Journeys Home (35 page)

Questions sprouted. Are Catholics really Christians or not? Some
Catholics sure seem to know Jesus; is that in spite of the Catholic
Church? What keeps Catholics and Protestants apart? If Catholics
aren't really Christians, I thought, I'd better find out and quit
reading those old books!

So the first phase of exploration came partly from a desire to
know whether Catholic books were really "safe" to read and partly
from curiosity about Christian roots. But even more, I just wanted
to know God better. If God was working in the Catholic Church
but I failed to appreciate it, then I must not know Him as fully
as possible. If God had a Catholic "side," I didn't want to be
guilty of closing my heart to that part of Him. I had an uncomfortable
hunch that God might not be as separated from Catholics as we
Protestants were.

I started reading Church history. My initial belief was, roughly,
that over time the Catholic Church had become irredeemably corrupt,
and that by Martin Luther's day God had basically given up and
started over with the triumphant Reformation. History challenged
that view, however. Indisputably, there were problems within the
Church of Luther's day. But as a movement, the Reformation appeared
to have had as many social and political motivations as spiritual
ones. It was a tangled time.

Holy leaders had called for reform from within the Catholic Church,
while others such as Luther had felt they had no choice but to
jump ship. Theologically, Reformers differed from each other significantly
about matters of doctrine and practice. The Reformation didn't
seem so clean and pristine -- so triumphantly directed by God -- as I had thought.

Reading beyond the Reformation ... well, Protestant history seemed
almost embarrassing, even when written by Protestants. Our track
record over the centuries was no more stellar than that of the
Catholics. Besides all the doctrinal disagreements, virtually
every sin and fault we criticized in the Catholic Church had been
repeated in Protestant history.

We hadn't purified ourselves by getting away from Rome; the problem
remained in us. The Catholic Church had undergone many internal
reforms of which Protestants tended to be unaware. And it seemed
clear that God continued to do wonderful things through faithful
Catholics, although we Protestants usually didn't take notice.

My paradigm of the Church and her history began to wobble a bit.
I hadn't grown up in a church-going family, but I had spent time
in several denominations and independent congregations. Over the
years, with all the differing opinions, I had vaguely wondered
what Jesus had meant when He told the Apostles that the Holy Spirit
would guide them into all truth.

Now I faced the puzzle: Protestant history didn't appear to validate
a
sola scriptura
(Bible alone) view. Part of the legacy of the
Reformation was Protestants splitting again and again from people
they disagreed with over the interpretation and application of
the Bible. Yet it couldn't be, I told myself, that God had kept
the roots of authority in the Catholic Church.

I read some biographies of respected Christians, including St.
Francis of Assisi and John Hyde ("Praying Hyde"). While one was
Catholic and the other Presbyterian, and they lived centuries
apart, I was struck by several similarities. Both were committed
to celibacy; both were men of deep prayer; both bore various physical
ailments with joy; both saw many instances of God's miraculous
intervention.

Both seemed to have delighted God -- and yet there were in St.
Francis all those Catholic peculiarities such as devotion to Mary,
belief in transubstantiation, and submission to the pope. I wondered
if maybe God wasn't offended by those Catholic peculiarities as
much as we Protestants were.

I moved on to explore Catholic beliefs. In addition to reading
Protestant books about Catholic beliefs, I also actually read
Catholic books about Catholic beliefs. It disturbed me to see
that Protestant books consistently misrepresented Catholic teachings.
I had thought, for example, that Catholic "prayers to saints"
were an ignorant substitute for prayer to God, as if Catholics
believe the saints are equal to God or that God will not hear
our prayers directly. I had thought that the notion of the infallibility
of the pope meant that Catholics think that popes are sinless
and that everything they say is infallible. I had thought that
the Catholic Church teaches that we are saved by works, not by
grace. Even many Catholics misunderstand what the Church teaches
about such things, but once I realized what she actually teaches,
I had fewer objections.

This brought on a sense of deja vu. David and I were serving as
missionaries in a Muslim country. It was no easy task to talk
with Muslims about our faith. They are sure they already know
what Christians believe and equally sure that Christians are wrong.
Yet when Muslims state what they "know" Christians believe, there
are many distortions.

It almost seemed that the same thing was true with Protestants
regarding Catholic theology. Just as one couldn't learn about
true Christianity by asking a Muslim -- even one who claims to
have been raised a Christian -- it didn't seem that one could
learn about the Catholic faith by listening to Protestants. Just
as Muslims seemed predisposed not to truly "hear" what Christians
believe, so Protestants seemed predisposed to misconstrue what
the Catholic Church teaches. It is so hard for us to consider
that the truth we know may contain some error, or at least may
be only part of the picture.

So I tried to be open-minded as I considered the Catholic Church's
viewpoints. I looked again at the Catholic belief in
sola verbum
Dei
-- the Word of God alone as authority, expressed through the
Bible, through Sacred Tradition, and through the Magisterium,
the living Church leadership.

It dawned on me that Protestant beliefs actually don't come solely
from Scripture. Without admitting it, Protestants follow their
own brands of Magisterium and Tradition -- each group having its
own authoritative voice in interpretation of the Bible, whether
it's John MacArthur or R. C. Sproul or Jerry Falwell.

Take, for example, Baptism: Is it a sign of individual faith,
as believed by the Baptists, or a sign of the covenant, as Reformed
folk believe? Should it be done by full immersion, as Baptists
insist, or is it okay to sprinkle?

Denominations disagree about this matter because it isn't absolutely
clear in the Bible. People hold to one view or another because
they accept the voice of authority of their denomination, which
is their form of "Magisterium," even though they don't call it
that.

When I married my Presbyterian husband, my church background had
been basically Baptist. I eventually became reconciled to infant
baptism because I learned that the earliest Christians practiced
infant baptism. Even though we didn't call it "the authority of
Sacred Tradition," it had made sense to me that what the earliest
Christians had consistently done with this sacrament must have
been all right.

Another example I pondered: The doctrine of predestination is
believed, with variations, by those in the Reformed faith. Predestination,
however, is not an absolutely clear teaching in the Bible. If
it were, the shelves of theological libraries would not be filled
with books on the topic of predestination vs. free will. If you
asked people in our Presbyterian church, I expect almost everyone
would say they believe in the doctrine of predestination -- not
because they fully understand it or can even articulate much about
it themselves, but because it's upheld by the denomination and
articulated by smart guys like R. C. Sproul.

This mind-boggling notion came to me: The Catholic "distinctives"
were not unbelievable, any more than Christian beliefs in general.
They were just unfamiliar.

They seemed unacceptable because I had been taught they weren't
true. I already accepted teachings from the Bible that offended
non-Christians. My submission to those teachings didn't come because
they made total sense but because I am convinced the Bible is
dependable, and I also believe reality isn't limited to what I
have personally experienced or what my little brain can comprehend.

If the Bible clearly spelled out the Immaculate Conception, I
would have believed it years ago, just as I believed in the Virgin
Birth. I had changed my views on infant baptism due to Sacred
Tradition; could Sacred Tradition also change my views on Mary?
It's really no more difficult to believe in the Immaculate Conception,
if one believes in the authority of the Church, than it is to
believe in the Virgin Birth, based on the authority of the Bible.

I saw more parallels. It's no more difficult to believe in the
assumption of Mary than in the assumption of Enoch or Elijah.
It is no more difficult to accept the Church's teachings about
contraception than to accept the Bible's teachings about sexual
morality in general. It is no more difficult to believe in the
true presence of Christ in the Eucharist than to believe in the
Incarnation.

Notice, I didn't say it's easy to believe any of this. It goes
against my human grain to put my trust in miracles I can't absolutely
prove, to live by unpopular standards, or to submit to authority
beyond my little self. And yet, ever since the gospel first struck
me as true, I recognized the importance of growing in my knowledge
and practice of the truth, however inconvenient.

One of my favorite Bible teachers was fond of saying that we should
always live in obedience to our understanding of the Bible, and
that we should always hold our understanding of the Bible in an
open hand for God to add to or correct. The question I now asked
was whether authority rested solely in the Bible, or whether the
authority of the Word of God came, as Catholics claimed, through
the checks-and-balances of the Bible, Sacred Tradition, and the
living Magisterium.

Again, Protestant history made the latter view seem more reasonable.
The Catholics had succeeded in growing past so many of their own
sins and blunders, while Protestants kept dividing in reaction
to sins and blunders. The Catholic Church maintained its stand
on the authority of the Bible, while most denominations weakened
on that issue as generations passed.

Surprisingly, some issues were not difficult for me. Fairly early
in my reading, for example, it made sense to me that there is
a major difference between worship and veneration. I didn't see
any problem with veneration of Mary and the saints.

I also found the basic idea of purgatory surprisingly easy to
understand and even biblical. As long as I could mentally let
go of the assumption that "this belief/practice couldn't be right
because this is what Catholics think/do ..."

Eventually, with great uneasiness, I realized that Catholic theology
made more sense to me than what I had learned as an Evangelical
Protestant. I had quit "protesting." I was a closet Catholic.
I doubted myself: How could I be persuaded by ideas that didn't
even interest my Evangelical friends, let alone persuade them?
Scariest of all, David hadn't shared my reading interest and hadn't
experienced the paradigm shift, and now we didn't want it to be
something that would divide us.

In the first years of our marriage, we had been unified in our
sense of calling. Now we didn't know what to do as missionaries
since I had become Catholic-at-heart. David hadn't read along
with me in history and Catholic theology; now he didn't want to
read for the purpose of trying to talk me back into Protestant
beliefs.

We ended up returning to the United States for a number of reasons,
among them our inability to find an acceptable school situation
for our growing daughters and, frankly, my own burnout. Some people
from the mission suggested that my interest in the Catholic faith
had been a subconscious way of trying to escape the difficulties
of our mission situation. Once we were home from the field, they
believed, my subconsciously motivated interest would naturally
decline.

The quandary did go onto the back burner for several years. It
was not easy to reestablish life in the United States after spending
our entire post-college adult life -- a total of thirteen years -- preparing and then serving as missionaries. We were, in a sense,
"wounded soldiers," and it was disappointing that with few exceptions
our Evangelical brothers and sisters were either too busy or felt
too uncomfortable to help us heal. I got new insights into the
story of the Good Samaritan when the people with the "right theology"
tended to keep their distance from our pain.

In retrospect, I think we all tend to have dangerously oversimplified
views of how God works in ministry and through leadership. When
troubles arise that don't fit the belief system -- not only when
leaders sin, but also when they show weakness or make unwise decisions -- we tend to go into avoidance or denial. But at that point,
on a personal level, I became angry and disillusioned over God's
permissiveness with all who call themselves Christians.

I recalled many examples of committed Christians seeking God's
will and guidance who ended up doing all kinds of ill-advised
things -- and the results ranged from the pathetic to the disastrous.
This brought me deep anxiety. For several years, my experience
encouraged me to be a Deist; it was a major exercise in faith
to trust that God was really involved in Christendom.

Nevertheless, I couldn't help but believe in Jesus, so I couldn't
pitch Christianity and settle into Deism, much to my frustration.
I didn't know what to trust God for any more. I spent several
years on the edge of cynicism, seeking to be content with simply
trusting God, emptying myself of expectations.