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\u00a0<\/p>\n Fr. Jack Whritenour, stalwart conservative ELCA clergyman and administrator of the Society for the Preservation of the Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy on Facebook, defines the term \u201cEvangelical Catholic\u201d:<\/strong><\/p>\n An Evangelical Catholic (and here I use the term as it applies to Lutherans) is one who views the Church of the Augsburg Confession as not just a Protestant denomination (or several denominations) but a branch of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, and sees Lutheranism as a reforming movement within the catholic Church. Carl Braaten has coined the phrase \u201ccatholics in exile.\u201d Most of us believe that full communion with the See and Bishop of Rome is something for which we should pray and strive under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in accordance with the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n Evangelical Catholics, while obviously acknowledging the primary importance of the right preaching and teaching of the Holy Gospel, also place the sacraments of Baptism, Confession & Absolution, and the Lord\u2019s Supper on the same level of importance as the right preaching of the Gospel for our faith and life as Christians. Evangelical Catholics, therefore, believe, as the Lutheran Confessions say, that the Lord\u2019s Supper is celebrated every Lord\u2019s Day and at other times (Holy Days). We adamantly defend the doctrine of the True Presence of our living Lord Jesus Christ in the bread and wine of His Holy Supper. We have a high view of ordination, believing that the ministry of the Apostles has been perpetuated in the Church down through the ages by those who have received the laying on of hands in ordination (by those who themselves have been ordained) and who have been called by the Holy Spirit through the Church to this Holy Office. We value the historic liturgy of the Church\u2014her rites, prayers, ceremonies, vestments, ornaments, sacred art, and sacred music\u2014which we consider treasures of the Church which should be used and carefully guarded against the heresy of iconoclasm. We reject only those ceremonies, rites, practices, etc. that obscure the Gospel, but we receive everything from the Great Tradition that is in accordance with the Gospel and is helpful in the proclamation of the Gospel.<\/p>\n Finally, let me say that the Evangelical Catholicism is not a party within Lutheranism; it IS Lutheranism. In truth \u201cEvangelical Catholic\u201d is a redundancy; for we believe that to be evangelical is to be catholic and to be catholic is to be evangelical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n +SDG+<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The views expressed in the following material are not necessarily the views of Just & Sinner, any of its contributing editors, or Rev. Jordan B. Cooper. They are presented as food for thought with the permission of their author. Any comments which are not directly germane to the material content of the post, but which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64,84,101,209],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholicity","tag-creed","tag-evangelical-catholicism","tag-rev-fr-jack-whritenour"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"IMG_87563670084697\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/523\/2014\/11\/IMG_87563670084697.jpg\")
<\/a>(Nota Bene:<\/em> in the original text of Fr. Jack\u2019s comments \u201cEvangelical Catholic\u201d and its derivatives were not capitalized. I made the choice to capitalize them here\u2014just so you know where to lob the verbal tomatoes. Again, lob them at me<\/em>, not him. <\/em>I have my reasons, the foremost of which is grammatical: \u201cEvangelical Catholic\u201d is used as a proper noun; thus it should be capitalized. Secondly, I will not cede the adjective \u201ccatholic\u201d or the capital \u201cC\u201d to the Church of Rome. I do not accept the dissolution of language which has led to the eponymous use of the term \u201cCatholic\u201d for \u201ccommunicant member of the Church of Rome.\u201d Furthermore, we would all do well to remember that the antonym of the term \u201cCatholic\u201d is not \u201cProtestant\u201d but \u201csectarian.\u201d<\/a> Context should determine the use of the term so as to avoid confusion, yes; however, all I ask is that we as Lutherans acknowledge that there are contexts which would bid us proclaim \u201cWe are Western Catholic Christians,\u201d even perhaps even simply, \u201cWe are Catholics.\u201d This is a matter of\u00a0in statu confessionis.\u00a0<\/em>No parallax\u00a0of time and no devolution of language can ever tie the term \u201cCatholic\u201d exclusively to the Roman see. Words shape our thinking. Ideas have consequences. Lex orandi lex credendi. \u2013TDD<\/em>)<\/span><\/h6>\n