What is curious to me and, I would think, a problem in Rome is that this is already a practice. Rome has granted to China the authority to decide on its own who will be bishops of the Chinese version of the Roman Church. There is supposed to be some sort of dialog or conversation between China's governmental minions and Rome but that has not been the case. China has gone ahead and decided for Rome who will be the bishops and Rome seems not to make a fuss over it. Curious to me is that Rome has decided the Chinese version of the Catholic Church is more important to them than the traditionalists across the world who prefer the Latin Mass. It is not just the Mass, however, but a group intent on being more Roman than just about anybody else in the Roman Catholic Church -- in doctrine and practice. They are not important but a Chinese faction intent upon being as little Roman as possible is definitely the preference of the leadership. How odd!
But, of course, it is not odd. That is typically how things have gone in Christianity for some time. Take the Anglicans, for example. They find the problem people to be not those who question the Bible or nearly everything creedal or confessional but those who take it all as seriously as they can. Globally, Anglicans are divided between those who want to be Anglican and those who like the name but not the doctrine once called Anglican. Or the Methodists. Remember, that the United Methodists disunited not because some wanted to push the boundaries of Christian belief or Methodist identity but because some wanted to keep it. The conservatives had to go. Not the liberals but the conservatives were the bridge too far. Lutherans have the same story. Those who like the name but who pick apart the Confessions and minimize the Catechism and who are content to live outside the tradition claim the high ground and the conservatives are seen as the problem child of Lutheranism. Wow. When did this happen? How? Why?
A long time ago I said that the most dangerous Christian of all is the one who truly believes and intends to live within orthodox and catholic Christianity. I wish it was a problem for all of us but it does not seem to be so. Those who live on the liberal and progressive side of Christianity have claimed the high road in this battle and made the conservatives look petty, small, and narrow minded. How strange it is to be the ones who pay attention to the words, creeds, confessions, and liturgies of the Church as normal and normative and then be asked to leave or shown the door. But there it is. It has happened nearly everywhere across Christianity. Maybe the Pope will back away from Francis and closer to Benedict but I doubt he will do much more than slow the drift to the left that seems impossible to stop. In every Christian tradition, the conservatives have become the bad guys and those who take the faith with a grain of salt have become the good guys. Maybe the SSPX will be excommunicated or maybe not but I think we have all seen the handwriting on the wall. Zealots are not welcome in Christianity and zealot simply means those who pay attention to the words of Jesus, believe in the facts of the Scriptures, confess the doctrine drawn from them, and practice consistently with that faith.
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The problem is not only found in the Roman Catholic Church, but in the Protestant world as well. Some churches are going left, others remain more traditional. Can we ever remember anytime in the history of the church when there was full unity? Back when the Roman Church ruled the known religious and political world, there were pesky zealots anxious to light the flames and burn the bodies of perceived heretics, accused witches, and those who dared oppose the Popes. Many of the Catholic monastic orders got their start torturing offenders during the bloody inquisitions, thinking falsely that they were doing God’s will by violently cleansing the church of apostasy. The tears of those persecuted, excommunicated, tortured and maligned included a mix of righteous men and women who followed the Bible alone and found the full weight of the Roman church on their necks. They stood on the firm rock of Christ as their foundation, unmoved by the storms and floods of persecution which threatened them on all sides. The Roman church made saints out of some of the Inquisitors, ranking them as defenders of the faith, while the martyrs they destroyed had their bones burned, and were deemed unfit for Christian burial. So the legacy of the Roman church, though more subdued now, was historically more zealous about Papal authority than doctrinal purity. One might say that this observation renders some of us as hateful and anti-Catholic, but this is not the case. The purest churches are not always pure, and as Revelation describes it, prone to a mix of truth and error. The vainglorious pursuit of power seduced the Roman church generations after the Apostolic church faded, and survived the schisms and heresies which followed. What Rome does today should not influence the Bible believing Christian. “So we may boldly say, ‘The Lord is my helper;’ I will not fear what man can do to me.”
Soli Deo Gloria
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