I now attend a evangelical church with my husband and kids but I still consider myself more Catholic than evangelical. I like I started attending because it’s easier on my family. I feel like I don’t really belong to either, just sort of in between both. There still times I think I still want to go back. Your blog is so encouraging to me. I can be a “happy enough” Protestant!

And how is it, after Babel and after Pentecost, we still are so intent about us making us a name for ourselves, much less us making taller-than-thou towers in the sky? That the world may know… what? That we are not One.

Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist – it’s all confounded language. Every word of it, every qualifying adjective and adverb, every shibboleth one can think of, confound it. It’s the Great Confusion – Christian Babylon.

Nevertheless and even so it’s still all in His Name and for His Glory. Which is as close to happy or content this bothered and bewildered pilgrim and self-confessed stranger hopes to get to in this weird world. Be that as it may, I still run to the little towers (any port in a storm), and every time and in each and every one I’ve found myself in excellent company. Which again is close. Maybe closest. I’ll always remember with fondness their names. But not so much their social categories. It just doesn’t matter.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but here I stand. I can’t in good faith make any other claim. For myself or anyone else, near as I can tell.

Even so, come Holy Spirit. Lord have mercy on us all.

However, I have just received my copy of “Towards Baptist Catholicity” by Steven Harmon, and there is something in his last chapter, “What keeps you from becoming Catholic” that resonates with me very much and bears spelling out here:

Like Prof. Harmon, I don’t believe that Christians switching from one imperfect denomination to another, even if that other seems more in line with my present convictions, serves the cause of Christian unity. In the context of his book, recovering Baptist catholicity, as well as in the context of my own involvements in ministries of reconciliation between the various Christian traditions in my country, conversion or “reversion” to the R.C.C. would only serve to increase Evangelical suspicion of anyone who talks about a greater recognition of Tradition or a more sacramental understanding of the ordinances.

Like Charley in an earlier comment, I also don’t believe in “Cafeteria Catholicism”, and since a “convert” or “revert” would have to explicitly declare their adherence to the complete package, I would have to go into this with a lot of reservations, and that would be a rather dishonest thing to do. (My reservations are not the proverbial ones about Mary, the saints, purgatory, the sacrificial character of the mass — all of these can be understood in ways I find acceptable — but rather a too formal and legalistic understanding of what God expects from us and deals with us as believers and as His church, i.e. viewing the succession of laying on of hands as more important than actually teaching the Apostel’s doctrine, viewing the large masses of baptized Catholics who have no idea what being a Christ-follower is as part of the Church while declaring that the Baptists, for example, are not a church in the proper sense, the “ex opere operato” view of teh sacraments which to me is not far removed from a magical understanding, etc.)

I love Catholicism. I love looking at the early church and seeing a primitive version of the Catholic Church, with liturgy, bishops, Eucharist, etc. I love doctrine rooted in history, Bishops whose successors can be traced back to Apostles, and a “Rock” with the keys whose successor is still with us today. But, I’m not Catholic.

I don’t love Protestantism like I love Catholicism. But I’m happy with it. Well … happy enough. I know I can’t be a “Cafeteria Catholic.” (No offense to those that are). For me, if you reject Church authority, then you’re essentially a Protestant. Once you realize that you are a Protestant, then the real work begins. What doctrines am I going to keep? Reject as unbiblical? Why did so many really smart literate early Christians belief “X”, if “X” is clearly unbiblical? Am I a Calvinist? If so, 4 or 5 points?

Even in the Protestant community, there is a tendency to cling to one’s beliefs like they are infallible. Likewise, it’s easy for Calvin, Luther, or your pastor become “pope like” and questioning them can be sacrilege. Which, if you ask me, kinda defeats the purpose of being a Protestant in the first place.

I’m a “happy enough Protestant” because being Protestant is a realization that the church itself, its individual denominations, and even its doctrines, are fallible. It’s a realization that two intellectually honest people can disagree about what the Bible says, and God is not going to step in and give an absolute answer.

Catholicism gives a system for salvation, and can point to the ECF’s and early Christian history to back it up. Protestantism tells me to be secure in my salvation, even though I can never be totally secure in its other doctrines (because the denominations disagree amongst themselves).

So, I’m happy enough to be a Protestant. I’m happy to know I am saved. But not as happy as I would be if Protestantism was one big church, with the same liturgy, with beliefs that had been widely practiced for 2000 years, and with bishops that could be traced back to the first century.