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The (Slight) Allure of Catholicism

How was splintering the Church supposed to strengthen it?

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I am not converting to Catholicism.

Not yet, anyway.

But there are certainly allures the Catholic (capital C) church presents, which I have become more aware of the older I get. Before I dive in, let me expound a little bit on what the past few years have looked like for me, theologically.

I was born and raised in the American Evangelical church. It was great. It was not an oppressive, secular-music-CD-burning type of church, but an authentic one that strove to love God and love everyone. Then I was with a mission organization, followed by Moody Bible Institute, both of which are strictly Evangelical.

Presently, I am attending Denver Seminary, another Evangelical school, pursuing my Master of Divinity degree, with an emphasis in Theology. Needless to say, the past 28 years of my life have been shaped by and revolved around the Evangelical church.

I’m not one of those angry Millennials plotting to destroy the Evangelical tradition, though I am beginning to see more faults in it, and I’m beginning to dismantle mental blocks which throughout my life painted the Catholic church as ‘the enemy.’

For instance, in my Church History class this semester, the professor told us of a recurring horror story: People tire of the rock-concert type of church and dive into Christian tradition. They begin to see the twisted roots of Evangelicalism and this leads them to a more liturgical church. Then, through further theological exploration and historical understanding, they convert to (gasp) Catholicism. A hardcore Baptist, my professor warned us of the temptation toward Catholicism and shared a few of his reluctancies with the church. (Granted, his hang ups are the same ones I encounter: Confession, Papal authority, saint worship, veneration of Mary, etc.)

However, He shared this pattern with such passion you would think these folks were leaving Christianity altogether and hailing satan! If pushed, I’m sure he would concede that these people are still brothers and sisters in Christ, so why such antagonism toward Catholicism?

I experienced the same amount of resistance a few years ago, when I posted on Facebook:

“Evangelicals are people who know they’re not Catholic, but most don’t know why.”

Many people firmly replied, I know why! I would never be Catholic! and so on. I know there are deep wounds and pain inflicted by the Catholic church, but frankly, the same could be said of just as many Evangelical churches. The difference is, if one Evangelical church hurt you, you could move to a different one and have a completely new start while remaining in the same denomination/tradition.

The Catholic church on the other hand is like an Aspen tree: each cluster of Aspen trees is the same organism, connected underground through a vast root system, making it the largest organism on earth. In the same way, each Catholic cathedral is a single building, but all connected through the same episcopacy and run from one hierarchy: Rome.

Alternatively, Evangelical traditions could be compared to any other type of tree: Each pine tree is a pine, but it is also its own unique organism. Killing (or renouncing) one pine tree doesn’t hurt all the other pine trees the way it would an Aspen. To renounce Aspenism is to renounce all Aspens everywhere.

My perspective toward the Catholic church began to soften last year when I moved to Guatemala. Not only is nearly everyone in the country a Catholic, but I met several Americans who had converted to Catholicism for very legitimate reasons. One stands out. He hd been living in California several decades ago and saw the poor and immigrants being mistreated in his neighborhood. After reaching out to several local churches, he found that the only church in his area doing anything to help was the Catholic church. It was then that he joined it, and never went back.

Of course that story is completely anecdotal, and is not meant to say Catholic churches always help and Evangelical ones never do. It is merely to say that for him, his reason for switching denominations was entirely legitimate, as well as unique to his passion. He cared deeply for social justice, so he aligned himself with a church that not only believed similarly, but acted on it.

Now, moving on to my point.

Before studying very in-depth, I, like most Evangelicals, saw the Catholic Church as the evil entity in the 16th century which needed to be taken down by the heroic Martin Luther. They were the undeniable Good Guys standing up to the empirically Bad Guys — the Catholic Church.

That was my simplified understanding, but after looking more closely, I have found it is far more nuanced than that. Ironically, some of this came about through the very class taught by my hardcore Baptist professor.

Was there actual evil being perpetrated by the Catholic church in the name of God in the 16th century? Yes. I think that is undeniable, and I would wager that today’s Catholics would agree. Is there actual evil being perpetrated by leadership in today’s Catholic church? Yes. But again, sadly, which denomination is completely free from corrupt leadership? It’s a logical fallacy to fault an entire organization for the misdeeds of a few of her members. You need a better metric.

But was the dividing of the church the best solution? How was splintering the Church supposed to strengthen it? My professor told us this joke:

“The Catholic church feared that if it let people read and interpret the Bible for themselves, they would end up with thousands of denominations. They were wrong. There are MILLIONS of denominations!”

For a little thought experiment, think this through: Imagine there is an organization which is trying to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick all around the world. Which would be more efficient: to have one unified global body going about this end, or to have 30,000 individual bodies doing it, assuming that in either case you have the same number of humans participating?

There are roughly 30k Christian denominations in the world.

The Catholic church still is one body which holds the same beliefs universally, and is under one authority.

It’s no wonder my friend’s Catholic church in California was more effective in poverty alleviation than the local Evangelical churches. One was pulling resources from over a billion people worldwide to provide aid, while the other was pooling resources from a few hundred local congregants.

It’s this very strength and unity which could also cause the top-down corruption which was witnessed in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. If the entire church is working toward advancing God’s kingdom, loving outcasts, and providing for the needy, the Catholic church could be an inconceivable force for good. If, however, the Popes are corrupt and the Bishops are greedy, the entire thing could quickly be doomed.

What I see in those who decide to leave Evangelicalism and turn to Catholicism is simple: hope. They see a sinful, imperfect expression of the Catholic church, but see how much good it could do.

Most who stand outside the Catholic church and point fingers at it simply see the same faults, but without the hope of what it could be.

So, which is better: A huge, worldwide institution with bottomless resources but many problems in the infrastructure; or a relatively tiny church with meager resources, but relatively smaller problems? Are the Catholic church’s problems magnified simply because it’s an exponentially bigger organism than your local non-denominational church?

I’m not arguing for one side over the other. If anything, I am simply arguing for more understanding and less antagonism within the Body of Christ.

One things Catholics emphasize which the Evangelical church could learn from is unity. They are not competing against other Catholic parishes, but working in unison with them. They don’t see other local expressions as competition, but as teammates. How much more powerful could the 30,000 Evangelical denominations be with that mindset? What if we, like the Catholics, minimized our theological differences in favor of unity in mission?

May we learn from one another.
May we be unified.
And may we pray with the Church universal, Maranatha! Come swiftly, Lord Jesus!

e

9 comments on “The (Slight) Allure of Catholicism

  1. “They are not competing against other Catholic parishes, but working in unison with them. They don’t see other local expressions as competition, but as teammates”

    …it may look like this from the outside in but from the inside (disclosure – born and raised Catholic), there is plenty of competition, similar to the secular world – city vs suburban, rich parishes vs poor, small parish vs large, etc. The competition is for resources – priests and funds. The Archdiocese in Chicago recently closed some parishes and schools and though I do not have direct knowledge, some of the members of the closed parishes claimed they were closed because the land the parish is on is valuable to real estate investors. Ditto a Catholic HS that’s buying out condo properties in the area for future expansion, causing grief with the remaining condo owners…

    …and though the Catholic Church would be that much better with you as a member, know that the greeness of the grass on the other side is an illusion…

    …oh, an begs the question – why do I remain Catholic? Because there isn’t a denomination that’s a step up, just a step sideways…

  2. Lambert Dolphin

    Jesus Christ is alive today and in charge of the entire universe ruling over the cosmos from the right hand of His Father. He is intensely personal! A small number of people alive today know Jesus intimately and relate to Him one-on-one 24/7. In this light, the professing evangelical churches, the eastern church and the Roman Catholics do not today present Jesus and His message well. The reality of Jesus is about being loved personally by the living God. “All who will may come.” We are proud and self-righteous, very lost apart from Jesus! With Jesus centered in one’s life, “…all
    things are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.”

  3. Lambert Dolphin

    Ethan, I promote your writings with a number of friends. Bryce Self (onesumus@ix.netcom.com), a friend for at 30+ years sent me his reaction today:

    “I hear what he is saying, and disagree 1,000%.

    Rome remains a hotbed of idolatry and worse. John Paul II may have actually been a Christian, but the present pope shows every sign of being the opposite of a Christian. Romes does not change, and though she is not THE antichrist that some reformers thought her to be, she is not only AN antichrist but remains the strongest candidate for the end-times religious Mystery Babylon who will gather all false religion under her wings.

    Here is a link to a book by one of my favorite Christian authors, J.C. Ryle, who was created the first bishop of Liverpool by Queen Victoria. His book on ‘Holiness” was the second significant Christian book I ever read, and has remained foundationally influential in my walk with the Lord ever since. The book linked below is his study of the men who launched and led the Reformation in England.

    The entire book is at this link, but I’d especially like to recommend the chaper, “Why Were Our Reformers Burned?” as a more than adequate response to the current that trends back toward Rome. (And, as anyone can tell from Ethan’s blog post, that is something other than the actual core issues he is dealing with in his article).

    https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/ryle/Light%20from%20Old%20Times%20-%20J.%20C.%20Ryle.pdf

    Bryce

    PS: I’ve been accused by Pentacostal friends of being a “closet Episcopalian” because of my appreciation for liturgical worship. And I’m very well aware of the positive contributions made by the Roman church in all the centuries when she was the only accessible church in the West. God accomplished a lot through His people in between Constantine and Luther, even though many Protestants don’t like to admit it. But just as for any church today (or any individusl believer for rthat matter), being used by the Lord to advance His purposes does not imply divine approval of all one’s beliefs and practices. That’s one of the really big take-aways from the NT epistles, including the letters to the seven churches that open the Book of Revelation. Today in class we finished Sardis, and next week go on to Philadelphia. The Roman era is typified by Thyatira in the strangling grasp of false doctrine and pseudo-prophecy. But the Reformation church is shown in Sardis—the zombie church that has the reputation of being alive but has in fact become moribund. It’s taking 3-4 weeks per church, but eventally we’ll get on into the “juicy” stuff that begins in chaper four. There is a reason the risen Lord Jesus designed these letters as His introduction to end-time events!”

  4. Thanks for sharing. I am wondering if you could clarify your hangups with the Catholic practice of confession? I am not Catholic, so I have not experienced it as a Catholic person, but the practice of confession has always seemed very helpful in terms of spiritual formation.

    • Hey! Thanks for reading! It’s not so much the act of confessing, as James says to confess your sins to one another so we may be healed. It’s more about how they go about it. I believe we can confess to anyone–my roommates or friends–and it is the same as a priest. Catholics, as I understand, require confession to a priest who will then give you specific prayers to pray x amount of times, and then you’re forgiven. Protestants would say there’s nothing necessarily more spiritual about confessing to a pastor vs. a lay person, while Catholics have very specific rules about it being done by a priest. Does that answer your question?

      • Yes, absolutely. Thanks so much! I agree with the way you stated it. Have you thought about exploring the concept of confession a bit more in your writing?

    • Yah, that’s a great idea! I went back and checked and I had one which had a few good points in it. It’s a good idea to write one that covers confession more broadly, not just in regards to porn. Good idea! https://ethanrenoe.com/2016/03/28/what-to-say-when-someone-confesses-a-porn-struggle/

  5. I converted as a Protestant to Catholicism four years ago (nearly to the day), and it was personally my greatest decision ever. I started reading history, the writings of the earliest Christians, and they all sounded Catholic (direct mentions of the Eucharist for example). Since I took the Bible seriously, when in Revelations it said, “the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the kingdom”, I couldn’t believe that Christianity was essentially wrong/corrupt for 1500 years.

    The Catholic Church still has its human problems, just as any other organization, but I love the stability of its unchanging morality. (The first sign I know a church must be in error is when their idea of right/wrong changes dramatically, as many denominations have done today.)

    Anyway, that’s why I converted. I wish you Godspeed in your Christian journey!

  6. Hi Ethan, I came across your work via your recent “tragedy of dumbing down Christianity” article, with which I could not agree more.

    “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” -Fulton Sheen

    As a revert Catholic, I’ve been profoundly enriched (and schooled!) by the many powerful conversion stories (within/outside of Christianity) that I’ve encountered since returning to the faith. The more I learn what the Church actually teaches and why, the more I want to know. (Highly recommend JPII’s Theology of the Body for ALL Christians, now more than ever! <3) It's true that many Catholics are woefully uncatechized and don't appreciate or understand what we even believe.

    I'll share one more quote. Thanks for your work and God bless you on your path!

    “If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hates. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church which is accused of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth. Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because he called Himself the Truth. Look for the Church which amid the confusion of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly, it is other-worldly. Since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself. … the Catholic Church is the only Church existing today which goes back to the time of Christ. History is so very clear on this point, it is curious how many miss its obviousness…”

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