Following Jesus into the Church
The local Catholic Herald is running an article on the "Coming Home" gathering that I spoke at a couple weeks ago.
That gathering was the first time that Paul McCusker, of Focus on the Family and creator of the famous Odyssey radio program for children, had spoken about his entrance into the Church last August. He was a bit nervous and somewhat overwhelmed that there was that much interest in his journey.
They did misspell my name but I, the chronically challenged speller, can't really cast any stones here.
But they did catch a good bit of the spirit of my journey.
What won't be clear from the article is that I *was* reading all the same books as most evangelicals (Newman, etc.) but the primary reason I entered was not intellectual (although I have a strong intellectual streak) or historical (although I adore history, was a history major, etc.) or about issues of authority or as a refuge from the culture.
Which seems to be the very thing that that so enrages certain individuals who haunt my blogging steps and which
strikes them as irreducibly foreign or smacking of the unspeakable "P" word. I didn't enter the Church for her own sake. The Church, by herself, did not loom largest in my consciousness or calculations. I did not fall in love with the Church.
(Please understand: I'm not dissing those who do enter for those reasons. Falling in love with the Church is truly a wonderful, blessed thing. I'm just saying that it wasn't my path. There are many wonderful, blessed paths into the fullness of the faith. The "I read my way into the Church" journey is only one albeit the one that has been lionized in our generation.)
I entered the Church to follow Jesus, because I believed Jesus desired it, indeed, commanded it. Because I wanted to be at the center of His Body and purposes on earth, to be where His central redemptive act, the central act of history, was the center of worship.
Entering the heart of the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ in order to follow Christ. I emphasized this in my talk because I wanted those who might hear of it in our very evangelical town to know it was more than possible.
How is it that so simple a thing should strike serious Catholics as contrary to "Catholic sensibilities"?
posted by Sherry W @ 6:49 AM
21 Comments
21 Comments:
Because the Church is the privileged place of encounter with Jesus and you consistently split Jesus apart from His Church. These two cannot be sundered or separated. As Tertullian said: Jesus is never without His Church. That's why Catholics think you are Protestant or not Catholic enough. Catholics instinctively do not separate the two and they do not regard the Church only with obedience, they regard the Church with love because it is of Jesus. You also don't understand that the Church isn't regarded for Her own sake. That isn't Catholic belief. The Church is always of Jesus and is connected intrinsically to Him. If this has been your impression, then you have been under a misimpression. And this might be the reason you have misrepresented Catholics as not being followers of Christ first, but rather of the Church. It's a common Protestant misperception. I don't know how you were catechized, but if you read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, you will see that it states specifically that the Church is the extension of Jesus Himself. You seem to see the Church still as an institution, rather than as the presence of Jesus among us. It has some institutional characteristics, because it exists in this world and has to support its mission, and it has a history, which it cannot dismiss as unimportant and which bears the mark of God's presence in this world, but it is primarily and obviously God's presence among us.
You are regarded by many as not having "Catholic sensibilities" because you still see the Church through Protestant eyes, primarily as an institution and not as a privileged place of encounter, founded by Jesus for those who follow Him. And you charge Catholics with regarding the Church as you do and as thinking that this caricature is more important than Christ when they do not.
Dave:
Nonsense.
It is *exactly and precisely* that I saw the Church as the "privileged place of encounter, founded by Jesus for those who follow him" that I became Catholic and have spent past 20 years in the Church.
It is *exactly and precisely* that I did not want to separate Christ and his Church that I went on a very long journey.
And a familiar warning:
On this blog, we accept what someone tells us they thing or believe in good faith. We are civil, we ask civil questions if we don't understand what someone means, we do not impune another commenter's motives, and we do not tell or imply that someone is not *really* a Catholic or should leave the Church.
And in your case, i'm going to require that you sign all your posts with your real name or they will be deleted immediately. No aliases. You need to take responsibility - lasting responsibility -- for your own words.
Sherry,
I didn't say or imply that you leave the Church. Otherwise, I would have said exactly that. I didn't say I didn't believe what you wrote. I said I disagreed with it.
But you do always seem to have a problem with the Church as opposed to discussing Jesus Christ completely separately. I'm saying that's what comes across from your writing, whether or not that's what you actually think. And I'm also saying that you tend to discuss the Church more in institutional terms than you do as a place of encounter.
I do have a question: if you did enter the Church "exactly and precisely" because it was a privileged place of encounter with Jesus Christ, then why wouldn't you love the Church?
DAVE
Dave:
Thanks for signing your name. The rules of engagement was generic, not aimed at you. I have one recurring troll who tends to hit and run and routinely does all the above and this is exactly the kind of topic that draws trolls. I almost didn’t post about my conversation story because I’m so tired of the same old, same old but then thought “how ridiculous!” Sorry to have implied that you were doing the same.
You wrote:
“But you do always seem to have a problem with the Church as opposed to discussing Jesus Christ completely separately. I'm saying that's what comes across from your writing, whether or not that's what you actually think.”
First of all – I was describing what motivated my conversion *20 year ago* - right? Not now. I was joining the Bride but my eyes were on the Groom.
Now I have a question for you: Why is it that you assume that If I or other posters on ID speak of the centrality of following Jesus that we must be “having a problem with the Church”{ or indeed talking about Christi “completely separately” from the Church.
I ask because you seem to be reading into my comments things I do not believe and have certainly never said. Never – EVER – in private or public conversation have I ever said anything of the kind – because I don’t think anything of the kind.
Blogs aren’t catechisms or theological treatises. The best you can do is a brief essay which absolutely requires that you leave 99% of your convictions unsaid and focus on the 1% that is your point.
Why would you assume that a blogger like me, who clearly trusts revelation and treasures the teaching of the Church, and has stated over and over ad nausem that I strive vigilantly to think and teach with the Church, doesn’t believe the 99% that must, perforce, remain unspoken?
Why is it that to talk of “following Jesus” directly seems to trigger this reaction and all sorts of people descend, attributing all kinds of beliefs and ideas to us that we have never held and sometimes didn’t even know existed!
Here at ID, we emphasize Christ because 1) he is the center, the Alpha and Omege, the beginning and end, the Lord, Husband, Savior, Redeemer of his Church and the Church receives all her significance from her privileged relationship with Him 2) because all the evidence suggests that many Catholics have a relationship of some kind (weak or strong) with the Church but not with Christ.
Before you (or anyone else) explodes, let me share a single conversation that I had just 5 days ago, while at breakfast with a diocesan vocation director (not here – from another diocese in the east)
This vocation director is one of the “new” priests. Only ordained a few years, in his clerics, orthodox in his theology and traditional-leaning in his liturgical convictions. The classic new-orthodox-JPII-generation-Benedict-is my-German-Shepherd priest.
In the course of our conversation, I asked him this question:
Would you say that your candidates for priesthood are disciples?
His instant response: “No!”
MY obvious next question: “Why not?”
His response (and I quote) “They don’t know how. No one has ever talked to them about it. They have knowledge about Christ. They don’t have a personal relationship with Christ.”
He was talking about men considering priesthood – discerning a call to become a *alter Christus* – but they don’t yet have a relationship with the great High Priest himself.
Some of us start with a relationship with the Church (mediated through the sacraments and our families’ faith) and some of us like myself, started with a direct relationship with Jesus.
Those of us who start with Jesus alone must move in obedience toward his Body on earth, the Church. Those of us who are raised in the Church must enter into personal relationship with the heart, Lord, savior of that Body of which we are already a part.
All of us must journey to the same place where we fully embrace Christ in the heart of his Church. Our particular individual journeys to that common end will look rightfully different because our starting places were different.
Sherry,
First of all, that's anecdotal evidence from one person. With due respect, I think people from Protestant backgrounds automatically assume that Catholics always have a weak relationship with Christ. I'll say it again: the Church was given to us BY CHRIST so that we would be in constant communion WITH HIM.
I've heard Catholics (some of whose names you would know) say exactly the same thing about Protestants: they know Christ, but they don't have a personal relationship with Christ (they didn't use the term "personal relationship" but the meaning was the same). They say all Protestant can do is talk about Christ, but Catholics can really know Him or commune with Him or encounter Him.
This is why I don't think, for all the ecumenical talk that goes on, that Protestants and Catholics are really very much alike. We have very different definitions of what knowing Christ and having a real friendship with Him actually means.
Dave
Dave:
Must I point out yet again that our knowledge in this area is hardly based upon a single conversation?
Of course, the breakfast conversation with the vocation director was a single conversation. But it was typical of thousands of such conversations we (the Institute) have had with cardinals, bishops, priests, pastors, religious, and lay people all over North America and Australia and New Zealand and Indonesia and Rome and Canada over the past 14 years.
Not one. Not a dozen. Thousands. As in at least five thousand. In depth. Private. One on one. Where people say stuff they normally never acknowledge or don't even grasp the significance of.
Not to mention all the papal and magisterial teaching that explicitly acknowledges this reality, things like the Pew Survey that dramatically document this reality, and all the pastors and other leaders I've talked to who are all wrestling with the same reality.
I didn't come to this conclusion as a *Protestant*.
I came to it after 20 years of some of the broadest and deepest immersion in the global Church, in her theology, her actual practice and the real lived spiritual lives of thousands of cradle Catholics.
I find it amazing that people still write as though I was just confirmed yesterday and am simply projecting my untroubled evangelical assumptions on the world.
Remember please, when you write me, you are writing *a Catholic* - not a Protestant - a full blown Catholic who actually has a lot of specialized knowledge in this particular area.
Our conclusions in this area aren't based *at all* upon my long ago experiences as a Protestant child or student. And it is “our” conclusions. I’m the only former Protestant around here. Surrounded by a sea of exceedingly well formed cradle Catholics, I am.
Our conclusions are based entirely upon the Church's teaching in this area and upon our experiences *as Catholics* and the experiences and theological and spiritual struggles of thousands of other Catholics, most of whom were born and bred and many of whom are in significant positions of leadership.
Of course, there are Protestants - even many - who don't have a personal relationship with Christ but talk a good game. I don't know a single serious Protestant who would deny it for a minute. Being Protestant is no more an automatic pass in this area than being Catholic or Orthodox is. Indeed, I have to constantly ask myself those questions because I could become a clanging cymbal just as easily as anyone else.
But you are desperately misled if you think that there aren't many non-Catholics who know Christ in the most profound way - who are towering spiritual giants and saints, laying down their lives for Christ in the most extraordinary ways. They don't have access to the fullness of the faith or the sacraments but what they do have; they are living with a purity and intensity that certainly puts me to shame. And Christ is honoring that.
Saints have always recognized other saints and passionate disciples will always resonate with other passionate disciples - regardless of the very real differences between Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. True holiness, true friendship with Christ is fundamentally the same, even if nourished by different means and flavored by different histories and cultures.
Which is the basis for the Church's very explicit teaching on ecumenism - which can only exist between true fellow Christians - is truly authoritative and says explicitly that we can and should learn from one another - without, in any way, denying or diminishing the fullness of all that has been revealed through the Church.
And now I have to leave this conversation – I have got to work.
Dave:
A question for you:
If the majority of Catholics have true deep friendships with Christ, are true disciples, how is it that 75% of American Catholics are not in Mass on any given Sunday?
I'm a little hesitant to interrupt the dialogue between Sherry and Dave, but decided to add my comment anyway.
My own conversaion back to Catholicism (I was raised Catholic but spent many years as a Buddhist) was motivated by a desire to follow Christ, who is the center of my life. The Church part came later - and not without struggle. I blogged last week about my struggle on that aspect here: http://susanjoan.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/a-tent-large-and-strong-enough/
I'm a little hesitant to interrupt the dialogue between Sherry and Dave, but decided to add my comment anyway.
My own conversaion back to Catholicism (I was raised Catholic but spent many years as a Buddhist) was motivated by a desire to follow Christ, who is the center of my life. The Church part came later - and not without struggle. I blogged last week about my struggle on that aspect here: http://susanjoan.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/a-tent-large-and-strong-enough/
Susan:
No worries. It's wonderful to have another voice. Thanks very much for sharing your experience.
And I'm working and praying for a friend who is stumbling on the Church as organization vs Jesus in the Church. The friend's issue is the scandal, and priests who fall down on the job in other ways besides the scandal. I'm trying to help her see that sinful as members are the Church is the Body of Christ in the world.
I'm cradle Catholic and I certainly have a tendency to see/read 'Church' as the bureaucratic institution. I come here to ID partly to be reminded that the focus needs to be Jesus. As Tom at Disputations said a few days ago:
"The problem is, Jesus is not a fact. God did not so love the world that He gave His only Proposition. In the beginning was not the Datum."
It's the person that matters most.
Sherry,
You always cite the Pew Report, but never the CARA Report, which corrected several of the statements in the PEW Report.
Basically, I stand by my statement that Protestants and Catholics see the encounter with Jesus in very different terms. I don't think there's a "one size fits all" to determine who has an authentic relationship with Jesus and who does not. And the Catholic Church recognizes that. And the Catholic Church has always taught that those who sincerely seek God are saved, not just since Vatican II.
My problem with the ecumenical movement isn't what you wrote about. No one is denying that there are holy people everywhere. All I said is that Protestantism and Catholicism are really very different things. I think that's a valid observation. That's not saying there aren't good people in both camps. It's just saying that ecumenism as it's conducted today is making some assumptions about how easy it is for us to understand each other and I don't think it is.
Dave
Dave:
In fact, I did quote from the CARA in both March and April and in the context of the Pew survey - here
reporthttp://blog.siena.org/2008/04/rcia-as-young-adult-movement.html
and here:
http://blog.siena.org/2008/04/cara-survey-on-belief-practice-among-us.html
and here:
http://blog.siena.org/2008/03/warning-long-post-ahead.html
You haven't been reading ID very long. I would suggest that you do a blog search before commenting in order to familiarize yourself with the conversations that have taken place to date.
In 1600 posts over the past 16 months, we have covered a lot of territory.
Elaine:
Thanks so much for adding your two cents. God bless Tom!
Dave:
You never answered my question:
If the majority of Catholics have true deep friendships with Christ, are true disciples, how is it that 75% of American Catholics are not in Mass on any given Sunday?
Sherry,
Thank you for sharing. I just think that we all have a yearning for Christ no matter what religious background we come from. I have been a lapsed Catholic, also an evangelical for a while, had very little interest in the Catholic Church for a long time. My mother prayed the Rosary that I would come back to the church. And I don't know, I am back and the relationship that I have with Christ is very real and the effect of the Holy Spirit on my life also is very real, a tremendous change. I can't explain what drew me back. It is only now that I am back that I interest myself in theology and what the Church teaches and the Bible, and church history. I had been very poorly catechized. But my coming home was an emotional or perhaps I should say spiritual thing between my Lord and myself. He is everything to me now. I have taken a deep immersion into Christianity via the Catholic Church and the joy I have in return is immense. He is truly present there. And only after developing a deep relationship with Christ have I become interested in the Saints, in Mary, those who I believe are close to Him, as I am, but myself only here on Earth and not in Heaven. Julie
Julie:
Thank you for sharing your story! Yes, for some of us, it starts with a relationship with Christ that opens the door to everything else.
It never ceases to amaze me, Sherry, how you and Mark Shea keep getting these comments from people who seemingly write as if you're not quite Catholic enough. In my two and a half years in the Catholic Church, I've not once met in person anyone who found my ecclesiology suspect because I used to be Protestant. Or if they have, I haven't heard about it. (I wonder if this is possibly a regional cultural difference, as I'm in Toronto. Dunno.)
A couple of my revert friends need to be reminded from time to time that people who remain Protestant can still live lives of great holiness--even if they're having to do so with one or both hands tied behind their back, spiritually speaking.
Anyway, I liked the newspaper article a lot (despite the glitch with your name). It is so wonderful to read about people coming into full communion with the Church, by whatever path the Holy Spirit may provide for each one.
Dave and Janice, have been the two most vocal commenters along those lines. (Of course, there are always the charming anonymous types who hit and run) Both live in the DC area and I'm fairly certain know one another because their topic and tones and way of descending like some kind of avenging St. Michael upon this blog is so similar.
What fascinates me is the contradictory assumptions at work:
1) That someone who is not born Catholic cannot ever be *really* Catholic. Once a Protestant always a Protestant, I guess, so powerful and terrible is the Protestant blood line. It almost smacks of the "pure blood" paranoia that haunted Spanish Catholicism for so long,
(And note, being Catholic isn't sacramentally based in this take - its all about not sharing a very specific, minority worldview. In other words, it's Protestant to the hilt in its demand for "real" Catholicity by like-mindedness rather than through the sacraments.)
while simultaneously they also seem to hold the untroubled assumption that
2) as life-long Catholics, they somehow magically know what it is like to be this alien creature - a Protestant - and so know that Protestants and Catholics are not really members of the same species: Christian, but are, in fact, really two different and essentially unrelated species.
Janice has said explicitly on several occasions that Protestants are not real Christians and don't have a real relationship with Christ (baptism apparently does not make you one in her estimation - the idea seems to be that you don't have access to the Eucharist, you don't have access to Christ.)
Of course, that is Janice's take on everything. Protestantism is *the* enemy and anyone who doesn't agree with her take on whatever the topic at hand might be, has been corrupted in some way by Protestant ideas. I've seen her accuse cradle Catholic lay people and priests of just that on this blog,
Dave have never said that but just talks as though the differences between Protestants and Catholics are so enormous that they have practically nothing in common.
The obvious question is : how would you know? The real experts on the subject are those of us who have really lived for a significant amount of time and at real depth in both worlds.
No one is more acutely aware of both the real differences and the real commonalities that those of us who have lived both.
Apparently this is a stunning idea but *you could ask us* and listen to what we have lived as though it might shed some light on the topic.
Instead of assuming heterodoxy, stupidity, ignorance, and bad will can be the only reason that we don't agree with you on everything or that we don't blog about your pet topic.
The Holy Spirit blows where He wills. As a wise man once said: in the apostolic age there were no Catholics or Protestants. Only one Baptist! :)
Well. I think that in many cases, Protestant converts to Catholicism are more "Catholic" than many, too many, cradle Catholics, who don't know Catholicism all that well except for their often rare experience at Mass. The Church has gotten so minimalized into just church on Sunday, without an emphasis on the holy spirit, the real presence, what the Mass really is, etc. It is mentioned sometimes, yes, but not hammered home. No wonder it is such a bore for some people. And really, we would be in a much more sorry state without Protestant converts. They refresh us, show us our faith with new eyes. Light a fire under us. Emphasize mission. Remind us of what we have. And I think there are many more commonalities between Protestantism and Catholicism than we know, if we could wipe away all of the misinformation, especialy the prevalent mistruths out there about Catholicism. It's just that we Catholics so frequently are told we are not Christian, or read ugly comments about Catholicism on the internet, see web sites dedicated to lies about our faith, or overhear insults directed at our church at work and elsewhere. Or read newspaper stories that gush over Protestant mission groups that see Catholic countries as mission fields. It is very disheartening and makes you a little gun shy. This is all just my viewpoint, by the way. But that is how I see it. Julie
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