why we don't leave the Catholic church because of its failures

why we don't leave the Catholic church because of its failures

You wrote:

We, in Europe, live in the midst of history and have a very strong sense of the past. We are very much aware of our roots. In America you restart things all the time. You can give a carte blanche to almost anything, because you look ahead, not behind. I’m not saying this as a negative thing, just as an observation. I love you, guys. You are much more free than we are. But in a certain sense you can even restart Catholicism, without much regard for her past.

Perhaps we Catholic converts are not so ignorant of the sins of Catholic leaders as you imagine, not only sins committed in the centuries past, but even in our own lifetime. Perhaps we read about them in all their titillating and disgusting details, before we decided to become Catholic. Remember, we were Calvinists, not entirely unaware of our own depravity, and thus already inclined to think not only of fellow sinning Calvinists, but especially of sinning non-Calvinists, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

Perhaps, however, our becoming Catholic is not on account of ignorance of the sins of Catholics. Perhaps we have looked even deeper into history, and come to understand and believe that Christ founded only one Church, and gave none of us authority to start our own sect, and call it Christ’s Church. Perhaps we’ve recognized that even the one to whom Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom denied Him three times, and another to whom He gave authority to forgive and retain sins betrayed Him to death. Perhaps in this deeper history we have learned from St. Ignatius of Antioch, and come to understand that we are to do nothing apart from the bishop. Perhaps we came to understand through our study of the Donatist schism in the fourth century that sins by Catholic leaders, no matter how horrendous and disgraceful, never justify the sin of schism from the Church, or dispense us from our obligation to remain in communion with the bishop, praying for him and seeking to build up the Church under his authority. St. Chrysostom, himself a bishop, reportedly said that the floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. Perhaps that sensibility is part of the very Catholic faith deeper in history than the sins of the middle ages. Perhaps we recognize and expect that there will be, as our Lord promised, tares of great evil mixed in with the wheat. But, as orthodox Catholics such as St. Chrysostom have always known, that gives us no authority to form a schism from the Church, or as St. Irenaeus put it, “assemble in unauthorized meetings.” Two wrongs don’t make a right. Sins by bishops do not justify departing from the Church Christ founded, and starting our own sect. They are the occasion, as in the face of persecution or suffering or death, in which Christ calls us to take up our cross and die. Those who choose euthanasia in the face of suffering, or abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, or apostasy in the case of persecution, or schism in the case of sinful bishops, are forsaking the cross, and disobeying our Lord.

The attempt to ‘restart Catholicism’ is just what Protestantism is, and in the American spirit of independent entrepreneurship and disregard for tradition and history, denominationalism and independent sects proliferated into the thousands in the US in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and have now been exported from the US all over the world. The founders of these denominations and sects were typically well intended, but they were mere men, and the sects they founded are all destined to decline and fade into history. Many already have gone extinct. The Church Christ founded, however, has remained these two thousand years, and will endure until Christ returns. Maybe therefore our becoming Catholic is not because we are ignorant of the number and magnitude of sins Catholic leaders have committed; maybe it is because we have discovered that how we respond to such sins, whether by schism from the Church or fidelity to her, is part of the test Christ has placed before us in this life, and part of the cross to which we as Christians are called. The Church is Christ’s family, and there are sinners in this family, but that doesn’t justify leaving the family and starting a new one. When one member suffers, we all suffer, precisely because starting a new family is not an option.

from comment 267  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-38720

following is comment 275

“like most of the popes, cardinals, and bishops of RC history” MOST? Really?
“In torturing chambers, for example, as the representatives of this “mother” were tearing off their tongues or breaking their legs, arms, and backbones. Or making them confess something they never did, so they could have the grace of dying on the gallows instead of being burnt at the stake.”

After all this excellent ecumenical discussion, it erodes into a page out of a Chick tract or a book by Lorraine Bottner. So disappointing.
My wife says you can should never judge a religion by looking at the lives of those who don’t practice it.
Should Lutherans bail, because their founder wrote a book called “Jews and their Lies” and advocating anabaptists to be drowned for their heresy? Should reformed folks abandon Geneva because their founder burned Servetus at the stake? Should Anglicans jump ship because of the Catholics drawn and quartered and burned at the stake and hung from the gallows during the reign of the Elizabethans by the good Protestant folk?

comment 277

I think this particular strand of the conversation has run its course. I’ll leave you with the following from Thomas Howard:

Rome’s opulence, her political machinations down through the centuries, her tyrannies and hauteur and self-assertiveness, not to mention the Dionysian romp in the Vatican in the Renaissance, what with Borgia popes and catamites and so forth: all of that is bad – very bad. The Catholic Church knows that. Dante, of course, had half of the popes head down in fiery pits in hell. Chaucer, contemporary with the Lollard Wyclif, but himself a loyal Catholic, is merciless – scathing even – in his portraiture of filthy and cynical clergy. St. Thomas More and Erasmus, contemporary with Luther and Calvin, were at least as vitriolic in their condemnation of Roman evils as were the Reformers . . . [But] Israel was not less Israel when she was being wicked . . . The Church is in the same position in its identity as people of God. We have Judas Iscariot, as it were, and Ananias and Sapphira, and other unsavory types amongst us, but we have no warrant to set up shop outside the camp, so to speak . . . Evangelicals, in their just horror at rampant evils in Catholic history, . . . unwittingly place themselves somewhat with the Donatists of the fourth century, who wanted to hive off because of certain evils which they felt were widespread in the Church. Augustine and others held the view that you can’t go that far. You can’t set up shop independently of the lineage of bishops . . . As far as the ancient, orthodox Church was concerned, nobody could split off . . . The problems of the Roman Catholic Church (sin, worldliness, ignorance) are, precisely, the problems of the Church. St. Paul never got out of Corinth before he had all of the above problems. Multiply that small company of Christians by 2000 years and hundreds of millions, and you have what the Catholic Church has to cope with. Furthermore, remember that the poor Catholics aren’t the only ones who have to cope. Anyone who has ever tried to start himself a church has run slap into it all, with a vengeance . . . Worldliness, second-generation apathy, ossification, infidelity, loss of vision, loss of zeal, loss of discipline, jiggery-pokery, heresy – it’s all there.

{“Letter to my Brother: A Convert Defends Catholicism,” Crisis, December 1991, 23-24,26}

from 302"




Of course, as you said, that is not how a loving mother treats her children. Again, however, the sins of various Catholics (even Catholic leaders) do not change the identity of the Catholic Church as the Church Christ founded, or justify schism from her, or gathering in unauthorized assemblies. It is just another form of ecclesial consumerism that creates new sects (composed only of pure persons) whenever a prominent member of the Church sins grievously. This was the rigourist error of Tertullian and the Montanists, the Novatians, the Cathars, and the Puritans. The problem is not only that these ‘pure’ persons aren’t all pure, and so the sect-making must continually be repeated, in order to get away from those impure ones, but that we ourselves are not pure, and cannot get away from ourselves. We bring ourselves with us, wherever we go. Of course there must be discipline, and sometimes discipline is not meted out when it should be. But, again, when a Church leader fails to discipline, this does not justify forming a schism from the Church. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

from comment 330: 

b It is a foreign concept from the NT that the office can be separated from the character.

Even if that were the case, in the Catholic paradigm, the fullness of the apostolic tradition is not limited to the New Testament. So, the “where’s that in the Bible?” objection just begs the question by presupposing the Protestant paradigm. But Jesus Himself taught otherwise concerning authorities who sin, when He said:

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. (Mt. 23:1-3)

According to Jesus, hypocrisy by ecclesial leaders does not vitiate authority.

and here at comment 136 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/#comment-49026

The difference here is that the Catholic Church has a visible unity and continuous visible existence through history. We have a visible Hierarchy. It is possible to KNOW where (and who) the Catholic Church exists everywhere in history and today. Certainly there are episodes that seem like mistakes. But we can’t deny that they belong to us.

You may be happier being a Protestant who can join a denomination conceived last year, or join a fragment of a denomination that split from a split, then you don’t have to personally recognize that historically, yes that was my church.

comment 222 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/apostolic-succession-and-historical-inquiry-some-preliminary-remarks/#comment-51886

The Catholic position is that the teaching Church is infallible within certain limits, i.e., when she teaches with her full authority on matters of faith and morals. This is not the same thing as claiming, which the Church does not claim, that the Magisterium is impeccable in the moral conduct of the pope and bishops or that these are infallible in their disciplinary judgments. I “reconcile” these things simply by recognizing the difference between infallibility and impeccability.

In your hypothetical scenario, there are only two churches in all the world, and presumably these differ from one another in essential matters. Given that Christ only founded one Church and that he promised to preserve this Church throughout time, it follows that only one of these churches is that Church founded by Christ and the other is something else. So the question then becomes, “Which one of these churches is the Church founded by Christ?” This places the same limitation on dialogue as does the thesis that there is only one Christ. The question in this case is, “Who is the Christ?” And it is no accident that this similarity obtains between Christ and the Church, because the Church is the mystical Body of Christ.

I have already explained the sense in which I am not “troubled” by human failures in the Church, namely, because my trust is not in man but in God, who preserves the Church by his Holy Spirit. I am glad that you understand this, but I had also hoped that such was your position as well. However, if you meant something else by “troubled,” such that it would not be inconsistent both to trust God and to be troubled, then you should specify what you mean so that we avoid talking past each other due to equivocation.

From the theological standpoint, heresy is more deadly than murder, since the former only kills the body but heresy can destroy the soul. But it does not follow from this that unrepentant heretics should in every circumstance be subject to punishment by the state. The persecution of heretics depends in part upon social conditions, most especially the relation between Church and state, which is bound to vary from time to time and place to place. Catholic doctrine is not post-millennial or politically theonomic, but the Church has recognized that the respective ends of Church and state are sufficiently compatible as to allow for mutual influence and support, the degree and kind depending upon circumstances which make for or else mitigate against a societies’ capacity for the spiritual life.

In some states, persistent and publicly proclaimed heresy might pose enough of a threat to society (analogous to terrorists threats or serious slander) as to be considered a crime. Whether or not heresy ought ever to be regarded as a capital offense, and obviously it has been so regarded at times, is strictly speaking a political question and as such does not fall under the rubric of the Church’s infallibility and is not directly relevant to the topic of AS. Thus, a Catholic can admit, as I do admit, that the Church, most notably at Vatican II, has significantly changed its position on religious freedom, including the question of whether or not heretics and infidels have the right to such freedom.

from comment 228 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/apostolic-succession-and-historical-inquiry-some-preliminary-remarks/#comment-51891

But, if I did get around to asking “which church – the one pastored by Sergius or the one pastored by Billy Graham – was the one that Christ founded, it would take me a nanosecond to decide in favor of the church founded by Billy Graham.

I suppose you meant to say “pastored” by Billy Graham, not “founded by Billy Graham.” Otherwise, saying that the Church Christ founded is the Church founded by Billy Graham would entail that Billy Graham is Christ. But the question is not how many nanoseconds it would take you to decide, but which is, in actuality, the Church Christ founded.

Imagine a man who decides which woman is his wife at any particular moment (or nanosecond), by asking which is the most beautiful. You point out to him that the woman to whom he is married is the one to whom he was betrothed at the altar ten years ago. But his response is something like, “Well, how sick do she and my children have to be before I get to have an affair?” Obviously, he doesn’t understand marriage. So likewise, there is no point of moral sickness among the members of the Church Christ founded at which “ecclesial consumerism” becomes an option, because Christ is not like the man I just described, and remains married to His bride, the Church He founded, even when her members fall into moral sickness. There is no point at which ecclesial consumerism becomes an option because the whole consumerism paradigm is mistaken, just as one’s wife is not “whichever woman happens to be most attractive to oneself at this particular nanosecond.” The proper response to moral sickness among members of Christ’s bride is the proper response to sickness among members of one’s family: laying down one’s life to serve and care for them, and nurse them back to health if possible, till one’s dying day. The man who abandons his family when his wife or his child come down with cancer, is not the exemplar we should imitate with respect to loyalty to the Church Christ founded. Such a man is a shameful scoundrel.

Yes, my position is that I trust in God, not man.

That position would put you in a pickle if God ever called you to trust a man He appointed, and through whom He would guide you: a pickle very much like that of Korah in the Old Testament in relation to Moses. At that point you would have to choose between your position and trusting God. You would be in the same pickle if Christ gave to His Apostles and their successors the sort of authority He gave to Moses, and Montanism [in which each man is to be divinely governed directly and solely by the Holy Spirit speaking in the bosom of one's heart] is false. So if, for example, Christ’s statement in Luke 10:16 ["The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me"] applies also to the successors of the Apostles [the very question Andrew's post addresses], then your position [as stated] puts you in a position of trusting yourself and distrusting God. So if you truly wish to “trust in God,” you must be willing to trust Him when (or if) He calls you to trust men whom He has established in authority, men whom we should obey, and to whom we should submit, who keep watch over our souls as those who will give an account to God on Judgment Day. (Hebrews 13:17)

also from comment 60 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/06/podcast-ep-17-jason-cindy-stewart-recount-their-conversion/http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/06/podcast-ep-17-jason-cindy-stewart-recount-their-conversion/

A thorough discussion of the history of the Catholic Church goes well beyond our conversation on scripture. Indeed there have been times in the history of the Church when its leaders or representatives did heinous, wicked things. We at CTC mourn these historical events, especially since they have done so much harm towards the work of ecumenical unity. I would say, as someone who once was exposed to much Protestant condemnation of past Catholic historical errors, that many accusations against the Church are not accurate, or misconstrued, and that many evils widely endorsed by Protestants at various points in history are downplayed (e.g. chattel slavery, apartheid, colonization, and the “White Man’s Burden” come to mind). Yet even great wickedness by individuals within the Church does not de facto demonstrate the Church is not who she says she is, only that she is human, and susceptible to just as much sinful behavior as those outside of it.