A Sister Act

In this month's edition of U.S. Catholic magazine, Father Bryan Massingale of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee related the story of his sister's defection from the Catholic Church to become a Baptist. To his credit, he attended her second baptism and celebrated with her over her new church home. Of course, there is some personal collateral damage. Father Bryan and his sister and their other siblings come from a devout Catholic family. And his sister was no Catholic-in-name-only. She was devout all through her youth and into adulthood. The reason she gave for leaving Roman Catholicism was that her spiritual needs were not being met. Naturally, this disturbed her brother, the father, not just because this is his sister saying these things, but because many others are as well. In fact, Father Bryan pointed out that former Catholics are the fastest growing and second largest Christian group in America, a denomination all its own. He ended his article with a plea for his own church to take the necessary steps to stop the hemorrhaging.

It should be pointed out that any church sect or denomination can fail to meet a person's spiritual needs. By the way, it's not just the Catholic churches that are losing members. Many of the mainline Protestant denominations are as well. People are opting for no church affiliation. Then there are the unsaved in churches everywhere. There are Protestants-in-name-only just like there are Catholics-in-name-only who like to control things in the church and dull the environment for the spiritually hungry with their idols. While the idols are many, one of the biggest ones, next to the god of "self", is religiosity. Religion can obscure the important matters of the Faith such as one's relationship with Christ. The answer to this problem is simple enough. Read the Gospels and accept the teachings of Jesus at face value. Deny your selfish desires and take up your cross and follow Him every day. Pray for wisdom and discernment from God and understand that only God is righteous and righteousness comes only from Him. If you have any righteousness in you, it's God's, not yours. And it's only God's righteousness, namely Jesus, in you that can save you.

As a one-time Catholic, I know about both sides. My wife and I raised our kids in an evangelical church and sent them to a Catholic high school. Why? To teach them Reformed theology but also to teach them what I call "the Catholic Ethic", i.e. compassion and acts of service. Catholics have a tremendous capacity for these. Sure, many Protestants do as well but Catholics do it very well. It's in their DNA; there's an intelligent and articulate bearing to their compassion. They empathize easily and communicate that empathy with great finesse. What Protestants do better is teaching their theology. They care about the quality of their preaching and love to learn. They want their sermons longer and "meatier" than a Roman Catholic homily. They aren't afraid to explore the great truths of Christianity and see very clearly the primacy and centrality of Jesus Christ in all of life. There are problems with both sets of gifts, however. What good is it to plumb the great depths of knowledge if you overlook your brother and sister in need? By the same token, it's just as silly to be nice to everyone while minimizing central teachings of the Faith and losing track by getting caught up in extra-biblical religiosity.

Pride is the greatest of all sins we are told and it has many faces. Both sides need to recognize their own pride and turn from it. If we aren't childlike, says Jesus, i.e. possessing a childlike faith in His Father, we will never enter His Kingdom and it won't matter if we're Catholic or Protestant.