Roman but Not Catholic

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/review/R16MD2ZQC1KV6/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm


A reviewer ought to reveal potential conflicts of interest so that the reader can adjust their assessment of the reviewed book by the bias potentially revealed by the conflict of interest. For example, the review of this book that currently has the most votes was done by someone who was thanked by one of the writers for his contributions to the book. For my part, I must acknowledge that I have interacted with Jerry Walls on Facebook and I like him. We share many of the same befuddled attitudes about culture and politics, and I am sure that if we had a beer, we would both be amused by the encounter. Further, I notice that Jerry thanks the sainted, bearded Al Howsapien for help on a chapter. I know Dr. Howsapien, and, in fact, I hired him as an expert witness in one case and spent a delightful 7 hours driving him back and forth to SLO Superior Court. So, I know that he is a genial, fair-minded polymath.

I am also Catholic, so I know from experience that this reveal will generate downvotes and cryptic biblical-based comments about lacking faith, being works-righteous and/or believing a different gospel with all that entails. The reader will have to decide how my biases work themselves out.

With that out of the way, a reader trying to decide whether to invest time and money in this book should know that this is a book of Protestant apologetics. Although written by two college professors, it is not principally a work of scholarship; rather, it is explicitly polemical. The author's state that their purpose is to dissuade Protestants who might be thinking to “swim the Tiber.” (p. 10.) Actually, their purpose is a little more dire than that: they are aiming at people who are being “pressured” to convert. (p. 10.) Catholics in this book are constantly depicted as being the aggressors in dealings with Protestants. Thus, Catholics use an “all or nothing tactic” to “unsettle evangelicals and other Protestants and to pressure them to convert to Rome” (p. 47) and we are informed that “many convert under the pressure of thinking they need to do so in order to preserve their faith” (p. 62) and finally, we are told that “[t]hose who press such arguments on vulnerable believers in order to pressure them to “convert” to their church or theological position are setting them up not only for intellectual implosion but for spiritual shipwreck as well.” (p. 63.) Add to that the recurrent image of Catholics being “docile” followers of unscrupulous priests and power-hungry popes and it appears that the authors are contesting against a well-organized, ruthless power dedicated to suppressing Protestant liberties. (See e.g., p. 45 (“...Rome has taken great efforts to inculcate docility among the laity at almost every turn...”(the claim that Catholics are trained to be “docile” to their priests is mentioned 8 times, but, strangely, in the last chapter, Catholics turn into “super-Protestants” who aren't “docile” in the slightest.; see also p. 152 (“The Lord's Supper is the sacrament in which such great change is to be observed from the meanings of the original ritual to the accretions that bit by bit have been added over time by a priestly class that was determined, with all manner of supposed justifications, to transform the Supper in accordance with its own self-ascribed role.”); p. 224 (“[I]in 1077 at Canossa, where Gregory VII left Emperor Henry IV, along with his family, out in the snow for three days humbly seeking a papal audience and reconciliation, as we have noted in chapter 10. Such a humiliating action, ironically enough, led to the weakening of the papacy much later as the temporal powers of Europe, kings and queens among them, were eventually able to free themselves from the yoke of such power-grasping claims.”).)

These are some weird shout-outs to classic anti-Catholic tropes in a book written by college professors, who, we assume, pride themselves on their objectivity and open-mindedness. For example, I've never heard anyone else say that Gregory VII left the family of Henry IV out in the snow, and I am amazed at the level of outrage managed by good American Methodists at the indignities inflicted upon royalty. This paragraph alone seems to vindicate recent books by Rodney Stark and Benjamin Wiker that argue that Protestantism played a signal role in the development of nation-states, statism, and the things we associate with nationalism and nation-states.

The book starts with an obligatory chapter on “what we have in common,” but this only creates more confusion since it is unclear who “we” are. The authors are all over the map at who they define as “we,” sometimes referring to “Reformation Christians” (p. 4) and to the “the living body of Christ represented by the magisterial Reformation that bears its witness from age to age” (p. 11.) The “radical Reformation” – i.e, Anabaptists, Mennonites and others – are distinguished from “Tradition I” Christianity, which is the “magisterial” Reformation. (p. 27.) Elsewhere, the non-creedal Christians are taken to task for misunderstanding sola scriptura. (p. 79.) In one strange chapter, the authors attack the Catholic practice of “infant baptism” as the “preferred way of entering the body of Christ” because it fosters “nominal Christianity.” (p. 149-150.) This might lead Baptist readers to think that the authors are including them in their “we,” except that the authors are Methodists, which is a church that practices infant baptism.

What, then, is the purpose of this hit on Catholicism? Is it to suggest that Catholics do the “permitted” thing for the wrong reasons? Is it that infant baptism is bad when Catholics do it? Or is it just that everything Catholic must be attacked? Again, strange.

Another strange and confusing piece of the book is its schizophrenic take on participation in the Eucharist. On the one hand, the authors clearly share their extended criticism of Catholic (and Orthodox) eucharistic theology, which is totally fair for Protestants to do, although the language gets a bit intemperate in a kind of fundamentalist anti-Catholic way. Thus, the authors emphasize how “great care must also be taken so that the clergy inculcates the proper attitudes of reverence and docility in the laity,” who, we assume, otherwise would have a solid Protestant understanding that the Eucharist is only a metaphor. (p. 164, 165, 166.) The authors share some speculation about the purportedly difficult theological conundrum of what happens when the Body of Christ is excreted. (p. 164-165; but see Aquinas' response to a similarly inane question in Summa Theologica I.97, a 4, reply 4 (“Wherefore there was need for voiding the surplus [in Paradise], yet so disposed by God as to be decorous and suitable to the state.”) Also, see Peter Schafer's “Jesus in the Talmud,” where the Babylonian Talmud makes a similar argument against Christians.) Then there s this:

“If the bread is, after all, literally and substantively the body of Christ, then it must be suitably cared for. The priests therefore must make sure that during the distribution of the elements nothing is dropped or spilled. Vatican II cautioned: “What you have allowed to drop, think of it as though you had lost one of your own members.”82 After the Mass the consecrated hosts can be placed in a tabernacle, often embedded atop the altar structure itself. The name “tabernacle” is reminiscent of the OT edifice, though the Roman Catholic structure is considerably smaller. Christ, so it is assumed, is placed in a small, dark, and at times cool or even cold box, depending on the temperature of the church. Given the logic of transubstantiation, it must surely be asked: “How is such an enclosure appropriate for the Savior, the Lord of Hosts, the King of kings and Lord of lords?” Bishops and popes have retired to better quarters.”

Aside from being a weird mockery of Catholicism and a total misunderstanding of the sacramental reality, this is pretty clearly a shout-out to the anti-Catholic tropes about the “wealth and sensuality” of the Catholic church.

The authors forthrightly acknowledge that many Protestants view the Catholic mass as “consummate idolatry.” (p. 167.) Given the many arguments leveled by the authors against the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, one would be surprised to find that they were not counted among the “many.”

But, then, the authors turn around and condemn Catholics for not letting them participate in full participation of Catholicism's erroneous and idolatrous eucharistic celebration. (p. 16-169.) For the author's this is the greatest tear at Christian unity, which is weird because one would think idolatry would be the greatest tear at Christian unity. The vehemence of the attack on Catholic (and Orthodox and, for that matter, Lutheran) “closed tables” would seem to have a psychological rather than a theological motivation. One gets the feeling that the authors are insulted at not being allowed to join a club they would disdain belonging to. Again, strange.

The attacks on Catholicism for both having an idolatrous eucharist and for not letting Protestants participate in idolatry, and for having infant baptism but not the right “something” about infant baptism, put me in mind of G.K. Chesterton's observation: “It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?”

I also had some concern about the supporting scholarship of the book. For example, the authors attempt to unlink the canon of scripture from the authority of the Catholic church. Their explanation this time involves the “self-authenticating nature of scripture,” which in turns involves recognizing that “reveal” is an “accomplishment verb” such that we know something is a revelation when it is accepted as a revelation. (p. 64 – 66.) This would seem to involve some question begging. For example, accepted by who? The Mormons? Rotary International?

Some attempt is made to give content to this formulation by noting that the accepted scriptures have “attributes of canonicity,” specifically beauty, spiritual power and harmony. (p. 68.) However, the Protestant canon fails this test in excluding Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, both of which are the most Christological books of the Catholic/Orthodox bible, among the most beautiful, and were received by the Patristic father and by the Catholic/Orthodox Church from the beginning. Wisdom, for example, contains the most powerful statements of the goodness of God's creation to be found in both testaments. If reception and “attributes of canonicity” are the tests, then why did they fail with respect to Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. Likewise, the reception of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus by the Catholic and Orthodox, and its rejection by the Protestants, indicates that the “who receives?” question is not something that can be answered with handwaving.

The authors attempt to finesse the problem of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and the other deuterocanonical books, with a quick statement that the Old Testament Hebrew canon should be established by the Jews. This, of course, is a strawman. Rose's point was that the Jewish Canon in 100 AD did not exclude Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. Jews and Jewish-Christians were free to treat the Jewish Canon as including the Septuagint as normative, which included Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. The Early Church Fathers did and the practice of reading the Septuagint in liturgy – which was really the reason for having a Christian canon – was well-established up to the Reformation. Erasmus – the veritable font of “ad fontes” – could challenge Luther for disregarding Ecclesiasticus 15:14 - 18 in his defense of free will:

“I do not suppose that anyone will plead here against the authority of this work that it was not originally admitted to the Hebrew canon (as Jerome points out), seeing that the church of Christ has unanimously received it into its canon, and I see no reason why the Hebrews should have thought this book ought to be excluded from the canon, given that they accepted the Proverbs of Solomon and the Amatory Song.”

In short, Erasmus's point was that Ecclesiasticus had been “received.”

I always find it disturbing in a book written by scholars to uncover crucial qualifications in the material cited by a book. For example, the authors cite J.N.D. Kelly, “Early Christian Doctrine” for a “veritable litany” of church fathers who purportedly did not accept the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. (p. 36.) The impression is that this means that the status of the deuterocanonical books was always an open question. Unfortunately, in the paragraph before the one they cite, Kelly writes:

“In the first two centuries at any rate the Church seems to have accepted all, or most of, these additional books as inspired to have treated them without question as Scripture.” (J.N.D. Kelly, p. 54.)

How then does the notion of “reveal” as an accomplishment verb not work against Protestantism, i.e., “mere Christianity,” as the authors would have it? Moreover, once the actual facts are known, how is it that the authors claim that their tradition, which rejected the normative canon of scripture, is the actual Catholic tradition of the first two centuries inasmuch as it rejects the scripture of that period? We have no idea what the answer might be from this book.

The authors pull a similar bit of deception in describing the Catholic doctrine that there is a “substantial change” in the eucharistic elements as a “late innovation” that dates to the 13th century, 1215 in the Fourth Lateran Council to be precise. ( p. 163.) However, the complete transubstantiation – change, conversion – from the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ was a feature of Christian teaching from the earliest era. The pre-Nicene patristic fathers regularly identified the Eucharist as being the flesh of Christ. Ignatius identified the Eucharist with the historical flesh of Jesus; Justin Martyr agreed that the Eucharist was the body of the incarnate Jesus; Tertullian affirmed that the Eucharist was the flesh of Christ. Even those Early Church Fathers who did not explicitly state a position on whether the Eucharist was the same flesh as that born of the Virgin, spoke about the Eucharist being the only sacrifice pleasing to God and could only be performed by a priesthood ordained by an apostle or an heir to the apostles. (See e.g., Clement, Cypian, Ireneaus.) (The Eucharist of the Early Christians by Willy Rordorf (Author),‎ Raymond Johanny (editor).)


The authors, however, describe the writing by St. Paschasius Radbertus as giving a “twist” on Christian doctrine. which “provoked a spirited response from his fellow monk Ratramnus of Corbie. Others who disagreed sharply with Paschasius's twist on things included John Scotus Eriugena and Rabanus Maurus, both also in the ninth century, and Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century, theologians of no small standing.” (p. 162.)

This is a substantial mischaracterization of the facts. After St. Paschasius wrote a treatise summarizing the historical understanding of the Eucharist in line with patristic fathers and the understanding of church, Ratramnus wrote a response arguing that the body of Christ on the altar was not the body of Christ from the Virgin. Jaroslav Pelikan, a Lutheran when he wrote his multi-volume “The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine” in 1978, points out that St. Paschasius and Ratramnus were treated “in two quite different ways”; Ratramnus “largely passed into oblivion,” whereas St. Paschasius's work was incorporated into many treatises. (Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology, p. 184-186.) In the early 11th century, Berengar also raised the claim that the sacrament of the Eucharist did not contain the flesh from the body born of the Virgin. Berengar's heresy caused the condemnation of Ratramnus at a Synod in Vercelli. (Pelikan, p. 186.) Berengar was forced to recant in Rome in 1059 by affirming that the “bread and wine which are placed on the altar, after the consecration, not only a sacrament by the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”(Pelikan, p. 187.) In short, the “spiritual” position favored by Protestantism was a late development that consistently rejected as heretical. None of this is mentioned by the authors.

The authors dive into several deeply unfortunate misunderstandings about Catholic eucharistic doctrine. Thus, they offer up a strawman that Catholics must hold to a “two-body teaching” such that Christ has one body and the Eucharist is another body. (p. 164.)

Unfortunately for this book, there is no such “two-body teaching” since it was specifically rejected in response to Berengar. The authors are simply reviving one of Berengar's arguments in support of his spiritualist position and ignoring the response that was given to Berengar that the resurrected body of Christ is not subject to the limitations of space but may be present where it pleases. (Pelikan, p. 194.) When I was reading the authors' “two-body teaching” I was put in mind of objections by Muslims to the doctrine of the Eucharist, and Aquinas' response to those objections and I wondered why the authors didn't mention the actual teaching that there is only “one body” all the time, instead of inventing a spurious “two-body teaching.” I also wondered why the authors ignored the teachings of the Early Church Fathers that Christians are united together and to Christ in the Eucharist because there is only one body which all partake. (See Ignatius in “The Eucharist of the Early Christians.”)

I was also puzzled by the author's attack on Cardinal Newman for characterizing “private judgment” as the core of Protestantism. (p. 56.) The authors ignore Alister McGrath's “Christianity's Dangerous Idea” which extolls private judgment as the core idea of Protestantism such that “all interpretations of the Bible must be regarded as provisional, not final.” (McGrath, p. 377.) McGrath finds the protean essence of Protestantism to be a demonstration of its vitality and power.

So, who is the true exponent of Protestantism? The authors or McGrath?

Finally, there is the constant theme of the book, which is that Catholics are not Catholics but are “Romans.”

This is a really unfortunate trope on the authors; part. This review has documented how often the authors engage in various kinds of anti-Catholic tropes to promote their arguments. Their insistence that Catholics be called “Roman” is part of the unfortunate prejudice that pervades American history. By calling Catholics “Roman,” the authors are clearly sending the message that Catholicism is foreign and cultic and idolatrous with a laity that has been rendered “docile” by their priests except when they are “pressuring” Protestants to convert.

Mark Massa in Anti-Catholicism in America: The Last Acceptable Prejudice notes that Catholics in America have been the perennial “other.” At bottom, I think the strange contradictions of this book are explained by the role that Catholicism plays in