​What Protestants Can Learn From Catholics

Two weeks ago I was at a conference in California where I had the joy of sitting on a panel to discuss True Confessions, a book by my friend and First Things colleague Fran Maier. Though the book is a collection of interviews conducted with Catholics—bishops, clergy, and laypeople—there’s a lot Protestants can learn from it as well, particularly about the importance of church discipline. 

As the only Protestant on the panel—and the only Protestant interviewed in the book—I was very much an outsider. The arcane politics of the Catholic Church are a mystery to me—as they are to many Catholics—and I have no experience of the rhythm and routines of everyday parish life. But there are many elements in the book that are instructive for those in the Protestant world. Many Catholics are disillusioned with their leaders, for example, but many Catholics at the ground level are also encouraged by them. Online noise may incline us all to think our churches are battlegrounds; but the petty rages of those who live their lives on X are largely irrelevant to the work of local churches. Faithful pastors and faithful congregants serving the needs of their local church communities and beyond may live hidden lives, but they make all the difference in the real world. Nobody of whom I am aware ever came to faith in Christ because of the rantings of the online unhinged. Many have been transformed through the random Christian kindness of strangers. 

There are also lessons to learn. I confess to a deep envy of Catholic intellectual life among many of its brightest young people, and the vibrancy of this is evident in several of the interviews. For example, at the University of Pennsylvania, Dan Cheely runs the remarkable Collegium Institute, offering a rich program of thoughtful lectures and seminars to students. The D.C.-based Leonine Forum provides thoughtful mentoring for those whose talents may well take them to places of cultural influence. And behind many of these programs lies an impressive and generous network of Catholic philanthropists, some of whom are also interviewed in the book. One Protestant pastor friend tells me that that chapter should be required reading for all because “it explains why Catholic philanthropy works and Protestant philanthropy so often does not.” 

But the comment in the book that struck me most came towards the end. Fr. Fessio, a Jesuit priest, called upon the Catholic Church to hold its people accountable to its teachings and to begin to discipline those who denied them. This is perhaps the Achilles Heel of the Catholic Church: allowing its name to be used by those whose war against human nature on issues of life, sexuality, and gender is so completely at odds with Christian teaching. Certainly, the child abuse scandal has severely damaged the Church’s public witness. But so has the failure to deal with those many politicians who use the Catholic label when it suits them but never allow the Catholic Church’s clearly stated positions on such matters as abortion to interfere with their chances of elected office. 

This is not to make a “holier than thou” criticism. Protestant witness is damaged by its obvious lack of unity. Even within my comparatively small world of Presbyterianism, there are  numerous denominations in the U.S. alone that have substantially the same doctrinal and ecclesiastical standards and in which I could serve as minister with a good conscience. We Protestants default far too quickly to a spiritualized understanding of Christ’s prayer that his people should be one, at the cost of credibility. Unfortunately, the purchase price of Catholicism's institutional unity often seems to be the hierarchy’s practical indifference to actual doctrinal and moral unity. If a church opposes abortion but never holds its people to account on the issue, then the question of what “opposes” means becomes rather pressing. 

I thought of this on the last day of the panel, as news broke that the Olympics opening ceremonies in Paris featured a drag performance that mocked the Last Supper. That event has been sufficiently discussed. Many Christians, including myself, found it offensive, if predictable and childish. But it should also provoke self-examination. It is not enough for the church to show that she takes the sacred seriously only when it is attacked by the encroaching paganism of the world around. Such criticism will only have credibility when it arises out of a consistent concern for the sacred within the church. 

Church discipline is one area where this concern most clearly manifests itself. Now such discipline today rarely achieves its purpose of bringing the offender back to the straight and narrow. It is too easy simply to change churches, especially in Protestantism. But there are two other reasons why Presbyterians consider church discipline to be necessary. First, it signals to other members of the church that certain things are taken seriously. When the unrepentant adulterer or abusive spouse is called to account, the message is obvious: to be a member of this church and to behave this way are incompatible with each other. Second, it vindicates the name of Christ in public. The action of discipline proclaims that the name of Christ is not to be associated with wickedness, whether that be disregard for the unborn, open contempt for biblical teaching on sex, or the adoption of the same sneering and slanderous idioms that populate the world of public discourse. 

Failure to discipline, say, pro-abortion politicians involves mockery of the name of Christ, just as surely as direct mockery of the Last Supper. Fr. Fessio’s comment is spot-on and allows us to draw no other conclusion. Kudos to Fran for including it. 

Protestants should read this book. From wisdom regarding philanthropy to the need for churches to do the hard things regarding discipline, there are important lessons here for us all.

Carl Trueman is a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. 

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Image by Martinus Rørbye, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Image cropped.