My sincere thanks to Bryan Cross and all the commenters in this discussion. The majority of our discussion has been constructive and helpful. Of course, there are deep feelings at work in these issues and some commenters reflect various levels of understanding other traditions and various levels of being able to communicate without rancor.

This final post deals with three issues causing continuing disagreement: Marian devotion, the doctrine of purgatory and the nature of the Catholic Eucharist.

10. Most Protestants would see three major impediments to reunion: Tradition in relation to scripture, the Papacy and the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Laying these aside, give me a quick assessment of three other issues that may be less intractable:

1) Marian devotion

As you know, some Protestants are coming to appreciate more deeply the Catholic Church’s historical understanding of Mary’s significance. (See “Do Whatever He Tells You: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Christian Faith and Life, A Statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together” in First Things, November, 2009.) Part of that, I think, is due to greater dialogue between Catholics and Protestants. Some Protestants are more sympathetic to understanding Mary as the second Eve, the ark of the New Covenant, and the theological implications of her being the Theotokos. Some are open to the possibility of her perpetual virginity. But the Catholic dogmas concerning Mary’s immaculate conception and assumption are much more difficult for Protestants. Part of this is because of the sola scriptura paradigm in which a doctrine needs to be taught explicitly in Scripture in order for it to be part of Christian belief or at least a required part of Christian belief. More importantly, perhaps, Protestants are concerned that focus on Mary could detract from focus on Christ. That’s why even terms like ‘Marian devotion’ sometimes elicit immediate negative emotional reactions from some Protestants.

From a Catholic point of view, anyone who loves Jesus, will love His mother, for His sake. And essentially that is what devotion is, i.e. love. Jesus was devoted to His mother, not just out of duty, but because as the perfect man He saw perfectly and continually the great gift she had given to Him, the sacrifice she made for Him. He loved her for what He shared with her, from her. He knew Himself more perfectly than any man ever has, and He loved Himself more than any man ever has. Knowing Himself, He continually saw her in Himself, in His humanity. And so she too is the object of His love, not just in His divine will as God, but in His human will as man. That is why loving Christ naturally includes loving His mother. He did not treat love for His mother as detracting from His love of Himself, but as part of the very expression of His perfect self-love. This is why Catholics do not view devotion to Christ’s mother as detracting from our love for Christ, but as an expression of our love for Christ. Because we (the Church) are Christ’s Body and by baptism are incorporated into His Body, therefore, in our baptism, Mary becomes our mother too. As Catholics we believe that when Jesus on the cross said to John, “Behold, your mother,” He was not only entrusting care of Mary to John. He was saying something more profound, to the whole Church, namely, “Behold, your mother.”

Honoring Mary honors Christ, because Mary is known to history only for the sake of her Son. She is known precisely because she is the Theotokos. So honoring her is a way of proclaiming the gospel that God became man. And since it is right to treat a thing according to what it is, so Mary deserves to receive the honor of Theotokos. Catholics and Protestants all agree that Mary is not divine, and therefore should not be treated as though she is divine. But we do not have to choose between treating Mary as divine or treating her as just any other woman. Mary is deserving of more honor than any other saint, but of course she is never to receive the adoration that is reserved exclusively for God.

Between Catholics and Protestants there is some disagreement concerning the meaning of “communion of the saints” in the Apostles’ Creed. Again this is partly due to the underlying difference regarding the sola scriptura paradigm, partly due to worries about necromancy, and partly due to concern that attention directed to the saints in heaven detracts from Christ’s unique mediatorial role. For reasons of time and space I cannot address those here, but I think there is good reason for hope for greater agreement on this point. Christ’s defeat of death and our union to Him through faith and baptism joins us in a mysterious way to all who are united to Him, even those whose bodies now rest in the earth. That’s a beautiful mystery, an amazing foretaste of the joyous reunion of all the saints when Christ returns.

2) Purgatory

Here too I think there is good reason for a convergence between Catholics and Protestants. More Protestant scholars are writing about the subject of purgatory as a completion of our sanctification. The standing Protestant-Catholic disagreement regarding this doctrine here again is partly based on the more fundamental paradigm difference concerning whether every doctrine needs to be taught explicitly in Scripture. But we all agree on two things: first, that we cannot enter heaven without being perfectly sanctified, and second, that at least most of those who die in a state of grace leave this earthly life not yet perfectly sanctified. So it follows that we all agree that for most of us who die in friendship with God, some kind of cleaning up has to be done between the moment of death and entrance into heaven. So the substance of the disagreement is about whether that cleaning up takes place instantaneously or takes some time. And at that point it seems clear that the disagreement is not a schism-justifying dispute.

The more difficult part of this disagreement is that from a Protestant point of view, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory seems to make Christ’s work on the cross incomplete or insufficient. It seems to suggest that Christ only paid for some percentage of my sins, and left the remainder for me to pay for in purgatory. And that seems to detract from the greatness of Christ’s work on the cross. From a Catholic point of view, Christ has graciously allowed us in this present life to participate in His sufferings, through the various sufferings we endure here. This is why our sufferings in this present life are not meaningless or pointless. The Protestant conception of Christ’s work is substitution-as-replacement, while the Catholic conception is more properly understood as substitution-for-participation. And in my opinion this difference is one reason why Protestantism is more susceptible to a Health & Wealth way of thinking about suffering than is Catholicism. In the Catholic mind, our present sufferings are a gift to us by which we are further sanctified and by which we are more deeply joined to Christ. And so Catholics see the period of cleansing in purgatory in the same way, not as detracting from the work of Christ, but as participating in it. There is much more to say here, but I don’t have space. I think as Protestants come to reflect more on the Catholic notion of participating in Christ’s sufferings, it will help overcome the concern that a time of cleansing after death would detract from the finished work of Christ.

3) the Eucharist as a true sacrifice

The disagreement here too is partly based on misunderstanding, and partly based on different conceptions of participation. These underlie the disagreement about what takes place in this sacrament. Some Protestants mistakenly believe that the Catholic teaching is that Christ is re-sacrificed at every Mass. And the notion of Christ being re-sacrificed seems clearly to be in conflict with what the writer of Hebrews says:

“By that will [i.e. Christ's] we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God . . . For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:9-14)

But here is how the Catechism explains the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist:

The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: “The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.” “And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner.” (CCC 1367)

The Catholic doctrine concerning the Eucharist is not that it is a re-sacrifice of Christ, but rather that it is our present participation in the very once-and-for-all sacrifice that Christ offered on the cross to His Father. How this takes place is a mystery. That is why it is called a sacrament, a word that means mystery. In the Person of the incarnate Christ, the eternal is conjoined with the temporal, without one eliminating the other. By that nexus of time and eternity upon the tree at Calvary, we now, through the sacraments Christ has instituted to be celebrated perpetually until He returns, are brought under that tree. In a mystery we are washed in the water that flowed from His side, and in a mystery we are nourished on His Body and Blood in an unbloody manner. Through these sacraments, drawn from the side of the New Adam while He slept, God the Father is forming a Bride for His Son. So for Catholics the Eucharist is the sacramental means Christ established by which we participate in His holy and perfect sacrifice, and by which we receive His divine life, i.e. grace, and by which we are knitted together in charity into His one Mystical Body. This is the meaning of St. Paul’s statement, “Since there is one Bread, we who are many are one Body; for we all partake of the one Bread.” (1 Cor 10:17) If the Eucharist were not a participating in His once-for-all sacrifice, but merely a remembrance of what He did, then in the Eucharist we would not receive His divine life, nor would it knit us together in His Mystical Body.

9. What should every Protestant know about Vatican II?

The Second Vatican Council took place from 1963-1965, and was the twenty-first ecumenical council, following the First Vatican Council in 1869-70. Vatican II produced sixteen documents; among the most well-known are:

Sacrosanctum concilium, Sacred Liturgy, 1963.
Lumen Gentium, On the Church, 1964.
Unitatis Redintegratio, Ecumenism, 1964.
Dei Verbum, Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation, 1965.
Dignitatis Humanae, On Religious Freedom, 1965.
Gaudium et Spes, On the Church In the Modern World,1965.

The three most important documents with respect to Protestants are Lumen Gentium, Unitatis Redintegratio, and Dei Verbum. I’ll say a little about each of those three. In its first section Lumen Gentium contains the following statement about the identity of the Church:

This is the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as ‘the pillar and mainstay of the truth.’ This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him” (Lumen Gentium, 8

Some people have misunderstood the meaning of the words “subsists in,” interpreting it to mean that Christ’s Church could or does subsist in many different institutions. But the Church clarified this in 2007, explaining that the Catholic Church governed by the successor of St. Peter is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded, and that nevertheless there are “numerous elements of sanctification and of truth” which are found outside her structure, but which “as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, impel towards Catholic Unity.”

Protestants should know that the Catholic Church teaches in this document that whoever knows that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, and refuses to enter it or remain in it, cannot be saved. (Lumen Gentium, 14) This is not merely saying that whoever does not follow his conscience cannot be saved. It is saying something about the absolute uniqueness of the Catholic Church: whoever discovers that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded as necessary for salvation, cannot be saved without entering it and remaining in it. To the ears of some people that sounds arrogant. But we should recognize that the statement is arrogant only if it is not true. If it is true, then it is no more arrogant than Christ claiming to be the way, the truth and the life. At the very least, this statement in Lumen Gentium requires of all Christians that they investigate the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church that Christ founded as necessary for salvation.

The document, Unitatis Redintegratio, on ecumenism, opens with this well-known paragraph:

The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council. Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but differ in mind and go their different ways, as if Christ Himself were divided. Such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature. (Unitatis Redintegratio, 1)

That summarizes perfectly the heart of ecumenism, from a Catholic point of view. The document goes on to discuss the Catholic principles of ecumenism, and how to implement them. It states that those who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are placed in an imperfect communion with the Church. The second half of the document discusses the relation between the Catholic Church and the Eastern [Orthodox] Churches not in communion with the successor of St. Peter, and between the Catholic Church and Protestants. To be clear, the word ‘Church’ can refer either to a particular Church, e.g. a diocese, of which there are many, or it can refer to the Catholic Church, which is the universal Church Christ founded, and to which all particular Churches should belong. The Church at Rome is a particular Church within the Catholic Church, and the bishop of the Church at Rome holds the office of visible head of the Catholic Church. (CCC, 881-882) Unitatis Redintegratio draws a distinction between those Christians who have preserved apostolic succession and those who have not, because of the need for apostolic succession in order to consecrate the Eucharist validly. This is why Orthodox Churches are called Churches, and Protestant groups are not called “Churches,” but communities.

The last of these three documents, Dei Verbum, explained the relation between Scripture, Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium. In this document we see the Catholic paradigm regarding the role of the oral Tradition handed down from the Apostles to the bishops. For Catholics this Tradition is also authoritative and provides a hermeneutical context in which to understand Scripture. This is the contrasting paradigm to the Protestant paradigm in which something must be taught explicitly in Scripture in order to be doctrine. One notable paragraph relevant to the Protestant-Catholic dialogue has to do with the role of the Magisterium in providing the authorized interpretation of Scripture.

The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith. (Dei Verbum, 10)

This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the episcopal successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome. By Christ’s authorization through apostolic succession, it belongs to them alone to provide the authentic interpretation of the deposit of faith.

Finally, every Protestant should know two more things about Vatican II. First, Vatican II did not infallibly define any doctrine. It did not intend to do so. Any infallible teaching contained in the documents of the Council had already been infallibly defined previously. Second, Vatican II did not retract or deny any previous Catholic doctrine. In other words, Vatican II should be understood according to the hermeneutic of continuity, as developing and clarifying the received doctrine of the Church, not as retracting or denying any previous doctrine. Some Protestants seem to think that Vatican II moved the Catholic Church away from previous Catholic doctrines and toward Protestant positions. Based on this [mistaken] conception of Vatican II, these Protestants are holding out for the Catholic Church to become more Protestant in the future, and for the eventual reunion of Protestants and Catholics to take place by way of a recognition by the Catholic Church of the legitimacy of all Protestant denominations. This speculation is based on a serious misunderstanding of Vatican II. In Vatican II the Church developed in her understanding of the positive elements of the faith contained in Protestant traditions, and of the state of Protestants viz-a-viz the Catholic Church. But this is not the same thing as moving toward Protestantism, and should not be interpreted as such. The Church does not have the power to retract any doctrine on faith or morals, once defined by the Magisterium.

For a number of years now, thousands of Anglicans have been asking the Holy See to allow them to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving unique aspects of the Anglican tradition. One factor that held up that request was the possibility that the Anglican communion would move in a more traditional direction (and hence toward greater agreement with the Catholic Church). But when the vote at last year’s Lambeth Conference showed that Anglicans had chosen to accept female bishops, the Anglican communion showed itself to have chosen to move further toward Protestantism, and depart further from apostolic succession. Pope Benedict apparently decided that the present prospects for the reunion of Canterbury with Rome are such that they will not be significantly worsened by opening the doors to Anglicans who wish to preserve elements of their Anglican patrimony in full communion with the Holy See. Pope Benedict’s fundamental motivation here is just what he said in his first address as pope, “The current Successor [to John Paul II] assumes as his primary commitment that of working tirelessly towards the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all Christ’s followers.” He is seeking to be a minister of Christ’s peace in the fulfilling of Christ’s prayer in John 17.

6. You do not impress me as being someone particularly impressed with all of the “convert apologetics” movement in the RCC. What’s your assessment of ministries like Catholic Answers?

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is some kind of “convert apologetics” movement in the Catholic Church. There are many converts to Catholicism, like myself, and understandably, we wish to share with others what we have discovered. We wish to see all Christians in full communion with the Church and with each other, and the present schisms resolved. Of course among some new converts there is zeal without sufficient knowledge. The solution to that problem, however, is not to reduce the zeal, but for such persons to develop a more thorough understanding of the faith, and a genuine sensitivity to the positions and personal situations of those who do not agree. Not everyone is called to be a professional theologian or historian or philosopher, but that shouldn’t prevent anyone from sharing his or her faith. In my opinion ministries like Catholic Answers have their proper place, because they are helping a great many people (Catholics and Protestants) find answers to questions about what the Church teaches and why she teaches it. That does not nullify the importance of academic work in these areas; over-simplification is a context-dependent term. In some ways, ministries like Catholic Answers can help serve as a bridge between lay persons and scholars.

7. Imagine that a large evangelical church brought you in to speak to the entire church on Protestant-Catholic relations/unity. What would be the main points you would cover?

I would first talk about the importance of unity as a constitutive element of the gospel itself, as I did to your earlier question. Then I would talk about the tragedy of the separation of Protestants and Catholics at the Reformation, and why love for Christ requires that Protestants and Catholics should be striving with all our effort to be reconciled in true unity and unity in the truth. Then I would talk about what I see as the fundamental reasons for the present division, first by laying out the two paradigms with respect to ecclesiology, ecclesial authority, ecclesial unity, and soteriology. These things cannot rightly be compared piecemeal; they have to be compared within their respective paradigms, and especially in view of the writings of the early Church Fathers. That’s why I think Protestants and Catholics need to understand both paradigms, in order effectively to reason together about them.

Here’s an example. In the Catholic paradigm, apostolic succession is a crucial component, because it is the basis for ecclesial authority, and thus for determining how other questions should be answered. Protestants do not accept apostolic succession, primarily because they do not find it in Scripture. So when Protestants find apostolic succession in the early Church Fathers, Protestants tend to view that as an accretion of some sort, not as an essential part of the deposit of faith. But from the Catholic point of view, the very stance of the Protestant who requires that something be clearly taught in Scripture in order to believe it, is already a departure from what has been the Church’s belief and practice since the beginning, that is, the practice of understanding Scripture as informed by those shepherds having apostolic succession. For this reason we can see that each side appears, from the point of view of the other side, to be begging the question, i.e. assuming precisely what is in question. In that sort of situation, cannot simply throw verses at each other; we have to step back and compare paradigms. I recently did something similar to that regarding the subject of justification, in my reply to “All the Romery People.”

8. What are some books or authors you would recommend to Protestants in the audience?

The following books may be helpful in clarifying the Catholic faith more fully for Protestants.

Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church, by Henry Graham.
The Early Church Fathers (Three Volumes), by William Jurgens.
A History of Christendom (Five Volumes), by Warren Carroll.
Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, by Louis Bouyer.
The Catholic Church and Conversion, by G.K. Chesterton
Evangelical is Not Enough, by Thomas Howard.
Upon This Rock, by Stephen Ray.
The Russian Church and the Papacy, by Vladimir Soloviev.
Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, by Henri de Lubac.
The Life of Faith, by Romano Guardini.
Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, by Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering.
Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI, by Scott Hahn.

2. Does Christian Unity mean “Protestants becoming Roman Catholics?”

In the Creed we refer to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Those are the four marks of the Church. Unity as a mark of the Church refers to unity of faith, unity of sacraments, and unity of government. These three correspond to the three roles of prophet, priest, and king; all three roles came together in Christ, and remain together in His Church. Even if we share the same faith, and the same sacraments, until we are one in government we are still divided. This is why the Novatians and Donatists were in schism from the Church, not branches of the Church. Unity of ecclesial government requires unity under the bishop having the highest ecclesial authority. Jesus gave this highest ecclesial authority to the apostle St. Peter, when He gave to St. Peter the keys of the Kingdom. That is why the episcopal successor of St. Peter is the divinely established principle of unity for the Church. The only way to avoid being in schism is to be in full communion with the successor of St. Peter. For this reason the Catechism defines ’schism’ as “the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” (CCC, 2089) Schism is a term rarely used today, but in order to pursue unity we have to recover an understanding of that term, and the unitive principle by which remaining in the Church is distinguished from being in schism from the Church. So the first part of the answer to your question is that full communion with the bishop of Rome is a necessary condition for Christian unity.

However, the Catholic Church includes within it the Latin Church and twenty-two Eastern Catholic Churches, all in full communion with the successor of St. Peter. Strictly speaking, Eastern Catholics are not Roman Catholics; Roman Catholic is reserved for the Latin Church. So in that sense full unity does not require becoming Roman Catholic, but it does require full communion with the successor of St. Peter.

3. There seems to be some tension in Roman Catholicism over the subject of Christian unity. For instance, many Protestants embrace Thomas Merton as a spiritual mentor, but I’ve found many Catholics who are suspicious of him. Are there differing approaches to unity among conservative and liberal tribes in the RCC?

I do not use the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ to refer to orthodoxy and heterodoxy, because those former terms have political connotations that are misleading when applied to the Church. Different Catholic thinkers and writers sometimes emphasize different truths of the Catholic faith, but if they are orthodox, they give at least “religious submission of mind and will” to the teaching of the Church’s Magisterium (i.e. the Church’s living, teaching office). And that is fully compatible with recognizing and affirming what is good and true in other faith traditions, a quality for which Merton was known. As for matters concerning which the Church has not spoken, Catholics may hold any positions. Unfortunately there are some Catholics who either do not understand the Church’s ecclesiology or do not accept it. The errors can be found on both ends of the Church’s teaching. On one end there are a few Catholics who mistakenly think that perhaps no Protestants are saved. On the other end there are some Catholics who think either that all Protestants are Catholics-but-just-don’t-know-it, or that the Catholic Church is just one denomination among many. None of those is the Church’s teaching concerning herself. These errors are the result of poor catechesis, and they lead to confusion among Protestants concerning what the Catholic Church actually teaches.

The Catholic Church believes and teaches that she is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ, who renamed Simon as Peter, and designated him to be the rock upon which Christ would build His Church, and to whom He gave the keys of the Kingdom. Those four marks of the Church are essential to the Church, and cannot be lost. That entails that the Church can never be divided, because she can never lose her unity. The essential unity of the Church and St. Peter’s authority are interrelated. In every schism, should it endure for any length of time, whoever separates from the successor of St. Peter is, by that very fact, in schism from the Church. Whoever remains with the successor of St. Peter, by that very fact, remains with the Church. Since every schism is a separation from the Church, the Church’s unity is undiminished by schism. Nevertheless, Christian disunity is a stumbling block to the world. Full communion among the followers of Christ, from a Catholic point of view, means nothing less than being in the Church Christ founded, sharing the same faith, the same sacraments, and the same government. The teaching of the Catholic Church regarding her ecclesiology and unity can be found in the following documents, which are all available in English online: Satis Cognitum (1896), Mortalium Animus (1928), Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), Lumen Gentium (1964), Unitatis Redintegratio (1964), Ut Unum Sint (1995), Dominus Iesus (2000), Responsa ad quaestiones (2007).

4. Many Protestants come to a place where they view the Reformation as the greatest moment in church history, and many Catholics view it as an event entirely inspired by the devil. What is a balanced view of the Reformation that both Protestants and Catholics could work toward embracing?

What Protestants and Catholics should be working toward with respect to understanding the Reformation is the truth about what happened. The only path to true reunion of Protestants and Catholics is unity based on truth. There were in the Church abuses that needed to be corrected. Various bishops were corrupt, immoral and overly involved in civil government and acquiring personal wealth. The training of priests was in lamentable condition, and superstitions and ignorance were common among the lay people. The Church was clearly in need of reform, and the Reformers were correct to point out such things. These reforms were taken up by the Council of Trent, and when we read through the documents produced by each of the sessions of Trent, we see that not only matters of doctrine but also matters of reform were addressed in almost each session. And many people, including St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Philip Neri, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Vincent de Paul helped reform the Church from within, in what is rather misleadingly called the “Counter-Reformation.” So the Church most certainly needed reforming. That is true, and both Protestants and Catholics can and should agree on that.

Another truth that needs to be recognized universally is that a schism took place between Protestants and Catholics. Much more can be said about this than in this context, but the first step in reconciling the division is acknowledging that a division occurred. From a Protestant point of view, the gospel had been hidden from the people under ceremonies and traditions. Then at the Council of Trent the Church declared the gospel to be anathema, and so separation from the Catholic Church was necessary. From a Catholic point of view, even if the gospel had been hidden to some degree, schism from the Church Christ founded is never justified, and the Council of Trent gave a definitive clarification concerning what is the orthodox understanding of the gospel. There is no ‘balanced view’ possible on this point of disagreement, because on the matter of schism, and on the points of doctrine where they disagreed, either the Protestants were right and the Catholic were wrong, or vice versa. In the one paradigm, the Church at the Council of Trent fell into apostasy, and the pope became a kind of anti-Christ. In the other paradigm, the Council of Trent defined soteriological orthodoxy, and those who rejected Trent thereby showed themselves to be in heresy, just as had those who rejected prior ecumenical councils.

That’s what makes the schism seem at first to be irresolvable, and why it has endured this long. But there is a way forward, I think, and that involves finding the fundamental underlying causes for the disagreement, and the common ground by which to reason together to determine together who was wrong and who was right. Doctrinally, much common ground regarding justification has already been recognized in the Joint Declaration on Justification between Lutherans and Catholics in 1999. And the same is true of the 1994 Evangelicals & Catholics Together document. These are important steps forward in finding and affirming doctrinal common ground. We should also acknowledge the particular gifts that develop in the various Christian traditions, even while recognizing that these gifts can find their full and proper expression only in full communion. Diversity should not be confused with division, and full communion should not be conceived of as restricting the flourishing of various gifts within the Body of Christ.

To effect reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics, the fundamental underlying causes of the division must themselves be addressed, because the differences are not merely first-order differences (i.e. within the same paradigm), but meta-level differences (i.e. not in the same paradigm). These are fundamental differences upon which all the others depend. That’s why examining Scripture together will only get us so far; it won’t resolve the schism because the schism is rooted in paradigmatic differences we bring to Scripture. These fundamental differences involve different conceptions of the authority of the Church with respect to the interpretation of Scripture and the defining of doctrine, the basis for that interpretive authority, the nature of the Church as the Body of Christ, and the relation of Christ to His Church.

Resolving these underlying disagreements upon which the others depend requires, in my opinion, turning to history, to that time prior to the separation, when we were still united. Only if we look back (not in the sense of turning the clock back, but in the sense of remembering together) in history to the point where we were united can we then proceed forward discursively and evaluate together, from a shared conceptual point of view according to shared criteria, the actions of our ancestors in our respective ecclesial traditions. In my opinion, that requires going back much further than the 16th century; it requires nothing less than mutual investigation and understanding of the Church in the first four centuries after Christ. Protestants tend to think of the Protestant-Catholic differences as arising in the sixteenth century, but I think a careful study of the Church Fathers shows that many aspects of Catholicism presently rejected by Protestants go back even to the first century. And that requires us to consider in what way Christ remains with His Church until the end of the age, leads her into all truth and prevents the gates of Hades from prevailing against her so that she remains the pillar and bulwark of truth of which St. Paul speaks. My point here is that in order to go forward together, we must first look back together.

Part 3 on the way….

A few days ago I asked Catholic blogger and philosopher Bryan Cross to do an interview here at IM on the subject of Christian Unity. Bryan blogs at Principium Unitatis. Bryan is a prolific writer and was gracious to do the interview. He’s given me enough content for several posts, so I am going to divide the interview into three parts. In part one, Bryan will talk about his journey from Pentecostal to Calvinist to Anglican to Catholic. Then I’ll post his answer to my first question on his personal passion for Christian unity.

Bryan is a patient teacher and apologist. Obviously, many IM readers will disagree with parts of his presentation while others will applaud. Having given articulate Lutherans and Anglicans space this year, I want to give Bryan time to talk about his personal mission of promoting church unity and reunion in the Catholic Church.

Some of you may want to read Bryan’s response to the “All the Romery People” piece at Mockingbird.

Thanks for coming to Internet Monk.com for this interview, Bryan. Take a couple of paragraphs and tell us your basic story, what you are doing now and about your family.

Thanks Michael for the invitation. I’ve enjoyed reading Internet Monk.com for the last couple years. I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to it in this way.

I was raised in the Pentecostal tradition. On both my mother’s and father’s sides my family was involved in the early stages of Pentecostalism in the first part of the twentieth century. In our family it was considered essential to know Scripture. My siblings and I were consistently taught Scripture since as early as I can remember. We attended church twice Sunday, and Wednesday nights, and attended Sunday school every week. We went to all the revivals and all the vacation Bible-schools. So my family and the Pentecostal tradition gave me a thorough familiarity with the Bible, a healthy fear of God and a disposition to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

During my undergraduate education at the University of Michigan, I was exposed to Christians of all different traditions, and this raised a number of questions for me. By the end of my senior year, I was reading various books on theology, and I became convinced that Reformed covenantal theology was more biblical than the dispensational theology in which I had been raised. For the following three years my wife and I led an international student fellowship composed of students from Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. During that time I continued to read books on Reformed theology. By the end of that three years, I came to see that if I was going to be a pastor, I needed much better theological training. So we moved to St. Louis where I studied at Covenant Theological Seminary for four years, earning an M.Div.

In my last year of seminary, I took a graduate philosophy class at Saint Louis University on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Studying Aquinas raised many questions regarding the Reformed tradition. I couldn’t answer those questions at the time, but it was clear to me that there was at least a deep tension between the philosophical and theological positions and methods of the Reformers, and those of Aquinas. I had hoped that a rigorous study of the biblical languages and exegesis would provide the means to resolve interpretive disagreements between the Christian traditions. I had poured myself into exegesis with that hope, so much so that at graduation the seminary faculty honored me with the exegesis award. But I began to see the implicit role that philosophy was playing in our interpretation of Scripture. My belief as a seminarian was that other Christian traditions didn’t agree with us (Presbyterians) primarily because they didn’t know exegesis as well as we did. At the seminary we believed that exegesis was on our side, that it was exegesis that validated our position over and against that of all the other Christian traditions. But when I began to see the degree to which philosophy was playing an implicit role in our interpretation of Scripture, my beliefs that exegesis was a neutral objective science, and that it was sufficient to adjudicate interpretive disputes, began to crumble. So I decided to study philosophy, in order to get a better understanding of the relation of philosophy to theology throughout the history of the Church. If I couldn’t avoid bringing philosophy into exegesis, at least I was going to do my best to bring in true philosophy.

I completed the internship required for ordination and continued to teach Sunday school at the Presbyterian church we were attending. But at that point I decided not to pursue ordination, because for me there were too many theological questions unanswered. Two years after finishing seminary, my youngest daughter went through a very seriousness illness, and during the following year I went through what I would call an intellectual crisis concerning theology and the ecclesial practice of Christianity. It wasn’t a personal faith-crisis; my belief in Christ and love for Him was never in question. At the time, I couldn’t have explained exactly what was the problem. Anglicanism and Catholicism were not even on my conceptual horizon. I knew that I didn’t want to go to church to hear any more “man-talk,” i.e. opinions of men. If church were primarily about “man-talk,” I could go to the library and find much more erudite thinkers and writers. With what I was learning from ancient philosophers and medieval theologians, I found myself mentally refuting sermons point-by-point as they were being delivered during every service. Of course I knew we are not supposed to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and yet existentially I couldn’t see any good reason to “go to church.” At one point I stopped going to church altogether because I was so frustrated with the whole scene, a scene that to me seemed spiritually vacuous and human-centered in its continual “man-talk.”

Eventually a friend of mine suggested that I visit an Anglican church, so I did. I went by myself. It was completely different. It was quiet and reverent before the liturgy began. The liturgy itself was beautiful, rich, and meaningful. Here for the first time I found freedom from “man-talk.” There was no personality at the front of the church with a microphone, saying whatever came into his head at that moment. There was no speculative exegesis or theological argumentation which I could critically dismantle. The liturgy is God’s speech spoken back to Him by His people or by one representing them. Of course Holy Communion is the climax of the liturgy, and it too is not “man-talk.” In this sacrament God was speaking to me not through words and propositions, but through a physical action, giving Himself to me in a very intimate way. This was not something toward which I could take a critical, disengaged stance. I could only receive it humbly and gratefully. In that respect, this sacrament almost bypassed my intellect and went straight to my heart. We received Holy Communion at the front of the church, on our knees. The very form of worship communicated something altogether different from the way of taking communion I had previously known. I found God to be present there in the beauty, reverence and silence of the liturgy. In that sacredness my heart, which had been starved under a diet of mere propositions, was drawn anew toward God.

The initial problem was that the Anglican church seemed to have no position on moral issues like abortion and homosexuality, matters on which we could not compromise. Eventually we found an independent Anglican parish that was in agreement with the natural law on these issues, and we were confirmed there in 2003. But I was still thinking about unity, and had started reading the Church Fathers. Already by the following year I found myself with serious questions about Anglicanism, as I sought to understand the underlying reason for the obvious disunity among Christians. I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the differences between Catholics and Protestants. Around that time I started to see ‘ecclesial consumerism’ for what it is.

My Anglican bishop seemed to have no interest in dialogue with the local Catholic bishop with a view to eventual full communion with the bishop of Rome. That troubled me. I knew from reading the Fathers that the bishop of Rome had a unique authority and role as the Church’s principle of unity, because of his succession from the Apostle Peter. When I asked myself why I was following this Anglican bishop, rather than the successor of St. Peter, I didn’t have a good answer. When I asked my Anglican bishop which ecumenical councils we [Anglicans] accept, his answer also troubled me. He said something like “we believe the first four, but are selective about what we believe from the others.” That seemed entirely arbitrary to me. How could we pick and choose from an ecumenical council, or from among ecumenical councils? Either we should treat them as good advice, or we should accept them all. Picking and choosing from them, and then saying that the ones we have chosen are authoritative, was to my mind self-deceiving. Finally, every Sunday while reciting the Creed, when we would get to the line “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” I couldn’t say it, because my conscience was telling me that we (as Anglicans) weren’t saying the word ‘one’ with the same meaning that those bishops who wrote the Creed intended it. We were treating what was a collection of groups not in full communion, as though it were a true unity. But I had come to believe that this was not how the early Church conceived of the unity of the Church. Real unity meant full communion of the bishops, especially with the bishops in communion with the bishop of Rome.

On April 22, 2005 I reached the conclusion that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, and decided that day to seek full communion with the Catholic Church. But my wife wasn’t ready, and it took her about a year to do her own reading, and be ready to enter the Church. Finally she and I and our two daughters were received into full communion with the Church on October 8, 2006. Presently I am teaching philosophy full time at Lindenwood University, while completing my dissertation in philosophy at Saint Louis University.

1. Your passion for Christian Unity is clearly a special part of your own understanding of the Gospel. Talk about how “unity” fits into your understanding of the Gospel.

When asked about marriage, Jesus refers back to the beginning. And here too, in order to understand the place of unity in Christ’s gospel, we have to look back at the beginning. When God made man, He established man in a unity, that is, an order consisting of various harmonies. There was friendship between God and man, shown by the fact that God walked with them in the cool of the day. They also enjoyed an internal harmony such that their lower appetites were ordered to reason, and their bodies were ordered to their souls so that they were immortal. They also enjoyed a harmony with the rest of creation; they exercised dominion over nature in a way that we do not presently enjoy. And finally they enjoyed a social harmony between the two of them. Had they not sinned, every child that would have come into the world would have become a participant in that social harmony, and in that way the initial harmony between them would have spread over the whole world, as a peace and harmony between all peoples. (CCC, 376)

Adam’s sin destroyed each of those harmonies. We see that in Cain’s murder of Abel, and especially at what happened at Babel. Origen points out, “Where there is sin, there is multiplicity, there are schisms, there are heresies, there are dissensions.” St. Augustine likewise, says, “Adam himself is therefore now spread out over the whole face of the earth. Originally one, he has fallen, and, breaking up as it were, he has filled the whole earth with the pieces.” The prophet Isaiah likewise says, “We had all gone astray like sheep, each of us was following his own way.” (Isaiah 53:6) The result of sin is described by the prophet as each one following his own way. Contrast that with Christ’s statement in John, where He refers to the Gentiles being joined to the New Israel, and says that they will become “one flock with one shepherd. (John 10:16)

God’s purpose in Christ is not only the salvation of the individual human person, but the restoration of the human race to unity in Him. We see this already at Pentecost. Peoples of all nations were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and the Apostles were given the gift of speaking in all their languages. In this way Pentecost reveals how the Church is to be a reversal of Babel. Isaiah spoke of this, saying, “The mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it.” It will be a “house of prayer for all the peoples.” (Isaiah 2:2; 56:7) Being reconciled to God through Christ is also the means by which all human beings are to be reconciled to each other; it is in this way that the Church reverses Babel. We refer to this universal character of the Church, by which every division effected at Babel is healed in Christ, as the catholicity of the Church.

For this reason, unity is at the very center of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the unity of God and man in Jesus Christ is at the center of His gospel, in the greatest union of all time, God united to man in the incarnation of Christ. Through union with the incarnate Christ, our friendship with God is restored, and so likewise is the social harmony between one another, as one family of God, the household of faith, the Body of Christ. In Christ God has reconciled us not only to Himself but also to one another. To become a Christian is to be incorporated into this unity, the New Israel, the Church. Christ’s desire for the unity of His followers can be seen clearly in John 17, where He prays infallibly that we would be one, as He and the Father are one, so that the world would believe that the Father sent the Son.

I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one. … I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me. (John 17:11, 20-23)

By our unity with one another, across every tribe, tongue, people and nation, we demonstrate to the world that something supernatural is at work here, because we transcend the sort of nationalism and racism that views others who are different as a threat to be defeated or subdued. When nations are joined to Christ in His Body, they no longer take up weapons against each other. Natural man tries to do this through the United Nations, but this can be done only by a supernatural unity, which is the Body of Christ. So the unity and catholicity of the Church are together a sign to the world that the One whose Name we bear as Christians was from God, because this kind of unity cannot come from man, but only from God. On the other hand, when Christians are divided against each other, we obscure the gospel and diminish its credibility. Disunity among Christians is an offense against Christ and His gospel, not only because it hides the gospel of Christ from the world, but especially because it contradicts the unity at the heart of the gospel, and in that sense denies the gospel.

(More of the interview coming….)

-What do you think of the President?
-What is your position on abortion?
-What do you believe about the legalization of gay marriage?
-Are you in favor of any version of Federally controlled health care?
-What is your church’s definition of the inspiration and authority of scripture?
-What is a brief definition of the Trinity?
-How does your church’s beliefs differ from Roman Catholicism?

Unless your church is very unusual, the first three questions will draw unanimous and vocal responses from everyone. The last three questions will draw considerable silence and much less coherent and confident answers.

Is it an anomaly that the culture-wide impression of Christians increasingly relates to their positions on social and cultural and not to their beliefs about the Gospel?

I’ve explained this many times: the Biblical culture “war” is not a war. It’s the proclamation of a victorious Christ and his ultimate claims over the world, the nations and every person. Jesus created, empowered and invested himself in a movement centered around the Gospel. That movement is a sign of the Kingdom of God and that Kingdom is the triumph of the only “culture” with significant impact on the Christian.

Of course, Christians will have a view of social and political issues that is influenced by the righteousness, justice and compassion of God. Christian vocations in the world should reflect that compassion and justice.

The church is the ultimate counter-culture. It’s been demonstrated more than adequately hundreds of times in history that if the church becomes more concerned with the manifestation of the Kingdom in society than within its own community, worship, discipleship and spiritual formation, it will become a tool of forces in practical opposition to Christ.

The following is an excerpt from my August 2006 post The Tactics of Failure: Why The Culture War Makes Sense To Spiritually Empty Evangelicals.

I am suggesting, therefore, that the increasing interest in the culture war among evangelicals is not an example of a reinvigorated evangelicalism remaking its culture. Instead, I believe the intense focus by evangelicals on political and cultural issues is evidence of a spiritually empty and unformed evangelicalism being led by short-sighted leaders toward a mistaken version of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The Culture War makes sense to Christians who have little or no idea how to be Christians in this culture except to oppose liberals and fight for a conservative political and social agenda- an agenda often less than completely examined in the light of scripture, reason, tradition and experience. Those evangelicals- like Greg Boyd- who have challenged or broken the identification with the political right can testify to how they are immediately viewed. Dissenting evangelicals are labeled as pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro- Democrat instantly. The rhetoric of the culture warriors is relentless in associating dissenting evangelicals of every kind with the issues of abortion and homosexuality. No one could be blamed for believing that evangelicalism was a modestly spiritual movement with the goal of banning abortion and gay marriage.

In this scenario, there are a number of bizarre takes. The SBC’s most well known theologian doesn’t write books of theology. He hosts a daily talk radio program on cultural war issues. Rod Parsley may preach about miracles, but he uses his influence to elect candidates and promote political causes. Politicians elected by evangelicals get re-elected by appealing to the hot button culture war issues, but their positions on issues like gambling or Aid to Africa are unpredictable and often unknown. The Left Behind movies become video games where the godless are shot by Christians defending themselves. And of course, Ann Coulter appears on TBN, promoting her take on why evangelicals ought to care about the influence of real “godless” liberals.

Where is the Gospel? Where is the missional calling of the Christian? Where is the church’s ministry of spiritual formation? Where are ministries of Word and Sacrament? All of these are increasingly buried under doublespeak and culture war rhetoric. Evangelicalism is being betrayed by many of its leaders who are building their “ministries” by the appeal to anything but the Gospel and compassion of Jesus.

The culture war agenda increasingly makes sense to evangelicals who are spiritually unformed, distracted and misled. I cannot approve of Greg Boyd’s theology of God’s knowledge, but I can say that his stand against the encroachments of the culture warriors- encroachments that come from outside the church and seek to dictate the work of the ministry itself- is commendable.

Why is Ann Coulter on TBN? Because we understand her and her war against liberals.

We are to be the best possible Christian citizens while we are here. And while we are here, our passionate pursuit is God’s counter-cultural movement. We are to be formed by Christ, not by the culture war. And these days, it’s not hard to see the difference.

A growing Anglican church has a lot of evangelicals to educate in the basics of liturgy. Rev. Eric Dudley is a wonderful preacher and a fine teacher. In this presentation, he takes an hour to guide you through the basics of Anglican liturgy. Many of you in the IM audience will learn a tremendous amount about the larger, deeper tradition in the Anglican and Episcopal churches. Listen to his explanation of not being “sermon centered” and what is an “Anglican altar call.”

The Nuts and Bolts of Anglican Liturgy from St. Peter's Anglican Church on Vimeo.

In 1983 I was finishing seminary and serving as youth minister at a church near the seminary and populated by mostly seminary students and their families. Among the non-seminarians was a single mother and her 15-year old son Bryan. Bryan was what some would call “special needs.” Severely autistic, Bryan gave no outward signs of communication. He lived in a self-contained world of a few repeated movements.

Bryan and his mother had been part of the church for years and were much loved. Bryan accompanied his mom to adult Bible study, worship and Wednesday fellowship meals. She gave him commands for everything. To any observer, it appeared that nothing much registered with Bryan and nothing came from him in any form of communication.

One day, Bryan’s mother came to see our pastor and asked that he baptize Bryan. While we could not see his faith in Christ, she could, and as his mother, she was asking that he be baptized and be included as a professing member of the congregation.

If you aren’t a Baptist, let me give you the short course of why this was a problem. We believe that a person who is baptized must be able to make a credible and intelligible profession of faith as an individual before a local church. Not to be saved, but to become a member. Despite whatever we do on “infant dedication Sundays,” baptism remains, in every Baptist church, an entrance into the local congregation by way of one’s own confession of faith in Jesus.

Credo-baptism can be confusing to non-Baptists, because we don’t believe that there is any saving action in the act of immersion itself, but that the confession of faith in Christ that occurs in Baptism (or even AS baptism, if you like) is evidence that a person has placed faith in Christ and received the grace of God.

There are other, secondary, aspects to baptism that also come into play. For example, baptism is a “pledge” of a conscience that rests upon Christ and an “appeal” to enter into fellowship with the people of God and the Lord’s Table. I’m not trying to start baptism argument #256 here (and I’ll moderate accordingly), but these aspects of our Baptist view of baptism are important to what happened next.

Our pastor- a brilliant preacher and scholar- stalled. He didn’t know what to do. He told Bryan’s mother that he needed to get a advisement and input from the leaders of the church, since he would be undertaking an action of behalf of that congregation.

As you can anticipate, the congregation and church leadership were divided. One group said that Bryan’s mother was the person who we should pay attention to. She, more than anyone else in the church, was capable of speaking to Bryan’s spiritual condition. If she said Bryan understood the Gospel and was trusting Jesus, then baptize him.

The other group, which included yours truly, said that Bryan could not fulfill our church’s constitutional requirements for church membership and should, as Matt Schmucker says in his piece, be treated as one of the church’s children. In this church, that was not a matter of being the target of exclusion or revivalistic preaching, but of nurture, care and inclusion in every way.

What happened? Our pastor baptized Bryan. In the water, he talked to the congregation about the love Jesus had for Bryan and how Bryan’s condition was a constant parable of our own condition apart from God’s grace. He was confident that Bryan, in his way, responded to that love and was a believer.

I was, I believe, both right and wrong.

Our church constitution was, as Baptist churches see these matters, correct. Bryan was not able to make a profession/confession of faith in the terms in which our church defined those things.

But the Gospel is a greater thing than a church constitution, and if you don’t know those occasions when one needs to give way to the other, there is no point in having a church constitution at all.

In our tradition, those who come seeking baptism are not doing a work, but are giving testimony to what God has done for and in them. In the saving grace of God, they are passive. Should we put the active aspect of baptism before the passive aspect of the grace of God in salvation, we will misrepresent the Gospel.

Bryan was that test. I was right in how I read our church order. I was wrong in not seeing that Bryan and his mother were giving us a chance to magnify the Gospel.

My pastor was a wiser man and today I am as well. I do not know what happened to Bryan, but I look forward to seeing him in the Kingdom that is to come, when all of our brokenness falls away. In the meantime, may the Christian community be a witness to greater and greater grace.

“You called and you shouted
broke through my deafness
now I’m breathing in
and breathing out
I’m alive again!

You shattered my darkness
washed away my blindness
now I’m breathing in
and breathing out
I’m alive again!
I’m alive again!”

-Matt Maher, “I’m Alive Again,” 2009

I was delighted to discover that I was right, and that Pr. Zahl was the minister preaching and leading the service.

Holy Cross has two worship centers. The smaller one where this service was held is a beautiful chapel that seats approximately a hundred. I was one of approximately 15 worshipers, all adults and mostly older than me. We did the Eucharistic liturgy Rite I from the Book of Common prayer, minus music. (Interesting, there was no music in either of the services I attended this week.)

When you’ve been to a Catholic Church and then come to a Protestant chapel, both liturgical of course, the differences make an immediate impression. The absence of statuary, immediately. The absence of the stations of the cross. The more accessible worship books. The liturgy without the Catholic elements. And the presence of the preaching pulpit.

My wife attended two services at the Catholic church and I attended one with her. In both, the “sermon,” amounted to a brief encyclopedia-type description of the particular subject of the day, in the first case the angel Michael’s three traditional responsibilities, and the second a very brief description of the significance of St. Jerome. The priest was erudite and eloquent, but this would not be recognized as preaching by most Protestants. It would be more accurately categorized as footnotes to the particular aspect of tradition presented in the calendar or in the readings. They were appropriate, but the homily is not the sermon in a Protestant sense. That’s been apparent in all my visiting of masses.

The chapel at Holy Cross had a large, elevated preaching pulpit, close to the congregation and at some distance from the altar. The architectural presence of both a large altar and a large pulpit is significant. When the lessons are concluded, Pr. Zahl preached for 20 minutes on the theme of the Old Testament and Gospel readings.

I enjoyed the sermon immensely, in no small measure because Pr. Zahl has his father Paul Zahl’s voice, cadence and approach to a text. Paul Zahl is an unusual preacher who is unafraid to be vulnerable, humorous and highly personal in application. John does all three as well as his father (and I say that as a compliment to him in making his father’s strengths his own unique strengths as a preacher.)

I was truly ministered to by the message and, of course, the following Eucharist. It seems that traditionalism is alive and well in Charleston, as the altar was placed ad orientum and Pr. Zahl stood/knelt with the congregation facing the altar for much of the service.

I identified myself to Pr. Zahl and he was surprised he knew me so well. Good ol IM family. Always amazing. He was very gracious in what he had to say to me and to others about me. I hope I can see him in the future and spend some time together. He understands what I am doing here at IM and I feel a real kinship with these Gospel-centered, application loving Episcopalians.

Jeff: “More experienced, mature Christians who should be teaching the young about and sharing with them their great Christian heritage are instead asked to ‘get with it’ or ‘get out.’”

Imonk: “I’m watching a father bring his 5 year old (?) to mass, take his hand and dip it in the water, make the cross for him, then take him to his seat and show him how to genuflect. … I am especially impressed with how a small child and an 80 year old man are functioning within the same world of thought, ritual and understanding. … I see evangelicals doing less and less that will hold anyone in the faith into their 80s. If I were 80, I wouldn’t go near 99% of evangelical churches.”

I’ve noticed that much of the discussion along these lines in this thread has tended towards the “yes, it is tragic, without older people in the congregation we are losing the wisdom of the sages of the faith” line of thought. And I would agree that is certainly true. But I wonder if it is only half the tragedy of the the picture that contains very few elderly (and even somewhat younger than outright elderly).

I wonder if the other half of that picture is that the grandpa whose brain’s speech center has been ravaged by stroke can still teach his 5 year old grandson to make the sign of the cross and genuflect. (I’m having trouble coming up with anything non-verbal in my own protestant tradition.) The grandma suffering from Alzheimer’s still has the light go on when the hymn she learned as a child is sung. The aging man crotchety from arthritis pain or the aging woman fragile with osteoporosis or the person being consumed with cancer – who really aren’t able or suitable to pal around with the youth, or teach the kid’s classes, or even help stack the chairs or take up the offering anymore – can be in the midst of the congregation, seen and heard singing the Doxology in a way that can only come out of intense struggle with the meaning of the same words over and over in the midst of long term pain and hardship.

Of course, all of the above is a form of the older teaching the younger, too. But I doubt it is the first image of “teaching the younger” that comes to mind even to those younger folk sympathetic to the idea of older folk having a role in a congregation. And, in the current situation that iMonk describes for the elderly within evangelicalism, I also suspect that the loss is not just the younger missing out on the wisdom of the older. There is also the effect on the elderly who feel rejected for uselessness or who lose contact with younger people.

With my mostly non-liturgical protestant background, I struggled to come up with the examples I gave above. Is it easier for those of you with long-term liturgical formation to come up with examples of continued meaningful participation by the elderly that you have seen in real life? Or am I just seeing greener grass on the other side of the fence in hoping there could possibly be contributing place for me in the midst of some congregation somewhere if (when?) I end up a non-sagely, non-productive, frail, and/or mentally diminished elderly (or even not so elderly) person at some point in life? From my middle-aged vantage point, I’m not seeing a happy path forward at the present time.

I have some thoughts on all of this for later. For now, it’s off to Poe’s Tavern and a harbor cruise, then Charleston market and The Hominy Grill.