Leithart: The End of Protestantism

"The Reformation isn’t over. But Protestantism is, or should be."

Protestantism ought to give way to Reformational catholicism. Like a Protestant, a Reformational catholic rejects papal claims, refuses to venerate the Host, and doesn’t pray to Mary or the saints; he insists that salvation is a sheer gift of God received by faith and confesses that all tradition must be judged by Scripture, the Spirit’s voice in the conversation that is the Church.

Though it agrees with the original Protestant protest, Reformational catholicism is defined as much by the things it shares with Roman Catholicism as by its differences. Its existence is not bound up with finding flaws in Roman Catholicism. While he’s at it, the Reformational catholic might as well claim the upper-case “C.” Why should the Roman see have a monopoly on capitalization?

A Protestant exaggerates his distance from Roman Catholicism on every point of theology and practice, and is skeptical of Roman Catholics who say that they believe in salvation by grace. A Reformational Catholic cheerfully acknowledges that he shares creeds with Roman Catholics, and he welcomes reforms and reformulations as hopeful signs that we might at last stake out common ground beyond the barricades. (Protestants also exaggerate differences from one another, but that’s a story for another day.). . . .

Some Protestants don’t view Roman Catholics as Christians, and won’t acknowledge the Roman Catholic Church as a true church. A Reformational Catholic regards Catholics as brothers, and regrets the need to modify that brotherhood as “separated.” To a Reformational Catholic, it’s blindingly obvious that there’s a billion-member Church of Jesus Christ centered in Rome. Because it regards the Roman Catholic Church as barely Christian, Protestantism leaves Roman Catholicism to its own devices. “They” had a pedophilia scandal, and “they” have a controversial pope. A Reformational Catholic recognizes that turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church is turmoil in his own family. . . .

A Protestant’s heroes are Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their heirs. If he acknowledges any ancestry before the Reformation, they are proto-Protestants like Hus and Wycliffe. A Reformational Catholic gratefully receives the history of the entire Church as his history, and, along with the Reformers, he honors Augustine and Gregory the Great and the Cappadocians, Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, Thomas and Bonaventure, Dominic and Francis and Dante, Ignatius and Teresa of Avila, Chesterton, de Lubac and Congar as fathers, brothers, and sisters. A Reformational Catholic knows some of his ancestors were deeply flawed but won’t delete them from the family tree. He knows every family has its embarrassments. . . .

A Protestant is indifferent or hostile to liturgical forms, ornamentation in worship, and sacraments, because that’s what Catholics do. Reformational Catholicism’s piety is communal and sacramental, and its worship follows historic liturgical patterns. A Protestant wears a jacket and tie, or a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, to lead worship; a Reformational Catholic is vested in cassock and stole. To a Protestant, a sacrament is an aid to memory. A Reformational Catholic believes that Jesus baptizes and gives himself as food to the faithful, and doesn’t avoid speaking of “Eucharist” or “Mass” just because Roman Catholics use those words.

Reformational Catholicism meets George Weigel’s Evangelical Catholicism coming from the direction of Rome, and gives it a hearty handshake.

Protestantism has had a good run. It remade Europe and made America. It inspired global missions, soup kitchens, church plants, and colleges in the four corners of the earth. But the world and the Church have changed, and Protestantism isn’t what the Church, including Protestants themselves, needs today. It’s time to turn the protest against Protestantism and to envision a new way of being heirs of the Reformation, a new way that happens to conform to the original Catholic vision of the Reformers.

Amen.

Comments

[Ron M]

Your post, along with Peter Leithart's FT article were something I needed to read just now. I've been wondering if I made the right move leaving the Catholic Church, but you've encapsulated better than I could the reasons I'm doing so. My journey is to keep the truths of Rome without the emphasis on the role of the papacy, something becoming obviously in need of much thought on the Roman side. I'm finding Anglicanism to offer the best of both worlds.

[Embryo Parson]

Thanks for your feedback, Ron. The older I get and the more I learn, I am driven to the conclusion that catholicity is absolutely essential. That is why Leithart's opinions strike such a chord with me. But I am fully convinced of classical Anglicanism's catholicity. If I weren't, I'd rejoin the Orthodox Church or swim the Tiber.

Notice I said "classical" Anglicanism. Unfortunately we Anglicans have too many ”Reformation Christians” in our midst whose version of catholicity is so watered down that it makes John Calvin look like Robert Bellarmine. I'm of course talking about our gaggles of neo-Puritan icon smashers and chasuble burners, neo-Evangelical woman ordainers, and Finneyite thou-shalt-notters . As I've taken pains lately to argue here at OJC, the English Reformation was unlike the Continental Reformations, so much so that Elizabeth and the second generation of reformers strove to temper the fiery, reductionistic excess of the radicals with the inherited wisdom and practice of the Fathers. That's what Anglicanism is.