Former Christianity Today editor Mark Galli was a very important figure in Evangelical Protestantism. But he recently crossed the Tiber. Matt Nelson explores Mark's explanation for his journey to Catholicism, much of which resonated with me as to my own conversion journey:
Reason #1: Disenchantment. Christians want to experience genuine, uncontrived worship wherever they gather. But Castaldo admits that overeager attempts to make church relevant and attractive has led to the disenchantment of many evangelicals. The unfortunate result of trying too hard to provide a “seeker-friendly” experience, he writes, is “congregations of people wondering what exactly it was they were seeking—nothing, it seems, that they couldn’t have found in an inspiring TED Talk or rock concert.”
Precisely. Although it's true that Catholics can't sing, at least they stick to the old standards. At least out here in Los Angeles, it's hard to find a Protestant church that hasn't gone full bore into Praise and Worship music. I yearned for a worship experience that was aimed at God rather than the rockstars on stage.
Apparently, however, Galli believes that:
While the Roman Catholic Church hinders and distracts its members with superficialities like transubstantiation, the ecclesial hierarchy, and the prayers to the saints, the Reformers insist on delivering believers back to the center—to Christ.
This has not been my experience. Most of the Catholic priests who have served that churches of which I have been a member have preached the Word. This is especially true of my current priest, who routinely mentions sin, Hell, and the need for a personal relationship with Christ.
Reason #2: Quest for Clarity. Castaldo notes that Galli—like Cardinal Newman—was unsatisfied with being his own highest interpretive authority. Not that private interpretation is all bad. But one should humbly check his fallible interpretations ....
Two points: I came to Catholicism because I was looking for a faith-based way of understanding the subject of my vocational interest; namely, the corporation. It was next to impossible to find anything useful about that topic in the Protestant literature. The problem crystalized for me when I read Mark Noll's book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which traces the historical processes that lead Evangelicals to reject "rigorous intellectual scholarship."
Instead, I found a treasure of profound Christian thought in Catholic social thought. Serious thinkers have pondered questions of business, labor, profit, etc... for two thousand years and CST brings those strains together. To be sure, I initially relied more on neoconservative Catholic social thinkers--especially Michael Novak--but I am increasingly reliant on the work of St Pope John Paul II and the other social encyclicals since Leo XIII Rerum Novarum. Learning about CST inevitably lead to learning about Catholic theology.
I found the core of the Reformation--sola fide and sola scriptura--less persuasive:
Most Protestants and Anglican converts I know recall “authority” as the central issue catalyzing their conversion. They identified the Church’s Magisterium—that is, the ecclesial teaching authority—as the missing solution to the central problem in non-Catholic Christianity—namely, the problem of biblical interpretation. In bishops, they came to discover successors to the Apostles. In the pope, they came to discover the chief Apostle and successor to St. Peter. And aside from the biblical proofs that grounded their paradigm-shifting conclusions, they discovered in the idea of the Catholic hierarchy a purely rational necessity.
Indeed. Protestant preachers claim to speak authoritatively. They rely on authorities. Why then reject 2000 years of authoritative teaching?
Reason #3: Church Unity. In the Catholic Church, Galli finds an awesome claim towards which he has been drawn: the claim to be the one true Church founded by Christ, teaching the deposit of faith entrusted once for all to the apostles (Jude 1:3).
The idea that, as a Catholic, you stand in the liturgical tradition that goes back 2,000 years and today stretches around the world is profoundly attractive. As someone who learned his politics from Russell Kirk's writings, I was long familiar with Kirk's argument that:
Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It is through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions. Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless. When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—why, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity; but that process is painful and slow; and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for the Earthly Paradise.
Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. Order and justice and freedom, they believe, are the artificial products of a long social experience, the result of centuries of trial and reflection and sacrifice. Thus the body social is a kind of spiritual corporation, comparable to the church; it may even be called a community of souls. Human society is no machine, to be treated mechanically. The continuity, the life-blood, of a society must not be interrupted. Burke’s reminder of the necessity for prudent change is in the mind of the conservative. But necessary change, conservatives argue, ought to be gradual and discriminatory, never unfixing old interests at once.
Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription—that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. There exist rights of which the chief sanction is their antiquity—including rights to property, often. Similarly, our morals are prescriptive in great part. Conservatives argue that we are unlikely, we moderns, to make any brave new discoveries in morals or politics or taste. It is perilous to weigh every passing issue on the basis of private judgment and private rationality. The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared. In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man’s petty private rationality.
Catholicism will be inherently attractive to someone of that mindset. Catholicism has not swayed with the winds, following the polls. Instead, Catholicism values the traditions that have come down to use from the Apostles and Church Fathers. We stand on the shoulders of St Peter and his successors. As Nelson explains:
Even when the rest of Christendom began to glide down the slippery slope of cultural compromise in recent centuries, the bishops and popes have held strong. Why? Because the dogmas of the Church are not theirs to change. ....
The Christian Church has been built upon the foundation of Christ, yes, and also fortified by two thousand years of deep thinking about hard issues, fraternal debate, and a tradition that says with Isaiah: “Come now; let us reason together” (Isa. 1:18).
Amen.
