long have we desired to find Christ. So long have we sought for Him, just as Mary and Joseph searched for Him when it appeared that He was lost. As He was found by them in His Father’s house, may we too find Him in His Father’s house – which is now the Church. Lead us to this Church where we may be one body, have one faith, and one Lord.

May our prayers rise up to You, Eternal Father, as a sweet offering. Abundantly send us Your graces, as we are in great need of them! Help us to be one body. . .

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our thanks to Carol Cross, convert and donor of great spiritual sacrifices to Called to Communion, for accepting our request to write a prayer for this occasion.