A Hard Saying
I so totally admire your love of the Catholic Church Tony. I am saddened that some of the rules I can not live with and will be joining a Lutheran one that will accept me.
What could I say? Facebook is where I keep in touch with my
family and friends; I don’t go there to engage in verbal fisticuffs or stand on
my soapbox. And yet, I can’t help feeling the answer I gave — “Forget it, lady.
You gotta do a lot worse than that to lose my friendship” — was well-meaning
but unsatisfactory.
I suppose I could have been a smartass and built some
quibbles based on the
precepts of the Church or on canon law. But either of those sallies would
have ended in an exasperated “You know what I mean!”
In fact, I do know
what you meant, my friend. It’s not really the rules you can’t live with, but
rather some of the teachings. It isn’t a question of whether the Catholic
Church accepts you: she does, and always has. Rather, it’s a question of what
you accept — or, rather, what you reject.
You’re not the first person to abandon the Church over a
teaching that sticks in the craw. Read the “Bread of Life” discourse (John
6:22-66): as Jesus insists that “unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (v. 53), his
verbs in the Greek become more graphic, switching from phagō (to eat) to trōgō (to chew, or gnaw like an animal). At the end of
it, many of his disciples leave him, telling themselves and each other, “This
is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (vv. 60, 66)
Jesus Never Promised Us a Rose Garden
Jesus came not just to forgive our sins but also to free us
from the propensity to sin. Jesus did not,
however, redefine sin or make the concept of sin “outmoded and irrelevant”. When
Jesus stopped the scribes and Pharisees from stoning the adulteress, he did so
by reminding them that they, too, were sinners; he did not, however, excuse the
woman’s adultery, but rather told her, “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:2-11). She
did not die for her sexual adventurism — but neither had Jesus made it no
longer a sin.
Jesus didn’t promise his followers an “easy” religion.
Indeed, he taught that it were better to tear out your eye or cut off your hand
if either leads you to sin (Matthew 5:29-30), and that “there are eunuchs who
have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew
19:12). While these are examples of rabbinic hyperbole, they’re meant to
underscore the necessity of avoiding sin.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:34-39; cf. Luke 12:49-53; emphasis mine)
Discipleship costs.
I’m not just thinking of the physical and economic threats that face Christians
in various parts of the globe, from hostile cultures and unfriendly
governments; I’m also thinking of the cost, in relationships broken, lifestyles
irretrievably altered, and careers stunted, to those who have committed
themselves to living out the Church’s teachings in their fullness.
Putting Handcuffs on God
If you can’t accept some of the harder truths of the Faith,
my friend, I can’t blame or judge you. My own discipleship is nowhere near
perfect. And yet, without meaning to insult or degrade my friends and family
from other communions, it would be more intellectually honest to give up
Christianity altogether rather than leave the Catholic Church for a Protestant
denomination.
I don’t recommend apostasy;
nor do I make any judgment against the souls of Protestants. Here’s what I
mean:
All Protestantism is, at its core, the rejection of
religious authority — that is, the capability of any one or group of humans to
be final arbiters over the meaning of the gospel message. This rejection,
sadly, isn’t always principled; for a significant motive in rejecting the
infallibility of the Church is found in the desire to change the rules so life
as a Christian can be made easier. It’s not just that human beings make
mistakes; rather, it’s that the mean ol’ corrupt bishops have laid such
intolerable burdens on us with their rules that they must have made mistakes.
And yet, if you reject the authority of the bishops, how can
you accept Scripture as authoritative, when it was the bishops of the Church
who decided which books were divinely inspired? (Saint Augustine: “For my part,
I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic
Church.” [Against the Fundamental Letter of Manichaeus
5])
If you reject Jesus’ teaching on divorce (Matthew
19:4-9; cf. Mark
10:11-12, Luke
16:18), then on what grounds do you repeat his command, “Judge
not, that you be not judged” (Matthew
7:1)?
If Christ giving St. Peter the power of the
keys (Matthew
16:19) is “a later insertion by the Church”, why isn’t the
tale of the adulteress whom Jesus saved from stoning (John
8:2-11) also a later insertion?
If the guidance of the Holy Spirit promised
by Jesus to the apostles (John
16:13) couldn’t prevent the Church from getting at least
one doctrine wrong, how could it prevent the Church from getting everything Jesus taught wrong?
Then again, if the Holy Spirit couldn’t
prevent the Church from getting something wrong, then what assurance do you
have that the Holy Spirit will keep you
from getting it wrong? This is the trap Martin Luther inadvertently laid for
himself and all Protestantism: denying the infallibility of religious authority
necessarily denies the power of the Holy Spirit to guide the Church, or even
individual preachers. Sola scriptura
handcuffs God Himself.
No Merely Human Institution
Yes, it’s difficult to live with complete faithfulness to
the teachings of the Church — not impossible,
for “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), but difficult
nonetheless. Even bishops struggle to live the Faith authentically; their
failure can be scandalous.
But consider: Jesus condemned the scribes and Pharisees for
not practicing what they preached: “They bind heavy burdens,
hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not
move them with their finger. … [They] shut the kingdom of heaven against
men; for [they] neither enter [themselves], nor allow those who would enter to
go in.” (Matthew
23:4, 13) However, before he denounced the scribes and Pharisees, he
instructed the people of Jerusalem to “practice and observe whatever they tell
you”, for they “sit on Moses’ seat”; i.e., they were heirs to the teaching
authority of Moses. (vv. 2-3) In other words, Jesus confirmed the scribes’ and
Pharisees’ religious authority even as he condemned them for their hypocrisy.
So it is with the bishops of the Church. Not only did the
early Church consider the bishops successors to the functions of the apostles,
there is evidence, as
I’ve shown elsewhere, that the apostles themselves considered their
authority transferable. We consider their teaching protected from error, not
because they’re uniformly wise, good and holy, but because they’re eminently
human. Hilaire Belloc once quipped, “The Catholic Church is an institution I am
bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be
found in the fact that no merely human
institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a
fortnight.”
So again I say, if you choose to convert to the Lutheran
church, I won’t stop being your friend. Nor will I presume to cast judgment on
the state of your soul. But I would ask you to prayerfully consider just what
it is that’s leading you from the Church. Ask yourself not why you don’t
believe everything the Church teaches,
but rather why you believe anything
the Church teaches.
Ask yourself how you’re different from those disciples who
abandoned Jesus in Capernaum two thousand years ago.
