What I Want from Catholics: Become More Protestant

Peter J. Leithart
October 28, 2015

Editor's note:
In the "What I Want From Catholics" series, Protestant writers from every tradition explain what they think of the Catholic Church, particularly her work in the world. We asked them to speak honestly and directly. See What We Want From Protestants for a description of the series. At the end of this article you will find links to the articles published so far.

My wish list for Catholics is terribly old-fashioned and terribly assertive. There’s hardly space here to defend my positions or thoroughly critique the Catholic position, so this may end up sounding like a drive-by shooting or a childish tantrum. I trust that I can formulate my wish list with enough calmness that it doesn’t turn it into a bitch list.

I want the Pope to give up his claim to infallibility. In our day, the Papacy stands as a global symbol of Christian faith, and popes of recent decades have been among the greatest Christian leaders of recent history. The Pope is a universal teacher, a stout defender of Christian morals, a living icon of charity, a father to princes and presidents. None of that makes him a definer of dogma. No matter how narrowly tailored papal infallibility may be, it is theologically and historically unfounded, as Lord Acton knew.

I want the Pope to give up his claim to exclusive primacy. Why not be content with being primus inter pares among the ancient sees? Suppose Peter was the first Bishop of Rome: Didn’t he leave it to Paul to lead the mission to the Gentiles? Besides, should we not be open to the possibility that the center of Christian gravity will shift dramatically in the future? In 3000 years, might not the Bishop of Beijing or Lagos or Brasilia be the actual primate of the Church? In 10,000 years, will Vatican-centered Christendom be anything more than a distant memory?

Catholics Should Give Up

I want Catholics to give up their sectarian exclusiveness. Jesus and His Spirit are present in the suburban Bible church, the Chinese house group, the Pentecostal assembly at one of Rio’s garbage dumps. The Son and Spirit have promised to be wherever word is preached and bread broken, where disciples strive together toward maturity in Christ. These assemblies are no less churches than the congregation of St. Patrick’s. Fellowship with Rome is not the same as fellowship with Jesus; submission to Rome is not the same as catholicity. Jesus and His Spirit do not observe Vatican protocols.

I want Catholics to stop spreading pious falsehoods about Mary. Protestants have unjustly neglected Mary’s central role in the Bible and redemption, but Catholic Marian dogmas are a cure worse than the disease. I want Catholics to honor Mary by giving up inventions like the immaculate conception and the assumption. Failing that, I would be content if these speculations were treated as speculative opinions rather than dogmas.

I want a Catholic to explain how Mary, a Jewish woman of the first-century A.D., can simultaneously hear the appeals of millions of people who speak dozens of languages that she never learned. I know Catholics don’t believe Mary has become God, but that looks like something only a God could manage.

I want Catholic theologians to give up the pretense that the dogma of the Church has never changed. When they try to explain that nothing substantive has changed between Trent and Vatican II, when they distinguish between unchangeable doctrine and changeable formulations of doctrine, they appear disingenuous. I prefer the old free church Independents, who eagerly expected the Spirit to break out fresh light from Scripture.

Worse, the premise of unchangeability makes it impossible for the Church to repent of mistakes. Catholics don’t think Vatican I, for example, will ever need to be overturned; it cannot be. But that means either that there will never be full reunion with Protestants and Orthodox, or that Catholic theologians must find a way to massage Vatican I so that it doesn’t say what it manifestly says. The possibility of saying “the church erred” is excluded in principle.

When I attend Mass, I want Catholic priests to let me share the Eucharist with my Catholic brothers. I want Catholics to accept my invitation to celebrate Eucharist with me and my Protestant brothers, and give up any doubts they might have that what we Protestants celebrate really is Eucharist.

I want Catholics to give up veneration of the consecrated host and other sacred objects. Jesus gave us His body and blood to eat and drink, not to admire. Whatever Catholics think they are doing, to Protestants they appear to be indulging a form of liturgical idolatry. At the very least, they are distracting from Jesus’ purpose for the Eucharist: “Take, eat; take, drink.”

Everyone, Become More Catholic

My rants are typically directed against my own tribe of conservative Protestants, and typically I am urging them to become more Catholic: to acknowledge church authority, to cultivate sacramental piety, to embrace the glories of the whole Christian tradition, to honor Mary and the saints, to conform worship to the pattern of the ancient Church, which is essentially the pattern of Scripture. Typically, I am urging Protestants to receive Catholics and Orthodox as Christian brothers, which they are.

I am not contradicting myself when I rant against Catholics and urge them to become Protestant. What I want above all, for both Catholics and Protestants, is full reunion and reconciliation in the truth. What I want is a Church where the old names of Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or other, are discarded so that we can all wear the old/new baptismal name: Father, Son, and Spirit. And I want that because I am persuaded it is what Jesus wants.

Peter J. Leithart is president of the Theopolis Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, and an adjunct senior fellow of New St. Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho. He is the author of many books, most recently Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor) and Traces of the Trinity (Baker). An ordained minister, he is a member of Evangelical and Catholics Together.

Other articles in the series

David Mills’ What We Want from Protestants (Catholic)

Bruce Ashford’s Save the Drowning (Southern Baptist)

Carl Trueman’s Be True, Not Paper, Roman Catholics (Presbyterian)

Christopher Jackson’s More Good Bishops, and Better Eschatology (Lutheran)

Susannah Black’s Occupy the Public Space (Anglican)

Jerry L. Walls’ Don’t Overreach (Methodist)

John Wilson’s Keep Doing What All Faithful Christians Have Done (Evangelical)

Bob Hartman’s Read the Bible More (Churches of Christ)

Readers are invited to discuss essays in argumentative and fraternal charity, and are asked to help build up the community of thought and pursuit of truth that Ethika Politika strives to accomplish, which includes correction when necessary. The editors reserve the right to remove comments that do not meet these criteria and/or do not pertain to the subject of the essay.

noclownquestion1

Mr. Leithart is right: it does sound like a “childish tantrum.”
Charlie Ducey

I think the point he misses is “why” it is important to have teachings like unchangeability or the exclusivity of the Eucharistic celebration for those initiated in the Church. If worldly forces seek to undermine Christ’s message, we cannot gradually submit to those forces through changing doctrine. Something has to be stable and unwavering in its commitment to the Truth. That won’t happen without dogma.
zebbart

So what he wants is the Catholic Church to die. That’s ok, that’s what I want for the Protestant churches too – to give up all the essentials of their identity and become Catholic. It’s just a weird thing to say you want from the Church rather than for it, and weird publish at the invitation of a Catholic site.
- Bavinck
  
  Protestant churches wouldn’t have to “give up” their essentials, as much as they would have to adopt new apocryphal ones. The author is not saying Catholics should give up ‘all the essentials of their identity.’ Just the ones that are unsupported by the Scriptures and emanate from bad papal theology (which would probably be healthier for their identity, anyway).
  - Sirene
    
    Well well, what he thinks is unsupported by scripture is actually very scriptural. He just lacks clarity and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to correctly interpret scripture.
    He wants the real Church to accommodate to his own theology and erroneous interpretation of scripture. Nothing new there. It’s been happening for 2000 years.
    There is a reason why Jesus Christ had to say that the gates of hell will not prevail against Her. That automatically implies that His Church will be attacked constantly.
    Can’t anyone really deny that Jesus Christ founded a visible Church? That’s as scriptural as it gets, but some twist it so much so as to deny the most evident scriptural basis for it.
    The problem is not that it isn’t scriptural. The problem is that it doesn’t fit to the personal interpretation of scripture that protestants have.
    And let’s face it, God did choose Catholic bishops under the authority of the pope to tell the world what should be in the bible in the first place.
    So anyone who believes the bible to be inerrant, which it is, then they must also implicitly believe in the infallibility of the pope.
    Can’t have an effect greater than the cause.
    I didn’t see it until one day, thanks to the grace of God, I finally saw the entire picture.
  - Thomas R
    
    Primacy of the Pope and not being open Communion goes back to centuries before there were Protestants. Although not infallibly proclaimed until modern times the Assumption or Dormition of Mary goes back to the seventh century at least. St. Jerome apparently speaks of the intercession of saints.
    
    Now you may feel that what really matters in Catholicism is mostly just what we share with Protestantism. And as a Protestant that’s your right. But the Catholic Church can’t really shed things that are part of our understanding of the Bible, the Councils, and Christianity before the Council of Chalcedon even. And Orthodox may well just laugh in your face about the idea as I think they’re often less interested in ecumenism.
    - Bavinck
      
      You’re right about some Orthodox folks. I think it comes down to the way in which Christians hold what makes them distinct from other Christians. They hold the things that divide way to close and are unwilling to loosen their grip for the sake of obedience to John 17. If the legacy and Tradition of the Church and its councils cause you to walk in disobedient disunity, why would you not consider the possibility that you are using them/believing them/applying them in the wrong way? That is the question. There are Protestants who do the same things to each other with the Westminster Standards, Dordt, Augsburg, London, etc.
  - Gail Finke
    
    That’s the crux of the probelm, isn’t it? We Catholics would say that those things are not apocryphal and do not emanate from bad papal theology. At the same time, we would say that Protestant groups and the other groups that have evolved from them have thrown away half or more of their inheritence as Christians and are content with the crusts, which they fight over among themselves at the foot of the banquet table. It is okay to ackowledge that we each think this is what the other is doing. You can’t really talk about Christianity unless you acknowledge that in the particular debate, each side thinks the other is just plain wrong.
    - Bavinck
      
      Ha. Did you just call Protestants ‘dogs’ by way of implication? Your tone is part of the problem with this discussion; you can’t say to Protestants: admit you’re wrong so we can move forward, when you see yourself as a fuller Christian eating at the table throwing scraps down at your feet. With such a condescension, how are you surprised when they bark at you and bump into your knees? The vainglory is breathtaking.
      - Gail Finke
        
        No, I did not call Protestants dogs directly or by implication. If you think the idea of eating crusts when there is a banquet available implies the eater is a dog, that would seem to me to be a problem of your own imagination and perhaps a problem of being quick to take offense. Is it arrogance to say that Catholics believe we have the banquet while Protestants content themselves with crusts? Again, that is your perception — I am simply trying to make a metaphor for how we look at things. We do think the Catholic Church is the fullness of Christianity and other “ecclesial communions” (to use the Catholic theollogical term) only accept part of that fullness and reject the rest — which, yes, by definition means they have less. This is not arrogant, it is an accurate desciription of what we believe. I am not accusing you of arrogance for believing your group or the set of groups you accept is correct, despite being a very small number of Christians who are alive or who have ever lived and despite denying (to my sense) the clear words of Christ Himself. I accept that you do and don’t attibute that to a character flaw on your part or on the party of anyone who agrees with you. If you can’t accept the fact that people disagree, how can you ever have a discussion with them?
- David Gray
  
  I believe he did so at the invitation of the site.
Greg Herr

“What I want above all, for both Catholics and Protestants, is full reunion and reconciliation in the truth.” Fortunately, the actual, real, tangible, and visible offer for what Dr Leithart seeks has been made available in the Ordinariate. Not on his or our terms. On the terms of the Lord Savior, Jesus, in John 17. Door’s open, Peter. Please feel very welcome.
Ryan Dolan

As a Catholic, Peter, I can say that, quite frankly, I couldn’t care less what you want from us. But, please, do have a nice day!
- guest
  
  Hey, give yourself some credit there. You at least care enough to declare you couldn’t care less.
jepprey

All the Roman Catholics I know of only labels themselves so because they grew up raised as Roman Catholics. Affiliation through familiarity. On the flip side, the same is true with many Protestants, Muslims, & Jews that I know of. Even though a person adheres to “correct doctrine”, they could still be walking in darkness if they are just following mere religion & traditions.
- Nordog6561
  
  I’m a Roman Catholic. I label myself as such. I was an agnostic/atheist well into my 30s and was confirmed Catholic at the age of 36.
  - jepprey
    
    Thanks for sharing, I haven’t personally met any Catholic converts. I was raised Catholic, agnostic during my early 20’s, and was born again at age 24.
Bavinck

These comments so far perfectly support one of the article’s contentions: Catholics are not open to the Spirit breaking out “fresh light from Scripture.” Catholicism, in its current form, uses a ‘fear’ of succumbing to liberal/secular redefinition as a smoke screen for its need of control and institutional veneration. Remove the smoke screen and deal with the insecurities; that’s one takeaway.
- noclownquestion1
  
  “[T}he Spirit breaking out ‘fresh light from Scripture’ ” is an interesting way — I might even call it a “smoke screen” — to characterize actions tantamount to the dissolution of the Catholic Faith as it has been received.
  - Bavinck
    
    Great. You’ve grasped the argument! The Catholic Faith, or any tradition, should dissolve its parts that unnecessarily prevent true catholicity (i.e. stop venerating the host, papal infallibility, fencing Nicene brothers and sisters from the Eucharist, etc.). The papacy, in its current form, only protects and preserves a syncretistic Catholic church, not that which was originally received from the apostles.
    - noclownquestion1
      
      Better to have thousands of microscopic splinter churches, all absolutely certain that THEY possess biblical truth. Btw, I can think of nothing sillier than people NOT in communion with Rome wanting to receive Roman Catholic Communion. Talk about theological subjectivism.
Virgil

Hmm….in many regards it looks like you want less for Catholicism to become Protestant than to become Orthodox, as I look at your comments on infallibility. I warn you my response may be long, but I hope will fairly discuss your points.

Many of the criticisms stem from a usual source…..that Catholic Tradition incorporates many articles of faith that are not found in Scripture but are nevertheless held as true, and much of which concerns Mary. The Protestant critique is that, or seems to be to this Catholic, if it is miraculous, but does not come from Scripture it must be a falsehood.

But you open a possible compromise….what if anything miraculous not of scripture is not necessarily false (after all God can do all sorts of miraculous things whenever He wishes) but is not necessary to the faith. Catholicism tends to take just this attitude with many Marian apparitions. They may well have happened, and the weight of evidence even may seem to indicate that they did happen, but they are not necessary for salvation and you place yourself at no risk by denying them personally.

However, even if we accept that (and even, for the sake of argument, if we were to make a similar allowance for acts of a council such as infallibility) we still have our more fundamental disagreements over what scripture passages mean. Your comments somewhat hint at this regarding communion. From the perspective of scripture, Catholics (and Eastern Christians) obviously believe in the real presence in the Eucharist, but many, although not all Protestants do not. This leads to additional complications…..there are scriptural warnings to receiving communion unworthily…but what does that mean if it is only a symbol. How can one place oneself into a position to receive? Does it require confession? If it is more than a symbol, what role does a priest have? Fundamentally does a priest (in terms of having what can only be described as supernatural gifts) really exist? The issue of not permitting cross-communion, to my mind seems less a matter of exclusion than it is a matter of not agreeing on what this communion is, or perhaps, Who is there.

At the bottom of all of this are the sacraments….in my estimation the primary issue dividing the Christians whose belief systems were formed prior to the Reformation from the Christians who draw their beliefs from and after that period. My suspicion is that if some consensus could be reached regarding those items (if we all have the seven sacraments and a priesthood) the other arguments….over Mary, the Saints, the position of the Pope, whether priests should be married or not, could be bridged. Without such a consensus however, we are left with two approaches toward Christ….one that states that approaching Christ requires both a sacramental and scriptural component (hence the two sections of the Mass) and one believing that, at basic, the sacramental is far less important compared to the scriptural and, at an extreme, that the sacramental component is nothing more than superstition.
Thomas R

As long as you understand these are your wants and that they can never, and will never (and most of the world’s Catholics I hope would still add “should never”), happen in full than it’s okay. You’re free to want whatever you want.

But if you actually have any hope that Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox will compromise to some kind of middle-way or even “Mere Christianity” I think that’s just a ridiculous hope. In fact I might be close to just saying that if that is your hope, “Stop that, right now, you’ll only be disappointed or annoyed.”

As for Mother Mary she’s in Heaven. The Heavenly life is more than this one. As for “that looks like something only a God could manage”, not really. It doesn’t make her at all omnipotent. Indeed she doesn’t, personally, have any power. She’s sometimes compared to the Moon, reflecting light of the Sun. If someone responded to a description of the Moon with, “You’re describing this thing in space that brings light to the nights of people of the whole world? Sounds like a star to me” they’d sound a tad dim. I don’t even know that Marian doctrines could imply omniscience.
Kirstin Merrihew

Dear Mr. Leithart, I wish for you conversion to the Catholic Church, just as I converted three years ago. Join us in the full richness of the faith that Jesus established. It is a beautiful thing to rest in it; to receive communion in it; and to love the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in it. Do not ask the Church to change; seek change in yourself. God bless.
- Mo86
  
  Christ nowhere came to establish an organization.
  - Kirstin Merrihew
    
    Christ established His Church.
    - Adam W.
      
      Christ said nothing about Rome, and simply because the most-often corrected disciple (Peter) might have taken up residence there before his death, it does not follow he could appoint successors, did appoint successors, or that those successors would have infallibility when Peter himself never claimed or appeared to have it.
      - Kirstin Merrihew
        
        In the Great Commission (Matthew 28), Jesus told his apostles to go out and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He also told them He would be with them until the end of the age. Do you think that Jesus only meant to offer salvation to that one generation? No. He meant for the apostles to begin the work and appoint others to carry on…and so forth. This the apostles did. They were the first “bishops” of Christ’s Church (even though they were not called bishops at first) and they selected others to act in this office of authority too. Peter ended up in Rome because, the Bible tells us, God directed him to go there. As for infallibility, the pope only possesses this in very specific circumstances. Generally, a pope’s comments are as subject to fallibility as anyone’s.
  - KAS
    
    Nor did He come to establish a thousand churches.
    
    He prayed that His followers would be one as He and His Father are one.
    
    The Reformation is an enduring scandal that we should endeavor to heal rather than perpetuate.
Gaius

Coming tomorrow, my Ethika Politika article: “What I want from Protestants: Accept All Catholic Teachings.”

Also gotta love the 10,000 year time-scale suggested for re-evaluating Rome-centrism. Well, we’re 1/5 of the way there, right? Whereas some Reformed churches literally have the crests of Zurich and Geneva carved into their façades. How’s that gonna look in 10,000 years?
- David Gray
  
  Pre-Reformation Church history belongs to Protestants. So we’re 1/5 there.
  - Daveshea1
    
    That is true… if you have never read any Pre-Reformation Church history.
    - David Gray
      
      Spoken like someone who thinks transubstantiation was dogmatized around 400 AD.
      - Thomas R
        
        When the formal definition of a dogma occurred doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before then. In Eastern Christianity they prefer different terms but here’s something from a Coptic site.
        
        “Thomas Acquinas from the Catholic Church is the one who introduced the
        term “transubstantiation” and it describes the process of change itself. The Orthodox Church refuses to use the term; since it is a mystery and cannot be explained. That is why we use the term “change” and we admit that we cannot describe the process; as it is a mystery. In response and reaction to the term “transubstantiation”, Martin Luther, who also rejected the term, introduced another term, “consubstantiation” meaning equal. This opened the door for the protestant denial of the reality of the change of the bread and wine to the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (misspellings were in source.)
        
        The word “transubstantiation” might be from the 12th century but belief in “the reality of the change of the bread and wine to the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ” might be found as early as the second century (or earlier, such as the Didache or the Gospels themselves) and, so far as I know, is held by all Pre-Waldensian Christianity.
  - Gaius
    
    Maybe so; but my point isn’t that only the Catholic church is old, but that even under the absurd near-geological time-scale suggested above, the Roman Church isn’t looking particularly provincial.
No Name

If the Catholic Church did this, would you become Catholic? Or would you shake their hands and turn away, only to return at your convenience? Something tells me the latter…
LawProf61

So we can become like Katherine Ragsdale, former dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, who declared, “Abortion is a blessing, and our work is not done”?

No thanks.
- Matthew S
  
  I’m not sure how this is a defining mark of protestantism. There’s an organization known as Catholics For Choice. Should you stop being catholic lest you become one of them? Is that position contagious by association?
  - Sirene
    
    Matthew those are protestants inside the Church who are going directly against the teachings of the Church.
    There have been all through out history people inside that go against the teachings of the Church. They eventually become protestants.
    The teaching is that abortion is intrinsically evil. That has always been the teaching for 2000 years. That group will dissipate and become a protester group outside. No offense but that’s how protestants are formed.
    From rebellious Catholic directly opposing the teachings of the Church from within to rabid protestants outside attacking the Church. Their religion has absolutely nothing to do with Christ but to be anti-Catholic.
    Satan’s lovely progression. That has always been the progression.
    - Matthew S
      
      That might be your definition of what a protestant is, but that is not at all what historical protestantism is. Historical protestantism is defined by adhering to what’s known as the five solas. Disagreeing with the catholic church is not at all what makes a protestant. Protestants are those who adhere to the theology of the protestant reformation, like I already mentioned, namely the five solas. You have a very different definition for protestant than any and every protestant has.
      - Sirene
        
        Actually it is. Protestant means that they protest the Church whether with the man-made solas doctrines or any other doctrines.
    - Matthew S
      
      Here is an article on protestantism by a protestant organization. Notice that protestants are not defined by just those outside the catholic church but those who adhere to the historical teaching of the protestant reformation. http://www.gotquestions.org/Protestantism.html
PeteM

From one Peter to another and one Christian to another, I admire your honesty and your urgency in seeing a reunion between Christians and Catholics but as a studying Catholic, I have to admit that the more I have read the bible and the works of the apostles and the early church fathers, the Catholic Church is the Church that Christ founded. They’ve got it right. You and I are both children of God and disciples of Christ and it is my hope that if we cannot be reunited on earth that we will be reunited with Christ in Heaven someday. Until then, there’s always alcohol-fueled theological discussions to make the differences more enjoyable.
Larson

Great article, Dr. Leithart!
Seraphim Hamilton

The way that the Virgin Mary can hear prayers of millions of people around the globe is through her participation in Christ. Christ in His glorified humanity is omniscient, so that a glorified human person participates in the all-knowing of God. Asking Catholics and Orthodox to discard the invocation of Saints, the Apostolic succession of the priesthood (required if we were to recognize your Eucharist), and iconography is not to ask for a reformation, but a complete end to who we are. It is difficult for one who has never lived a Catholic or Orthodox spiritual life to understand how deeply these things are woven into the day-to-day of who we are. When we ask a Saint to pray for us and those prayers are answered, what do we do when the purported Reformation comes? Pretend that it never happened, and that those Saints who comforted us during our time of need weren’t there after all? It would require an abandonment of much of our spiritual life as mental delusion. That’s why something like this is never going to happen.
- jepprey
  
  Why bother praying to Mary or a Saint when you can pray directly to the Heavenly Father, the creator of the Universe, as Jesus taught?
  - Daniel Karistai
    
    We don’t pray *to* saints or the Virgin Mary, that would be silly. We ask them to intercede on our behalf as we would any other friend or loved one because we believe we participate in the communion of the saints; an eschatological reality ushered in by the Eucharist.
  - Elizabeth Shearer
    
    But then why ask your friend from church to pray for you and your intentions if you could go directly to Jesus with your prayers? Why have prayer chains? Prayer meetings? Laying on hands? Is all that for naught when you could just go directly to Jesus? The saints in Heaven are our friends, and they are more alive than we are, as they are beholding the face of God. They can pray for us and intercede for us, just as our faithful, friends here on earth (or our very faith-filled mothers) could pray fervently for our well-being, safety, our health, the strengthening of our own faith, marriages, children, etc. Do you stop loving and caring about anyone here on Earth when you die and go to Heaven? Is that what perfected love in Heaven is like? Do you think when we die we just magically forget about everyone here on earth who is still “fighting the good fight”, we play our harps, fly around on clouds and don’t think about the suffering, hurting people who haven’t made it to their eternal reward yet, because they’re not really our problem anymore? Is that how you think the Body of Christ really works? The teaching of the Catholic Church on the saints is BEAUTIFUL. It takes nothing at all away from Jesus, but shows His love and mercy on His people by allowing us to raise our prayers to Him on behalf of our loved ones in Christ…whether we are in Heaven or on Earth.
    - Daniel Karistai
      
      I’m pretty sure Jesus pays more attention to my wife’s prayers than he does mine. So I have her pray for me all the time. 🙂
    - Matthew S
      
      We do not venerate people we ask to pray for us. We ask brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for us because they have equal access to God’s throne as we do, not because they have better access to the throne of grace. Asking particular “saints” to pray for us is venerating them as if they have better access to God than we do. I am seated with Christ in heavenly places. I can go boldly to the throne of grace. How is Mary’s proximity helpful? Does God hear better if we are closer? It does take away from Jesus if we fail to recognize that because of Jesus we have equal access to God the same way Mary did. If we say that someone has better access to God then we are saying that the efficacy of Christ’s accomplishment for all who believe is different for certain persons. With Mary specifically, we are saying that her salvation is of her own merit. If she was immaculate, then the blood of Christ was not shed for her. She didn’t need the gospel. His blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins. If she was immaculate, then his blood wasn’t shed for her. She merited salvation on her own, which makes her in her humanity equal to Christ since he was exalted to his position because of his sinlessness. But only Christ has all authority, only Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. Only Christ did what Adam couldn’t do. Mary is seated with him the same way we all are, because she believed in him and received the blessings of his accomplishment.
      - Seraphim Hamilton
        
        Matthew, your view does not hold together under scrutiny. In Genesis 20, God speaks directly to Abimelech and tells him to ask for Abraham’s intercession, because Abraham is a prophet. I parse the biblical theology here:
        
        http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/onbehalfofall/intercession-saints-gods-divine-council/
Matthew S

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” 1 Timothy 2:5. Praying to Mary to get to the Father is a form of mediation. But we have only one mediator, Jesus Christ. Am I wrong for praying only to the Father in his name? Has the blood of Christ not washed me so that I can go boldly to the throne of grace? Is Mary my high priest or is Jesus? My bible says to go boldly to the Father in the name of Jesus. Nothing about going to Mary so she can go to the Father. The blood of Christ has made it so I can enter the throne room of God and make my request directly to Him in Jesus name. That’s the gospel. Adding mediators is a different gospel.
Frank La Rocca

I am dismayed that so eminent a theologian as Dr. Leithart appears to understand so little about the reasons Catholics could never make the changes he wants. It is not within the power of any individual Pope to reject the primacy of Peter. Does he not understand Apostolic Succession, Holy Orders, Catholic sacramental theology? He wants nothing less than for Catholics to cease being so. The chutzpah is breathtaking.
- Bavinck
  
  It sounds like he wants nothing more than for Catholics to be more fully so (i.e. by shedding the extra stuff not supported by the Bible, but only the big stand-alone T).
  - Gail Finke
    
    I think you are right. But that is a Protestant understand of Christian faith. We do not believe that “stuff” that is not in the Bible is “extra.” We believe that they are part of the fullness of the Church, which has (collectively) the authority to teach it and determine what it means. Protestants have thrown out everything but what is int he Bible and a certain number of dogmatic truths derived from it ( the Trinity is not in the Bible. What books belong in the Bible is not in the Bible. Etc.) and said, “This far and no farther… plus, each of us has to read it for himself and decide what it means for himself.” This is simply wrong, according to the Catholic way of looking at things, and is necessarily wrong — as has been demonstrated by the many, many different things that have been and are believed by people who rely only only on themselves or a favorite pastor to tell them what is true. Such an understanding is and can only be tied to one’s culture, time, and intellectual capacity. There is nothing “catholic” about that.
    - Bavinck
      
      Thanks, Gail. A couple of things: the Protestant folks you are sampling are a thin brush, making it difficult for you to paint such a wide space with one stroke. I’ve spoken to plenty of Catholics who have said, almost verbatim, what you attribute to Protestants: ‘each of us has to read it for himself and decide what it means for himself.’ That is not an exclusively Protestant sin, unfortunately, and Tradition doesn’t prevent it for Catholics. However, I’m not saying that that is what all Catholics believe, nor what the Vatican teaches.
      
      Also, it’s fine that Catholics keep the extra-biblical stuff from history and Tradition that help them identify as Catholics (even if it is juridically applied). The problem is how you hold those things. It is unnecessary to accept as authoritative, a tenet of Tradition that excludes believers in the Triune God (e.g. Nicene, Athanasius, Apostle’s Creed Christians) from the Eucharist. I understand there are theological premises for closing the table, but they are not consistent with blatant Biblical teaching. Just because a Christian doesn’t believe in transubstantiation as he partakes in the Eucharist, or hasn’t bowed the knee to Rome, shouldn’t be grounds for exclusion.
      - Gail Finke
        
        As there is no central authority among Protestants and other Christians, it’s dificullt or impossible to say anything definitive about them asa whole. For instance, some denominations have VERY clear teachings about how Scripture is to be interrpreted, while others have practically none As there is a central authority to Catholics, it is possible to say that anyone who told you that ‘each of us has to read it for himself and decide what it means for himself’ is not a teaching of the Catholic Church, no matter how many Catholics happen to believe it right now. (And while that might be a lot of Catholics in the West, it’s not even a majority of Catholics now, much less a consistent belief of Catholics through history). That is a hazard of attempting to talk about these kinds of issues, and we have to simply try to do the best we can.
        
        However, the second half of your note is easy to discuss because it is specific. You think the “extra-biblical stuff” that “helps Catholics identify as Catholics” is not necessary, we think it is. You think it is being petty for us to exclude people who don’t believe in transubstantiation from communion, we think it’s vital because to us that’s a key — THE key — point of communion. You think that people who don’t “bend the knee to Rome” can be be considered in communion with people who do; but we think that’s a vital part of being in communion. Those are clear and substantial disagreements between Catholics and Protestants/non-Orthodox/non-Catholic Christians. I just don’t see how we can compromise on things that in your opinion and reading of Scipture (not ours, and not many other people’s, your particular reading) seem to be optional or “variations” but that we see as real, vital, and essential. The way I see it, we can respect each other’s viewpoints and agree to disagree, but compromise isn’t possible.
      - Gail Finke
        
        On more thing… I am amused that you think it’s “fine” for us to “keep” things you think are nice add-ons to some sort of basic faith (that’s what I get from your post, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth). The thing is, we don’t think they are extra things that give us “identity” — the way the Presbyterians emphasize art, while many Baptists prefer lots of Gospel music and the Methodists have their cool Celtic cross. To us, it’s all one big Catholic Thing. We don’t really have a “basic Catholic kit” you can add on to, although we do have a plethora of rites and different spiritualities and things; these are all equally Catholic. The Syro-Malabar Catholics, for instance, have their special rite and language and vestments and music and EVERYTHING. But they are organic parts of their churches and equally valid — just as the most awful guitar mass music is (sadly) equally valid. It’s hard to explain because it’s a whole way of thinking. Non-Catholics get along by saying that there are shared essentials and that everything else is optional and so can be ignored — like, say, going to a mall and buying whatever you want from whatever store you want. It doesn’t matter what brand you buy or what store you go to. But that just doesn’t apply to the Cathoolic Church, which is more like going to IKEA and buying whaever you want — there’s a huge amount of stuff to choose from but it’s all from IKEA.
        How Catholics view other Christians is also very different. We say that the Catholic Church is the fullness of Christianity. Everyone else takes little bits and pieces and makes them into their whole. But they really belong in the Catholic Church, and where they can be part of the greater whole they are part of. I realize that can sound condescending and annoying. But while Baptists don’t think Lutherans are “really” Baptists, Catholics DO think everyone else is in a sense “really” a Catholic. Not every individual Catholic thinks this, but this is official teachiing of the Church. This doesn’t mean at all that Catholcis don’t think anyone else is Christian (the way many non-Catholics don’t think Catholics are actually Christians, ha ha). But they think that these other ways of being Christian are stunted, in a way, and cut off from the fullness that Christ established and heads.
        So… in a nutshell, that’s why such discussions often end up nowhere. There are basic, world-view type differences, not just theological and practical ones.
Brian Sullivan

Let’s say the Catholic Church did all that Dr. Leithart asks. He would presumably be happy at first. But within a few years he would come to despise the Church for becoming the very thing he wanted it to be.
priest’s wife

“I want Catholics to give up veneration of the consecrated host”- so….you want us to give up worshipping Christ….

I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, A Charmed Life). She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual.

We went at eight and at one, I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. The people who took me were Robert Lowell and his now wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.

I then said, in a very shaky voice, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.

Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being
- Bavinck
  
  You realize that there are more than 2 positions with regard to Eucharistic theology, right? Wanting Catholics to drop the veneration of the host does not mean one necessarily believes the Eucharist is a mere symbol.
  - Preston
    
    Bavinck: If Catholics believe Christ is fully present in the Eucharist, which we do, why in the world would we ever consider dropping veneration? I believe that’s the point priests wife was getting at.
    - Bavinck
      
      That’s true as far as it goes, but Protestants believe Christ is fully present also, even locally present; just not physically present. You’re right, you wouldn’t want to consider dropping veneration if you believed that. Exegesis of John 6 is probably the locus of the divide here.
    - wyclif
      
      ALITHIA. I must request you, brother, to show still farther, from reason or Scripture, that there is no identification of the bread with the body of Christ… For I am no means pleased with the spurious writings which the moderns use, to prove an accident without a subject, because the church so teaches. Such evidence should satisfy no one.
      
      PHRONESIS. As to identification, we must, in the first place, agree on what you mean by the term. It signifies, God’s making natures, which are distinct in species or number, one and the same – as though, for instance, he should make the person of Peter to be one with Paul… For if A is identical with B, then both of them remain; since a thing which is destroyed is not made identical, but is annihilated, or ceases to be. And if both of them remain, then they differ as much as at first, and differ consequently in number, and so are not, in the sense given, the same…
      
      PSEUDIS. In the first place, you cannot escape from this expository syllogism: First, This bread becomes corrupt, or is eaten by a mouse. Second, The same bread is the body of Christ. Third, Therefore the body of Christ does thus become corrupt, and is thus eaten; – and thus you are involved in inconsistency.
      - Preston
        
        Wyclif: While I have to admit I like your style (do you only comment on things in John Wyclif quotes?), I can’t say I find these kinds of arguments all that convincing since they are basically composed of elaborate wordplay. That’s not to say they aren’t useful or interesting (and, to be fair, I feel basically the same way about Aquinas), only that they seek to prove the impossibility of concepts by attacking problems of language. Shaky terms like substance, species, and accident can never be “evidence” proving beyond doubt the truth or falsity of transubstantiation. They simply explain its mechanism (if I can be permitted to use such a blunt term). No news there.
        
        The third paragraph, for example, conflates two different definitions of the word “corrupt.” The corruption done to a body (decay) is not the same as that done to a soul (sin). It also assumes that a mouse eating the Host would corrupt the Host in the first place, an assumption for which there is no real basis because Christs resurrected body is a glorified body and not subject to decay. I only bring this up to support what I said above (that the problems he points out are more problems of terminology than anything); I have no intention of starting a debate about whether his logic follows or not.
        
        At any rate, it’s not Wyclif’s logic I find unconvincing but the fact that he reads this as a logical problem at all. Reason can and does lead us to truth, certainly. But that’s not what’s at issue here. as Bavinck rightly pointed out above, Catholic and Protestant differences in opinion really differ wrt exegesis of John 6 and perhaps some other passages as well.
        
        To me, in the end, Wyclif is asking a really boring question: How can I, Wyclif, prove that transubstantiation is impossible or logically inconsistent? (Perhaps I am being too cynical?) More interesting questions imo are as follows: Does Christ have the power to be fully and physically present in the Eucharist (body, soul, and divinity)? If so, would he choose to do so? If so, why might he? If he did end up doing so, how would he communicate that fact to us and would we be receptive to Him? I don’t expect those questions to be answered, of course. I am merely attempting to explain why scholasticism bores me and why I feel (quite strongly) that we have to start asking the right questions (whatever those may be).
      - KAS
        
        You have touched on a significant marker of Protestantism: skepticism – beginning perhaps as an honest objection but flowering into willful obtuseness.
        
        It’s the difference between St. Thomas’ initial doubt about the resurrection, which was susceptible to evidence, and pseudo-logical games of the sort you highlight. Or, put in epistemological terms, the will to be convinced vs. the refusal to be convinced.
        
        Further, in rejecting the authority of the church and permitting non-canonical readings of scripture, Protestants replace the tension of faith and reason with a faith dependent on hyper-rationalism such that anything that doesn’t “make sense” is rejected summarily.
        
        It makes ecumenical discussions virtually impossible.
  - Thomas R
    
    The kind of full communion he’s suggesting is maybe more what implies that. Because to avoid offending some of those communicants it might at least become tempting to downplay the teaching on the Eucharist.
    
    Considering he wants Protestants to be more Catholic it’s maybe, almost, like a plan for “An Old-form Anglican Church for everyone.” (I’m aware he’s not Anglican.) And his mindset gets to why I think people are wrong in thinking C. S. Lewis would have been Catholic if it wasn’t for Northern Irish prejudice.
    
    Although I’m not sure he ever said it explicitly C.S. Lewis I think had big problems with Vatican I. And some of this article is about that.
    
    Although this article borders on being more “modernist” than I think Lewis ever got. Lewis believed, I think, that Anglicanism was truer to Medieval Christianity. Even if he should have known some of his own beliefs were rather at variance from that. I don’t think he was saying Christianity should necessarily change in quite the way this hints at.
    
    But either way every Christian becoming an open communion version of pre-WWII Anglicanism is unrealistic at best.
    - Bavinck
      
      Great points. However, I don’t see why open communion is ‘unrealistic at best.’ This article is challenging what Catholics dub ‘unrealistic,’ by asking on what grounds? By all means, guard the Church from liberalism/secularism that seeks to water down and hollow out church teaching. But, guarding the Church from legitimate forms of itself makes no sense, is cannibalistic, and further tangles the problems facing it from post-modernity.
      - Thomas R
        
        It seems kind of obvious to me. The Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is not like any Protestant churches. That you should have some sense what you’re doing, and why, doesn’t seem that extraordinary to me.
        
        There’s also 1 Corinthians 11:29.
      - Daveshea1
        
        It is a mercy that someone is not allowed to receive what they do not understand or believe in. I do not receive in Protestant churches because I do not believe it is the Eucharist.
  - Gail Finke
    
    What does it mean?
    - Bavinck
      
      See Socrates’ comment above. It means real presence, but I would still distinguish that from ‘physical’ presence.
      - Dan Carollo
        
        If you can allow Christ to be literally, spiritually (meaning “immaterially” present — then it is not difficult to allow him to be physically present as well. God is the Lord of both the material and immaterial universe. Why should he not give us the extraordinary fullness of BOTH in His Eucharistic presence? Protestants generally have difficulty with the idea of “physicality” of anything — as if he visible/physical can ONLY ever be idolatrous or superstitious
      - KAS
        
        Precisely.
        
        Protestants, in this sense, are practicing Manicheans. And, in the bargain, limit the sovereignty of God by limiting what God is capable of doing. Or at least what God may choose to do, which amounts to the same thing if it claims to impose that limit for all time to come.
David W

“I am not contradicting myself when I rant against Catholics and urge them to become Protestant. What I want above all, for both Catholics and Protestants, is full reunion and reconciliation in the truth”

I guess the question is: Will there be any truth left in Catholicism if she abandons what you dislike? Or will she become like those denominations which are offering approval to whatever society happens to like at the moment.

I suspect the latter, and that is why the Church cannot and will not become what you want.
Kaijubushi

Haha nope. I give it a 5/10. You lose 5 points on the troll scale for not bringing up pedophilia.
Jon

So basically you want to be more Catholic but you want Catholics to deny what makes them influential. Makes perfect sense. Your desire for the Catholic Church to change in this way will simply make the church as non influential as most of Protestantism. The chaos of Lutheran belief is exactly what you dislike and the unity of Catholicism is what you desire but you fail to grasp the missing link…..the authority you reject. And the Mary language thing…..really. By Gods power in heaven seriously we should not doubt the ability of him to assist in such a trivial matter. Perhaps by your logic you cannot communicate with people in heaven that don’t speak English. I thought you more scholarly and level headed then this. Even suggesting time as a problem for hearing prayers outside of time is nonsensical.
Jonathan Boothby

As per usual, if the Church would just abandon it’s teachings and history it would be perfect.
- Matthew S
  
  I they were replacing those things with faithfulness to the scriptures, yes that would be perfect. An entity abandoning its teaching and history is not inherently a bad thing. We cannot uphold tradition over truth, and only God’s word is truth. Also, the protestant reformers believed they were recovering the historical faith that had been corrupted, not at all abandoning it. If the catholic church returned to the faithfulness to the scriptures that the church fathers had then that would be progress, not regress.
  - Thomas R
    
    Have you read the Ante-Nicene Fathers? To me it’s really difficult to see how you can and think the Protestant Reformers are closer to them. I’ll grant an argument can be made Orthodoxy or non-Chalcedonian Eastern Christianity is, but not the Reformers.
    
    The earliest Christian Bibles we have contain the books of Judith and Tobit. Ignatius of Antioch speaks of bishops. And by the fifth century we have St. Jerome speaking of intercession and St. Augustine referring to marriage as a sacrament. The Bible itself I think would indicate St. Stephen is a martyr for the faith, but he died before Paul was Christian and therefore before the New Testament was finished. Further the New Testament may well quote books the reformers rejected and fit the Septuagint better than the Hebrew canon Protestantism uses.
Douglas Beaumont

Sure, then all we’d have to do is figure out which of your 40,000 denominations to become.
- Matthew S
  
  The protestant principles are the same across the board. Faith alone, scripture alone, through Christ alone, by grace alone, to the glory of God alone are the protestant marks. If a denomination doesn’t hold to those, then they are not protestant.
  - Sirene
    
    They are not the same by any stretch of the imagination.
    - Matthew S
      
      Yes they are. What makes a protestant is adhering to the five solas. Any group that doesn’t adhere at least to that cannot be described as a protestant. You should do some research on historical protestantism because you are very confused about what makes a protestant.
      - Sirene
        
        The only thing that unites the protestants is their irrational hatred towards the apostolic Church.
        The five solas, which none of the protestants really agree with each other about them either, are doctrinal errors.
        And protestants today range from those who didn’t deviate from truth that much to those who deviated so much that they don’t even admit Jesus Christ as the Son of Man.
        Sola gratia, sola scriptura, sola fide are all errors that history has proven to progress to heresies that are so far from true authentic Christianity that if a 1st century Christian would attend their “services” would recognize them as being Christian at all.
        No Eucharist is unreal!!!
        Always go back to the truth. I saw you write in other portions that according to you and many other protestants the Catholic church is not scriptural.
        Nothing could be further from truth. Where is the Eucharist? What happened do protestants omit what they don’t like and simultaneously accuse those who follow the scriptures to a T of being unscriptural? Christ repeated the teaching of the Eucharist 11 times. It is prefigured in the OT all over the place and it is also reaffirmed by the Apostles.
        I just can’t believe someone would think they are scripturally based and have missed that huge part of it.
      - Gail Finke
        
        Many people use the term “Protestant” to mean any Christian group that is not Catholic or Orthodox. It is not accurate in terms of dogma but there is no other umbrella term. I think that some people here are using it that way.while others are using it in the technical theological sense. I am not certain which way Leithart is using it.
    - Thomas R
      
      I think he’s maybe kind of right. There are post-Reformation Christian faiths that do not hold to those five, but he could argue they aren’t Protestant. They’re instead “Restorationists” or something else.
      
      But Catholics can’t embrace those anyway, well not in full, because there’s very little or no reason to think Christians did until the Waldensians, at earliest, and more likely it started with Luther. The “five solas” are not believed in by Orthodox, Copts, Assyrians, and I don’t even think by some of the pre-Waldensian heresies. (And in fairness I’m not sure if the writer of this article is even claiming Catholics should embrace the “five solas.”)
  - Douglas Beaumont
    
    It’s easy to make a list of slogans, but watch Protestants try to parse them out and you’ll see why they are virtually useless (other than for distinguishing themselves from the historic faith).
  - KAS
    
    By sola scriptura, I assume you mean the scriptural canon as fixed by the Catholic Church?
    
    By sola fide, I assume you mean faith in the credal formulae fixed by the Catholic Church in ecumenical councils and including doctrinal decisions not fully elucidated in the scriptures.
    
    Really, it’s all too much.
steve5656546346

I fear that this Pope has raised such hopes, but they will not be fulfilled. Because Christ created a Church–not a Bible. The Bible is from the Church.

In that Bible, you see a Church being created: and that Church is–in its earthly dimension–visible, hierarchical, and one. That Church did not disappear: it is with us today. It is the Catholic Church.
- Bavinck
  
  What gives the Catholic Church its oneness, in distinction from the churches outside its scope that account for more than a billion Christians? I think Protestants clearly see what that oneness looks like and aren’t taking the bait. The future of the Church is neither Catholic, nor Protestant, but Catholics as a whole seem far less open to that proposition.
  - noclownquestion1
    
    Protestants apparently prefer the separateness that comes from the shards borne of a splintering of a Christianity forever in search of a rock upon which the Church was built.
    - Bavinck
      
      Pretty sure we’re not searching for a rock. It’s the confession of Peter, not Peter himself.
      - Sumguy
        
        Ignorant Protestant interpretation of scripture that has to be interpreted in such a manor in order to divide the body of Christ and open up untold numbers of theological arguments that are biblically settled by a hierarchical, organization founded by Christ on Peter, otherwise known as the Church.
        
        Division is the work of Satan sir, he doesn’t care what you believe as long as it starts a fight and is at least a little wrong. I’ll stick with truth. The Church is where the bible says the Truth is kept. Odd how Protestants point to the bible and the bible says, no it’s the Church. Maybe because the bible knows it can be misinterpreted and the Church is a living entity that can defend its own interpretation.
- Matthew S
  
  By your reasoning Christ did not create the church either, the church created the church. Christ chose apostles but he also spoke his words. So… If his words are his words, then he did create the bible. Perhaps not in its assembled form, but that’s just convenience. We don’t use scrolls anymore. Books are much more practical. The bible is however God’s word, which means that he did create it. He spoke it, he inspired it and he gave it. The apostle Paul did not teach from tradition, he taught from scripture and the direct words of Christ which would be written as scripture. He also taught that all scripture is profitable for teaching and doctrine. He never used or mentioned any other rule or guide but God’s own word. How’s that for a tradition?
  - Brennan
    
    2 Thessalonians 2:13-15 (KJV)
    
    13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
    
    14 Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
    
    15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.
  - KAS
    
    Except that Paul wrote before the gospels even existed. He was familiar with the gospel as handed on in oral form by his fellow apostles and Jesus’ other followers.
    
    You also seem not to understand (or accept) that the canon of scripture was determined by the Church. It’s why there are four gospels and not seven and that some Pauline letters are scripture while doubtless others are not.
- Gail Finke
  
  Great way to put it.
Nordog6561

Does Ross Douthat know about this?

What would Fr. James Martin, S.J. think I wonder.
SDG

Dear Protestant brother in Christ:

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I appreciate your candor, and the critical eye you cast in both directions, up to a point. “Catholics, become more Protestant; Protestants, become more Catholic” is good rhetoric, especially if as you say you typically exhort your own tribe first.

As an aside, from a formal perspective, if you wanted the best possible hearing from Catholics, I think you should have led with some of the stuff addressed to Protestants, as a pledge of good will to Catholic readers. Of course, if your real audience is your Protestant readers, then you structured it the right way.

Some of the things you say make more sense to me than others. These do not necessarily correlate with the extent to which I agree or disagree or how important I think the questions are. We strongly disagree on papal infallibility and supremacy, and it’s very important, but I understand where you’re coming from and your position makes sense to me. On the other hand, the practice of asking the intercessions of the Virgin Mary and the saints in heaven is not as important, but your argument that to “simultaneously hear the appeals of millions of people who speak dozens of languages” effectively ascribes omniscience to Mary and the saints makes me doubt the seriousness of your argument, or your moral seriousness as a dialogue partner. Try harder.

“Sectarian exclusiveness” is not a very good characterization of where Catholic ecumenical thought is today. Yes, we believe that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church and that we have the fulness of faith. But when you say “Jesus and His Spirit are present in the suburban Bible church, the Chinese house group, the Pentecostal assembly at one of Rio’s garbage dumps,” like this is news to anyone, it makes you sound like you aren’t aware what we actually believe. This is not a good way to open a dialogue.

By the way, I used to be Protestant. I became…more Catholic.
- Matthew S
  
  How does Mary hear everyone’s prayers then? Christ says that we are to keep in mind that God knows what we need when we pray. Does Mary know what I need? How does she know this? How does this not equate to some level of omniscience? You have to answer Dr. Leitharts question before you dismiss it as not a serious argument or question. Shrugging isn’t exactly a rebuttal.
  - SDG
    
    Matthew S: I am happy to answer, but first let me put the question to you. Let’s try a thought experiment: Suppose Jesus were to appear to you, in such wise that you could not doubt it, and confided to you that, in fact, the saints in heaven do pray for us and that they hear our petitions on earth for their prayers. You now believe this — how could you do otherwise? Then a fellow Protestant makes the above objection to you. How might you answer him? Use your imagination.
    - Matthew S
      
      My imagination is not what counts. We can philosophize and invent all kinds of things that seem to make sense with our imaginations. What counts is scripture. We aren’t writing fantasy novels, we are discerning truth. I don’t need Jesus to come and tell me anything. He already has disclosed all we need to know in his word. If it takes my imagination to invent ways for how something works then that is not reliable for doctrine. Scripture is reliable for doctrine. Scripture says we have one mediator. Scripture says that God and only God hears our prayers and knows our needs. Scripture says that all who are in Christ have equal access to throne of grace, so I don’t need to go through someone else. If the saints in heaven do pray for us, it is no different than if I ask any other Christian to pray for me, we are all seated with Christ in heavenly places, all heirs to the kingdom, all sons of God by faith. God has given me an imagination, but I don’t have to be creative to discern his truth, that he has made plain in his word.
      - SDG
        
        Matthew S: If your objection to the intercession of saints is that it isn’t scriptural, that’s an objection that I can understand and respect. In that case what we disagree on is the doctrine of sola scriptura, which I will argue is unscriptural, anti-scriptural and self-contradictory.
        
        But that isn’t what you (and our author) said. He, and you, raised a quasi-philosophical objection, not a scriptural one. Scripture doesn’t object that Mary hasn’t learned all those languages. Scripture doesn’t object that Mary can’t follow what all those people are saying at the same time. These are quasi-philosophical objections, not scriptural objections. I don’t need scriptural answers to your quasi-philosophical objections. I just need to show that your quasi-philosophical is no credible objection at all.
        
        Nor do I need to defend the practice on the basis of scripture, since I don’t accept the rule of sola scriptura. As a Catholic I accept sacred scripture and sacred tradition. The practice of invoking the prayers of the saints comes to us via sacred tradition. You are not going to argue me out of adhering to divine revelation in sacred tradition with empty human philosophy about what languages Mary learned on earth, etc.
        
        Scripture says we have one mediator. Scripture says that God and only God hears our prayers and knows our needs.
        
        “God and only God”? You “sola scriptura” Protestants are great ones for adding to scripture, especially the word “only” where the Bible never says “only.” First Luther added “only” to Romans 3:28, now this.
      - Matthew S
        
        Scripture doesn’t say that anyone else can hear our prayers or know our needs but God, there is your only. It only names God as having that knowledge. Scripture alone being contradictory is an odd notion, especially since Paul taught that scripture is profitable for doctrine. He never mentions anything else being profitable for doctrine. It is odd to me that praying to the saints is such a large practice for the Catholic Church yet it never appears anywhere in scripture. If this is such important teaching that we are expected to hold as dogma you would think that we would find it somewhere in the instructions of the apostles given to the churches, somewhere in the teaching of Jesus in the gospels, yet we don’t find it anywhere.
        
        I was objecting to the idea of using my imagination to solve the Mary knowing my needs problem. Omniscience for God is a biblical doctrine that has certain philosophical implications. I get the doctrine from scripture. No one else is ever said to have omniscience. You still have yet to answer the original objection. How is Mary hearing prayers and knowing my needs not an implication of omniscience?
        
        Luther didn’t add the only to Romans 3:28. If we are justified by faith apart from works of the law then that equates to we are justified by faith alone. It is faith “apart” from anything else. That’s what the text says. You want to insert works of the law back in there. But it is clear that there is no room for boasting. Yet you want to say that you are saved partly by your own merits. How does that exclude boasting? How does that equate to justification by faith apart from works of the law?
      - SDG
        
        Scripture alone being contradictory is an odd notion, especially since Paul taught that scripture is profitable for doctrine. He never mentions anything else being profitable for doctrine.
        
        Regular exercise is profitable for health. It does not follow that regular exercise alone is profitable for health. Good diet is also profitable, whether I mention it or not. You know an argument from silence is the weakest of arguments, right? The fact that this is your opening salvo speaks volumes to the weakness of sola scriptura, even before we get to the problems.
        
        Saint Paul tells the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” 2 Thes 2:15). The apostles taught both by divinely inspired letters and writings and by word of mouth, and both were equally authoritative.
        
        The word Paul uses for “tradition,” paradosis, is the same word he uses for “hand on” or “deliver” in 1 Corinthians 11 and 15: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered (“traditioned”) to you…” That pair of terms, “receiving” and “delivering,” is used in rabbinic tradition to describe the transmission of a body of teaching from a master to a disciple; it is fundamentally oral.
        
        Paul indicates that this oral tradition, along with his inspired letter and making no distinction between them, is how his teaching will be handed on, and he plainly intends this to continue: “what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2). This is just the beginning in a long, long, long litany of problems with sola scriptura.
        
        Look. Sola scriptura is a long debate, and I didn’t come here to hash out the whole Reformation. Busy. You’re a Protestant, you don’t accept practices that come by tradition. Fine. I get that. You ask me “How is Mary hearing all these prayers at the same time in all these languages she didn’t know on earth?” Is that a question or an objection you got from scripture, or from human philosophy? If it’s from human philosophy, then I have a right to address it in the same arena.
        
        Luther didn’t add the only to Romans 3:28.
        
        That is factually incorrect. The word “only” isn’t there in the Greek for Romans 3:28, and no major English translation represents it as being there. “Only” is there, however, in Luther’s German translation of Romans 3:28. He added it. Any Lutheran scholar will verify this. There is zero ambiguity about this.
        
        For a more accurate interpretation of Paul on this point, I refer you to the Protestant scholars James Dunn and N.T. Wright, among others.
      - SDG
        
        P.S.
        
        If the saints in heaven do pray for us, it is no different than if I ask any other Christian to pray for me,
        
        Yes. Exactly. EXACTLY. No different. Quite right.
  - Gail Finke
    
    Please allow me to make an answer. When I came back to the Church, Mary was a problem for me. The priest I spoke to asked me if, if I believed everything else, I could say “Well, I don’t understand this but I will accept it and try to understand it from now on.” At the time I was angry with this answer, which I thought was a refusal to answer my questions. But as it DID take me a long time to get the Catholic understanding of Mary, it was after all a really good answer.
    You don’t have to ask Mary to intercede for you, if you are a Catholic. You can go your whole life without asking even once. In that way, Mary is NOT as a big a deal as non-Catholics make her out to be. That’s one of the things I did not understand — is she important,or not???
    Catholics do not worship Mary. Our worship is the Eucharist, everything else (and this is hard for many non-Catholics to understand, because for many of them our “everything else” IS worship) is just something you do before, after, or outside of worship. The Catholic Church, like Orthodoxy, is filled with devotions, veneration, and things that are not worship but that are good and beautiful. Non-Catholics have such things too, though fewer of them, and though they don’t think of them as such. But they are there — anything that is not reading the Bible and praying, pretty much. We have more, and that is good.
    Mary is the Mother of God. This is an ancient understanding of Mary, not anything new. She was specially chosen by God, which does not make her “yes” any less a matter of free will. She bore the Son of God inside her. We do not think she was like a milk bottle that Jesus appeared in and poured out of without changing her. You may not agree with that, but that is the essence of the doctrines on Mary, which are supported by Scripture but are not spelled out in it. She is the Mother of God and so of all the adopted brothers and sisters of Christ. She was changed by being his mother — bodies, and what happens to them, matter.
    As to “how could she understand everyone or know what we all need.” well, that’s just a silly question. She couldn’t if she WERE just a first century Jewish girl. But she is not, she is a saint in Heaven (we would say the foremost or queen of the saints). Do you, as any kind of Christian at all, actually believe that everyone in Heaven will be exactly as he or she is here and only speak on language? Our heavenly bodies will be like AND unlike our earthly ones. The Church has 2000 years of mystical experience from believers encountering saints, Christ, and — yes- – Mary. We count all that as indicating there is much more to even this world than we know, much less the next world.
    That’s what we believe. I could just as easily ask my evangelical neighbor why she thinks her friend is a “powerful nexus of prayer” or why the Presbyterians in town put their hands on people to bless them or why the storefront church nearby thinks its minister can heal people. Each one of them would have an explanation that I do not accept. But I do understand them, whether I believe them or not, and I accept that they DO think those things make sense and are real observable or mystical phenomena. That’s what you have to understand about the Church and Mary. You can believe it or not believe it, but if you make no effort to understand it, you never will understand it.
    As for me, I do believe that Mary is the Queen of Heaven and my (and your) Mother. It is hard for me to explain how it happened, but let me just say that when it did I fell down on my knees in veneration. Mary is the new Eve, she is humanity as it was meant to be and so she gave God the answer humanity was meant to give, she is closer to God than any other person who ever lived (except Jesus, who is fully human but also fully divine), and she is ALIVE, as all the saints are alive. She is “full of grace” — as no other person ever has been. She was full of grace then and she is full of grace STILL.
    Do some people overstate what that means? YES. But then, I think many non-Christians practically idolize the Bible, as if it is somehow a sort of little version of God. That doesn’t mean I think the Bible is stupid and ought to be viewed with suspicion. I just know that those people are are wrong.
    The Catholic Church is bigger.
Nordog6561

Mr. Leithart, how long have you been a Protestant?
love casts out fear

Thank you for the article Rev. Leithart; I appreciate your articles in general, and I appreciate the frank character of this article as it highlights some of the very real differences that are sometimes lost in ecumenical good will. I think the topics raised could perhaps help us all think about the “why” in ecclesial praxis, but, even more, help us to enter more fully into contemplation of the mystery of the church, the people of God, enlivened by the Spirit of Christ.

I will simply write some thoughts as a Roman Catholic, not a treatise, as each of these warrant much thought. I think in part, each component of the mystery of the Church should be understood within the context of the whole. In commenting upon the Synod on the Family, Cardinal Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, mentioned in an interview that the emphasis on collegiality of bishops at the Second Vatican Council did not diminish the formulae produced during the First Vatican Council, both are seen in light of the other. (This is short and simple, so much more to say on this, but this is not a treatise.) I would say the same is true for the Marian dogmas; they only find their meaning in the context of the whole, that is, the entire mystery of the Church, the People of God, and the life of grace.

Each of the topics raised warrant a volume of books for each, so it is not possible at all to expound here. I do see, as a Roman Catholic, certain problems, theoretical and practical, when certain aspects of the Mystery are placed over and apart from the mystery of the life of the Church in totum. (Obviously, aspects can be distinguished, defined, etcetera, but in the context of the whole.) There is much to say on this, but little time. However, a very few short comments without much explanation have I. As for Roman Catholic Marian devotion and the Marian dogmas, if these are separated from the mystery of the Church, not only do the individual devotions to Mary tend to become mechanistic, but the conception of grace, the life of grace, become mechanistic as well. In a way it is not fair to not expound, but I think a couple of articles that I have found helpful, I recommend: “THE CONFESSION OF THE
CASTA MERETRIX” by Jacques Servais in Communio, Winter 2013. http://www.communio-icr.com/files/05._servais40-4_v2.pdf Another that is tangentially related to this (ecclesiological soteriological- not expressly “marian”, but think of the Marian dimension of the Church)- VATICAN II AND THE
CATHOLICITY OF SALVATION:
A RESPONSE TO RALPH MARTIN*- NICHOLAS J. HEALY, JR in Communio Spring 2015- http://www.communio-icr.com/files/healy42-1_rev.pdf

As for the worship of the Eucharist, I agree, Christ said “Take and eat” not “Take and look”. I do find troubling the practice in some parishes of having a separate chapel for perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for the expressed purpose of not having to repose the Blessed Sacrament during Mass. This is not only liturgically problematic, but also seems to undermine the words of Christ. As well Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is not integral to the life of the People of God, meaning, it is not necessary to the Church’s life, but the Eucharist is. With this said, while the practice of exposition may be linked to Eucharistic neglect, it, however, also is a sign of Christ’s abiding presence and covanental fidelity to his Church in the Eucharist. There has been a resurgence in devotion to the Blessed Sacrament outside the context of the Mass in recent decades. People have come to learn how to listen to the Lord in prayer, see the meaning of the Christian life as Eucharistic (offering of thanksgiving), growing in the life in the Spirit. It would seem that for this time and this place this is a way and locus through which the Spirit is working. Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is not necessary for all times and all places, but the Eucharist is (or at least normative, obviously God can and does act outside of the sacraments.) An article that I like- this is not on adoration of the Host, but it does incorprate the Eucharist in discussion of grace and nature, reality, symbol- “IN THE BEGINNING
WAS THE WORD”:
MERCY AS A “REALITY
ILLUMINATED BY REASON”- DAVID L. SCHIN DLER in Communio, winter 2014- http://www.communio-icr.com/files/DLS_Winter2014_final.pdf

There is so much that I could speak of regarding the points raised. I will simply express my thanks to Rev. Leinhart and his ministry. As well three books and an article I recommend: “Diversity and Communion” by Yves Congar and another of his that I have only begun to read “True and False Reform in the Church” (Yves Congar) Also, “Heart of the World, Center of the Church”, by David L. Schindler. And the article- THE PRIMACY OF THE POPE
AND THE UNITY OF
THE PEOPLE OF GOD by CARDINAL JOSEPH RATZINGER http://www.communio-icr.com/files/ratzinger41-1.pdf
- love casts out fear
  
  I do not mention this explicitly in the above comment, but I would encourage fellow Roman Catholics, if there is time, to read the above articles in the comment above. While not going into detail, there is problems with isolating certain aspects of the mystery of the Church from the mystery of the Church in totum. I think that we ought to reflect on Marian devotion and dogma, and all the mysteries, in the context of the whole. There are extremely mechanistic, juridical, and moralistic conceptions of grace and the life of grace when we isolate Mary from the mystery of the Church. While I disagree with Rev. Leithart in the final conclusion, that does not leave free certain theologies, spiritualities, practices, and devotions (not only Marian) that isolate and fragment the mystery. (I do not mean that examination of the particulars is off limits, but in the context of the whole.) The ressourcement of the 20th century, and continuing today, has made much progress in correcting an impoverishment of theology that, among many things, tended to fragment the whole into many particulars, seemingly isolating each from the whole. Again, I encourage all to engage the articles mentioned in the comment above as it is too much to discuss here. I also thank Rev. Leithart for his forthright critique and ask the Lord’s continued blessing upon his ministry.
James Kohn

This deserved a line by line refutation/commentary:

http://latinandabeer.blogspot.com/2015/10/leithart-eyes-will-bleed-what-i-want.html
Chuck Colas

The Catholic Church isn’t the one that revolted, changed dogma, and decided to “uninspire” 7 books of the Holy Word of God! We’re still here and haven’t changed for 2000 years. Do we at times need to repent? Yes, and we should do it more often, men tend to corrupt things sometimes. But, if this Peter guy really believes in the Word, he would know then that the gates of hell will never prevail against the Church. It is a shame that all of us Christians aren’t in unity. But to ask the One, Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church to become more Protestant and to disreagard the Blessed Sacrament for what it truly is, is down right shameful. I’m a preachers kid, Protestant for 45 years. I converted 4 years ago. That was the best decision I have ever made… Catholics probably should read more scripture like the Protestants do, but it’s the Protestants that need to come back to the Church. Not the other way around.
trinko

I want Protestants to admit that their beliefs are man made and originated in the 16th century.

I want Protestants to admit that if they can claim that every Protestant can infallibly read the bible then they can’t pick on the Church for saying only 1 Catholic can infallibly read the Bible.

I want Protestants to admit it’s the Church that defined the Bible and explain why they trust the Church to get the Canon of the NT right but not get what’s in the NT right.

I want Protestants who let every individual go to the Bible and define dogma admit that the Pope is no worse than any random Protestant.

I want Protestants to admit that if core moral doctrine, like the use of contraception, can change with the times then there is no Truth and Jesus didn’t really teach anything that is unchangeable.

I want Protestants to stop claiming Catholics worship things or saints when we only Worship Christ.

I want Protestants to stop telling Catholics what Catholics “really” believe.

I want Protestants to explain why their interpretation of Scripture is better than mine.

Most of all I want Protestants to explain to me how when two good, God loving intelligent Bible literate, well educated, sincere, highly intelligent Protestants read the Bible and come to diametrically opposed positions Protestants can decide which of those two Protestants is right.
Laura Gray

As a former protestant and wife of a former protestant pastor, I guess my first question is “What brand of Protestantism would you like us to become more like?” Are we to embrace the mainline protestant church that tells us abortion is to be accepted as necessary in our present society and that Capital Punishment is to be opposed?! At one point in his ministry, that was exactly what my husband was told to do.
If the Pope were to surrender infallibility, who is he to surrender it to? YOU?! Because you are so much more progressive and in touch with reality? Or if authority is then to be distributed to other protestant leaders who can not agree on which protestant principles are correct how will they ever bridge the gap between Catholics and Protestants?
As far as authority in the church, have we forgotten who Jesus gave it to? He declared that Peter was “the rock on which he would build his church.” Others (including Paul) were given authority to carry out certain tasks, but it almost seems as if Paul, much like the Protestant church, railed against the authority the Jesus himself conferred upon Peter.
IOne of the hardest things (especially in our society) to wrap our heads around is the fact that God’s Church is not a democracy. Right and wrong is not determined by the beliefs of the majority. Obviously, those beliefs have shifted many times over the course of history, but God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Stu

“I want a Catholic to explain how Mary, a Jewish woman of the first-century A.D., can simultaneously hear the appeals of millions of people who speak dozens of languages that she never learned. I know Catholics don’t believe Mary has become God, but that looks like something only a God could manage.”
——————
Indeed. We believe God is giving her this ability. You do believe in miracles, don’t you? You do believe God can do anything, don’t you?
Jesse Nigro

For those who’ve expressed a desire to see Rev. Leithart addressing his own people:

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/08/the-future-of-protestantism
Alex Strohschein

Love the sentiment, agree with the sentiment and I want to see these points articulated winsomely and with deeper engagement with Catholic thought in a full-length book. It’s getting frustrating when I think you make some great points but don’t take the time to back things up. Gone, unfortunately, are the days for remarkable sweeps and generalizations. Again, I hope this might be the “core” of a forthcoming book!
W. Myers

Peter Leithart, you have underdone yourself. This is no more than a typically mindless Protestant sermon against popery, missing only the bold and bald citation to Hezekiah Chapter 8, which your congregation will adoringly lap up and go home to blather to their confused Catholic neighbors (“Yeah, it’s right there in Hezekiah”). The one about Mary is a real wing dinger, worthy of the analytical depth and intellectual honesty of any good Protestant seminary. Shades of Gerstner’s hateful superficiality? I think so.
Gail Finke

I’ve read many essays by you so I know you are thoughtful and intelligent. This sure doesn’t show it. I know that you know a lot more about Catholicism than this demonstrates — this sounds like it was written by someone who knows almost nothing about what we believe, and throws up questions anyone who has never talked to a Catholic would ask. Let’s see… if the Catholic Church WERE the one true Church, it wouldn’t change for you, would it? But also, if it were a false Church, it wouldn’t change either. Therefore, if the Church doesn’t change the way you want it to (which it won’t) there’s no way to know whether that’s because she is right and shouldn’t change, or because she is lying and won’t. So as this is a no-win situation,
I’m pretty sure we will go right on professing what we have always professed But thanks for the suggestions.
Del Sydebothom

“I want a Catholic to explain how
Mary, a Jewish woman of the first-century A.D., can simultaneously hear
the appeals of millions of people who speak dozens of languages that she
never learned. I know Catholics don’t believe Mary has become God, but that looks like something only a God could manage.”

“…that looks like something only a God could manage” indeed. Every creature is powerless, and utterly without resources unless God sustains it. I can’t breath without God. And, of course, Mary could not fulfil her motherly and intercessory office in the Church except by the power of God. That’s how this works. That’s how all of this works. 🙂
Zane

As an Orthodox Christian, while agreeing and disagreeing with parts of what Peter has written I find this to be one of the most idiotic essays the author -who I have often read in print and online with profit- has ever written.
Dante Alighieri

Mr. Leithart,

Some of your points are interesting, and I cannot express how much I want the Great Schism to be healed. But, to be honest, I do not think your requests would fit Orthodoxy either, and, personally, I feel as though the Orthodox and Church of the East should be a higher priority than Reformation churches at the moment.

While the Orthodox hold to first among equals, in theory, the Oecumenical Patriarch has absolutely no real clout, infaillibility or no. While I certainly desire much greater conciliarism and local autonomy, the reunified Church must find a way to reel wayward bishops, i.e. Kirill I of Moscow (and hence Putin) and others like him, when the time comes for the Church to discipline within its hierarchy. As of now, the Patriarch has nothing but moral authority to do this, and the Orthodox have not succeeded holding authoritative synods on the matter where brother bishops could discipline one of their own either which is universally binding. So, while the Bishop of Rome may have overreached, the Orthodox need to find a way not to be so fissiparous politically. That being said, I agree that Catholic bishops often seem employees of the papacy, which is not Traditional, and that needs to change. But, today, with all of the papal media, the centralization will inevitably get worse, not better; far more Catholics today have access to the Pope than they did in the time of Pius IX.

Other than that, the Orthodox would not agree to any of these terms you suggest either. Your points are quintessentially post-Reformation, not of the Apostolic Churches. The Orthodox and the Church of the East focus very much on saints and intercession, and they hold, the majority at least, to the Assumption. Their praises to the Theotokos are at least as colorful as Catholic ones, albeit, from my perspective, more Christocentric, and I admire that. But that doesn’t stop them from crediting to the intercession of the Theotokos the salvation of Byzantium multiple times.

I would imagine many Protestants, though not all, might have trouble with the high prevalence of clergy and monasticism and asceticism among the Orthodox – which, to be frank, is more much visible in the East than West anyhow. Granted, Luther was okay with some ascetic practice, but I know a good many Protestants would be deeply uncomfortable.

True, they don’t venerate the Eucharist. But they would be more intransigent about admission of Protestants to their Eucharist than I think Catholics would be. The Orthodox do not believe that what Protestants (minus the Anglicans) celebrate is a valid Eucharist, and I doubt strongly that they would recognize Calvin’s position on the Eucharist as theologically strong enough to be correct – i.e., that many Protestants hold the Eucharist as Body and Blood as Catholics and Orthodox do. They might be willing to accept Luther’s wording of consubstantiality, but, to suggest, in a blanket fashion, that all Protestants believe the same about the Eucharist, and that belief aligns with the Orthodox, in general, is not true at all. And Catholics and Orthodox are equally protective of that sort of thing so it won’t happen until the change comes from the Protestant side. And that means accepting valid ordination and consecration of a priesthood which Orthodox and Catholics recognize as capable of providing the Eucharist in unity with the Church.

As for veneration of “other sacred objects,” you would be hard-pressed to have the Orthodox give up the iconostasis and all of the other sacramentals in the Divine Liturgy – of which there are more than many modern Catholics currently see at our Masses.

As for infallibility, I am content with the belief that the Church will be protected in the Truth, and the Ecumenical Councils teach Truth. I do not like to parse papal infallibility except to say that the first among equals is the lynchpin of that unity, and so I will leave it at that. But what of all the other Protestants who do not accept the Councils, never mind the high church variety? What of those who believe only the Scriptures as they understand them personally? Most of the non-denominational Protestants I know, and they’re the ones which are growing, not the high church Lutherans (who I have the utmost respect for, above all). Many do not like, in general, to speak of Trinitarian doctrine as defined by the Councils. But the Orthodox, in some ways, are far more Trinitarian than the Catholics. How would all Protestants get on board with that? If some Protestants get on board with either of the great Churches, what of the others and who speaks for them?

It appears that your essay suggests a desire for Catholics to join the post-Reformation churches, but that is a very different project, and a more undesirable one, from the Catholic Church making up with the other Apostolic Churches in old Christian Africa, Asia Minor, and the post-Byzantine world. I agree the Catholic Church must adjust, and the Orthodox must adjust, but the Protestants in particular, if they want to reunify with the Orthodox and Catholics, must actually undo the Reformation. And that is the real challenge.
jakeslaw

unfortunately the article reflects that the author does not have a clear understanding of Catholic teaching with respect to the papacy, with respect to the Eucharist, and with respect to Mary. I suggest he study the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I suggest he read the works of John Paul II. I suggest he spend time in prayer in order to understand with the concept of unity is all about. I pray that he is open to the Holy Spirit. And being open to the Holy Spirit, he will understand the unique role of the Catholic Church throughout history and the present day.
Guy Fox

Do you know what they call a Reformed bible jock who spends too much time reading Patristics? A Catholic convert, hahahahahaha!
James Varney

This has to be a parody…
KAS

I truly desire that you flourish, Mr. Leithart, but I’ll get back to you in another 500 years if the Presbyterian church still exists.
RS

Great advice! Always wanted to be an Anglican – envy their chic. As Teddy Roosevelt noted, “the American elite assembled for prayer”. You should seriously consider it too. They address most of your issues.
Nordog6561

“I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, “A Charmed Life.”) She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. . . . Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.

That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”

~Flannery O’Connor
Rachel Meyer

No disrespect intended to the author, who is arguing honestly from his world view, but why was this published on EP? So that we know that protestants don’t like Catholic doctrine? I don’t think this piece was what was intended for the series about the practice of Catholics and not the teaching of Catholicism, was it? As a daily reader I don’t think this blog is the place for insulting the Blessed Mother or the Eucharist.

And to Pastor Leithart – if the apostles could speak to everyone in their own language simultaneously through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is it really far fetched to believe that Mary, who enjoys the beatific vision and is more united with the Holy Spirit now than anyone is on earth, could understand all languages? If you don’t want us to pray to her, at least give real objections, and try not to be condescending. “We know that we will be like Him, for we shall see Him face to face.” Who knows just how like to God the saints are?
Jim

Since when do Catholics merely “admire” the Eucharist?
Jonathan Brumley

If Mary’s assumption is an “invention” of the pope or the Catholic Church, then where is her body? We’ve got Orthodox or Catholic churches claiming the relics for every single saint or apostle of the early church. Except for Mary. And why not Mary, if all these churches believe she is the greatest saint? Surely some church somewhere would claim her relics? Or at least fake them?

Second, saying that the pope or the Catholic Church invented this belief just makes no sense. In the West, we have the feast of the Assumption, in the East, the Dormition of Mary, and these feasts exist since very early times.

Finally, how is the belief in the assumption that strange? Wasn’t Elijah assumed into heaven at the end of his life? Is there some fundamental belief held by Rev. Leithart that says God hasn’t or won’t assume any saints of the New Covenant?
David Mills

A response from Fr. Alvin Kimel, an Orthodox priest: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/peter-leithart-and-the-return-of-pontificators-laws/
Alvin Kimel

A blog response to Dr Leithart’s article: https://goo.gl/MT2gWR.
Dawn O’Donnell

I’m a bit late, but this article has been on my mind for 2 months. First I ask the Lord for all of us, to show us ourselves in truth, each one and to cause us to always pray and seek the Love for each other that our Lord commanded of us (1Jn3:1-11) and also that our Lord would help us to understand each other – Amen. ON the RCCs claim to the infallibility of the office of the Pope – Increasingly we see a that ‘rights’ are the world’s agenda. We have all but lost our gender roles not only in name but it seems the ‘rights’ agenda is storming its way through our law system and laws will interpret how we are to view or not view each other and law enforcement will hand out punishments for speaking truths as simple as calling some one ‘he’ or ‘she’; as we are already experiencing. Why is this relevant to the Pope’s infallibility? It’s not only relevant to his infallibility, it’s relevant to the RCCs claim to Authority and the handed down Apostolic Succession. Our world needs a visible spiritual Authority on earth – which the Spirit is leading. As a wife my Lord’s word says I’m to obey my husband – for better or worse. The Lord will lead us by His Spirit through my husband and he might mess up, but he will never trump the Lord’s sovern work in my life. (Jude vs 24-25)
James M

About Our Lady and the millions of prayers thing: the supposed problem comes of applying to the Saints, who see God “face to face”, the limitations of space and time to which we on earth are subject. The Resurrection and Ascension show that these limitations do not apply to Christ – so why should they apply to the Saints in Heaven who are perfectly united with and in Christ ?

The mystical phenomena recorded of some of them – the presence of St Alphonsus Liguori in two places at once, the reading of men’s hearts by St John Vianney, the presence of Blessed Maria of Agreda in the Americas and in her convent at the same time, and the other mystical graces of this kind – suggest that some Saints have, even on Earth, lived under conditions not shared by most of us; conditions that are a foretaste and pledge of the complete subjection of all creation, including the conditions of its existence, to Christ.

That the Saints “see” in God the prayers of those on earth is, IMHO, a result of their love of God, and is also the making permanent, for all of them, of the extra-ordinary mystical phenomena (just mentioned) that have been granted to some of them. They do not become God – instead, God “dwell[s] with” them, and in them, so that they are as fully “in-God-ed” as creatures exalted and sanctified and purified by grace can be.

Why should Our Lady, whom the Church venerates and loves as the most God-filled of the Saints, as the most pre-eminent in charity, the most radiant with Christ, as exalted in glory even above even the holiest of all angels, and as the most grace-filled of all mere creatures, *not* see in her Divine Son what the prayers of those whom He Loves are ? She is united with Him by the Infinite Divine Love that is His as her as Creator, Lord, Redeemer, and Saviour; and by the love from her, shed abroad in her heart by His Holy Spirit, that is His Love in her by which she returns His Love.

The Vision of God enjoyed by the Saints is in proportion to their love of Him – and the greater the vision, the fuller the knowledge of Him. Our Lady loves those who belong to her Divine Son as her own, for she loves all and only those whom He loves, and desires for them what He desires. So her heart is “enlarged” by His Spirit within her, so that she may be equipped with the “capacity” to love those whom He Loves.

The University’s Useful Christians

Synod Watchdogs Are Against the Wall

What I Want from Catholics: Become More Protestant

The University’s Useful Christians

Synod Watchdogs Are Against the Wall

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