Protestantism, Catholicism, and Justification (for old time's sake)

So I know I promised to shut up about this a while back, but I just thought it was interesting that Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ (God rest his soul) stated that the problem with Protestant-Catholic ecumenism wasn't necessarily their beliefs on Justification as much as it was their worry about the issue of justification at all.

For Protestants Justification is the doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls, because Justification causes the Church to exist. For Catholics Ecclessiology is the doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls, because it is the doctrine about the Church itself. Our starting points are so different that it's no wonder we get to different conclusions.

Personally I think all the scripture is a red herring, as the NPP has pretty much raped Luther's exegesis. And as the "New" perspective on Paul is just the Old Catholic perspective, we've pretty much gone full circle. The real issue like I've said, is where you start, which doctrine is most important, and epistemology (How do you know what is true?)

Catholicism starts with Metaphysics for it's epistemology - Aristotle/Aquinas - which is the worst of all sins to the Reformers. Reformers start with Ockham and Fideism.

It's two different languages, two different gospels, two different histories.

It reminds me of the category for divorce, "irreconcilable differences".

Seeing Orange

For one of my British History classes, I have to lead a seminar on the "Glorious" Revolution of 1688. For those unfamiliar with British history: in 1688 James II a Catholic, tried to pass laws of Religious Toleration and had a male heir. This was enough for parliament to treasonously plan a Dutch invasion of England and a Coup D'Etat in which William of Orange, military leader of a Protestant league waging war against Louis XIV of France, could take the crown. Many Scottish and Irish Catholics died fighting for King James, but English historians call the event a "bloodless revolution" (as any student of England knows, Catholics and non-English folks don't 'count'). My professor is an oldschool Englishman who was at least nominally CofE from what I can tell, and characterized James II as a despot and absolutist. But I mean, who wouldn't call legislation for Freedom of Religion despotic? How mindlessly absolutist to act well within constitutional law to protect a persecuted minority. ...sarcasm...

Then I saw this video of Northern Irish politician Ian Paisley screaming at the Pope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoCU6Clpkxk It's weird how things change, because I was actually in a bible study with his grandson at bible school in England. I think we stopped being facebook friends when I converted to Catholicism. When we were at school both he (the grandson) and I, actually agreed that we had doubts about those who believed in infant baptism and the Trinity, could really be biblical Christians. Good old Evangelical Arianism and Anabaptism...

Then I found the Canadian Orange Lodge, which is like the KKK for anti-Catholic Anglos. The Strange thing is how I could see myself being in it if I hadn't gone Roman.

I feel like Joseph Pearce a bit, the famous Irish convert to Catholicism. It's always a weird thing to switch 180 degrees from your upbringing. But I find myself with the famous Catholic historian Lord Acton saying that communion with Rome, is more dear than life. It's strange that for us Anglo's, Catholicism is a political thing. For every other race, it's not a political matter if you become Catholic, but for the descendent or student of English History, conflicting loyalties to King and Church have been quite common.

Mass-ive Disasters, Modernism, and Tradition

"Now I praise you, brethren, that in all things you are mindful of me and keep my ordinances (tradidi) as I have delivered them to you." - 1 Corinthians 11:2 (Douay-Rheims)

After listening to a standard Pietistic sermon at my parents Baptist ecclessial community on Christmas Eve my mom - being the 'genius' she is - decided to bring up the Perpetual Virginity of Marriage. This broke the uneasy truce our family has and led to "the troubles" of the evening. I defended the doctrine from a position that no one had called it into question until the Enlightenment (Calvin, Luther, and Wesley all affirmed it). Of course my chief tool was Tradition not even in a specifically Roman Catholic, but just in a general Western Christian way, and I realized these modernists (N. Amer. Evangelicals / post-great awakening Prots.) were not the Classical Protestants or the Catholics or Orthodox I know and respect but a beast of Kant and the Anabaptists...

Anyway, after a vitriolic attack on Our Lady, closed communion, relics/saints, and indulgences (why can't our Roman Church accept Trent's recommendation and just give up on indulgences... not to say we deny them, but they're SO misunderstood, it's basically a lost cause). We arrived home on what proved to be the worst Christmas I've had.

I told them not to come to Mass with me, but my Catholic friends basically said I had to because it would "turn their hearts" and "lead them to the truth" and (insert Papal BS here). I knew it wouldn't, it only makes them hate Catholicism more. And I'm fine with them hating Christ's Church, it's not like it falls within the realm of nature to convert, that's God's business (grace) and their own (free will). I think the Anabaptist tradition irredeemable anyway...



Something interesting happened though. I was reading Jaroslav Pelikan's 5th installment on the history of the Christian Tradition (1700-present) and I discovered his opening story where he juxtaposes 2 different figures who attended Maundy Thursday Mass in St. Peter's Basillica in Rome. One was John Henry Newman, and the other Ralph Waldo Emerson. One chose the 'purely scriptural' and private judgment modernist/enlightenment view and ended up a Unitarian, and the other accepted the authority of Tradition and became the Venerable Oxford Cardinal who helped my conversion as well as many others since 1845.

I felt again a companionship with Newman, I see the more and more I read, that there are two paths really. One of reductionistic modernism (Atheistic materialism, American Evangelicalism, etc) and the other of traditional Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Classic Protestantism) which sees Scripture and Tradition as complimentary. I would argue of course that the roots of modernism are in Luther's rebellion, and the Protestants would of course argue that the roots of modernism are in the Catholic view of human reason. Both are oversimplifications I think.

So on this Christmas as I gather myself together, I want to thank God for the gift of Christ first and foremost, but also for the gift of History, which is the story of Jesus, and for his Church and it's Tradition which guides me through the wrecks of theology so prevalent in our day.

Tridentine Justification & Neo-Thomism

I understand and believe Catholic/Tridentine soteriology / doctrine of justification, but man is it repellant. I have to write an essay partially on it, and when it sits there next to the Lutheran doctrine it's so painfully bad. Not in the sense of innaccuracy or lack of Patristic support etc, but just sad, difficult, and scary.

When you read things about 'killing grace in your soul' versus 'Christ's free gift of salvation' and the overwhelming mercy of the Lutheran gospel, it sometimes makes you wish you could have all the Ecclessiology and Tradition of Catholicism and just take Lutheran justification... I guess that was the Anglican dream really.

Anyway, while it's easier and easier to read (Trent that is), it still strikes a bad note, it's all the 'worst' parts of Catholicism together.

By contrast I'm reading a book by Etienne Gilson called "The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy" and it's amazing. Obviously it's on a really different topic, but it's awesome how he describes the scholastics and how attractive he makes the doctrines rejected by the Reformers seem.

I've found out in Thomism too, they traditionally talk in a way about salvation and predestination that leaves little to free will. NOT that they deny it, or that St. Thomas doesn't write about it elsewhere - after all they firmly believe in it. But they err on the side of Grace and predestination rather than the side of free-will and foreknowledge.

They recognize that it's a mystery how free will works with efficacious grace, but they teach it. And that's the great gospel I always need to hear. That even when I'm completely sinful, Christ is still giving me grace, and has chosen me ante praevisa merita / unconditionally.

The one interesting thing I've found is that describing justification in terms of grace, merit, cooperation, etc is more passe now. It seems like after Jansenism the Church got stuck with how it could talk about it. Thus they've gone to the Greek Fathers and are now big on understanding soteriology through Trinitarian theology and participation in the divine nature etc.

Newman - The Development of Doctrine (Part 1)

"Till positive reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary, the most natural hypotheses, the most agreeable to our mode of proceeding in parallel cases, and that which takes precedence of all others, is to consider that the society of Christians, which the Apostles left on earth, were of that religion to which the Apostles had converted them; that the external continuity of name, profession, and communion, argues a real continuity of doctrine; that, as Christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind, therefore it went on so to manifest itself...this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this...Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant...this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact" - Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman "Development of Christian Doctrine"

I'm going through this monumental work of Cardinal Newman's. I'm on # 14 of the intro and very much enjoying how he's taking the argument so far and destroying Anglicanism & Protestantism.

Welcome

I'm just getting things started here at Recusant Corner. I'm a Roman Catholic convert from Anabaptist/Evangelical Protestantism and plan on writing my thoughts here (probably mostly theology, but other stuff as well).

It's hopefully going to be a refuge from Polemics where I can try to operate on the principle 'live and let live'.

Why Call it Recusant Corner?

I'm a history major and my niche in Catholicism is a movement known as Recusancy (wikipedia it). Recusants were the Catholics who refused to submit to the Established Church of England and resisted to the point of martyrdom and persecution at first, and in later years at least were forbidden from public worship.

I find it a fascinating movement and some English Catholics even today like to style themselves Recusants. St. Thomas More, St. Edmund Campion (and all the Tyburn martyrs), John Donne (for a while), William Shakespeare (probably), were Recusants, as well as later figures like: Alexander Pope, Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Lord Acton, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others.

Canada (where I live) is technically ruled by the English Monarch who is the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, so technically, and in a very vague impractical sense I am a Recusant.

Many Recusants were Jacobites, and on this blog, you'll find a strong support of the Stuart line rather than the Hanoverian usurpers of the inGlorious Revolution of 1688-9.

Some abbreviations you might want to know so they don't confuse you:

CofE : Church of England - Anglican Church - Established Church
R.C : Roman Catholic
Papist : Roman Catholic
Puritan : Reformed Protestant
Prelate : Anglican
Fr. : Father (indicating a Catholic Priest)
Bp. : Bishop
Abp. : Archbishop
Ven. : Venerable (Level in sainthood/canonization after blessed)
Bl. : Blessed (1st Level in canonization)