When I was an Anglican priest I once said to the (Catholic) Abbot of Quarr, \u201cI\u2019m a Catholic too, but in the Anglican Church.\u201d He smiled and said, \u201cYou should understand that we Catholics define what being Catholic is rather differently than you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
It got me thinking. Certainly it is true that many Anglicans claim to be \u2018Catholic\u2019 but in the Anglican Church. Then on summer vacation I went to my mother\u2019s Presbyterian Church and found that they had started to recite the creed on Sundays, so over Sunday lunch I asked my mother how she was able to stand up and say that she believed in \u2018One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.\u2019 She replied that her pastor explained that \u2018Catholic\u2019 means \u2018universal\u2019 and that it refers to all baptized people who have faith in Christ.<\/p>\n
I then discovered that this is the definition held by very many Protestants of most any denomination. I discovered Baptists who said with a straight face that they \u2018believed in the Catholic Church\u2019 and offered the same explanation as my mother. Therefore, when we hear Anglicans say they are \u2018Catholic but in the Anglican Church\u2019 I suppose we should accept their statement at face value rather like I did my mother\u2019s. Another way she could have stated her belief was, \u201cI am Catholic but in the Presbyterian Church.\u201d Indeed, a member of her church who attends Mass with her husband says cheerfully, \u201cI\u2019m a Presbyterian Catholic!\u201d<\/p>\n
Other Evangelical Protestants might say, \u201cI am Catholic but in the Foursquare Church of the Gospel of the Abrahamic Faith\u201d for that matter why should not a sincere Seventh Day Adventist, Assembly of God or Member of the Television Cathedral of Tomorrow say, \u201cI am a Catholic in the (fill in the blank) Church?\u201d They all profess faith in Christ and have been baptized.<\/p>\n
This pleasant re-interpretation of what \u2018Catholic\u2019 actually means is typical of the modernist Protestant. He loves to \u2018re-interpret\u2019 everything. For him the Virgin Birth does not mean that a girl who had never had relations with a man became pregnant and gave birth through the supernatural intervention of God. Instead it means \u2018Mary was an especially pure and innocent young girl when she became pregnant.\u201d He holds enthusiastically to the Resurrection of Christ, and by that he means, \u201cIn some wonderful way the noble teachings of Christ continued to be believed and proclaimed after his tragic death.\u201d<\/p>\n