Evangelical convert to Catholicism Bryan Cross harps on how Jesus founded a "visible" church. He complains that Protestants allegedly lack a visible church. Of course, he defines visibility in Roman Catholic terms, so his objection amounts to the circular argument that Protestant churches aren't Roman Catholic! Granted
But let's take a concrete test-case. If Bryan was a Chinese Catholic, what church would he attend? Until recently, there were two candidates for the Catholic church in Red China. There was the underground Catholic church. And then there was the puppet church.
Recently, Pope Francis signed a concordant with the communist gov't to certify the puppet church and decertify the underground church.
So in China, under the current pope, the Catholic church that enjoys official sanction from the Vatican is the puppet church, whose bishops are appointees of the Communist gov't.
According to Bryan's ecclesiology, that's the visible church in China. The church with puppet prelates and puppet priests. A mouthpiece of the atheist state.
So Bryan would boycott the underground Catholic church, shun the suffering church, turn his back on the persecuted church, and attend the puppet church, staffed by Communist apparatchiks–because that's the visible church founded by Jesus.
How would Bryan argue against Voris' assessment of the "visible" church? The magisterium of the church is corrupted (absolutely?), so how can he point to it? Tradition I think would be his escape, and how the current magisterium has abandoned it and all its teachings. Doesn't matter if most RC exegetes come to protestant conclusions when the texts are examined isolated from tradition, he will soldier on and claim it's all wrong, and that tradition as defined by the previous "visible" church is the correct teaching. And the saddest part is that no one can definitively define or identify just what that tradition is. Maybe that’s the crux, if you can’t nail it down, then you can expand or curtail it as necessary.
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