 |
Luther before Cardinal Cajetan (Holzschnitt, 1557)
(PD-old, via Wikimedia Commons) |
"Does the Reformation Still Matter?" So asks the headline of an RNS from earlier this week by Jacob Lupfer. The author lifts up shifts in society and culture, especially recent developments in U.S. cultural history, that pose the question whether the Protestant Reformations (not the plural) that began 499 years ago are still germane to Western Christians today.
For example, according to Lupfer, ecumenical relations between Rome and Protestant bodies have warmed under the pontificate of Pope Francis (I welcome this development, by the way). What's more, markers of identity have shifted in recent decades, such that like-minded Protestants and Roman Catholics are more likely to find common cause politically and socially across the confessional divide than they are to do so with members in their own respective communions with whom they clash ideologically. Lupfer also quotes Stanley Hauerwas, who alludes to the ways Roman Catholic theologians have creatively rethought their doctrinal tradition to answer the critiques of the early Protestant movements. One thinks, for example, of promising ecumenical statements between Lutheran and Catholic theologians on the question of justification. Again, all this is true, as far as it goes, and I wouldn’t want to minimize or dismiss any of it.
This is a brief piece, of course, aimed at a popular audience. Still, it invites response. My answer is "Yes." From where I sit, the Protestant Reformations indeed still matter. Lupfer doesn't address what is, for me, the decisive area: Ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.
It's a much more complicated question, of course, than I can deal with in a little blog post, but here is the rub for me: The Roman Catholic Church -- much as I love, admire and (indeed!) envy its richness, its traditions, the better aspects of its socio-political witness and spirituality, and its inimitable, trans-cultural global reach -- still holds that the church is
infallible -- that, in some way, there is some corner of its life and witness that are beyond human error (of course, through the power of divine providence, and not from its own finite resources).
Note what the Catechism says about the Magisterium, about the authority of its historic teaching office:
(889) In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith.”
And again:
(891) "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council.418 When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed,"419 and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith."420 This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.
The retort, for example, that papal infallibility rarely has been invoked -- though that is fortunate, indeed -- is not to the point. The claim, if I understand it correctly, is that Jesus Christ has endowed his earthly body with a share of the infallibility that is proper to his Lordship to his human followers, whether collectively, as a whole, or to some portion of it.
I cannot accept this doctrine. To that extent, count me still a "Protestant." That makes me and my community vulnerable – absolutely defenseless, in fact, under the Word of God who is Christ himself. Devastatingly vulnerable, under the sign of the cross. But what can I do but cling to that Word?
"Hier stehe ich!"
