Further Reflections from a Protestant Library

or Veritas est non Tacitas

As I walked around the aforementioned library, I began to dwell on the relation of Protestant and Catholic thought, primarily in the realm of what makes the Church. To Protestants, any group who believes in the trinity and has the Bible as their rule of faith is part of the church, while Catholics hold the Church must remain in communion with itself; that is, for a individual church to be part of the Church it must agree on all important issues with every other church and be aligned vertically with them beneath Christ.

Therefore, it is easy to see why Catholics do not consider Protestants as being in full communion with the Church. How Protestants see Catholics is a more complicated matter and the one which occupied my thought.

Some Protestants find reason to believe that Catholics cannot be Christians for they have added too much to the Bible (everyone ads something to the Bible. The Apostles did not drive cars to church, much less even have an independent church building). These, however, are not our concern at the moment. We are much more interested in the Protestants who believe Catholics are Christians.

In growing numbers Protestants are realizing that not only are Catholics Christians, they are often among the most holy of Christians. In 1973 almost no Protestants even noticed Roe v. Wade, but the Catholic Pro-Life groups (which were, and are, also concerned with contraception) were immediately in opposition. Still today some of the most adament Pro-Lifers are Catholic and many Protestants get their first exposure to true Catholicism through them.

The growing concensus is that Catholicism is a perfectly valid understanding of Christianity. This, however, cannot be the end of those thoughts. If Catholicism is a valid Christian thought, then it must be the only valid Christian thought, for it claims Christ himself appears in every Mass. If he doesn't, then Catholicism is false, but many have already learned it to be true enough, in which case it must all be true, and Christ truly is present in the Eucharist.

What is happening is that Protestants come to understand the Catholic Church as being truly Christian. They then come to realize that they cannot accept Catholicism as a possible truth without accepting it as the revealed truth of God and they make the step to Rome.

We do not need to disprove all the differences between Catholics and Protestants, rather we simple need to break down the walls that say Catholics are not Christian. Once here, wisdom and knowledge will do the rest. We may still need to take up certain issues, but we do not need to conquer an entire system. Truth is on our side, and it is not silent.