‘Catholics Gone Wrong’
There are quotation marks around that title because I didn’t say that so put the rocks back down (for a minute anyway). I’ve been reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Catholic Church and Conversion and he said that. Listen…
They [Protestants] are not people who have really created something entirely new, until they pass the border of reason and create more or less crazy nightmares. But nightmares do not last; and most of them even now are in various stages of waking up. Protestants are Catholics gone wrong; that is what is really meant by saying they are Christians. Sometimes they have gone very wrong; but not often have they have gone right ahead with their own particular wrong. Thus a Calvinist is a Catholic obsessed with the Catholic idea of the sovereignty of God. But when he makes it mean that God wishes particular people to be damned, we may say with all restraint that he has become a rather morbid Catholic.
Now I know (and understand) the Catholic perspective that Protestants do not share the fullness of faith to be found in the Catholic Church. After all how can we as Catholics believe and teach and live in the Real Presence of Christ and then say it doesn’t make a difference? Why bother with a Savior that if you have an actual physical encounter with Him it leaves you unchanged? We MUST believe that there is something missing for those who do not have the Real Presence and the Sacraments or we deny the power of Christ. Hilaire Belloc describes heresy in general in The Great Heresies,
“The word [heresy] is derived from the Greek verb Haireo, which first meant ‘I grasp’ or ‘I seize’ and then came to mean ‘I take away’”
and
“The denial of a scheme wholesale is not heresy, and has not the creative power of heresy. It is the essences of heresy that it leaves a great part of the structure it attacks. On this account it can appeal to believers and continues to affect their lives through deflecting them from their original characters. Wherefore it it is said of heresies that “they survive by the truths they retain.”
I liked that too. If you combine Belloc and Chesterton, (I suggesting exiting the room quickly if you do, they might reach critical mass.) I think you have a very interesting picture. Chesterton it seems almost pictures the doctrinal extremes of the various branches of Protestantism as a form of cancer, that crowds out an essential piece of something in Belloc’s construct. In fairness to Belloc, he writes about the root of the Protestant heresy as a denial of visible unity and not at all about Calvinism being obsessed with the sovereignty of God. The rejection of unity is, of course, why Protestants MUST reject the Real Presence since to do otherwise would be to literally participate in the dividing of Christ’s Body. To look at the various denominations of Protestantism then can become a way of identifying and appreciating what makes the Catholic faith whole and complete with all of the facets set just so reflect the light inside.
So that brings me to Old Testament reading from Friday’s Mass:
Ezekiel 18:21-28 But if the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced. Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live? And if the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die. You say, “The LORD’S way is not fair!” Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair? When a virtuous man turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die. But if a wicked man, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins which he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.
“‘Do I indeed derive pleasure from the death of the wicked?’ says the Lord.” I was musing on this and wondered how those who believe in predestination understand this Scripture. If some are predestined for Heaven then, must it not follow that some are predestined for Hell? And if they are predestined for Hell, then did God create them for that purpose? How is that possible when Our Lord tells us in Sacred Scripture that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked? And I was reminded of Chesterton’s observation that a Calvinist is obsessed with idea of the sovereignty of God. Then in the SAME passage of scripture I run up against the impossibility of the idea of Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) ”And if the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die.” I think I have been approaching my discussion about this topic all wrong. I have seen predestination and OSAS proof-texted until my eyes crossed but in the end both ideas rest squarely on idea of an obsession of the sovereignty of God which diminishes the idea of the gift of Free Will given to us by our Creator. So even though in this passage Ezekiel has some very important things to say, I think that perhaps I won’t reference this scripture the next time it comes up. Maybe a flanking move that challenges the ideas those prooftexts are resting on, might be in order. Thanks to both Belloc and Chesterton for your penetrating insights.
We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. –G.K. Chesterton
