Stepping Back From Mary to the Roman Catholic Question: Why the Remedy for Converts to Rome is a Better Reformed Church, and Perhaps a Reckoning
In my first post in this series I outlined three desiderata for a Reformed Mariology. These desiderata do not so much concern the material features of Scriptural and traditional teaching about Mary as they reflect a concern to appreciate, theologically, the way the Mary question involves us in other questions of great contemporary concern: gender, Reformed catholicity, and reading Scripture. Of course, this is not to suggest that our desired path toward a faithful Reformed Mariology does not include more Mary-specific matters of substance, but to suggest that we not work on the Mary question in a way that naively misses why that question takes the form it does in our time.
With that same interest in view, I now suggest a further desirable feature of serious and productive engagement of the Mary question. It is arguably simpler and yet exponentially more difficult than the three discussed earlier, because it is potentially quite unsettling, disturbing, disruptive. This additional desired feature is, one might say, a reckoning. Given the context in which the Mary question is ordinarily located, namely the Roman Catholic question, there are both objective and subjective dimensions to evangelical and Reformed attractions to Rome in our day that require some straight talk about certain key problems we must name accurately. Many of our friends may not be prone to rejecting the importance of the Mary question (the concerns of the previous post) but are in fact more open than they should be to what the Roman Catholic Church teaches on Mary and a range of other matters, and we want to pause humbly to ask why that is rather than rush on to our readings and critiques.
Over the last twenty years or so I have listened to and watched friends and acquaintances move from antipathy to all things Roman Catholic, or at least a rather confident rejection of Roman Catholicism, to “swimming the Tiber” and becoming Roman Catholic. I could add to this conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy (or other national expressions of the Orthodox tradition), not because Orthodoxy is the same or very similar to Roman Catholicism (it is not), but because in the popular evangelical and Reformed mind they are regarded as largely the same and a prospective convert might–if you ask them–just as well choose one or the other.
In my experiences over the years, which may differ from the stories of others, and in my reading of many accounts of evangelical conversion stories of this sort, I recognize both objective and subjective dynamics at play in these stories, none of which speak well of the condition of Reformed churches in our time, and all of which help explain why Greystone pursues another way so energetically and hopefully.
Objective Dynamics
The objective dynamics may be outlined using the three desiderata listed in my first post: gender, Reformed catholicity, and Scriptural reading. Because much of what follows in this series will explore the Scriptural reading element, I will leave that one to the side in this post and attend only to gender and Reformed catholicity. I will also limit my closing discussion of the subjective dynamics to a two-sided (personal and pastoral) cluster of related observations that, I suggest, highlight the strange but real challenges and opportunities of our time.
Gender
In short, though it is difficult to acknowledge, the sociological world of western, English-speaking evangelicalism, into which much of the contemporary Reformed church world has sadly been folded, swings on a pendulum across a scale of gender ideologies. A rabid patriarchal model of male aggression and power stands on the one end, and sexually deviant models of homosexual or same-sex-attraction affirmation (slowly also transgender-affirming, and likely eventually bestiality-affirming) stand on the other, with various points on this scale perceived by evangelicals as “tending in” one or the other direction. Because in this all-too-common mindset we can never resist a reductionist oversimplification, we hear an astonishing amount of “slippery slope” and “root fallacy” arguments, in which a point is objected to because it allegedly “leads to” or “comes from” some unacceptable point much further on the spectrum in one or the other direction.
Further, because we ascribe material and theological value to our generation’s unofficial eleventh commandment of niceness, we adjudicate our cultural situation in and outside the church accordingly. Thus many of our friends (Christian or not) will associate niceness with “leftward” moves on that spectrum, and call the affirmation of homosexuality an example of tolerance and charity, and will to the same degree associate meanness with “rightward” moves, and regard the defense and commendation of distinct male or female callings, prerogatives, responsibilities, etc. as an example of intolerant narrow-mindedness and antiquated ethics beyond which everyone else has certainly evolved. In the end, we may claim that there are many points on this imagined spectrum, but in fact we talk and think as though there are only two positions with many weak or strong variations.
Combine this state of affairs with the fact that, for a Christian committed to any degree of meaningful orthodoxy of theology and life, the gender chaos of our time is rightly seen as urgent and critical. The soft, elusive, and thin commitment on the part of much evangelical and Reformed speech and writing on gender, which is seen by concerned Christians as constantly gesturing–and moving–”leftward,” provokes those Christians to conclude that moving “rightward” is the only alternative and the way to go. After all, even if there are problematic features in some versions of patriarchy in the Church today, they are much to be preferred to the disorderly minefield of evangelical and Reformed moves toward egalitarianism and homosexual affirmation. And the Roman Catholic Church, for all its problems, is at least pretty clear on male/female sexuality. In fact, as I have often noted, the most helpful and theologically sophisticated treatments on gender over the last century or so have usually come from Roman Catholic scholars. And it’s not very close.
To some extent, then, I suggest that evangelical and Reformed instability and ambiguity on a range of deeply biblical and traditional Christian sexual themes has driven concerned believers “rightward,” not just to versions of patriarchy where power and aggression are celebrated and bacon is almost a means of grace, but also to the Roman Catholic Church. These biblical and Christian traditional themes include the goodness and importance of the male/female difference, the reality of the rights and responsibilities of a man as husband and father and of a woman as wife and mother, the equal dignity and asymmetrical harmony rather than (in modern terms of freighted politics and sociology) “equality” of male and female, the good of reproduction in relation to sex and of children in general, the blessing of the intact family as a divinely ordered vehicle of church growth and maturity over time, and so on. In the same way that too many Reformed churches in our time have driven people “leftward” by refusing to listen to abused women and children, declining to hold men who are husbands or fathers or elders or ministers accountable for manipulation or abuse of power or dereliction of duty, and the like, so the drift of general Reformed church culture “leftward” has driven other Christians to look toward Rome or Constantinople.
They are not instructed in any other real options. These Christians have not been catechized in another biblical, far more compelling way on gender than the two ends of that spectrum, and the Roman Catholic Church is perceived by these Christians as way out there on the right side of the scale, and therefore safer and more stable, especially since it lacks some of the quiddities of allegedly Reformed versions of “strong” patriarchy. And where is so much of Roman Catholic theology on gender focused in one way or another? On Mary, who is, in Roman Catholic theology, the counter to so much Reformed treatment of women: she is at the same time a compelling illustration of the glorious receptivity and response-fructification that ennobles woman as woman, particularly in her central vocation as mother, and yet is also highly honored, visible, vocal, and theologically mature in the life of the Church and in relation to her Lord. Submissive? Yes. By leaving the theological reflection and speech to the men and quietly going about her job description? Not at all. Visible, honored, theologically productive for the faith and life of the Church, and vocal rather than silent? Yes. By being a minister or by denying vocational differences from men? Not at all. Currently, we have no popular model of gender which affirms women without denying their important differences from men, and vice versa, in Reformed churches. It is either bad to be a man, or it is bad to be a woman. And, based on conversations I have long had with apparently sincere brothers and sisters in the Church (again, my experiences may be exceptional here, I grant), I fear that the more we illustrate theological and practical confusion in either direction, the more we drive Christians away. Accounting for conversions of formerly Reformed Christians to Rome and Constantinople requires a reckoning with our recent track record on gender, not just in theory but in practice.
Reformed catholicity
In this area, one might easily explore the many ways that the contemporary Reformed church has too easily and readily relinquished the entirety of the pre-Reformation (or later) tradition(s) of the Church’s faith and life to Rome or Constantinople. I have said as much already in the first post in this series. Instead, I would like to accent two sides of the objective phenomenon of evangelical and Reformed attraction to the Roman Catholic Church which, again, suggest the need for a reckoning.
History: A Story Wrongly Told
The first of these is theological and historiographical. In short, the way the story of the Reformation has been told in twentieth- and twenty-first century historiography, alongside the most recent popular contexts for the commendation and defense of what is put forward as “Reformed” theology, have contributed materially (and of course unintentionally) to conversions to Rome. In this historiography, the story of the Reformation has been told as the rejection of Roman Catholicism in general or of certain Roman Catholic teachings and practices (often spoken of as a synonym of “medieval” theology) which in fact in many cases it was not, and the resultant “Reformed theology” which the Reformation is claimed to have launched bears little resemblance not only to the Reformation but the confessions and catechisms of the Reformed tradition. Instead, one might say it is the enthusiastic sprinkling of some unilateral divine monergism and supremacy onto the largely intact but ailing body of modern evangelical theology and piety. But it is practically unrecognizable in historic Reformed terms. Discovering the fiction of how much of Roman Catholic theology and practice has been explained to them, some Christians therefore find themselves quite open to reconsidering everything they thought they knew about Roman Catholicism. And, feeling somewhat misled (and rightly so), they are also dispositionally inclined to believe the Roman Catholic apologist over what Reformed figures say.
It is sobering to consider, but whole “Reformed” industries in the last generation or so have been spiritually fueled and financially resourced by this catechizing of new Reformed converts (ordinarily from revivalistic, pentecostal, anti-intellectual, Arminian-decisionist contexts of one kind or another) into a version of what “Reformed” means that bears little to no resemblance to historic reality. It may be startling to put it in such direct terms, but it is important to stare this phenomenon squarely in the eyes. Doing so will help us avoid hearing the call to a more robust, substantial, faithful Reformed faith and practice as “be countercultural by being more five-pointer and anti-Catholic, especially as more and more Christians are being pulled that way.”
This remarkably effective program of new historiography and theology has shaped a generation or more of people in Reformed pews and pulpits to think that being distinctively “Reformed” means certain things that it does not (usually soteriological and accenting themes like divine sovereignty, human depravity, predestination, five points, and the like). It has also taught them that “Reformed” means being against certain things that it certainly is not (the ordinary necessity of good works and of the Church for salvation, the validity of Roman Catholic baptism, human responsibility and activity in a bilateral sense, Church tradition as an authority, sacramental efficacy for both baptism and the Supper, and the like). None of this is true, but it has been enormously influential, and many Reformed churches are now full of such converts. In this narrative, these are things associated with the Roman Catholic Church, not the Reformation, and anything that allegedly “smells” like the Roman Catholic Church (so defined) is therefore suspect. Unfortunately that often includes most of the Church that Christ and the Spirit has built from the Ascension up until yesterday. This phenomenon has led some sincere Reformed brothers and sisters to wonder rather peculiar things, the very questions themselves saying so much about our condition: Does the imputation of Christ’s righteousness for my justification mean that everything a believer does is unacceptable to God? Are Anglicans who pray from a prayer book, call their pastor “father,” wear vestments, and love Church tradition really Reformed? Aren’t those church fathers and medievals Roman Catholic? Should we really say good things about Mary other than that she obeyed God and needed a Savior like us? A traditional Reformed Christian’s head can’t help but fall into their hands in perplexed despair. As they say, you can’t make this stuff up!
What happens, then, when such Christians learn from just about any thoughtful Roman Catholic friend or from the writings of Roman Catholic theologians and apologists that the relatively recent caricature of Roman Catholic theology, on which their transition or belonging to the “Reformed” church was based to some degree, was inaccurate? What happens when, no matter how much “Reformed theology” that Christian has learned and read and heard, perhaps even from their youth, all it takes is one or two well-written, winsome, and thoughtful books from, say, Peter Kreeft or Scott Hahn or Brant Pitre to demonstrate–and quite easily–that Roman Catholics don’t actually believe what the popular Reformed writer or pastor claimed they did about faith, justification, works, Scripture, tradition, Mary, and much more, or at least not in that form? What happens is sad but simple to understand. They conclude, wrongly, that therefore the differences between Geneva and Rome are not that important or significant after all.
The corrective to popular misunderstandings of historic and confessional Reformed theology on these matters has long been available to us, but unfortunately principally only in more academic publications and similar contexts. While we do have examples of excellent popular treatments of certain topics or questions, we have not yet seen many solid, clear, and confessional Reformed surveys at the popular level of what it means to be “Reformed” that account for these corrections without containing other problems or weaknesses. The reform of what goes by the name “Reformed” in our day may require such publications to begin to undo the damage done by earlier, well-intentioned, but wrong-headed efforts. But it will require something more.
Worship: An Unacknowledged Reformed Crisis
Though I have said much about this first side of the objective dynamic of Reformed catholicity (the theological and historiographical), the second side I would draw attention to is, in my view, more fundamental and, perhaps, even more controversial. It is worship, which is not only the context in which Reformed catholicity is most on display (or is not), but also the context in which it is most pastorally effective in a way that is relevant to our overall interest here. I can speak briefly here, I trust. To put the matter concisely, the worship of many Reformed churches has driven, and continues to drive, Christians to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches. Crucially, this is not only the case with respect to the thin, trendy, music- and performance-driven, evangelical, “missional” styles of the non-denominational and too many Reformed churches. It is also the case in what is referred to as “traditional” or “conservative” worship in most confessional Reformed churches, which is in fact neither traditional at all (unless we start the “tradition” a hundred years ago) nor conspicuously Reformed, but is in reality the perpetuation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English-speaking anti-liturgical nonconformity. I can think of no better way to illustrate this difference than to ask you to compare and contrast the liturgies or service features of the Reformed churches of the Reformation and of the post-Reformation period of orthodoxy (the liturgies of Geneva, Scotland, the French churches, and others are easy to find online) with the orders of service in a typical Reformed congregation today–and for the last hundred years or so–that would see itself as “traditional” or “conservative” because it sings hymns and some psalms and does not include a “praise team” or use drums. What happened?
This is not the place to outline the case for a return to Reformed liturgical self-consciousness as central to pastoral care and faithful church identity and mission. I attempt that elsewhere. Instead, I will simply note that this liturgical poverty–which includes an aversion to any substantial theological attention to matters of liturgy because (see above) “that’s a Roman Catholic thing”–has been motivated, to be as charitable as possible, by an ostensibly Reformed concern for worship simplicity and for ensuring worship will be meaningful to as many in attendance as possible. At work, however, is a divorce of worship from theology, especially a theology of preaching, and a functioning model of ecclesiology that sees the church’s identity, and therefore worship, as most fundamentally evangelistic rather than the discipleship of those who are the Lord’s and gathered away from the world to himself in sacred assembly. It also assumes the Christian life is fundamentally conversionist and experiential in terms that are dissonant with the covenantal and communal commitments of Reformed ecclesiology.
What does this have to do with the pull of Rome or Constantinople? The emails in my inbox from troubled friends and students and the conversations I’ve had over the years make it quite simple, really. Christians in the pews are frustrated by the evangelical rather than Reformed nature of church worship and thus routinely drawn to the aesthetic “otherness” and the deliberate and deeply historical patterns and practices of worship found in Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. To step into such spaces is undeniably to step out of the world as it is, and these Christians know there is something about that difference that is substantial and proper, given who the Church is and is called to be. Here is the one thing I have heard the most often, by far, from those who are tempted to convert: “When it comes to worship, I know they probably have other things wrong, but at least they have this right.”
I disagree, of course, since I regard many (not all) features of Roman Catholic worship as not only wrong but dangerously so, especially but not only in connection with the mass. But this sentiment is saying something important about the state of Reformed worship and church life today. The single greatest problem with contemporary Reformed Christianity is, I suggest, her liturgical poverty, which informs the relative poverty of her theological and practical engagement with gender, of her preaching, and of her general Christian maturity. The remedy is not to go to Rome. The remedy is for the confessional Reformed tradition to remember where she came from and why, to repent, and to be renewed. We don’t need an abandonment of the Reformed tradition in order to recover some ecclesial, historical, and liturgical sensibilities; we need a better, more faithful one.
That last concern–general Christian maturity–prompts my last suggestions on the more subjective dynamics of conversions to Rome and Constantinople.
Subjective Dynamics
The subjective dynamics of such conversions are impossible to regularize, at least beyond some generalities. But it is important to note them anyway. The truth is that many converts leave the Reformed church in favor of Rome or Constantinople not only because of objectively problematic features of their Reformed experience (discussed above), but also because of their own private experiences, personality, and relative spiritual maturity or immaturity.
Personal
One cannot and should not try to psychologize such conversions too confidently, not least because the reasons a person may be attracted to conversion are ordinarily complex rather than simple, historical rather than merely present, and unspoken rather than candidly discussed and acknowledged. In addition, the reasons of the heart are ultimately mysterious to us all, including to the convert himself or herself, and known fully only to the Lord. This is one reason of many that we must rest resolutely not in the prowess of an apologist’s arguments as such but in the reliable and authoritative witness of God to himself in his Word. He knows us all the way down, and what he says in his Word he says to us in that knowledge.
While we cannot speak with confidence about any person’s reasons for converting, however, we may speak in terms of what converts have themselves often said or exhibited in one way or another.
In this light, we can say some are understandably but wrongly attracted to the fiction of Roman Catholic antiquity and stability over many centuries. It is a fiction, as a historian of the Church can tell you in ugly detail, but it is a fiction that appeals to many. This attraction may be due only to their frustration with the pedantry of much evangelical and protestant divisiveness and conflict. But it may also arise from their own deep longing for something stable like the fictitious Roman Catholic Church. It may have more to do with their own rather unstable selves and a hope that the apparently fixed and reliable context of that church will compensate for, or even end, their own deep restlessness.
For the same reason, some convert because they came from broken households, had poor experiences of their own fathers or husbands, or at least had only inadequate examples of authority figures who would exemplify stable faithfulness and provide direction in life. As the current crisis of fatherlessness (or of poor fathers) grows, we might see more conversions to ostensibly stable, authoritative, fatherly church traditions like the Roman Catholic Church as a result. Others are of course simply fickle people, easily swayed by the latest appealing or generally persuasive line of argument, surfing the winds of the most recent interesting book they read. Some of these are also in a perpetual state of teen-like rebellion against their background and upbringing. For this reason they are as likely to join any church tradition rather than just this one, so long as it’s not the one they grew up in or are in presently. Others simply needed wise and persevering mentors, but lacked them, and so were vulnerable to the unwise mentorship of others. More reasons of this sort could be listed–and it is important to note that people sometimes convert to the Reformed faith for these wrong reasons as well.
Pastoral
What they have in common should not be overlooked: a kind of spiritual immaturity that may reflect the failure of the Christian or of the leadership of his or her church. At the end of the day, in such cases conversion to the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t really have to do with the teaching and practice of that Church so much as the cracks, fractures, and incompleteness in their own hearts, which they hope this change might help.
This spiritual immaturity (which, while true, does not remove our need to be sympathetic) may be the failure of the Christian himself or herself. For instance, he or she may refuse to acknowledge the bare hypocrisy of breaking their church vows they took in relation to their church (officially or, more often, by practice) in order, allegedly, to “belong” to a better church for their spiritual good; of claiming to despise the evangelical habit of church-shopping in order to find a place that matches one’s own felt needs or desires while doing exactly the same by choosing to leave for another church for what amounts to the same basic reasons; or of pointing to many ills and problems in the Reformed church as reasons for leaving while turning a blind eye to the many ills and problems in the Roman Catholic Church (which include theology and liturgy, and not only the terrible sexual abuse scandals). This general issue of spiritual immaturity may help explain why such converts are willing to extend so much more charity to the Roman Catholic Church (or any other church) than they are, or were, to the church and the people they once embraced and committed to, but then left. These are seldom reachable with good arguments or explanations, and tend to avoid sources of wisdom that will challenge them at the roots of their spiritual malaise. In the end, they are their own pope. Objective reasons for the conversion may be put forward, but honesty often requires accounting for the subjective ones too.
But it may (also?) be the failure of the leadership of the church they left. We have noted potential failures on the church’s part already above, under the objective categories. But how many converts to the Roman Catholic Church also left their churches without the leadership “getting in the way” pastorally of their headlong pursuit of this error that compromises the welfare of their soul? How many loved them enough to “get in the way” in the form of pastoral and loving admonition and correction when that Christian showed signs–as they ordinarily do–of spiritual problems in the earlier, more “low level” decisions they had made before this? A scourge on many Reformed congregations is the confusion of pastoral action with judicial action so that leaders act only if and when there are judicial tools one can defensibly use. (This is a topic for another day.) Another scourge, and a related one, is that church leaders only act at the end of a situation they should have seen coming if they had known and loved their people, and act only when it’s too late. To be sure, a pastor or elder or fellow church member cannot force someone to be humble, to listen, to ask questions, to be patient, to love their church. But they can impress upon them the Lord’s commandments to do so, and so let their rejection be the rejection of their Lord rather than the dereliction of Christian duty.
What, then? Perhaps a Reckoning
The desiderata for a Reformed Mariology with which we began may seem far from our interests at the moment, but in fact they are not. Those desiderata include clarifying the reasons we should take Mary seriously in biblical and theological terms (the concerns of our first post). But they also include doing justice to the reasons increasing numbers of Reformed Christians are attracted to Mariology, and to the Roman Catholic church more generally, in a way that they ought not to be. I suggest that doing justice to this latter phenomenon requires that we look in the mirror as confessional Reformed churches and ministers. I suggest that in our generation a faithful Reformed Mariology (and a faithful Reformed doctrine or practice of any other truth) requires not merely a better apologetic, a better historiography, and a better theology, but may also require a penitence, a reckoning.
This is because the Mary question belongs, to a great extent, to the broader Roman Catholic question, for better or for worse. And the Roman Catholic question of our generation is an opportunity to reflect on the sad and dangerous phenomenon of Reformed converts to Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
And this in turn leads to an opportunity, if we want it. In many ways, the Lord may be leading his Church today through a time of disassembly and reassembly, what we have sometimes called reformation and renewal historically. He has done this with his people from Eden’s Garden down to our time, leading us along the contours of the story of Christ himself: of humiliation and exaltation, weakness and strength, cross and resurrection, penitence or judgment and renewal and power. Judgment must begin humbly within and among us as an expression of the House of God as we honestly ask ourselves if there are patterns and practices at work in our churches which do, however inadvertently or unintentionally, drive our people to Rome or Constantinople. Asking this hard question may reposition us in our approach to Mary in the Scriptures and in the Church’s tradition. This is because Mary figures for us all an example worth emulating right now, in our time, in these circumstances, with these challenges: whatever the call to utter faithfulness looks like and demands of us, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).