Roman and Reformed Right-Worship
“I’ve been very vocal in my love and devotion to the [Traditional Latin Mass] and its necessity for our lives. But what I think gets misunderstood is that people who attend the TLM do so out of pride or preference. I can speak to my own experience, but for most people I have come across within these communities this simply is not true. I do not attend the TLM because I think I am better than others, or for the smells and bells, or even for the love of Latin. I attend the TLM because I believe, just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular in how he wanted to be worshipped, the same holds true for us today. It is through the TLM that I encountered order, and began to pursue it in my own life.”
This was NFL kicker Harrison Butker’s explanation in a recent commencement address at a Catholic college for why he attends the Latin Mass. Michael Brendan Dougherty agrees, saying, “One reason to attend the Traditional Latin Mass is that the God of the Bible is revealed to be especially interested in right-worship.”
Absolutely God is interested in right worship, and both Butker and Dougherty go on to have good insights about the good ordering of worship that comes with a structured, rooted, reverent liturgy. However, they both make a logical leap that is characteristic of Roman Catholics on this point. Yes, God is interested in right worship and is very particular about how he is worshiped. But God nowhere reveals or commands that particularity be expressed in the Traditional Latin Mass.
This is where the Roman and the Reformed catholics differ: we both believe God is particular about worship, but we Reformed think he’s actually revealed what right worship looks like in the Bible, whereas the Romanists think the church’s traditions capture God’s design. In Matthew 15:9, Jesus makes the point that well intentioned, well designed worship of God is vain if the commandments and traditions of people are held to be divine in nature.
Ross Douthat and Tough-Guy Calvinists
From Ross Douthat, in The New York Times,
The rhetoric of anti-Catholicism, whether its sources are Protestant or secular, has always insisted that the church of Rome is the enemy of what you might call healthy sexuality. This rhetorical trope has persisted despite radical redefinitions of what healthy sexuality means; one sexual culture overthrows another, but Catholicism remains eternally condemned…But at the same time, the way the “healthy sexuality” supposedly available outside the church seems to change with every generation offers a reason to be skeptical that all Catholic ills would vanish if Rome only ceased making “unnatural” demands like celibacy and chastity.
The difference between the secularists of today who believe that priests need to be sexually liberated, and the Protestants of the past (and present), is that the Reformed believe Rome insisting on clerical celibacy goes beyond scripture and even violates it. This twists the gospel by concluding that celibacy is necessary for a better spiritual life…
On Doctrine v. Aesthetics in the Church of Rome
Because few Catholics are bold enough to say they actually know all the Church’s teachings, the traditional recourse is some version of “the Church cannot err in its teaching, so whatever she teaches—even if I’m still struggling with, or even unaware of, that teaching—must be true.” But of course the Church teaches via her bishops, and preeminently the bishop of Rome. So the claim is, in effect, “I trust that the bishops and the pope speak the truth.” (Yes, I’m aware that the underlying theological claim is a little more sophisticated than that; still.)
But that trust is precisely what is being forfeited with the cover-up scandals. And note the already evident domino effect. In light of the scandals, many faithful Catholics, for example, are now comfortable saying that it was likely a mistake to canonize John Paul II. But it has long been the majority opinion of the Church’s theologians that canonizations are exercises of papal infallibility. If, in light of the scandals, otherwise faithful Catholics are now willing to doubt what was long believed an infallible exercise of magisterial authority, there’s little reason for them not to doubt other of the Church’s teachings. That’s not to say they necessarily will doubt other teachings; but the door’s been cracked and there’s no longer a principle to prevent it being thrown wide open.
h/t D.G. Hart.
Roman Catholics Should Join the Reformed
The horror coming out of Pennsylvania is absolutely sickening. The attitude of “it’s not that big a deal” from the Roman Catholic episcopate communicates that the possibility of this kind of coverup happening again is very likely. Coming on the heels of the revelation that Cardinal McCarrick was a rapist and that the Catholic Church covered for him, the events in Pennsylvania should jolt the Catholic laity into the realization that this was not an abnormality: the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has no interest in or willpower to do what it takes to protect their people. And often the Roman Catholic Church itself is the source of this danger.
The Roman Catholic Church continues to teach that it is the only true church. Now, Protestant churches are not immune from sin or from covering that sin up, even sin as heinous as the abuses of the Roman Catholics. The difference lies in Rome’s claim to be the true church, and to be subsequently assaulting their own people and covering up that assault.
On Failed Consensus and Justification
I had intended to keep up my comments on the Joint Declaration on Justification (JDDJ) that I began this summer, but time got away from me.
The JDDJ sets out to demonstrate that there is a common consensus between the Lutheran and Catholic signatories on the fundamental aspects of the doctrine of justification. The JDDJ is a reminder that Protestants need to engage with Roman Catholics as they actually are, not with caricatures of them…
There is much to commend with the report, as I previously mentioned. However, the JDDJ falls short of addressing the primary concerns that confessional Protestants and Trentine Catholics had with the doctrine of justification….
