Protestant or Reformational Catholic

Over at First Things, Peter Leithart has an interesting piece on The End of Protestantism where he argues that we should think of ourselves not as anti-Catholic Protestants, but instead as Reformational Catholics.

Protestantism has had a good run. It remade Europe and made America. It inspired global missions, soup kitchens, church plants, and colleges in the four corners of the earth. But the world and the Church have changed, and Protestantism isn’t what the Church, including Protestants themselves, needs today. It’s time to turn the protest against Protestantism and to envision a new way of being heirs of the Reformation, a new way that happens to conform to the original Catholic vision of the Reformers.

I’ve argued in EvTh for a “Evangelical Catholicism,” taking cue from Kevin Vanhoozer and his articulation of it. I think we still have a Protest against the Roman Catholic Church – only place I’ll do a “Hail Mary” is on a football field – but it is a church that is still our estranged Mother.

Though a response comes from R. Scott Clark at the Heidelblog who questions Leithart’s credentials as a “Federal Vision” proponent and because some of the Reformed confessions call the Catholic church a sect.