IZ BLOGA THE REMNANT

The Truly Catholic and Charitable Approach to Protestantism

In the final analysis, the post-Conciliar ecumenical approach to Protestants is uncharitable and cruel. 

First, the post-Conciliar Church does not see Protestants as individuals. Instead it insists on identifying them in groups by their errors. For the post-Conciliar Church only sees Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. It then reaches out to the leaders of human organizations which represent these sects, not to convert their members, but in order to minimize the severity of the doctrines their members deny; therefore keeping these pour souls mired in their erroneous beliefs.

Thus the Catholic Church joining in the commemoration of the “Reformation” only reinforces to these people that God is using their sect, in the words of Vatican II, “as a means of salvation.” For, they rightly say to themselves, if the Catholic Church truly believed I was in grave danger of losing my soul in my false religion, surely it would spare no expense at letting me know this by warning me, and never ceasing to tell me. For even as Protestants they recognize that this behavior would be consistent with true Christian love for another person.

This is precisely what the Catholic Church used to do. In the eyes of God there are no Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. There are only baptized Catholics who have been cruelly deprived of the graces of the sacraments and the sure knowledge of the Truth through the sins of heresy, apostasy, and schism committed by the very “Reformers” the VCII Church helps them commemorate and which these people now adhere to.  They are trapped in an ignorance we can only hope is invincible as they struggle to see the true path of salvation steeped in intellectual darkness by the privation of truth in their false doctrines; for these are the consequence of heresy, even if it is held in good faith. Every Catholic then, should possess a holy zeal to want to help rescue these souls from the errors that keep them in misery and lead them to Truth.

In the words of Protestant convert, Orestes Brownson (1884):

In direct personal addresses to Protestants it is rarely necessary to call them heretics and we may with propriety after the illustrious Bossuet call them our separated or our dissenting brethren if we call them so only through conventional politeness. But if we avoid the term heretic and call them our separated brethren for the purpose of implying some sort of religious sympathy with them to conceal from ourselves or from them the fact that all good Catholics presume them to be heretics or so as to produce an impression on those within or those without that we do not look upon heresy and schism as deadly sins we occasion scandal and have nothing to plead in our justification. If on the other hand we call Protestants heretics in ill humor from the virulence of passion for the sake of wounding their feelings and insulting them we are also unjustifiable for even the truth spoken for unlawful ends is libelous and the greater the truth not unfrequently the greater the libel. But if in addressing Catholics or in reasoning against Protestant errors we call Protestants heretics because they are so in fact and because we would call them by their Christian name either for the sake of leading them to reflect on the danger to which they are exposed or for the sake of guarding the unwary against their seductions and the contamination of their heresies we give them no just cause of offence and do only what by the truth and charity of the Gospel we are bound to do.

…[I]f we speak to them in relation to the supernatural order, not from ourselves, but from the word of God, and tell them in the spirit of ardent charity, plainly, directly, unreservedly, energetically, what our religion commands, and assure them in unequivocal terms and tones that they are out of the way, following the devices of their own hearts, the delusions of the devil, wedded to damnable heresies under the wrath and condemnation of Almighty God, and that their only possible chance of escape is in humble submission to that very Church against which their fathers wickedly rebelled and which they themselves so haughtily reject, though they may be pricked in their hearts, though they may be startled from their dreaming, or may even bid us go our way for this time, till they find a more convenient season, they will respect our principles, and acknowledge in their hearts the free, noble, lofty, and uncompromising spirit of our Church, and the high worth of character she gives to her children.

It was thus spoke the prince of the apostles on the day of Pentecost:- “Ye men of Israel hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as you also know; this same, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have crucified and put to death by the hands of wicked men… Therefore let all the house of Israel know most assuredly, that God hath made him to be Lord and Christ, this same Jesus whom you have crucified. Now when they heard these things, they had compunction in their heart; and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren what shall we do? But Peter said to them, Do penance and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins.” Acts ii. 22-41.

Protestants, indeed, expect Catholics to speak in this way. They expect them to speak differently from their own scribes and elders with whom they are wearied half to death, and whose doubt, and hesitation, and arrogance they find all but insupportable. They know the Catholic claims to speak with authority, as divinely commissioned to teach, and they wish him to speak in character. They are disgusted when he descends from the pulpit to the rostrum, or from the preacher sinks into the mere reasoner, taking their standpoint, and discoursing to them in their own spirit, as one of their own number. They demand of him what he professes to have, and which they know their own ministers have not; and if he gives it not, they conclude it is because he has it not to give. He is then, say they, with all his lofty pretensions to authority, no better than one of us; and they turn away in disappointment and disgust. Let him speak as one having authority, as the authorized minister of God, never forgetting his commission never forgetting that he is priest and doctor, and that it is not he that teaches, but God through him, and, cold, and unbelieving, and heretical as they may be, they cannot but listen with awe and some of them with profit.^[1]