A religion of law. . .

The people of my parish have asked me over and over again to explain the problem with a baptismal formula in which water is used in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit but the priest baptizing says We baptize...  They do not get the fight over Latin (not that they would ever choose it but they do know that Latin was the language of Roman Catholic worship for 400 years until the early 1970s.  They do not get the way individual bishops interpret the rules differently so that different orders extend over different dioceses.  They do not get how bishops close churches and reorganize parishes without much input or rebuttal by those affected most deeply by the changes.  They do not get how a church body could experience so many abusive priests and have it hidden or kept quiet for so long and how some could escape the lens of scrutiny for so many years.  They do not get how a bishop can tell a parish who to employ or how many -- especially if the parish has the resources and desires to do so.  They do not get how some parishes skirt the very edges of propriety in worship and continue and those most serious about what happens in the Mass could be constrained.  I could go on.  I won't.

It seems rather painfully obvious to me and to them that Rome is all about rules.  Don't get me wrong.  I believe in rules and believe in holding people accountable to our discipline as well as our confession.  But the rules should serve the Gospel and not create a religion of law.  To those outside of Rome, that is exactly what is going on.  For all those who laud Vatican II, it does not take much more than a brief survey of the actual conciliar documents to see that little of what ended up to be the New Mass was directed by the Council and nearly everything Pope Francis seems intent on killing explicitly was commanded to be preserved.  For all the talk about Christ, the buzz in Rome is more about rule following and authority than it is the clear and unequivocating proclamation of Christ crucified and risen.  Again, from the outside it seems to be all about whose in charge rather than what Christ has called His Church to be and to do.  The real conflict seems to be about who rules the rules more than even the rules themselves.

No, the Gospel is not license to do whatever you please or whatever seems right in your own eyes (it seems the Scripture has something to say about that).  Perhaps it is the temptation and failing of Protestantism (and even my own beloved Lutheranism) that freedom in Christ is less about the more we can and ought do because of what Christ has done than the unrestrained exercise of desire, preference, and self-interest.  That is a fair criticism.  But the answer is not to retreat into rules.  I lament the fact that theological issues are too often left unanswered and churches deal with them by throwing rules at each other.  We will not and cannot bylaw ourselves into orthodoxy.  That does not mean bylaws and rules are bad.  It simply admits that theological controversy is not best served by making rules or bylaws.  It is about reasoned deliberation around God's Word and within the context of our creeds and confessions.  When disagreement is serious enough and agreement cannot be reached, better to admit this and separate than to craft vague statements that satisfy no one but allow the differences to exist -- each claiming the authority of the rule to justify their positions.

In the end, this is exactly the poisoned fruit of bad seed -- namely that words do not matter but feelings, desires, preferences, and appearances matter most.  What I see in Rome and in Protestantism and in Lutheranism is how desperate things have become.  Rome fights over rules, Protestantism fights against rules, and Lutheranism ignores their rules -- all because we no longer believe and hold to the idea that words matter and therefore God's Word does not matter.  The answer is not to turn a church into a religion of law or one of license but to live in submission to the Word of God.  Luther's confession before Rome was not that he was captive to personal conscience but that his conscience must be captive to the Word of God.  I wish Lutherans would remember it, Rome would learn it, and Protestants would discover it.  Until then, we seem powerless to prevent real theological disputes from devolving into rule games or to live with a chaos without rules.  The sadder result of both is that the Gospel of Christ crucified, risen, and returning is neither the center of Christian life nor the proclamation to the world.  God help us from ourselves.