Living and Engaging with Different Forms of Catholicism: A Matter of Bearing Witness to Jesus Christ

The theme of this year’s conference (December 5–8) presents us with a major challenge that goes beyond the “relationship” between Evangelicals and Catholics. This challenge has many facets: it is relational (involving one’s neighbor or coworker); it relates to the devotion of social communities (parishes, neighborhoods, patron saints, etc.); it is social and cultural, as it reflects the constant intervention of the authorities of the Church of Rome (first and foremost the Pope), who give the impression of being a “Big Brother” constantly commenting on historical events and current affairs at every level. This “Big Brother” speaks from a vantage point with a millennia-old legacy that seems unshaken and unaffected by scandals or secularization: it speaks, makes pronouncements, and is called upon to intervene in the most diverse dynamics of the contemporary world (see, most recently, the encyclical on artificial intelligence).

Taking up this challenge—and this is the point of this reflection—is an integral part of the witness that the disciples of Jesus Christ intend to bear to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The “witness” to Jesus Christ is a motivation that goes beyond the reasons most commonly cited to justify an interest in Catholicism.

It goes beyond evangelism, which is the most commonly cited reason. Catholicism is a context in which we would find the figure of the baptized but not that of the born-again. Expressed in this way—as one of the ultimate reasons for the interest and energy devoted to the study of Catholicism—it would make any interpersonal interaction with people of the Catholic faith problematic. It would turn “living alongside” into a sort of permanent evangelism campaign.

Perhaps it is here—in this emphasis placed on the evangelistic aspect—that we find the reason for a series of practices often adopted by evangelicals, which result in “not participating” and in distancing themselves from a series of liturgical rites that mark the life and existence of a Catholic, such as Communions, baptisms, etc. In the human experience of individual Catholics and Catholic families, however, these rites are an expression of their very material and social existence. Non-participation raises the issue of reciprocity, which is essential to the dynamic of sharing the Gospel: why do you invite me to baptisms at your church when you do not participate in my daughter’s First Communion?

The emphasis on evangelization, at times, might also explain the rejection and the accusation of “idolatry” leveled against any form of personal piety or devotion, or that of social communities. By failing to demonstrate toward these realities a commitment and interest aimed at discerning something else that lies on an anthropological level and perhaps expresses human and spiritual needs that should be read and understood with greater attention.

This does not mean, of course, that “non-participation” has not played a role in the long history of interaction between Evangelicals and Catholics in certain historical and cultural contexts. Nor does it mean that we blindly accept everything about popular devotion or piety.
But evangelism alone cannot justify our interest in the world of “Catholic practices.”

Taking up this challenge goes beyond a purely theological and doctrinal issue. There is no doubt that any interaction with people of the Catholic faith must navigate a landscape populated by dogmas, creeds, doctrines, and theological convictions.

“What are the differences between us and you?”

This is the question that often kicks off doctrinal conversations.

But the theological issue is not limited solely to knowing and listing the differences between the dogmas of the Church of Rome and, for example, the five “solas” of the Reformation. Theology is not defined solely by propositional correctness but also includes, among other things, the way it is applied. In contexts where evangelical communities and Catholic social communities are in close proximity, theological clarity sometimes appears as something dry and functional solely for marking boundaries of identity.

I am thinking, for example, of a doctrine such as “justification by faith and not by works,” brandished as a sort of boundary marker beyond which there seems to be nothing else. This very formulation, when used as an identity slogan, is very often incomplete and cobbled together in a way that reveals the flaws of precisely this arid theological diatribe: in fact, the fundamental phrase “by grace… through faith” is missing here.

But, above all, the predominantly theological rationale for interest in Catholicism sets up an artificial opposition that does not honor the desire to bear witness to Jesus Christ. How many doctrinal conversations between evangelical Protestants and Catholics end up focusing on Luther, his life, and the events of the Reformation, rather than highlighting the offer Jesus made to the Samaritan woman (John 4)?

Exclusively theological reasons bring into the dialogue the unwelcome guest of the “us versus you” identity conflict: on one side, “us Evangelicals,” and on the other, “you Catholics.”

Taking on the challenge of engaging with Catholicism goes beyond purely social, historical, and cultural considerations regarding the Church of Rome. What is at stake is not asking how much space the Church of Rome occupies, or how global, all-encompassing, and omnipresent it is. It does not matter whether this influence is maintained by courting power—as has been the case since antiquity—or whether it is defended through the force of persecution, as during the Counter-Reformation, or expanded through strategic maneuvers, as in the current post-Vatican II era. We should not be concerned with how many Evangelicals are joining the ranks of the Catholic Church (nor should we be thrilled by the opposite trend).

The description of a polymorphic reality such as Catholicism certainly fuels academic speculation; it is part of the researcher’s effort to try to identify and perhaps reduce an entire system to a few key pillars (a reduction that is, of course, subjective and open to verification). Part of the researcher’s intellectual honesty should also include a healthy epoche (as Ninian Smart defined it using the key term from Husserl’s phenomenology), that is, a suspension of one’s own preconceptions in order to evaluate a cultural and religious reality that is not one’s own, entering another’s space with the interpretive frameworks that belong to the other.

But all of this belongs to the world of research, to a pseudo-academic interpretation of the phenomenon of Catholicism. And it cannot constitute a profound motivation for an interest in Catholicism.

If these were the only reasons (we could certainly add a few more), then it might mean that when we speak of Catholicism, we are not actually speaking of Catholicism, but rather of how we speak of Catholicism! We are speaking to ourselves, starting from our own well-defined historical, cultural, and theological identity (which we believe to be such). This is the identity-based approach to Catholicism.

On the contrary, we believe that living and engaging with Catholicism is an integral part of the witness we are to bear to Jesus Christ as his disciples.

Here too, the focus shifts from the object of knowledge (Catholicism) to the subject who knows, but there is a caveat to consider: while this shift in focus is legitimate, it can be carried out in two completely different ways.

One way is to look inward and limit ourselves to taking stock of the various approaches to Catholicism in order to arrive at normative judgments: there is a right way and a wrong way to interact with Catholicism. Ecumenism, for example, is inherently wrong, regardless; rediscovering and maintaining the Protestant and Reformation identity at all levels is the right approach. Venturing into the world of Catholicism without an understanding of the Roman Catholic system could lead us to be misled and make errors in judgment, or even cause us to fall into the trap of the new way in which post-conciliar Catholicism relates to other Christian denominations (during the era of Pope Francis, we have seen how there was a particular focus on the evangelical-Pentecostal world).

In this first way of approaching Catholicism—by turning our gaze inward (as noted above)—we say we are concerned with Catholicism, but in reality we are concerned with the way we as Evangelicals relate to Catholicism.

A second way of conceiving our interest in Catholicism is to trace it back to and make it an expression of Christian witness to Jesus Christ—that is, to concern ourselves with whether our witness (ours—whose? Who is this collective subject?) also involves ensuring that the gaze we turn toward ourselves does not remain trapped within our own “identity.”

On the contrary, our gaze should make it clear to ourselves and to those we speak with WHO we want to be present in the context of our lives and to engage with people of the Catholic faith: the disciples were called “Christians” (Acts) because their lives pointed to Jesus Christ. In our Evangelical churches, we sing a hymn that at one point says: “… may they see Christ there wherever we are …”!

This is as far as living is concerned.

In this encounter (living and engaging with …), Christian witness—which is also martyrdom, sacrifice, and self-denial, in the broadest semantic sense—hopes that the actual dialogue will ultimately not become a dialogue between an Evangelical and a Catholic interlocutor.

The dialogue must make room for a THIRD PARTY, Jesus Christ, who is in fact the one who calls both of us to a three-way dialogue; a dialogue in which our identities—including our own as Protestant evangelicals—are put to the test by the living person of Jesus Christ.

Because we are who we are—or who we claim to be, namely disciples of Jesus Christ—it is important for us to live and engage with anyone so that the role Jesus Christ plays in our vision of life, the church, history, and so on may be seen. And we desire that this presence be experienced precisely as we live and engage with others.

This is the ultimate reason that must motivate us to live and engage with everyone… to take an interest in Catholicism.

At this point, however, an objection might be raised—one we mention and acknowledge here but will address in more detail shortly: if the goal is to adequately represent Jesus Christ in any interaction, shouldn’t we be concerned with the frameworks through which our interlocutors view, interpret, and inhabit the world?

And does it mean anything if the “Catholic-minded” person we’re speaking with sees, interprets, and lives in a world where the very same words we, as disciples of Christ, utter resonate—with ways of thinking that also have at their heart the person and work of Jesus Christ? Must we subject the use of these very words to a method of suspicion, placing ourselves in the role of semantic correctors during the interaction?

Follow us, and we’ll discuss this further.

 

di Giacomo Carlo Di Gaetano