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Would Protestantism suit most religious people now more than Catholicism?
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28-08-2018 1:17am#1
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It’s a list which, no offence, may have been drawn up by Protestants.Looking at differences between Protestants and Catholics, and this is list from the web
Mm. Infallibility preoccupies Protestants a bit but, from the Catholic perspective the Pope isn’t all about infallibility. He’s more about communion. For (some) Protestants, shared baptism is all the communion the church needs; for Catholics, much more is required, and the papacy is an instrument of communion.1. The Pope. Catholics have a Pope, which they consider a vicar for Christ — an infallible stand-in, if you will — that heads the Church. Protestants believe no human is infallible and Jesus alone heads up the Church.
The infallibility thing kind of falls out of that. For Catholics, papal infallibility in the Catholic tradition, is a manifestation of the infallibility/indefectibility of the church. Protestants (mostly) agree that the church is infallible/indefectible; they just don’t buy the role of the papacy as a manifestation of communion and, it follows, as a manifestation of infallibility/indefectibility.
Protestants don’t do big, fancy cathedrals? Have you been to London recently? Or, if you want more contemporary examples, have you looked at some of the more spectacular examples of American Evangelical Protestantism?2. Big, Fancy Cathedrals. Catholics have them; Protestants don’t. Why? Well, Catholicism says that “humanity must discover its unity and salvation” within a church. Protestants say all Christians can be saved, regardless of church membership. (Ergo… ****ty, abandoned storefront churches? All Protestant.)
Plus, I think you’re gliding a bit glibly from ecclesiastical architecture on the one hand to issues of individual salvation on the other. There is a point here. Probably the key difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is the Protestant focus on the individual versus the Catholic focus on the community. From a Catholic point of view, you can’t be a Christian on your own; you have to do this collectively with others, in a community, otherwise it’s defective or incomplete. We are not called to be Persons of God, but to be the People of God, and there’s a collective dimension to that which cannot be omitted. So, for Catholics, it’s all about communion; all about fellowship; all about shared faith and shared practice.
This isn’t a simple binary where Catholics are collective and Protestants are individual. There’s both an individual and a collective dimension to both traditions, but they tend to have differing emphases, with Protestants laying greater stress on the individual unmediated relationship with Christ, and Catholics on the shared, collective, communion in Christ. This doesn’t, I think, really account for the different architectural traditions, but it does, e.g. help to explain why shared baptism is all the communion Protestants see as essential between Christians, whereas Catholics feel that more is required.
This one has always puzzled me, I gotta say, because it seems to me there is a bit of a gap between what Protestants say (“Why not just pray directly to God?”) and what they do, which is constantly inviting others to pray to God (“Please pray to God for healing for so-and-so, who is ill.” “Let us all thank God for the blessings He has given us.”)3. Saints. Catholics pray to saints (holy dead people) in addition to God and Jesus. Protestants acknowledge saints, but don’t pray to them. [Note: There is much debate about the use of the word “pray” in this context, so let me clarify: Saints are seen by Catholics as an intermediary to God or Jesus. Although Catholics do technically pray to saints, they are not praying for the saints to help them directly but to intervene on their behalf. They are asking the saints (in the form of a prayer) to pray for them. It’s like praying for prayers. Hope this helps.]
Nothing really to comment on here, I'm sure not all praying catholics pray to saints, why not just pray to God himself? Why go through middlemen?
The difference is not that Protestants don’t ask other Christians to pray for them, or for their intentions; it’s that they tend only to ask other living Christians to do so; they never invoke the prayers of the Saints. But if you believe in the Communion of Saints - and, you know, it’s right there in the Creed, so why wouldn’t you? - and if you believe in the Church as a community that transcends this world, then why limit your prayer invitations in the way that Protestants seem to?
Again, I think this comes down to a different sense of communion between the two traditions. The Catholic emphasis on communion leads to a more lively awareness of the Communion of Saints; the Protestant downplaying of it has the opposite effect.
Why is anything holy? There’s nothing special about holy water except the fact that it has been dedicated to a particular purpose, which is to be a physical, material symbol of, and reminder of, blessing.4. Holy Water. Catholics only.
Would most catholics really believe that holy water is holy? Really? I'm sure many do, but does a priest blessing ordinary water make it special?
Well, it’s not Catholics only. There’s a strong tradition of celibacy, and indeed of consecrated life, in Orthodox Christianity also.5. Celibacy and Nuns. Catholics only.
There is a growing sentiment that priests should be allowed to take partners, and the idea of celibacy is against human nature. Most catholics would agree with allowing priests to have a wife and kids.
You’re right, of course, that there is a “growing sentiment” against this. This probably arises out of a better understanding of human sexuality (thanks, Sigmund!). But there’s also the communal versus individual thing again; Christianity has a tradition of people forming communities, and living a common life, in order to live the gospel in a particular way, and those communities are really not compatible with the intimate and exclusive community that is a marriage.
Long story short: you can certainly have married priests, but you can’t have married monks or nuns. If you think the monastic life has any value, either in itself or as a sign of the Kingdom, then there’s a place for celibacy in the church. (Just maybe not the place it has at the moment.)
Protestants who believe in Hell are on weak ground with that argument, I think! I think Purgatory is a kind of antidote to “cheap grace”; the notion that if you just make the right act of will at the right moment you have the fullness of salvation as easily as if you had won it in a raffle. Salvation is a call to become the person that God created you to be, but that’s a journey, not an instant, and sometimes a painful journey. Growing up hurts, basically, as any adolescent can tell you. Purgatory is not something like a prison sentence imposed for an offence; it’s the difficult and frightening and painful process of shedding your ego, your illusions, your fears, the lies you tell yourself, the burdens you cling to, the facade you hide behind, that keep you from being the person God has called you to be.6. Purgatory: Catholics only.
I'm sure a lot of old catholics still believe in it, but I would say most younger ones think it is a relic of the past that was used to scare followers.
No offence, but what Catholics hear here is you reducing the Word of God to just the scriptures - even though the scriptures themselves point out that it isn’t.7. Scripture: The be-all, end-all for Protestants is “the Word of God.” For Catholics, tradition is just as important as scripture — maybe even more so.
We also hear what seems to us to be a false dichotomy between “scripture” on the one hand, and “tradition” on the other. Scripture is tradition - as in, the texts themselves emerge from tradition - they didn’t grow on trees, and they weren’t handed down on tablets of stone - and our recognition and reception of them as scriptural is itself tradition at work. If we deny the revelation of tradition, then we don’t have any scriptures.
I think this is an area - one of several areas, if we’re honest - where the Catholic and Protestant traditions have spend the last five hundred years or so defining themselves in opposition to one another, to the detriment and distortion of both traditions. The fact is that Protestants do accept the authority of tradition; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have any scriptures. And I suspect there is also a tendency to accept particular traditional interpretations or reading of scripture, and to have recourse to a degree of literalism to try to characterise these as the inexorable meaning of the scriptures, rather than acknowledging that what is going on is actually the preference of one interpretive tradition over another.
Possibly not. And, to the extent that it is still true, I’m dubious about the spiritual value of memorising either text.8. Catechism: Protestant kids memorize the Bible. Catholic kids get catechism.
Is this relevant any more?
(I do think the Catholic kids have the easier task, though. The Catechism is much shorter, and was designed specifically to be easily memorable!
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I think we need to unpick what’s meant by “authority” here. Obviously, any Christian can read, reflect on, pray about the scriptures, but in what sense - if any - can we claim that the outcome of this is “authoritative”? I think what we have here is another manifestation of the individual versus collective tension that I mentioned earlier. Christ is present when we gather; the shared encounter with scripture has an authority that the individual, personal encounter does not. How I read scripture interests me, but how we as a church read scripture concerns the whole church, and furthermore that’s a reading in which Christ is present.9. Authority: In Catholicism, only the Roman Catholic Church has authority to interpret the Bible. Protestants hold that each individual has authority to interpret the Bible.
Doesn't the latter sound the better idea? After all, the CC has shown that many of their own interpretations don't fit into the current modern world.
Protestants have sacraments too; baptism and the eucharist. And most (all?) Protestant traditions are quite happy to talk about them in the language of sacrementality; it doesn’t embarrass them to describe them as sacraments.10. Sacraments: Catholic are the only ones to have the concept of the seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony). Protestants teach that salvation is attained through faith alone.
Nothing to say on this one.
A sacrament is a moment when we believe we are assured of a particularly graced encounter with God. (Jesus Christ, in fact, is the ultimate sacrament.) Which is not to say you can’t encounter God anywhere at any time, but you have a particular assurance of an encounter in these moments. The difference between the Catholic and Protestant traditions is that Catholicism is more ready to recognise these moments than Protestantism tends to be. But this seems to me more a matter of differing emphasis than of outright opposition.
(And not necessarily at Christmas; I remember a couple of years ago when Christmas fell on a Sunday stories about some American churches cancelling Sunday services so as not to interrupt family time, to the detriment of “family values”.)11. Holidays: Catholics have 10 Holy Days of Obligation (which mean they must go to Mass). Protestants are more like, “Just come to church on Christmas, that’s all we ask.”
In 2018, many so-called catholics are not attending church much any more, and some only do it for Xmas and Easter, others only for weddings and funerals. 'Holy Days' means nothing to many catholics any more.
This one comes back to the same individual -v- collective tension we’ve seen earlier. For Catholics, gathering for shared worship is a central part of Christian living, and that is supported by regular practices and disciplines.
Them’s fightin words, NIMAN! Most of the Protestant traditions in fact affirm the Real Presence - Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians all affirm the Real Presence, although they differ in the language they use to describe it, and they all reject the Catholic “transssubstantiation” language. They certainly deny that the bread and wine are exclusively symbolic.12. Communion: In Catholicism, the bread and wine “become” the body and blood of Jesus Christ, meaning that Jesus is truly present on the altar. In Protestantism, the bread and wine are symbolic.
Again, most sane people know what happens in the catholic church is symbolic too, so again the protestants have it right.
The view that the Eucharist is purely a memorial meal with a symbolic signficance, and nothing more, is known as the Zwinglian view (after Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, who taught this view, and as a result managed to fall out with the Catholics, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, which was quite an achievement). In contemporary Protestantism in Ireland, I think this view would be associated with some Baptist congregations, and possibly some Evangelical/Pentecostal congregations, but not with the mainstream Protestant denominations.
Evidence might suggest that in fact the faith best suited to modern Ireland is consumerist materialism.So, looking at all that, wouldn't Protestantism suit Ireland as a christian faith in 2018 more than Catholicism?
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Peregrinus wrote: »Evidence might suggest that in fact the faith best suited to modern Ireland is consumerist materialism.
I'd suggest you're being a bit harsh on modern Ireland there, P. Just because the modern Irish conscience is no longer solely informed by church doctrine that does not make it any lesser of a conscience. It isn't reasonable to compare today's rampant consumerism with a lack thereof in the past from a moral standpoint as consumerism simply wasn't an available option in times past for most Irish people. We can only consider righteousness in rejecting an option on moral grounds where that option is actually available. Violence aside, Burgess covered this rather well in 'A Clockwork Orange'. My own view is that modern Ireland is considerable more morally evolved than Ireland of a few decades ago, and that recent referendum results for example were driven largely by the senses of compassion and egalitarianism.
Like many people, I'm disgusted by rampant consumerism and the wealth of problems it brings, but if we're talking avarice, the Catholic church is far from innocent and has hoarded wealth in the Vatican for centuries.0 -
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