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The Forum > Article Comments > The failure of Protestantism > Comments

The failure of Protestantism : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 7/12/2007

Why do Protestants remain separated from the Roman Catholic Church after most of the reasons for their separation have disappeared?

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DB - have a feeling you are terminally confused about what a "sacrament" is. I do remember another occasion when a poster explained something you had labelled a sacrament was actually not.

The selling of indulgences to which Luther took objection was not, I think you will find, anything to do with sacraments. This referred to the habit of people paying money for a modified "Get Out of Jail Free" card: - so much money resulted in so many days parole from purgatory As no-one has succeeded computing exactly how many days till infinity ends, this was a pretty good racket as one could go on paying for days off with, of course, no end in sight. You said this still goes on to-day...well I know that theres one born every minute, but its hard to imagine?

Lev
yes, I too would have thought that a quick answer to the question of what stops Protestants becoming Romans was available without any meanderings away from the tenets and bedrock issues: how many Protestants accept the concepts of The Trinity...Transubstantiation...the Sacraments. How many lay religious Protestants would be happy taking the 3 vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and making the leap into religious orders? All the rest, the issues Sellick brings up, appear to be so much window dressing and do not touch issues of faith at all but merely preference.
Posted by Romany, Friday, 7 December 2007 7:59:09 PM
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Sells says
"the freedom of the gospel which orders culture aright under the Lordship of Christ."
forgetting that culture was hardly ordered 'aright' prior to the reformation and that the universal rule of the church was in large part the cause of the problem rather than the solution.

The many denominations that exist today represent a rich cultural diversity within the faith community. Lets thank God for that and enjoy it. As Sells points out there is increasing agreement among theologians of all denominations on the core elements of faith. It is no accident that this is happening in a context of great religio-cultural diversity.

Church union is undesirable and thankfully also quite impossible. Sells is being a bit tragically romantic when he imagines that the laiety is predisposed to unity and that the churches might be re-united in some sort of bottom-up groundswell of ecumenical enthusiasm.

And by the way.... while we're talking about unity in terms of 'returning to Rome'.... the Eastern churches are not 'break-aways' from Rome and it makes no sense really to speak of Rome as the church to which all should return.

The denominations offer a richly diverse range of religious cultures and there is just no need to merge the community of faith back into any particular expression of christian culture. In fact such a thing would inevitably become a deeply evil institution. Lets not go there!
Posted by waterboy, Friday, 7 December 2007 11:42:38 PM
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The reasons for separation of churches in the 16th century were multi faceted. They included Corruption, Despotism, and religious dogmas that were put in place not to enlighten the faithful but to prevent them from straying.

While the Catholic church has reformed from a kleptocrasy, many of the dogmas put in place such as the infallibility of the pope have prevented later administrations from removing some of the ridiculous edicts of the power hungry popes.

The fact that in European catholic countries, the birth rate is the lowest in the world and church attendance is the lowest ever would indicate that nearly all roman catholics cut and paste the teachings of the church and that the entire package is unpaletable except for a tiny minority.

The requirement for a single point of enlightened guidance is not something the catholic church can provide without serious re examination of the past 1000 years of poor judgement.
Posted by Democritus, Saturday, 8 December 2007 2:20:16 AM
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It is great to see an enthusiastic article written with fixed argument and a keen attachment to the issue.
While the seemingly absolutist nature of the arguments prompts a list of readily available counter-arguments (insightful 'broadening clean up'), it is a good example of how members of the Christian community feel about the ever-broadening disunity of the Church/es in the modern age.

Aside from valid arguments mentioned above, it is surprising that -waterboy- had the only reference to the (Eastern) Orthodox Church, arguably the least changed as per the original teachings, and something that struck me as a strong contradiction of the author's positioning of the Roman Catholic practice as the ideal that Protestantism should return to.

Apparent relativity forces us to wonder: "Why do Catholics not push away years of misunderstanding and reunite with Orthodoxy?"
Debate: never ending?

Thankfully, we do live in an age of diversity; plenty of reasons for the existence of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Posted by Serge, Saturday, 8 December 2007 2:31:07 AM
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Well, fair enough Peter Sellick. I guess it's better to be united and delusional than schismatic and delusional.

:-D
Posted by Mercurius, Saturday, 8 December 2007 8:03:34 AM
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Waterboy.
I find your comment surprising. The reasons for ecumenism are theological in that we are called to “one Lord, one faith and one baptism” and I find you celebration of diversity incongruous. What about a celebration of unity? In my experience the call to celebrate diversity is really a smug glossing of real differences so that we can all feel good. But I take your point about the danger of the one church and I think that was what Avery Dulles points to when he says that the separation of the churches robs the Church of its Catholicity. Certainly the Roman church appears a monolith, but as Hauerwas points out it accommodates diverse forms of the faith.

Also do not get me wrong about my attitude to the Roman church, I think the ruling of contraception, based as it is on natural theology, which the present pope himself has observed has capsized on the rocks of Darwinian evolution, is a huge mistake. I also think that the insistence on a celibate clergy has done untold damage. I am fond of quoting Genesis: “ Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." While celibacy may be a sign that vocation trumps biology its insistence has decimated and estranged the priesthood. What would the Vatican be like if its halls resounded to the calls of children and priests went back to their wives after a trying time in the parish? As it is the priesthood is attractive to those who are not strongly heterosexual with the obvious consequences.

If find it interesting that the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th C, Karl Barth, had to turn his back on modernism in order to write his dogmatics. Thus although there are many criticisms of the Roman church in his work, his theology is truly Catholic. Surely the Church must converge in order to be faithful and it is not helpful to conjure up a demonic totalitarianism. Peter Sellick
Posted by Sells, Saturday, 8 December 2007 10:25:19 AM
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