Church Cleaning
by S. M. Hutchens
As I write, I have just read one of those cleverly written articles that, without overtly condemning a phenomenon, uses polite contempt by word choice to flatter its readers and suggest how intelligent people like them ought to think about it. No, it was not the New York Times, which specializes in the technique, but a Catholic publication describing something Catholic.
The story was about mostly younger priests whose bishop has been permitting them to return to a more traditional form of Catholicism than they have been raised in, and who by doing so are scandalizing their post-Vatican II fellow Catholics with their Latin-Mass strangeness, doctrinariness, and lack of inclusivist sensibility. This has in some places resulted in a kind of house-cleaning in which liberalized Catholics are fleeing to Protestant churches that are more positive, accepting, and loving (the reader will understand)—like what they have become used to in modernized Catholicism.
Now, I am a conservative Protestant who sees in traditional Catholicism everything that rubs the old wounds of our disagreements raw, and who tires of the material it generates that regards Protestantism as diabolical and treats Protestants as ignorant, stupid, or willfully blind. (Being the True Church, just like the Protestant one I was raised in, what choice does it have?) Still, I have no difficulties in recognizing traditional Catholics, among whom I grew up, as Christians. Whatever they think of us, I hope their tribe increases and that they remain at war with everything genuinely uncatholic in Protestantism. I am cheered by the news that there are places where they are trying to retake ground surrendered by their
popes.
The correspondent who sent me this article asked how I thought "church cleaning" might be done. I believe I know only in part, but have pretty firm ideas on how it has to start, or perhaps better stated, on the necessary signs in the churches that it is underway, understanding on the basis of New Testament teaching that the Lord commands (as in Revelation 1–3) it to be done, and wherever it is not done, he will personally extinguish the light of Christian witness by removing his Spirit—something we have all seen a great deal of. Here I have nothing new to say; I'm just agreeing with people I respect.
The cleansing must begin by defining fundamental Christianity in terms of dogma and practice and thus identifying the liberals as adherents of another and non-Christian religion, as Pope Pius X, J. Gresham Machen, and C. S. Lewis did. It is essentially for this reason that the early ecumenical councils were called, and they produced a Creed that is still "drawing the line" more than 1,500 years later. This done, the fog will be dispelled that allows the use of terms like "liberal Christian" or "liberal Catholic," since, properly speaking, there is no such thing, any more than there is a "gay Christian." One part of the term excludes the other.
Commanded, Yes—But Possible?
After that, the apostolic directive is clear: separate from their fellowship as Christians (the separation being adumbrated in the very acts of defining and identifying). This is not conceptually difficult, but people have found a cornucopia of very pious excuses not to do it. That's where most of the difficulty and confusion comes in, and where the process stops. The Apostolic Teaching (2 Cor. 6:14–18) that governs separation, however, is:
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
"I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
Therefore,
"Come out from among them and be separate," says the Lord. "Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters," says the Lord Almighty.
Fundamentalism, Right & Wrong
This passage describes what Protestant fundamentalists call "biblical separationism," their interpretation of which is hateful to those who have rejected the movement's bad attitudes and manners. The fundamentalist mistake, however, is not in holding to the rule of separation, which is given by God, but in the first step of cleaning: defining the faith.
The weakness of fundamentalism does not lie principally in its willingness to transgress the Niceness canon for truth's sake—the principal reason, I believe, it attracts so much odium. Its validity suffers from drawing its parameters for the Christian faith too narrowly, according to the sectarian (phyletic) impulse of its own religious culture, rather than from a catholic mind that keeps the Nicene Creed in the forefront of its vision. That mind was clearly evident and operative in the first generation of Protestant fundamentalists, after whom the phenomenon was named, but it was later lost among those who retained the name but withdrew from the society of others who agreed with them on The Fundamentals.
Touchstone follows Lewis in an attempt to draw the boundaries in a catholic way (mere Christianity), that is, as broadly as possible under present circumstances of division. This has resulted in the creation not of a church, but of a fellowship, in anticipation of a day when each shall be corrected and given his place. It occurs to me this fellowship reflects that described by Tolkien: it is of those who recognize and love in each other loyalty to the High King not yet come fully into his kingdom, even when they are in a sense, here and now, natural enemies.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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33.2—March/April 2020
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