PROTESTING THE PROTESTANT MOVEMENT
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Truth requires us to combat error. Justice demands that we do so by honest means. Charity would have us combat only the error itself, and not the human being who is its victim.[1] In what follows, the words Protestant and Catholic are used with their traditional meanings. Excluded from consideration are liberal Protestants and modernist Catholics, two groups of people who seem to believe nothing any more.
Protestantism can be summarized by paraphrasing Mark Twain: "The trouble is not that Protestants are ignorant. Rather, the trouble is with all the things they know that ain't so..." Protestantism is negative: it is defined in terms of Catholicism by emphasizing the rejection of various teachings of the Catholic Church. These rejections are justified by attempts to refute dogmas of the Catholic Church, but these refutations are never successful because they always contain factual errors.
In the United States, Roman Catholicism2 by Loraine Boettner is considered a comprehensive collection of refutations of Catholic beliefs and practices. The book rejects Catholic beliefs and practices, but it does not succeed in refuting a single one of them. The book reveals that Protestants have little understanding of Catholicism, and thus little understanding of what exactly they are rejecting. So in the strictest sense it is true that "the trouble is with all the things they know that ain't so...." A few comments on Boettner's book:
• The book was written for Protestants, and a Catholic does not really know what they will make of it. But the Catholic reader very quickly discovers that the book does not present religious truth, but anti-Catholic propaganda, and so predictably there is almost nothing in it that is true. To Catholics, the Protestant picture of Catholicism may appear amusingly misinformed, deliberately misleading or downright mean-spirited.
• The book is characterized by an intense hatred of the Catholic Church, which we shall discuss later.
• The book is full of blatantly dishonest arguments none of which will ever stand up in the court of reason (e.g., Roman Catholicism is just like communism; Catholics worship images, statues, and, of course, also Mary; American civil law is superior to Roman Catholic Canon Law; Catholics are poor, ignorant, idolatrous, superstitious people, etc. ad nauseam). It is written in the style of typical modern propaganda or "hate literature," i.e., it appeals to the emotions rather than to the intellect.
• When it comes to strictly religious issues, in many cases various straw men are knocked down, and caricatures of Catholic beliefs and practices are refuted. For example, it is correct to denounce idolatry, but it is completely bogus to accuse Roman Catholics of idolatry.
• Not surprisingly, Boettner fails to refute (i.e., to prove wrong) a single Catholic belief or practice. For example, he announces that Mary is the mother of Jesus but not the mother of God because God does not have a mother (p. 133). Anybody who says that does not understand the Trinity, does not understand the Incarnation, and is guilty of the heresy of Nestorius. The Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 settled this matter once and for all: Mary is the Mother of God, and this stands for all eternity.
St. Thomas Aquinas explains (Summa Theologica, III, Q. 35, Art. 4) that when a mother gives birth to a child we do not say that the mother is the mother of the "body of the child" but simply that she is the mother of the person of the child. The Blessed Virgin Mary gave a body to the person of Jesus Christ, but this person was the God-man, with both a human and a divine nature. Therefore, the Blessed Virgin, being the mother of the person of Christ, is justifiably called the Mother of God.
Boettner grudgingly admits that the Council of Ephesus did say that Mary is the Mother of God, but then takes it on himself to explain what "Mary is the Mother of God" really means, arriving at the conclusion that it should have never been said because it is "unscriptural." (This turning things upside down is typical Protestant "scholarship.") Finally, p. 135 concludes with the following nonsense: "The correct statement of the person of Christ in this regard is: As His human nature had no father, so His divine nature had no mother." Natures have no father and mother, only persons have a father and mother.
The book of Boettner, being a typical presentation of the stock Protestant arguments, suffers from the same basic problem the whole of Protestantism suffers from: it is inconsistent, which means that all its arguments are worthless. (In an inconsistent system when a proposition P is provable, then so is its negation). See below "Why believe the Bible?–Inerrancy."
Protestantism is not a single religion that could be examined and debated. It only has some "principles" which can be invoked with flexibility and can be used to generate the religion congenial to the Protestant. In these pages, as examples, we discuss two Protestant "principles," one Protestant doctrinal error, and the rejection of two Catholic doctrines, each in deliberately simple terms.
Sola Scriptura And Private Judgment
Sola Scriptura means that (supposedly) Divine Revelation is contained in Scripture alone. This is expressed in popular language by saying that Protestantism is "the religion of the Bible."
Reading the Bible Cannot Be a Requirement for Salvation
According to Protestants, a Christian is supposed to save his soul by acquiring a book called the Bible; read the Bible, make up his mind about what the Bible means (principle of private judgment), and now he is supposedly in possession of Divine Revelation.
Unfortunately, the Bible did not exist for the first 400 years of Christian history (the canonical books were selected by the Catholic Church only at the Council of Carthage in A.D. 397):
The whole revelation of Christianity was given by the Holy Spirit and preached also and believed among the nations of the world before the New Testament existed. The knowledge of God through the Incarnation, and the way of salvation through grace, was revealed partly by our Divine Lord, and fully by the Holy Ghost at His coming. The faith or science of God was infused into the Apostles by a divine illumination. It was in itself the New Testament, before a line of it was written....3
For the subsequent 1100 years the Bible was completely inaccessible to most ordinary mortals because there was no way to reproduce the Bible cheaply. Thus, apparently Our Lord Jesus Christ has completely failed to provide for His followers for 75% of Christian history. Since such charge of failure is untenable against God, these Protestant ideas must be wrong.
The Bible Is Not the Sole Source of Divine Revelation
It makes little sense to consider the Bible the only source of Divine Revelation in the light of the following consideration:
St. John put on Our Lord's lips about 8,000 words. Sts. Matthew, Mark and Luke about three times as many. To speak slowly and distinctly, all the words of Our Lord recorded in St. John would take less than an hour, the words given in the Synoptics about two and half. Now the Gospels give us to understand that during His Public Ministry Our Lord spoke practically, day by day, for many hours. If Our Lord spoke only one hour a day in public, His public speeches would occupy say one thousand hours, but Our Lord did not merely speak in public. He spoke continually in private to His disciples. His longest recorded speech in St. John (12-17) was spoken entirely in private to His disciples. Considering that apparently, Christ devoted all His time to speaking and teaching, somehow, His twelve Apostles must have heard him for thousands of hours, and what is contained in the Gospels is in consequence not one-thousandth part of what they heard Him say.4
Indeed, Tradition is another important source of our knowledge of Divine Revelation. For example, the Catholic is not impressed at all when Protestants question the existence of purgatory; the Catholic knows that not only the most ancient liturgies, but also the Roman catacombs were full of proofs of purgatory, because purgatory was always believed.
This also explains the fact that all the frenzy of Protestants fulminating against something "unscriptural" leaves the Catholic absolutely cold. He knows that everything does not have to be in Holy Scripture.
Why Believe the Bible!
Unfortunately, Protestants have no conceivable right to base any argument on the inspiration of the Bible, for the inspiration of the Bible was a doctrine which had been believed, before the Reformation, on the mere authority of the Church; it rested on exactly the same basis as the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The only reason for holding the Bible worthy of credence is because the Catholic Church has said so. St. Augustine stated this very clearly: "I would not believe the Gospel unless moved thereto by the authority of the Church."5
Protestantism repudiated Transubstantiation, and in doing so repudiated the authority of the Church; and then, without a shred of logic, calmly went on believing in the inspiration of the Bible as if nothing had happened! It is a most absurd and untenable position to be in, but most Protestants do not even realize this.
Of course, for liberal Protestants, literal inspiration led to literary inspiration, which then led to the total disintegration of the authority of the Bible. Only fundamentalists still hold on to the old inconsistent position.
The Protestant Bibles
Johann Gutenberg (1397-1468), inventor of the printing press, was a Catholic, and numerous (47) Catholic Bibles were printed in the vernacular (in many languages) between 1466 and 1520, but the Protestant propaganda is persistent that Luther somehow found the Bible and gave it to the people for the first time in their own language.6 Another one of the things they know that ain't so...
So what did the Protestants do with the Bible as it now became easily available? First, they have mutilated the Bible, the book for which they claim to have such high regard. They dropped typically six books from the Old Testament. For example, the second book of Machabees had to go because it proves the existence of purgatory beyond a shadow of doubt.
They left out parts of the books they kept (e.g., seven chapters of the Book of Esther, and most of the third chapter of Daniel), and they mistranslated key passages to suit their purposes. A theologically important example is from the prophecy of Malachias (Douay Version), which predicts a sacrifice that would be offered universally even among the Gentiles: "In every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation" (Mal. 1:11). The King James Version deliberately mistranslates it as: "And in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering" (Mal. 1:11). Of course, having refused all sacrifice to God, Protestants should now at least offer incense to Him (to be consistent with this Scripture passage), but they probably declare that practice "unscriptural" too.
As a result, even the very best of the Protestant Bible translations (such as the King James Version) are very faulty translations, full of errors.
But worst of all, they systematically misinterpreted the Bible. The Protestant revolution involved a great "explaining away" of many of the doctrines that the Catholic Church held for 1500 years. Without the divinely appointed interpreter, the Word of God preserved in Scripture is just a lifeless text, defenseless before the wildest interpretations. Propagating and respectfully accepting wild interpretations of Holy Scripture is an undeniable fact of Protestant life, which led to a proliferation of sects. The resulting doctrinal anarchy is in itself a complete condemnation of Protestantism: Protestants are inherently incapable of agreeing on what exactly Divine Revelation is supposed to be.
Although it is hard to find two Protestants who agree on all they believe (in the sense in which all Catholics agree on what their Faith is), it is still possible to comment on the range of beliefs Protestantism has generated. Opposition to the Catholic Church, the Catholic priesthood, the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Catholic sacramental system are certainly common to them all.
Although the Catholic Church had always had to contend with heresies, Protestantism was a totally new class of heresies. Nobody had ever believed the kinds of things Protestants came to believe. Protestantism, with its individualism, complete refusal of authority and anti-sacramental nature is absolutely alien to Christianity as it existed for 1500 years.
Boettner is flagrantly lying when he writes: "Ever since New Testament times there have been people who accepted the basic principles now set forth in Protestantism."7 He cannot support this with any citation because it is not true. Anybody familiar with history knows that the "basic principles of Protestantism" did not exist until Luther scraped them together in a most haphazard fashion. And the irony of it all is that Luther ended up with his feelings hurt when his fellow "reformers," instead of admiring his principles, overruled him, and started producing their own "principles." Pandora's box was open.
And of course St. Paul has warned against such things: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema" (Gal. 1:8).
Private Interpretation Of the Bible
One of the "principles" of Protestantism is private judgment: "I deny the authority of the Catholic Church: every man must examine the credibility of every doctrine for himself." The result is a complete anarchy not only in belief but also in practice. Using this "principle," well-meaning Protestants, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Methodists find different things in their Bibles. A humorous result of private interpretation is the Shaker (now virtually extinct):
You are a presumptuous people. Do you not know that the Bible tells you that you must work out your salvation in fear and trembling, and you do not tremble at all. My brethren, if you want to go to heaven, shake, my brethren, shake!
All of which proves that the Bible is not easy to understand. The chief of the apostles said so:
As also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. (II Pet. 3:15, 16)
Private judgment is implicit in all heresies, but Protestants were the first to state it explicitly as one of their "principles." St. Augustine commented on private interpretation:
If there is no branch of teaching, however humble and easy to learn, which does not require a master, what can be a greater sign of rashness and pride than to refuse to study the books of divine mysteries by the help of those who have interpreted them?8
When some Protestants say that it is not the whim of the individual, but the inspiration of the Holy Ghost that produces the Protestant interpretations of the Bible, their position gets even more awkward. Since the interpretations contradict each other (just take two well documented cases like Luther and Calvin), we must conclude that the Holy Spirit is contradicting himself. Since this assertion is blasphemous, private interpretation of the Bible must be a false concept. And it should be pointed out that what Protestants here claim for themselves (i.e., the Holy Spirit guides the reader of the Bible to the knowledge of the truth) is much more than the Catholic Church has ever claimed even for the Pope himself.
Although Protestants claim to derive their whole religion from the Bible, their "principle of private interpretation" cannot be found in the Bible. Protestant groups often try to counter the resulting doctrinal chaos and inherent fragmentation by instituting some kind of a "Confession of Faith." But these are not tolerated well: imposing any kind of norms is in contradiction with Protestantism, to which all fixed dogma, all immutable morality and any definitive rule is absolutely foreign.
It is easy to verify that the Catholic religion is clearly contained in the Bible, but the Protestant religion cannot be found in the Bible. If a Protestant honestly examines his own mutilated Protestant Bible, even there he can find the Catholic religion.
This has happened many times, and occasionally it was documented. Paul Whitcomb, who eventually converted to the Catholic religion, describes himself:
I was born of Protestant parents, was baptized a Protestant, was reared a Protestant, married a Protestant, and for a number of years held down a Protestant pulpit. If ever there was a "thoroughbred" Protestant, I was one.9
His conversion began with the painful realization that the Church, the Body of Christ is one, and he, as a Protestant, is not a member of it.
The Protestant misinterpretations of the Bible and the persistent errors of Luther and Calvin are propagated by means of a Protestant oral tradition whose existence only few Protestants are willing to admit.
The doctrinal error of the "reformers" easiest to explain is their erroneous concept of being justified. It also proves that Protestants–in violation of their principle of Sola Scriptura–also have an oral tradition: what Luther and Calvin (for example) said often decides what a Protestant is going to believe.
The Protestant Concept of "Justification"
The issue is what did St. Paul mean by the expression "to justify." (Catholics use "sanctifying grace" as a synonym for "justification." Justification is effected through the infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul.) Protestant exegetes from Luther and Calvin all the way to Barth maintain that it means nothing more than "to declare just," that it applies merely to extrinsic justice, which has nothing real to correspond with it in the person justified. God only declares the sinner to be justified, although he remains intrinsically unjust and sinful. On the negative side, justification is not a real eradication of sin, but merely a non-imputation or covering of the sin. On the positive side, it is not an inner renewal and sanctification but merely an external imputation of Christ's justice.
This is sometimes illustrated by saying that according to Luther a justified soul is like a pile a dung covered by snow. So then heaven would eventually be populated with, and God would for all eternity be surrounded by, piles of dung. This concept is truly repulsive and absurd.
The correct meaning is "to make just," or "to declare officially just someone who is so in reality." The correct, Catholic understanding is that justification sanctifies the soul, bestows supernatural beauty on the soul, makes the just man a friend of God, makes the just man a child of God and gives him a claim to the inheritance of heaven, and makes him a temple of the Holy Ghost. The justified man has been remade by God; he is truly a "new creation."
This explains why not only there are no saints in Protestantism, but there cannot possibly be any. The saint is a person converted and newly created in the grace of God, and Protestantism refuses even to consider the existence of such a thing.
The rejection of the Catholic Church and that of the Catholic sacramental system are closely connected.
Rejecting the Church
What did Our Lord leave behind him at his Ascension? Merely an example, and fleeting memories? (At that moment no words had yet been written down.) His primary legacy to the world was a society which he originated; a society which consisted in the first instance of his own immediate followers, and which has become known as the Catholic Church. The Divine Redeemer, who brought us the final revelation of God, would see to it that His purposes were not frustrated by the infidelity of His legatees. He gave His Church a monarchical organization, with the Apostle St. Peter as the first head.
The Church is the most sore subject for the Protestant, the truth he most bitterly rejects, denies or tries to evade, and therefore it is the pivotal issue in trying to comprehend Protestantism.
Since it was necessary that the divine mission of Jesus Christ should be perpetuated to the end of time, Jesus Christ took to Himself disciples, trained them Himself, and made them partakers of His own authority. And when He had invoked upon them from heaven the Spirit of Truth, He bade them to go through the whole world and faithfully preach to all nations what He had taught and what He had commanded, so that by profession of His doctrine, and the observance of His laws, the human race might attain holiness on earth and never-ending happiness in heaven. In this wise, and on this principle, the Church was begotten.10
The unspeakable tragedy of the Protestant revolt was the wholesale rejection of the Church Jesus Christ had founded. It deprived Protestants of the Truth, and deprived them of the means to save their souls. Pope Pius IX correctly described Protestantism in all its forms as a "revolt against God," it being an attempt to substitute human for divine authority.
The true Church of Christ is both natural and supernatural; it is both external and spiritual.
If we consider the chief end of this Church and the proximate and efficient causes of salvation, it is undoubtedly spiritual; but in regard to those who constitute it, and to the things which lead to these spiritual gifts, it is external and necessarily visible.11
The Church being both natural and supernatural simultaneously is a reflection of her Divine Founder, who is True God and True Man at the same time. It is an error to imagine that the Church is only natural or that the Church is only supernatural. In the words of Pope Leo XIII:
It is assuredly as impossible that the Church of Christ can be the one or the other as that man should be a body alone or a soul alone. The connection and union of both elements is as absolutely necessary to the true Church as the intimate union of the soul and body to the human nature.12
The human body without a soul is merely a corpse, and the human soul separated from the body is not a living human being either. Separating the body and soul of a human being is equivalent to killing it. And that is what the Protestants tried to do with the Church.
According to Protestant beliefs, there is really no vital need of a Church. For Catholics, the Church is a vital fact; for Protestants it is an intellectual figment. Unfortunately, the Bible is too full of references to the Church for the Protestants to make it completely disappear. So the wholesale rejection of the Catholic Church by Protestants was accomplished by declaring the Church either 1) only natural, visible and external (a merely human organization, convenient for organizing the energies of individuals) or; 2) only supernatural, invisible, intangible, merely "pneumatological" (i.e., united by a bond that eludes the senses). Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), nobody is at liberty to "redefine" the Church of Christ. The Church has been perfectly clearly defined by Jesus Christ Himself, and His definition cannot possibly be changed.
The Church is certainly mysterious: the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ (Rom. 12:4-5), the Church is the Bride of Christ (Eph. 5:25-27), and the Church is a continuation or an extension of the Incarnation of Jesus Christy Christ continuing to dwell among us.13
The words of Jesus Christ in Holy Scripture announce a certain identity of Himself–and not merely His presence–with those who corporately represent Him: "I am the Vine, you the branches" (Jn. 15:5), or "As the Father sent Me, I also send you" (Jn. 20:21), or "He that heareth you, heareth Me: he that despiseth you despiseth Me" (Lk. 10:16).
Even after the Ascension Jesus Christ most clearly identified Himself with His Church in His encounter with Saul. "For I am the least of the apostles who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God" (I Cor. 15:9). But in persecuting the Church, Saul was persecuting Jesus Christ Himself: "Who art thou, Lord? And he: I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts 9:5).
The Church is Jesus Christ still living with us, she is Jesus Christ still at work in the world. As Jesus Christ lived His natural life on earth 2,000 years ago in a body drawn from the Blessed Virgin Mary, so now He lives His Mystical Life today in a body drawn from the human race in general, and this body is called the Catholic Church. In the words of St. Gregory the Great: "Christ with His whole Church, in heaven and on earth, is one single person. And as there is only one soul vivifying the different members of a human body, so the Holy Ghost vivifies and enlightens the Church."
Indeed, the Church is mysterious, there is nothing like it in the whole world. No community in the merely natural order can be called a person. For example, no nation is a person, no nation has a divine mission, nor any promise of lasting always and being constantly assisted by God. Only the Catholic Church has these properties, given to her by her divine founder. It is this personality of the Church that we affirm in the Nicene Creed: "I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church...." "Apostolic" means that the personnel of the Church can be traced back all the way to the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, i.e., that the Church existed at all times without interruption.
And I say to thee: That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: And whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Mt. 16:18-19)
Our Lord means that His Church, built on Peter, will never be destroyed. To "give the keys" of a storeroom, a house, or a city, to someone meant to give him delegated control of all that is in it. "To bind and loose" means to forbid and permit in a wide sense: Peter is to be the visible "master of the house," Our Lord of course being the invisible foundation and controller by whom all power held by a visible representative is delegated.
All power is given to me in heaven and earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Mt. 28:20)
In this tremendous declaration Our Lord sends the apostles, with delegated power 1) to teach and 2) to baptize all nations–no more only Israel–in the name of the Trinity. The last sentence implies the indefectibility of the Church, i.e., the Church will never fail. This clearly contradicts the Protestant myth that the Catholic Church has somehow "failed," the Church has become corrupted, has fallen into error, and Protestantism had to step in to take her place. If this myth were true, then Our Lord would be a liar. But that cannot be: "And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever" (Jn. 14:16).
That the Church is not a merely human organization but is truly Christ continued, is not an obscure dogma for Catholics but a self-evident fact. The Catholic knows that Christ really and truly lives and acts in His Church: the grace of every sacrament comes from Christ, the Catholic makes his confession to and receives absolution from Christ, and in the Holy Eucharist he receives Jesus Christ Himself.
The Rejection Of The Catholic Sacramental System
"I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life" (Jn. 14:6) means that Our Lord is Lawgiver, Teacher and High Priest. Correspondingly, the Church governs, teaches, and dispenses the fruits of the Redemption through the sacraments. Protestants reject all that, but most of them especially vehemently reject the Catholic sacraments. Some Protestant groups claim to recognize a few (typically two) sacraments, but these claims are completely misleading. When a Protestant says "sacrament," what he means is not a sacrament at all. A Protestant "sacrament" is not a channel of divine grace, rather it is a means of stirring up faith.
There are strong similarities between the most dramatic examples of opposition in the Gospels against our Lord's teachings and the most violent rejections of Catholic teachings by Protestants:.
"How can a man be born when he is old?" (Jn. 3:4)–a challenge against Baptism;
"Who can forgive sins save God only?" (Mk. 2:7)–a challenge against Christ forgiving sins;14
"How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" (Jn. 6:53)–a challenge against the Eucharist, and finally
"Before Abraham was made, I am. They took up stones to cast at Him" (Jn. 8:58)–a challenge to the divinity of Christ.
As Christ was rejected then, the Catholic Church is rejected by Protestants now, some of the most violent rejections being leveled against the Catholic sacraments (including Baptism, Confession and the Eucharist) and against asserting the divine prerogatives of the Catholic Church.
Even Protestants tend to admit that God had to become man to redeem us. Our Divine Lord redeemed us in a most unspiritual way, through His bodily sufferings and His death. God could have done it differently but that is how He did it. And the Incarnation did not end with the Ascension. The Eternal Son of God assumed a human nature never to lay it down. Our Lord Jesus Christ will remain a man forever. And thus the religion He founded is also incarnational. The principle implicit in the Incarnation is that matter is not bad, nor is it to be despised, but can be made use of by God in the work of our sanctification.
G. K. Chesterton offers the following explanation:
The sacramental system is based on the idea that certain material acts are mystical acts; are events in the spiritual world. This mystical materialism does divide us from all those forms of idealism that hold all good to be inward and invisible and matter to be unworthy to express it.15
Since the Incarnation, no one can possibly criticize a religion because it is not wholly "spiritual." We, humans, are not wholly spiritual, and Christ is not wholly spiritual. Therefore, the religion that He gave us is not wholly spiritual either; it does not disdain material elements but includes them.
Just as the Incarnation was believed from day one, but began to be understood only later, the situation was similar with the sacraments. All the sacraments were used from day one, but an understanding of them was only gained gradually. Jesus Christ Himself instituted all seven of the sacraments, and they are not haphazard but form an orderly series, a central idea giving coherence and unity to their number and nature.
The Seven Sacraments of the Church are a Record, or Scripture of God anterior to the written Gospels of the Evangelists....The Church, its sacraments, and its worship were spread throughout the world before as yet the books of the New Testament were written.16
All seven sacraments give sanctifying grace. God does the work, He gives the grace, but the minister and the recipient have to cooperate. Lack of proper cooperation prevents reception of grace. So it is not God who is tied by the sacraments, but we. God is merely fulfilling His promise to give grace.
When G. K. Chesterton was asked by horrified fellow Anglicans why he chose to become a Catholic, his answer was: "To get rid of my sins."17 He wanted certainty that he was forgiven, and the Catholic Church, and she alone, can give such a certainty. All the sacraments provide such certainty: if the minister and recipient do their (easily verifiable) part, God gives sanctifying grace according to His promise.
Of course, God in His omnipotence and freedom can communicate grace in a purely spiritual manner also, but about that, being the exceptional case, we know very little. The Sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for the salvation of mankind, exactly because Christ gave them to the Church to be used as the ordinary channels of divine grace. God is the one who determines the way He is pleased to bestow His graces.
One of the sacraments, the Holy Eucharist, is special, because in it we not only receive sanctifying grace (a participation in the divine life) but in it we receive Christ Himself. In the account of the Last Supper we read:
And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. In like manner the chalice also, after he had supped, saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you. (Lk. 22:19-20)
The men to whom He was speaking were not modern psychologists and symbolists but men of antiquity who thought simply and in a corporeal way. When Jesus said to them, "This is my Body" and, "This is my Blood...," then it is that and does not merely signify it. So they knew that here He was giving them Himself, in the mystery of an inconceivable sacrifice. This too is contained in the new Community which was here established. It is the central point, the Holy of Holies. Here again we are told what the Church is-the living Christ who imparts Himself to His own throughout the ages.18
The Catholic Church is the heir to the rights of Jesus Christ. She is the faithful guardian of the spiritual treasures of Jesus Christ. She is the infallible teacher of the doctrines of Jesus Christ. She wields the authority of Jesus Christ. She lives by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ. She enjoys the guidance, protection and help of Jesus Christ. She speaks, orders, commands, concedes, prohibits, defines, looses and binds, in the name of Jesus Christ. But when the Catholic Church claims her uniqueness, that she is Christ continued, that she is the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, then Protestants are ready to take up stones to cast at her.
Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, a convert from Anglicanism, described England in 1911:
It is a very delicate and significant compliment to the Catholic Church that religious people are bound to hate her more than anything else in the wide world. Religious people may differ among themselves on every other imaginable point, but they are at any rate agreed on this, that the Church is the enemy and must be annihilated. Now surely this is a remarkable phenomenon–that one religion should have such a monopoly of being hated by religious persons. Anglicans do not hate Wesleyanism; Wesleyans do not hate Congregationalism; Congregationalists do not hate Christian Science. They disapprove, and they disagree, but their emotion is not vivid enough to be called hatred. But they hate Catholicism. There is no question about that.
The Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew are alleged as reasons for this hatred when it makes its appearance; but it is not really these things. It is Catholicism itself.
It is what is called "intolerance"–that is, the claim of the Church to be the Truth–that is at the bottom of the trouble. And so we see religious persons rending their garments in horror at this blasphemous arrogance; and we see Jesus in His Church, bound, spat upon and condemned, standing at the bar.19
In the United States, Jimmy Swaggart, Jack Chick, Alberto Rivera, Tony Alamo, and men of that ilk not only personify but also fuel the hatred of the Catholic Church.
Bishop Fulton Sheen in his preface to Radio Replies tried to minimize the extent of this hatred:
There are not over a hundred of people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church–which is, of course, quite a different thing.20
Whether all the slander is motivated by malice or ignorance is a moot point. But Jesus Christ clearly predicted this hatred. It started with Caiphas, was given a strong boost by the vulgarities of Luther, and will only end at the Last Judgment:
If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you...because you are not of the world but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for my name's sake: because they know not him that sent me. (Jn. 15:18-21)
Being Separated From The Catholic Church
To the Protestant, the Christian religion consists in the union of the individual with Christ–of individual with individual–the Church having nothing to do with the whole thing. The Divine Person lived on earth 2,000 years ago, performed actions, spoke words, finished His work and went back whence He came; and true religion consists in the adherence of the human to the Divine Person, with no priest, prelate, church or sacrament involved, since none are thought necessary. (This individualism in religion is repudiated by few Protestants only, most notably the Anglicans.)
The Protestant, not understanding that the Catholic Church is Christ, thinks in terms of intermediaries. Even if the Church is considered an intermediary, it does not have to be an obstacle, preventing access to Christ. On the contrary, it is an aid, greatly helping us to have access to Christ (as in the Holy Eucharist) or to the benefits we hope to obtain from Christ (divine grace in all the sacraments).
But not only is the Church very beneficial to our salvation, she is absolutely necessary to it. The claim of the Church that she alone can lead men to salvation, what men call her "intolerance," is not a mere trick, a human invention to get ahead in a crowd of equal rivals. The Catholic Church has no equals. She is absolutely unique. She is the Bride of Christ, she is the Mystical Body of Christ, she is Christ continued. That is why the Fathers of the Church like to compare the Catholic Church with the ark in which Noe and his family were saved, while all those who were outside the ark perished.
To be saved, we must do the will of God: "Not every one that saith to me Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 7:21). The will of God the Father is that men hear and believe his Son, Jesus Christ: "This is my most beloved Son. Hear ye Him" (Mk. 9:6). Now Jesus Christ said to His apostles and lawful successors: "He that heareth you, heareth Me: he that despiseth you despiseth Me" (Lk. 10:16).
From these words it is clear that it is not possible to be united with Jesus Christ while despising His Church. Yet Protestants despise the Catholic Church, they turn their back most contemptuously on the Catholic Church, they slander her at every turn, and follow their own will in all religious matters. It is a delusion and a tragic mistake for anyone to count on gaining his salvation outside the Catholic Church. Holy Scripture, the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church all warn against it.
Jesus Christ:
If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican. (Mt. 18:17)St. Cyprian:
Whoever has been separated from the Church is yoked with an adulteress, is separated from the promises made to the Church. Nor shall he who leaves Christ's Church arrive at Christ's rewards. He is a stranger, he is sacrilegious, he is an enemy. Who has not the Church for mother can no longer have God for father. (On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 6)St. Isidore of Seville:
Therefore heresy is so called from the Greek word meaning "choice," by which each chooses according to his own will what he pleases to teach or believe. But we are not permitted to believe whatever we choose, nor to choose whatever someone else has believed. We have the apostles of God as authorities, who did not themselves of their own will choose what they would believe, but faithfully transmitted to the nations the teaching received from Christ. (Etymologies, 8, 7)St. Augustine:
• In the Catholic Church there are both good and bad. But they who are separated from her, as long as they remain in their opinion against her, cannot be good; ...the separation itself makes them bad, the Lord saying: "He who is not with me is against me; and he who gatherest not with me, scattereth." (Ep. ccviii, n. 6, col. 1177)• No one, indeed, attains to salvation and eternal life except he who has Christ as his head. But no one can have Christ as head, except he who is in His body, which is the Church. (Ep. ad Cath. contra Donat. xix, 49)
• The Christian ought to fear nothing so much as to be separated from the body of Christ. For if he is separated from the body of Christ, he is not a member of Christ; if not a member of Christ, he is not quickened by his Spirit. (Tract, xxvii, in Joan., n. 6, col. 1992, tom., iii)
• Outside the Catholic Church one can have anything except salvation. One can have honor. One can have the sacraments. The "Alleluia" can be sung. The response "Amen" can be given. One can hold to the Gospel, and can have and preach the faith in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. But one can never find salvation except in the Catholic Church. (Sermo ad Caesariensis ecclesia plebem, 6. MPL., XLIII 695 )
These quotes have the full authority of the Catholic Church, and therefore the full authority of Jesus Christ behind them. By contrast, it is both comical and tragical, when, aping the Catholic Church, Protestants make statements in a similar fashion, usually assigning all Catholics to hell on their own authority.
The meaning of the statement "There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church" is not that all Protestants necessarily lose their souls. The meaning, admitting no qualifications, is that the Catholic Church is the only religious body in the world through which salvation can be procured. Membership in any other religious body will not contribute to any man's welfare in eternity. So if a Protestant eventually manages to gain his salvation, it will be not because he was a Protestant, but despite it.
Finally, some words of G. K. Chesterton, one of the greatest converts to Catholicism in the 20th century, describing what is it like having arrived home:
It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug toward it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair. The man has exactly the same sense of having committed or compromised himself; of having been in a sense entrapped, even if he is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real psychological experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and is responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere trap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is not the Pope who has set the trap, or the priests who have baited it. The whole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth. The whole point is that the man himself has made his way toward the trap of truth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps, except the last step, he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of interest in the truth; and even the last step, or the last stage, only alarms him because it is so very true.21...After nearly 2,000 years, Catholics have come to regard Catholicism as one thing, all the parts of which are in one sense equally assailed and in another sense equally unassailable. Now it is unfortunately impossible for a Roman Catholic to state the principle without its sounding provocative and, what is much worse, superior; but unless he does state it, he does not state Roman Catholicism. Having stated it, however, in its dogmatic and defiant form, as it is his duty to do, he may afterwards suggest something of why the system seems, to those inside it, to be not so much a system as a home, or even a holiday.22
Dr. Gyula Mago was born in 1938 in Hungary and raised a Catholic. He lived under Communist rule for 20 years. Dr. Mago obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, in 1970, and was a professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1970-99). He presently lives in retirement in Durham, North Carolina, and assists at the Latin Mass at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.
1. A. G. Sertillanges, Spirituality (McMullen Books, 1954), p. 180.
2. Loraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1962).
3. Ralph Woods, The Catholic Companion to the Bible (Lippincott, 1955), p. 199.
4. J. P. Arendzen, The Gospels: Fact, Myth or Legend? (Sands, 1923), pp. 64-65.
5. Contra Epis. Munich., Fund., n. 6
6. Woods, The Catholic Companion to the Bible, p. 76.
7. Boettner, Roman Catholicism, p. 11.
8. Woods, The Catholic Companion to the Bible, p. 95.
9. Paul Whitcomb, The Bible Made a Catholic Out of Me (Gregorian Press, 1956).
10. Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum (On the Unity of the Church), June 20, 1896, §5.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., §8.
13. Tihamer Toth, The Catholic Church: A Course of Sermons (Herder, 1943), pp. 36-39.
14. Not surprisingly, Boettner uses it to attack Confession in the Catholic Church (p. 202).
15. G. K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion, (Burns & Gates, 1926), p. 122.
16. Woods, The Catholic Companion to the Bible, p. 200.
17. G. K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K.C. (Sheed & Ward, 1936), p. 341.
18. Romano Guardini, The Church of the Lord (Henry Regnery, 1966), p. 24.
19. Robert Hugh Benson, Christ in the Church (Sheed & Ward, 1911), pp. 145-150.
20. Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies (TAN Books, 1938).
21. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion, pp. 53-54.
22. Ibid., pp. 117-118.
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