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Hunter24
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Minnesota tooHell freezes over every winter. It’s in Michigan.
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GKC
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Yes, I know all that. I am one of those Continuing Anglicans. But there is no legal requirement applicable to all in the Continuum, nor is there one Continuing Anglican Church (ah, that there should be) to set such a requirement. Given the nature of the early departees from TEC, after the St. Louis meeting (mainly from the Anglo-Catholic/high Church side), who originally formed the Continuum, most such folk used the 28 Book, exclusively. As would I, under all circumstances. But in our diocese I know of at least one parish which routinely uses the 79 book. And I doubt that the 28 Book is in the majority in ACNA.
Generalizing about Anglicans is not a precise science.
GKC
*posterus traditus Anglicanus, Anglicanus-Catholicus
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Heather777
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If the churchs united…I would jump for you joy!
Because then I would not have to make some difficult decisions
Because then I would not have to make some difficult decisions
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Jeff77
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I would give thanks and glory to God.
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Heather777
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If the churchs united…I would jump for joy!
Because then I would not have to make some difficult decisions
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Deo_Volente
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Grace & Peace!
That having been said, I find the reasoning in the quotation above very unconvincing. Are you hinting that the New Covenant in Christ’s blood is mediated through Peter or that Abraham, Moses or David are types of Peter or of the Petrine office as Rome understands it today? I’m with Ben who commented on this earlier: that seems to be a strange reading of the text. (For what it’s worth, I subscribe to the “Jesus was referring to Peter’s profession of faith” school of thought, that Our Lord was only secondarily referring to any authority that such a confession would give him but was certainly not referring to universal ordinary authority over his fellow apostles.) Perhaps you can explain your thinking here?
One of the thingsI discovered by reflecting on my own discernment in the matter of what river to swim is that whenever I approached those aspects of Roman doctrine or culture which gave me pause, I could, for the most part, rationalize my reservations away. It made me wonder if I was not beginning to engage, from afar, in a version of that old psychological game of “Making Mother Good”–in this case: mother is always right, and even when mother is wrong or seems to do iffy things, mother is actually always right, therefore it’s my job to discover the rationale behind why mother must be right even when she’s not. That made me question if the rest of my Christian journey as a Roman Catholic would just be one long game of Making Mother Good. And that seemed nightmarish and oppressive to me and unreflective, therefore, of the Gospel. I determined that until I could give full and unqualified assent to all that Rome taught, I would not be doing anyone any favors by converting. Regarding anyone who is not Roman Catholic but who can give that full and unqualified assent, however, I think it’s their moral duty to convert.
May God assist you with his grace to continue in his holy fellowship within the Roman Catholic church and to do all good works that he has prepared for you to walk in.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
Edwin, I appreciate the position you’re in. I used to think about swimming the Tiber or the Bosphorous quite regularly. I can go further than I will in this post into why I’ve pitched my tent on the banks of the Thames, but I doubt my reasons would be anything you hadn’t already heard or thought about already…
That having been said, I find the reasoning in the quotation above very unconvincing. Are you hinting that the New Covenant in Christ’s blood is mediated through Peter or that Abraham, Moses or David are types of Peter or of the Petrine office as Rome understands it today? I’m with Ben who commented on this earlier: that seems to be a strange reading of the text. (For what it’s worth, I subscribe to the “Jesus was referring to Peter’s profession of faith” school of thought, that Our Lord was only secondarily referring to any authority that such a confession would give him but was certainly not referring to universal ordinary authority over his fellow apostles.) Perhaps you can explain your thinking here?
One of the thingsI discovered by reflecting on my own discernment in the matter of what river to swim is that whenever I approached those aspects of Roman doctrine or culture which gave me pause, I could, for the most part, rationalize my reservations away. It made me wonder if I was not beginning to engage, from afar, in a version of that old psychological game of “Making Mother Good”–in this case: mother is always right, and even when mother is wrong or seems to do iffy things, mother is actually always right, therefore it’s my job to discover the rationale behind why mother must be right even when she’s not. That made me question if the rest of my Christian journey as a Roman Catholic would just be one long game of Making Mother Good. And that seemed nightmarish and oppressive to me and unreflective, therefore, of the Gospel. I determined that until I could give full and unqualified assent to all that Rome taught, I would not be doing anyone any favors by converting. Regarding anyone who is not Roman Catholic but who can give that full and unqualified assent, however, I think it’s their moral duty to convert.
May God assist you with his grace to continue in his holy fellowship within the Roman Catholic church and to do all good works that he has prepared for you to walk in.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
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Contarini
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Well maybe–everything is a type of everything else, as far as I’m concerned–but that’s not really what I’m saying. I’m saying that Peter is like Abraham, Moses and David in being a person with whom God makes a covenant. I don’t think that Jesus and his saints are in competition, which is perhaps one of the most fundamental ways in which my thinking is Catholic and not Protestant! Of course Jesus is the rock–but clearly Peter is being named as the rock in some sense here. Pretty much all exegetes of all confessions agree on this, even if they think the claims of Rome are nonsense. Similarly, if the Church is Jesus’ body, then our covenantal relationship to Jesus is mediated by our membership in the Church. And the language of Matt. 16, seen in comparison with other similar name-changing, covenant-making passages in the Bible, clearly implies that some kind of authority is being given to Peter (and/or to the other apostles, as in Matt. 18) within that body.
I don’t claim to be able to prove this interpretation, but it fits with the general pattern of covenantal language in the Bible. (Yes, Scott Hahn has influenced me here, even though I’ve scoffed for years at those who treat his teachings as gospel, and even though I have a much less patriarchal, hierarchical set of assumptions than he seems to have had even when he was a Protestant.)
It’s strange if you have been formed by a tradition that strenuously denies this way of thinking and sets Jesus over against His Body, indeed.
I have no problem with the idea that Jesus was referring to Peter’s profession of faith–what I don’t follow is the “certainly not.” How on earth can you make so confident a negative statement? Aren’t you limiting the implications of this clearly very significant event?
Of course Peter’s authority stems from his profession of faith. And indeed that very consideration may answer one of the problems I’ve always had with RC apologetics on this point. Catholics will say “of course the promise that the gates of hell won’t prevail refers to infallibility.” And I’ve frequently asked why it wouldn’t refer to preservation from sin just as easily. But if in fact Peter’s authority rests on his profession of faith, then the promise about the gates of hell may well refer similarly to preservation in the profession of faith, leaving the Church prone to human sinfulness in every other respect. . . .
Indeed. That’s one of the considerations that has held me back for a long time. But in fact I think what you’re describing is simply how we function within a paradigm, as Kuhn has shown in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. There are always things that don’t seem to fit with any paradigm. And so you come up with explanations–“epicycles” in Kuhn’s language. The alternative (as William James shows in The Will to Believe) is an endless choice not to choose, a kind of limbo in which you never commit yourself to any paradigm because they all have things that need explaining.
The difficulties I face in defending Catholicism within the general Christian paradigm pale in comparison to the difficulties involved in defending Christianity and more broadly theism themselves. Don’t you find that answers to the problem of evil sound an awful lot like “Making Mother Good”?
One of the things I find amazing about Catholicism is the very high level of internal critique it can handle. Because in the end it’s about communion and not about having pat answers to everything. Far too many conservative Catholics speak as if it were the latter.
A few articles that may help explain where I’m coming from:
Stephen Long wrote a great article just after the election of Pope Benedict on why Protestants need the Pope. Long’s relationship to Catholicism is very similar to mine–people keep asking why he doesn’t convert, especially now that he’s at Marquette!
S. M. Hutchens wrote an article late in 2004 trying to explain why C. S. Lewis didn’t become Catholic, based on Lewis’s book The Pilgrim’s Regress. The problem is that Hutchens outrageously attributed to Lewis (with regard to Catholicism) a view that Lewis explicitly identified with a non-Christian philosopher (Mr. Wisdom) who winds up in Limbo. I responded with a blog post called "The Ecclesiology of Limbo." As to why I didn’t then become Catholic–space has run out to explain that, and I need to go teach my class!
Edwin
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GKC
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Historically the Continuum leans Anglo-Catholic/1928. Generally. For what that’s worth.
GKC
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AbideWithMe
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Mark, you’ve nearly perfectedly articulated a major qualm and source of queasiness I have at any thought of converting to Catholicism. I don’t have the time tonight to read Contarini’s blog post in his response to what you’ve said here, but I’ll do so as soon as I have time to read it thoughtfully.
Anyway, I’m glad this you and Contarini are discussing this “Making Mother Good” idea. I’ll be an interested reader of any further dialogue on this. I have to do a lot of physical work throughout my day and I often don’t have the mental energy left at day’s end to put my concerns into words so I can discuss them with other people…I’m always relieved when someone else articulates something that I’m thinking.
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andrewstx
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Interesting, in my Episcopal years I preferred 1979 BCP rite one only, as leaning more Catholic, more for the reason the 1928 puts the Gloria at the end of Mass.
I have this mental picture of Cramner cutting the Sarum mass into pieces. shaking it all up and then reassembling the pieces just to deliberately make it different from the Catholic mass.
No offence meant.
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Contarini
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He wasn’t trying to be different for difference’s sake, but he was definitely expressing theological convictions that differed from medieval (or even, I’d argue, patristic) Catholicism.
He put the Gloria at the end because he wanted to make clear that only after you have heard and received the Gospel are you in a position to glorify God. It’s an act of thanksgiving for grace received. The bigger innovation–which the Scottish/American tradition reversed–was to take much of the Eucharistic Prayer and put it after the reception of Communion as a prayer of thanksgiving.
Edwin
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Contarini
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The blog post doesn’t address “making mother good” per se, but it does in a way address the Protestant unwillingness to accept the visible Church as mother, so in that sense it’s relevant. In the course of posting the link to that old post of mine, I went back and skimmed a lot of my old blog posts (my blog went silent on Catholicism after I got hired at an evangelical college, which meant that for years I posted almost nothing at all). I can see myself yearning for Catholicism and then trying to come up with arguments justifying staying Protestant. It was painful reading. The basic issue for me has for years been that I don’t want to turn my back on the truth and goodness I have experienced in Protestantism, particularly in the past 14 years as an Anglican but also in my Wesleyan heritage, to which I have more access as an Anglican than I would as a Catholic. The practical issue of family disunity is a subset of that–it’s where the rubber hits the road. The “making mother good” issue is also related to this, because as an Anglican I’m free to be deeply critical of Anglicanism, even in doctrinal ways, while still acknowledging the means of grace I receive there. This is something I think a lot of Catholics skate over in urging people to “swim the Tiber”–when one becomes Catholic one is committing to the Catholic Church in a way that most Protestant churches don’t require.
Edwin
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Deo_Volente
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Grace & Peace!
Thanks for your reply, Edwin. It’s much appreciated and, as usual, thought provoking.
(CONTINUED…)
Thanks for your reply, Edwin. It’s much appreciated and, as usual, thought provoking.
I don’t think Jesus and his saints are in competition either, but I also don’t think the Church Militant is excluded from the number of Our Lord’s saints (which, granted, puts a more reformed spin on things). But that’s one of the reasons why I read the incident in Matthew 16 as bigger than Peter–it applies to us as well. The covenant made is not just with Peter, but with Christians of every time and place.
I agree.
Re: Peter’s authority, I agree that something special was given to him (and in terms of the papacy, I think the primus inter pares notion covers it). But your first sentence here could very easily be taken as a nod in the direction of the hyper-clericalism of which Roman Catholicism has often (and often justly) been accused–which is to say, Peter isn’t the only member of Christ’s Body the Church, and we do not first need to be members of Peter’s Body in order to be members of Christ’s. However, if we would be Peter’s brothers in the Body, we should make Peter’s confession and, like him, becoming living stones building up the Temple of God.
I’m confident of the “certainly not” because history does not appear to bear out the assertion that universal ordinary authority was claimed and possessed and exercised by popes in the first few centuries of the church and/or that such an authority with such a scope was recognized by the rest of the early church.
(CONTINUED…)
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Deo_Volente
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(…CONTINUED AND COMPLETED)
Inquiry is tolerated, but only to a point. Past that point, inquiry can be perceived as faithlessness or heresy rather than a movement toward faithfulness or a thrist for orthodoxy. Moreover, for all of the brilliance, the faithful daring and the overall excellence of Roman Catholic theologians both lay and ordained and both in and out of universities throughout the world, who’s really listening? How does it effect the lived reality of everyday Roman Catholics if the doing of theology often amounts to little more than citing the catechism? Real inquiry in this context seems to be the hobby of academics and clerics who aren’t actually talking on the record, as it were.
I do remember reading the Long article some time ago…and I remember agreeing with him. I also remember thinking, though, that the Pope the Protestants need is not necessarily identical with the papal office as it is currently understood by the Roman Catholic Church…
Finally, re: “the Protestant unwillingness to accept the visible Church as mother” …could you speak to that a bit more? When I think of “visible Church” I think of all of the Christians throughout the world who form the one Body of Christ and I see that community as matrix and mother by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. I will admit that I have a hard time seeing the bureaucratic instruments by which power is exercised in any particular Christian communion as solely indicative of the motherhood of the church. But it often seems like those bureaucratic instruments and those who exercise them are what is most commonly identified as making up the visible church…as if the word “home” actually and exclusively referred to the skeletal infrastructure of a given house.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
I can agree that all belief represents (to one extent or another) the struggle to believe given a will to believe assisted by grace. For me, the level of suspension of disbelief that I would need to engage in in order to be Roman Catholic, though, would be unacceptably disingenuous.
I don’t, actually! Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius on evil are wholly and unreservedly compelling to me (so too is Simone Weil). Now…explaining that sort of apophatic approach to others can indeed be a trial…
I’d like to agree with you here, but I just can’t. I see no evidence of internal critique being faced with anything but tolerance at best and the descent of a heavy administrative hand at worst. That doesn’t suggest an active culture of inquiry or investigation to me. And while I’d like to believe that it’s about communion in the Roman Church, experience suggests that that communion is predicated on everyone feeling or believing that they have the answers pat. I know there are some incredible thinkers and theologians in the Roman Church, but unless there’s an official pronouncement saying that resonable and reasoned dissent, internal critique, and searching for answers (as opposed to merely assenting to the answers already given) is actually smiled upon, then I’m afraid that everything I’ve seen of how the Roman Catholic Church operates (both through history and in the present moment) militates towards a view which suggests that the conservatives are actually right.
Inquiry is tolerated, but only to a point. Past that point, inquiry can be perceived as faithlessness or heresy rather than a movement toward faithfulness or a thrist for orthodoxy. Moreover, for all of the brilliance, the faithful daring and the overall excellence of Roman Catholic theologians both lay and ordained and both in and out of universities throughout the world, who’s really listening? How does it effect the lived reality of everyday Roman Catholics if the doing of theology often amounts to little more than citing the catechism? Real inquiry in this context seems to be the hobby of academics and clerics who aren’t actually talking on the record, as it were.
I look forward to looking into these articles. Thanks!
I do remember reading the Long article some time ago…and I remember agreeing with him. I also remember thinking, though, that the Pope the Protestants need is not necessarily identical with the papal office as it is currently understood by the Roman Catholic Church…
Finally, re: “the Protestant unwillingness to accept the visible Church as mother” …could you speak to that a bit more? When I think of “visible Church” I think of all of the Christians throughout the world who form the one Body of Christ and I see that community as matrix and mother by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. I will admit that I have a hard time seeing the bureaucratic instruments by which power is exercised in any particular Christian communion as solely indicative of the motherhood of the church. But it often seems like those bureaucratic instruments and those who exercise them are what is most commonly identified as making up the visible church…as if the word “home” actually and exclusively referred to the skeletal infrastructure of a given house.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
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Woody87
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Oh what a glorious day that would be.
For that to happen first our church’s would have to come to an agreement on biblical interpretation. Since the RCC is not going to budge on any subject that it has already defined I guess everything about the church I attend would change. In which case I would switch churches. I am guessing you mean in a more broad sense if the whole PCA community switched to the RCC. I would strongly consider their proofs for why I should believe what they now claim as being the truth. I would most likely change denominations since I have seen your “proofs” already and was not quite convinced. The Lord himself would have to convince me that the precepts of the RCC are true. This is the case of learning any truth though is it not? Since the PCA church will never completely surrender everything that it believes in; this is an interesting but purely theoretical question.
Still it will be a glorious day when this happens because we will be in heaven and I suppose in that day we would also enjoy the delight of being under a theocracy as well as other things that await believers in Christ.
For that to happen first our church’s would have to come to an agreement on biblical interpretation. Since the RCC is not going to budge on any subject that it has already defined I guess everything about the church I attend would change. In which case I would switch churches. I am guessing you mean in a more broad sense if the whole PCA community switched to the RCC. I would strongly consider their proofs for why I should believe what they now claim as being the truth. I would most likely change denominations since I have seen your “proofs” already and was not quite convinced. The Lord himself would have to convince me that the precepts of the RCC are true. This is the case of learning any truth though is it not? Since the PCA church will never completely surrender everything that it believes in; this is an interesting but purely theoretical question.
Still it will be a glorious day when this happens because we will be in heaven and I suppose in that day we would also enjoy the delight of being under a theocracy as well as other things that await believers in Christ.
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Miriam1947
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What a great article, Edwin. Thanks for the link.
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exnihilo
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I’d thank God for making life easier for me. I’ve been considering the claims of the Catholic church for a while now. I’ve found that I don’t find any doctrine, as I understand it, to be something I could not accept. My issues are whether the doctrines are in fact true and how do I know whether they are true. A theophany would be a blessing.
My mainline protestant church is doing the exact opposite. It is entering formal communion with other Protestant churches. These churches are somewhat varied in their beliefs but the one thing they have in common is they are theologically liberal. They are heretical given the beliefs of the Catholic church and I’m largely in agreement. I don’t believe in independent churches so those are not an option. I find their approach to authority problematic. They typically have no problem with God putting authority into a secular institution, the state, which you must obey and cannot disassociate from, but they do have a problem with God putting authority into a secular and spiritual institution, the Church.
My mainline protestant church is doing the exact opposite. It is entering formal communion with other Protestant churches. These churches are somewhat varied in their beliefs but the one thing they have in common is they are theologically liberal. They are heretical given the beliefs of the Catholic church and I’m largely in agreement. I don’t believe in independent churches so those are not an option. I find their approach to authority problematic. They typically have no problem with God putting authority into a secular institution, the state, which you must obey and cannot disassociate from, but they do have a problem with God putting authority into a secular and spiritual institution, the Church.
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CatherineOH
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I’m a recent convert from Lutheran… and am of a firm belief that if history would have only taken a slight turn, and one that only involves one document ; there would be Franciscans, Beneditines, Carmolites, Trappist, Dominicans, and Lutherans within the various Catholic Orders. and the Angicans would be possibly another.
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hn160
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I really would not have a problem because it would mean that the Lutherans and The Catholics have come to agreement on key points of doctrine and that Catholics will have to like coffee and donuts after Mass and potluck dinners.
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