Writing About Protestants
A conservative Protestant, I am kept well-supplied by a Catholic friend with the literature of Catholic protest against the modernists who now infect his church in all its parts. Despite temptations to Schadenfreude against triumphal converts, I regard the plight of traditionalist Catholics sympathetically, for I have been where they are, and believe that in their part of Christendom they uphold the fundamental doctrines of the faith and the ethical imperatives that accompany it.
Unlike Protestants who see Catholicism as without remainder an anti-church and Catholics as false Christians, I believe a Catholic might be as much a Christian as a non-Catholic, just as a Catholic might think of a Protestant, although one must grant there are many of both tribes for which Dante could find a warm place. My attitude comes less from the liberality that accompanies “mere Christian” conviction than from what I have found from early youth, before I read C. S. Lewis, to be inescapable evidence of living faith among serious Catholics, so that if Catholics cannot be believers, neither can I. Lewis simply reinforced intuitions I had before I read him.
Roomism & Its Antithesis
Concourse between Protestants and Catholics takes place, I believe, under one of two frames of mind on the latter’s part. One view is that the churches of the Reformation, in breaking communion with Rome, willfully departed the fold of Christ and can no longer be regarded as truly Christian, but are apostate and to be treated as a class of unbelievers. The other, very different, view is that a spiritual communion still exists and could not be destroyed by the logic of the magisterially energized (on both sides) severances of the last half-millennium. Indeed, from the standpoint of both Catholics and Protestants, some teachings of the separated and now opposing body, and certainly all of the fundamental ones represented in the Creed, are actually identical to those of the continuing and anointed congregation, and within this common faith and doctrine lies hope of regained unity.
This latter understanding is reflected in the existence of a common hall touching the rooms of C. S. Lewis’s Christian edifice in Mere Christianity, whereas the historical proclivity of all “Roomists,” shall we call them, is to regard their own partition as the whole House, to minimize or deny the existence of common living space (the hall), and to keep the walls between their room and other rooms in good repair. One establishes his identity among his fellow Roomists by invalidating commonalities with so-called “others in the house,” emphasizing and reinforcing the differences and disagreements. After observing the phenomenon for sixty years, I could not be convinced otherwise.
This divisiveness I would identify as the default position in every church, for they all are defined, legitimized, energized, and dominated by the spirits of their institutionally accredited Roomists. Alongside this, though, always exists Roomism’s antithesis, which finds its expression not in disloyalty to the stated beliefs of the denomination but in such things as the remarks of people who lack power in them, such as, “My neighbor is Catholic, but I really think she is a Christian.” In such a case, on either side, a minister or priest has the duty to remind members of his flock who say such things that, however it may be explained, she’s a Catholic, or a Protestant, and that means “outside the fold of Christ.”
In the story of the Protestant-Catholic contest since the Reformation, both of these minds have appeared. There is always an undercurrent of popular skepticism regarding the dominant church teaching about other churches and a willingness and desire found among the people to accept brotherhood where it appears to exist. This is most evident where the authority of the central church structures is distant or attenuated.
On the battlefields, Protestant and Catholic soldiers see little reason to make strong distinctions between each other’s beliefs and face death as brothers. In the mission field, Protestant and Catholic missionaries meet to pray. In the neighborhoods (this is part of my own story), Catholic and Protestant children play together and compare notes on what they have heard in Sunday school and CCD, and the begrudging churches must always find ways either to prevent or accommodate marriages between their respective children.
Discerning Departures
As a person who from his youth has sought to know more about the truth of our confession—which the sectarian Protestant churches in which I was raised believed and faithfully taught—and who would give up friendship with anything Roman Catholic if I believed devotion to Christ demanded it, I, knowing many Catholics, became unconvinced by the profession and manner of life of the better ones that my own “room” was—as I was in fact taught by the Roomists who dominated my own sect—the whole House. For it became clear at the same time that the Catholics were basically right about most things, as we were also—if I was willing to believe it—and that the places where they or we were wrong would have to be worked on until they went away, which they must because the Lord clearly requires it of those who name his Name. I believe this still—and that the spiritual darkness which is now gathering around us all will lead to greater clarity on all these things.
It is from this standpoint that I urge traditionalist Catholics to consider what sort of Catholic they are when they accuse members of their own church of “Protestantism” when the departure from Catholic belief they have in mind might not require them to go this far, when it might, in fact, be more accurately identified as that of “liberalism” or “modernism” or “progressivism,” in the sense defined by explicit papal teaching, especially in loci like Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Ecumenism from the online archives
31.4—July/August 2018
Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner
more from the online archives
28.2—March/April 2015
Neo-Pagan Family Policies Doom Any Recovery by Allan C. Carlson
32.2—March/April 2019
Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II by Paul Gosselin by Louis Markos
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
