Long, D. Stephen

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Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteTheology Faculty Research and Publications Theology, Department of8-1-2014My Church LoyaltiesD. Stephen LongMarquette University, d.stephen.long@marquette.eduPublished version. Christian Century, Vol. 131, No. 16 (August 2014): 23-25. Permalink. © 2014Christian Century. Used with permission.My church loyalties | The Christian CenturyVatican City as seen from across the Tiber. Photo by Jean-Pol Grandmont.FEATURESMy church loyaltiesWhy I am not yet a CatholicJul 28, 2014 by D. Stephen LongIn 2005, after Benedict XVI was elected pope, I wrote an essay for the Century titled “In need of apope?” That essay cost me a job at a Protestant evangelical institution. A Catholic friend told meat the time that I should think of that result as a gracious preemptive strike.Since then I have repeatedly been asked, “Why are you not Catholic?”The main reason I am not (yet) Catholic and remain a Methodist and an ordained Methodist elderis that I do not know how to become Catholic without betraying the people who taught me to loveGod, pray, worship, desire the Eucharist, take delight in scripture, and so on. How can I leave thepeople I love?I remember my pastor, Lloyd Willert, who tended to me when I had major surgery at the age of 19and was in a body cast for three months. He visited me and prayed with me. When I went toseminary, his wife gave me books from his library. I still cherish them.Then there was Cleveland Tennyson, a self-educated African-Caribbean Methodist preacherwhom I worked with in Honduras for a year. His sermons brought me into the presence of God insuch a way that I felt you had to take off your shoes when he preached because you werestanding on holy ground.Geraldine Ingram was the first Methodist preacher I worked with in an official capacity. Hercelebration of the Eucharist was beautiful and inspiring. It made me see the incarnation in a newlight.Then there are numerous friends and family members who have asked me not to convert. Howcould I walk away from those who gather with me on Wednesday nights to be accountable in ourdiscipleship, attend to Sunday’s lectionary Gospel lesson, and celebrate the Lord’s Suppertogether? Should I abandon them? It is not what I am against that keeps me Methodist; it is what Iam for.On two occasions over the past decade I decided to become Catholic and initiated the process,largely out of frustration with Protestant sentimentality. On both occasions I had to wait because Ihad also been asked to lead a retreat, preach or preside at a Methodist church, teach a Sundayschool class, lecture to a Methodist audience, or otherwise work in a congregation. In GrahamGreene’s novel The Power and the Glory, a less than admirable whiskey-loving priest becomesholy, and possibly a saint, simply because he had too much going on to leave Mexico after arevolution ousted the Catholic Church, even though he had begun to question most of thechurch’s teachings. I sometimes think I’m like a whiskey-loving Methodist preacher. I just neverget around to leaving; I always have something to do for the Methodists, and I cannot figure outhow to leave without betraying people I love.Two things prompted that 2005 essay. First, I was moved that so many Protestant leaders feltcompelled to attend John Paul II’s funeral. The papacy no longer seemed to be a decisive point ofcontention if so many Protestants wanted to be present at the funeral mass. Second, I was movedby Benedict XVI’s smile when he was presented to the world as pope. It hit me that Protestantefforts to create authority through texts, laws, and regulations lacked this humanity. So I thoughtout loud, without thinking of all the ramifications, about how Protestants might come to find a wayto affirm the bishop of Rome and other aspects of Catholicism that once were thought to benonnegotiable dividing lines.How might Protestants reform Protestantism? I do not think Protestants can do so if their identityis bound up with “protest.” If all that holds them together as Protestants is what they are against,then they actually depend on what they supposedly oppose for their identity rather than on whatthey are for. The end result of that “protest” will be solipsism or nihilism.Of course, many Protestant conversions to Catholicism are themselves protestant conversions. Onone occasion when I was tempted to convert to Catholicism, I did so because I was angry at thesilliness of activities like puppet-and-clown Eucharists. A friend and pastor asked me to wait oneyear to make sure that I was not converting because of what I was protesting against. Wouldn’tsuch a conversion be one more act of protest? It was good Ignatian counsel. I waited the yearand then went through spiritual direction with a Jesuit to discern whether I should convert. He didMy church loyalties | The Christian Centurynot think I was ready.How thorough is a Protestant conversion to Catholicism if the convert harbors an animus towardProtestantism that violates Roman Catholic teaching? In my 2005 essay I quoted the Catholiccatechism to remind Protestants that the Roman Catholic Church does not consider Protestants tobe heretics, apostates, or non-Christians: “I would not deny that Protestants already share to anextent in the Catholic unity. In fact, this is the official teaching of the Catholic Church itself. Itscatechism states that ‘one cannot charge with the sin of separation those who at present are borninto these communities [that resulted from separation] and in them are brought up in the faith ofChrist, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers.’ Those of uswho came to love God through these separated communions are correct to declare our faith in the‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.’” So even on Catholic grounds, I am not considered as aProtestant to be protesting against the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.I am willing to concede, as Roman Catholicism states, that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolicchurch “subsists” in it. That may be too much for many Protestants, but it is not for me. I am evenwilling to agree that whatever is found of faith in the “separated communions” has as its cause—insome mysterious sense—in the unity Catholicism has maintained. But I cannot conclude that byremaining Methodist I am protesting against the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. In fact, itis my love for and faith in that church that keeps me Methodist.The “counter” identities that began in the 16th century have damaged Christian witness andbrought God’s judgment of secularity against us. But God has not seen fit simply to do away withProtestants or take the fruit and gifts of the Spirit from us, so it will not suffice simply forProtestants to cease to exist, which I fear seems to be some Catholic converts’ (perhapsProtestant?) solution. I am not a Methodist because I am in protest. I want to find a way forwardwithout having to replay the countermeasures of the 16th century.I do think the church stands in need of constant reform. This is not a Protestant-versus-Catholicposition. In fact, Catholics have often been better at reform than Protestants, as Karl Barthacknowledged after Vatican II. So let me directly state what I do find troubling in Catholicism.None of this is so troubling that it would keep me from embracing Catholicism, because I knownone of it identifies the whole or breadth of the Catholic faith; nor do I think that similar, if notdeeper, problems cannot be found in Protestantism.Nevertheless, I find the absence of women in leadership deeply problematic. I sometimes wishCatholic bishops would at least run some of their statements past their mothers or sisters beforereleasing them to the public. This would help to avoid public relations gaffes that make it look likethe Catholic Church has a “war on women” (in fact, I don’t think Catholicism has any suchintention).I support women’s ordination. I don’t have any grand theory about it; I have simply seen it. I grewup with women preachers whose sermons bore the fruit of the Holy Spirit. They bring a uniqueperspective to the church that I think the church lacks if it denies them the exercise of their gifts. Ithink it matters that women were the first proclaimers of the resurrection and that the first personto make God present in his materiality was Jesus’ mother.Second, I am concerned about abuses of authority and power that occur and have occurred inRoman Catholicism. Who could possibly deny this? Here, of course, I would find an ally in theOrthodox Church, which would question any easy Catholic answer as to where the true catholicchurch resides. I don’t think this problem has to do with the papacy per se or the primacy of thebishop of Rome. But I am concerned about habits of power that prompt Roman Catholic leadershiptoward secrecy or to use the instruments of government to impose a way of life that Catholiclaypeople themselves refuse to adopt.Let me give an example of the latter. I largely support, with some qualifications, the AffordableCare Act. Providing health care for everyone seems to me to be fulfilling a command Jesus gaveto us to love our neighbor. I do not recognize abortion or contraception as having to do with healthcare. I want Catholic institutions to be allowed to opt out of any mandatory requirements. However,that Catholic (and Protestant) leaders have made this a question of persecution is dishonest.Many Catholic institutions were already providing contraceptive options for their employees prior tothe Affordable Care Act—a fact that is widely known.Rather than taking on the federal government, Catholic leadership (bishops, theologians, laity)would have been more truthful if they said to the Catholic people: Artificial contraception is aquestion of mortal sin. We refuse to admit to the Eucharist or receive money from any Catholicwho violates this teaching. We will take the name “Catholic” away from every institution alreadyinvolved in this practice.My church loyalties | The Christian CenturyIt’s not that I think Catholic leaders should do this; it would be imprudent. I like the fact thatCatholicism has an earthy paganism to it that can incorporate all kinds of messiness into its life.But if Catholic leaders are going to howl about persecution because they are asked to dosomething by the federal government that Catholic people are already doing, then their witnessrings hollow. I worry about a Catholic defensiveness that finds persecution when its moralteachings are not honored or implemented by governmental power but looks the other way whenCatholic laypeople do not abide by them.Third, I struggle to affirm Catholic teaching on contraception. I served as a pastor in Honduras ina village with many Catholics and Methodists. A Catholic priest from Miami would fly in every othermonth, drive to the Catholic church in his Mercedes, unlock the church, hold mass, lock thebuilding, and drive off. He was one of those priests who declared the “cafeteria was closed” whenit came to matters of church teaching. I remember a poor Catholic women in her early thirties whogave birth to her tenth child on a dirt path on her way to the clinic my wife operated. She wasfaithful to the church, but there was no one there to attend to her, to help her with her poverty, orteach her natural family planning.I also recall a conversation I once had with a young priest over dinner. He was going on and onabout how everything in Western society declined once contraception was permitted. (I wasthinking to myself: So contraception is the defining sin—not slavery, genocide, Jim Crow laws,total warfare, racism, patriarchy?) I finally confessed to him that I had been married for twodecades, that I did not follow Catholic teaching, and that I didn’t think my marriage embodied anyof the consequences he thought inevitable from failing to do so. He turned to me and said, “Yourmarriage lacks the fullness it could otherwise have.” I admit I was offended and wondered how hecould make such a snap judgment without knowing me, my wife, or our biological realities.I agree with Protestant ethicist Paul Ramsey that a marriage must be open to children or it is nota fulfillment of the Christian vocation to marriage. I teach this view when I do marital counseling.However, I do not think every act of sexual intercourse has to be open to the propagation ofchildren. On this point I don’t think I differ that far from Catholic teaching. “Natural family planning”is itself a natural contraceptive practice that requires certain artificial instruments for itsemployment (thermometers, calendars, etc.). It is unclear to me that it bears a differentintentionality from certain other forms of “artificial” contraception. So if this teaching is necessaryfor someone to be Catholic, I am not Catholic.I would express one more concern I have about Catholic teaching. I address ethical issues from achristological perspective more than a natural one. Many Catholic colleagues tell me this is aProtestant position. I used to argue with them, but now I have come to accept their criticism. Ioften worry that Catholic theologians can say “nature” much more easily than they can say“Jesus,” and I think this is tied up with my three concerns noted above. Those concerns are notunique to Catholicism. Bad practice by Catholic priests does not invalidate all Catholicism anymore than bad practice by Protestant ministers invalidates all of Protestantism.Every good Protestant Christian must be willing to return to Rome for the sake of the unity of thechurch once the “Reformation” is over. The Reformation should always be understood as atemporary measure. Perhaps the time for reunion will come in my lifetime. In the meantime, thoseindividuals who return to Rome prior to that day must not deepen the divide and therefore bearwitness against that future reunion.How Catholics receive Protestant converts (and vice versa) will have an effect on this effort. Ifconverts are seen as booty in a cultural war, then they are not being faithfully received. One of myclose friends, my son’s godmother, recently left the Methodists and became Catholic. I wassurprised because she had feminist commitments—but she found a place in Catholicism wherethose commitments were honored. I am pleased she found a home and rejoice with her. ACatholic friend wrote to her and said, “Welcome home. Sorry we left the house in such a mess.”On the day we are reconciled, I hope the Catholic Church will welcome us with this kind ofhumility.Tags:  catholicism Graham Greene Methodists protestantism roman catholic church

My Church Loyalties

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My Church Loyalties

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