Can you be too Catholic to be (Roman) Catholic?
Such a claim has been popularized in recent years by prominent Protestant thinkers, such as Gavin Ortlund, Peter Leithart, Kenneth Collins, Jerry Walls, and Kevin Vanhoozer. “Protestantism is the most catholic and the most biblical of all the major streams of Christianity,” asserts Ortlund in What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church. More than a decade ago, Leithart, a former Presbyterian pastor, in a piece entitled “Too Catholic to Be Catholic,” argued much the same, claiming that to become Catholic would mean going to a “eucharistic table” where his Protestant friends are not “welcome” and to acknowledge that those Protestants are “living in a sub-Christian existence.”
What, precisely, does this charge mean, where does it come from, and what is the (Roman) Catholic response?
As Catholic theologian Matthew Levering explains in his new book Engaging the Doctrine of the Church, “too Catholic to be Catholic” is not entirely new. Twentieth-century Lutheran scholars Friedrich Heiler and Wilhelm Stählin accused the Catholic Church of committing an anti-Catholic heresy by defining the particular as the universal. Rome, these German Lutherans declared, seeks to rule in the spirit of the ancient caesars rather than serve the church in the humble spirit of the gospel.
In Roman but Not Catholic, Collins’s and Wall’s expansive attack on the Church, Rome is not truly universal, because it excludes those Christians not in communion with the bishop of Rome. Such a position, they claim, is contradictory, self-serving, and divisive. The real catholic church, say Collins and Walls, is visible wherever there are Christians. Vanhoozer similarly argues that Protestantism is more catholic than Rome, because it is centered not on an imperial structure (namely, the Roman See), but on an “imperial gospel,” the domain of God’s word. Doctrines taught only by a part of the Christian world, says Vanhoozer, are not truly “catholic.”
The Catholic Church, these Protestants argue, demands that its adherents accept doctrines that they claim have little, if any, biblical support; it refuses to recognize Protestant ordinations as valid and prohibit Protestants from receiving the Eucharist. Protestantism, in contrast, is said to be more accepting of other ecclesial traditions and allows for a diversity of religious belief and practice. “Protestantism has a superior orientation toward catholicity than its rivals because it lacks their institutional exclusivism,” writes Ortlund. “Protestantism offers the most promising pathways by which to cultivate and pursue catholicity.”
All of these arguments are premised on a specific definition of “catholic” that presumes a kind of “mere Christianity” that supposedly all true Christians share. But who decides what is included or excluded from that “mere Christianity”? The one making the definition, naturally. Thus, for example, Vanhoozer and Daniel Treier define “catholicity” as what the entire Church believes “about the gospel of God and the God of the gospel,” united to “the consensus tradition passed down through the centuries.”
Self-described Christians whose beliefs lie outside such definitions—say, for example, Arians, Pelagians, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses—are by default excluded. As much as the Protestant may seek the title of “most catholic,” exclusivity is unavoidable, lest one’s position collapse into a “lowest common denominator” universalism that permits everything.
The question, then, is on what grounds the “little c” catholic excludes some Christians. The answer, given Protestantism’s foundational commitments to the individual conscience of the Christian, reduces to that individual Christian’s personal interpretation of Scripture, and what traditions and doctrines accord to that individual interpretation. This cannot be anything but ad hoc.
The “too catholic to be Catholic” thesis also relies on compelling Catholics to accept Protestant ecclesiology. “They are consigning those who do not agree with them to the status of those who distort true catholicity,” writes Levering. “Ironically, they offer a Protestant version of what they think (Roman) Catholics are doing, by insisting that only their own ecclesiology is compatible with true catholicity today.” In other words, for Catholics to be truly “catholic,” they have to forfeit much of their uniquely Catholic beliefs—such as about the sacraments, Mary and the saints, etc.—which isn’t a particularly “catholic” thing for Protestants to demand of Catholics.
Finally, the “too catholic to be Catholic” thesis is question-begging. If Christ established a visible, institutional Church to which Christians are expected to submit, and if the Catholic Church is that very institution, then a Christian is not being more universal by refusing to acknowledge it as such and submit to it. That self-identifying Christian is being a heretic or a schismatic.
Catholic theologians such as Avery Dulles, Aidan Nichols, and Levering argue that catholicity begins with Christ himself. Christ is catholic because he possesses the divine fullness as the incarnate Lord, and because he is the head of all Christians. The Church participates in the catholicity of Christ as his body, because Christ is present in his body. As Catholics, we believe that Christ is fully present in the sacraments, and pre-eminently in the Eucharist. In the celebration of the Eucharist, each local church participates in the catholicity of the whole.
In Catholic thinking, the Church is united via the leadership of the apostles and their successors, who possess the authority to continue administering the sacraments and proclaiming the Word. Catholics today participate in the fullness of Christ through their communion with the Church, led by the bishop of Rome. Although the pope of course cannot prevent all divisions, his leadership serves as a guard against fragmentation that is superior to Protestant ecclesial models or conciliarism. “Without the Petrine office (and the hierarchical constitution of the Church), which stands in service to Christ’s fullness, the diversity-in-unity that characterizes catholicity could not be maintained but would fragment,” explains Levering.
Protestants, in contrast, do not properly possess catholicity, both because they are not in communion with Rome, and because they lack certain doctrines, sacraments, and offices that Christ has established through the Holy Spirit to communicate His fullness to the Church. Such a position may be interpreted by Protestants as divisive, but truth typically is, as Jesus taught (Matt. 10: 16-24). It is, in fact, Protestant “catholicity” that is contradictory and self-defeating.