sports. The point I wish to make above all is that the argument that any rejection of a practice should be based on the fact that it is seen as ‘Catholic’ is both insufficient and ecumenically flawed. The larger issue is always consistency with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Many of my fellow New England Congregationalists, especially, I would suspect, those raised in that tradition, would be shocked to read this interpretation of ‘free church’ worship from colonial days to 1880. In it, Henry Martyn Dexter affirms the right of any local Congregational Church to establish worship which may utilize the ‘higher church’ Anglican ritual, a liturgy whose roots are in Catholic tradition. Dexter writes:
So long as it (the church) does nothing which shall give reasonable ground of offense to the other churches with which it is in fellowship, it may order its prayers, its praise and all the methods of its worship to its own entire content; and its pastor, remaining true to our fundamentals of doctrine and polity, though enrobed and endowed with ‘chausable, alb, amice and maniple, with two blessed towels and all their appendages, would remain, in good faith and entirely, a Congregational minister still.’39
This quotation affirms the fact that there is a historical basis, even in churches perceived to be the most non ritualistic, for the kind of higher liturgical style so often deemed as ‘Catholic.’ The key to this passage is the phrase regarding ‘remaining true to doctrine and polity.’ This leads one to appreciate that the keys to a Congregational approach are found more in one’s actual theology and establishment of church governance and far less on worship style. In fact, this interpretation actually expands the ‘free church’ tradition to make room for elements of worship heretofore seen as being something other than purely ‘Protestant.’
Before going on much further, I would be completely remiss were I to ignore the outbreak of clergy abuse scandals which burst onto the international Catholic scene in the early twenty-first century. These scandals also served to contribute to the sense of suspicion of Catholics of which we have been speaking. Protestant clergy have not had the requirements about priestly celibacy, as we know, and the great reformer Martin Luther himself has been held up as an exemplar of the clerical right to marry. This area of mandatory priestly celibacy has been one that has caused many a Protestant to be quizzical over the years.
The barrage of reports concerning illegal and abusive sexual activity among Catholic priests who had made the promise or vow of celibacy may very well have exacerbated this sense of suspicion. Likewise this abuse crisis set off a variety of reactions within the Roman Catholic community which are reflective of the vast differences that have existed not only on this issue but on related sexual matters as well. As I noted before, I will speak to this at a subsequent point in this book. For now, it is sufficient to note the fact that the headlines these abuse cases made contributed to a reinforcement of some previously held suspicions about the Catholic Church among those who claim Protestantism as their heritage.
In any attempt to be both historically accurate and to attempt to lay out all important issues so that true dialogue between Catholics and Protestants may be achieved, it is necessary to acknowledge an anti-Protestantism existent among Catholics as well. As with anti-Catholicism, we are now seeing the remnants of historical battles which are simply not as relevant to this generation or this culture as to generations and this culture in its past. For Catholics as for Protestants, some of the antagonism stems from forces beyond religious dogma, though certainly religion is part of an often complicated mix. The battle between the Irish and the British, as we have noted with respect to conflicts in Northern Ireland, is rooted in political decisions quite removed from discussions of theology or the polity of one church over and against another. Whatever the causation, there has been a historic pragmatic impact upon behavior. The facts that I never set foot in the ‘Protestant’ funeral home in my native Putnam for the entirety of my youth or that several Catholic parents I have known were troubled that their Boy or Girl Scout son or daughter had to recite the ‘Protestant Our Father’40 at a scouting event is most certainly indicative of something!
Theologically speaking, if members of a church accept the claim that they belong to ‘the one true church’41 as many Catholics have done throughout the years, based on what they have been taught was the teaching of the church, there does evolve a certain sense of the deficiency of other churches and the attendant supposition that Christian unity would best be served by the conversion of Protestants to the Catholic faith. Does this position represent an anti Protestantism as such? While the degree to which the Catholic would go to promote the conversion of the Protestant would most likely be a determining criteria in responding to that question, it could be argued convincingly that there remains even today a tendency within many members of the Roman Catholic Church to have knowledge that they as a church have something that others don’t. On some level, even among Catholics who would freely label themselves as progressive, the need to assert the special place of Roman Catholicism strikes me as a part of their mindset.
Bear with me as I take you through what may at first seem like a diversion. I am a Boston Red Sox baseball fan. To Red Sox fans, the Yankees are the archrival and the passion between the teams intense. I have a wonderful relative, someone very close to me, in fact, who happened to grow up in Massachusetts, home base of Red Sox Nation! When this relative of mine discovered back in late 1990s that I was leaving the Catholic Church and then becoming a Protestant minister, I think it is fair to say he was not pleased. He comes from a family with deep Catholic roots going back many generations. He was also extremely supportive of me as I pursued my training for the Permanent Diaconate in the Catholic Church. Now, fortunately, he is also a wonderfully kind and good humored guy and has been consistently terrific to all of us in what has become a large extended family. In his own unique and jocular way, he loves to talk about ‘how I’ve gone over to the other team.’ He says that I have left the Red Sox and joined the Yankees, the implication being that there is something better about the Red Sox and worse about the Yankees. While I think he’s correct on that premise, I happen to disagree with him regarding its applicability to one’s church of choice.
To be honest, in my lived experience as a Protestant and my prior experiences as someone seeking to learn about Protestant churches and theology going back into my late high school and my collegiate days, I have not seen anything within individual Protestant denominations with respect to one another along the lines I have described in the example of my Catholic relative. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that while his reaction was unique to him, the underlying need to identify the primacy of the Catholic Church as, in some way, THE church, is one held in common by Catholics across the conservative-progressive spectrum.
I am not saying that it is not important to Protestants to see the Reformation approach as more Biblical or sensible to them. Nor am I saying that there are not large numbers of Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians or Baptists who are deeply connected to their heritage. Yet despite these connections, it has also been a typical occurrence for a Protestant to join a Methodist church while living in one state and then a Congregational Church in another, to be Presbyterian in New Jersey and join the UCC in New Hampshire. My experience with Roman Catholics, including my reflection on my own evolving mindset through the years, is that there is a Catholic impulse to see the Catholic Church as THE church and to somehow measure other churches against it. In fact, a quote that has long stood out to me is the one in which someone contended that the Catholic Church is ‘the one church that sees itself as THE church.’42
How often do we hear of Catholics who have decided to leave Roman Catholicism and have found themselves in the Episcopal Church, landing there with the claim that ‘it is the closest thing to the Catholic Church.’? Is the implication there that the ideal by which all ecclesial bodies are to be measured is that of Roman Catholicism or is it simply an expression of spiritual comfort level? My experience as a Catholic Permanent Deacon who taught in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program in my parish, a process by which people enter the Catholic Church as adults, is that there exists a yearning among a large number of Catholics, even among those sincerely and consistently ecumenically
