|
R e v i e w s
It's in the Cards
Professional anti-Catholic James G. McCarthy was raised in a Catholic home and is, his online bio states, "a product of the Catholic parochial school system." He left the Catholic Church in his early twenties, convinced by his studies that "the teachings of Rome could not be reconciled with Scripture." In 1981 he founded Good News for Catholics, a group meant to "educate Christians about Catholicism and to bring the gospel to the Catholic people."
I first came in contact with McCarthy’s work in 1995 when some family members, upset that my wife and I were seriously studying Catholicism, sent me copies of Catholicism: Crisis of Faith, a video produced by McCarthy, and the freshly published The Gospel According to Rome: Comparing Catholic Tradition and the Word of God, McCarthy’s 400-page response to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I soon learned that Harvest House, the publisher of McCarthy’s books, specialized in apologetics against Catholicism, most notably in the books by McCarthy, Dave Hunt (author of The Woman Rides the Beast), Ron Rhodes (Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics), and John Ankerberg (Protestants and Catholics: Do They Now Agree? ).
Anti-Catholic polemics were not new to me: I was raised in a Fundamentalist home, I knew all of the reasons Catholics weren’t really Christians, and I read Jack Chick comics, Keith Green tracts, and former priest Bart Brewer’s Pilgrimage from Rome. Although McCarthy clearly agrees with the beliefs of those anti-Catholic writers, he is more sophisticated in style (though not in theological or philosophical acumen) and is ambitious on a scale that can be compared with Loraine Boettner, author of Roman Catholicism. He also benefited from the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as he indicated in the prologue to The Gospel According to Rome, writing that "the publication of the new Catechism presents a unique opportunity to understand Roman Catholicism and to compare it to Christianity as found in the Bible." This dubious but clever dichotomy—the Catechism versus the Bible—was the foundation upon which McCarthy has built a superficially impressive array of arguments against the Church of Rome.
McCarthy is successful as long as his readers—both Catholic and non-Catholic—embrace his explanation and presentation of Catholic teaching and fail to subject his many assumptions, presuppositions, and dubious arguments to any sort of rigorous analysis. He has undoubtedly been successful in leading many Catholics from the Church; there is also little doubt that he has reinforced harmful stereotypes and skewed perceptions in the minds of many Fundamentalist and Evangelical readers.
Not surprisingly, McCarthy pursues the same goals in his most recent book, Talking with Catholic Friends and Family. Essentially a companion to The Gospel According to Rome, this new book places some of McCarthy’s central arguments against Catholic teaching within the context of a plan aimed at "freeing" Catholics from the clutches of superstition, traditions of men, ritual, salvation by works, popery, Mariolatry, and bread worship.
This plan is facilitated by a set of nine cards meant to show Catholics how they have mistakenly placed their trust in the wrong things for salvation: believing and loving God, being baptized, going to Mass, obeying the Ten Commandments, doing good works, praying to Mary, and so forth. A tenth card is not revealed (using the "Hidden Card Method"!) until the Catholic has selected every card he believes represents something essential to his salvation. A series of suggested questions are provided, each meant to reveal to the Catholic how he has misplaced his trust in one or more ways and to show him that "Trusting Jesus as Savior"—the tenth card—is the only way to be saved. McCarthy writes: Don’t be surprised if the person objects, complaining, "But I’ve always believed that! I believe that Jesus died on the cross for sin." This is another critical point in sharing the gospel with a Catholic. Here you must be firm, look the person in the eye, and state clearly, "No you don’t. You haven’t been trusting in Jesus to save you. Look at the cards you selected when I asked you what you had to do to get to heaven." . . . By not allowing the person to escape the fact that he has chosen cards representing a false gospel, you can help him realize for the first time in his life that he is truly lost and needs to trust Christ for salvation. Such tactics are hardly new for the card-carrying Fundamentalist McCarthy. As Catholic Answers has demonstrated in the article "Exposing Catholicism: Crisis of Faith" (available online at www.catholic.com), he has a penchant for manipulation, including taking comments out of context, using misleading narration, and setting up Catholics with questions that guarantee their (usually edited) answers will appear out of touch with his form of "biblical Christianity." His misleading style is evident, for instance, in this strange (even bizarre) statement: "For Catholics the Mass has a magical, almost eerie feel to it." It is also found in his use of selective quotes from dissenting Catholics (such as Sr. Maureen Fiedler of the We Are Church Coalition), as though they are somehow closet Fundamentalists.
As Catholic apologist Gary Michuta has shown very well in The Gospel According to James McCarthy, McCarthy combines a condescending attitude with a theological incompetence that is almost breathtaking in its obtuse clumsiness. For example, writing of the Last Supper and the Eucharist, McCarthy argues that "the Lord Jesus never said . . . that the bread and wine would become His body and blood. What He said was ‘This is My body’ (Matt. 26:26) and ‘This is My blood’ (Matt. 26:28). The most natural reading of the text is that at the Last Supper He used bread to represent His body and wine to represent His blood." What part of is is so hard to understand?
In fact, McCarthy practices a sort of radical dualism, which one prominent Evangelical historian has described as "a tendency toward a docetism in outlook and a Gnosticism in method" that rejects the possibility that God can or would work through material things—bread, wine, water, oil—to impart his divine life. That description comes from The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Wheaton College professor Mark A. Noll. He is the co-author, with Carolyn Nystrom, of the recently published Is the Reformation Over? , an Evangelical examination of "contemporary Roman Catholicism."
Ironically, McCarthy’s book has a chapter called "The Reformation Is Over!" insisting that Noll and other Evangelical leaders have capitulated to the "false gospel" of the Church of Rome. The desperate tone of McCarthy’s indictment suggests that perhaps he is avoiding what Noll understands very well: that the Catholic Church is not only Christian but has been around a bit longer than Evangelical Protestantism, and its formidable historical and theological heritage must be reckoned with. Is the Reformation Over? is the antithesis of Talking with Catholic Friends and Family, displaying the careful thought of authors intent on finding truth, not scoring brownie points with fellow Catholic-bashing buddies.
Near the halfway mark of their book, Noll and Nystrom note that the "most serious differences" between Catholics and Evangelicals today are not found in Marian beliefs, the sacraments, the communion of saints, or views about justification. They are "rooted in ecclesiology, contrasting versions of what the church is and how it functions." This point is made later with even more directness: "If Christ and his church are one, then a great deal of Catholic doctrine simply follows naturally. In a word, ecclesiology represents the crucial difference between evangelicals and Catholics." And the final pages repeat this core theme: "The most serious disagreements continue to exist between Catholics and evangelicals over questions of the church." This assertion informs the entire focus of Is the Reformation Over? and is, I think, its most important contribution to current Catholic-Evangelical relations.
Noll and Nystrom provide a series of helpful snapshots of the past and the present. They argue that the issues that once dominated Catholic-Protestant conflicts (either 500 or fifty years ago) are no longer the central issues. They state in the introduction that they "do not propose a final, universal, dogmatic assessment of Roman Catholicism"; they do, though, provide many qualified assessments, most of them both fair and helpful. To make those assessments, they seek to "use the classic ideals of the Protestant Reformation to measure contemporary Catholic Christianity." Those ideals, of course, include sola scriptura, sola fide, and the priesthood of all believers.
This goal, of course, raises some important questions: In what way are American Evangelicals true heirs of the Protestant Reformation? How many Evangelicals, for example, would agree with the high praise given to Mary by Martin Luther and John Calvin? How comfortable would Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli be in most Evangelical churches today? And, considering the incredibly fragmented nature of Evangelicalism (a term nearly as slippery as "liberal" or "conservative"), can an "Evangelical assessment" really be made of Catholicism without all sorts of qualifications?
These counter-questions are not so much critical as practical in nature, highlighting the difficulty of the task taken on by Noll and Nystrom. To their credit, they do a commendable job throughout navigating deep and difficult waters with care and moderation, only occasionally stumbling when attempting to summarize positions or arguments that defy tidy summaries.
Is the Reformation Over? is most successful as a systematic, historical documentation of a complicated and often contentious relationship. This is to be expected of Noll, whose outstanding works of Church history (especially the history of Christianity in North America) are marked by careful research and well-measured opinions. And it is not surprising that Noll would write such a book. Ten years ago he was a prominent Evangelical endorser of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, penning a chapter for a book of the same title that outlined the "History of an Encounter," with some of that material appearing in this new book. Respective chapters examine the various official dialogues between the Catholic Church and certain Protestant groups, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the work of the ECT initiative, and the conversions of Evangelicals (including Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, and Thomas Howard).
Although the authors often praise the Catholic Church—they are especially taken with the Catechism—they are still critical of what they perceive to be an overreliance on ritual and papal authority. And the last chapter ("Is the Reformation Over?") has several remarks that will raise the eyebrows of Catholics who understand the biblical and historical roots of particular Catholic doctrines. But the authors are often even more critical of Evangelicals and Evangelicalism—they certainly aren’t just preaching to the choir or scoring cheap points, unlike a certain card-carrying Fundamentalist.
-- Carl E. Olson
Talking with Catholic Friends and Family
By James G. McCarthy
Harvest House (2005)
223 pages
$10.99
ISBN: 0736916695
Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism
By Mark A. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom
Baker (2005)
272 pages
$24.99
ISBN: 0801027977
Catholicism for Thinkers
Now in its second paperback edition since its original publication in 2001, Cambridge University chaplain Alban McCoy’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Catholicism is a collection of talks that were given by McCoy over lunch to Catholic and non-Catholic students pursuing degrees in a variety of religious and secular disciplines. It is a wonder that the essays in this short (yet meaty) book worked as speeches given to modern college students distracted by eating lunch. That the conferences, densely worded and scholarly in tone, were popular enough with young adults to merit publication in book format is certainly a sign of hope for future generations.
The essays are grouped into four sections: "Common Questions," "The Ten Commandments," "The Seven Deadly Sins," and "The Virtuous Life." Blending high-level apologetics, philosophy, and theology, they require careful reading and close attention, but the necessary effort is well repaid.
The common questions move from questions of general theism (e.g., "Faith and Reason: Enemies or Allies?") and what C. S. Lewis dubbed "mere Christianity" (e.g., "The Church: Do We Need It?") to such specifically Catholic concerns as sacraments, our Lady, and the papacy. This is ground well-trod before by apologists, but McCoy brings some fresh insights to the table. For example, McCoy notes that the Protestant war cry of "faith alone" of the sixteenth century evolved into the "reason alone" cornerstone of the Enlightenment philosophers in the eighteenth century. Between the two poles stood the Church, which "has never seen any inherent conflict between faith and reason."
Of special delight is McCoy’s consistently orthodox defense of modern hot-button issues, such as annulments and women’s ordination.
Is annulment "divorce by another name"? After reviewing the evidence, McCoy concludes that "marriage annulment in the Catholic Church rests on its conviction that marriage has a definite and specific nature, and that it is a serious business, requiring certain essential conditions and dispositions." Rather than undermining marriage, the Church carefully investigates annulment cases "because marriage is too important to be taken for granted and entered into lightly."
On the issue of women’s ordination, McCoy points out that "complaints are frequently heard that the Church is acting beyond its remit or power." In this case, though, "this teaching is a declaration that it cannot do something, that it has not the authority to do something" (emphasis in original). He goes on to explain why the Church is limited in this manner, from the necessity of following Christ’s example to the Church being bound by the specific and historical nature of the Incarnation.
The section on the Ten Commandments discusses each of the commandments in an accessible but deep manner, demonstrating their relevance to modern readers. For example, far from modern man’s chronologically snobbish view that idolatry is an antiquated temptation that afflicted superstitious pre-moderns who prostrated themselves before bits of metal or stone, McCoy shows how it can afflict anyone who puts lesser goods in the place of God, the ultimate good: Nobody worships an idol purposely: you worship what you think is or what you want to be "God." . . . Manifestly, given the meaning of the word God, lasting happiness and fulfillment is to be found only in him. McCoy’s presentation of the seven deadly sins remedies their lack of mention in many contemporary pulpits. McCoy mentions that the deadly sins used to be a favorite topic of preachers during Lent. In the absence of such homilies his essays could be read and re-read as an annual Lenten retreat.
Too often today, otherwise intelligent and sophisticated people have formed a shallow understanding of spiritual concepts such as the deadly sins. They ask whether gluttony means pigging out at Thanksgiving dinner or whether a person can have a well-adjusted sexuality if he has never had sex. McCoy offers a deeper, more profound understanding of what the seven deadlies really mean—and what they do not mean.
The book concludes with a brief look at the virtuous life, a section that may well have been extended to serve as counterpoint to the intense examination of vice in the previous section. It is against the backdrop of the essays that precede this that McCoy concludes with one of Augustine’s most often quoted maxims: "Love, and do what you will."
For those seeking a popular introduction to Catholicism, get Catholicism for Dummies by Frs. John Trigilio and Kenneth Brighenti. But for those who have finished their milk and are ready to try the steak, it is time to read An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Catholicism, which could have been given the alternate title of Catholicism for Thinkers.
-- Michelle Arnold
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Catholicism
By Alban McCoy
Continuum (2005)
139 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 0826476724
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
