A "beer summit" for two Christians

My friend Gary has been talking about what evangelical Christianity gets right, and what it gets wrong. He is himself an evangelical Christian, and his thoughts on both of those subjects are worth reading.

His five-item posts got me thinking about what I would say in a similar look at what Catholic Christianity gets right and wrong. My lists would be shorter less symmetrical.

An aside about the vocabulary in play here: I'm of the opinion that a proper understanding of the Great Commission makes every branch of Christianity inherently evangelical, but Gary uses the term "evangelical Christian" in its popular sense, to encompass Christians who identify themselves as part of the legacy of the Protestant Reformation. He's not particularly fond of the term "Protestant," because it smacks of "being known for what we're against, rather than what we're for." I'm happy to accept his vocabulary choices unless I think they confuse more than they clarify, and usually they don't confuse.

With a tip of the old chapeau to my friend, here's what we in the Catholic church get right:

• Understanding the Holy Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life, per the testimony of the early church and scripture passages like those throughout John 6.


• Sacraments generally, not least because they each have a communitarian "Wherever two or three are gathered in My name" rather than individual emphasis (people sometimes miss that even without knowing it).


• Devotional practices like praying the Angelus, the Stations of the Cross, and the rosary.


• Organizational structure, which for all of its sometimes-crippling reliance on a worldwide bureaucracy still preserves apostolic succession and the import of Jesus's special charge to Peter.


• Forthright defense of human life from conception to natural death.


• The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and what a practical help it can be.


• The canon of Scripture (and the concomitant understanding of the Word of God as most perfectly realized in a person, Jesus, rather than in a set of inspired books).


• Believing the Angel Gabriel when, on God's instructions, he called Mary "full of grace," and believing Mary when she prophesied that all generations would call her blessed.

What we in the Catholic church get wrong:

• Outreach to teenagers and single people too often gets shortchanged by pastoral emphasis on ministry to married couples and senior citizens.


• Adult religious education outside of sacramental preparation is typically a do-it-yourself venture.


• On any given Sunday (with a few honorable exceptions), preaching tends to shy away from hard questions and challenging doctrines.

What's interesting to me as I look my lists and then again at Gary's is that, apart from the obvious plus of what he calls "majoring in the majors" (by which he means that evangelical Protestant Christianity does a good job of keeping questions and answers about who Jesus is, what He accomplished, and how to respond to Him front and center), Gary spends comparatively little time on doctrine. The Westminster Confession, for example, does not appear on his list (cue a Seinfeldian "not that there's anything wrong with that").

I wouldn't expect to see any doctrinal shortcomings in his list of what evangelical Christianity gets wrong, and in fact they're not there -- but at least one may perhaps be inferred from what Gary calls the "lack of an overarching vision" of God's eternal purpose. That doesn't seem to be a problem in Catholic Christianity, which to me suggests that Gary might want to rethink his reservations about "enforced unity from a central command center."

Unpacking that concept, I agree with my friend about the difference between superficial unity and real unity, but wonder if he thinks of unity in the Catholic sense as a top-down thing driven by the pope and his henchmen in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, rather than what we Catholics actually understand unity to be, which is a bottom-up thing driven by Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

Gary's contention that the New Testament doesn't "authorize anyone to enforce unity at bigger than local church level" is something I would (and do) dispute (Yo! Holmes! Jesus told Peter to "feed my sheep," and that was after He'd already made clear that He had sheep among the non-local Romans and Samaritans. Plus if you can explain the Council of Jerusalem and the argument between Peter and Paul in a "strictly local" context, then you must have puckered up to the Blarney Stone longer than I did ).

Even superficial unity has something to recommend it. Consider the saying about how you should "let a smile be your umbrella" especially when you're not in a cheerful mood: Like its annoying cousin ("turn your frown upside down"), it's based on the recognition that it's sometimes possible to "fake it 'til you make it." I'm also reminded of this sage advice from Fr. Benedict Groeschel: "True belief is a decision. It's also a gift. Accept the gift and you will make the decision."

In other words, ya gotta start somewhere ("meeting people where they're at," as the cliché runs). The Velveteen Rabbit was loved into becoming real, remember? This side of heaven there will always be dissenters in the big tent of Catholicism, and people who confuse their own orneriness with an allegedly ministerial "call to question," but strumming my six-string on my front porch swing, it occurs to me that carping about "superficial unity" as a criticism of Catholic ecclesiastical structure in contrast to the freewheeling roll-your-own-church ethos bequeathed to us by militant Reformers is rather like accusing the homecoming queen of being a bottle blonde so you don't have to admit that she really is strikingly pretty.

While we're on the subject, this series of six posts ("What I Love About the Catholic Church") from Fr. Dwight Longenecker also offers much to chew on, and Fr. Longenecker is smarter than I am. This is how he writes about the Catholic stew (and if this be "triumphalism," then so is breaking out the home movies and the photo albums when friends come over):

In the Catholic Church you find what is best from every other religion and denomination. It is syncretistic in practice without being syncretistic in dogma.

Do you like the austere asceticism and counter-cultural life of the Mennonites and Amish with their odd clothes, old-fashioned lifestyle and prophetic and pastoral way of life? We got monks.

Do you find Hinduism intriguing and fun with its flowers and candles and statues and temples and little festivals and offerings and devotionals? Catholics have all that without the idol worship.

Do you like Anglicanism with beautiful buildings, sophisticated educated people, fine music, sumptious liturgy and a spendid history? We've got all that.

On the other hand, do you like down to earth worship with folksy people involved in fellowship, peace and justice and making the world a better place? There sure plenty of that in the Catholic Church.

What about scholarship? Are you impressed with the bookishness of Protestants, the erudition of the Jewish scholars and the love of Bible learning among sincere Evangelicals? Catholics have it too.

What about Eastern religions? Are you drawn to esoteric spiritualities? Mystical experiences? Meditation? Monasticism? Catholicism offers a rich banquet of 2,000 years worth of spirituality.

Back to you, Gary. Thanks for being thought-provoking. You always are. And we haven't even gotten around to talking about science yet!