Crossing the Street. Robert R LaRochelle
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parlance, a semblance of suspicion nonetheless remains.
In many social contexts, Catholicism was seen by Protestants as a religion of the working class, often an immigrant one at that. In the small Connecticut mill town where I grew up and its surrounding region, it would not be complete hyperbole to say that it was the Protestants who owned the mills and the Catholics who worked in them. Of course, this simple delineation ignored the reality that many Protestants worked in mills too. Nevertheless, in the history of Protestant-Catholic relations in the United States, one cannot discount the presence of some economic and cultural factors. The tension was not completely about religious tenets, per se. Such, of course, has also been part and parcel of the religious tensions in Northern Ireland!
Protestant suspicion also arose over some of the unique practices that set Catholics apart from their Protestant peers in local neighborhoods and sometimes even in schools. Protestants knew about these mysterious figures usually shrouded in unique clothing and who went by the name of ‘nun.’ Protestant children were aware of the fact that their Catholic friends would avoid meat on Friday and would oftentimes rush off on Saturdays to this ‘strange’ entity called confession. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s teenagers would tell their Protestant peers that they could not attend certain movies that were ‘condemned’ by the Catholic Church. Parenthetically, one of the earliest battles I ever ‘won’ on a religious issue was when I convinced my mom to let me see an Elvis movie, rated by the Catholic Legion of Decency38 as ‘objectionable in part for all.’
Protestants were also cognizant of the fact that rare was the Catholic whose mother and father were divorced and many was the Catholic family with many a child in it. As contraceptive methods were developed and improved, the disregard in which the Catholic Church held birth control was quite noticeable to members of Protestant faiths. Many Protestants had a hard time understanding Catholic opposition to birth control and even in recent years the difficulties involved in simply purchasing condoms over the counter in states so heavily Catholic. The cumulative effect of all of this was that there developed a certain sense of suspicion about Catholics, a suspicion that must be distinguished from any sense of overt discrimination.
Interestingly enough, the 2012 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination has been marked by an alliance between conservative Protestants and traditional Catholics, the kind of coalition that simply did not exist decades ago. This coalition emerged in response to the Obama administration’s ruling concerning contraceptives and insurance payments for Catholic workers. Protestantism’s traditional suspicion of the Catholic position on birth control took a back seat to common concerns about both religious liberty and ‘traditional family values.’ In fact, this coalition was first forged in political efforts dating back to the 1980’s as many traditional Catholic Democrats joined forces with conservative Protestants in support of Ronald Reagan.
Remnants of this sense of suspicion remain. I have heard it in conversations with Protestants about Catholics. In fact, one of the gut level concerns that I have heard expressed by some Protestants is that a certain religious practice smacks of being ‘too Catholic.’ In my conversations, my preaching and my teaching on ecumenical issues in my local Protestant congregation, I have made the point many a time that one could not evaluate the value of a certain religious practice by whether or not it is ‘too Catholic,’ but instead by whether it conveys the proper sense of what it means to seek to follow Jesus.
Were I to walk into most New England Congregational churches on a Sunday morning to lead a service of worship and were I to do some combination of what I will list below, I think a few eyebrows would be raised and there would be people out there who would say that I am being ‘too Catholic.’ Let’s look at this imaginary list: I make the sign of the cross, I sprinkle people with water, I light up some incense. In doing Communion, I wear a garment over my alb. I incorporate some chanting of a Latin phrase as part of the service. I offer anointing with oil as part of a healing ritual during worship. In my preaching, I pull out a crucifix to show my congregation, explaining to them the value of reflecting upon Jesus and his passion and suffering, including the use of this representation of his hanging upon a cross.
Now, it is unlikely that in any New England UCC church, that would all happen in the course of sixty Sunday minutes and this listing has an intentional absurdity about it. Yet the fact is that any one of those actions could happen and has happened in many churches that are not even considered ‘high church’ Protestant. We are not talking about Anglo-Catholic Masses or highly liturgical Lutheran services that might even fool some Catholics temporarily into thinking they are in a Catholic church!
Yet, if even SOME of these actions were to take place, is not the central question whether any of these contribute to what it means in our lives as individuals who seek to follow Christ? Using one simple example: In making the sign of the cross on one’s body, what is more important: that one avoid it because it is Catholic or that in so doing, one comes to a deeper appreciation of the meaning of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one’s own spiritual life?
I am not suggesting or implying that Protestants should necessarily embrace all religious devotional practices associated with Catholicism. The possibility might exist that a particular practice might either conflict with one’s understanding of her/his faith or in no way enhance her/his spiritual life. Thus each practice should be evaluated on its merits. Personally, I would be happy if all Christians avoided any practice that crossed the line from piety to superstition as they pursue playing sports. The point I wish to make above all is that the argument that any rejection of a practice should be based on the fact that it is seen as ‘Catholic’ is both insufficient and ecumenically flawed. The larger issue is always consistency with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Many of my fellow New England Congregationalists, especially, I would suspect, those raised in that tradition, would be shocked to read this interpretation of ‘free church’ worship from colonial days to 1880. In it, Henry Martyn Dexter affirms the right of any local Congregational Church to establish worship which may utilize the ‘higher church’ Anglican ritual, a liturgy whose roots are in Catholic tradition. Dexter writes:
So long as it (the church) does nothing which shall give reasonable ground of offense to the other churches with which it is in fellowship, it may order its prayers, its praise and all the methods of its worship to its own entire content; and its pastor, remaining true to our fundamentals of doctrine and polity, though enrobed and endowed with ‘chausable, alb, amice and maniple, with two blessed towels and all their appendages, would remain, in good faith and entirely, a Congregational minister still.’39
This quotation affirms the fact that there is a historical basis, even in churches perceived to be the most non ritualistic, for the kind of higher liturgical style so often deemed as ‘Catholic.’ The key to this passage is the phrase regarding ‘remaining true to doctrine and polity.’ This leads one to appreciate that the keys to a Congregational approach are found more in one’s actual theology and establishment of church governance and far less on worship style. In fact, this interpretation actually expands the ‘free church’ tradition to make room for elements of worship heretofore seen as being something other than purely ‘Protestant.’
Before going on much further, I would be completely remiss were I to ignore the outbreak of clergy abuse scandals which burst onto the international Catholic scene in the early twenty-first century. These scandals also served to contribute to the sense of suspicion of Catholics of which we have been speaking. Protestant clergy have not had the requirements about priestly celibacy, as we know, and the great reformer Martin Luther himself has been held up as an exemplar of the clerical right to marry. This area of mandatory priestly celibacy has been one that has caused many a Protestant to be quizzical over the years.
The barrage of reports concerning illegal and abusive sexual activity among Catholic priests who had made the promise or vow of celibacy may very well have exacerbated this sense of suspicion. Likewise this abuse crisis set off a variety of reactions within the Roman Catholic community which are reflective of the vast differences that have existed not only on this issue but on related sexual matters as well. As I noted before, I will speak to this at a subsequent point in this book. For now, it is sufficient to note the fact that the headlines these abuse cases