Nuancing Roman Catholicism

I’ve left some comments on Bnonn’s excellent article, The Wolves are Guarding the Sheep Pen.

Bnonn argues both that “Roman Catholicism is not a Christian denomination, and Protestant apologists of all people should be conversant with the reasons why.”

I fully agreed with the second, but I thought the first ought to be nuanced just a bit.

Hey Bnonn — I kind of agree with your main premise (that Roman Catholicism is not a Christian denomination) — but I think it needs to be nuanced a bit, because, way deep down, going way back, there is some Christianity in there, and I certainly agree with the second part — that Protestant apologists should be more than conversant with all of the reasons why.

I say “kind of” because Roman Catholics do “name the name of Christ”, and they do have understandings of Trinity and Christology that are largely correct. The problem, as I see it, is two-fold. They have forgotten what some other essentials are (i.e., they substituted Greek philosophical ideas for the largely Hebrew/OT ideas that are conveyed by the New Testament; and then they wholesale adopted ancient Roman culture — they would say they “baptized” it and assimilated it — that’s one major part that needs to be thrown out. (And the papacy came wholesale with that). Then, afterward, you have the Medieval speculations, and Trent’s anathemization of the Gospel.

So I would agree with you, absolutely, that large portions of Roman Catholicism do not deserve to be called Christian. But there is some Christianity in there, somewhere.

* * *

Bnonn, I don’t disagree with you that Rome is bad; I just think it is so big and amorphous that it defies the straightforward categorization that you’ve given it here. As you said above, “the analogy is flexible at best”.

True, wolves have been guarding sheep. But they are generations of wolves, who are writing laws which, first of all, were semper eadem, and then they were “reformulated” so as to appropriate huge swaths first of all, of Roman popular religion, and then its own medieval speculations, and now, popular liberal culture.

The Roman Catholic Church is huge and menacing, though to call it a “sect”, I think, doesn’t capture it. It is a Hydra; it is its own category. Calling it a “sect” or even a “denomination” doesn’t capture all the various things that go wrong, in all the various directions. But in there, somewhere, as you said in your title, are some sheep, who believe (and even preach) the gospel of salvation by faith in the work of Jesus, and who believe (and even preach) that Jesus is fully God and fully man.

The problem is the syncretism, the “both/and” methodology. It claims virtually to “baptize” anything, to assimilate anything. In that sense, it is like the Borg.

See also: “Christ the Borg”.