John Paul II's legacy

Leonardo De Chirico writes about John Paul II's legacy.

How is the gospel witness in Rome?

Leonardo De Chirico answers.

What is the Essence of Roman Catholicism?

http://vaticanfiles.org/en/2019/08/vf165/

The Reformation isn't over

http://foclonline.org/users/leonardo-de-chirico

De Chirico: Rome will Absorb “Pope Francis”

Marking Time

In an article with the same title, Leonardo De Chirico asks, “What Happens If Catholics Think the Pope Is a Heretic?” The short answer is found at the end of the article:

Nothing is going to break abruptly and, more importantly, no biblical reformation is possible under these conditions. Roman Catholicism will be stretched and go through a stress test, but will be able to handle both Francis’ catholicity and his critics’ insistence on the Roman component. The synthesis will be expanded, but the gospel will not be allowed to change Rome. This is the reason why the Reformation is not over.

The article primarily catalogues the ruckus that has been going on in the controversies surrounding “Amoris Laetitia” and the subsequent protests, first from the Dubia Cardinals, then from the “Filial Correction” crowd (Roman Catholic priests and theologians), and finally from Fr Thomas Weinandy, who wrote an open letter to Bergoglio stating, “a chronic confusion seems to mark your pontificate obscured by the ambiguity of your words and actions.”

De Chirico asks, “What is happening in the Roman Catholic Church? Is Rome on the eve of an internal breaking point with disastrous consequences?”

Interestingly, he frames the issue as one of “Roman” elements vs “catholic” ones. “Pope Francis” and “Vatican II” on the “catholic” side (De Chirico uses the word “Catholic” with a capital “C” from time to time, but I think he means small-c “catholic).

He suggests, however, that the “inner and constitutive dynamics of Roman Catholicism” – and the synthesis of “Roman” and “Catholic” will enable the system to survive, because the system was created in order to accommodate various swings back and forth between both.

Here is his larger explanation:

Van Til was “Prophetically True” on Roman Catholicism

Daniel the Prophet Accurately Describes Roman Catholicism

Leonardo De Chirico explicates Van Til’s view of
the syncretism of Roman Catholicism

In his latest issue of Vatican Files, Leonard De Chirico has published an excerpt of a paper given at a September 2014 conference in Rome entitled “Rerum Novarum: Neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism”. Google translates “Rerum Novarum” as “of the new things”. That is also the title of a papal encyclical, Rerum Novarum, by “Pope Leo XIII”, and the title indicates “the spirit of revolutionary change” – beginning with the “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”.

This theme was an appropriate point of contact between neo-Calvinists of the late 19th century, and it was deemed to be the theme of a program in 2014 as well. Here is the theme of the program from the organizers:

Roman Catholicism was a world player when neo-Calvinism began to develop from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. At that time, both Catholicism and Protestantism went through substantial changes. For the neo-Calvinists, Catholicism functioned as both an antagonist and an ally in their struggle to uphold religion in the modern age of ‘rerum Novarum’. The neo-Calvinists were the first Protestants to cooperate openly with Roman Catholics in politics and on social issues. Theologically they were particularly interested in neo-Thomism, but remained critical of Roman Catholicism until after the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council.

The conference will focus on the theological, ecclesial, philosophical, political, social and cultural interactions between the two traditions: in what ways did they influence and approach each other, on which aspects did they continue to differ and why, and how could their relationship over a century and a half best be described?

This, it seems to me, is a useful approach that Reformed scholars and believers can take in addressing Roman Catholicism. Especially useful, it seems, is the paper given by De Chirico (excerpted here, and to be given in a fuller form in a book-length project soon to be released from this conference): “The clay of Paganism with the iron of Christianity: Cornelius Van Til’s Critique of Roman Catholicism”.

Papal detente

http://vaticanfiles.org/2017/04/135-the-decentralization-of-catholic-bioethics-in-the-time-of-francis/

Mariolatry

An entry point into the world of Marian prayers is the collection put together by Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787). Liguori, an Italian Catholic bishop who was proclaimed saint in 1839 and eventually Doctor of the Church in 1871, spent many years gathering the best material on Mary he could find from various sources that were used in the liturgical practice of the church. In his book, Liguori explains that Mary is “our life, our sweetness and our hope,” and goes on to argue that Mary’s intercession on our behalf is powerful to the point of enabling sinners to regain the state of grace. Mary can be approached confidently because she can obtain for us from her divine Son anything she asks for. Moreover, devotion to her is a most certain mark of eternal salvation. This book has been shaping Marian devotions since becoming the reference point for subsequent Mariological reflection....

The Holy Rosary is considered a perfect prayer because within it is the awesome story of salvation retold in a way that highlights Mary’s central role in redemption. With the Rosary, devotees meditate on the mysteries of joy, sorrow, and the glory of Jesus and Mary, thus internalizing the blurred analogy between Mary and the Son. Gone is the story of salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection as the Bible tells it. Instead, the Rosary is a powerful tool to shape one’s own imagination in terms of the pervasive presence and agency of Mary in whatever the Triune God is and does. The whole orientation of Roman Catholic “biblical theology” is inherently Marian, in that Mary is thought of as sharing the prerogatives and roles of the Son....

Mariology is an inescapable, all-embracing, and fundamental tenet of Roman Catholic theology and practice. Moreover, it is a deeply troubling development because it is impossible to see a linear and coherent connection between this Marian devotion and the more sobering account of what the Bible actually says about Mary.

http://vaticanfiles.org/2017/06/138-marian-prayers-as-shapers-of-roman-catholic-theology-and-practice/

How Vatican II Changed the Roman Catholic Church

"The core of what Roman Catholicism stands for has never changed". Probably one of the main challenges is going to be The battle over words. Rome uses basic Protestant language, and tries to re-define it, in its own way.

See also: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/03/weigle-room-at-christianity-today.html

“Pope Francis” is not a friend of the Protestant Reformation

What Kind of “Reformation” Does Pope Francis Have in Mind?

In the Western church, talks about reform have been going on since the Councils of Vienne (1312), Constance (1414-1418) and the Lateran V (1512-1517). The word is therefore part of the language of the Church, even before the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) used it abundantly to promote changes at the level of ecclesiastical organization. In subsequent centuries the word was treated with caution, if not suspicion, given its Protestant flavor. It was Vatican II (1962-1965) that began to circulate it (e.g. Lumen Gentium 4) also using “aggiornamento” (updating) and renewal. Typically the Catholic sense of reformation is continuity in change and change in continuity.

Again, it’s Vatican II that sets the tone for interpretation when it says that “every renewal of the Church is essentially grounded in an increase of fidelity to her own calling” (Unitatis Redintegratio 6). In reforming itself, the Roman Catholic Church does not lose anything of the past, but rather tries to become more faithful to what she is already. The criterion of reformation is not external and objective, as would be the case with recognizing it in the Word of God, but always internal and ecclesial, i.e. the Church itself setting the parameters of its own renewal.

Against this background, Pope Francis has been talking about reformation in the context of calling the church to re-launch its missionary impetus. No reformation of doctrine and devotions is in view. In the papal narrative, reformation means accelerating the process spurred by Vatican II. …

Synodality and mercy are the two qualifiers of reformation the pope has in mind. There is no hint of what the Reformation of the 16th century meant for the church, i.e. the recovery of the supreme authority of the Bible and the message of salvation by faith alone. There is no hint of it in the papal dream for a reformation. According to Francis’ view, the future of the Roman Catholic Church will make room for more discussion and involvement of different subjects at all levels and will be marked by the pervasiveness of mercy. …

Some evangelicals seem to be fascinated by the phenomenology of pope Francis although they do not always understand his theological vision. Addressing the issue of the “reformation” is a significant entry point in his world and gives to opportunity to begin to understand it. As the Pope commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, what he has in mind is an altogether different kind of reformation, i.e. a reformation that will make his church more catholic and more Roman, doubtfully more evangelical.

Roman Catholicism distorts the Biblical message about God’s work in time

Leonardo De Chirico has revised and re-posted an article of his that demonstrates how the Roman Catholic distortion of time plays a major role in its current ecclesiology (which is, as I’ve mentioned, its major selling point in the post Vatican II era). He focuses on two words, two biblical measures of time, “hapax” (“once for all”) and “mallon” (“for evermore”)

As Protestants, we believe the following:

1. The incarnation of Christ was “once for all”
2. Christ’s death and resurrection and our redemption were “once for all”
3. “Revelation” was “once for all delivered to the saints”.

Roman Catholicism flips these precisely on their head:

1. The Roman Catholic Church is the “ongoing incarnation of Christ” (“for evermore”)
2. “The Eucharist” (“the sacrifice of the Mass”) is a “re-presentation” of the one sacrifice of Christ, providing redemption on an ongoing basis (“for evermore”) throughout time.
3. The “once for all” sense of biblical revelation is opened up to being integrated with “living Tradition” that is mediated by the Magisterium, creating a dialectic between the biblical message and the process of tradition.

De Chirico’s original Themelios (2004) article is here.

In it, he suggests “Roman Catholicism is not intentionally driven by the desire to confuse the time periods of God. It would be uncharitable and prejudiced to think so,” he says.

However, Roman Catholicism IS driven to exalt itself: “Rome IS all about aggrandizing Rome”. And if it means distorting the Biblical message about God’s work in time, it has no hesitation to do so. This is not at all “uncharitable and prejudiced to think so”, because it is true.

“Yet the need is to understand Roman Catholicism as a system governed by spurious principles …”

The Gospel Coalition has featured an interview with Leonardo De Chirico on the state of the Gospel and the real church in Italy: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-gospel-in-italy:


On the Gospel in Italy:

The faithful evangelical witness of past generations in difficult circumstances is inspiring. The gradual growth of cooperative efforts—for instance, in advocating for religious freedom or mercy ministries—is also encouraging. There are more solid books being translated into Italian (e.g., authors like Don Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper, John MacArthur, Mark Dever), and conferences and training initiatives are available for the Italian public. Recently the Dictionary of Evangelical Theology, a 900-page volume with more than 600 entries, was edited by Italian theologians and had to be reprinted—something unthinkable even a few years ago. There are 120 students following a non-residential five-year course in Reformed theology at the Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione (IFED); this is also encouraging.

In the past, Italian theologians have significantly contributed to the cause of the gospel worldwide: I think of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562), peer to John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger, whose Loci Communes (Common Places) were standard works for generations of Protestant pastors. I think of Francis Turretin (1623–1687), whose Institutes of Elenctic Theology is a crown of Reformed orthodoxy that served as the theology textbook at old Princeton Seminary. So while there’s still much to be translated, I’m convinced of the need for Italians themselves to write and develop contextually appropriate resources.

On “Roman Catholicism”:

The allure and appeal of unity with Rome is as enticing as ever. Yet the need is to understand Roman Catholicism as a system governed by spurious principles such as optimistic anthropology, synergistic salvation, abnormal ecclesiology, and ambiguous church-state identity which lies at the heart of the church (emphasis added). The Vatican Files are tools designed to help grasp the theological system binding the whole of Roman Catholicism—and it attempts to go beyond simplistic and superficial understandings of it. …

Today, the contribution that Italian theology can make to the global evangelical family perhaps lies in helping it to frame a biblically robust assessment of Roman Catholicism. More than ever this is at the top of the list of the global evangelical agenda.

On the secular popularity of “Pope Francis”:

Pope Francis is working hard to change the overall narrative of the Roman Catholic faith, wanting it to be marked by mercy and inclusivity instead of tradition and rules. He’s pitting the “letter” against the “spirit” of Roman Catholicism, pushing the latter over the former. This explains the concerns of certain traditional quarters about ambiguities in his language, also present in the final document of the recent Synod on the family.

Pope Francis wants to overcome the letter of canon law with a merciful spirit that welcomes all without challenging anyone. This is why he’s so loved by secular people. Everyone feels affirmed and no one feels questioned by what he says. But the biblical good news is that Jesus has come to pay for our sins and calls all persons to repent and believe. If you miss one bit of the gospel, you miss it all. The Pope uses language that resembles the gospel, but the meaning of what he says is far from it (emphasis added).

How can we pray for the evangelical church in Italy?

Please pray for:

a growing appreciation for gospel centrality in all we are and do;

a stronger sense of being part of the historical and global church of Jesus Christ;

a deeper sense of unity based on gospel truth;

a new enthusiasm in church planting and evangelism, especially in urban centers;

a support of training initiatives that are biblically sound and culturally relevant;

a peer-to-peer gospel partnership between the Italian church and the global church wanting to help us; and

a renewed gospel-centered engagement of society that addresses the bankruptcy of both religious and secular illusions in the hope God will move powerfully in the country.

Fundamental differences between an evangelical and Roman Catholic understanding of the Gospel

This is three minutes, and it's worth a look. De Chirico neatly summarizes the key differences that he points out in his book, "Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism".



HT: Vincent van der Weerden

Q&A: Leonardo De Chirico on Roman Catholicism

Leonardo De Chirico

http://vaticanfiles.org/2015/11/115-rome-the-pope-and-gospel-work-in-italy-10-questions-with-leonardo-de-chirico/

I think De Chirico provides one of the best analyses of modern Roman Catholicism that’s available in the Protestant world today. This interview was published in Credo Magazine, volume 5, Issue 4, November 2015, pp. 8-11:

Q. What is the main doctrinal divide, in your estimation, between Roman Catholics and Protestants?

A. In Roman Catholicism the tendency is to idolize the church. The distinction between Creator and creature is blurred by way of conferring to the church what ultimately belongs to the triune God alone. The church is elevated to a position that makes it an idol, stemming out of a non-tragic view of sin, the conviction that in significant ways the church continues the incarnation of Jesus Christ resulting in an abnormally conflated ecclesiology. The great bullet points of the Protestant Reformation, i.e. Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, are all biblical remedies against the idolatrous tendency of a self-referential church, which sadly have been rejected so far.

Q. In your ongoing interaction with Roman Catholics in Italy, what approach have you taken and found to be effective when witnessing to them?

A. Exposing them to Scripture as much as possible and not assuming they already grasp the basics of the gospel. They may know some Christian vocabulary, but it is generally marred, distorted by traditions and deviant cultural baggage. Most Catholics in Italy are of the “pick-and-choose” variety and so they blend unbiblical traditions and secular unbelief. It is also important to show the personal and the communal aspects of the faith in order to embody viable alternatives for their daily lives.

Q. So tell us, what are positive and negative aspects of this new pope Francis?

A. There is much sentimentalism about Pope Francis. He is a champion of the gospel of “welcoming all” and “showing compassion.” Many secular people, as well as many evangelicals, are fascinated by it. We should ask: What about repentance and faith in Christ alone? What about turning back from idolatry and following Christ wholeheartedly? What about putting the Word of God first? Some of the language of the Pope seems to resemble gospel emphases, yet the substance of it is still heavily sacramental and Marian, leaning towards a liberal form of Catholicism. He is the first Jesuit to become Pope and we should never forget that the Jesuit order was founded to fight against the Protestant Reformation by learning its secrets and using them against it.

Q. Is the Pope the Anti-Christ?

A. Luther, Calvin, the seventeenth-century Protestant confessions, the Puritans, Wesley, Spurgeon, et al., believed that the papacy (not this or that Pope) is the institution out of which the Anti-Christ will eventually come. I share this broad protestant consensus. The papacy claims christological and pneumatological titles and prerogatives (e.g. vicar of Christ, infallible teacher, supreme head of the church with full, immediate and universal power), coupling them with earthly political power. Remember that Popes are monarchs of a sovereign political state. In the papacy what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar tragically intermingle. This poisoned mixture is the potential milieu for the Anti-Christ to rise from.

There are other questions and answers about his church in Rome, what should tourists do in Rome, Italian food, and soccer.

Francis Turretin: “Papacy is AntiChrist”

Following up on the wild popularity of “Pope Francis” to the United States, Leonardo de Chirico looks at the question of whether “the pope is AntiChrist” in his occasional “Vatican Files” email this morning. In it, he cites Turretin’s “7th Disputation on the AntiChrist” which was part of a larger work entitled “Concerning our Necessary Secession from the Church of Rome and the Impossibility of Cooperation with Her” (1661) (published as F. Turretin, “Whether It Can be Proven the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist”, ed. by R. Winburn, Forestville, CA: Protestant Reformation Publications, 1999).

Here is a selection: Turretin: “Papacy is AntiChrist”:

Understanding and Evaluating the Appeal of Roman Catholicism - Leonardo de Chirico

What Is Roman Catholicism? Part 1

What is Roman Catholicism in our day? According to Leonard De Chirico, no evangelical theologian has had a good handle on answering this question in the post Vatican II years.

(Although to be fair to evangelicals, Roman Catholics don’t seem to have a handle on it either. As the AP recently quoted “Pope Francis”, “What are we waiting for? For the theologians to reach agreement? That day will never come, I assure you”).

One should note that even (maybe especially) among the core group among the Roman Catholic laity, “large chunks of Mass-going traditional Catholics don’t believe in basic doctrines of the Church” – that’s not “lapsed” Roman Catholics – it’s a group of people who attend Mass regularly and at least feign some kind of devotion to “the Church”. Maybe it has always been that way, since “Christianity” was made the “official” religion the Roman empire. Rome was careful to figure out “Rome is first”, but it kind of left the rest of “ecclesiology” an open question.

(Evidence: I’ve recently had the book “Figuring Out the Church” recommended to me. This is a work by a major Roman Catholic theologian, examining the writings of other Vatican II theologians. Whereas the Vatican II doctrine is “infallibly correct”, no one as yet can definitively figure out what it means).

Nevertheless, De Chirico tries, and Allison very much affirms what De Chirico concludes: that Roman Catholicism does have a “core” and it is identifiable.

On Gregg Allison’s “Roman Catholicism: An Evangelical Assessment”: Responding to Objections on “Exactly What is Evangelicalism?”

I’m continuing my walk through Gregg Allison’s work,“Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment”. Throughout, Allison’s method is to show side-by side, the Roman Catholic beliefs, along with what an “Evangelical Assessment” of those beliefs might say. And he does it in the light of a methodology that he clearly articulates at the beginning.

Several individuals have taken issue with one aspect of his treatment: the fact that he identifies “Evangelical Theology” as the interlocutor in his discussion of Roman Catholicism. I’ll admit, I find this to be somewhat unusual at one level. There might be better ways of identifying himself (I won’t speculate).

But on the other hand, he is following the method first articulated by Leonard De Chirico in his work “Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism”.

Before I get to De Chirico’s and Allison’s overviews of “Evangelical Theology”, I’d like to look first at a couple of specific objections.

One writer (Ted Bigelow on an earlier Facebook post of mine) suggested that Allison was being “dishonest”: “He just isn't being honest as to its source. The source of his doctrine, or his ‘pou sto’ isn't evangelicalism.”

“Pope Francis”, in scolding the Curia this past Christmas, stops far short of what’s actually needed

The Latest from Leonard De Chirico:

Pope Francis was chosen “from the end of the world” in the hope that he would deal with the crisis of the Roman Curia as an outsider. Since being elected he has been sending clear signals about his uneasiness towards the Vatican establishment. The latest example of his criticism was his message to the Roman Curia just before Christmas (December 22, 2014) where he diagnosed a spiritually gangrenous reality….

Back to the list of sicknesses. One consideration is worth mentioning. Historically the Roman Curia is a child of the Renaissance courts that surrounded the princes in their various tasks as absolute monarchs. The Pope as a Renaissance prince also had his dignitaries assigned to him and Popes even today continue to have them in the Vatican state. Throughout the centuries the Curia was given a theological status as if it were a small model of the Church itself; indeed the Church at its best on a small scale. The Curia is a product of a monarchial vision of the church and the role of the Pope as absolute monarch of a state is also part of the same breed. Pope Francis criticized the awful spirituality of the Curia, but did not go so far as to question its political and monarchial nature. While denouncing its wrong behaviors, he did not tackle the wrong theology behind it. …

This means that reforming the Curia entails much more than denouncing the poor spiritual conditions of its members or changing personnel in key positions. It involves a radical re-envisioning of the structures of the church according to the supreme apostolic teaching, i.e. the Bible, where the church has no court of dignitaries nor prince at its head, but Jesus Christ alone, who was crucified, rose again and is now exalted.

Of course, I wrote this a long time ago, in an “open letter” to the pope:

The time is long, long past for some pope to stop saying “I [personally] am a sinner…” (as you had done at the beginning of the interview), to stop shifting the blame to “the sins of the children of the Church”.

If your intentions truly are what you say they are, you need to start saying, and quickly, “The Roman Catholic Church has sinned against Christ and his church and humanity” — and then, as is required by your own doctrine of confession, you need to articulate these sins clearly and in fact numerically.

It takes no imagination whatsoever to understand what these sins are.

That alone will be a show of good faith. All the rest of your happy-hopeful statements are mere window dressing and evasion and dissembling.

Gregg Allison on Roman Catholicism: The Heart of the Matter

After the brief introductory materials that I described, Gregg Allison starts right into the meat of his work,“Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment”.

“Chapter 2” is the largest and most important chapter; it’s here where he picks up responding to Leonard De Chirico’s lament that Evangelical perspectives on post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism “must be judged to be deficient in theological insight, especially as far as the recognition of the systemic nature of Roman Catholicism and the theological core of the problem between Roman Catholicism and Evangelicalism are concerned”. (De Chirico, 303).

My assessment of Roman Catholic theology and practice will be on the basis of both Scripture and evangelical theology, so this chapter will begin with a brief explanation of Scripture and its interpretation and will then concentrate on a presentation of evangelical doctrine (pg. 31.)

There may be a number of objections to this approach.

With this assessment being “on the basis of both Scripture and evangelical theology”, someone like Bryan Cross (who has already begun yipping at Allison) will immediately say “that’s begging the question in the dialectical sense”. But that objection fails because Allison clearly defines his primary audience as “evangelicals who desire to become familiar with Catholic theology” and “evangelicals who wish to know better their own evangelical theology as compared to and contrasted with Catholic theology”. So for his two primary audiences, this is a legitimate comparison. It is educational, not polemical.

I’ll go further, and say that Allison’s stated purpose is not to dissuade erstwhile evangelicals from becoming Roman Catholic. The final chapter of his book is devoted to “Evangelical Ministry with Catholics”. That is, “the clear and pointed critique of the doctrines and practices on which Catholic theology disagrees with evangelical theology has not given me any joy. However, this criticism of such divergences, as burdensome as it has been, is necessary for several reasons”:

Evangelical readers of this book know many Catholics and want to understand what they believe and why. Additionally, Catholic readers of this book know many evangelicals and want to understand what they believe and why, and also what their assessment of Catholic theology is. Moreover, dialogue between Catholics and evangelicals will move ahead constructively only if both theological perspectives thoroughly understand each other, both their commonalities and divergences. Finally, Catholics who are journeying toward evangelicalism, and evangelicals who are journeying toward Catholicism, need to know what they are getting themselves into.

He notes rightly that while most people make the journey from one place to another because of “the counsel of a spiritual guide or mentor from the faith toward which the person is traveling”, such journeys frequently are such that “the doctrinal and practical issues that are the focus of this book may not play the key role in the decision-making process”.

As well, Roman Catholics may object because the notion of a unified “evangelical theology”. But Allison paints in broad strokes – he paints “evangelical theology” with a broad brush, and as well, he talks about Roman Catholic “theology and practice”. He does not dive into “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma”.

What Allison seeks to do, rather, is to recognize the “systematic nature” of Roman Catholicism, its “theological core”, in such a way that evangelicals today can recognize the differences that exist between Protestants and Catholics, and trace them to these differences. These differences have been profound differences since Rome anathematized the Gospel at Trent. And, in my opinion, Rome, while trying to put a pretty face on things at Vatican II, has only worked to solidify and exacerbate the differences.

A friend of mine has said, “the older we become, the more like ourselves we become”. That statement is true of the Roman Catholic religion. It is becoming less and less Christian, as the truly Christian elements within it become hidden further and further in the Roman morass.

So Allison focuses not on “fundamentals” and the minute differences, say, between the de fide definitia and the fides ecclesiastica. He approaches, again with a broad brush, what Roman Catholics believe and practice, specifically as it has been outlined in the most recent “symbol” or “official pronouncement”, the 1992/4 “Catechism of the Catholic Church”.

In doing so, as I’ve said, he picks up where De Chirico has left off:

Additionally, it will propose for the purpose of understanding and assessment an approach that considers Catholic theology as a coherent, all-encompassing system with two major features: the nature-grace interdependence, that is, a strong continuity between nature and grace; and the Christ-Church interconnection, that is, an ecclesiology (a doctrine of the church) that views the Catholic Church as the ongoing incarnation of Jesus Christ. These axioms will also be assessed.

Allison again provides “broad brush” treatments of these two “core” elements: “the nature-grace interdependence” and “the Christ-Church” interconnection.

My hope over the course of the next several blog posts on this topic will be to look at what Allison says about these two items (which he has condensed from the writings of De Chirico), and I’ll expand upon them in the context of some of the larger historical discussions and theologies.

The next several elements in order will include:

·        Scripture and Its Interpretation

·        An Evangelical Vision of Life with God and Human Flourishing

·        Catholic Theology as an All-Encompassing System

o   The Nature-Grace Interdependence

o   An Evangelical Assessment of the Nature-Grace Interdependence

o   The Christ-Church Interconnection

o   An Evangelical Assessment of the Christ-Church Interconnection

Throughout the book, I’ve found that Allison’s presentations of Roman Catholicism are honest, in that he works with great diligence to describe what Roman Catholicism actually teaches (although, as we have seen, on the “Catholics-in-the-pews” side, there is a great deal of unwillingness to actually believe all of that**), and his “Evangelical Assessments” are very thorough (within the “broad brush” method that he uses), and they go very far to explain why I am not, cannot be, and refuse to be, Roman Catholic.


** Maggie Gallagher, writing in National Review, notes, “When large chunks of Mass-going traditional Catholics don’t believe in basic doctrines of the Church, something is going very wrong at the most basic level.” She suggests that “My guess from 30 years of Mass-going is that they seldom or never hear what the Church teaches”, but in that case, what good is the “infallible Church” if “the infallible Church” hierarchy doesn’t actually teach “what the Church teaches”? It’s completely useless. But Roman Catholics want to maintain that there is some form of “pristine Church doctrine”, even though the hierarchy, which is supposed to define, protect, and proclaim that “doctrine”, and it is, in fact, the only source in the world from which we can receive it.