Catholicism: A Theology of Staying

By Aimee Milburn

Marie at the blog View from the Pews alerted me to a post she just wrote, “Why I Stayed – A Catholic Conversion,” which is just breathtaking. In it she says,

God is a dangerous Lover, He seduces the soul until we can no longer be satiated by the trivialities of the world. It is a thirst that only The Divine can quench yet we are still like deer that panteth after the water.

What I went through, scorched away my own superficiality in that I did not have to face those who opposed me, I instead faced my own weakness and fears.

I found myself in the Fire of God's Divine Love, but God's love does not destroy us. It instead refines and strengthens that which is weakest in our frail human nature.

Where I was weak God steeled me to remain where He wished me to be. When I suffered hurt God helped me realise that it was my Ego that was paining and not the inner sanctum of my soul. When I vaccilated, God helped me realise who was I following Him or people? When I wished to flee God helped me understand to whom was I running from, people or God Himself?
I finally understood that to follow Christ comes at a price. We are not meant to be safe or comfortable or look for safe havens. The only way to Christ is through the Cross.

Brought tears to my eyes. And that, too, is why I also am a Catholic.

Which makes me think of something else: in certain respects it is easier to be a Protestant (or almost anything but a Catholic), because Protestants (and people in general) can sort themselves out into more or less like-minded congregations, switch churches if they don’t like the one they’re in, or even start their own if they can’t find one they like.

In the Catholic world there is a certain amount of parish-hopping as people look for parishes they like, but it is still the same Church, all one Body, with the same teaching and leadership – which means we must really learn to love our sometimes very difficult neighbors in the pews, bear with what sometimes are very difficult faults, and carry sometimes very heavy burdens. We are confronted with warts and wrinkles and sometimes very overt sins, and weakness and failures in leadership.

And yet we must stay. And in staying, and learning to love anyway, we grow in holiness and real selflessness and real, unshakeable faith – for we truly are staying at the foot of the cross with Christ, who had been so disfigured as to become unrecognizable. And sometimes the Church is so disfigured by the sins of her members, including of her leaders, that she, too, is unrecognizable as the Bride of Christ, and as Christ Himself. But she is Christ – and loving her, even in her disfigurement, is truly to love Christ on the Cross. To wash her with your tears is truly to wash Christ with the perfume of your love.I don’t mean to make it sound like the Catholic world is all ugliness and suffering. It’s not – there’s plenty of beauty and joy here, even if sometimes well-hidden from the world. Just come to mass at the Cathedral here with me sometime, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. But I have been far more challenged to grow in holiness, and to learn what real love is, which is costly, steadfast and enduring and forgiving even in difficulty, than I ever was in the Protestant world – and I was in a very good church there. Even there, when a scandal came and engulfed the pastor and the going got rough, large numbers left and went elsewhere – and some tried to get me to leave, too, and go to a “better” church, though that is the exact opposite of what scripture tells us to do (just ponder the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Mt 13:24-30, and study the second epistle of Peter, to get an idea of how to behave when scandal comes). It caused me to think of Protestantism almost as a “theology of leaving,” and since becoming Catholic to think of Catholicism as a “theology of staying.”

Well, I’m staying, warts and all. I love Catholicism, and the Church, and the people, even the nasty ones. I love them. They’re members of my own body, part and parcel of Christ who loves me. And considering what my life has been, and the fact that Christ loves me anyway, how could I not but love them, too? If I didn’t, then I truly would be like the debtor whose debt was forgiven – but refused to forgive those in debt to me:

“’You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Mt 18:32-34)

That is an outcome I for one do not want. No, we must forgive, and love, and stay put – even if it means staying at the foot of the cross.

The Church: Head and Heart of Christ

By Aimee Milburn

I was finishing up morning prayer this morning using the Liturgy of the Hours, when a series of images and reflections passed through my mind. They were triggered by this line from the Intercessions:

Teach us to enter more deeply into the mystery of the Church.

And the thought crossed my mind: in the Church we are in the Body of Christ – which struck me as a little odd, because we usually speak of how we are members of the Body of Christ. But the image that passed through my mind was of the church itself, the cathedral where I presently worship, which is a traditional cathedral, and it seemed to me that when we are inside it we are actually inside Christ’s own body.

I saw the shape of the floor plan, and remembered something I learned in my degree program: the traditional church floor plan, with baptismal font at the rear, the altar in front, and behind the altar the tabernacle, with a side table for the unconsecrated bread and wine, is based directly on the architecture of the Temple at Jerusalem, which is revealed architecture, God’s architecture, His own design for His place of worship, which He directly gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

Since Christ dwells in the tabernacle in the Eucharist, and He is our Head, the Head of the Body, it makes sense to me that the tabernacle should be at the head of the church, behind the altar, which is the traditional location of the tabernacle. To move it elsewhere to me is to dislocate the Head.

But I had not thought of the rest of the church, the traditional design, as representing His body, and that we are in His body when we are in it. And all of the sudden something else flashed through my mind: the confessionals traditionally are located to one side of the church.
One side. The side of Christ, pierced by the lance, from which blood and water, mercy and grace, flowed forth. In the confessional, the blood of Christ and water of the Holy Spirit, mercy and grace, flow forth in forgiveness and absolution of sin.

And I saw: if the Church is the Body, and the tabernacle is the Head, then the confessional is the Heart. When we go into the confessional, we are going into the Heart of Christ, to be forgiven and washed clean of sin.

I love confession; I’ve been meaning, when I have a little more time and a clear head unpreoccupied with other things, to write a long post on the beauty of confession, what it has come to mean to me. One thing is clear: confession is not for the purpose of making us feel guilty. It is for the purpose of freeing us from guilt. When I go to confession, I feel like I am stretching my soul wide, like a sheet, and Christ Himself is reaching in and scrubbing it out, over time removing more and more deep stains of sin. And the more I am opened up and cleansed, the more prepared and open I am to receive Him in the Eucharist – and the more freely and deeply He can enter into me in the Eucharist.

Tabernacle and confessional. Head and Heart. Eucharist and forgiveness. The Body and Blood of Christ, operating in the Church, of which we are not only members, but which we are actually in.

And I remembered one other thing: when visiting a traditional chapel recently at the seminary here, it was explained to me by a seminarian that the architectural design of the sanctuary around the altar actually represents the arms of Christ, reaching out to wrap around and embrace the congregation. And I had an image: Christ gazing tenderly at us from His Head, embracing us with His arms, holding us close to His Heart.

These images flashed through my mind in only a moment, after I closed my prayer book – but they have changed forever, I believe, how I will think of the space inside the church when I go there. I will forever see it as the space inside Christ’s body, close to His Heart, where He tenderly feeds us with His own life, and continues to pour streams of mercy and grace upon us from His Heart, torn open on the Cross, remaining open in the Church, forever.

Don't HIde Jesus

By Aimee Millburn

SEPTEMBER 26, 2007 (http://aimeemilburn.typepad.com/) - This week I began teaching classes as part of my thesis project, and one of the participants at the first class told a moving story about wearing a crucifix.

He is a cradle Catholic, a middle-aged man who never really knew or understood his faith until a couple of years ago, when he had a real conversion experience. Now he is on fire for Christ. Recently he saw another man wearing a crucifix, and thought to himself, “I should get one of those!”

So he went to a Catholic store, bought a crucifix on a chain, and started wearing it. He is also a teacher, and many, if not most, of his students are non-Catholic and even hostile to Christianity, so he found himself during classes putting the crucifix under his shirt, to avoid awkwardness. But he felt uncomfortable about it, so the other day he decided to go to confession and discuss it with his priest.

As he explained to the priest what he had been doing, he realized: “I have been hiding Jesus. I’ve been putting Him underneath my shirt, so that no one can see Him.” And he began to cry, as he described to the priest what he had been doing.

As he talked, he heard sounds coming from the other side of the screen, and realized: the priest was crying, too. The priest was crying, because someone who loved Jesus had hidden Him away, so no one could see Him.

Now, this priest has an interesting story, too. You see, he is a convert, a former atheist, raised in an atheistic family. But one day as a young man, going for his first ride on a brand new motorcycle, excited and not looking where he was going, he rammed into a car that had stopped right in front of him in the street.

He was thrown 50 feet through the air – and landed on his feet, unhurt. The police said it was a miracle, that there is no way a person could be thrown that far, and land unhurt on his feet.
But what’s more, he landed facing the house of a friend he’d gone to school with, who happened to be a Catholic. That accident, where he was miraculously saved in front of a Catholic home, made him realize there is a God – and that God had saved him because He was calling him for something.

And God was calling him. The young man converted to Catholicism, entered seminary, and was ordained a priest in Rome by Pope John Paul II several years ago. He is now one of the most dynamic and committed young “John Paul II” priests in this diocese.

A few days ago he broke down into tears, to hear that someone who loves Jesus had nevertheless been ashamed and hidden Him away, so no one could see Him. And the two men, priest and parishioner, wept together in the confessional, that someone who loved Jesus had hidden Him away.

Pope Paul VI, in his document Evangelii Nuntiandi: On Evangelization In The Modern World (1975), said of evangelization,

The gospel must be proclaimed by witness. . . . Nevertheless . . . even the finest witness will prove ineffective in the long run if it is not explained, justified – what Peter called always having “your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have” – and made explicit by a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the Lord Jesus. (21, 22)

Pope John Paul II echoed and developed his thought in his great document on the laity, Christifideles Laici: On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World (1988):

The images taken from the gospel of salt, light and leaven, although indiscriminately applicable to all Jesus' disciples, are specifically applied to the lay faithful. . . . They tell of the radical newness and unique character of an involvement and participation which has as its purpose the spreading of the Gospel that brings salvation. (15)

The dignity as a Christian . . . brings demands, the dignity of labourers called by the Lord to work in his vineyard: "Upon all the lay faithful, then, rests the exalted duty of working to assure that each day the divine plan of salvation is further extended to every person, of every era, in every part of the earth." (17)

We the laity, every one of us, are called to evangelize every single person in the world. And we cannot do this, if we are ashamed and hide Jesus away so no one can see Him. We must not be ashamed, and must make Him visible. As Paul said,

So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God. (2 Tim 1:8)
And, as Jesus Himself said,

Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mk 8:38)

So let’s not be ashamed - for then Jesus will be ashamed of us. Let’s make Jesus visible, out of joy and love, and show Him around to people, so He may be seen, known, loved, and worshipped – and souls may be saved. For there is no other name under heaven by which souls may be saved, than the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12). And then Jesus will be proud of us, and at the end of our lives we will hear the blessed words, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Mt 25:21).

Conversion as Christian Longing Fulfilled

By Aimee Milburn

Dave Hartline at Catholic Report has pointed me to another beautiful conversion story, thoughtfully told in a series of installments by a man who traveled many different roads of Protestantism, from charismatic Evangelicalism to Anglicanism, before finding his home in the Catholic Church. You can read the whole story here, but below are a few excerpts I particularly loved:

Though I probably read more than most converts, Catholicism is not an intellectual abstraction; all roads lead to the Mass, and the Mass is a physical, sensory, emotional, mystical, and spiritual experience.
. . .
Though I could not fully articulate my thoughts, I had reached the limits of Protestantism. Protestant churches can deliver rich flavors but never Christian fullness under one roof. I did not want to be part of a church; I wanted to embrace the Church. I did not set out to become Catholic; I marched forward to know God and was surprised by joy when I found Him among those people who teach seven sacraments, venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary and other saints, and organize more soup kitchens and bingo nights than tent revivals. . . . I was a lifelong Christian who was beginning to see continuity and harmony in the Church through her sacraments, authority, moral teaching, saints, prayer, liturgy, and history.
. . .
All my longings as a Protestant I found fulfilled in Catholic sacraments: intimacy with our Savior, Truth with a capital “T,” reverence for sacred scripture, discipline and beauty in liturgy, the regular celebration of the Eucharist, the experience of the Holy Spirit in tangible and memorable ways, unity in marriage, and charity for all. Yes, the Church has its many imperfections, but I was startled to learn from reading Church history that there is no problem in the Church today that was not present in every century. By the Holy Spirit, the Church keeps doing what Jesus ordained her to do. Priests, bishops, and laymen may let the Church down, but the Holy Spirit always gives the Church a holy shove in the right direction at the very moment that all the critics and pundits have declared her hopelessly corrupt and irrelevant.

For myself, I have found that to be the truth as well. There is a fullness of truth and a reality of unity here that transcends differences and heals over divisions again and again. I can only conclude that it truly is Christ, working in the power of His Holy Spirit, to protect, guide, and grow His One Church, as He promised He would do from the very beginning, always has, and always will.

How does the Holy Spirit Teach, and Through Whom?

By Aimee Milburn

After making my post about Papal Infallibility, I had a dialogue of sorts with a Protestant who was trying to refute the doctrine from scripture. He used the Protestant practice of “proof-texting,” in which individual verses of scriptures are quoted to prove certain Protestant doctrines, or disprove certain Catholic doctrines.

Although individual scriptures can be used in support of doctrines, the approach can be problematic, as they can be misused and misinterpreted if taken out of context. The dialogue gave me an opportunity to demonstrate this, and I decided to put it out here for the benefit of other readers, as my original comment is buried pretty deep in the (long and convoluted) thread.

In trying to defend the Protestant idea that the Holy Spirit teaches and interprets scripture directly for everyone, so we don’t need an infallible teaching authority outside of scripture itself, my reader quoted the following verses:

This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. (1 John 2:25-27)

The crux of his argument is “you have no need for anyone to teach you,” because we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit to teach us. This is a good illustration of how problematic it can be to quote individual verses of scripture out of context. It’s like quoting a comment from a politician out of context, and making it seem like he was saying the opposite of what he meant – which happens all the time in the media.

To understand what John is saying, we must look at both the whole letter itself and the context in which it was written, and what the rest of scripture says on the subject. Following is my explanation and exegesis of the context and content of 1 John, in which the verse in question appears.

The immediate context of the letter was divisive people spreading false teaching (John calls them “antichrists”), threatening the unity of the Body. The letter was written to believers who apparently were being harassed by the deceivers, and their unity threatened.

Divisiveness and disbelief have always been a problem in the Church. From the beginning of its existence there were people who believed and people who disbelieved, and even among believers were some who came up with different ideas, false doctrines, and tried to usurp authority from the Apostles and promote their own ideas, causing division (this occasioned, for example, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians and his letter to the Galatians; Peter warned about them in his second epistle). It still happens today. These false and divisive teachers also are the cause of John first epistle.

It is typical of epistles in the New Testament to include in the salutation some indication of the theme or cause of the letter. John does so in the very first sentence of this letter, in which he says, “… that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1:3)

The theme of the letter is fellowship, unity, in Christ, the Son of God. John is writing in order to preserve unity. Throughout the letter John emphasizes fellowship and love, and later in the letter, after he addresses the source of the divisiveness, he says, “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”

Where did we hear this? From Jesus, on his last night on earth, which John recorded in his gospel. Jesus’ commandment that we should love one another (Jn 13:34) and become perfectly one (Jn 17:23) are in the background of this letter - indeed, His whole discourse at the last supper, spanning five chapters (Jn 13-17) and bookended with Jesus' words about love and oneness are in the background.

After the introductory section in the first epistle, John begins to move into the meat of the letter: “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin,” (2:1), which he expands on through verse 2:15. What is the sin? “He who says ‘I know him’ but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him … he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” (2:4, 6) In other words, people who claim to be Christians, but don’t obey his commandments or follow his example.

He comes to the crux of the matter in 2:18: “Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour.”

What is the antichrist? “This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.” (2:22b) So there were people who were not only sinning by breaking the commandments, but also denying Christ in some way, perhaps by denying that he was the Messiah (the Jews did this), or accepting that he was the Messiah, but denying that he was truly the Son of God and so not really God himself (an early heresy).

Whatever the case, John is clearly warning against these false teachers, in order to keep true believers united and strong in their faith. He follows his condemnation of the antichrists, the false teachers, with, “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (2:24).
What did they hear, and from whom? They heard the gospel, heard it proclaimed and explained by the Apostles, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When we hear and receive the gospel, we also receive the Holy Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to hear in the first place: God who draws us, through His grace, which is the power of the Holy Spirit. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." (Jn 6:44)

Verse 2:24 is followed by the verses my commenter quoted, “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him."

It is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that inspires the Apostle to preach, and inspires the listeners to open up and receive the preaching - which the faithful believers that John is writing to have done. They have listened, and received, which means they have already been taught by the Apostles, which is the teaching of the Holy Spirit. And in the early Church, when they accepted the gospel, they were baptized and anointed by the Apostles, through which they received the Holy Spirit that ingrafted them into the Body.

Later he says, “We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” Who is the “us?” John was one of the Apostles, and a bishop of seven churches. He is talking about Church authority, Apostles chosen and given authority by Christ, and those chosen by them, the bishops, anointed by the Holy Spirit, teaching and writing with authority, the authoritative teachers of the faith through whom people received the faith, long before they had bibles to consult.

So, in other words, what John is saying in his letter is: you have no need to listen to these false teachers, because you have already heard and received the truth from us, the true teachers of the faith, because it is the Holy Spirit teaching you through us, which you also have received through us.

It can be seen, then, from the larger content and context of the letter, that John’s phrase “you have no need for anyone to teach you” is not a reference to any and all teachers of the faith, but to false teachers, those who teach differently from what they had heard from the Apostles, and so threaten the faith and unity of believers.

Yes, all believers receive the Holy Spirit. But there are also deceiving spirits, who lead people astray. How do we know which is which? By listening to the Apostles and their designated successors, who are the real authorities of the Church, whom we are to obey. If we obey them, then we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. But if we don’t obey, and believe something different, we don’t have the Holy Spirit, but believe a deceiving spirit.

John concludes the section, “And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.” In other words, abide in your faith in Christ and in the sound teaching which you have received from the Apostles – and so receive eternal life. Which is the essence of Catholic teaching, and the whole reason for the existence of the Church: eternal life with God.

The larger context of scripture supports this. For example, Paul emphasizes the necessity of sound, authoritative teaching in his epistles to Timothy, whom he appointed a bishop. He warns against “deceiving spirits” (1 Tim 4:1), and exhorts Timothy,

Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me … guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. … What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Tim 1:13-14; 2:2)

This is also one of the indications in scripture of the beginning of the Apostolic Succession. Paul appointed Timothy a bishop, and instructed him to appoint others, handing on to them what he had learned from Paul. That’s how the faith was handed on in the beginning, and still is in the Catholic Church: by authoritative teachers in the Apostolic Succession, who had been chosen and taught the true faith by their predecessors in the succession.

In another example, Peter warns, regarding the interpretation of scripture,

There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pet 3:17-18)

Note that he does not say, nor does anyone anywhere in scripture say, that when the going gets rough we should leave and found our own churches someplace else. That is completely against everything the bible says about the church, obedience, the unity of believers, and responses to division and controversy.

Paul also warns against division in 2 Tim, and warns, regarding eternal life, “If we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us.” (2 Tim 12) In other words, endure, don’t lose your faith and deny him, or he will deny you.

He later affirms of himself, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” (2 Tim 3:7) In other words, Paul, writing from prison and awaiting death, knew that he had kept, not lost, the faith, and so would receive the crown of righteousness when he died.

In other words, you can lose your salvation if you lose your faith, and disobey or deny Christ. And Christ has sent the Holy Spirit to infallibly guide His Church, promised to the Apostles on His last night on earth (Jn 16:13). So to obey the Church is to obey the Holy Spirit, which is to obey Christ. This is what the Catholic Church and the bible both teach – but what many Protestants deny.

In Closing: Scripture itself led me to the Catholic Church

When I was a new Christian in the Evangelical church, I was taught that individual verses of scripture must always be interpreted in light of the whole of scripture, or you can get it wrong. So I taught myself to read the bible “holistically,” constantly using my concordance to compare verses and passages of scripture that dealt with the same subjects, for a fuller understanding.

Over time, I began to see contradictions between what I was reading in the bible and what I was hearing preached from the pulpit. It appeared to me that my pastors were taking individual verses of scripture out of context, and interpreting them in light of a pre-existing theology that contradicted other verses of scripture, on issues like Peter, authority, Mary, the nature of salvation, the nature of the bread and wine, etc. The key passages dealing with these issues either were never addressed, or addressed so poorly that it seemed to me the pastors were convoluting and contradicting scripture in order to justify their theology.

My observations contributed to my conversion to Catholicism, as when later I began studying Catholicism, I found, to my utter surprise, that the Catholic Church was teaching the very things that I had been observing for myself from scripture, and always had. And it also became clear, as I studied history, that Protestantism itself is based on a new theology, propounding new and false doctrines, a “different gospel” (2 Cor 11:4, Gal 1:6) based on misunderstanding of scripture that came along 1500 years after the fact, that early Christians had never heard of and would have been scandalized by, of the kind that the bible itself warns against because of its threat to the faith and the unity of the Body, and which we are not to pay attention to.

It’s not the fault of Protestants today, and many are sincere and believing Christians. But I believe they are also sincerely misled, which is one reason why I write: to share the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith with my brothers and sisters in Christ, which I believe both scripture and history demonstrate is the authentic and original Christian faith, the original gospel, and the original and true Church.

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Papal Infallibility: God's, not Man's

By Aimee Milburn

A reader has written, a Protestant grappling with the relationship between authority and Papal infallibility in the Church, and we've had quite a correspondence about it. He can accept the necessity of authority, but has difficulty accepting infallibility. It's not an issue I was concerned about entering the Church, as it was was clear to me from the beginning that if I really trust Christ, then I also trust that He is in control of the Church He founded, and so I can trust the Church. But it's not that easy for everyone, and my reader's questions have led me to grapple more deeply with the issue. Here is my latest reflection, which I thought other readers might enjoy. It's a bit long, so bear with me.

The relationship between authority and infallibility is the meat of the issue. It is good that you see the importance of authority. It is important to understand, however, that when it comes to the real Church founded by Christ, authority and infallibility are inseparable, because Church authority cannot work without infallibility. It would become meaningless – it would simply, and rapidly, devolve into merely the opinions of men, with one asserting one thing and another asserting another, causing the rapid breakup of the church over disagreements, with different groups forming different camps.

This is what has happened in the Protestant world, because Protestants rejected the Pope and the Magisterium, the sole source of infallibility for the Church. Protestants take scripture as the sole rule of authority and consider it infallible – which it is – but scripture does not interpret itself, and in the absence of an authoritative, infallible interpreter, how can anyone know which interpretation is correct? Who has the power to decide?

No one does, so people disagree and divide, because there is no final, infallible interpreter in the Protestant world to interpret scripture and explain doctrine. In practice, Protestant “authority” and interpretation really is just private judgment, and people group together with those they agree with – and change and go to a different church if they disagree – which is anti-scriptural on so many levels.

So, you ask, what makes the Catholic Church different? Isn’t it just another man, or group of men, issuing their own private judgments, their own faulty opinions?

No, it’s not. Authority in the Catholic Church is not and never has been the same as authority in the Protestant world. It is important to understand that we are not talking about the authority of a man, the Pope, to assert his opinions as true above the opinions of other men. The Pope is not really the one who decides matters of doctrine. It is God who decides, through the office of the Pope; God, not man, who is guiding the Church in unfolding and explaining the meaning of the deposit of faith. God is the interpreter of scripture and the One who settles matters of doctrine, and He does so infallibly through the Pope and the Magisterium of the Church.

People can make the mistake of thinking of the Pope as the “boss” of the Church, but he’s not. He and the Apostles, Bishops today, are not bosses; they are servants of God and stewards of His Church. God inspired Peter and the Apostles to write the New Testament, and He continues to guide and inspire them in correctly interpreting scripture in the Church through the Holy Spirit. It is God’s infallibility at work in the Church, not man's. The Church belongs to God, and He is the One running it, through the men He has chosen to serve Him as stewards – keeping it on track despite all the ways that men can stray in history.

When I was a Protestant, I was taught that the Holy Spirit is the interpreter of scripture, which is correct. However, it confused me, because I could not see how He could interpret one way through one person, and another way through another person, and both be right, because God is not a God of confusion.

As a Catholic, I now understand that the Protestant world has a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Holy Spirit works, and how God orders the Church. He does not work to interpret scripture or doctrine through just anyone, and certainly not through everyone. He works in many ways with many people, but when it comes to interpretation, either of scripture or of doctrine, He works only through the designated authorities of the Church, whom scripture tells us to obey. Who are the designated authorities? Peter and the Apostles, and their successors the Pope and the Bishops, in the valid Apostolic Succession through the laying on of the hands.

There is only one passage in the New Testament where Jesus clearly gives authority to another: Matt 16:13-19. In this passage, Jesus asks who the disciples think he is, and they all give different answers. He then asks Peter, who says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Jesus replies, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

God revealed to Peter alone a truth of the faith, the true identity of Christ, when the others were confused and divided. That is the seed of Papal infallibility in scripture.

The passage is strikingly similar to Is 22:20-24:
In that day I will call my servant Eli'akim the son of Hilki'ah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father's house. And they will hang on him the whole weight of his father's house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.

And to Rev. 3:7:

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: 'The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens.

Keys in scripture are symbolic of authority; the key of David symbolizes the authority of God. The passage in Isaiah is in the context of usurping a former authority that wasn’t true to God, and establishing a new authority while the old is cut down (Isaiah was prophesying to Judah and Jerusalem, just prior to the Babylonian exile). The passage in Revelation is clearly a reference to Christ, who is God Incarnate.

So, in Matt 16:13-19, Jesus Himself, recognizing that God the Father has chosen Peter, gives him the keys to His own authority, the authority of God, and the power of binding and loosing that goes with it, in a clear allusion to Is 22. The Isaiah background is the judgment of the Jews and the destruction of the Temple, which Jesus also prophesied. Jesus was founding a new church in place of the Judaic Temple, and proclaiming a new leader, revealed by God the Father, in Peter.

Peter alone, and no other, was given a direct revelation by our Father in heaven of Christ’s identity, and so given the biblical keys of authority, the authority of God to bind and loose, make final decisions. And it is not an arbitrary authority, but the authority of God to steer the Church to the truth in moments of man’s confusion, given to Peter alone. That is why the Church defines the Magisterium as “The Pope and the Bishops in union with the Pope.”

It was our Father in heaven who chose Peter, Jesus who confirmed him, before the Holy Spirit later descended on him, turning him into the powerful leader and witness he became. None of the other Apostles received this much special treatment. Are you really willing to argue with the Trinity over their choice of a leader for the Church, and pooh-pooh their decision?

That is why today the symbol for the Pope includes two keys, but the Apostles have only one. It symbolizes that their authority is complete only when in union with the Pope, because of the Pope’s union with God in the special charism given by God to recognize and protect the true faith. And it hardly would work to protect the Church over the ages, if the gift had died with Peter. Why would God have gone to the trouble, if He didn’t intend it to last? Why would He write it into scripture, if He didn’t intend it to be a lasting thing?

The gift given to Peter, as with all charisms, continues to be given, to the appropriate member of the Body: Peter’s successor.

What were the Apostles given?

At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the disciples, “This is my body …, this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.” This is the charism of consecrating the bread and wine, given only to the Apostles.

At another point in the evening he tells them, “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth … He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (Jn 16:12-15) This is the promise of the Holy Spirit, who will guide them in correctly interpreting scripture and doctrine, so they can correctly preach and teach everyone else – also given only to the Apostles.

Later, after His death and resurrection, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (Jn 20:22-23) This, too, is a sacramental charism given only to the Apostles.
Consecrating, interpreting the faith correctly, forgiving sins. These are unique charisms given by Christ to the Apostles, which from the beginning they handed on, and have always handed on, to their successors through the laying on of the hands.

In the book of Acts, at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fell not only on the Apostles, but on everyone gathered there with them. What power was given? The power of witnessing, (Acts 1:8), which is shared by all believers. And Paul later explains how the Holy Spirit also gives different gifts – but not all gifts are given to everyone. The Body is ordered. Only some are given certain gifts, not all. And authority, God’s authority to interpret scripture and doctrine, matters of the faith, are given only to Peter and the Apostles, with Peter given final authority on matters of doctrine.

It is God’s authority, God’s infallibility at work in the Church, God acting and making His will clear, not men deciding according to their opinions. In the Protestant mindset, God wrote the bible through men, and men follow the bible. That is not how the early church worked, and is not how the Church works today. Never has.

The doctrine Sola Scriptura would have confounded the early Christians. Authority is not confined to the written word, nor does it actually come from the written word. It comes from God, who guides the Church through the Pope and the Apostles, wrote and interprets the bible through them, develops and protects the understanding of doctrine through them, and guides the Church through them. That’s how it’s always been.

Also please understand: doctrine develops, but it does not evolve, does not change from one thing to another. Revelation is finished. It is our understanding that is incomplete, which is why Jesus said “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:12-13); our understanding that is developing and growing, as an acorn into an oak tree.

The Faith of the Catholic Church today is the faith of the early Church, is the faith of Jesus, is the faith of the bible - explained and interpreted correctly. The mass, too, is the mass of the early Church: remarkably the same, which I can attest to, having studied the development of liturgy in the early Church. Nothing, actually, has changed, except for our understanding of it and a few externals of practice; and our understanding has grown and will continue to grow and unfold, guided by the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth, as Jesus said He would, the infinite truth of God, speaking and explaining His Revelation through the voice of the Magisterium.

God did not only act in distant history, and leave us only a book to follow, with only fallible men to try to figure out what the book really means – and so fail at what the book asks us to do, because we can’t agree on the meaning. Infallibility is the lynchpin of authority and interpretation, and of unity, without which the former would be meaningless and the latter would fall apart. All are a work of the Holy Spirit, all are God working directly in His Church to infallibly teach us, guide us, and keep us united as one. He’s been doing it all along in the Catholic Church.

Which brings me to another related point: the nature of the Church. The Protestant world has a very truncated view of the Church, as only a “mystical body” united in faith, though visibly fragmented. But this is not the Church founded by Christ, and it is not the Church spoken of by scripture.

The real Church in its fullness truly is a single, living organism, united in faith and practice. It is the Body of Christ, united as one through the Eucharist, His Body and Blood. It has a single head on earth, the Pope, stewarded and guided by Christ in heaven, the real Head of the Body. The Holy Spirit lives in the Church as His Temple, guiding her leaders and sanctifying her members. It is a single organism, and God really is living and speaking and teaching in her midst and is really her Real Leader – without whom it would all fall apart. In a very real way, the Church is God Incarnate on the earth.

This is why I say that, when it comes to matters of the faith, to trust the Church is to trust God, and not to trust the Church is to fail to trust God. The Protestant Reformation was a massive failure of trust in God, trust that He is in control of His Church and knows what He is doing, and a massive usurpation of the authority of God Himself. But it is a usurpation that failed. Though God continues to save souls in the Protestant world, the Protestant world only becomes ever-more divided over time, and theology ever more debased, while the Catholic Church has recovered, grown stronger, gone on, and continued to grow and develop in ever more beautiful ways.

This is not to say that the members of the Church, including her leaders, are without sin. There are saints and sinners in the Church, wheat and weeds, as promised by scripture, and it shows in her colorful history. But it doesn’t mean the Church is not God's Church. She belongs to God, and always recovers, due to God’s grace, and continues on.

I’ve been around both the Protestant world and the Catholic Church long enough now to notice a very curious thing: when there is controversy in the Protestant world, congregations tend to split up and go their separate ways. I could tell stories about it. It happened to my old church, when a scandal engulfed the pastor and huge numbers of the congregation left. When controversy comes to the Catholic Church, however, she gets stronger. A few may leave, but more stay, and more come in. She always recovers and grows.

In the wake of the priest scandal, conversions to Catholicism in the US have increased: 100,000 entered the Church this year, an all-time high. I think it’s because the Church really is the Body Christ, and her suffering is His suffering – which is redemptive: When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself (Jn 12:32). People are drawn through the power of the cross – and perhaps this is the pruning of Christ in action. Pruning always results in new growth, and makes a tree healthier. And the Church is the great Tree of Christ, growing from all over the earth into heaven.

Do we limit God to only acting in heaven, and we just have to figure things out as best we can on earth, or do we grant that He really is infinite and all-powerful, and can act on the earth as well as in heaven, through the men He chooses? Do I trust what Jesus said, that He would found his church upon the rock, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it, regardless of how things sometimes look? Or am I a doubter, who runs away from the foot of the cross when Jesus appears defeated – when the Church His Body appears defeated – and so miss the joy of the resurrection, when He comes alive again?

I trust Him; that is why I became a Catholic. That is why now, rather than trying to decide whether a doctrine is true or not, I instead accept it, and try to understand how it is true, trusting that it is coming from God, and not from men. I no longer have the hubris to think that I can judge the deep things of God, when God has given me no authority to do so. If there is a problem, the problem is with me, my ability to understand, not with the Church.

I close this reflection with this quote from an article on Papal Infallibility:

Often those who object to the doctrine of infallibility confuse it with impeccability or personal inerrancy. It is neither. Impeccability means that a person is incapable of sinning. Popes, like other Christians, are sinners. Personal inerrancy means that Popes cannot make mistakes. Infallibility, on the other hand, refers to that guidance of the Holy Spirit that guards Popes from officially teaching error in matters of faith and morals. [italics mine]

It is a gift that I, for one, am extremely grateful.

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