Putting the Protest in Protestant
Rare is the ill will coming from either side of the Tiber in this year of Protestantism’s 500th anniversary, but David Mills reminds Roman Catholics and Protestants why the Reformation is flawed from Rome’s perspective. It turns out that the stress on the Bible is a weakness because Protestants don’t interpret and understand Scripture in accord with — wait for it — the church:
“They really know their Bible,” Catholics say of our Evangelical friends. They say it with admiration. And some do have an admirable knowledge of Scripture. We can do better, and I include myself among those who don’t study Scripture as intensely as we should. If we really believe what Dei verbum says about Sacred Scripture, we will do better.
But here’s the other side. Even if it were true that our Evangelical friends really know their Bible, it’s still only half-true. They know the Bible outside the Church. They know the text, but not always what it means. They read it without the interpretive guide of Sacred Tradition and without the confirming voice of the Church’s teaching authority. They miss such important biblical truths as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven.
The faithful Catholic who never picks up his Bible outside the Mass is still a more biblical Christian than his Evangelical friends who know the text inside out. He would go much deeper into the Faith did he read and study the Scriptures. But his Catholic faith still makes him a biblical Christian.
This is a strange argument for at least two reasons. The first is that the Bible no where mentions the immaculate conception of the assumption of Mary. Roman Catholics may try to find reasons from the Bible for asserting those beliefs about Mary. Still, the Bible is remarkably silent about the mother of Jesus. Not even the alleged first pope, Peter, mentions the mother of Jesus or her importance in his canonical writings.
The second oddity here is a Roman Catholic who points out the weakness of Protestant individualism even while flying solo himself. If the idea of belonging to the church and letting its traditions and teachings inform one’s understanding and faith is so important, wouldn’t someone like Mills leave blogging to those church officers — the bishops and cardinals — with the responsibility for explaining and teaching the faith? He might have a point about Protestant weakness if he also exhibited his own deference to tradition. That would mean having a blog that aggregated posts from bishops and other members of the magisterium on the deficiencies of Protestantism. After all, the point of being a Roman Catholic is to believe with the church and understand the faith in the light of what the church teaches. That means that opining about ecumenical matters is above your pay grade.
But instead, Mills reveals his inner (former) Protestant and expresses his own individual judgments independently of the church and magisterium. Some call that having your autonomy and submitting to authority too.
Meanwhile, some Lutherans also show an attachment to Scripture that does not reflect well on the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
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