Some off-the-cuff reasons I’ll never be Roman Catholic
- Idolatry is a huge sin and praying through icons (whether 3d or 2d) is idolatry. I cannot possibly engage in such a practice, allow anyone in my guardianship to do so, or excuse such a thing, without falling into rank unbelief.
- Necromancy is almost as huge a sin and praying to the departed saints is necromancy. See #1 above. People raised thinking bigamy is Christian may be true Christians, but people who know better are living in sin and without hope of eternal life unless they repent of such behavior.
- The way some Roman Catholic constituencies provide ministry opportunities for defectors from Protestantism is, of course, tempting–but it can hardly count as anything more than thirty pieces of silver if #1 and #2 hold. If one must be marginalized and impoverished in the Protestant world due to sectarian sins, well, God has called many Christians and their families to far worse martyrdoms.
- Claiming unity can be achieved by everyone else joining one’s own denomination is exactly the sect spirit that is so loathsome in many Protestant groups, and it gains no more attractiveness in Rome.
- Anyone who has read Clement’s letter to the Corinthians knows that he was unaware of being the Pope; and that ends all possibility that Jesus instituted the Papal office.
- Nowhere are Christians required to do a genealogical study to see if they are members of the true Church.
- The fact that the Church is an objective institution does not require the papacy or any number of other things; the Bible and the Sacraments are enough.
- No number of Protestant sins and errors can justify embracing Roman Catholic ones.
- Beliefs that one can or should do good works to merit salvation or merit escape from a time of suffering in purgatory are idolatrous and cruel; even if there is some sophisticated way of evading some of the blasphemy in such beliefs, the fact that these superstitions are at least permitted to thrive is a real crime that greatly reduces the credibility of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution.
- Claiming the effectiveness of the Lord’s Supper lies in the performance at the table rather than in the eating and drinking, so that priests performing alone in vast numbers is preferable to all Christendom partaking at one table, is an anti-Eucharist doctrine that should be abominated.
That’s all for now.
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November 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
At the risk of sounding as if I’m knee-deep in the Tiber, here are my preliminary responses:
1. Idolatry through icons is bowing down to the icon (2d Commandment) in worship, praying without icons is an utter impossibility as there is always some sort of image–be it manmade or natural–in our presence.
2. Praying to departed saints is no more necromancy than gathering with the saints of the departed on the Lord’s Day in (Heb 12) or seeing them pray for justice in the world in which you live (Rev 6:10).
3. Fails if 1 and 2 aren’t true. In light of what I’ve written, I think more investigation is due.
4. Agreed.
5. Agreed.
6. Agreed, does Rome somehow require this?
7. But it does require the church, and those things that make it up.
8. Agreed, but that would definitely have to be expounded upon.
9. Can be argued and responded to the same way you “defended” (I use the word lightly) the sins of Protestantism in #8.
10. Agreed.
Our agreements are reasons, in addition to another, why I too remain a Protestant. But I do not believe they un-church the Roman church.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Mark,
I think the way to work through these disagreements is a careful, reasoned, committed (long-term), charitable dialogue, taking them one at time.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Matt,
1. There’s a significant distinction between man-made icons and icons-which-are-men, in that the former were prohibited and the latter are, as you say, inescapable (unless you’re in private). But this distinction is irrelevant to the fact that praying to an icon as a means of praying to God is still idolatry.
2. Being brought by the Spirit into the presence of the departed saints, or being told by the Spirit via a prophet that the departed saints are praying to God, does not imply we are permitted to try to directly contact the departed saints. At least I can’t see how that follows.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I think 6 and 7 need qualifying, but the rest of the list is good. I would add another as number 1 and shuffle the rest down: Anyone who has studied “tradition” in the early church can see how it was virtually synonymous with Scripture as the final source of arbitration; at best it was a tiny creed for baptism candidates. That the concept grew to include extra scriptural dogma (Trent), does not fool us when RCs tell us “the church has always affirmed Holy Tradition.”
As for 6 and 7, I would tighten them up a bit so as not to include in the Holy Catholic Church any group of new converts, who having heard the gospel preached by an established, historical church, decide to shun them and the rest and create their own church, ordaining themselves as it were (Robert Duval style).
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Bryan, I agree, personal and relational dialog is much better than just listing disagreements 1,2,3 bam, bam, bam. But I think Mark knows where I’m coming from–we’re tight on Twitter. :)
Andrew, 1) to equate praying to an icon with idolatry is to equate prayer with worship. I don’t think that has been done. But, while I’ll agree that there are some who do, I don’t think faithful Catholics who understand their faith are praying TO the icon, rather than praying with the icon as an aid, and in its presence. At least not the Catholics with whom I am friends. 2) When you are brought into the presence of departed saints and are communing with them, what else are you doing but communicating with them? The fact that we are not explicitly permitted to do so, does not indicate that we are implicitly forbidden from doing so. As I said, it is no more necromancy than Hebrews 12 is.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 pm
“2) When you are brought into the presence of departed saints and are communing with them, what else are you doing but communicating with them? The fact that we are not explicitly permitted to do so, does not indicate that we are implicitly forbidden from doing so. As I said, it is no more necromancy than Hebrews 12 is.”
You’re communicating with the Lord in whose presence they are. That’s the point of worship, after all.
“1) to equate praying to an icon with idolatry is to equate prayer with worship. I don’t think that has been done.”
What exactly does our worship of God consist of other than prayer?
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Matt, I’ve never heard of saints in the US communicating their prayer requests via voice or thoughts in Sunday Morning worship–and it is not possible apart from telecommunication technology in the case of voice. The Church is one in the Holy Spirit; that is true. But the union of the saints does enable them to speak to other saints in other places. And if someone pretended that such a thing was effective, I would suspect that they should be spending more time speaking to those who can hear them and that maybe they are rationalizing an excuse not to do so. Love the living and wait for the resurrection to visit with those who are now dead.
Since the communion of the saints does not entail spoken requests to those not present in this life, I don’t see how it can escape the accusation of necromancy.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:45 am
That’s a good, concise statement of the fundamental issues that would, with God’s mercy, keep me and mine from ever moving into the Roman Catholic church.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:20 am
[...] my list of reasons I cannot be Roman Catholic (mixing up reasons for not, a lack of sufficiency in reasons [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
Mark, I’m not defending its efficacy or implying that I engage in such practices. I’m simply saying that in light of our communing with dead saints, I would be hard-pressed to call speaking with them (in prayer or whatever) a sin comparable to necromancy. Necromancy, from a Biblical perspective, appears to be more of calling them from out of the dead back among the living (Saul with Samuel). Speaking to them through our unification in Christ just doesn’t seem to qualify–efficacious or not.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
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November 4th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
[...] Horne offers some arguments why “he can never be a Roman Catholic.” I might not that while not a Roman Catholic … it seems like a number of his [...]
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November 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Matthew Bianco is the bomb dot com. I think his points are right on.
I love Mark Horne, Peter Leithart, and James Jordon, quite honestly. Those three men have my utmost respect. But! If these things (#1 and 2) are vile idolatry and necromancy (respectively), I’d like to know why these men aren’t actively condemning Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Schmemann not only engaged in these activities, he actively promoted them. Or is using Schmemann, who was clearly in “rank unbelief” and “without hope of eternal life,” akin to using Crossan and Borg when they are correct? If so, I would humbly submit that Jordan and Leithart should stop actively promoting Schmemann’s books on worship, and only use him on topics where idolatry is not clearly associated. Which leaves…umm…maybe his journal?
November 8th, 2009 at 12:02 am
P.S. For any who may wonder why I mention Schmemann. Leithart and Jordan actively PROMOTE his work, particularly his work on Sacraments, For the Life of the World. What I never understand is the level or rhetoric about these things, and then the rapturous endorsement of Schmemann. If veneration of icons and prayer to the saints are so vile, and put the wise in danger of hellfire, surely someone as wise as Schmemann is a vile, God-hating idolater.
November 8th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Jamey,
They acknowledge the difference between sins of ignorance/wandering and apostasy, while still recognizing that the activity is sinful.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:18 am
So the venerable and learned Schmeman was ignorant? In his years as a priest, a seminary professor, and dean he never came across the arguments that would have warned him of hellfire?
Sorry, Andrew. Mark, Peter, & James know better than to do this doublespeak of making Orthodoxy and Catholicism into “rank unbelief” and “hellfire” talk, & then freely take from the very sacramental model that makes veneration and “necromancy” possible.
At least one of my pastor friends was willing to refer to Chesterton and Lewis and Schmemann as “Egyptians” for his plundering. To be consistent, Schmemann, et al, can be little more than a pagan idolator who uses the Creed.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:20 am
*pagan idolators
Also, my pastor friend is no small fry. Household name in some Reformed circles.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Jamey, I think diving into something when you know better and being brought up with within a community of faith, a branch of the church are two entirely different things. I don’t think a person raised in the Northern Kingdom who was taught to worship at the shrines went to Hell. God continued to refer to the Northern Kingdom as “my people” all the way to the end and beyond.
But that would be entirely different than a Levite in a border town having to deal with a parishioner who wanted to move north even if it meant worshiping at the golden calves, and even more different than one moving up there in order to worship the Golden Calves.
I realize you have your own intellectual and spiritual biography in all this, which I know very little about and which I will not judge. You know what you know and what you have gone through and I don’t need to judge the servant of another. But if I’m dealing with people I do know who do think the Northern Kingdom is attractive, I’ve got to be honest about what I think it means to use unauthorized means into God’s presence (without denying the real sins in the Southern Kingdom, BTW).
But it seems to me that, in addition to defending your own chosen tradition and branch of the church, you are saying that one must either reject the Northern Kingdom as not God’s people at all, or consider the sins of the Northern Kingdom to not really be sins.
Of course, you would reverse the analogy. I’m the guy who was been brought up outside the realm of the true sanctuary, etc. But that is my point: There has got to be some way to acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit in other communions (and thus the presence of gifted teachers such as Alexander Schmemann) without making light of perceived sins/errors. Otherwise, we are put in the polarizing position of either joining with or regarding others as false churches altogether.
I thought I was trying to find a middle ground. We are talking about sources of public schism, after all. How can those not be serious? But do they mean I can’t read and even recommend Louis Bouyer of Alexander Schmemann? I don’t think so.