Fr. Brian W. Harrison
The renewed challenge of old-style fundamentalism to the Catholic faith is one which undoubtedly needs to be taken much more seriously by the Catholic Church at large. Although militant Protestant groups (and others which do not even really merit the name “Christian,” such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses) have for decades been reaping a harvest of literally millions of souls throughout the world – and especially in Latin America – the Catholic “establishment” has shown very little active awareness or concern for the problem so far.
In the years since Vatican II, relationships with other religious groups have been viewed too often in terms of a limited, one-sided kind of ecumenism. At the recent world-wide “post mortem” on the Council and its results, the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, many or most of the delegates had some thing to say about the implementation of the conciliar Decree on Ecumenism, but only a tiny handful even mentioned the enormous problem of massive defections from the Church as a result of the proselytising activity of those who have no interest in amicable dialogue, and who see the Pope not as the leader of a “sister Church,” but as an arch-enemy leading countless souls to Hell. Many, indeed, see him as the Antichrist.
It is a “sign of the times,” perhaps, that today’s most prominent Catholic initiative in this specific field has come, not from the Church’s shepherds – those whose appointed task it is to guard the flock against wolves but from one of the “sheep.” California layman Karl Keating has developed a very effective and significant apostolate in the last four or five years, meeting and talking with militant Protestants, debating with them publicly, and rebutting their objections with learning, wit, and charity in his monthly publication Catholic Answers (available from Catholic Answers, Inc., P.O. Box 17181, San Diego, California 92117 for $12 a year in the U.S., $15 in Canada and Mexico, and $20 elsewhere – payment in U.S. funds only).
Karl Keating is thus a competent Catholic apologist, inheriting a great tradition that dates back to the 2nd-century Fathers, and which in more recent times has included such illustrious names as Newman, Chesterton, Lunn, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Dr. Leslie Rumble of the famed Radio Replies, and Frank Sheed of the Catholic Evidence Guild – now, unfortunately, defunct, it seems. The trouble is that even the very word “apologetic(s)” has become a decidedly pejorative expression in many “forward-looking” Catholic circles: one hears comments such as, “Oh, but that’s an apologetic approach!” – as though there were something self-evidently wrong with anything apologetic. Indeed, the very idea of arguing in defence of one’s Catholic beliefs, and attempting to show the falsity of a non-Catholic position, is often seen as impolite, perhaps “uncharitable,” and, of course, “pre-conciliar.” After all, one cannot “impose one’s values” on others.
In fact, however, those who take such an approach are falling into that attitude which, according to the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism, is very harmful to the ecumenical movement itself. In article 11 of the Decree we read:
It is, of course, essential that the (Catholic) doctrine be clearly presented in its entirety. Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures its genuine and certain meaning.
If that is so, then the modern ecumenical movement has itself become largely anti-ecumenical, because that “false irenicism” is riding high and having a field day all over the contemporary Catholic scene! Many of our prominent theologians seem to envisage the goal of all ecumenical activity as a new united world-Church which transcends all existing churches (including the Catholic Church) – a sort of Hegelian synthesis in which opposing doctrines can somehow be reconciled.
But that is certainly not the way Vatican II envisages the ecumenical future. According to the Council’s official statement, ecumenism should be seen by Catholics basically as a new strategy for achieving the same goal as before conversion of other Christians to the already-existing Catholic Church, not the emergence of a new super-Church which would be a “blend” of Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox elements. (Perhaps we could call it the Capranglidox Church.) A while back I received a letter from a fundamentalist Protestant lady in England who said, “You Romanists and your ‘ecumenism’! It’s all just a clever ploy to break through our Protestant defences! But there’s a lot of us you won’t be able to fool, because we know that this friendly, new, smiling image and invitation to ‘dialogue’ is just like the hypocritical spider saying to the fly, ‘Come into my parlour!’ You want to gain our confidence just in order to absorb us all. Well you won’t absorb me!” The odd thing is that insofar as her comments refer to the official Catholic attitude to ecumenism – that of the Council itself and of the post-conciliar Popes – this little lady basically had her facts right. She was wrong only in her negative evaluation of them, and in attributing hypocrisy to the Church – concealment of our true aims. In fact, article 4 of the Decree on Ecumenism spells out openly, for all the world to see, the authentically Catholic understanding of the final goal towards which ecumenical activity is heading: reconciliation of all Christians, not in some newly-invented kind of “unity,” but in that unity which the Catholic Church has had “from the beginning” and which “she can never lose.” In other words, plain old-fashioned conversion to Catholicism. The text reads:
The results (of authentic ecumenical activity) will be that, little by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered, in a common celebration of the Eucharist, into the unity of the one and only Church, which Christ bestowed on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time.
If we see very few signs so far of these results anticipated by the Council – rather, the exact opposite, with conversions to Catholicism in Western countries plummeting to an all-time low since Vatican II – then this is not because Catholics have been doing what the Decree on Ecumenism asked for, but because they have been doing what it expressly forbade. They have not consistently been “presenting Catholic doctrine in its entirety” in their dialogue with separated Christians, but have instead taken the easier road of emphasising only the common ground which we already share, and assuring non-Catholics blandly that “sincerity” and “following your own conscience” is all that really matters.
Also, far too many of our theologians have been “obscuring the genuine and certain meaning” of those Catholic doctrines which Protestants find difficult or unacceptable – especially that concerning the Catholic Church’s uniqueness and necessity for salvation. In short, ecumenism in practice has usually meant a widespread loss of zeal for Catholic truth. This has had disastrous results for the true Church and has occasioned stupendous results for proselytising anti-Catholic sects.
The time to stop this corrosive process is right now. The mature human mind is made by God for the strong meat of objective truth, not merely for the milk of subjective sincerity. Therefore, a truly ecumenical attitude – one which shows real charity and respect – will involve pointing out to non-Catholic brethren, in a calm and friendly way, and preferably in circumstances where they are likely to be receptive, three vital truths: first, that any non-Catholic is in serious error; secondly, that on the heavenly statute-books, so to speak, there is a divine law, permanently in effect, which commands everyone on pain of damnation to be a member of the only Church organization which has been around continuously since the time of Christ and the Apostles, i.e., the Catholic Church; and, thirdly, that once a non-Catholic comes to realize that this divine command exists, he or she will be eternally separated from God for wilful disobedience unless he or she becomes a Catholic before dying. (The last two points represent the perennial meaning of the immutable article of faith, “outside the Church, no salvation,” as expounded by Vatican II in Lumen Gentium, article 14.)
These stern truths cannot be glossed over by anyone who wishes to practise true, Vatican II-style ecumenism. They have been particularly important for me, a former evangelical Protestant who “accepted Jesus as my Saviour” at the age of 18 and became a Catholic at 27. I was an active and sincere believer, and I think I may well have been in the state of grace for much of the time before I became a Catholic. But if so, I certainly would have lost that grace if I had refrained from assuming full membership in the Catholic Church after coming to believe it was the true Church. At the time, I would have preferred not to enter, humanly speaking: all my friends and family were Protestant, and changing my whole life-style was clearly going to be a traumatic experience. The easy way out would have been to accept the spurious solution now being offered to non-Catholic brethren by many of our “advanced” practitioners of ecumenism: “No, don’t convert! That’s a pre-ecumenical solution. Stay in your own Church and help it to travel along side by side with us Catholics as we all grow together towards that future unity which will transcend our present differences!” That is sweet music. The only reason I didn’t listen to it was the grace of God and the pressure of that troublesome divine command repeated by Vatican II. God was giving me no choice. He was saying, “Become a Catholic or be damned for disobedience!” I realised that having “accepted Jesus as Saviour” could not compensate: it is in fact mere self-deception if you claim to “accept” Jesus while consciously disobeying a grave obligation which He has placed on you.
In short, the kind of ecumenism which Vatican II calls for is the kind which presents the full Gospel of Christ to our separated brethren, and defends it. Apologetics will then be seen as an integral and necessary part of ecumenism, not as an alternative to it. And until the Church as a whole starts to implement this whole-hearted approach in a determined way, we will continue to lose our confused “sheep” to the militant fundamentalists.