4 Things Evangelicals Can Learn From Catholicism

I want to make something clear: this is not intended to be a condemnation of Evangelicalism or Protestantism. I grew up in that tradition and have a great respect for it. That being said, I do think there are fair criticisms to make, and ecumenicism does not forbid us from doing so. I also know I could easily write a post about what Catholics can learn from Evangelicalism. Perhaps soon I will. 

1. The Church is big enough for all of us.

It's a funny thing that all Christians accept we are not called to judge and yet we turn around and always find a convenient excuse to do so. I'm happy to be a member of a faith community (Catholicism) that is spacious enough for all types of people! It spans countries, ethnicities, and cultures. And it especially spans dichotomies of right v. left, liberal v. conservative, etc.

This week it was announced that the Vatican will be canonizing Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. This is no coincidence. JPII was a champion of conservative, traditional values and John XXIII is the pope who sought to modernize the Catholic Church with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Catholicism is an umbrella with space for both Opus Dei and Catholic scholars doing "queer theology." We have it all! I don't know what the Church would look like in a perfect world but in this world, the Church welcomes all types and a wide-range of gospel views, without the need for splitting the church into smaller, "more pure" communities. Evangelicals seem to often get caught up on not compromising their principles. While anti-gospels should be refuted, we may find our smaller, purer communities look nothing like the "all are welcome" Church our spiritual forbears spoke about.

2. The Church's mission is to meet material needs, not just spiritual ones.

You have to care for people's physical needs, and you very often have to care for those needs before you can meet a spiritual desire. Imagine missionaries who visited the starving of the world and told them the importance of changing their doctrines. Now imagine missionaries who show God's love through meeting physical needs. The beauty of the gospel is that meeting these needs is spiritual ministry. There is no distinction between the natural world and the spiritual world. Christ in the gospels is often meeting (seemingly) physical needs of people first. He feeds them or cures them or returns lost loved ones to them. Do we think Christ did anything outside of the Father's will?

Yes, Catholicism holds that works are part of salvation and a means of obtaining grace. But most Catholics don't think of doing good works as merely a way to assure salvation. Most Catholics think of good works as simply what a Christian should do. And the simple reason is that literally every Sunday we say prayers for the poor, the needy, the disenfranchised. Evangelicals need not adopt the theology but the philosophy of ministry is a fruitful one. (And for the record, many Evangelical communities are doing this already.)

3. Proselytism is solemn nonsense. You have to meet people and listen to them.

Before you say, "that's too far!" know that this is a direct quote from Pope Francis in a recent interview. Another name for this principle could be, "accept people on their own terms." Francis has spoken at great length about this, saying that Catholics can meet Protestants, people of other faiths, and even atheists on their own terms. They can all listen to their consciences and try to follow those as best they can and that we can meet in that space. He's actually offering validity to honestly-held beliefs, even if they aren't in accordance with our own religious creed. We should take a moment to really contemplate that.

I'm reminded of when I told my father I was becoming Catholic after growing up Evangelical. Eventually he accepted my decision and told me about the one Catholic friend he had had in college. My father related how that man had still been a good Christian: he read the Bible, attended small groups, and even spoke in tongues. I realized my father could accept a Catholic when he looked and acted just like him. That's quite fine but it's not accepting people on their own terms and I dream of a much bigger Christian unity than that. Listening to people and finding what commonality we can opens up a much bigger world. Not all views are created equal or correct but Christ showed a greater need for peace, justice, and respect than he did for arguing doctrine.

4. The purpose of religion is divine union, not social order.

To be fair, this is a problem in both Evangelicalism and Catholicism but I think it tends to be a more systematic trend for Evangelicals. Perhaps the difference is that Catholicism is diverse enough to have voices who have always and loudly advocated this principle, even if they've been labeled "liberal" or "progressive" for doing so. I'm quite appalled to hear from Catholics, the bishops, and a multitude of Evangelical voices that gay marriage destroys the family, that God takes a special interest in America, or that politics is where the gospel should be lived out. This is an affront to the message of Christ.

The gospel and all good religion seek to transform people. When was the last time who you are was transformed by a law? The counter-intuitive message of self-donating love is meant to recreate you in a different likeness. It's not meant to restructure society from the top down. The gospel is the good news of the lowly. It's a completely grass roots message; it starts at the lowest levels. Our example of the one person arguably at the "top" who had real divine authority - Christ - is an example of someone who said, "who made me judge over you?" Compare that to Moses' supposition of power - even when trying to do the right thing - and his condemnation by a mere slave, "Who made you a ruler and judge over us?" Evangelicals need to realize that the rules and attitudes of society are not the rubric for if God is respected. Having "Christian values" reflected in society doesn't mean that God wins. And not having them doesn't mean that God fails. Our God is so much bigger than that. If Evangelicals let go of their need to make everyone else live according to their principles they may, in fact, find more freedom in how they personally live the gospel.

Related Posts:
When Christian Doctrine Fails Us
"Christian Unity is Inconceivable": I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means

Why I Really Became Catholic

In conversations this past week it was rightly pointed out that last week's post on Why I Became Catholic helped clarify why I was attracted to traditional Christianity but not why I chose Catholicism specifically. What was it about Roman Catholicism that made me say, "Yes! Here is something true that I've found nowhere else"?

If I had to do it over, I would retitle last week's post "Why I left Evangelicalism." I'd like to say for the record that I believe there is a lot of good in Protestant and Evangelical traditions. In fact, I feel part of my personal mission as a Catholic convert is to help Catholics see where we can learn from our Protestant brothers and sisters. But I did reject a lot of tenets in Evangelicalism as I experienced it growing up. And the specifically 'Catholic' things I found in Catholicism were so overwhelmingly good for me to know.


Some reasons I chose Catholicism specifically

The Papacy - I really think it's hard to consider "Catholicism" outside of the figure of the pope. As I was saying to someone recently, the pope is the linchpin that holds Catholicism together as a unified, trustworthy belief system.

A fundamental problem for Protestantism, in my experience, is authority. Why is one denomination more valid than another? How can I trust one interpretation over another? It seems this requires the answers of "my pastor says, the denomination believes, our translation, the King's version, scholars note," and on and on. I didn't find those answers definitive or personally satisfying. But in Catholicism, there is a clear hierarchy of authority. Because Catholics believe Christ instituted the papacy personally with Peter (Matthew 16:17-19), when we're asked "How can you believe X?" we can answer "Because the pope, Christ's representative on earth, said so." Now, that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But when I looked at Scripture and the tradition of the Church, I found the papacy to actually be a great comfort. Theologically, it's a form of assurance.

Vision of Mary - What would a Catholic blog really be without a mention of Mary?? I hope to do a future post on Mariology 101. But unlike the vast majority of reasons I did join the Church, this reason was not logical but experiential. I offer this story as my own experience, and I make no demands for belief one way or another.

"Mary" was something I was just not on board with when I converted. I didn't understand the Catholic belief here (and a ton of other places, let me tell you) but I was given the grace to simply accept that understanding would come with time.

A couple weeks before joining the Church I was growing extremely anxious. Is this the right choice? What if I get it wrong? I really didn't know if I should 'go through with it' and become Catholic. So I went for a walk around campus to pray, and I desperately asked God for a sign. Of course, this is really immature spirituality but it was all I really had at the time. And God had enough mercy to give me what I hoped for.

As I was walking I looked up and stared at a very large oak tree with the sun shining directly behind it. After a few seconds of taking in the beauty of its leaves, I closed my eyes. And there, in my now (non)vision, the sun shining through the leaves had burned a perfect - I mean absolutely perfect - image of Mary. It was unmistakable. Please feel free to be a skeptic. I normally discount such stories myself as wishful thinking. But it was a true experience for me (the only person it was meant to be true for), and I took it as a sign that I really should become Catholic. I've never looked back.

Salvation - I found a lot more history, tradition, theology, and Scripture validating a Catholic understanding of salvation rather than a Protestant one. The world is both physical and spiritual. They go together. And so a view of sacramental grace just made a lot of sense.

Works and action being part of our salvation was also an important belief for me. Christ rarely tells his disciples what to believe (though it's often revealed to them) but he always tells them to do something: follow me. Other times he denounces those with the proper confession but wrong action and affirms those with the wrong profession but the right action. The Catholic view of faith and works affirmed what I felt experientially was true.

Salvation is a process in Catholicism. Protestants tend to view it as an event, which explains why they always want to know when you were saved. But Catholics believe salvation is a constant process of growing in holiness, of uncertainty, and of much stumbling. And, if you're not careful, you could possibly lose your salvation altogether in extreme cases. I think this is a much more difficult view of salvation to live with but I do think it's the right one.

Why I Became Catholic

I joined the Catholic Church from a Baptist and Pentecostal background during college, Easter Sunday 2007. Lots of Catholics leave the Church but not many Protestants come in, particularly if they're not marrying a Catholic.

So I'm often asked why I became Catholic, especially living in Wheaton where Catholics are few. This is kind of like being asked, "What makes you you?" We can do our best to give a nod to nature, nurture, and choice but we'll never be able to fully explore it.

That's true for me with my conversion and I'm discovering new 'reasons' all the time. And I acknowledge that accepting Catholicism was also a rejection of a lot of the Protestantism of my childhood. That being said, here are 3 main reasons I became Catholic.


1. The marriage of Faith & Reason. Many Christians still hold that scientific evidence isn't trustworthy since the Bible doesn't mention things like evolution. But Pope Benedict XVI said that faith and reason are never at odds. If you think they are, you're misunderstanding at least one of them.

The natural world and its laws are part of God's creation so how can we reject part of God? Let me quote Godspell's character, Galileo in saying,

When it comes to God, I find
I can't believe that he designed
a human being with a mind
he's not supposed to use.

As a young man in college desiring an honest faith, I needed to hear that.

2. Continuity with the past. Growing up in my Protestant church(es) I had the sense that 'true' Christianity came about with Martin Luther and the Reformation. The Early Church, of course, had it right and was perfect until corrupted by Catholicism (insert dramatic music here).

So many Protestants are left with at least a thousand year gap in which there were basically no 'true' Christians. But how could God allow that to happen?

J.R.R. Tolkien once described a mustard seed. It grows and changes over time and the grown tree looks nothing like the original seed because it's not meant to. This is the Catholic Church, he says.

No, there weren't titles like "pope" in 1st century Mesopotamia but these developments are okay and part of God's providence. God uses human agency. And logically, it made much more sense to me that God was always guiding the official teaching of the Church.

There was no thousand year gap of corruption. I accepted that God was there all along and the Holy Spirit has guided the development of Christianity at all times.

3. The emphases in Catholicism seemed truer. I don't wish to anger any Protestants but I really have issues with some emphases in Protestantism. They tend to be less focused on community and looking out and much more focused on the self and looking in. (Catholics, of course, have the opposite problem.)

A perfect example is the individualism found in many Protestant circles. It's just so American(!) and tends to give the gospel an American flavor, which I just don't like.

You get hints of this individualism in some Protestant language. "Have you read your  Bible?" "I  don't like the music at that church." "Jesus is my personal  Lord and Savior." No, he's not! Jesus is the savior of the World!

I think Protestants (and really all of us) can be so focused on our own faith life that we forget everyone else. I think this plays out in things like "church shopping", a phrase I'm convinced can only lead one to conclude that finding a church that suits you is the same as finding flattering pants for your body type.

I found in Catholicism an emphasis on action and not just faith. An emphasis on caring for the poor in all their forms. And I found a primacy of community over the individual.

In Catholicism I heard, for the first time, that we are meant to fit the Church (like a good pair of pants), and not the other way around. That still rings true to me.

Update: After receiving feedback from several individuals, I decided to clarify my reasons for converting and to offer "specifically Catholic" reasons for choosing Catholicism. Thanks to those who gave me feedback. And you can find Part 2 of this post here.