Introductory comments by Web Master:

The book below, which was written by Charles W. Moore, presents historical
background and arguments concerning restoration of Christian unity. It is extremely well
written and except for expected differences, due to faith backgrounds, I highly endorse it as
being informative to Catholics, Orthodox, and other Christian believers. NOTE:
Colorization has been added.

THAT THEY MAY BE ONE

To heal the scandal of the fragmented Church
By CHARLES W. MOORE
1997 Copyright © 1997 -- All rights reserved.
Web published here by permission.

PREFACE

PART I CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS

Chapter 1: HOW DID CHRISTIANITY GO OFF THE RAILS?
Chapter 2: THE PROBLEM WITH PROTESTANTISM
Chapter 3: RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION
Chapter 4: THE END OF CATHOLIC CULTURE
Chapter 5: THE SPIRIT OF SKEPTICISM
Chapter 6: SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE REFORMATION
Chapter 7: LIBERAL HUMANISM
Chapter 8: THE LONG ROAD BACK TO CHRISTIAN UNITY
Chapter 9: The strange case of how 2,000 protestant Evangelicals ended up joining the
Orthodox church
Chapter 10: ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM
Chapter 11: What the Church Is Not: Liberal Mainline Protestantism and "Protestantized"
North American Catholicism

PART II DIFFICULTIES
CHAPTER 12: AUTHORITY
Chapter 13: SACRAMENTAL GRACE
Chapter 14: THE EUCHARIST
Chapter 15: THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION
Chapter 16: CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION
Chapter 17: LITURGICAL WORSHIP
Chapter 18: VENERATION OF MARY AND THE SAINTS
Chapter 19: PRAYERS TO MARY AND THE SAINTS
Chapter 20: MANDATORY CELIBACY IN THE PRIESTHOOD
Chapter 21: "CALL NO MAN FATHER"
Chapter 22: PURGATORY
Chapter 23: ICONS, RELICS, AND IMAGES
Chapter 24: THE TRADITION

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Part III WHAT IS THE CHURCH?
Chapter 25: THE TASK

"Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all
speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly
joined together in the same mind and the same judgment." (1 Cor. 1: 10)

"The Christian Church is in one hell of a situation."

Fr. William DeWitt Clinton

The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada 1

PREFACE

"And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of
other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them
together."

Monteigne

This book is about a big idea -the oneness of the Christian Faith- nothing less than
restoring the doctrinally unified, undivided Christian Church that existed prior to the Great
East-West Schism of c.1054 AD. It may be too big an idea for one little book; but I hope
what follows here will serve as a catalyst for thought and discussion. This much I am sure
of: having His Church divided, let alone fragmented into literally thousands of
competing--all too often warring--denominational factions cannot possibly be God's will.

Jesus prayed: "Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given
Me, that they may be one as We are." (St. John 17: 11) So, while the idea that this book
articulates and advocates may be overly optimistic, I believe that it is worthy. The divided
Church is a tragedy and a scandal. It is sinful. It needs to be healed.

A divided Church presents a disastrous witness to the unity in Christ we purport to

affirm. No one in his right mind would argue that the voice of a unified Church would not
be vastly more effective in witnessing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a broken and sinful
world, than is the cacophonous babel of contradictory Christian positions that exist today.

It was not always so of course. Throughout the first Christian millennium, the Church
spoke with one voice. Divers heresies cropped up to challenge unity and sound doctrine
during those thousand years, but the Church managed to stay one--as Christ desires. The
first great Christian schism, between Rome and Constantinople, accrued honour to neither
party, but at least it could be said that both sides in the dispute retained orthodox
doctrine--the sacred Deposit of Faith.

The second schismatic wave that occurred 500 years later inadvertently precipitated
a descent into heresy and apostasy that destroyed Christian culture and set in motion a
process of philosophical and moral decay, from which it is as yet unclear whether the
Church will survive as more than a tiny, culturally irrelevant, island of faith in a vast roiling
sea of pagan secular barbarism.

In this book I shall attempt to explain how we got into these regrettable
circumstances. It is necessary to have some understanding of the Church's history in order

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to make an informed evaluation of what caused the fragmentation of Christendom, and to
decide whether those reasons stand up to scrutiny. What I have to say on the pages that
follow will not be a comfortable message for many, and it is certainly inadequate as a
prescription for healing the Church. I do hope however that my thesis herein might serve as
a catalyst for further thought, and ultimately, action, toward restoration of the Church of
Jesus Christ as One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, unified body. I invite you to join me in this
quest.

Part I: CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS'

Chapter 1: HOW DID CHRISTIANITY GO OFF THE RAILS?

Christianity is in crisis at the end of the second Christian millennium, The Church's
cultural purchase is melting away like ice-cream in the hot August sun, its moral authority
over what used to be Christendom all but spent. How did the Christian Faith lose its rightful
place at the head of the civilization it established and built? A complex concatenation of
factors led to this sorry pass, chief among them being the fact that for the past 500 years
Christianity has addressed the world with an ever more fragmented and incoherent babel of
often contradictory voices. The weakening, destructive effect this has had on the Church's
effectiveness as a witness to the risen Christ, cannot be underestimated or overstated. It is a
tragedy that has exponentially aided the forces of wickedness in the world. The unfortunate
spectacle of literally thousands of Christian sects, frequently hostile to one another, all
simultaneously claiming to be the true Church founded on the love of Christ, does not tend
to encourage thoughtful people to wish to join or even seriously listen to any of them.

Of course the troublesome question is: which of the multiple banners flown by
fragmented Christianity as it marches and staggers and retreats these days can the Faith be
restored to unity under? The only logical answer to that is a return to the true, undivided
Faith that existed in essential doctrinal unity for the first thousand years of Christendom,
and which continues in the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic traditions today. For
over 1,000 years, from Christ's ministry to A.D. 1054, there was ONE Church, and at least
from the Council of Chaledon in A.D. 451 to 1054, doctrinal stability prevailed in that
Church. There really was a time when the same Universal (Catholic) Faith could be defined
as "what was believed by all men everywhere" throughout the undivided Church. Any
logical-thinking Christian absolutely must regard the sundering of Church unity that began
with the great east/west schism of 1,054 as a tragedy of cosmic proportions.

Christ founded a Church against which He declared the gates of hell would not
prevail, and He promised to abide with that Church until he comes again. It simply cannot
be a matter of indifference to Him whether the human beings He desires to save from sin
and its consequences are a part of that Church or not. Jesus did not say: "The gates of hell
will not prevail against my churches." He referred to His Church in the singular. Some
Protestants recite the Apostles' and/or the Nicene creeds, which affirm belief in "The Holy
Catholic Church;" and "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church;" respectively. The
work around rationalization is that the real universal or "catholic" Church is not any visible
communion but rather an "invisible fellowship of true believers in all churches." However,
this argument doesn't stand up convincingly under historical scrutiny.

Early Christians regarded the visible Church as not only the form, but quite literally
the context of Christianity. The Church was one; with one doctrine, and exercising one
authority. Dissent within the communion was not tolerated. A universal union of local

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churches was bound together organically in the unity of the Apostolic Succession, one
liturgy, and the sense of common victory by grace over natural divisions. For them, the
Church was the literal Body of Christ--a divine-human organism. Were they wrong? St.
Paul affirms that the Church is One (Eph 4: 3-5) with Christ as its Head (Eph. 4: 14-16) The
word catholic comes from the Greek Katholikos, meaning "universal." which in turn derives
from katholou, "in general". It was first used by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch in a letter to the
Smyrnians (c. AD 110) to distinguish the whole Church from individual congregations.
Subsequently, the term "catholic" distinguished orthodox Christians from those who
embraced heresy. Catholicism and affirmation of infallible Church authority (on matters of
doctrine and morality) are identical. A "Catholic" who considers himself free to believe as
he chooses is a contradiction in terms. For Catholics, reason and truth are objective--not
what each individual chooses to make them.

The word orthodox (from the Greek: "right-believing") affirms the claim of doctrinal
consistency with apostolic truth, The term "Catholic" in the sense of the Church being
universal can only apply to a Church in which there is agreement as to what constitutes true
doctrine. The word Catholic was used in the primitive, undivided Church to define the
commonly held doctrine affirmed in the Church "by all men everywhere"--the rule of faith
defined in the 5th Century by St. Vincent of Lerins as "Let us hold that which has been
believed everywhere, always and by all, for that is truly and properly Catholic."
Consequently, unless we subscribe to the exclusive catholicity of one particular branch of
the divided and fragmented Church, strictly speaking there has been no truly catholic
Church since at least 1054. The term "Catholic" cannot be legitimately considered to mean
"universal" alone, unless it is acknowledged to incorporate universality of doctrine, orders,
morals, and sacraments. The nearest approximation of true catholicity that exists in
post-schism, post-Reformation Christendom, resides in the branches of Christianity that
retain the essential doctrines, creeds, orders, tradition, and sacraments of the primitive,
undivided Church, but none can legitimately claim exclusivity.

At this point, I must appeal to Protestant readers to bear with me and to not
prejudicially dismiss my argument at least until you've absorbed it in its entirety. Let me
state clearly at the outset that this is NOT an anti-Protestant polemic, and while a critique of
Protestant ideas and the philosophical assumptions behind them necessarily appears herein,
it is emphatically not intended as an attack on, or disparagement of, the sincere faith of
Protestant Christians, past or present. I acknowledge and celebrate the fact that the life and
work of sincere Christians adherent to Protestant beliefs has had profound and beneficial
effects on millions of individuals and countless societies and cultures over the past five
centuries.

My own family background is Baptist, and I became a Christian believer through the
ministry of Protestant evangelism. However, a subsequent quarter-century of scriptural,
theological, and historical inquiry has led me to conviction that division of the Christian
Church into competing camps--Orthodox/Catholic and Protestant--cannot be God's will. I
have further become convinced that the Christian Faith in its fullness can only be lived and
experienced within the sacramental compass of the original apostolic Orthodox/Catholic
Faith. Additionally, I believe that the Protestant reformers, despite presumed good
intentions, were predominantly responsible for unleashing a mood and spirit of subjective
anarchy from which derives the depraved and frequently vile liberal humanism that is
currently busily at work destroying Western civilization.

I think also, speaking from both personal experience and observation, that few
Protestants ever seriously consider Orthodox/Catholicism on the basis of what it claims to

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be in its written doctrines, dogmas, and policies, but rather only through an accretion of
hearsay assumptions and prejudices that are often inaccurate or even maliciously biased. As
Catholic apologist Sir Arnold Lunn observed: "Most Catholics avoid controversy not
because they dislike intelligent discussion with a non-Catholic, but because the preliminary
spade work which is necessary to clear the ground of debate from the litter of ignorant
prejudice exhausts all but the stoutest heart." One of my hopes for this book is that it might
sweep away some of that litter and to help non-Orthodox/Catholic Christians to view the
Apostolic Church from a more informed perspective.

I concede that the breadth and scope of "Orthodox/Catholicism" is itself a matter of

much controversy. The Eastern Orthodox Church claims to be the only true apostolic
Church, with an unbroken line of historical continuity, episcopal succession, and doctrinal
orthodoxy extending back to the communities created by Christ and His disciples in the
Levant and Asia Minor. It claims to hold the original Christian faith that was common to the
primitive, undivided Church in both East and West during the first millennium of Christian
history, and has always regarded itself as the organic continuation of the original Apostolic
community and as holding a faith fully consistent with the Apostolic message.

On the other hand, Rome considers the Eastern Church to be schismatic. Orthodoxy
reciprocally regards the entire Western Church, subsequent to Rome's break with
Constantinople in 1054, to be schismatic and/or heretical. Roman Catholics deem
Protestants to be heretics. Many Anglicans labour under considerable ambiguity as to
whether they are Protestant or Catholic. The Eastern Orthodox have grave doubts about the
validity of Anglican orders, and the Roman Church explicitly declared them to be null and
void in a Papal Bull of 1896, in which it was claimed that Matthew Parker's consecration as
Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559 was illegitimate due to doubt over whether the orders of
his chief consecrator, William Barlow, were valid. While Roman doubts about Barlow have
not been proved, and even if they were for argument's sake correct, legitimacy would have
been secured through Archbishop William Laud, from whom the present Church of England
Episcopate derives. Laud's consecration in 1621 was through the hands of undisputed
bishops in the Irish and Italian succession.2

To be Apostolic, Orthodox, and Catholic, a church must affirm certain fixed

principles, which are derived from four principal sources: the teachings of Christ; the
Apostles, the early Church Fathers, and the inspired revelations in the canonical Scriptures.
For the purpose of this book I am applying the general term "Orthodox/Catholicism" (and
vice-versa) to churches that affirm the traditional, apostolic, orthodox doctrines and creeds,
sacramental grace, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; the episcopal apostolic
clerical orders of the historic, undivided Church, and that hold Church tradition3 as well as
Holy Scripture as authoritative. These qualifications obtain in Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman
Catholicism, and Traditional Anglican Catholicism.

As a member of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, this writer is part of the
international Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), which explicitly affirms the ancient,
Apostolic, Orthodox/Catholic faith of the primitive, undivided Church in its principal
doctrinal statement, "The Affirmation of St. Louis." Since the TAC is not well-known
outside Anglicanism, or indeed even within it, a brief explanation is in order. Contrary to
popular misconception, an autonomous Church of England existed long before King Henry
VIII and the Reformation. Indeed an autonomous British branch of the one Apostolic,
Catholic Church can trace its roots back to Celtic Christianity in the 2nd Century, when it
was part of a classical form of Christianity that was neither Eastern Orthodox nor Roman

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Catholic--not under the authority of the Bishop of Rome or any other foreign bishop, but
"autocephalous," as the Eastern Churches have always been; that is: governed by its own
head bishop, and simply in continuum with the common Apostolic Christian heritage.

The earliest undisputed documentary evidence of the organized Christian church in

England is found in written works of early Church fathers (EG: Tertullian and Origen) early
in the 3rd Century, although the first English Christian communities were probably
established significantly earlier than that. Three English bishops attended the Council of
Arles in 314, and English bishops also attended the Council of Sardica in 347 and the
Council of Ariminum in 360. Several references to the Church in Britain during the Roman
occupation are found in the writings of 4th Century Church fathers. There are two schools
of thought with regard to whether the first Christian missionaries came to Britain from the
Eastern Church of Asia Minor through Ireland, or from the Western Church in Rome. The
Celtic British Church existed mainly in the north of England. When later missionaries
arrived from Rome, they found the Christian Church already established in Great Britain.

The early Celtic Church was spiritually vigourous and strongly evangelistic,
preaching the Gospel not only to pagans in the British Isles, but also sending missionaries to
Europe, Africa, Iceland, and perhaps even pre-Columbian North America. St. Patrick of
Ireland and St. Columba of Scotland are probably the ancient Celtic Church's most
well-known figures. Some other early British Christian Saints are Saints Alban, Aidan,
Hilda, and Chad.

In the 5th and 6th Centuries, the British Isles were subjected to increasing attacks
and invasions by Norse and Baltic pirate raiders, especially on the east coasts of England
and Scotland, resulting is a barbarization and re-paganization of society there. The invading
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes drove the original English Celtic Christians into western enclaves
in Cornwall and Wales. In 595, St. Augustine (of Canterbury), a Benedictine monk and
prior of St. Andrew's Church in Rome, was dispatched by Pope Gregory I (The Great)
leading a group of some 40 missionaries to re-evangelize Britain.

Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet in Kent. King 'thelbert of Kent (c. 552-616)
was a pagan, but his wife, Bertha, daughter of Charlibert, the King of Paris, was a Christian,
and the couple with members of their court, went to Thanet to see Augustine, who,
according to the Venerable Bede, came to meet them in procession behind the Cross and a
picture of Jesus, and "prayed both for themselves, and also for them to whom and for whose
sake they came thither."

'thelbert was impressed by Augustine's preaching, and invited the missionaries to his
capital, Canterbury, where they were allowed to hold masses in the old church of St.
Martin, which had been built during the Roman occupation. 'thelbert became a Christian,
and was baptized on June 2, 597. On Christmas Day 597, tradition has it that more than
10,000 persons were baptized in the River Swale by Augustine, the first Archbishop of the
English Church at Canterbury. He appointed two other Roman missionaries, Mellitus and
Justus, Bishops of London and Rochester respectively, founded a monastery, and
re-consecrated another nameless, disused Roman church at Canterbury as Christ Church.
This building was eventually expanded into the present-day Canterbury Cathedral.

Augustine attempted to secure unity with the Celtic bishops, without success, but
over the next hundred years he and his successors gradually re-established
Christendom--the Mass, Latin writing and letters, and Christian civilization in general, to the
ravaged regions bounded by the North Sea. During this time, the Church in western Britain,

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though impoverished and beleaguered, remained stubbornly autonomous, and refused to
help the Italian papal missionaries. Consequently, the Roman Church encouraged and
financed campaigns by east-coast-based British chieftains against the fiefdoms of western
British warlords and bishops.

Most of Ireland was already under the authority of the Roman Church, and Irish
missionaries were enlisted to help with re-Christianizing the barbarized eastern districts.
However, the Irish Church still retained a semi-autonomous spirit and disagreed with the
Romans over certain customs of the Latin Church, notably Easter observances.

Things came to a head at the Synod of Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, convened by
King Oswy of Northumbria in A.D. 664, where arguments for conformity with Roman
customs and usages prevailed. At Whitby most of the British Celtic Church voluntarily
submitted itself to the Bishop of Rome, and to full unity with the Latin or Western Church
in Europe, although it still remained largely autonomous due to its geographical isolation
from the papal see. Some dioceses in Wales and Ireland remained independent of Rome
until the 12th Century. Consequently, it is argued that Henry VIII merely restored an
autonomy to the native British Church in 1531 that parts of it had forfeited only 300 years
earlier, and as long as he remained on the throne, the official religion of England was
virtually Catholicism without the Papacy. Henry claimed that he was reaffirming the ancient
right of Christian princes and kings to exercise supremacy over the affairs of the church
within their domain, citing as precedents, relations between church and state in the Eastern
Roman Empire and until the 9th century under Charlemagne.

The reader will search these pages in vain for any attempt at a defense of the
particular motive behind Henry VIII's break with the Papacy, or of the English Reformers'
introduction of selected Continental heresies to the Church of England.

I also have no intention of mounting here an apologetic for the impaired and
heterodox late 20th Century Church of England. Unfortunately, mainstream Anglicanism
has been handicapped since Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, and Hugh Latimer busily
set about adding Continental Protestant theological accretions to the English Church's
Catholic doctrines immediately following Henry VIII's death in 1547. During the reign of
Elizabeth I, the influence of Puritans within the Anglican communion increased, and they
succeeded in bringing the Church of England into closer conformity with Calvinistic
Reformed ideas. On the other hand, during the 19th century the Church of England
experienced a "counter-reformation" of sorts, when a group of clerics at the University of
Oxford initiated a movement to restore the Catholic elements in the Church of England's
spiritual heritage that had been suppressed by the Reformation. The "High Church" Oxford
movement transformed its version of Anglicanism, placing renewed emphasis on the dignity
and beauty of religious observances and affirming the central place of worship. The Anglo-
Catholic High Churchmen revived theological concern for the traditional Catholic and
Apostolic character of the ministry and the sacraments, and the ancient creeds of the
undivided Church.

Today, the Church of England suffers from acute institutional "multiple personality
disorder," a disease induced by the Canterbury communion's wishy-washy ethic of
"inclusivity." In the Anglican Church, you can find most any doctrinal confession, ranging
from paganism through outright atheism, Gnosticism, agnosticism, addle-brained liberal
modernism and radical post-modernism, Evangelism, Pentecostalism, to "bells and smells"
Anglo-Catholicism. Many Anglicans extol this inclusiveness as a virtue but in fact it is an
acquiescence to compromise-- the resort to ambiguous formulae that both believer and

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heretic can subscribe to, which, axiomatically, accords the heretic equal status in the church
as the true believer. This ethic is not coincidental in a state-established church, since the
typical orientation of statesmen is to seek compromise where a reconciliation of opposing
views seems a remote prospect. Thus an uneasy sort of peace is achieved, but it satisfies
none of the participant parties.

Recent innovations embraced by "mainstream" Anglicanism, like the ordination of

women, and in some Anglican provinces non-celibate homosexualists as well, have served
to harden Orthodox and Roman rejection of Anglican orders. However, the Traditional
Anglican Communion and other "continuing" Anglican communions maintain that Anglican
Catholicism chose to align itself with the universal doctrines and practices and the Apostolic
succession of the universal (catholic) Church. They introduced no peculiar creeds, no
unique sacraments, and no distinct ordinal practices or orders. They simply retained the
bishops, priests, and deacons of the Orthodox/Catholic Church.

In contrast with the European Reformers like Luther, Zwingli, the Anabaptists and
later, Calvin, who put themselves in a position of having to develop a new theological
system on the fly, as it were, the tenets affirmed by the 16th and 17th Century Anglican
Church were not the work of any original theologian in the way that Lutheranism and
Calvinism were. The English Reformation produced no new confessional document
equivalent to Philip Melanchthon's Lutheran Augsburg Confession or the Reformed
Heidelberg Catechism, but rather simply reaffirmed what the English Reformers deemed to
be the teachings of the ancient apostolic faith. Traditional Anglicanism has no creeds other
than the ones developed by the early Church, and shares this creedal catholicity with the
Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Henry's usurpation to himself of the place of Supreme Head of the Church of

England was an act of arrogant hubris to facilitate ignoble ends--his determination to defy
Pope Clement VII and divorce Catherine of Aragon so he could marry his pregnant mistress
Anne Boleyn. However that was essentially a political act of state and not an ecclesiastical
or theological revolution, such as was happening on the Continent.

The English Catholic Church at the beginning of the 16th Century was relatively
uncorrupt, and in any case, Henry VIII was no Reformer. Indeed, the title "Defender of the
Faith," still held by British monarchs today, was originally awarded to Henry VIII by the
Pope in appreciation of Henry's forceful treatise against the anti-Papal theology of Martin
Luther. In this work, Henry wrote that no punishment was too great for one who "will not
obey the Chief Priest and Supreme Judge on earth," and that it was impossible to draw
distinctions between "Christ's Church" and "the Pope's Church," because the Pope is
"Christ's vicar in that Church over which Christ is the Head," and furthermore, "the whole
Church is not only subject to Christ but, for Christ's sake, to Christ's only vicar, the Pope of
Rome."4

Henry VIII remained a Catholic to his death, albeit a spectacularly apostate one, and
the Church of England, in his lifetime, also remained Catholic in virtually all respects except
obedience to the Pope. The "King's Book" published in 1543, and the Act of Six Articles,
enforced belief in transubstantiation, the sufficiency of Communion of one kind, clerical
celibacy, the binding effect of vows of celibacy, the rightfulness of private Masses, and the
necessity of Sacramental confession.

Henry publicly burned Protestant translations of the Bible, and during his final illness
rejected suggestions from Protestant advisors that he receive the Eucharist sitting. He

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replied: "If I could throw myself not only on the ground but under the ground, I should not
hold myself to have given sufficient honour to the most Holy Sacrament." Deathbed
contrition no doubt, but Henry had much to be contrite about.

One persistent voice of conscience on Henry's life was his cousin Reginald Pole, son
of Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, and the last of the Plantagenet line. Indeed,
historian T.M. Parker asserts that "the Poles, descended from George, Duke of Clarence,
Edward lV's brother, were more certain heirs of the Plantagenets than the reigning [Tudor]
dynasty."5

In 1535, Henry wrote to Pole in Rome, ordering him to submit his opinions on
Henry's breach with the Papacy and self-appointment as the Supreme Head of the English
Church. Pole replied in a letter entitled "Concerning the Unity of the Church," denouncing
Henry's destruction of Church unity, his creation of a national Church, and above all his
taking the title Head of the Church:

"Are titles given for nothing, or less than nothing," Pole wrote, "that men should call
you, the robber and persecutor of the Church, the Head of the Church? Your father was a
penurious man, but even he founded a few monasteries for the care of the poor; but who
can cite any good deed of yours? Pleasure-houses, built for your own gratification, ruined
monasteries, wrecked churches, their possessions confiscated to the Crown.... You have
destroyed your nobles on the most frivolous pretenses; you have filled your court with
worthless men, to whom you have yielded up everything. But what shall I say of the
butcheries; of the dreadful executions which have made England the slaughter-house of the
innocent? The holiest and most spotless men, for the new crimes invented by yourself, put
to death in the most horrible and unheard-of manner. The gracious Bishop of Rochester, the
unparalleled [Sir Thomas] More, the learned Reynolds, and so many others were victims of
your senseless and wicked fury. In their bloody death no torment was spared to them nor
any insult to their religion.... And you are the man who holds that the Pope on account of
his moral deficiencies cannot be Head of the Church!... Finally I turn to you Henry, as your
friend, your physician, your one-time intimate. I say to you repent, return, make good your
misdeeds. In contrition lies man's hope. I am your Nathan. Be my David."

Alas, Henry's "senseless and wicked fury" was far from spent, and he was further
enraged by the fact that the Pope had made Pole a Cardinal and appointed him Papal
Legate to England. Henry hired assassins to attempt (unsuccessfully) to kill Pole, seized and
killed two of Pole's brothers on a trumped up charge of treason, and even arrested Pole's
70-year-old mother, Margaret, and beheaded her for refusing to acknowledge Henry as
Head of the Church.

When the news reached Pole, he remarked: "Until now I had thought God had given
me the grace of being son of one of the best and most honoured ladies in England. Now he
has vouchsafed to honour me still more, by making me the son of a martyr."

Anglican apologists might argue that Pole, who returned to England after the death
of Henry's short-lived son Edward VI in 1553, as Papal Legate, spiritual advisor to Queen
Mary, and eventually Archbishop of Canterbury, was at least party by association to plenty
of religious executions himself, including those of the Anglican Reformers Cranmer, Ridley,
and Latimer. Latimer could hardly complain, having written to Henry VIII's Master of Rolls
and Vicar General, Thomas Cromwell, at the time of the killing of Pole's family: "Blessed be
the God of England whose minister ye be! I heard you once say you would make him [Pole]
eat his own heart, which you have now brought to pass, for he must needs eat his own heart

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and be as heartless as he is graceless.6

It has been argued that of the 273 individuals burned by Bloody Mary, two-thirds
would likely have been burned anyway by Cranmer, had he remained in power, as
"Anabaptists"("the Devil's martyrs, according to their Lutheran co-Reformers). Clearly
there was plenty of shame to go around, and this writer finds respective citations of atrocity
by Catholic and Protestant apologists a singularly unprofitable line of debate. As Roman
Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton said of Mary's reign: "She was allowed to deprive small
men of their lives, she was not allowed to deprive great men of their property--or rather of
other people's property. She could punish heresy, she could not punish sacrilege. She was
forced into the false position of killing men who had not gone to church and sparing men
who had gone there to steal the church ornaments."7

In point of fact, Pole and Mary did have a plan to reform the English Church within
Roman Catholicism, to enforce clergy to be resident in their parishes; to instruct all
congregations in the principles of the faith through frequent and intelligent preaching; for
bishops and priests to live frugally, using the greatest portion of revenues for charity and
education; to establish seminaries with high educational standards, to publish a new English
language translation of the New Testament, a catechism, and a book of homilies, and they
did produce a new English prayer book for private use. However, within three years of the
1555 national synod at which these proposals were tabled, both Reginald Pole and Mary
Tudor died, coincidentally within hours of each other, on November 17, 1558. With them
died the hope of reversing the English Reformation.

Chapter 2: THE PROBLEM WITH PROTESTANTISM

I have no desire to offend my Protestant friends here, but when mutually

contradictory positions exist on matters such as sacramental grace, the nature and function
of the priesthood, Christ's real presence in the Mass, or baptismal regeneration, one view
must necessarily be correct and the other mistaken, no matter how sincerely each is held. It
is illogical to assert that both can be ordained of God. The notion that "you can believe one
thing and I another about a matter of fact or truth, and neither of us has to be wrong," is a
relativist sophistry unsupported by reason or logic.

There is also the troubling matter of the major Reformers' theological "creativity." As
historian Philip Hughes observes: "And the Lutheran conquest of Christian thought--the
immediate conquest--was, in its essence, that an orator of genius persuaded the ordinary
man by the thousand to throw over what every preacher he had ever heard had always said,
and to accept instead of it, merely on the word of a man who said he knew better, ideas
never heard of until now."8 In his bull of 1520 condemning Luther's teachings, Pope Leo X
notes that if Luther's ideas were true, it would follow that the Church, whose guide is the
Holy Ghost, would have to be in error and always had been in error. The day after Luther's
famous defiant stand at the Diet of Worms on April 17, 1521, the young Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V declared that "A single monk, led astray by private judgment, has set
himself against the faith held by all Christians for a thousand years and more, and
impudently concludes that all Christians up till now have been in error."

What probable cause exists to determine which view-- Orthodox/Catholic or

Protestant--is true in disputed matters?. On one hand we have a unified body and unbroken
line of doctrine and tradition reaching back 2,000 years to the very beginnings of the
Christian Church. On the other, a constellation of belief systems, none yet 500 years old, all

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derived to some degree from the Orthodox/Catholic tradition whose authority they
repudiate. The undivided Orthodox/Catholic Church's heritage belongs to Protestant
Christians too, unless they propose that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et al., started something
entirely new from scratch back in the 16th Century. However, while some of the European
Reformers may have been convinced that by repudiating the Papacy and medieval Catholic
Christendom they were returning to primitive Apostolic Christianity--they were grievously
mistaken. Certainly they had no appeal to the Eastern Church. Patriarch Jeremiah II
(1572-'95) rejected the Augsburg Confession as obvious heresy. "You can never be in
agreement with us, or rather, say with the truth," wrote Jeremiah, "And we beg you not to
trouble us further, not to write us or appeal to us while you go on reinterpreting the guiding
lights of the Church and its theologians in other ways, paying them respect but repudiating
them in deeds... Go your way, and write us no more about dogmas."9

Protestant apologists will counter that corruption in the medieval Roman Catholic
hierarchy justifiably provoked the Reformers' revolution, and they will cite various more
recent moral failures and other shortcomings particular to Orthodox/Catholics. While such
criticisms are often overstated and/or not informed by fact so much as by myth and
prejudice, no historically literate person will dispute that the immediately pre-Reformation
Roman Church had many serious problems, or that Orthodox/Catholic individuals have
always been, and continue to be, poor sinners afflicted by failings common to humanity.
However, the faults of the medieval Church were matters of individual conduct--not
doctrine--and any legitimate reform initiative should have remained within the Church to
address the problems there.10 Reform doesn't necessarily imply secession, and to reject
Orthodox/Catholicism because certain individuals past and present have failed to honour
and live up to its teachings is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Protestantism
abandoned the universal Church on the basis of misdirected good intentions mixed with
erroneous philosophical assumptions and political opportunism.

It must also be understood in the interest of historical accuracy that as bad as the
corrupt popes of the Renaissance were in terms of personal morality, not one of them made
heretical alterations to the theological, moral, or doctrinal teaching of the Roman Church.
As former Protestant, now Roman Catholic convert, Tom Howard notes: "Whereas other
benches of bishops, which shall be nameless, in our own day are applauding homosexual
promiscuity, adultery, everything else, themselves in a frolic through Sodom and Gomorrah,
not one of those wicked Renaissance popes ever said, `Yes, I have lovers backstage here
and this is a deeply Christian style of life.' They knew they were going to hell. They knew
they were sinning."11 Yet they did not adulterate the Deposit of Faith.

It must be remembered that the original Reformers all started out as Roman
Catholics, and that the Protestant Reformation was born in a spirit of rebellion. Sometimes
this revolt was manifested in utterly sophomoric forms, such as Ulrich Zwingli's stunt of
publicly cooking up a pan of sausages in the middle of the 40 day Lenten fast, thus
"showing our emancipation from such man-made rules." Luther and his followers
ceremonially burned Leo X's bull, along with the Corpus of Canon Law and some minor
scholastic works, on the town sewerage dump at Wittenburg on December 10, 1520.

To argue that the Reformers only rejected the Roman Catholic Church's 16th
Century present, and didn't break with the Christian past, simply doesn't stand up to critical
scrutiny. The European Reformers, albeit to varying degrees, rejected the Church's
Sacraments, Tradition, and Authority, not merely the corrupt Catholic hierarchy of the time.
Under Protestantism's revolutionary ethos, all forms of innovation came to be greeted with

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enthusiasm, rather than with caution and suspicion as they had been under Catholicism.
Free enquiry and "the right of private judgment" are the paradigms of Protestant culture,
which denies any central, united authority of doctrine or knowledge. Reformed Christianity
would rest solely on individual faith based on the guidance contained in the Bible. This
assumption inevitably destroyed the cultural purchase disciplined philosophy previously
exerted on society prior to the Reformation, and the notion that there would be profound
differences of opinion on fundamental issues came to be taken for granted.

G.K. Chesterton, a convert to Roman Catholicism relatively late in life, argued that
with Luther, "[The Augustinian tradition] came out of its cell again, in the day of storm and
ruin, and cried out with a new and mighty voice for an elemental and emotional religion,
and for the destruction of all philosophies.... It had one theory that was the destruction of all
theories; in fact it had its own theology which was itself the death of theology. Man could
say nothing to God, nothing from God, nothing about God, except an almost inarticulate cry
for mercy and for the supernatural help of Christ, in a world where all natural things were
useless. Reason was useless. Will was useless.... Nothing remained in earth or heaven, but
the name of Christ lifted in that lonely imprecation; awful as the cry of a beast in pain."12

The gloomy outlook Chesterton refers to was articulated in Martin Luther's own
Wittenberg Testament, in which he affirmed that "Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in
saying; Repent ye! intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence. This word
cannot be understood of sacramental penance, that is, of the confession and satisfaction
which are performed under the ministry of priests. It does not, however, refer solely to
inward penitence; nay, such inward penitence is nought unless it outwardly produces
various mortifications of the flesh. The penalty thus continues as long as the hatred of self,
that is, true inward penitence, continues, namely: until our entrance into the Kingdom of
Heaven."

Luther asserted the total depravity and corruption of human nature, the utter
powerlessness of man to do good, and the belief that men are predestined by God to heaven
or hell without regard for what sort of life they lead. Calvin amplified this into an inflexible
and horrible doctrine about predestination to hell that equated all temporal pleasure with
sin. The Reformers were nothing if not inconsistent. Calvin rejected the Catholic Church's
authority as that of the anti-Christ and proclaimed the sovereignty if individual human
conscience. Yet he claimed that "... if authority and liberty of judging the law be left to
private men, there will never be any certainty set down, but rather all religion will become
doubtful." In that saying, Calvin concisely defined the problem with Protestantism, and
prophesied its inevitable consequences for Christendom.

The Reformation did much more than ending the ecclesiastical supremacy of the
pope in Western Christendom. It changed the general Christian focus in the West from an
objective concentration on praising God and acknowledging what He has done for us, to an
increasingly subjective emphasis on personal experience and internalized faith. The Right
Rev. Robert Mercer, C.R., Diocesan Bishop of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada
observes: "I note that after, say, 1700 AD hymns tend to be more subjective. Me and my
Savior. Me and my love for Him. Me and my sin. We even sing hymns to ourselves, preach
ourselves musical exhortations, as it were...."13 This obsession with personal feeling was
and is at odds with Orthodox/Catholic tradition, in which what one "feels" during Christian
worship is essentially irrelevant. Fr. Andrew Neaum says: "The worship of the church flows
on whether I am there or not, whether I feel pious, moved, or not. The tradition flows on,
and simply by going one slips into its river, and is carried along for an hour, to slip out again

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refreshed and renewed, whether one recognizes the fact or not."14

In Protestantism there is a constant emphasis on the subjective self, EG: "In order to
be a Christian `I have to," or "one has to.'" In Orthodox/Catholic understanding, becoming a
Christian is a more objective process, whereby you are not expected to grasp the whole light
of Christian understanding immediately. It is like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts saying: "I
know I'm reading something that is significant, but what does it all mean?" In the present
chaos of Western denominational pluralism, the Protestant Christian is left to figure out
"what it all means" almost entirely on his own resources, without any authority or guidance
other than his own interpretation of what the Bible says to him as an individual.

Arnold Lunn described Protestantism as "a mixture of objective truth and subjective
error." That is: it is objective insofar as it retains selected Orthodox/Catholic doctrines, and
the Orthodox/Catholic arguments in defense of these doctrines, but the Protestant must also
rely on subjective feeling to bolster his incomplete belief in Orthodox/Catholic Truth. Ergo,
the Protestant who still accepts the Orthodox/Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, but who
rejects the authority of the Church to define that doctrine, must necessarily fall back on his
own subjective feeling to support his Trinitarian belief, because it is impossible to prove that
doctrine on the basis of New Testament texts alone. Sola Scriptura does not conclusively
protect Trinitarian belief. Orthodox/Catholicism, on the other hand, is objective in terms of
doctrinal belief. The Affirmation of St. Louis (TAC) declares that "The conscience, as the
inherent knowledge of right and wrong, cannot stand alone as a sovereign arbiter of morals.
Every Christian is obligated to form his conscience by the Divine Moral Law and the Mind
of Christ as revealed in Holy Scriptures, and by the teachings and Tradition of the Church."

Protestantism, implicitly rejects the concept of immutable absolutes and affirms

liberal progressivism in the sense that it is theoretically willing to change and adopt new or
"better" ideas and discard the traditions of the past on the basis of democratic opinion. For
example, several conservative Protestant denominations have voted to issue policy
statements strongly condemning homosexual behavior (although not the PERSONS who
practice it) as sinful and inimical to Biblical teaching. That is commendable as far as it goes,
but the point too easily overlooked is that the very process of voting on this matter implies a
priori that the vote could potentially go the other way--that affirmation and acceptance of
homosexual behavior could also become church policy on the basis of a democratic vote.
This has of course already happened in several liberal Protestant denominations. However,
in terms of Orthodox/Catholic understanding, the matter of rejection or acceptance of
homosexual behavior is not a negotiable issue--not something that could ever be
legitimately voted on. Scripture and 2,000 years of Holy Tradition have declared
homosexual behavior to be sinful and morally deficient, and there is simply nothing to
discuss.

However, Protestants in the post-modern West, and indeed many Western Catholics,
have been so thoroughly conditioned by the reflexive assumptions of Enlightenment
liberalism, that Orthodox/Catholic certitude on moral issues (or anything else) becomes
extremely difficult to accept. It seems like an abdication of intellect and reason, although it
should be carefully noted that it is only after a Catholic has accepted by reason the concept
of an infallible Church that he surrenders private judgment to the judgment of the Church,
and then only on points where the Church speaks with the voice of God. On all other points,
private judgment for Catholics remains unimpaired. However, in the not-unrelated
paradigms of Protestantism and liberalism, EVERYTHING is theoretically negotiable and
mutable, since there is no fundamental ground of knowledge and authority. Even the appeal

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to Scripture is open to interpretation. If something seems like a "better idea" at the time,
Protestants and liberals want to adopt it. Conversely, Orthodox/Catholics acknowledge and
affirm that there is absolute truth that doesn't change with the ephemeral fashions, whims,
and obsessions of time.

The only thing that prevented Protestant anti-authoritarian freedom from

degenerating into secularist chaos during the first post-Reformation centuries was the fact
that laws and public morals--the social consensual ethos--continued to be based on a priori
assumptions of Biblical inerrancy. The late Protestant evangelical philosopher Francis
Schaeffer wrote: "The Bible's absolutes provide a consensus within which freedom can
operate. But once the Christian consensus has been removed... then the very freedoms
which have come out of the Reformation became a destructive force leading to chaos in
society."15

Schaeffer's son Frank, whose conversion from evangelicalism to Orthodoxy is

discussed in a later chapter, says that: "Any Protestant who is honest will admit concerning
the chaos of Protestantism that it's debatable that if that chaos had been in the Church from
the beginning there would be any Christian witness left. It has had such a diluting effect on
it."16

Besides their reference to Scripture as the sole authority, sola scriptura, the
Reformers, because of their concern about prevailing attitudes that salvation depended on
works of merit rather than the grace and mercy of God, developed the companion doctrine
of sola fides - -justification17 by faith alone. Martin Luther wanted to excise the book of
James from the Bible because of its affirmation that faith without works is dead. John
Calvin recognized only one will operating in the universe--the Divine Will, which he
emphasized so strongly that he virtually denied (in his stress on the role of predestination)
the power of human free will. Man's good works, which proceeded from no free will in
Calvin's construct, were thus of no consequence in terms of salvation.

Both Luther and Calvin had a bleakly pessimistic view of human nature, and
affirmed the total depravity of man; that no "good works" done by man avail in the slightest
toward his salvation. Man's nature is utterly sinful, and remains so even after baptism and
justification by grace. All man's acts are essentially sinful, and continue to be sins even after
he is justified, although God no longer holds these sins against him. In the Reformers'
theology, there was no room for natural goodness, no such thing as small sins, and no such
thing as human merit. "Without the faith that works through charity, even the works which
appear good are sins," wrote Luther, who taught that God not only permits sin, but that sin
cannot be committed unless God commands it. "It does not follow," he maintained, "that
God wants the sin to be committed, although He wills that it should take place." The reason
for this alleged divine perversity, according to Luther, is to demonstrate through divine
anger punishing the sinner how hateful sin is to God.

The primitive, undivided Church also affirmed that salvation was granted by the
mercy of God, and that those baptized into Christ were called to believe in Him and that
good works would be the fruit of their faith. The concept of faith versus works was
unknown in the early Church. Or as C.S. Lewis observed, it's like trying to decide which
blade of a pair of scissors is more important.

Orthodox/Catholics believe that justification by faith in God is part of being brought

into covenant relationship with Him, rather than a sort of legal acquittal before Him. It is

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God's mercy, not our own faith that saves us. God initiates and makes the New Covenant
with us. For Orthodox/Catholics, justification by faith is a dynamic--not static-- concept. It
is not a point-in-time thing. Faith is not something the Catholic Christian exercises at one
critical moment, expecting it to be effective for the rest of his life. True Christian faith is not
just a decision, but a carrying through of that decision as a way of life. Orthodox/Catholics
happily affirm justification by faith (Rom. 3:28), but not justification by faith alone, which
contradicts Scripture (James 2: 17, 25).

Chapter 3: RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

It would of course be unfair and inaccurate to place sole blame on Protestantism for
the ascendance of secular humanism in Western society, although the Reformers
unquestionably pulled the bung out of the liberal barrel. The Reformation either originated
or facilitated the advancement of a constellation of interconnected modern ideas that had a
profound influence on political, economic, and philosophical developments in the centuries
that followed up to our present day. As G.K. Chesterton put it: "On a great map like the
mind of Aquinas, the mind of Luther would be almost invisible. But it is not altogether
untrue to say, as so many journalists have said without caring whether it was true or untrue,
that Luther opened an epoch; and began the modern world.

"He was the first man who ever consciously used his consciousness; or what was
later called his Personality. That is what we now call personality. A little later is was called
Psychology. After that it was called Advertisement or Salesmanship.... [Luther] did in a
very real sense make the modern world. He destroyed Reason; and substituted
Suggestion."18

The spirit that presaged the end of dominant Catholic Christendom really began to
stir with the Renaissance during the 14th and 15th Centuries, a movement whose most
ardent apologists extravagantly regarded as the rebirth of the ancient civilizations of Greece
and Rome. Indeed Renaissance scholars had re-discovered, and developed profound
admiration for, the rich cultures of pagan antiquity, and in the process become semi-pagan
in spirit themselves. This revived enthusiasm for Graeco-Roman glory--its art, architecture,
literature, and philosophy-- aroused a notion that the nemesis of these great cultures was
none other than the spread of Christianity. Indeed this had been implied before by such
pagan reactionaries as Julian the Apostate, who wrote in the 4th Century of "The Christians,
to whom we owe all our misfortunes...."

This postulate has remained persistent since the decline of the Roman Empire
became manifest, coincident with the exponential spread of Christendom during the
half-millennium between Christ's Resurrection and about A.D. 500. Blaming Christianity for
divers malignancies-- present and ancient--has become especially fashionable in the latter
part of the 20th Century. However a contradictory school of thought has been articulated at
least since the time of St. Jerome (A.D. 320-420), who argued that if the Graeco-Roman
world had accepted the Orthodox/Catholic faith sooner, the decay of ancient material and
cultural civilization would never have taken place.

The paradigm-shift that the Renaissance represented had divers catalysts. Beginning
with the revival of the Holy Roman Empire (which was, as has been noted, neither holy, nor
Roman, nor in fact--an empire) under Otto I in 962, popes and emperors competed for
supremacy. A, bitter antagonism developed between Rome and the German Empire, which
was exacerbated in the 14th and 15th Centuries by burgeoning German nationalism.
Increasing resentment of papal taxation, and submission to a foreign Pope also developed in

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northern Europe, especially England and Germany, during this era. The late Middle Ages
were punctuated by various power-struggles between the Popes and secular Kings,
emperors and other lay-potentates, which led to the Avignon papacy of 1309-77, in which
Christendom's central authority was captured by one of its provinces. This state of affairs
ruptured Church unity and resulted in the papal Great Schism of 1378-1415. A unified
papacy was reestablished under Martin V, but it had suffered heavy damage to its prestige,
and the popular sense of Christian commonwealth was severely eroded.

Meanwhile in England, the statutes of Mortmain in 1279, Provisors in 1351, and

Praemunire in 1393, substantially reduced the Church's power to withdraw land from the
control of the civil government, to appoint clerics, and to exercise judicial authority, setting
the stage for Henry VIII's breach with the Papacy a century and a half later.

Anti-Catholic critics have made much of the Church's descent into superstition
during the late Medieval period, and although essential doctrine remained untouched by bad
popes and general corruption, it was indeed overlaid by a great deal of superstitious
unfortunateness, particularly the issue of indulgences, which were to soon result in
catastrophe.

The doctrine of indulgences affirmed that Church authorities can assign what could
be described as "spiritual credits" earned by especially saintly individuals who had led holy
lives to the benefit of others: an indulgence granted. In the late Medieval era, indulgences
began to be handed out--essentially sold--in exchange for alms or other monies given for a
pious purpose, a clear distortion of the basic concept. In addition, the ecclesiastical courts
had in many cases become engines of extortion, since it was always convenient for Church
lawyers and judges to discover cases of heresy or other spiritual misdemeanors for which
fines could be levied. These abuses brought the credibility of the Church as a repository of
truth into disrepute, and promoted skepticism about essential doctrines.

"I did see the common people of Christendom to be corrupted, not only in their
ways, but in their ideas," wrote Erasmus of Rotterdam. "I considered the most part of those
which profess themselves to be pastors and doctors to abuse the titles of Christ to their own
advantage... preaching men's inventions and alleging them to be God's commandments...
indulgences, financial substitutes for penance, and such like..."

There was also the matter of payment to the Church of mortuaries- -dues payable
upon death. When a person died, one or another clerical organization had the right to bury
him and collect the mortuary payment. Ordinarily this would be the local parish, which
would collect funeral dues from the surviving family after the funeral. However practices
varied in different clerical jurisdictions, and in some places the mortuary would take the
form of the Church appropriating the deceased's most valuable material possession. This
practice of mortuaries amounted to a gratuitous tax which enriched the clergy at the
expense of the laity.

The Church had also become rich due to feudal land holdings and other endowments
that had come into its possession. The Church's tax-free land holdings, are estimated to have
included as much as one-fifth to one-third of the area of Europe. Much of this wealth was
used for commendable purposes, building and maintenance of church buildings,
monasteries, hospitals, schools, and higher education institutions. However, by the end of
the Middle Ages, widespread abuse became common whereby the Church's endowments
came to be regarded as a source of private income for clerics and even lay-nobility
designated as "guardians" of Church properties. Witnessing monies and land that had been

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donated for the proper conduct of the Church, to help the poor, or to finance education or
medical care, used to finance lavish lifestyles for corrupt clerics or even laymen, promoted
a general cynicism and resentment. It should however be acknowledged that despite this
scandal, most of the Church's income continued to be applied to rightful purposes.

The fate of the medieval Greenland colonies provides a capsule vignette of the effect
abuse of indulgences and mortuaries could have. The Greenlanders had been evangelized
around AD 1000 by Lief Ericsson, who was converted to Christianity and made a
missionary by King Olaf Trygveson during a visit to Norway in 999. Nineteen year old Lief
returned to Greenland with several priests, and his mother, Tjodhild, built the first church
there at Brattahlid.

Eventually there were 16 churches in the Greenland colonies--12 in the Eastern

Settlement and four in the Western Settlement. The Cathedral at Sandness, whose
foundation still remains, measured 80 feet by 60 feet. The bishop's residence was said to be
even larger.

However, by the mid-14th Century, the Greenland colonies had fallen on hard times,
partly because climate change was making already marginal conditions more difficult. As
well, nearly all of the colonies' 250-odd farms had become possessions of the Church
through payment of mortuaries and the sale of indulgences. The formerly independent,
landowning, Viking farmers were reduced to tenancy and serfdom.

In 1342, the entire population of the Western Settlement disappeared, leaving no

evidence of epidemic disease or violence. Their ships were gone, and it was speculated that
fed up with living in quasi-slavery in harsh conditions, they, "having given up all good
manners and true virtues, turned to the people of America." No conclusive trace of the lost
colonists has ever been found.

The last officiating Greenland bishop died in 1383, but a large wedding with guests
from Iceland took place in 1408, and two papal letters mention church services there in
1418. A great naval attack by native Eskimos, which killed hundreds and destroyed homes
and churches, struck the Greenland colony's deathblow that same year.

Along with a corrupt clergy, another factor that increased the burgeoning of doubt
and undermined Church authority was the assault on traditional certitudes resulting from
new scientific discovery and speculation, as well as a vastly expanded geographical context
that came with New World discovery. Things were shown to be not what they had so long
dependably seemed, and this greatly disturbed the equilibrium of Christendom. Rapid
expansion of material knowledge upset long-fixed traditions of thought about the nature of
the universe. The now-familiar tension and conflict between science and religion began in
earnest with the Renaissance spirit.

Without doubt the most revolutionary technological development of the late Middle
Ages was Johann Gutenburg's printing press (c. 1452), which facilitated radically more
efficient, rapid, and general communication of information--both true and false--than had
ever existed before in history. Techno-prophet and conservative Catholic Marshall
McLuhan, most of whose self-perceived fans never bothered to find out what he really had
to say, argued that the balance of human senses had been disrupted by the "bombshell" of a
phonetic alphabet in the 4th Century BC, and even more so by the "H-bomb" of movable
type in the 15th Century. McLuhan believed that "Print gave tribal man an eye for an ear,"
making the visual sense paramount over the other four senses. This, he protested, led to an

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unhealthy obsession with specialization, and a fragmentation of peoples and cultures that
was manifested in such phenomena as the Protestant Reformation, the concept of the
nation-state, the rise of bureaucracy, and the ascendancy of the "expert." McLuhan's
famous observation that "The medium is the message," which became a misappropriated
buzz-phrase of the baby- boomer generation, actually meant that any communications
medium creates a particular mental environment of its own that in turn colours how people
it touches perceive and experience the world. Printing, for instance, would engender the
concept that only documented knowledge is reliable and trustworthy, making tradition,
including the traditional authority of the Church, suspect. This idea would become
incorporated with the sola scriptura doctrine of the Reformation.

In reaction to their eroding moral authority, the clergy struck back, often brutally,
using threats and acts of force to impose order on an increasingly restive laity. Not only
heresy and rebellion, but even complaints expressed about clerical excesses were met with
harsher and more frequent punishments. The ancient practice of burning people alive was
revived with a vengeance, enlarging the quotient of fear and resentment of the Church and
its "reign of terror" at the end of the Middle Ages.

The Hundred Years War in France and the War of the Roses in England both
contributed to the social and spiritual ferment of the pre-Renaissance period, but the most
shattering cataclysm of all was the Black Death--Bubonic Plague--which tore into Europe
via Mediterranean ports in 1348 and killed at least a third of Western Christendom--25
million people--within the span of two hideous years, throwing its economies into chaos.
The ranks of the clergy were decimated, making it necessary to ordain many poorly
educated or otherwise inadequate priests. This state of affairs also opened Church offices to
those who sought them as a means to achieve personal gain and power, with subsequent
disastrous consequences.

In many respects, Christian civilization, which had arguably reached its zenith in the
High Middle Ages during the 11th, 12th, and 13th Centuries, never fully recovered from the
Black Death's ravages. The modern era hadn't quite begun, but it was waiting in the wings,
poised to burst onto the stage of history and steal the show. Meanwhile the English
Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, and the German Peasants' Revolt some 150
years later that was so brutally put down with the blessing of Martin Luther,19 bore witness
to the lingering economic effects of wars, plague and late medieval corrupt mismanagement
of affairs both spiritual and temporal.

The Renaissance period is consensually deemed to have marked the end of the
Middle Ages, the burgeoning of modernism, the decline of traditional Catholic religion as
the dominant Western socio-political force, and the rise of the secular nation-state as a
political paradigm. In this new conception of the world, focus shifted from the general
destiny and unity of all Christendom, to the earthly progress of particular states, each of
which should enjoy sovereign independence to make laws applying to its citizens without
interference or sanction from any higher moral power. The time-honoured unity of Empire
and Papacy, with all of Christendom operating under one civil authority acting in synergy
with a central religious authority over spiritual matters, was discarded. Politics began to be
regarded in secular terms--recognizing no higher law than the temporal welfare of the
particular state and its citizens, to wit: "separation of Church and state." The future plagues
of state bureaucracy and the confiscatory taxation necessary to pay for it also gained a
foothold during the Renaissance. Niccolo Machiavelli more or less invented and defined
modern, pragmatic, power politics in his famous 1513 work "The Prince."

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 During the Renaissance, humanism began to displace classical philosophy and
disciplined medieval scholasticism. Voltaire considered the Renaissance to be a crucial
watershed in the alleged liberation of the human mind from superstition and error, which he
identified with Christianity. Sir Thomas More, who ironically was to become a sainted
Roman Catholic martyr, foreshadowed socialist folly in his work, "Utopia,", in which he
prescribed a classless, communal society, without Christianity, and guided solely by human
reason. Nineteenth Century French historian Jules Michelet maintained that the
Renaissance marked a true rebirth of the human spirit, which was a precondition for all of
the great achievements of modernity, characterized by the rise of the individual, scientific
inquiry and geographical exploration, and the growth of secular values. In the eyes of these
humanists, medieval society was a period of unrelieved darkness--a point Christian admirers
of Catholic society and culture hotly dispute.

In Christian terms, Renaissance "rebirth" was nothing other than a renovation of the
human hubris that led to man's expulsion from Eden. To humanists, only human values are
significant, and a culture of humanism is essentially hostile to Christian humility and
reverence for the supernatural. The Renaissance humanists were profoundly convinced that
society and its requirements had "outgrown" older modes of thought. The Renaissance was
characterized by a rise in sexual immorality, and widespread interest in the occult, magic,
and astrology. In religion, the durable old Gnostic and Manichean heresies--never entirely
stamped out--once again reared their ugly heads.

The humanist virus also infected the world of Renaissance art. "In old times," wrote
John Ruskin, "men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times
they used the objects of faith to show their powers of painting. The distinction is enormous,
the difference as incalculable as irreconcilable." Medieval Christian painters had
consecrated their art to the service of Catholic religion. Humanist painters used their
mistresses as models for the Madonna, and exploited sacred subjects to demonstrate their
mastery of technique.

Ruskin believed that post-medieval architecture expressed the worst characteristics

of pagan pride and ignorance, a "blank, hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency." What he would
think of today's Bauhaus monstrosities and suburban kitsch boggles the imagination.

"Something very beautiful passed out of the world at the Renaissance," writes Sir
Arnold Lunn, "the beauty which was not the monopoly of class or clique, but which found
expression in the common things of common men, in the peasant's hut no less than the
palace..."20

We only need compare the architectural glory of, say, 14th Century Venice, with
Blake's "dark satanic mills" of the Industrial Revolution, the hellish no-man's-land of
post-modern U.S. inner-city urban decay, or the cancerous strip-mall sprawl blighting the
outskirts of nearly every North American city and town, to grasp what Ruskin and Lunn
were getting at.

"The standard to which Ruskin appealed was ethical rather than aesthetic," notes
Lunn. "The good produced the beautiful, but he was interested in the beautiful mainly
because it was a reflection of the good. [Pre-Renaissance] architecture was nobler because
it enshrined a nobler ideal."21

Unfortunately, as discussed above, the Roman Catholic Church found itself

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weakened by internal strife and ill-prepared, just at the time it needed to combat the tide of
humanism, neo-paganism, and budding liberalism that swept over Europe during the
Renaissance. Not least among these problems was the Great Papal Schism referred to
briefly earlier in this chapter, which began after the death of Pope Gregory XI in March,
1378. Rome was determined that the papacy, which had been ensconced at Avignon and
dominated by the French Crown for 70 years, must return to Rome with the election of the
new pope. A somewhat rowdy papal conclave was strongly lobbied by crowds outside to
elect a Roman, or at least an Italian pope. A Neapolitan priest who took the name Urban VI
was chosen, a disastrous mistake as it turned out. Urban proved to be bullheaded, arbitrary,
and ruthless when opposed or questioned. He launched a campaign to drastically reduce the
power of the cardinals, who had been virtual co-rulers with the Avignon popes.

Under French influence, a majority of cardinals gradually withdrew from the papal
court. In a meeting at Anagni the cardinals declared Urban's election null and void because,
they alleged, they had elected him under extreme duress from the Roman mobs. A second
pope, Cardinal Robert of Geneva who became Clement VII, was elected. Urban VI did not
step down willingly, and Clement VII was obliged to exercise his reign from Avignon. Thus
began nearly four decades of division in the Church along national, political, and religious
lines between two lines of papal claimants: the Roman succession of Urban VI, Boniface
IX, Innocent VII, and Gregory XII, and the Avignon line of Clement VII and Benedict XIII.

After decades of wrangling and fruitless negotiations, the cardinals finally called the
Council of Pisa in 1409, which deposed both Gregory XII and Benedict XIII and then
elected yet another pope, Alexander V (who was succeeded shortly afterward by the
medieval John XXIII). The Pisan popes received the support of most of Latin Christendom,
but the papal schism continued until the Council of Constance (1414-18) removed all three
papal claimants and on Nov. 11, 1417 elected one new pope, Martin V, who was finally
accepted by almost everyone. However, the papal battles were not quite over yet. Another
schism emerged at the Council of Basel (1431-49) which elected "Antipope" Felix V.
Happily, Felix abdicated in 1449, and the unified papacy was at long last restored.

However, the prestige and authority of Rome, and the Catholic Church in general,
had been disastrously diminished in 39 years of internal strife. By the 15th Century the
fractured papacy had surrendered most of its control of the Church to the French and
Spanish monarchies. The fact that reforms were needed to address corruption became
obvious, and various agendas for reorganizing the ecclesiastical hierarchy had been debated
at the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418, but none gained majority support, so none
were implemented at that time, with disastrous consequences.

Some popes of the post-schism, post-conciliar period, notably Nicholas V

(1447-1455) and Pius II (1458-1464) were learned, devout, Christian men and worthy
leaders of Christ's Church, but others were interested mainly in political life, furtherance of
their families' interests, and collection of revenue. Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borja--father
of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, by his mistress, Vanozza dei Cattanei) ascended to the papal
throne by means of bribery, blackmail, and other chicanery, and his reign was characterized
by a descent into decadence that included oral readings of pornographic literature in the
papal library. This perversion of the papacy resulted in deteriorating clerical discipline and
morale, and flourishing heresies, making conditions ripe for the most successful of all
heresies--Protestantism--to make its bow.

Julius II, the "soldier-pope," was enthroned in October 1503, and attempted to
institute reforms during his decade of tenure, but was more interested in consolidating the

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papacy's eroding political influence. Giovanni de Medici (Leo X) of Florence (second son of
Florentine commercial magnate Lorenzo "The Magnificent" de Medici) followed Julius II in
1513--a genuinely popular choice for pope despite the fact that he was only a 38 year old
deacon who had not been ordained at the time of his election. However, virtually
continuous wars, endless political intrigues, and Leo X's personal admiration for the Borgias
and his desire to emulate their empire-building ambitions undermined his half-hearted
Church reform initiatives.

Despite the advanced degree of apostasy and/or perfunctory concern for spiritual
matters at the highest levels of the Church, there remained a remnant of spiritually
discerning and morally upright clerics, who watched with growing dismay as the cancerous
deterioration continued. Among these was a German Augustinian monk and university
professor named Martin Luther.

Humanism began to displace Scholasticism as the dominant philosophy of Western

Europe during the 15th Century. Christian humanists like Desiderius Erasmus of Holland,
John Colet of England, and others, anticipated the Reformation in their tendency to study
the Bible directly, ignoring medieval commentaries, and in their application of "new
learning" critical methods to New Testament study. Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla
criticized Bible translations other documents that supported Church dogma and tradition.
However, despite their flirtations with heresy, the Renaissance Christian humanists
continued to regard themselves as good Catholics. Erasmus, for instance, refused to throw
in his lot with Martin Luther.

Proto-Reform heretical movements led by John Wycliffe (the Lollards in England)

and Jan Hus or "John Huss" (the Hussites in Bohemia) cropped up during the 14th and 15th
centuries The execution of Huss as a heretic in 1415 initiated the Hussite Wars, a violent
Bohemian nationalist rebellion, stamped out only with difficulty by the combined armies of
the Holy Roman emperor and the Pope. The Hussite wars anticipated post-Reformation
religious civil war (the Peasant's Revolt) in Germany and their residual influence played a
significant role in the Reformation later on.

Wycliffe, (c.1330-1384) who was for a time Master of Balliol College at Oxford
University, launched a series of forceful attacks on Catholic Practice and doctrine in the
late 14th Century. In 1379, Wycliffe wrote: "All men are tenants-in-chief under God, and
hold from him all that they are and possess; the Pope claims to be our mesne-lord, and to
interfere between us and our divine suzerain, and therein he grievously errs."22 Wycliffe
believed that the sacramental power of the priesthood was an illusion, and anticipated
Protestant liberalism in his belief that reason and conscience are wholly adequate guides for
the self-directed soul, asserting that the State must act as guardian over the Church, that the
Church should be under secular power in each country, and that the papacy should be
eliminated. "After Urban VI," declared Wycliffe in 1382, "no one ought to be received as
Pope, but men should live, after the manner of the Greek Church, under their own laws."
Wycliffe was mistaken about the Orthodox Church, but his writings and statements did
make him one of the principal authors of the Protestant Reformation. King Richard of
England's Queen, Anne of Bohemia, was a Wycliffe sympathizer, and sent his pamphlets
home to Bohemia where they influenced Jan Hus, who in turn inspired Martin Luther.

It must also be noted, however, that devout, orthodox, Christian voices also
remained within the Church during the Renaissance, such as Girolomo Savonarola
(1452-1498), Thomas Kempis (c. 1380-1471), Francisco Xemenes de Cisneros

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(1435-1517), the "small-r" reformer Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1470-?) and countless others
whose names are now forgotten but who kept the Faith alive through the bad papacies.

Chapter 4: THE END OF CATHOLIC CULTURE

The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the French Revolution that followed them,
ended medieval Catholic culture in Western Europe and launched the era of modern
liberalization. The Reformation's repudiation of central spiritual and moral authority made
Christian faith, as it had been understood by the Church for a millennium and a half,
virtually impossible. Conviction was substituted for faith, establishing an environment in
which everyone was free to interpret truth on the basis of subjective understanding and
conscience, thereby paving the way for ideological plagues like liberal moral relativism,
logical positivism, and situational ethics.

Not that the founding Reformers had abandoned all of the orthodox doctrines of the
Church that had united Christendom for over 1,500 years. The proto-Protestants continued
to affirm the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ; the immortality of the
soul and the eternity of blessedness (or its polar opposite) after death. The essential
definition of faith as certitude in things not demonstrable by direct experience or deductive
proof remained. However it remained in increasingly fragmented groups, rather than as a
universal affirmation, held commonly throughout Christendom, taken for granted as the
central governing influence in everyone's life. There was now such a diversity of doctrinal
emphasis and moral affirmation that no common consensual norm could be applied to all of
our civilization. With no common moral bond, moral authority, or unified Sacramental
expression in a single liturgy, Christendom was severely weakened. The loss of Christian
unity vastly diminished Christian capacity for coordinated resistance to the sustained
assaults of spiritual evil--a state of affairs that has become woefully obvious in the last third
of the 20th-Century as what is left of Christian civilization slides ever deeper into an abyss
of moral depravity.

Francis Schaeffer noted: "The [post-Reformation] freedom that once was founded on
a biblical consensus and a Christian ethos has now become autonomous freedom, cut loose
from all constraints. Here we have the world spirit of our age--autonomous Man setting
himself up as God, in defiance of the knowledge and the moral and spiritual truth which
God has given....

"As evangelical, Bible-believing Christians we have not done well in understanding

this.... Very few have taken a strong stand against the world spirit of this age as it destroys
our culture."23

Differences in religion are the root of differences in culture, religion being the main
determining element in the establishment of a civilization. The Catholic religion built
Western Christian civilization, and that culture cannot be sustained without Catholic
Christianity as its dominant moral compass. Since the Reformation, Christianity's influence
on Western culture has steadily declined, a phenomenon directly attributable to
Protestantism's demonstration that Church authority could be successfully challenged.
However, behind the assertion that authority should be thrown off lies the assumption that
freedom is a moral imperative--that what is not free absolutely and always ought to be free,
and that limits on freedom of any sort are intrinsically evil. Unfortunately, the effect of
doing away with anything and everything that inhibits or restrains personal autonomy is in
fact a direct and deliberate rebellion against God and His law. Freedom without form, order,
or limits amounts to chaos, and inevitably leads to the breakdown of society and

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civilization.

Rejection of authority and tradition led predictably and inexorably to the cultural
embrace of modernity and secularization. The ascendancy of reductionist science, the
Industrial Revolution, and the philosophical Enlightenment were all enabled and
empowered by the Protestant Reformation. Questioning the beneficial goodness of these
developments seems peculiar--even bizarre--to most modern minds, but historians of the
future will be able to evaluate their consequences more objectively, given adequate time
remaining to do so. The fact that we have taken what was a perfectly good planet for people
to live on, and within an interval of 100 years or so turned it into a polluted cesspool that
may not sustain human life much longer--a direct result of scientific and industrial
activity--may provide the ultimate and definitive judgment.

Westerners in general and Protestants in particular tend to reflexively equate

Christian virtue with progress, utilitarianism, and even material prosperity, a topic I will
discuss more comprehensively in another chapter. This is one reason why monasticism has
never made more than a peripheral impact in North America and is now in severe decline in
Europe as well. The materialist assumptions of post-Enlightenment liberalism deem
monasticism to be "useless." It has no immediately tangible social, political, or material
benefit. It produces nothing "real." In Protestantism, especially North American
Protestantism, material prosperity and social progress are assumed to be the inevitable fruits
of Christian living. Western Christians in general have been conditioned to expect that
Christianity will produce positive social results in a utilitarian sense. They want their faith to
accomplish something economic or political that people can see. Such results are not
necessarily wrong or undesirable, but they should not be the main objective of Christianity
whose primary mission is the salvation of souls, not material prosperity and social reform.

The late Canadian philosopher George Grant astutely defined liberalism as an

essentially anti-ecological creed: "The idea that man's essence is freedom and that what
chiefly concerns man in this life is to shape the world as we want it."24 Grant also argued
that by aspiring to transcend "the human condition" and establish Heaven on Earth through
application of technological means, post-Enlightenment liberals and leftists destroyed the
intellectual and social conditions necessary for wisdom, heroism, and productive work. He
noted that all "local cultures" were in danger of being swept away by a pan-global economic
technocracy, as liberal humanist intellectuals everywhere pursued their agenda of tearing
decent, but formally less educated, people away from their attachment to religion.

Grant believed that western Christendom was doomed, not merely compromised, by
the fact that its theologians from at least the 11th century on have downplayed the mystical
and over-emphasized rationality and intellect in their approach to God. He blamed these
man- centred theologies for the rise of the scientism and industrialization that he believed
were destroying civilization, arguing that many church leaders "don't seem to be aware of
how deeply the principles of modernity... make the believing of Christianity an
impossibility, and that these principles have to be shown to be false."25 George Grant hoped
for a religious revival that would re-establish "the idea of limits... the necessity of knowing
in advance that there are things one will never do, things that one can know would be wrong
at all times and all places.... God is that which we cannot manipulate. He is the limit of our
right to change the world. In the recognition of limits the idea of law in some form must
once again become real for us." Pre-Reformation Catholic culture in the West understood
the crucial need for limits, but Protestantism's demand for individual moral freedom and
rejection of authority quickly obscured that understanding in Western popular culture.

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 So what was Medieval Catholic culture really like? There is a received and seldom-
examined assumption in our time that humanity has progressed from the alleged tyranny,
oppression, and feudal servitude of the Middle Ages, through the great awakening of
humanistic consciousness in the philosophical Enlightenment, to arrive in a brave new world
of liberal democratic social justice. This facile and prejudiced view is false. The feudal
system itself conferred numerous rights on the peasant classes, and was established in part
as a reaction to the tyranny of the Roman Empire in its last days. The Medieval peasantry
was exempt from military conscription. The peasant class was highly valued by Christian
society, and in exchange for their work peasants were granted freedom (slavery disappeared
in France in the 9th Century) and tenured quasi-ownership of their land. Low land taxes and
generally fair contracts between feudal landlords and peasant farmers arguably resulted in a
more equitable division of property than exists in Europe today.

Landlords seldom sought to be hands-on administrators of their holdings, and local

parishes as a rule were governed semi-autonomously by council assemblies presided over by
the local priest which elected stewards to one year terms. These stewards, acting on behalf
of the landlord, made virtually all the practical, day to day decisions pertaining to
administration of forest lands, waterways, roads, bridges, commons, and public buildings.
The Reformation-facilitated Industrial Revolution transformed the guildsman and free
peasant classes from being essentially self-governing proprietors who owned their own tools
and worked out of their own homes for their own profit in organic local economies, into
wage-slaves subject to increasingly remote and centralized governments, working for
faceless corporations--a state of affairs that still obtains today.

According to French historian Raymond Delatouche, post-modern Europe is doomed

because it has rejected the feudal system of small peasant farmers, along with the Christian
Faith that built Western civilization. Delatouche observes that the post Industrial Revolution
West is the "only civilization which is not based on peasantry," and the only one which in
fact assumes that the mark of a truly developed society is the disappearance of small
farmers. Delatouche believes that while an agricultural peasantry is the "irreplaceable
foundation of any society," the industrial and technological revolutions are "only gigantic
fireworks," with an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels used to produce more and more
useless and destructive consumer products which serve mainly to create an artificial
environment that isolates people from nature and God, and a profit-based economic
structure that cares nothing for God or nature.26

Medieval culture was largely illiterate, with perhaps only one of three people at the
beginning of the 16th Century being able to read or write. Four hundred years earlier, in the
High Medieval period, even great kings and nobles were unable to sign their names. Prior to
the invention of the printing press, illiteracy was no great inconvenience or impediment to
success in life. Until the late 15th Century, all books had been laboriously produced
manuscripts, available to only the very rich, or to scholars and clerics with access to
institutional libraries. Consequently, whatever ideas the vast majority of people had about
God had been transmitted aurally, and it was through preaching rather than reading that the
Gospel was heard. This fact makes Protestant complaints that the Roman Catholic Church
"kept the Bible from its people" ring hollow. Except for at the very eve of the Reformation,
no mechanisms had existed to put the Bible into the hands of the masses. However,
contrary to present-day popular misconception, once printing came on stream in the mid
15th Century, many vernacular editions of the Bible were printed in Catholic Europe, in
Italian, Spanish, French and German, but significantly--none in English.27 Other religious
books also were published, including prayer books, guides to spiritual life, and manuals for

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parents in instructing their children in the faith.28

Feudalism was a complicated system of personal, economic, and legal relationships

involving the control and use of land and military power. Sovereignty was decentralized and
divided among powerful, land-holding nobles who maintained their dominance with private
armies. Usually these tenured estates were not actually owned by the local lord or seignior,
but were part of a higher noble's holdings assigned at the pleasure of the monarch. Likewise,
peasants did not usually own the land they cultivated, but held it from the local seignior.
Feudal society was held together by a consensus that every man had a place in the scheme
of things with fixed duties inherited at birth which would be passed on to his descendants.
Everyone was bound by rules, custom, and tradition in which it was taken for granted that
each member of society owed it certain dues, but was in return guaranteed subsistence for
himself and his family. Peasants could not be detached from the land they worked, and
retained their tenure even if the land passed from one lord to another. This system created a
static, steady-state society, organized around rules that provided a strong framework for the
preservation of the character of the whole. This social stability was founded and sustained
on universally accepted religion whose liturgy and philosophy explained the essential nature
of life, death, and most importantly, man's relationship to God and eternity.

Virtually everyone in medieval Europe believed that the universe was created by
God; that humans were distinct form other categories of living creatures by virtue of
uniquely possessing an immortal soul; that death was just a transitionary stage in human
existence; that after death man was intended by his Creator to live in perfect happiness in
the Holy City, in the Light of God's immediate presence; that the divine plan had been
disrupted by the first man's act of disobedience, which precipitated the Fall from grace; that
consequently by his own doing man had destroyed the harmony of God's plan, and wrecked
his chances for happiness beyond the grave; that happily, God in His divine mercy had
intervened by becoming a man with the same nature as the Creator, who offered Himself as
an infinite Sacrifice for the atonement of human sin, thus restoring the prospect of Paradise.
These points were all but universally affirmed by everyone from the most powerful
monarch to the most common serf.

Medieval European society was centred on a consensus of Christian principles that

defined what was right and wrong, what was done and what was not. All human activities
were conducted on the understanding that they were acceptable to God, from which derived
the Medieval ethic of service. Feudal landlords and their tenants shared a complex
relationship bounded my mutual obligations.

The first part of the European Middle Ages was unambiguously rural in
temperament--a world of agricultural peasants, country-bred warrior lords, and landed
monasteries. Nevertheless, the dominant influence of bishops and monks ensured that it was
a cultured rurality, with great architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature and oratory,
and central to it all the Catholic Faith. Medieval agriculture was of a truly sustainable
nature, leaving the land more fertile than it had been, in contrast to the prodigal soil
degradation and poisoning with chemicals that obtains today. One tenth of the crop, a tithe,
was given to the Church, the proceeds of which were intended to support charity and
cultural development.

On the other hand, our modern liberal sensibilities are affronted by the fact that
dissidents and non-conformists of any sort were treated very harshly. However, it must be
acknowledged that this (to our late 20th Century liberally conditioned minds--cruel)

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intolerance of non-conformity obtained in post-Reformation Protestant culture as well.

Medieval European life, even in the troubled late period, was structured around the
Church calendar and its system of fasts and feasts, of which the greatest was the Lenten
period followed by Easter. Medieval Catholic religion was not merely the private affair of
individuals relating to their Creator, but the central reality in a culture where there was one
religion professed by all in society, and in which everyone, at least outwardly confessed
devotion to it. The Catholic religion thus dominated every aspect of medieval life: family,
work, business, art, social life, and entertainment. It was, in a comprehensive sense, a
Christian society in the way that no major society has been since.

It is probable that much late medieval preaching and pastoral teaching, especially
after the Black Death had decimated the ranks of the clergy, was not of very high quality,
as many priests were poorly educated themselves. Indications are that in many areas of
Europe, Catholics only received Holy Communion once yearly during the late medieval
period. This was in contrast to the earlier Middle Ages when Mass was conducted every
Sunday and on 30 or so other Holy Days each year, and failure to participate was
considered a serious sin. Priests were not permitted to marry dating from the 12th Century
in Roman Catholic society. However, by the late medieval period many Catholic clerics,
especially in rural areas, openly cohabited with women, weakening the Church's reputation
and moral authority.

Poor instruction, perfunctory participation in the Sacramental life of the Church,

moral corruption in the clergy, and an illiterate, bookless laity, all doubtless contributed to
the rise of widespread superstition, belief in witches with resultant cruel atrocities, cults of
saints and relics, the infamous abuse of indulgences, and other caricatures of Christianity
that helped fan the flames of reformist sentiment. However, it also must be well noted that
the superstitious hysteria about witches reached its bloody peak in countries dominated by
Calvinistic branches of Protestantism after the Reformation. The very late medieval period
also ushered in the Spanish Inquisition (in 1478), which put the ecclesiastical institution of
the Church Court, whose true objective was not punishment, but rather conversion or
restoration of the sinner to a state of grace, under the control of the state, where, as nearly
everyone is aware, it was horribly abused to a legendary degree--a topic deserving of a book
of its own.

The Middle Ages were thus a time of sharp contrasts and contradictions. However, it
can be convincingly argued that on the balance the medieval system of guilds and freehold
peasantry far better expressed the essential Christian belief in the infinite worth of every
human soul than does industrialism and technocracy. The sort of democracy that has
developed under capitalism and socialism (state capitalism) has actually widened the gulf
between economic classes. Despite the hierarchical stratification of medieval society, hard
boundaries of social division between rich and poor didn't exist. Catholic feudalism had
gradually transformed slaves (who made up two-thirds to three-quarters of humanity at the
time of Christ) into serfs, serfs into peasants, and peasants into peasant proprietors over 14
Christian centuries, but that process ground to a halt with the Renaissance.

The very early Christians would not have been able to conceive of any other socio-
economic structure than slavery. However, through gradual spiritual awakening, the
Christian Church first promoted laws making slavery more humane, and then eliminated it
entirely from Christian societies. It was difficult for a baptized Christian to regard another
baptized Christian as a chattel.

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 It was a slow process, but the slave of early Christian Europe, where people could be
bought and sold as a commodity, was transformed into the free peasant of medieval times.
The intermediate stage of serfdom involved obligations of labour, but also freedom to hold
property and hereditary rights. No explicit process brought about this transformation, but
rather a common, universal religion confessed by people of all social ranks, which made it
more and more impossible to "buy and sell Christian men." The frequent forcible breakup of
families in the slave trade was neither consonant with nor defensible under the Christian
ethic. Unfortunately, slavery returned with a vengeance after the 16th Century colonization
of the New World, and again, somewhat more subtly, as Catholic Culture gave way to
post-Reformation industrialism, and the guildsman who owned his own tools and worked
out of his own home was transformed into the wage slave toiling in machine age
factories--the "dark satanic mills" described by William Blake in his poem, "Jerusalem."
The filthy, pestilence-ridden sweatshops of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th Centuries are
gone now, at least in the liberal West, but wage-slavery remains the economic paradigm for
most people. In the late 20th Century, slavery has taken on the insidious form of servitude
to material appetites, which keep most people, even in the prosperous West, chained to a
treadmill of acquisition and debt. It is interesting to observe that in the Middle Ages, usury
was illegal. It is not at all fanciful to imagine that as the last vestiges of Christian restraint
crumble away in the post- Christian West, we will see the return of undisguised slavery.

In contrast to the caricature of feudal oppression, servitude, poverty, drudgery,

disease, famine, and superstition and most people today associate with the Middle Ages, the
stable civilization and Catholic Culture of pre-Reformation Europe allowed merchants and
the artisans considerable freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary demands for
services or taxes, and protection from marauders. These conditions prevailed in medieval
towns where merchants and tradesmen organized their guilds as voluntary commonwealths
of mutual help and solidarity that helped secure from the landed aristocracy the freedoms
they needed. The guilds monopolized their occupations and trained apprentices and
journeymen. The rule and spirit of the Guild forbade accumulation of wealth by the few.
Apprentices were subject to their masters, but earned the right to become masters
themselves in turn. Some guildsmen became as wealthy as the great landed lords, and some
lords built town houses, where they spent part of the year. Most townspeople, however,
were little better off materially than country people, and many were as dependent
economically on their employers as villagers were on their lords. However, townspeople did
have greater legal freedom.

In country or town, the feudal system was not based on materialistic greed, as both
the modern socialist and capitalist systems are, but rather upon the belief that "the earth is
the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Nationalism had yet to rear its ugly head. Individuals'
loyalties were their families and local communities, to their immediate feudal lords, to
higher temporal lords on up through the feudal hierarchy, and ultimately to God. Even the
feudal absolute monarchs perceived their possession of kingdoms as a tenancy under God,
the true Owner. There was no place in the feudal concept of government for ownership
without responsibility, and no place for the modern notion of the nation-state as a mutual-
benefit trust. Mutual benefit statism implies possession of "rights," a particular obsession of
our post-Christian era, but Christian Feudalism recognized only duties towards God, and
under God, towards men--whether one was a serf or a noble, a vassal or a prince. It was a
system based on faith in God, rather than in money and power.

The High Middle Ages saw a flowering of culture. "It was that moment in which the
Catholic culture came, in the civic sense of the word `culture,' to maturity...," wrote the

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great mid- 20th Century Anglo-French historian and Roman Catholic apologist Hilaire
Belloc, "Never had we had such a well-founded society before, never have we since had
any society so well founded or so much concerned with justice. A proof, if proof were
needed, of the greatness of that time is the scale of the chief public characters...: St. Louis
the King, St. Ferdinand of Castile, St. Dominic and St. Francis, with their new orders of
friars; Edward I of England; and in philosophy, which determines all, the towering name of
St. Thomas Aquinas."29 The early Medieval period was a time of establishment of great
political and social institutions such as Parliaments and Universities, as well as major
advances in architecture, art, and literature. It was also a time of social emancipation,
marked by developments such as the Magna Carta in England. especially with the Christian
family paradigm coming under sustained attack.

In "Now I See," Sir Arnold Lunn draws the reader's attention to three particular
paintings representing families during three phases in the history of Europe: Medieval
Catholic Christendom; post-Reformation Calvinist Puritanism; and 19th-Century bourgeois
modernism. The first painting described by Lunn is the Memling triptych of St. Christopher
at Bruges. In the central panel is the commissioner of the painting, Burgomaster Morel,
surrounded by his sons and his patron saint. In the right panel, his wife appears with her
eleven daughters and her patron saint. "The whole picture is haunted by a strong faith in the
supernatural," writes Lunn, "...and there is not one unhappy face in either group. And note
as a sure sign of a superstitious age, that this great leader of commerce chose to be painted
on his knees."

The second family is in a painting by Michael Schwerz. "If the first group symbolizes
the happiness of Catholic supernaturalism," observes Lunn, "this study of a Calvinistic
family shows the effect of supernaturalism gone sour. Note the cold cruel compressed lips
of the mother, and the smug satisfaction on the face of the eldest daughter. Even the baby
looks as if it had a vocation in Puritanism. The most human figure is the father, a pathetic
creature with a hint in his eyes of suppressed revolt against the sour Puritanism of his wife."

The third group Lunn describes is in Romney's study of the Beaumont family. "In the
interval, he writes, "Calvinism had gone the way of Catholicism. Religion only survived as a
ceremonial background.... Look at the two young men on the left, one of them is admiring
with satisfaction his own portrait... No reliance on saints here for protection. If good
breeding, good looks, good health, and a good income were all that a man needs, the
Beaumont family represent the crown of an evolutionary process which begins with
Burgomaster Morel on his knees and ends with Mssrs. Beaumont standing firmly on their
well-shod feet. Try to introduce a saint into the Beaumont group. The effect would be as
incongruous as that produced by those modern stunt paintings of Apostles in lounge
suits."30

Chapter 5: THE SPIRIT OF SKEPTICISM

Protestantism's inherent spirit of skepticism, beginning with the statement: "I deny
the authority of the Church; everyone must examine the credibility of every doctrine for
himself," originally fell back on the prop of Scriptural authority. However, that
retrenchment could not withstand the tide of liberal skepticism that the Reformers loosed on
the world. Christian appeal to Scripture as the sole authority (sola scriptura) begged the
question of New Testament canonicity. The present canon of 27 New Testament books was
not finally accepted until the third Council of Carthage around A.D. 397. It should never be
forgotten that the Scriptures referred to by St. Paul as being inspired by God (2 Timothy

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3:16) are the Hebrew texts--the OLD Testament. The New Testament was not available to
the very early Church because it had not been written yet. However the Church survived,
grew, and thrived somehow without New Testament Scriptural authority. For first-century
Christians, the idea of the Church and the Bible as distinct and separate Revelation would
seem a very odd notion indeed.

There were indeed writings that the early Church preserved and distributed for
instruction and encouragement in the faith, but it took several hundreds of years before
these documents were critically evaluated and a very small proportion of them accorded
special value as inspired and authoritative Holy Scripture. For instance there were more
than 50 different records or alleged records of the life and teachings of Jesus, of which just
four made it into the canon. This collection of documents cannot legitimately be considered
the primary authority of the early Christian Church. That authority resided in the Holy
Tradition of the Apostles embodied in the visible Church.

The same Church fathers who established Orthodox/Catholic credal doctrines of the
Holy Trinity and Christ's Incarnation also determined (c. A.D. 350-397) which books would
be included in the New Testament. Were they were right about the Bible and wrong about
doctrine? As Frank Schaeffer observes: "The monopoly of truth [Protestants] affirm, the
Scriptures for instance, only exists because they were preserved by the Church through
history. And they were preserved because the Church kept a strict control of certain
nonnegotiable traditions, including its own tradition of what was or was not considered
Scripture."31

What became the Roman Catholic version of the Old Testament originated as a
translation of earlier Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, beginning in the 3rd Century BC among
Jewish communities in Egypt and elsewhere outside Palestine where there was demand for
Scriptures in the language of the local culture. By the time the Christian Bible began being
compiled, around the 1st Century AD, two distinct versions of Jewish Scripture existed: the
older Hebrew Bible and the Greek Old Testament--the Septuagint.

The early Christian Church recognized the additional books that appeared in the
Septuagint, and many writings of the early Church Fathers attest to this fact. However,
Martin Luther removed the books that did not appear in the Hebrew version of the Jewish
Scriptures and established them as the Apocrypha, which he suggested was useful for
edification but not establishment of doctrine. His stated rationale was a return to earlier and
presumably more accurate sources, but a secondary agenda was a repudiation of the
Church's canonical authority.

The Reformers, found the story in the Second Book of Maccabees about Judas
Maccabeus sending twelve thousand pieces of silver to Jerusalem to pay for sacrifice to be
made in atonement for the sins of those fallen in battle particularly objectionable, because it
was included in the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, which affirms: "Let none doubt
that it is a pious thought and a salutary one to pray that the dead may have their sins
remitted," which provided Old Testament authority for devotion to Requiems. The Introit
and Gradual for these Masses: "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat
es," ("Grant them O Lord, eternal rest and let light perpetual shine upon them") comes from
the Apocrypha as well.

The typical Protestant attitude toward Scripture is as if the Bible had suddenly been
discovered in a desert or fallen from the sky like manna from Heaven in the 16th Century. It
denies acknowledgment of those who suffered persecution and battled heresy to ensure that

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the Bible made it into the 16th Century intact, that is: the historical Church. Protestantism
essentially ripped the Bible out of the Church's hands and claimed it for itself, while
simultaneously denying the Church's Tradition, Sacraments, teachings, and Apostolic
legacy.

Incidentally I would encourage any of my Protestant readers who subscribe to the

myth that Roman Catholics do not esteem Scripture adequately, to carefully ponder the
following citation from the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second
Vatican Council: "The Sacred Scriptures contain the Word of God and, since they are
inspired, really are the Word of God.... This sacred Synod urges all the Christian faithful to
learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures the `excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ.'
`For ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.' Therefore that they should gladly
put themselves in touch with the sacred text itself.... And let them remember that prayer
should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture so that God and man may talk together;
for `we speak to Him when we pray; we hear Him when we read the Divine Saying."

Twentieth-Century Christians are blessed with unprecedented access to the Bible,

and that is a wonderful thing. However, it is wrong to regard the Holy Scriptures as
self-sufficient and self-interpreting. In Orthodox/Catholic understanding, the Bible is meant
to be read and interpreted within the context of the life of the Church, under the guidance
and illumination of the Holy Spirit. His work in the Church was not suspended after the first
century, to sit out the next fourteen centuries, and then resume in the sixteenth.

The Council of Trent's mandate was to restate clearly Catholic doctrine, with
particular regard to those points on which the Reformers had offered a new teaching. A
decree of April 1546 states that the first objective of the Council was to preserve, not to
restore "the purity of the Gospel," and to declare that the truth and the way of life revealed
by Jesus Christ "were contained both in written Scriptures and in the unwritten traditions,
which received by the Apostles from the lips of Christ had been handed on by them and so
come to us." Trent also declared that "to decide the true meaning and interpretation of the
Holy Scriptures is the business" of the Church.

The Orthodox Church teaches that while no other treasure of the Church's tradition
equals the Bible in value and authority, and that the Bible is the main source of patristic
theology, it considers the Bible to be a record of truth, but not truth itself, the truth itself
being God alone. Orthodox theologians affirm other records of the experience of God, EG:
the writings of the Church Fathers, liturgies and other sacred texts, and the decisions of the
Ecumenical Councils. This, they assert, rescues the Church from exclusive focus on the
Bible, and "thus guards Orthodox life from the error of idolatrous veneration of the text of
Scripture" or "bibliolatry."

The Orthodox Church believes that Sacred Tradition (which is defined as "the life of
the Holy Spirit in the Church") plays an important role in the interpretation of Scripture."
Scripture and Tradition belong together according to Orthodox teaching, and indeed the
Bible needs Sacred Tradition as the living interpreter of God's Word, just as Sacred
Tradition needs the Bible as its anchor and foundation. Fr. Kallistos Ware writes: "...we do
not read the Bible as isolated individuals, interpreting it solely by the light of our private
understanding.... We read it as members of the Church, in communion with all other
members throughout the ages. The final criterion for our interpretation of Scripture is the
mind of the Church. And this means keeping constantly in view how the meaning of
Scripture is explained and applied in Holy Tradition that is to say, how the Bible is

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understood by the Fathers and the saints, and how it is used in liturgical worship."32

The Reformers imagined that they could cherry-pick selected creeds and dogmas of
the ancient Church while ignoring the ecclesial structures that originally defined and
authorized them as Divinely revealed Truth--an approach that is neither logically consistent
nor convincing. If what the Church fathers established as doctrine and tradition in the seven
great oecumenical councils (AD 325-787) was provisional and mutable, what prevents us
from second-guessing them on what is or is not Scriptural? As Lutheran theologian Carl E.
Braaten argues: "A purely biblical dogmatics that claims to go straight to Scripture--
bypassing the question of the Church's authority in exegeting, interpreting, and transmitting
the beliefs of the community for which this book and none other is Holy Writ--is surely
self-deluded."33

That Scripture is authoritative is undisputed among Christians, but the Church is the
logical and proper primary interpreter of its revelation. Interpretation is not legitimately the
role of just anyone who picks the Bible up, reads a bit, and then decides what it means to
him, within whatever frame of reference he brings to the project. There is more than a little
residue of the ancient, but remarkably durable, Gnostic heresy in the too-frequent
Protestant presumption and acceptance that the "prophetic" insights of a single
individual--be he Calvin, Luther, or a modern-day TV evangelist--can blithely ignore or
even contradict the centuries of Church teaching and tradition that have gone before.

Indeed, Scripture must be interpreted, but the Apostolic tradition of the

Orthodox/Catholic Church is the God-appointed, permanent witness to the Scriptural
message, because the Church Herself belongs to that same revelation, being truly the Body
of Christ. Protestant belief in sola scriptura is not adequate. As the Council of Trent
(1545-1563) declared, tradition--that part of revelation not written down in Scripture, but
transmitted through the teaching of the Church--is of equal authority to the Bible.34

Surely Martin Luther never dreamed his teaching that every Christian could and
should establish his own relationship with Christ through reading and interpreting Scripture
for himself would eventually lead to the horror of Biblical "higher criticism," but once the
unified Christian Church's authority had been repudiated, nothing was beyond skepticism.
Textual criticism of the Bible that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was
utterly predictable in an ethos of skeptical free enquiry and the asserted sovereignty of
human reason. In this sense, Protestant Christianity was, as Hilaire Belloc declared, "auto-
toxic," carrying within it the germ of its own destruction.

Originally, all Protestant sects asserted that the Bible is the uniquely infallible source
of truth and authority, but respectively emphasized one or more self-interpreted text(s)
upon which to distinguish themselves from other Protestants. With no objective spiritual
discipline, no doctrinal unity, and in repudiating most of the Sacramental life of the
primitive undivided Church, there was nothing to inhibit Protestantism from continuing to
dissolve, ad infinitum, into ever more idiosyncratic fragments. Reductio ad absurdem.
Protestantism bears within its founding notion the process of endless disintegration through
perpetual reform; reformation upon Reformation. Reportedly, there are now in the
neighborhood of 25,000 Protestant denominations and sects worldwide. How under these
bizarre circumstances can Christ's voice be heard through this cacophony of voices, or
Christianity speak with anything approximating coherent authority?

A direct progression can be traced from the Reformers' initial attacks on the Church's

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authority to modern wholesale assaults on every substantive aspect of Christian Faith.
Christendom's modern adversaries won't be satisfied until the Church is obliterated as
anything more than an irrelevant, toothless shell. Liberal-humanism will not and cannot
tolerate the true Christian Gospel, and Christians are mistaken in the notion that they can
tolerate a cultural environment dominated by liberal humanism, without profoundly
compromising their Christian Faith. In Belloc's words: "We must attempt to destroy [the
modern attack on Christianity] as being the fully equipped and ardent enemy of the Faith by
which man lives. The duel is to the death."

Belloc's friend G.K. Chesterton wrote that "On a great map like the mind of Aquinas,
the mind of Luther would be almost invisible. But it is not altogether untrue to say, as so
many journalists have said without caring whether it was true or untrue, that Luther opened
an epoch; and began the modern world."35

Chapter 6: SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE REFORMATION

The salutary characteristics of Reformation theology and its secular spawn--socio-

economic liberalism, include hard work, frugality and individual self-reliance. Modern
materialism was developed around these principles, which favoured production over
consumption and the interests of the individual over that of the collective community. The
Protestant dogma of personal judgment advanced the concept of democratic governmental
systems based on representing the preference of a majority or a plurality of individual
voters. The destruction of the medieval system of authority removed traditional religious
restrictions on trade and banking--especially proscriptions against usury--which had
inhibited the development of modern capitalism.

Reformation theology, especially that of John Calvin, emphasized industriousness.

The famous "Protestant Work Ethic" terminology actually derives from a famous study by a
German Marxist economist, Max Weber, first published as "The Protestant Ethic and The
Spirit of Capitalism" in 1904/'05. Weber's thesis was picked up and expanded upon by
English economic historian R.H. Tawney who argued in his "Religion and the Rise of
Capitalism" (1922) that historical causation is not influenced solely by economic
considerations, and that the peculiarly Protestant (especially Calvinist) synergy of
asceticism and worldliness facilitated the rise of capitalistic productive efficiency. Weber
pointed out that while the necessary material and circumstantial factors that could have
accommodated the establishment of capitalist economic structures had existed in Hindu,
Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Judaic, and indeed Orthodox/Catholic societies; various
philosophical, religious, and ethical characteristics inherent to those traditions inhibited such
development. By contrast, post-Reformation Christian society provided just the right
conceptual soil in which the seed of capitalism could germinate and flourish.

Max Weber was the first to clearly identify and define the organic relationship
between the Reformation theological ethic and broader social and economic developments
such as capitalism and liberalism. He argued that the following characteristics of Reformed
theory led to the rise of capitalism: (a) the emphasis Luther and Calvin placed on the
Christian "calling" inclined people to work harder; (b) the Reformers' emphasis on frugality,
including a greater commitment to earning than consuming, encouraged accumulation of
capital for investment and business growth; (c) belief that success in one's temporal work
provided an indication and assurance that the individual Christian was living a well-ordered,
disciplined life; and (d) the commercial attitudes that inevitably evolved from these
assumptions. In turn, R.H. Tawney argued that Calvinist Puritanism was most "congenial to

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the world of business," and that it gave the "capitalist spirit" a "tonic."

During the more than 12 centuries in which Roman Catholicism had dominated the
spiritual and temporal affairs of Western civilization, economies grew at a glacial rate. In
this steady-state environment, people tended to work only as necessary to fulfill immediate
or short-term needs. Work was seen as something to be avoided entirely if possible by the
higher social classes, and best left to serfs, servants, and peasants. Nor did the latter
categories see anything innately virtuous about labour, and consequently they too did as
little as they could get away with.

Hilaire Belloc observes: "Under the old social philosophy which had governed the
Middle Ages, temporal, and therefore all economic, activities were referred to an eternal
standard. The production of wealth, its distribution and exchange, was regulated with a view
to securing a Christian life for Christian men. In two points especially was this felt: First in
securing the independence of the family, which can only be done by the wide distribution of
property, in other words the prevention of the growth of a proletariat; secondly in the close
connection between wealth and public function.... The artisan in the towns, organized in his
guild, had control over his own life and that of his family. He was not, as he has now
become, the economic subordinate of wealthier men. His relations with his apprentices were
organic and domestic, unlike the modern relation of mere mechanical contract between
laborer with the capitalist who exploits him....

"The society of Christendom, and especially of Western Christendom up to the

explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial
Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class or another, and
in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction
between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the
possessors, such as our society has become. It has become so through the action of the
Reformation, which was at the root of the whole change."36

The Calvinist Protestant idea that work for work's sake was innately virtuous
supplied a theological rationale for liberal economics and its paradigm of growth. Calvin's
emphasis on individualism meant each individual's responsibility to serve God. Every
individual Christian had a duty and obligation to be as self-reliant as possible, and to lead a
life centred on hard work and frugality. The central doctrine of Reformation theology is
salvation by grace through personal faith in Jesus Christ. A question that naturally arose was
how can one know that he is really a member of the elect? Catholics receive assurance of
their salvation through rites of the Church: the Sacraments and priestly absolution, but these
had been rejected by the Reformers. Therefore one answer was found in "By their fruits
shall ye know them." A Protestant could receive assurance that God's grace was effective in
him through living a daily existence characterized by moral order and devotion to temporal
as well as spiritual affairs. While one cannot be saved through one's good works, they still
needed to be evidenced in one's life in order to provide assurance of salvation.

Martin Luther's ideal for Christian living was apostolic poverty and simplicity, but he
also held that we should apply ourselves to our work in a thoroughgoing manner and strive
to do well at any enterprise we put our hand to. This amounted to a significant departure
from the "present needs" ethic of work that prevailed under medieval Catholicism.

Labor became an end in itself-- "a station assigned him by the Lord," according to
Calvin, who believed that idleness, "sloth," and even relaxation were essentially sinful and
indicative of insufficient commitment to God. The individual would no longer cease from

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his labours once his essential financial and physical needs were satisfied. Continuous work
was necessary to fulfill one's obligations to God and to avoid the dangers of idleness. As
with so many other aspects of Reformation theory, its economic implications led to
unintended consequences. In Calvin's perspective we find the roots of 20th Century manic
workaholism. The idea of hard work and ceaseless activity is about all that remains of
Calvin's doctrine for most of Western society, but he was successful beyond his wildest
expectations in making people feel guilty about "doing nothing."

Four centuries later, materialism is now centred on consumption rather than

production. Calvin doubtless never imagined that his half- thought-out ethic of ceaseless
production would lead to what we now call Capitalism, but that it would was inevitable.
Unlike the economics that existed under Catholic Christendom, in which people tended to
work only as much as absolutely necessary, Calvin's ceaseless, tireless production for its
own sake was bound to create surplus material wealth which would go to waste if not
consumed, an embarrassing problem since, to Calvin's way of thinking, enjoyment of the
fruits of one's labour was as carnal and "sinful" as idleness. The solution to this dilemma
was reinvestment of the surpluses in even more efficient production and creation of a means
of marketing it--leading to the development of consumer capitalism. Calvin tragically
underestimated the seductive pull material wealth and comfort would exert on individuals
once their production and acquisition was sanctioned by Christianity (and thus the social
moral consensus). If he had possessed a realistic view of human nature, he could never have
thought that an ethic of work for work's sake combined with material asceticism would be
sustainable.

Liberal capitalist economics soon took on a life of its own. Individualism gradually
lost the ascetic ideals that Calvin and the other Reformers preached, and along with it the
sense of individual responsibility to God. Today it has developed into a secular dogma of
freedom to do and/or consume whatever one desires, uninhibited by any sense of moral
restraint, let alone duty. Pleasure becomes the primary objective of life, an ethos that pulls
the floor out from under moral society. Post-Reformation empiricist English philosopher
John Locke (1632-1704) argued that man's natural and rightful objective in life was
temporal happiness, and a measure of Locke's influence is found in reference to "the pursuit
of happiness" in the U.S. Declaration of Independence of July 1776. Locke argued that the
proper role of morality was to caution against indulgence in immediate pleasures that result
in lasting misery. He believed, far too optimistically, that man's instinctive inclination to be
happy should provide sufficient motivation to ensure moral behavior.

However, under a paradigm of sovereign individualism, reason can no longer impose

limits on the pursuit of pleasure--including the immediate gratification of every desire, no
matter how perverse, criminal, or immoral. As Locke's contemporary Thomas Hobbes
argued: when we say "good" we simply mean that which we desire, and by "evil" that which
we choose to shun; and that will is "merely the last appetite in deliberating." Likewise, for
Hobbes, "True and false are attributes of speech, not of things, and where speech is not,
there is neither truth nor falsehood." The objective standards that stand in condemnation of
crime and cruelty derive from religion, and have no place in a society based on a
consumption ethic. The Reformation made all authority--parental, political, religious,
academic, etc.--suspect, or at best subject to individual interpretation. The liberal impulse is
to remove all external restraint on the free agency of the individual--to set up a permissive
society organized around the pleasures of consumption and sensuality, and is ideologically
at odds with the concepts of self-restraint and self-discipline.

Capitalism set up a system dependent for its survival upon the promotion of

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consumer demand. People are encouraged to spend and consume rather than to save and
conserve. The principle of delayed gratification, which initially provided an ascetic rationale
for the accumulation of capital, were soon discarded in favour of the spontaneous,
emotional, and subjective ideology of endless consumption. Capitalism subordinated the
sense of being to a desire for having, and transformed the value of commodities from
usefulness to their exchange potential. American philosopher Richard Weaver wrote that
one of the "strangest disparities in history," is the "sense of abundance felt by older and
simpler societies," contrasted with the "sense of scarcity" felt by our materially rich one.37
That gnawing sense of insecurity pertains not only to the individual's material estate, but
also to the soul's status. There may have been a lot less individual liberty under Medieval
Christendom, but there was virtually no suicide either.

It was no major leap to go from regarding idleness and relaxation as sinful, to

thinking of efficiency and productivity as innately virtuous-- that output was as important as
input. Because industrial activity is inextricably linked to the material goods it produces, it
is not hard to trace the process by which material prosperity came to be regarded as
unquestionably "good;" an outward sign of divine reward for "right living." If work (which
increasingly came to mean wage-slavery in industry) was a temporal manifestation of moral
propriety and spiritual well-being, then there could hardly be anything wrong with the
material fruits of labour or with the environmental sacrifices that resulted from industrial
progress. Belloc writes: "In denying the efficacy of good deeds and of the human will, of
abnegations, in leaving on one side as useless all the doctrine and tradition of Holy Poverty,
Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money.... Calvin himself would
have said with learning, sincerity, and zeal that the glory of God was the only object worthy
of human activity, but as he divorced such activity from the power of saving the individual
soul, what could there remain save the pursuit of riches?"38

The notion of the positive goodness of material wealth and prosperity gradually
developed into a heresy that has enjoyed a particularly strong constituency in North
America, suggesting that anyone who is not materially prosperous--whether he lives down
the street or in the Third World--is somehow deficient in character, lazy perhaps.
Nineteenth Century Protestant evangelist Dwight L. Moody implicitly repudiated the
traditional Christian ideals of poverty and simplicity, stating that "It is a wonderful fact that
men and women saved by the blood of Jesus rarely remain subjects of charity, but rise at
once to comfort and respectability.... I never saw a man who put Christ first in his life that
wasn't successful."39 The operative words here are "comfort and respectability," the
arch-objectives of bourgeois liberalism. "The Gospel of Wealth" preached by Moody fit in
perfectly with the burgeoning liberal/humanist apotheosis of material comfort and
prosperity. This notion, widely promoted by 19th Century Protestant evangelists, equated
Biblical teaching with individualism, free enterprise, and unlimited material accumulation. It
is still a dominant motif in many sectors of evangelical culture, manifesting itself in such
ideas as the "name it and claim it" pseudo-gospel of acquisition.

It is notable that among Moody's close associated and supporters were such
19th-Century Capitalist barons as John Wanamaker, Cyrus McCormick, Philip Armour, Jay
Cooke, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and J.P. Morgan. Another prominent 19th-Century
American Protestant, Russell H. Conwell, also ingratiated himself with captains of industry
by preaching that financial success was a reflection of personal righteousness while poverty
was a mark of God's punishment.40 Evangelist Billy Sunday, a contemporary of Moody and
Conwell, was also a friend and confidante of big-name capitalists, including John D.

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Rockefeller, S.S. Kresge, Elbert H. Cary, Louis F. Swift, Henry S. Frick, and John M.
Studebaker. A New York Times columnist of the day asserted that wealthy capitalists
supported Sunday as a "police measure--as a means of keeping the lower classes quiet."41

The term "Gospel of Wealth" was actually coined by Scottish-American industrialist

and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, in an essay of that name first published in The North
American Review in 1889. Carnegie postulated that civilization depended upon a threefold
set of "laws": 1. The "sacredness" of private property. 2. Open commercial competition. 3.
Unrestrained accumulation of wealth.

Carnegie believed these laws were ordained of God, and that anything which
undermined them was "the work of the devil." Consequently, in his schematic, those who
lived in accordance with these "divine laws of economics" (ie: unbridled capitalist
liberalism), were guaranteed to prosper. Conversely, anyone not materially successful must
have serious deficiencies in his Christian life.

The fact that even a cursory reading of Jesus' teaching on poverty in the New
Testament reveals the "Gospel of Wealth" to be utter heresy, seems not to have phased
Carnegie (or legions of other bourgeois liberal professing Christians) in the least. They, in
R.H. Tawney's words, had persuaded themselves that "greed is enterprise and avarice
economy."

Carl Jung observed that by the beginning of the 20th-Century it had become
"gratuitously offensive" to imply that Christianity should be hostile, or even indifferent to
the material world. On the contrary, wrote Jung, the "good Christian" is the "jovial citizen;"
the "enterprising businessman;" the best in whatever field of temporal endeavour he
involves himself in; "worldly goods," Jung continues, are "interpreted as special rewards for
Christian behavior."42

As we have noted, secular humanism evolved from the Reformation doctrine of

individual sovereignty, as the Lutheran/Calvinistic concept of covenant with God was
gradually (but inevitably) displaced by the liberal religion of self-gratification. The Calvinist
idea that productive work was outward evidence of Christian salvation became outmoded
as far as most of society was concerned. However, pressure to conform with a Protestant
Work Ethic ideal of behavior remained. The "need," as Jung characterized it, is to propitiate
a "great power" outside of ourselves. A "Wholly Other," representing the perfect and only
reality. The fact that most people now substitute money, power, material prosperity, and
"good citizenship," for God, makes little difference in terms of the P.W.E.'s compulsive hold
on their psyches.

We might reflect that the Reformers, with self-perceived best of intentions, sowed
the seed of the Reformation's auto-destruction by promoting a simplistic, easily distorted,
"down-to-earth" idea of visible righteousness. Today, the true cathedrals of consumer
society are shopping malls. The marketplace ministers to our personal needs, and is the
chief moral instructor of post-modern, post-Christian individualism, taking the place of both
the Church and the extended family. Calvin's rigid asceticism, intended to focus the
individual's mind on serving God, ultimately and ironically ended up creating and serving
the hedonistic demands of a new bourgeois-consumer class. It is no accident that the so-
called "Gospel of Wealth," originated in North American Calvinistic Protestantism.

As American scholar Christopher Lasch observed: [The bourgeois] extols

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cooperation and teamwork while harbouring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect
for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in
the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions
against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century
political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless,
perpetually unsatisfied desire."43

Technological development expresses a revolt against the limitations of the human

condition, and appeals strongly to the seductive notion that we can remake the world in
accord with our desires and harness nature to our purposes, thereby achieving humanistic
self-sufficiency.

By the late 20th Century it had become obvious to anyone with eyes to see, that this
heroic project was going sour. Not only were the earth's ecological systems breaking down
under the stress of human activity, but nihilism, neurosis, and despair were running rampant
in the most prosperous, "developed" societies. Many people in the "deprived" Third World
living under repressive regimes were arguably happier than the average discontented
Westerner. The more we conquer nature; the more we increase our power and wealth; the
more we consume; the more scientific knowledge and technological sophistication we
possess; the deeper despair bores its way into our collective psyche, feeding on our uneasy
sense of failure to live up to our potential as human beings rather than as consumers and
despoilers of nature.

"A despairing humanity is not merely an unhappy humanity;" writes Theodore

Roszak, "it is an ugly humanity, ugly in its own eyes-- dwarfed, diminished, stunted, and
self-loathing. These are the buried sources of world war and despotic collectivism, of
scapegoat hatred and exploitation. Ugly hates beautiful, hates gentle, hates loving, hates life.
There is a politics of despair.... Out of despair [people] grow burdened with moral
embarrassment for themselves, until they must at last despise and crucify the good which
they are helpless to achieve. And that is the final measure of damnation. To hate the good
precisely because we know it is good and know that its beauty calls our whole being into
question."44

The average person nurtured in the bosom of liberal democracy tends to be

scandalized by any suggestion that hierarchical feudalism had anything to recommend it in
terms of justice. We dealt in an earlier chapter with the popular prejudice that caricatures
feudalism as a barbaric and oppressive system benefitting only those born into the
aristocracy, and that its overthrow was a triumph of human justice.

However, it is arguable that the average person of whatever feudal class was happier
and more satisfied with his lot in life than the typical stressed-out denizen of our
post-modern liberal democratic cultures. Part of the problem with democratic capitalism is
that it created its own dialectical opposition, a large population segment with political and
social freedom, but without the economic freedom to take advantage of it --Marx's
Proletariat-- a faction convinced that it has "nothing to lose but its chains," and therefore
possessing no sense of loyalty to, or stakehold in, capitalist society. Depending upon
circumstances and opportunity, varying percentages of this self-perceived dispossessed
class will become lawless and even predatory, a phenomenon manifesting manifold
examples in contemporary Western democracies.

The full citizen possessing political freedom, but little practical economic freedom, is

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bound to resent the injustice of being exploited by others of equal political status whose
only claim to superiority is the power that comes with greater wealth. The obvious material
and social inequalities that abound in purportedly civically "equal" liberal democratic
societies are a constant goad to these festering resentments. The ordered and generally
acknowledged stratification of social and economic relationships between the duty of
superiors and loyalty of inferiors in feudal culture, even when a degree of injustice obtained,
was a moral reality familiar to both parties and mutually recognized as their mutual
guarantee of a stable, economically secure, and civilized existence. No such bond of mutual
commonwealth exists in an economic culture predicated on contract rather than status.
Thus, when a wage-earner's services become superfluous to a capital enterprise's economic
needs, the capitalist will terminate the worker's employment, perhaps with sincere regret,
but with no sense of duty toward the employee beyond the discharge of any contractual
obligations. Likewise, the wage-earner feels no particular sense of loyalty toward his
employer beyond the stipulations of his job description. However, it is not difficult to
discern who has the whip hand in such a relationship, or to recognize how it leads to social
instability and alienation.

The impersonality of corporate culture only increases that alienation. Many people
who work for large companies may never lay eyes on, let alone meet or talk to, the upper
managers and directors who control decision making and policy, and thus the economic
destiny of the workers. And even those individuals are not the true employers in companies
owned by public shareholders, who, especially these days, often live in foreign lands.

The structural flaw in the liberal economics from which both capitalism and
socialism derive, is that the vast majority of citizens come to regard themselves as
employees, with little control over their economic security. Labour unions purported to
address this problem, but succeeded mainly in reinforcing the contractual dynamic in the
workplace. This increases, rather than reduces the level of antagonism in the
employer/employee relationship, and in no way enhances any sense of commonwealth. The
unionized worker is still a wage-slave, who may have achieved a greater degree of
economic justice through collective bargaining, but who ultimately has no secure hold on his
socio-economic status beyond the terms of his union's current contract, and is still subject to
layoffs. Not only that, he is even less of a free agent than he was as a non-union worker,
now having another set of bosses over him-- the union executive.

Karl Marx's remedy has proved to be an even greater failure than capitalism at
achieving economic and social justice and a sense of mutual commonwealth. Alienation is
the cosmic disease of modern and post-modern society. People feel, with considerable
justification, that they are essentially on their own, obliged to swim or sink. The palliative of
the impersonal welfare state, resented by its powerless beneficiaries and taxpaying
benefactors alike, is a shabby substitute for Christian society in which the more fortunate
assume a sense of duty toward the less fortunate, rather than merely a legal obligation that
is dispatched when they pay their taxes.

The manifold horrors of our present century, in which the most infernal brutality,
cruelty, and evil have co-existed with the ascendancy of liberal humanist ideologies;
poverty and famine with material abundance; technological advances with ecological
destruction; are largely a consequence of the modern tendency to cast all constructs of
problem and solution into an economic context. The futility of this approach is manifest for
anyone who has eyes to see. However, because affirmation of the absolute sovereignty of
God is incompatible with the sovereignty of man--whether the latter be under democracy or
dictatorship--no other solution is seriously considered or even imaginable to growing

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numbers of people. They see civilization collapsing around them, but can't explain why this
is happening. What they don't grasp is that no political or economic system can cure this
illness.

In truth, the only force powerful enough to arrest the disintegration and descent into
neo-pagan barbarism is the Faith that built Western civilization in the first place--
Catholic/Orthodox Christianity. Religion is the only paradigmatic basis for workable,
sustainable, just societies. Because of this fact, the High Middle Ages serves as a model of
sanity and practicality in terms of economic development and social structure, especially
when contrasted with the suicidal madness of our age with its overarching greed and
monomania for productive efficiency and delusions of endless material prosperity.

Chapter 7: LIBERAL HUMANISM

"No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist."

Pope Pius XI encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931)

The Catholic Christian architects and builders of Western civilization held that faith
in God is the root of knowledge. The neo-barbarian humanist materialists who now
dominate and control Western society and its anti-culture culture hold that faith in God is
the root of ignorance, and that no truth is legitimately appreciable except through direct
experience and observation. The two polarities cannot peacefully co-exist, because they
respectively lead to radically different and incompatible social cultures. The "culture wars"
of the 1990s are a symptom of this dynamic.

The so-called philosophical "Enlightenment" of the 17th and 18th Centuries in

Europe was an intellectual movement that asserted the sufficiency of human reason, and
skepticism with regard to the validity of the traditional authority of the past--including
Christian teaching. It also advanced the concepts of nationalism and the secular state in a
more systematic way than had ever obtained before. The objective of Enlightenment
philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau was to create a better centralized state at the
expense of local autonomy. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines the
Enlightenment (die Aufkl„rung or `clearing') as follows:

"The Aufkl„rung combines opposition to all supernatural religion and belief in the
all-sufficiency of human reason with an ardent desire to promote the happiness of men in
this life.... Most of its representatives... rejected the Christian dogma and were hostile to
Catholicism as well as Protestant orthodoxy, which they regarded as powers of spiritual
darkness depriving humanity of the use of its rational faculties. ...Their fundamental belief
in the goodness of human nature, which blinded them to the fact of sin, produced an easy
optimism and absolute faith of human society once the principles of enlightened reason had
been recognized. The spirit of the Aufkl„rung penetrated deeply into German Protestantism,
where it disintegrated faith in the authority of the Bible and encouraged Biblical criticism on
the one hand and an emotional `pietism' on the other."45

The Enlightenment led directly and unambiguously to 19th and 20th Century
liberalism, and it must be clearly understood that it stands in complete antithesis to
Christianity--Orthodox/Catholic or Protestant-- on all points: denying the supernatural;
affirming the all-sufficiency of human reason; rejecting the fall from grace and original sin;
denying Christ's divinity and His Resurrection from the dead; believing in the perfectibility
of Man; deconstructing the Bible. All of these Enlightenment/liberal beliefs are aggressively

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anti-Christian. Make no mistake: you cannot make a coherent synthesis of
post-Enlightenment liberalism and real Christianity in full understanding of what they
respectively signify. You cannot legitimately say: "I am a Christian, but I believe the
Church's teaching is false and the Bible is full of errors."

Post-Enlightenment liberalism combined with 19th and 20th Century existentialism

begat modern liberal secular humanism, which British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper
concisely summed-up as "the unwarranted assumption that man only needs freedom from
ancient restraints in order to realize his inherent perfection." In their book "Dialectic of
Enlightenment" Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno note that "the Enlightenment has
always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully
enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant."46

Existentialism holds that it is an illusion to imagine that anything can be truly known,
or that there are objective truths and moral absolutes. All we have is subjective experience.
Everything is "relative," and the only legitimate values are "tolerance" and whatever makes
the individual "happy," or at least feel good at the moment. The secular "creeds" laid out in
The Humanist Manifestos I and II are clearly inimical to Christian belief, EG: "The Central
task of Mankind is the quest for the good life," and "Conceptions of right and wrong are to
depend on the feelings of the person in any given situation." Humanist relativists assert that
moral principles of right and wrong, virtue and vice, are simply value judgments--matters of
personal taste. As American liberal apologist Stanley Fish puts it: "All principles are
preferences; All preferences are principled." This half-baked sophistry quickly falls apart
when confronted with real-life moral questions like whether murder, rape, or keeping slaves
are simply matters of personal taste, but there is no shortage of self-styled humanists who
enthusiastically affirm positivist dogmas in the abstract. The true Christian, on the other
hand, perceives God as the source of all being and order, who creates human beings in His
spiritual image and likeness. Therefore, the actions of human beings are objectively right to
the degree that they are consistent with God's divine nature, and wrong to the extent that
they deviate from it.

Recently, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia addressed 650 people at the
Mississippi College School of Law about the difficulty of being a Christian in public life
today. Scalia pointed out that the word "cretin," which means "fool" or "idiot," derives from
a Swiss-French word for "Christian." "To be honest about it," said Scalia, "that is the view
of Christians taken by modern society. Surely those who adhere to all or most of these
traditional Christian beliefs are to be regarded as simple-minded.... We must pray to endure
the scorn of the sophisticated world." Predictably, a liberal humanist backlash declared that
such opinions make Scalia unfit to sit on America's highest court.

Liberal humanism has long since gone beyond mere doubt and skepticism about the
claims and teachings of Christianity, and now considers orthodox Christian doctrine
positively erroneous and even destructive. For example, Katha Pollitt, an Associate Editor
with the Nation and the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "Free-Thought Heroine of
1995," declares religion to be "a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny, and humble
pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom."47 The spirit of skeptical inquiry
and the emotional, indefinite approach to knowledge and philosophy ushered in by the
Reformation destroyed traditional faith. Doubt came to be popularly perceived as more
intellectually sophisticated than faith. As Soren Kierkegaard observed: "Now it is spirited
and the sign of a deep nature not to be able to [believe].... Splendid result attained by
Christendom!"

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 Protestantism's bastard child, modern liberal humanism, teaches that no point of view
can justifiably impose its principles on society. The Reformation laid the groundwork for
liberal Enlightenment doctrines like the alleged goodness and perfectibility of man, and the
inevitability of social and moral progress in history. While some Enlightenment philosophers
continued to utilize Christian language, their ideas contradicted the essential Christian
affirmation that all men are poor sinners in need of salvation by Grace, and that this state of
affairs will prevail until the end of time. The Gospel proclaims our dependence upon God,
while liberal humanism purports to make men captains of their destiny and masters of their
own fate. Essentially, liberal humanism is a denial of acknowledgment that we are created
beings living in a created universe and subject to a created order. There is no question of
obligations towards God. Law does not derive from God's revealed will, but rather is an
expression of the will of the people. Governments don't derive their authority from the
Almighty, but from the consent of the governed. Liberal "reality" is what we decide to make
it--not an objective ground.

By rejecting the magisterial Church's authority, sacrament, and ritual, the

Reformation kicked open the door for humanity to unilaterally declare its "coming of age."
The liberal humanist project grossly exaggerates man's place in the cosmic scheme of things
while denying God's divine sovereignty. St. Thomas Aquinas argued that our reality inheres
in having a certain level or dimension of existence--which is governed by an essential
principle which is both a potentiality and a capacity for existence or esse. At one end of this
scale is God, who is pure Existence with no potential in Him. All other beings receive their
level of existence from God so that there are beings with greater or lesser degrees of being
or existence depending on their potential (essence) for it. God is absolute, while human
beings and His other creations are inexorably finite.

The Enlightenment cleared the way for quantum leaps in human understanding of the
physical world through the advancement of empirical science and geographical exploration.
The scientific Enlightenment worldview applied a more skeptical spirit to history and
documents, both sacred and secular, and promoted the deconstruction of the Catholic
culture of Christendom. It came to be widely assumed that science would eventually be able
to explain everything in terms of natural causes. The stable equilibrium that had hitherto
prevailed in Christian Europe, the ordered rule and custom that had governed economics,
with human relationships connected by inherited status rather than by contract, disappeared
with stunning rapidity. The new paradigm introduced unrestrained competition, rather than
the steady-state stability of Medieval society.

As material civilization advanced, spiritual civilization declined reciprocally, a

process that has continued into our present era. Our partial mastery over nature and
acquisition of knowledge about the material world has been accompanied by a
commensurate decline in philosophical depth and maturity. It is probable that many would
regard the trade-off as advantageous if they recognized its existence at all, but such is our
philosophical and spiritual poverty in this post-modern era that few do.

The quasi-sophisticated ignorance and philosophical/intellectual confusion liberal

humanism has bred in late 20th Century Western culture is demonstrated in a survey that
found 70 percent of Americans affirming belief that the Bible is "the written word of God,
totally accurate in all it teaches," while at the same time 72 percent say they believe "there
are no absolute values." This self-contradiction bespeaks the cultural dominance of
half-baked and incoherent philosophical notions like radical Empiricism, Existentialism, and
Naturalistic Determinism that have so impoverished the intellectual life of our era. Liberal
modernism of course, as Hilaire Belloc noted, "is indifferent to self-contradiction. It merely

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affirms. It advances like an animal, counting on strength alone."

Real Christianity is incompatible with liberal humanism. Until our own

philosophically and spiritually bankrupt era, the Christian Gospel was never taken to mean
that we are here to stroke everyone's self-esteem, to make them feel happy and welcome.
Too many modern would-be Christians, nominally Orthodox/Catholic and Protestant alike,
prefer sentimentality to virtue. That way they can feel good about themselves without
having to change their behavior or do anything else that's inconvenient. However,
Christianity, properly understood and lived, makes rigorous and sometimes even harsh
demands on the individual. It is not about "self-realization," but rather the realization that
Jesus is Lord and that we are here to obey and serve Him.

What matters is not what we would like Christ to have been, but rather what He was
and is. Any Jesus worth worshiping must be more than just a subjective construct that we
can mould and manipulate to suit our prejudices and preferences. The liberal project of
emphasizing the human Jesus, while largely ignoring or even denying His divinity, would
only be intellectually defensible if Jesus really were not divine. And if Jesus is not divine,
what is the point of Christianity? As St. Paul pointed out, if Christ is not raised from the
dead, then we Christians are of all men most pitiable.

Unless Jesus really was God, many of his statements can only leave us to conclude
that He was a madman. For example: "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men,
him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.... He that receiveth me,
receiveth him that sent me." (St. Matthew 10: 32, 40)

Only God, or a deluded lunatic, would have said: "All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth.... Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. (St.
Matthew 28: 18, 20) Jesus claimed that all nations would be gathered before Him on
Judgment Day, while He sits on His throne and pronounces judgment on them. Hardly a
claim one would expect from a sane individual, unless of course, He really was God.

The exclusively "human" Jesus of the liberals, strangely enough, is very much a
modern humanitarian, a peacenik and socialist who opposes war and violence, and is
preoccupied with equitable distribution of the world's material goods. In short, the liberals'
Jesus remarkably resembles their idealized projection of themselves, "the people of God."
Such a Jesus appeals to liberal narcissism, but fortunately he is not recognizable in the Jesus
of the Gospels, who is anything but an amiable pacifist and philanthropist. In the New
Testament we find a Jesus who pronounces unambiguously: "He that believeth not is
condemned." The unprofitable servant is to be cast into the outer darkness, where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This line of rhetoric is likely to be altogether too redneck
and judgmental for your typical liberal-humanist to stomach.

Liberals who read the Gospel accounts of Jesus' teachings (and of course outside of
the Gospels and the Apostolic tradition--which liberals reject--what do we know of Christ?)
will find plenty more that conflicts with their ideologies and prejudices. For example, the
Christ of the Gospels believes in hell. Liberals don't want to believe in hell, and insist that
Christ must have been mistaken on that point. Jesus also believed in evil spirits, which
liberals scoff at as "superstition" peculiar to His time. They, enlightened by science, of
course know so much better. And so on. Once it has been decided that Christ didn't quite
know what He was talking about on so many weighty matters, it indeed becomes difficult to
sustain the concept of Christ as God, or to rely on much of anything He had to say. On the
other hand, if we affirm that Jesus was God, then it is absurd to suggest that He was

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mistaken about hell and evil spirits and the Judgment.

American historian and former Stalinist, Eugene Genovese, who has returned to the
Catholic Faith into which he was baptized, argues that Catholicism is the only faith that
satisfies his logical need for an omnipotent God. "I have to say," he writes,48 "a God who is
progressing, learning from his creatures, is not somebody who interests me. If I have
something to teach God, I don't need him anymore. A God of love who is not
simultaneously a God of wrath doesn't interest me either."

Unlike liberals, bona fide Orthodox/Catholics affirm as true everything that Christ
taught, for the novel reason that He taught it, and they predicate their general belief system
on these teachings as the standard of moral and spiritual knowledge, as opposed to setting
up their own subjective suspicions or the latest philosophical fashions and trends as a
substitute for that standard, and presuming to dictate the terms by which they will accept
God and His revelation, rather than coming to terms with Him through that revelation.

Arnold Lunn likened liberal theology enthusiasts to a little girl drawing a picture.
"What are you drawing?" her mother asked. "I'm drawing God," the little girl replied. "But
you can't do that," objected the mother, "nobody knows what God looks like." "They'll
know now," said the little girl determinedly, and kept on drawing.

The liberal humanist movement that insists on substituting mawkish sentimentalism

and naive faith in science for real religion, will succeed only in writing civilization's epitaph
if it is left unchecked. As an antidote, the Church must assert the Gospel with authority and
unshakable confidence in its message, not in the hesitating and irenistic dissembling with
which it as been inclined to address issues in the public square over the past 50 years.

Chapter 8: THE LONG ROAD BACK TO CHRISTIAN UNITY

In its present fragmented state, Christianity is poorly equipped to battle the humanist
onslaught. My dream is of a Christian Faith restored to unified strength as
literally one truly Holy Apostolic Catholic Church. I believe that this will be
possible only if, (a): Protestants can be brought back within the fold of
Orthodox/Catholicism, and (b): the churches that still affirm the Apostolic
Faith can somehow be reconciled with one another. An optimistic and naive hope
perhaps, but the alternative is grim. Hilaire Belloc noted that the True Church cannot
disappear entirely, since it is the only institution among men not subject to the universal law
of mortality, but he warned that the Church could indeed be "reduced to a small band
almost forgotten amid the vast numbers of its opponents and their contempt for the defeated
thing."

Happily, some convergence toward unity is evident. A significant proportion of

Anglicans worldwide, distressed by the increasingly impaired and apostate established
Anglican/Episcopalian communion, are leaving to become Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or to
join the Traditional Anglican Communion.

Then there are former Protestant evangelicals like myself who have returned to the
Orthodox/Catholic fold. John Frank (`Franky') Schaeffer--son of the man many regard as
the foremost evangelical Christian philosopher of this century--joined the Greek Orthodox
Church in 1990. As Schaeffer puts it: "At long last I had been given weapons of sacrament,
faith and tradition with which to do spiritual battle. I was no longer trying to go it alone." It

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is ironic that former Protestants, coming from denominations that consider themselves the
"free church," often experience a tremendous sense of liberation when they convert to
Orthodox/Catholicism.

"Our experiential Protestant `desert,'" says Frank Schaeffer, "is such an all-pervasive
monolithic culture that, within it, we Protestants never dreamed that there was still a faith
both sure and `primitive'--close to the early Church--vibrant and true, of which it could be
accurately proclaimed, `This is the faith of our Fathers; this is the doctrine of the Apostles!'"
In Catholicism/Orthodoxy, you no longer have to struggle to get "right with God" through
your own subjective understanding. Your relationship with God is found within the
sacramental life of the Church and the faith of Christ who lifts you up--no longer dependent
upon your "faith alone."

Schaeffer's friend Tom Howard, a professor of English and author of several books
(EG: Christ the Tiger, and Evangelical Is Not Enough) also made what he calls "my own
pilgrimage from good, sturdy, Bible-centred Protestant evangelicalism into a form of
Christianity which was...liturgical and sacramental and historical..." Howard became first
Anglican, then Episcopalian, and ultimately was received into the Roman Catholic Church
in 1985, a conversion that cost him his position teaching English at evangelical Gordon
College. "I pray every morning for the reunion of the Church, on God's terms, not ours,"
says Howard, "and I will be the happiest man in Christendom if that can ever get itself
sorted out."

Chapter 9: THE STRANGE CASE OF HOW 2,000 PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS

ENDED UP JOINING THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

In early 1987, some 2,000 members of the now-dissolved Evangelical Orthodox

Church were received into full communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church--the largest
ever mass conversion to Orthodoxy in North American history. Even more remarkable was
the fact that the leaders and clergy of the erstwhile E.O.C. group were former evangelical
Protestants, with backgrounds in Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth for Christ, and Young
Life, and degrees from institutions like Wheaton College, Dallas Seminary, Fuller Seminary,
Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Seattle Pacific University, Oral Roberts University, Lincoln
Christian College, and Biola University.

As one of the former E.O.C. priests, Peter Gillquist, a former regional director of
Campus Crusade and now an archpriest of the Antiochan Orthodox Christian Diocese of
North America, asks rhetorically in his book "Becoming Orthodox," "whatever would
possess two thousand Bible-believing, blood-bought, Gospel-preaching, Christ-centred,
life-long evangelical Protestants to embrace this Orthodox faith so enthusiastically... [to]
end up embracing historic ecclesiology, liturgical worship, and sacrament?" What indeed?

Fr. Gillquist relates how he became increasingly disillusioned with what he was
accomplishing as a Protestant "parachurch" evangelist. He recalls seeing a button on
someone's shirt that read: "God isn't dead-- Church is." "Amen," Gillquist said to himself,
"Not only are converts falling by the wayside, but the churches are so pathetic that they
can't handle the ones who do come. The Church is in captivity to an invisible, present- day
Babylon!"

In 1973, Peter Gillquist joined a core group of six other burned-out campus
evangelists in a quest to discover what had happened to the New Testament Church. "Not
too far into our investigation," writes Jon Braun, one of the seven, "we were shocked to

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discover that there were whole chapters, as it were, of Church history with which we were
totally unfamiliar. And in our quest to get to the bottom of what was missing, we made a
monumental discovery... the historic Orthodox Church. [Up until then] we didn't even know
it still existed."49

"As Protestants," observed Jack Sparks, another member of the group, "we know our
way back to A.D. 1517 and the Reformation. As evangelicals--Bible people--we know our
way up to A.D. 95 or so, when the Apostle John finished writing the Revelation. It's time we
fill the gap in between!"

The problem, Sparks allowed, is that "everybody claims to be the New Testament
Church. The Catholics say they are; the Baptists say they are; the Church of Christ says it
is--and nobody else is. We need to find out `who's right?'"

The group of seven decided to research and study every aspect of Christian history
they could uncover until they discovered "who's right." They agreed going into this project
that wherever their "phantom search for the perfect Church" led, they would resolve to do
and be whatever the New Testament Church did and was. "If we found we were wrong, we
would change," says Gillquist.

What the seven seekers discovered indeed revolutionized their vision of what the
true Church should be. They discovered that Christian worship was liturgical from the
earliest recorded times. The original Greek text of Acts 13:2 refers to
"leitourgounton"--"liturgy."

They discovered that the Fathers of the ancient Apostolic Church perceived the
consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist as the actual body and blood of Christ, as He
Himself affirmed at the last Supper, and that from the earliest times the Sacrament of Holy
Communion was the centrepiece of Christian worship.

They discovered that the episcopal orders of clergy date from the First Century, and
that Ignatius of Antioch was bishop of the Church there from A.D. 67 to 107. Acts 1:20
(K.J.V.) uses the term "bishopric" ("episcopen" in the original Greek), although some
modern Protestant translations paraphrase it. St. Paul speaks of bishops and deacons in
Philippians 1:1-2 and 1 Timothy 3: 1-12, and bishops in Titus 1:7. Acts 15 refers to James
the brother of Jesus, who was Bishop of Jerusalem, rendering final judgment in a dispute.

They discovered that the New Testament Church was Sacramental, believing that
Baptism really is for the remission of sins and the giving of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).

They discovered that "tradition" was the tradition of the very early Church. St, Paul
wrote: "Therefore brethren stand fast and hold to the traditions which you were taught,
whether by word or our epistle" (2 Thess. 2:15). He affirms tradition again in 2 Thess 3:6.
The tradition St. Paul speaks of is the teachings of the Apostolic Church, which were
considered authoritative long before the New Testament canon was ratified.

These discoveries led to the establishment of a new Church denomination: the

Evangelical Orthodox Church, which incorporated the ancient doctrines and forms of
worship that the seven scholars had identified in their historical research. At that point, they
still had virtually no knowledge of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but once contact was
finally established, the journey began in earnest that eventually led most of the former
evangelicals into the ancient Apostolic Orthodox Faith. It's a fascinating tale, well told in

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Peter Gillquist's book.

Chapter 10: ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM

Protestant readers may still argue, "Why is it us who have to make a move?" At risk
of repeating myself, the principal answer is that Protestantism moved away from
Catholic/Orthodoxy in the first place. Martin Luther's resolve to clean up corruption within
the 16th Century Roman Catholic Church was commendable (although the regime Luther
established as a substitute was arguably as cruel, or even worse, then the one he wanted to
reform). However, Luther and the other Reformers grievously erred in their subsequent
moves to change the essential doctrines and beliefs of the traditional Christian Faith, which
were not and are not faulty.

The only logical justification for the Reformers' doctrinal revolution would have been
if God suddenly decided He had been mistaken for the first 1,500 years of the Church's
history, that Orthodox/Catholic doctrine and tradition had not been guided and established
by the Holy Spirit after all, and that it was time to wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and start
afresh. It is grossly presumptuous to assert or imply that the Church had misapprehended
the Truth and the Will of God for 15 centuries, until Luther, Calvin, and company showed
up to point out the error of Her ways. The literal definition of "heretic" is "one who picks
and chooses," as opposed to one who accepts the entirety of the Church's teaching.
Therefore, the European Protestant Reformers were heretics by definition, and the
movement they founded is essentially heretical as well. In order for them not to have been
heretics, we would be obliged to accept that the Apostolic, Orthodox/Catholic Church
herself had been heretical for 1,500 years. The notion that it could be God's will that there
be two (or as it turned out, thousands of) Churches, is ludicrous.

"Now just a doggone minute," Protestants might reply, "where do you get off calling
my church heretical? That's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but I've been Protestant
all my life, my parents and grandparents before me, and nobody is going to turn me into a
Catholic!" At least that was more or less my reaction when confronted with these arguments
by Catholic friends twenty-odd years ago. Like nearly everyone brought up in 20th century
North American culture, I was so steeped in reflexive assumptions of personal autonomy
and democratic freedom of conscience, that I simply could not think the concept of a
legitimate central moral authority. My grasp of Church history was hazy at best, and what
little I knew was heavily biased toward the Protestant point of view. The Catholic
perspective, as I perceived it, seemed insufferably arrogant in not granting "equal time"
moral equivalence to Protestantism. After all, our opinion was just as valid as theirs!

Alas, that reaction was purely and reflexively liberal, despite the fact that I fancied
myself a true-blue, small `c' conservative-- theologically and politically. What I just couldn't
"get" at that stage in my philosophical development was that within the context of
Catholic/Orthodoxy, personal opinion--mine or anyone else's, doesn't matter. The Apostolic
authority of Catholic/Orthodox doctrine is not based on the personal opinions of individuals,
including Popes and Patriarchs. As Catholic scholar Dr. Cheslyn Jones once remarked when
asked to give "the Catholic point of view" on an issue: "My dear, either it's Catholic or it's a
point of view." The fatal flaw of Protestantism is that it is a point (indeed many points) of
view, an expression of opinion about God rather than the revelation of God's divine will and
nature.

The Church councils of 325-787 did not invent new doctrine based on opinion, but
rather determined and reaffirmed what had always been believed about God by the True

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Church based on teachings of Christ and the Apostles. For over 1,000 years, the undivided
Christian Church had one doctrine, and for another five centuries after that, although
Constantinople and Rome disagreed on certain issues (EG: the filioque50 clause in the
Nicene Creed ), fundamental doctrinal beliefs of East and West remained essentially the
same.

The True Church of Jesus Christ can be neither a democracy nor a debating society,
and that it is widely perceived to be both nowadays is a liberal, not a Christian notion. "One
Lord, one faith, one baptism," declares St. Paul. If your right to your sovereign opinion, and
loyalty to your denominational heritage, family tradition, etc., mean more to you than the
unity of one true universal Church, then you are indeed Protestant in spirit. This debate,
properly apprehended, is not a tribal turf-struggle, but rather about the nature of Truth.
Truth resides in God, being the ultimate, objective ground of reality that exists whether you
or I or anyone affirms it or not.

Another objection to any call to universal Orthodox/Catholic unity might be that one
sect of Protestantism--Pentecostalism--is currently the fastest-growing religious category in
the world. At present rates of growth, an estimated 50% of all Christians will be Pentecostal
by early in the 21st Century. Although I don't celebrate the fact that many Pentecostal
converts come from moribund Catholic communities in the Americas, it can't be disputed
that the Pentecostals do a superb job of evangelizing.

However, some aspects of the global Pentecostal revival are highly questionable
outside the context of sheep-stealing. For example, a Time magazine story51 noted that the
Brazil-based Universal Church of God, one of the fastest-growing Pentecostal
denominations globally with 3.5 million adherents in 34 countries, employs some pretty
unethical practices. TIME reported that Universal Church evangelists promise seven days of
prayers and blessings to those who give $50 or more to the Church. A $20 donation buys a
cut-rate three days of blessings. Hmm; sounds a bit like selling indulgences, doesn't it?

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God reportedly has an annual cash flow of
$750 million to $2 billion, and its leader, self-appointed and self-ordained "Bishop" Edir
Macedo Bezerra, lives in a mansion in Purchase, New York, although there are only 15,000
members of his flock in the U.S. In October, 1995, another Brazilian Universal Church
"Bishop," Sergio von Helde, shocked TV audiences by kicking, slapping, and insulting a
statue of Our Lady Aparecida, Brazil's patron saint, while on camera. While most North
American Pentecostals would doubtless deplore such shameful and disrespectful
shenanigans, as well as the Universal Church's exploitative and avaricious fund-raising
tactics, the latter prove that one must be careful about applauding the explosive growth of
world Pentecostalism without qualification.

And, while Pentecostalism is highly effective in attracting converts, it does a rather

poor job of taking Christians very far along the road to spiritual growth after the conversion
experience. Bereft of creedal discipline, liturgy, orthodox doctrine, the priesthood, and the
rich sacramental life of Orthodox/Catholicism, Pentecostal Churches are simply not
equipped to nurture real growth in the Faith. Their emphasis is on perpetual evangelistic
revival, not on achieving spiritual maturity.

Revivalism is commendable in that it produces Christian conversions, but emotional

fervor cannot be sustained for very long, and Christian faith must be sustained by something
more substantial than a dramatic conversion. The evangelical notion that Christian

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profession is suspect unless it is the product of a vivid religious conversion experience is
mistaken and destructive.

This writer's own conversion to faith in Jesus Christ was of the profound, point-
in-time, dramatic variety--a personal encounter with the risen Christ. The euphoria lasted
for several months, which were followed by a quarter-century quest to recover that initial
spiritual "high." Happily, I instead discovered in the historical Apostolic Faith the substance
and religious depth that I had really been seeking.

"Just knowing Jesus" is not enough. A `born-again" experience, however profound

and dramatic, is not enough. I know--I've been there. Salvation isn't just a one-time affair
occurring at a single point in one's life. Certainly it can begin that way, but it must be an
ongoing journey. We must not only become Christian, we must learn to be Christian, and
we can't do this on our own strength, on the basis of "feelings" or experience--even the
experience of being "slain in the Spirit." Doctrine and structure do matter. But what a
powerful force for the propagation of the Faith Pentecostal Christians could bring to the
True Church with their evangelical zeal and energy!

The Catholic/Orthodox Churches affirm a belief based on reason and sound

theological grounding, which is independent of emotion and subjective experience. They do
not disparage experience, but recognize that an enduring faith cannot be wholly sustained
by it. Even the great revivalist and Methodist founder John Wesley warned that: "You are
in danger of enthusiasm every hour... if you despise or lightly esteem reason, knowledge or
human learning; every one of which is an excellent gift of God and may serve the noblest
purposes. I advise you never to use the words wisdom, reason or knowledge by way of
reproach. On the contrary pray that you may abound in them more and more."

As former evangelical--now Roman Catholic--Tom Howard puts it: "An evangelical

eventually wakes up and says, `Look, I've got Jesus. I've got the Bible. I've got the faith. I
love the Gospel. We've got zeal, we've got creativity, we've got energy. We've got
everything. But What is the Church? WHAT IS THE CHURCH?'"52

Chapter 11: WHAT THE CHURCH IS NOT: LIBERAL MAINLINE

PROTESTANTISM AND "PROTESTANTIZED" NORTH AMERICAN
CATHOLICISM

"The more left wing your are, the more permissive you are and the less religious you
are. The more right wing you are, the more conservative you are; probably you are more
religious."

Thomas Cardinal Winning, Roman Catholic Primate of Scotland

BBC interview, October 1996

If lopsided emphasis on revival and neglect of creed, sacrament, and doctrine are the
Achilles' heel of Protestant evangelicalism, the quest for "relevance" has been plague and
pestilence to the so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations over the past half-century.
Widespread devolution into the mire of humanist neo-gnosticism has taken place, and these
churches now function in almost total capitulation to the anti-culture culture of Western
post-modern secularism. Instead of creating, driving, changing, and dominating culture as
the Church historically did throughout its first 19 centuries, mainstream 20th Century
Protestantism has raised the white flag; thrown in the proverbial towel, and resigned itself to

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passive accommodation of secular humanist "values." The concept of a uniquely Christian
state of mind is foreign to mainstream Protestantism, whose adherents, except in the
relatively narrow and specific areas of "spirituality" and personal ethics, overwhelmingly
accept as normative a frame of reference contrived by secular minds on the basis of secular
evaluations.

Whatever residues and resonances of Orthodox/Catholic doctrine and sensibility as

once existed in these denominations continue to steadily diminish, to be replaced by a banal
mush of politically-correct liberal sentimentalism and even explicitly pagan elements
masquerading under the banner of a celebration of "feminist spirituality" or
"multiculturalism." Precipitously declining membership in these churches bespeaks a failure
to transmit a faith that attracts the allegiance of successor generations, which is hardly
surprising considering that there remains little in the way of a coherent expression of what
the faith to be transmitted might be. The reason the Christian religion no longer attracts and
animates people the way it once did is that it has lost confidence in its essential message.
The fact is, as noted in the foregoing chapter on liberal-humanism, that true Christianity is
an offense and a scandal to the post-modern liberals who dominate the polity and
administration of many church denominations--especially "old-line" Protestant ones. These
self-perceivedly "broad-minded" individuals like to think of the various world religions,
including Christianity, as all containing some part of the truth but not all of it. To them, the
historical, uncompromising Christian claim that Christianity is uniquely the truth, and the
firm assertion that all other religions and philosophies are only true to the extent that they
approximate Christian beliefs and principles, and false when they deviate from them, is an
embarrassment.

The central point of the Christian faith boils down to this: If Jesus Christ is, as He
affirmed, "The Way, The Truth and The Life," and the "True Vine," and if His claim that
"No man cometh to the Father but by Me," is true, and if He really did rise from the dead on
Easter morning, as the Church has believed from the very beginning, then it is absurd to
suggest that other religions can be "equally true" in any sense that they contradict the
Christian Gospel. The liberal notion that Christians must always regard the religious
convictions and sensibilities of others with deference is supported by neither the Gospels
nor Christian tradition. Pluralistic affirmation of the moral equivalence of various religious
views is the product not of faith, but of doubt.

If Christ was not who He said He was, and if he did not literally rise from the dead,
then Christianity is a preposterous fraud, and we should give up the charade. The only
possible legitimate and intellectually honest positions are to either accept the Christian
Gospel or reject it, but you can't have it both ways.

Unfortunately, the churches in our post-modern era have been infiltrated and
subverted by a spirit that is not just indifferent to the Gospel, but is overtly contemptuous
and barely tolerant of it. This didn't happen overnight. The process was rather similar to that
of the famous experiment in which a frog that is dropped into a pot of boiling water
immediately hops out, but the same frog placed in a pot of cool water that is slowly heated
to a boil will sit complacently and cook. The churches have gradually accommodated to the
liberal modern spirit that prefers to believe in human freedom rather than in God. Liberal
humanism trusts in human cleverness and temporal power, not divine wisdom; it trusts not
in Providence, but in human ability to create an earthly paradise through social, economic,
and technological progress. This garden of earthly delights can be indulged in without guilt
once humanity has liberated itself from all "superstition" and inhibition. Traditional
Christian belief in God's Almighty power, grace, and Providence is totally incompatible with

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the liberal humanist project of self-engineered human redemption, and nothing is more
repugnant to the fully convinced modern or post-modern individual than the central
Christian teaching that all humans are in fact poor sinners who must first and foremost deny
ourselves in order to be made truly free.

Consequently, the liberal-humanism that dominates most Western churches at the

end of the 20th-Century represents the temporal triumph of a spirit that sees itself as
superior to religion, that wants to purge the church of all that is "superstitious," and to
substitute sentimental symbolism for the spiritual substance of faith and Sacraments. This
"Brave New Church" will dedicate itself to celebrating the human spirit; its god will be the
image of absolute human freedom; its creed the "Gospel of Humanity;" its liturgy an
invitation for celebrants to celebrate themselves as "the people of God;" and its standard of
virtue will be an ethic of "choice," subjective feeling, sentimental feelgood-ism, and
indiscriminate tolerance of everything save for traditional Christianity's claim to absolute
authority as the only true way of life. That, liberal humanists cannot abide.

This too is the unintended legacy of the Reformation's rejection of the Church's
magisterial authority, and its affirmation that every Christian must be free to interpret the
Gospel on the basis of his own conscience. As Theodore Roszak writes: "For there was one
terrible possibility that the Protestant founders failed to anticipate in their fierce hunger for
iconoclastic purity. They did not see that the eclipse of God might grow so dark and last so
long that men and women would lose their eyes for the light."53

A church without magisterial authority is a church that will be obliged to change its
teachings to suit the philosophical and social fashions of the moment, and a religion based
on popular opinion amounts to a democratic social club--not the living out of a revelation
from an omnipotent and omniscient God who exists and operates whether we agree with
Him or not. As Roszak notes: "Mainstream Christian orthodoxy, with its minimal investment
in visionary experience, was more than willing to see its God become a functional postulate
in a desacralized universe.... They may never have heard the word `Deism,' but they
continue to pay respects to that aloof `Somebody (or is it Something?) Up There,' the
managerial deity who stands well off behind the scientist's universe, careful never to
intrude... a shy and shriveled divinity... an afterthought... a clich‚. If God has at last died in
our culture, he has not been buried. For the casually religious, he lingers like a fond old
relative who has been so expertly embalmed that we may prop him up in the far corner of
the living room and pretend the old fellow is still with us. We have even taken pains to bend
his fallen mouth into a benign and permissive smile... and that is a comfort. It makes him so
much easier to live with. No more of the old hellfire and brimstone; no more of the terrible
mystery and paradox that require the crucifixion of the intellect; no more dark nights of the
soul. Is it any wonder that for many people, a dead and stuffed God seems preferable not
only to no God at all, but to any God at all?"54

But to have faith in the liberal humanist "God" is to have faith in nothing more than
human sentiment and intellectual fad. That sort of "God" fools fewer and fewer people
these days, which explains why attendance in liberal churches declines on a fairly constant
curve. The post-modern, post-baby-boom generations are more cynical and far less
sentimental than the liberal moderns who precede them, and are hardly likely to be
persuaded to place any confidence in such an obviously contrived "deity," let alone worship
it. On the other hand, they just might be reachable by a Church that uncompromisingly
proclaims the truth, and points the way out of the barren swamps of post-modern nihilism.

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 The scourges of subjective sentimentalism and relativistic modernism are not
exclusively concentrated in the avowedly liberal Protestant denominations. Studies cited by
evangelical scholar Gene Edward Veith Jr. in a recent book found that 56 percent of single
"fundamentalist"55 Christians indulge in sex outside marriage--nearly the same percentage
as single non-Christians, and 49 percent of American Protestants say they are "pro-choice"
regarding abortion.56 A survey released in March 1996 by Barna Research of Oxnard,
California, found that 84 percent of self-described "committed, born-again Christians" held
non-biblical views on several crucial points. Forty-nine percent agreed with the statement:
"The devil or Satan is not a living being but is a symbol of evil." Thirty-nine percent agreed
that "If a person is generally good, they will earn a place in heaven." Thirty percent agreed
that "Jesus Christ was a great teacher, but he did not come back to physical life after he was
crucified." Twenty-nine percent thought that "Jesus Christ was human and committed sins
like other people."57 All of these statements are of course completely heretical. The Barna
survey discovered that only 16 percent of people calling themselves Christian could
correctly identify the most basic Christian beliefs. "Almost 40% of our church-going
population is inoculated against the Gospel, because they think they already have it,"
commented Barna's Research Director Dave Kinnaman. "They think they've got a faith
tailor- made for themselves. They like everything providential and agreeable, and reject
anything smacking of absolute truth or judgment. The secular virtue of tolerance is their
only absolute."58

Many nominal Roman Catholics today too, especially in the West, have adopted the
Protestant spirit to a degree that they can no longer be legitimately considered to be truly
Catholic either, in any strict application of the term. For example, a dissident movement
calling itself "Catholics of Vision," beginning in Austria and Germany in the mid-1990s and
then spreading into the U.S. and Canada, gathered over two million signatures on a petition
demanding democratization of the Roman Catholic Church; "an all pervading atmosphere of
freedom among the people of God;" "liberation" of theologians from doctrinal restraints;
"normalization" of homosexuality; repeal of mandatory priestly celibacy; ordination of
women; "freedom of conscience" with regard to contraception and abortion; and election of
bishops. In other words, a prescription for radical liberal humanism and Protestant "freedom
of private judgment."

A 1995 TIME/CNN Yankelovich poll of U.S. Catholics found that 60% favored
female priesthood; 75% said that non-marital sexual relations are not necessarily wrong;
80% believed they can contradict the Church's official positions on morality and still be
"good Catholics"; and 78% said that individual Catholics can safely ignore Church
teachings and make up their own minds on moral issues like abortion. Gene Edward Veith
Jr's. statistics say that 66 percent of single Roman Catholics are sexually active, that 83
percent of Roman Catholics accept premarital sex, and that 47 percent are "pro-choice."
The principles of personal moral autonomy and freedom of conscience these persons affirm
are emphatically not Catholic, and these statistics illustrate that most North American
Roman Catholics have clearly capitulated to a Protestant mood of radical individualism.
Therefore, as Christianity Today editor Timothy Morgan notes, when rock star and
pornographer Madonna Louise Ciccone declares that her baby is "gonna be a good
Catholic, just like me," most North Americans, Catholic and Protestant alike, figure that she
has just as much right to define "her" Christianity as anyone else.

Not so. There are minimum standards of orthodox belief individuals must meet in
order to legitimately call themselves Christian, even in the most rudimentary sense, and

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most liberals and post-modernists, based on their own testimony, do not honor these basic
Christian beliefs whether they are nominally Protestant or Catholic. Did Jesus Christ rise
from the dead or not? This is more than a theological or rhetorical question. A Christian
must affirm without equivocation that Jesus Christ was and is God the Creator Incarnate,
and that He rose from the dead. Anyone who does not believe that these two points are
objectively true cannot legitimately call him/herself Christian.

In our ideologically pluralistic era, with its multicultural obsessions, the concept of
exclusive truth is dissonant with the popular zeitgeist-- literally repugnant to some, including
increasing numbers of professing Christians. However, the essence of Christianity has
always obliged its adherents to draw boundaries and circles. Jesus established the Christian
claim to unique revelation when He said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one
comes to the Father but by me." This is the inescapable essence of the Christian message,
no matter how much it may make post-modern "liberal Christian" multiculturalists squirm
with embarrassment. The more troublesome question is where do we draw the boundaries
and how big to we make the circles that delineate what is and is not Christian.

It is in this line and circle-drawing that the inconsistency, illogic, and inherent
relativism of Protestant liberalism are accented. Protestants generally affirm that some sort
of boundaries are necessary, but tend to keep moving them to accommodate the influences
of the secular, humanistic world--making the circle ever-bigger. Orthodox/Catholics, on the
other hand, insist that the boundaries must stay where they have always been.

Do all of the multi-thousands of Christian denominations have legitimate equal claim

to call themselves the Church? Or has Protestantism simply given up on the concept of the
Church as an objective body at all?

PART II: DIFFICULTIES

Chapter 12: AUTHORITY

Authority, both religious and secular, is ordained of God. St, Paul clearly stated in
Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no
authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed of God." No one can
reasonably dispute that the orders of episcopal government--Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons--existed in the very early Church.

In Acts 1: 20 the term "office," referring to the Apostolic vacancy left by Judas, is
literally translated "Bishopric." In a letter to the church at Philadelphia, Ignatius, Bishop of
Antioch (67-107) writes of "Christians at one with the bishop and the presbyters [priests]
and the deacons." St. Peter was the first Bishop of Antioch before AD 53, and was later
Bishop of Rome, where he was martyred c. AD 65.

Much Protestant resistance to restoration of Orthodox/Catholic Church unity inheres

in misapprehension of what "Church authority" really means. A popular Protestant
perception seems to be that the Roman Catholic Pope functions as an autocrat, imposing his
every will and whim on a subservient laity. In fact, the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, and
Deacons are themselves under the authority of the Church's doctrine, tradition, and canon
law. Their function is to administer that authority within, not over, the Church--not to
assume it personally.

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 However, Roman Catholic church policy is unquestionably characterized by
centralized authority under the Pope, who the Roman Church regards as the successor to
the apostle Peter. In Roman Catholic belief, the Petrine See is the sacrament of the Church's
unity. Peter is the vicar of Christ, and Christ is the head of the Church. The First Vatican
Council (1869-70) further enhanced the role of the papacy by declaring that the church's
infallibility (or inability to err on central issues of the Christian faith) can be exercised
personally by the Pope. Papal infallibility has been invoked only in extraordinary
circumstances, and the notion, held by some Protestants, that Catholics believe that it
applies to every word that proceeds from the pontiff's mouth, is utterly without foundation.

To be deemed infallible, a statement of the Pope must satisfy all of the following
criteria: (1) he must be speaking ex cathedra as Pope; (2) the utterance must define a
doctrine concerning faith and morals; (3) he must be defining a doctrine to be affirmed by
the whole Church. Unless all three conditions obtain the Pope is not speaking infallibly. For
example, the Pope may err when expressing his personal theological views, and not ex
cathedra, as, for example, when he condemned Galileo.

It is inaccurate to assume, as many Protestants do, that the Pope could produce an
infallible ex cathedra pronouncement at any time, and on any subject connected with faith
and morals. Any explicit ex cathedra utterance is based on intensive research and study by
both the Pope himself and his Episcopal advisors.

Eastern Orthodoxy's rejection of papal authority was part of the reason for the great
East/West Church schism in 1054, but it cannot be argued that the primacy of the Bishop of
Rome was not acknowledged by great Eastern early Church Fathers and Saints including
Ignatius, Iren'us, Denys, Athanasius, and St. John Chrysostom. St. Ignatius, who was
consecrated a Bishop by St. Peter himself, according to Chrysostom, wrote to the Roman
Church: "Ye were the instructors of others, and my desire is that those lessons should hold
good which as teachers ye enjoined." Orthodox scholar Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes:
"[In the primitive Church] there is no mention of `rights' or `subordination,' but the more
ancient churches were naturally more concerned for the universal unity of Christians and
the welfare of the Church. Among them the Church of Rome, the Church of the Apostles
Peter and Paul--the Church of the capital of the empire--undoubtedly enjoyed special
recognition from the very first."59 The Bishop of Rome was considered the Apostle Peter's
successor, and head of the universal church by divine appointment. By the beginning of the
fourth century, says Schmemann, "Rome's first place was not denied by anyone in the
Church." Eastern Bishops acknowledged the Pope as their father and teacher. However, in
the 5th Century Popes increasingly asserted that the see of St. Peter was the ultimate judge
in matters of faith and discipline, whereas the East affirmed the authority of councils, where
the local churches spoke as equals. They were happily prepared to respect the tradition of
the Petrine see, according the Roman bishop a measure of moral and doctrinal authority,
but they believed that the canonical and primatial rights of individual churches were to be
determined above all by historical considerations.

St. Iren'us, a disciple of St. Polycarp, who, Iren'us wrote, "had not only been trained
by the Apostles but had conversed with many of those who had seen Christ," paid tribute to
"the Church, founded and established at Rome by two most glorious apostles Peter and
Paul. For this Church, on account of its higher origin, the whole Church (I mean the faithful
on all sides) must needs agree; wherein the tradition which is of the Apostles hath ever been
preserved by them in all countries."

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 St. Ignatius's writings also affirm the three hierarchical episcopal offices, the
monarchical bishopric, the doctrine of the Eucharist, Catholic teaching on the value of
virginity, and of major relevance to the theme of this book: the teaching that the Church is
one. "Have a care for unity, than which nothing is better," Ignatius wrote to St. Polycarp.
"Be not deceived, my brethren; if any man follow one who makes a schism he doth not
inherit the Kingdom of God; if anyone walk in another doctrine he consenteth not to the
Passion."

When schism finally came, it was not only over theological and ecclesiological
disagreements, but also reasons of state. The Turks were at Byzantium's gates, while the
Normans were ravaging the Roman Empire's northern holdings. However, Alexander
Schmemann notes that when the actual separation came in 1054, it was not over substantive
issues like the filioque, a celibate priesthood, and papal infallibility, but rather more trivial
matters like disputes over the ecclesiastical calendar, the use of unleavened bread and the
singing of Alleluia at Easter, etc.

Mutual anathemas (excommunication) were exchanged by Pope Leo IX and

Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople, and once the break was perceived as final,
Schmemann notes, "hatred crowded into this prolonged encounter between the divided
halves of the Christian world. The separation of the churches ceased to be a dispute
between hierarchs or a theological controversy; for centuries it was part of the flesh and
blood of the people of the Church, a constant source of anguish in their state of mind.
`Latinism' in the East and `the Greeks' in the West were synonymous with evil, heresy, and
became terms of profanity." A similar dynamic would apply in Europe and America 500
years later, after the Reformation schism.

"The worst part of the separation of the churches," continues Schmemann," lies in
the fact that through the centuries we find hardly any sign of suffering from it, any longing
for reunification, any awareness of the abnormality, sin, and horror of this schism in
Christendom. There was almost a satisfaction with the separation, and a desire to discover
darker and darker aspects of the opposite camp. It was a separation not only in the sense
that these two churches were in fact divided, but also in the sense of a continually
deepening and widening gulf in the state of mind of the total Christian community."60 (once
again, this dynamic was to be repeated following the Reformers' break with Rome).

If there had been an practical hope of mending the torn fabric of the Church in the
Middle Ages, it was dashed by the so-called Fourth Crusade of 1202-1204, a misbegotten
adventure mounted on a nominal pretext of the Western Church coming to the aid of
Constantinople, which had been captured by the Turks, to restore the deposed Byzantine
emperor, Isaac II Angelos, to his throne. However, Constantinople owed a large financial
debt to the Venetian city-state, which supplied equipment and transport to the mostly
French Crusaders. The Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, was intent on exploiting the
campaign as a means of recovering Venetian money as well as eliminating the Hungarian
Christian port of Zara, which was Venice's chief commercial competitor on the Adriatic.

When Pope Innocent III heard of the Venetians' true agenda, he forbade the
expedition, and after it went ahead in defiance of his prohibition, he excommunicated all
participants. The Crusaders stormed up the Bosporus and took Constantinople on April 13,
1204, and proceeded to ransack, rape, and pillage over the next three days. Most of the
city's art objects and other treasures were either destroyed or carted off to Venice. In the
meantime, both Isaac II, Angelos and his son had died, so the Crusaders proceeded to set up

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a colonial administration they pompously named the "Latin Empire" in the ruined city, with
Count Baldwin of Flanders (1171-1205) as its potentate. They forcefully imposed the Latin
liturgy on the Greek Church, supplanting the domestic Greek rite. This humiliation was
bitterly resented throughout the Eastern Church, leading to the proverbial dictum: "Better
the boot of the Turk, than the slipper of the Bishop of Rome." Greek forces re-took
Constantinople in 1261, at which time the Eastern Church immediately reverted to the
Greek liturgy. The Osmanli Turks, under Sultan Mehmed II, finally re-conquered
Constantinople for good in 1453, bringing the Byzantine Empire to an end. The injustice of
the West's cynical "help" and its attempt at restoration of Church unity by military force,
hardened the East's animosity and suspicion.

There was half-hearted talk of reconciliation between East and West at the councils
of Lyon (1274) and Florence (1438-39), but nothing came of them. Unilateral doctrinal
statements declared by the Church of Rome at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and the
dogma of papal infallibility defined at the First Vatican Council in 1870, widened the gulf
between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Only since the Second Vatican Council
(1962-65) has serious interest in reconciliation revived.

"For you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you,
are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?" (1 Cor 3:3)

Chapter 13: SACRAMENTAL GRACE

One of the most profound dissonances between Orthodox/Catholic and Protestant

belief lies in respective perceptions of the meaning of the Sacraments. The Roman Catholic
Church and the Traditional Anglican Communion recognize seven Sacraments: Baptism;
Confirmation; the Holy Eucharist; Confession or Repentance; Holy Orders; Holy
Matrimony; and Holy Unction or Anointing of the Sick. The TAC's "Affirmation of St.
Louis" refers to these seven Sacraments as "objective signs of the continued presence and
saving activity of Christ our Lord among His people and as His covenanted means for
conveying His grace." Orthodoxy does not arbitrarily limit the Sacraments to these seven,
but also regards as Sacramental: offices and things like the Great Blessing of the Water at
Epiphany; the funeral service; Consecration of a Church, The Anointing or Coronation of
an Emperor or King; preaching through which we convince with Christ as the Word of God;
Icons; Relics of Saints; minor Sanctification of foods, houses, fields, etc; prayer and charity.
For instance, St John Chrysostom stated: "Charity is a sacrament... for our sacraments are
above all God's charity and love of mankind."61 Martin Luther, on the other hand, rejected
all the Sacraments save for Baptism and Holy Communion, and redefined the significance
of those.

In Orthodox/Catholic belief, a Sacrament is a divine rite instituted by Christ or His

Apostles in which things visible convey to us the hidden grace of God. Through Sacraments,
God's grace is mediated to us through matter. The Sacraments use natural things as vehicles
of the Holy Spirit to remind us that matter created by God is good. They are deemed to be
inspired by and extensions of the Incarnation in which God Himself did not eschew
becoming flesh for our salvation. This is in direct contradiction of the Gnostic-Manichaean
heresies and their residual modern manifestations that explicitly or implicitly hold matter as
ignoble or evil, and only spirit as good. Through the use of material vehicles, nature also
participates in salvation from the consequences of the Fall and the Curse to which it was
subjected through no fault of its own.62 The Sacraments minister to the whole person--body,
mind, and spirit.

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 The Sacraments of initiation: Baptism; Chrismation/Confirmation, and Holy
Communion, are unquestionably the most important because through them we enter the full
life of the Church. Orthodox/Catholics baptize infants as did the early Church, not because
they believe, but in order that they might believe--Sacramentally planting the seeds of faith
as it were. Through the life of the Church, these seeds will be nourished to grow and
produce Christian maturity. Baptism consecrates us to Christ. As St. John Chrysostom
wrote: "For this reason we baptize children, although they have no sin... in order to confer
upon them sanctification, adoption, inheritance... that they may be members of Christ and
become the abode of the Holy Spirit." Through Baptism, we are born into the life of Christ,
"not of blood nor the will of man, but of God" (St. John 1:13). Baptism symbolizes our
participation in the death and resurrection of Christ--our death to sin, and rising to the new
life in Christ.

Fr. Kallistos Ware writes: "However careless and indifferent the baptized may be in
subsequent life, this indwelling presence of the Spirit is never totally withdrawn. But unless
we co-operate with God's grace-- unless through the exercise of free will, we struggle to
perform the commandments--it is likely that the Spirit's presence within us will remain
hidden and unconscious."63

Chrismation or Confirmation is the Christian's participation in the anointing of Christ

by the Holy Spirit after His baptism. In Baptism we Sacramentally share in the death and
resurrection of Jesus; in Chrismation/Confirmation we receive the Holy Spirit, Who enables
us to live the life of God into which we are born through baptism.

Chapter 14: THE EUCHARIST

Many Protestants consider Holy Communion or The Lord's Supper as merely a

commemoration or remembrance of Christ's sacrifice for us, in which the elements remain
nothing but bread and wine, only representing Christ's Body and Blood and having no
spiritual reality. John Calvin rejected the possibility of any sort of objective presence of
Christ at the Eucharist. Martin Luther, however, affirmed that Christ is really present in the
Eucharistic elements, and not just in the soul of the communicant.

Orthodox/Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist--that the

bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ, although there are
differences on what that means in a material sense.

Jesus said: "Most assuredly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up
in the last day.

"For My flesh is food indeed and My blood is drink indeed.

"He who eats my flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." (St. John 6:
53-56)

There is no implication of symbolism or commemoration here. "This is My Body; this

is My blood."64 The Eucharist makes present again the sacrifice of Christ in a mysterious
manner. The Traditional Anglican Affirmation of St. Louis defines the Eucharist as "the
sacrifice which unites us to the all-sufficient Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and the

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Sacrament in which He feeds us with His Body and Blood." Those who receive the
Eucharist unworthily are declared to be bringing condemnation and sickness--even
death--upon themselves (1 Cor. 13:30). Surely no mere symbol could have such power!

St. Justin wrote less than two centuries after the Crucifixion, and in a manner as on a
matter long established and accepted, and for the instruction of readers who were newly or
not yet Christian, that the sacramental bread was no longer "common bread," but "the flesh
of Christ."

For Roman Catholics, the Sacrifice of the Mass is the Sacrifice of Christ which was
"full, perfect and sufficient," but which can be repeated by men in time and space because
God is outside of time and every Mass is connected to Christ's bloody sacrifice. Each mass
is the unbloody sacrifice, which, united to Christ's eternal sacrifice is offered to God again
and again as the most perfect of prayers, since it is divine and eternal.

The Protestant Reformers argued that the "Sacrifice of the Mass" meant that the
Catholic/Orthodox priest offered up Christ, really present in the forms of the bread and
wine, as a propitiatory sacrifice to God for the sins of the living and the dead, and against
this concept they vigourously rebelled. The Reformers insisted that (a) Christ's sacrifice
took place once and for all on the cross (indeed the adverb hapax or ephapax--meaning
`once and for all'--is applied in this context five times in the Letter to the Hebrews) and
cannot be re-enacted or supplemented in any way; (b) Christ's Sacrifice was made by
Himself alone, and sinful humanity cannot make it or share in making it; (c) was a perfect
and all- sufficient propitiation for sin, so that any additional propitiatory sacrifices are
unnessessary, and derogatory to it. This explicitly contradicts Catholic teaching, re-affirmed
at the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545-54), that:

"Inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass is contained and
immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who once offered himself in a bloody
manner on the altar of the cross, the holy council teaches that this is truly propitiatory and
has the effect, that if we, contrite and penitent, with sincere heart and upright faith, with
fear and reverence, draw nigh to God, we obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid.
For, appeased by this sacrifice, the Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence, and pardons
even the gravest crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering
by the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross, the manner alone of the
offering being different...." (Session 22, Chapter II)

"If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving;
or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a
propitiatory one; or that it profits him only who receives, and ought not to be offered for the
living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be
anathema." (Canon 3)65

We may speculate that the conciliar bishops of Trent were perhaps reacting more
strongly than was warranted to the Reformation revolt in making these statements. While
the bishops of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-'65 did not explicitly repudiate the
findings of Trent on this matter, they did take pains to clarify that the Eucharist is not a
repetition, but a perpetuation of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, and that the eucharistic
offering is made not by priests but by Christ and His whole people together. They affirmed
that Christ "instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice... in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the
Cross throughout the centuries until he should come again." Priests, "acting in the person of
Christ, join in the offering of the faithful to the sacrifice of their Head. Until the coming of

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the Lord... they re-present and apply in the sacrifice of the mass the one sacrifice of the
New Testament, namely the sacrifice of Christ offering himself once and for all to his
Father as a spotless victim."

There is doubtless still a great deal of dissonance between Roman Catholic teaching
on the Eucharist and its significance, and most of the variegated Protestant modalities of
thinking on this subject, however, it behooves Christians of good will on both sides of the
dialectic to ensure that they are really disagreeing about substance, and not merely about
semantics and emphasis.

The Orthodox position on these matters is refreshingly clear. The Orthodox Church
affirms that the Eucharist makes present again the sacrifice of Christ in a mysterious
manner. While the Sacrifice of Christ is presented in the New Testament as something that
happened once and for all, the Orthodox Church maintains that the Sacrifice of Jesus is
made present again to us in the Eucharist so that baptized Christians can partake of it, but it
is still something that happened once and for all. It is therefore not a new sacrifice, but an
unbloody re-presentation of Christ's original sacrifice. The Eucharist in Catholic/Orthodox
worship not only remembers the death of our Lord, but also His burial, Resurrection,
Ascension, and anticipates His Second Coming.

For the Church's first thousand years while it was still one and undivided, the
elements of the Eucharist were received unquestioningly as the Body and Blood of Christ.
How the bread and wine became Christ's Body and Blood was considered a mystery that
the Church did not attempt to explain. The Roman Catholic Church later developed a
detailed theory called "transubstantiation" that does attempt to explain how the bread and
wine become divine elements; ergo: the elements are no longer bread and wine but are
physically changed into the actual Body and Blood of Christ. Only the appearances of the
bread and wine such as colour and taste remain unchanged.

Orthodox66 and Anglican Catholics still simply accept the mystery of the change
without insisting on a reasoned explanation. St. John of Damascus wrote: "And now you
ask, `How does the bread become Christ's Body, and the wine and the water become
Blood?' I tell you, the Holy Ghost comes and makes these Divine Mysteries... to be Christ's
Body and Blood."

All Orthodox/Catholics, however, affirm that God's grace is transmitted in a real

sense through the elements of the Eucharist, and that it is a completion of all the Sacraments
and not merely one of them. The Eucharist is celebrated daily in Roman Catholic and
Orthodox Churches.

Chapter 15: THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION

Orthodox/Catholics believe that there has been a direct and unbroken line of
Apostolic succession in the Holy Episcopal Orders and continuity of origin from Christ and
the original 12 Apostles to the present-day bishops, priests, and deacons of the Church. As
Jesus told the Twelve: "Peace unto you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you...
Receive the Holy Spirit.

"If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained." (St. John 20:21-23)

The first seven deacons were ordained by the Apostles (Acts 6:6). Priests were

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ordained by the laying on of hands (Acts 13:3.) The ministry of Christ was transferred from
one person to another through the laying on of hands (2 Timothy 1:6-7).

The authority of faith was in the tradition of Christ's Apostles. At the head of one
church was a presiding officer, the Episkopos or Bishop, who was nominated either by the
local clergy or the church community at large, but who held his office by virtue of the
Apostolic Succession. Bishops were consecrated by their peers to occupy the "place of
Christ" at the Eucharistic meal, and to guard and witness a tradition reaching back,
uninterrupted, to Christ, the Apostles, and Mary, and that unites the local churches in the
community of faith.

This was the original form of the Church or "Ekklesia," affirmed by such as St.
Ignatius of Antioch who knew the Church from the time of Pentecost, and whose writings
of around 100 A.D. take a personal, monarchical episcopacy for granted.

Integral to the apostolic succession of bishops is the belief that the church has the
right and duty to teach Christian doctrine and morals authoritatively and that the substantial
correctness of this teaching is guaranteed by the continued presence of the Holy Spirit in the
Church.

The ancient local churches all claimed to have been founded by one or another of
the original Apostles to whom an unbroken line was maintained through ordination by the
laying on of hands. Bishops could also ordain subordinates called "elders," "presbuteros" in
Greek, a title which was eventually shortened to "priest." Priests could consecrate the
elements of the Eucharist as part of their office

Which brings us to the contemporarily difficult issue of female ordination.

Orthodox/Catholics cannot in good conscience and respect for 2,000 years of Church
Tradition, accept the ordination of women to Holy Orders in the Church. There is no
precedent in the ministry of Jesus or the Apostles for doing this. The Traditional Anglican
Communion affirms: "The Holy Orders of bishops, priests and deacons as the perpetuation
of Christ's gift of apostolic ministry to His Church, asserting the necessity of a bishop of
apostolic succession (or a priest ordained by such) as the celebrant of the Eucharist--these
Orders consisting exclusively of men in accordance with Christ's will and institution (as
evidenced by the Scriptures), and the universal practice of the Catholic Church."

Many Protestants, and large numbers of nominal Roman Catholics in the liberal
West as well, argue that there are no legitimate theological reasons to prohibit Ordination of
women to the priesthood, and that such exclusion amounts to gratuitous bigotry. They argue
that there are several Scriptural precedents for ministry by women, and that women were
excluded from the original Apostleship only because of cultural and social conventions that
prevailed at the time of Christ's earthly ministry. However, what Protestants in particular
fail to acknowledge, is that a minister and a priest are not the same thing. There have always
been female "ministers" in the Catholic/Orthodox Churches--women who minister to the
material and spiritual needs of Christians and others. But the Sacramental priesthood is
something else entirely, although most priests also have a ministry. A priest is ordained by
God through the Apostolic Succession to perform certain specific functions in the Church:
pronouncing absolution for sin, and consecrating the elements of the Eucharist. Many
Protestants insist that the priesthood is merely a human contrivance never intended by
Jesus, but if that were so, the Apostles went off the track very early on in establishing it.

The Orthodox/Catholic churches base their doctrine of Holy Orders on a precedent

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established by Christ after His Resurrection. "He breathed on them and said, receive the
Holy Spirit," (St. John 20: 21) and proclaimed "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven."
When the Apostles chose a successor to the dead traitor, Judas Iscariot, they looked "among
these men that have been in our company all the time the Lord Jesus moved among us."
(Acts 1: 21) The word used in the Greek is unambiguously "males" (andron) and not
"human" (anthropon).

"One might argue that the apostles got it wrong," observes Bishop Robert Crawley of
the Anglican Catholic Church, "but if that's the case, the whole foundation of the Church is
in doubt."67

Four days after the Church of England's General Synod voted by a razor-thin margin
to begin ordaining women, The Rev'd. Dr. Brian Horne, a Theology lecturer at Kings
College of London, England, tabled a 22-point thesis outlining theological objections to the
decision. Dr. Horne has since left the Church of England.

Dr. Horne affirms that we, as created beings, both fallen and redeemed, live under
God's order of creation and redemption, and that the latter does not abrogate nature and the
created order, but rather transforms it. Sin distorts and perverts the order of creation, but
does not destroy it. Christ's redemption restores the order that has become disordered by
sin, but it does not restore the pre-fallen Edenic order, but rather integrates and transforms
the sinful state of human nature through the sacrifice of Christ.

In the created order, men and women are essentially different and complimentary.
The dialectic of male and female is the fundamental differentiated state in which human
substance resides and is articulated. There is no gender-neutral undifferentiated state of
human nature, and the order of redemption does not abolish this essential dichotomy.

Sin corrupts and distorts the divinely ordered male/female complimentarity into the
dominance of male over female in which women are oppressed by men. It is that distortion
of the dialectic, not the dialectic itself, that is redeemed through Christ's sacrifice and
properly reflected in the life of the Church.

The essential male/female difference is articulated in the complimentarity of sperm

and ovum. The involuntary shedding of female blood during menstruation is the symbol of
life, making woman both victim and life-giver. On the other hand, men shed blood only
voluntarily, accidentally, or as victims of violence.

Women's priesthood resides in the order of nature, within themselves whereby they
shed blood involuntarily for the continuance of the human race. However, because the
order of creation has been distorted and perverted, in the order of redemption sin can be
redeemed only by the voluntary shedding of blood, which is a sign of humility and sacrifice.
This requires the oppressor, man, to signify the restored order.

Therefore, Jesus, the Incarnate Savior, had to be male, argues Dr. Horne, because
redemption is the order of humility which had to be signified by man. Male blood had to be
shed and male life surrendered in repentance for oppression of women in the sin-adulterated
order of creation. "It is a special kind of sacrifice, the self-offering of blood not demanded
by nature."

The Holy Eucharist of the Church represents this sacrificial mystery, and the
priesthood can only be properly understood in the context of eucharistic liturgy. The male

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figure of the priest symbolizes and "Iconizes" Christ's willing acceptance of the humility that
transforms and heals the distorted order of male dominance. The Church is an essential part
of the order of redemption, representing in the Eucharist the pouring out of Christ's blood
which transfigures the world.

Christ's Atonement does not abolish the male/female dialectic in the created order,
but rather restores it to its rightful relationship. Priesthood is therefore not identical to
ministry, but a symbolic and representational office that is not principally functional. As Dr.
Horne points out, the priesthood "is concerned, first, with being and not doing." That being
is the being of humility, which is its only ground of authority. "The maleness of the
Incarnate Lord is the deliberate choice of God and the male priest is the icon of this unique
savior."68

However, insistence on maintaining the Church tradition of an all-male priesthood in

no sense implies a denigration of the work or competence of women or their consignment to
"second-class-citizenship" in the Church. As Fr. Anthony Coniaris notes: "Women are not
eligible for Holy Orders in the Orthodox Church in keeping with Sacred Tradition and the
example established by Jesus and His apostles. This practice conforms with the traditional
Orthodox belief that men and women were designed by God to serve Him in different
capacities."69 The Traditional Anglican Communion approves "The ancient office and
ministry of Deaconesses as a lay vocation for women, affirming the need for proper
encouragement of that office." The Canon Law Society of America has also recently
declared that for the Roman Catholic Church to ordain women as permanent deacons, only
a few changes in current church law, all "within the authority of the Apostolic See to
make," would be needed. The Society invoked the authority of precedent, referring to the
fourth century "Apostolic Constitutions" which clearly document an order of deaconesses,
open to virgins and monogamous widows, that flourished in the Eastern Church for about
1,000 years and was also present in the Latin Church during part of its early history.

The Reformation was essentially an anti-clerical movement, attacking the powers

and claims of the priesthood and the Papacy. Some Protestants seem to take perverse
delight in cataloguing moral failures of particular Orthodox/Catholic clerics and presenting
these as an argument against the Church herself. This is surely an unworthy project, and a
futile line of reasoning, since it is not difficult to document many instances of equally
heinous and unworthy behaviors on the part of certain Protestant clergy. In either case, the
guilty parties are renegades from the precepts governing the communions they represent,
and their faults or crimes must be ascribed to them alone as weak and poor sinners and not
to the churches in which they hold office.

It must be further understood that the efficacy of Sacramental ministration comes

from God alone, and is irrelevant to the character of the ministrant. Just as the virtue of a
particular priest cannot be transferred to another person, neither can his personal vices rob
another of virtue. A useful analogy is that of a court judge. So long as the judge's decisions
on the bench are fairly and soundly based in the law, his personal character and moral
behavior outside the court are irrelevant. Even if a judge were found to have committed a
particular crime, his sentences meted out to other criminals for the same crime would not be
invalidated, because their validity rests on his performance of an elected or appointed office
and not on his personal moral behavior. Similarly, the Sacraments derive their efficacy from
Christ--not from the human channels that convey them.

Chapter 16: CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

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 "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained." (St. John 20:23)

"And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on
earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
(St. Matthew 16:19)

Many Protestants viscerally object to the concept of Sacramental confession of sins

to a Priest, and insist that they need only make their confession directly to God. However,
the Sacrament of Confession was very much affirmed by the primitive, undivided Church,
especially after the 4th Century. Originally, Confession was a public act, required of those
who had been officially excommunicated or who had performed acts subject to
excommunication. This practice gradually evolved into the form of private confession,
followed by a prayer of absolution pronounced by a priest.70

St. Athanasius, who was instrumental in establishing the creeds of the Christian
Faith, one of which bears his name, wrote: "He who confesses in penitence, receives
through the priest by the grace of Christ the remission of sins.... If our chains are loosed, we
shall go on to better things; if yours are not loosed, go and give yourself into the hands of
the disciples of Jesus; for they are here to loose us, having received the power from the
Savior."

St. Augustine affirmed: "To pretend that it is enough to confess to God alone, is to
make void the power of the keys given to the Church, and to contradict the words of Christ
in the Gospel."

Every Anglican priest at the moment of his ordination hears the words: "Receive the
Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto
thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and
whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." Either this is true or it is blasphemy.

The Book of Common Prayer also affirms in the orders for The Ministry to the Sick:
"If the sick person feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter, he shall be moved
to make a special confession of his sins... After which the Priest shall absolve him... with
these words: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all
sinners who truly repent and believe in him: Of his great mercy forgive thee thine offenses.
And by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all of thy sins, in the Name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

The Orthodox Church considers the Sacrament of Penance (Confession) to be "a

new Baptism," since it involves the forgiveness of all sins committed after Baptism.
However, Orthodoxy does not require particular Sacramental forgiveness of every sin, since
we are never completely without sin. Rather, grave sins such as murder, apostasy, adultery,
and other sins of willful disobedience that separate us from God and the love of our fellow
humans must be confessed. Orthodox Christians are expected to avail themselves of
Sacramental penance periodically, as a form of spiritual check-up, as a means of humbling
themselves before God, and to receive spiritual guidance from their pastor. Sacramental
confession before a priest even for lesser sins is recommended at least once a year. It is not
regarded legalistically, as a means of sentencing and punishing guilt, but rather as an
instrument of liberating and healing the wounds of sin.

Fr. Anthony Coniaris writes: "There are two kinds of confession in the Orthodox

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Church: private confession by prayer and sacramental confession. Whereas our Roman
Catholic brethren tend to hold to sacramental confession only, and our Protestant brethren
to confession by private prayer only, the Orthodox Church, following the apostolic way,
avoids both extremes."71

The Roman Catholic Church believes that a certain amount of temporal punishment
is due in this life, even for sins that God has pardoned, and that for these some
reparations--"satisfaction"--must be made. When Protestants confess their sins to God
alone, even with genuine repentance, the only thing to incite them to make reparation is
their own will and judgment. Self-imposed penances, like New Year's resolutions, are very
difficult for most people to adhere to. However, penances imposed by a confessor are more
objective and much less likely to be rationalized and dishonoured.

Confession and Absolution can also be a great relief and comfort to persons
weathering dark nights of the soul. The Protestant way--"just me and God" can be a very
lonely road to tread.

Another often-heard Protestant criticism of the Orthodox/Catholic Sacraments of

Confession and Absolution is that the sinner can emerge from the confessional, his slate
wiped clean as it were, and go right back to sinning in the alleged happy knowledge that he
will be pardoned again at a subsequent confession. This is of course not true. Confession
and Absolution are only valid if entered into sincerely by the penitent; a mortal sin
intentionally concealed nullifies the entire confession.

The priest must of course assume good faith on the part of the penitent, but an
absolution obtained under false pretenses would be invalid. God will not be mocked, and
exploiting the Sacrament of Confession as license to sin willfully surely makes a mockery of
the process. Sins are forgiven only where there is at the time of the confession no wish or
intention to recommit them. In any case, even if Confession conceivably could be
misapprehended as a license to go on sinning, what is there to prevent Protestants from
doing exactly the same sort of thing in confessing their sins directly to God? It would seem
that there is even less inhibition of abuse when the individual sinner is the sole judge of
whether he really is repentant and contrite.

For the Protestant, self-delusion is quite possible and even probable when evaluating
his own moral failures, and his efforts at reparation. This is much less likely when sins are
confessed to another individual as well as to God. Being obliged to verbally articulate an
inventory of one's sins makes them much more difficult to fudge and rationalize. As for the
calumny that confession is just a clerical power trip, it must be acknowledged that
Orthodox/Catholic priests themselves, even the Pope of Rome, must confess their own sins.

In the Russian Orthodox rite of Penance, the priest addresses the penitent thus, as a
witness rather than a judge: "Behold my child, Christ stands here invisibly and receives your
confession; therefore, do not be ashamed or afraid, and hide nothing from me; but tell me
without hesitation all the things that you have done, and so you will have pardon from our
Lord Jesus Christ. See, his holy image is before us; and I am only a witness, bearing
testimony before him of all the things you have to say to me. But if you hide anything from
me, you will have greater sin. Take care, then, lest having come to a physician you depart
unhealed."

Chapter 17: LITURGICAL WORSHIP

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 Some Protestant churches--notably Lutherans and Anglicans-- practice liturgical
worship. Anglican liturgy, for instance, consists of translated and somewhat revised versions
of the pre-Reformation Catholic liturgies. Most Protestants reject liturgy however. There is
no question that the Jews did and still do use a liturgical form of worship. Therefore, it can
be reasonably assumed that the Church also used liturgy from the very first. Christ is "a
priest forever" (Heb. 7:17-21) and a minister (Gr. leitourgos--"liturgist"). Acts 13:2 is
accurately translated: "they were in the liturgy of the Lord." Acts 20:7 indicates that the
Disciples came together regularly on Sundays to celebrate the Eucharist. Hebrews 13:10
notes that "We have an altar..."

"The Protestant evangelical idea of worship as `make-it-up-as-you- go-along' is

nonsense," says Frank Schaeffer, "When you come to worship, you're certainly not there to
hear a lecture or be educated, or be fed... you are there to worship God. Liturgy and
worship is not preaching and teaching and it's not singing songs that titillate you."72
Schaeffer contends that worship is something objective you do for God; not something you
do for yourself."

In the primitive, undivided Church, a Christian could go to mass anywhere in

Christendom and find the same liturgical order of worship. "If you had a time machine,"
Schaeffer observes, "you could grab a Christian pilgrim out of her third century pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, and fast forward her to 15th century Europe, and you march her into a
church, and in 10 seconds or less she could not only tell you she was in the Christian
Church, but she could also tell you, `I'm in vespers.' She would know exactly where she was
in the liturgy."73

Chapter 18: VENERATION OF MARY AND THE SAINTS

In any discussion of Orthodoxy and Catholicism with Protestants, especially

evangelicals or fundamentalists, the matter of reverence paid to Saints, and particularly
Mary the Mother of Jesus, is bound to be raised. Frequently heard is the accusation that
Catholics "worship Mary." This latter is simply not true. Both the Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox Churches explicitly forbid worship or adoration of the Virgin Mary.
Roman Catholic doctrine states that to adore Mary in the sense that God should be adored
would be idolatry, for adoration is reserved for God alone. Catholic doctrine absolutely does
not place Mary on an equal plane with Jesus.

On the other hand, to love and reverence Mary is a duty and privilege for
Orthodox/Catholic Christians. If it can be legitimately argued that some Catholics give
Mary more reverence than is her due, it is even more true that virtually all Protestants give
her less, as Billy Graham has pointed out. One Catholic apologist observed, with
considerable justification, that even Muslims pay much greater honour to the Mother of
Jesus than do the majority of Protestant Christians.

Some Protestants object to the titles Orthodox Catholics give to Mary, such as
"Mother of God," "Blessed Virgin," and "Theotokos" ("God-Bearer"). Their objections can
be best answered with the following questions: Is Jesus God?, who is His Mother?, did she
carry Him in her womb?, was she a virgin when she conceived? In St. Luke's Gospel (1:48),
Mary herself affirms: "From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." At the
Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel greets Mary with the words: "Hail, full of grace! The
Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women." St. Elizabeth uses the same expression:
"Blessed art thou among women... Whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should

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come to me?"(St. Luke 1:43)

The title "Mother of God" was formally affirmed at the council of Ephesus as early
as 434 AD, and was used by Church Fathers Athanasius and Eusebius. Of course neither
Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox doctrine teaches that Mary is the Mother of the Holy
Trinity. The Holy Trinity has no mother. But Mary is the Mother of the Son of God in his
human nature, so she assuredly is the Mother of God in the sense alluded to.

The Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches affirm that Mary was not only a virgin,
but ever-virgin, ie: that she never had sexual relations with her husband, Joseph, even after
Jesus was born. Most Protestants reject and even scorn this belief, arguing that it is
unscriptural (EG: St. Matt. 1.25).74 However, it must be acknowledged that the
ever-virginity of Mary is a very early teaching of the Church. Saint Athanasius used the
term "ever virgin" in reference to Mary, and this view was apparently accepted by the
Fathers of the Church from the 5th Century on. It was formally established as a doctrine at
the Lateran Council of 649. Orthodox/Catholics build a case of circumstantial evidence to
support the ever-virginity dogma based on Old Testament prophesy (Ezekiel 44:1-2),75 and
alternate meanings and connotations of the word translated as "until" from the Greek text in
St. Matthew's Gospel. They also maintain that the brothers and sisters of Christ mentioned
in Scripture were actually either cousins or Joseph's issue from an earlier marriage. Abram
called his nephew Lot "brother" (Gen. 14:14). Boas referred to his relative Elimelech as his
"brother" (Ruth 4:3). Joab called Amasa, his first cousin (2 Sam. 17:25), "brother" just
before he killed him (2 Sam. 20:9. On the Cross, Jesus committed His mother to the care of
St. John the Disciple, which would have been highly unusual and scandalous if she had had
another child of her own to care for her.

In my estimation, neither the pro nor the anti "ever-virginity" factions can mount a
case strong enough to convince an impartial jury beyond reasonable doubt. However, I do
not think difficulty in accepting this dogma is sufficient basis to reject the
Orthodox/Catholic Faith outright. Part of becoming Orthodox/Catholic is to stop resting on
one's own understanding and to accept the Church's teaching authority as a whole, whether
or not we are convinced intellectually on every detail of dogma.

Which brings us to two other beliefs about the Virgin Mary: that she was bodily
assumed into Heaven, and the Roman Catholic dogma of her Immaculate Conception.

The Assumption of the Virgin was ratified as a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church
in 1950. It has never been declared a dogma by the Eastern Orthodox Church, but it
remains a pious belief based on tradition among Orthodox Christians, who affirm the
Dormition of the Theotokos. Orthodox Scholar and historian VIadimir Lossky observes:
"The Mother of God was never a theme of the public preaching of the Apostles. While
Christ was preached on the housetops... the mystery of His Mother was proclaimed only to
those who were within the Church... It is not so much an object of faith as a foundation of
our hope, a fruit of faith, ripened in tradition. Let us therefore keep silence, and let us not
try to dogmatize about the supreme glory of the Mother of God."76

The Immaculate Conception of Mary, on the other hand, is a relatively recent

interpolation (1854) unique to the Roman Church, and rejected by Orthodoxy as well as the
Protestant churches. The rationale behind this Roman Catholic dogma is a commendable
effort to distance Mary (and therefore to protect Christ) from the taint of human sinfulness
by declaring that Mary herself was conceived and born without original sin; that as the

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mortal vehicle of Christ's Incarnation, the Blessed Virgin was, from the moment of her
conception, entirely uncontaminated by the stain of original sin, and that as the person
chosen uniquely to become the Mother of Incarnate God, Mary was granted freedom from
that blemish and thus made a spotless vessel for the savior of mankind.

The Orthodox Church believes that Mary was cleansed of all sin at the
Annunciation, after she had willingly agreed to accept God's offer. At this moment, and not
before, she became blessed and full of grace ("henceforth"--St. Luke 1:48).

In any case, the Mother is venerated because of the Son and never apart from Him.
Orthodox writer and scholar Father Anthony M. Coniaris notes that "The incarnation was
not only the work of the Father, of His Power and His Spirit... but it was also the work of
the will and faith of the Virgin... Just as God became incarnate voluntarily, so He wished
that His mother should bear him freely and with full consent."77

Chapter 19: PRAYERS TO MARY AND THE SAINTS

The Orthodox/Catholic Churches teach that the Mother of Christ is the most potent
advocate among the Saints in Heaven, and that the Saints, reigning with Christ, offer their
prayers for men to God, and that it is good and useful to call upon them, and to have
recourse to their prayers, help, and assistance, in order to obtain help from God through
Jesus Christ, who alone is Redeemer and Savior. Mary's intercession is invoked because she
was closer to Jesus than anyone else and is, therefore, the representative of fallen humanity
and the most prominent and holiest member of the Church.

Orthodox/Catholics do not worship Mary and the Saints; rather they venerate them
as heroes of the Faith whose example makes it easier for others to believe in God. Anyone
who claims that Orthodox/Catholics worship Saints is guilty of calumny, because it is not
true. Prayers to Saints are not worshipful, nor in expectation that the Saints themselves
possess power to grant prayerful petitions, but rather that the Saints will intercede on the
petitioner's behalf with Almighty God, who alone is the source of every grace, blessing, and
providence. Like faithful Protestants, Orthodox/Catholic Christians believe that there is just
one Mediator between God and man: Jesus Christ. When Orthodox/Catholics invoke the
prayers of the Saints, they do not ask the Saints themselves to save or redeem, but to pray
for them.

Orthodox/Catholics find it odd that Protestants so doggedly resist the idea that the
Angels and Saints in Heaven might intercede with the Lord for fellow Christians on earth.
Corporate prayer is affirmed in this life, so why not in Heaven? Jesus said that "joy shall be
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth," so the heavenly company must take an active
interest in us. How could they rejoice over our repentance unless they know about it? St.
Paul writes of a "great cloud of witnesses," who surround us continually. "The air is thick
with them," says Fr. Anthony Coniaris, "they're like a cloud in their multitude... not one of
them silent or indifferent, all of them eager to share what the Lord did for them, how they
found Him, what grace they received."78 Revelation 8:3-4 refers to an angel whose duty is
to offer "the prayers of all Saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And
the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the Saints, ascended before God from the
angel's hand." Revelation 5:8 mentions "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers
of the Saints."

The prayers of Saints and Angels can hardly be for themselves, since they are

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already perfected and living in the Holy City, so one must deduce that their prayers are for
those in need of prayer--poor sinners in this world.

Prayers for intercession of the Saints in Heaven date from the very early Church, as
evidenced by funeral inscriptions on Christian crypts in the Catacombs beneath Rome (c.
2nd to 4th Century), one of such which reads: "Ask for us in thy prayers, for we know thou
art with Christ." St. John Chrystostom (c. 346-407) observed: "Not on this fatal day only,
but on other days also let us invoke these Saints; let us implore them to become our patrons;
for they have great power; not merely during life; but also after death; yea, much greater
after death."79

Everyone who recites the Nicene Creed, as many Protestants do, affirms the
Communion of Saints. This affirmation means that the Church Triumphant in Heaven is not
ignorant or insensitive to the needs and sufferings of the Church Militant here on earth. As
Fr. Coniaris notes: "The two churches remain connected through the bond of love which is
expressed through prayer. The Communion of Saints is a communion through never-ending
prayer."80

Another Orthodox priest, scholar, and writer, Fr. Kallistos Ware, notes: "In God and
His Church there is no division between the living and the departed, but all are one in the
love of the Father. Whether we are alive or whether we are dead, as members of the Church
we still belong to the same family, and still have a duty to bear one another's burdens.
Therefore just as Orthodox Christians here on earth pray for one another and ask for one
another's prayers, so they pray for the faithful departed and ask the faithful departed to pray
for them. Death cannot sever the bond of mutual love which links the members of the
Church together."81

Chapter 20: MANDATORY CELIBACY IN THE PRIESTHOOD

Mandatory celibacy for priests is really only an issue in the Roman Catholic Church,
although Eastern Orthodox bishops have been chosen exclusively from the ranks of
voluntarily celibate or widowed priests at least since the reigns of Emperors Theodotus II
and Justinian, and the requirement is mentioned in the Synod of Trulla (AD 692). Celibacy
is also expected of any Orthodox priest not married at the time of his ordination.

The universal celibacy rule for Roman Catholic priests dates only from 1139, long
after the East/West schism of 1054. Post-Reformation Anglicanism restored approval of a
married priesthood and bishopric in that communion, continued by the Traditional Anglican
Communion.

The Roman celibacy rule is Church law--not divine law, and therefore could be
changed by the pope or the general council. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council
acknowledged that celibacy is "not demanded of the priesthood by its nature."

The Roman Church also imposes the rule of celibacy on single men ordained as
deacons, although mature, married men are also accepted to the diaconate. However, many
Eastern Rite Catholic Churches in communion with Rome have a married priesthood, and
married Anglican priests who convert to Roman Catholicism are also accepted. Given that
the Roman Church is experiencing a critical shortage of priests in some parts of the world,
and that mandatory celibacy is widely regarded as a significant impediment to recruitment
to Holy Orders, and also the reason some have left the priesthood, it is reasonable to

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imagine that the Church might consider modifying the requirement if not for apprehension
that to do so would increase pressure to ordain women and even non-celibate
homosexualists. These days, changing anything might be regarded as a dangerous precedent.

Chapter 21: "CALL NO MAN FATHER"

For many Protestants the Orthodox/Catholic tradition of addressing priests as

"Father" presents a major stumbling-block. A New Testament text frequently cited in
objection to this practice is St. Matthew 23:9, "And call no man your father upon the earth;
for one is your father, which is in heaven."

However, if you look at the context in which this statement is delivered, Jesus is
rebuking the scribes and Pharisees for self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and their inward
corruptness while they loaded heavy burdens on the people. Arguing the case against calling
priests "Father" solely on the basis of this one verse leaves one on uncomfortably soft
ground indeed.

A radically literal interpretation of Jesus' words would leave us at a loss as to what

we should call our male parent. It should also not be overlooked that Jesus warns against
calling people "rabbi" (teacher), or "master" as well as "father." As Fr. Peter Gillquist, who
wrestled with the "call no man father" issue during his conversion from Presbyterianism to
Orthodoxy, puts it: "In this `call no man father' passage, our Lord is contending with certain
rabbis of His day who were using these specific titles to accomplish their own ends. And
had these same rabbis been using other titles like reverend and pastor, Jesus, it seems to me,
would have said of these as well, `Call no one reverend or pastor.'"82

St. Paul refers to himself as spiritual father to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:5). Jesus
refers to the rich man in torment crying out to "Father Abraham" in St. Luke 16:24, 30.
According to Fr. Anthony Coniaris, "Clergymen are addressed as `Father' in the Orthodox
Church since they are the ones through whom we receive our spiritual birth in Christ
through baptism.... The title `Father' expresses the attitude of the faithful toward the role of
the priest."83 This concept of course relates to the doctrines of Apostolic Succession and
Sacramental Grace.

Chapter 22: PURGATORY

The Roman Catholic Church contends that purgatory (from the Latin purgare, "to
cleanse") is the place or state after death where the souls of Christians who have died in a
state of grace but not free from imperfection expiate their remaining sins before entering the
visible presence of God and the saints; the damned, on the other hand, go directly to hell.

Living Roman Catholic Christians are encouraged to pray for those in purgatory, and
perform other acts of piety and devotion on their behalf. The suffering of purgatory is less a
concept of physical pain than one of postponement of the "beatific vision." Purgatory will
end with the Last Judgment at the close of the world.

Roman Catholic dogmas of purgatory were defined at the councils of Lyon (1274)
and Ferrara-Florence (1438-45) and reaffirmed at the Council of Trent (1545-63). These
dogmas were rejected by Luther, Calvin, and other leaders of the Reformation, who
asserted that Christians freed from sin through faith in Jesus Christ go directly to heaven.

The Orthodox church does not affirm the developed Roman Catholic theology of

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purgatory, but it does encourage prayers for the dead in some undefined intermediate state
between temporal life and life in the Holy City.

Chapter 23: ICONS, RELICS, AND IMAGES

After an early controversy on the subject, the Eastern Church affirmed the use of
images, or icons, of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints as visible witnesses to the fact
that God has taken human flesh in the person of Jesus.

One old English Roman Catholic catechism explicitly affirms: "We should give to
relics, crucifixes and holy pictures an inferior and relative honour, so far as they relate to
Christ and His Saints, and are memorials of them. We may not pray to relics or images, for
they neither see nor hear nor help us." The Catholic Church does not compel anyone to
kneel or pray before any statue.

Veneration of relics dates to the early Church. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4th Century)
writes: "Though the soul is not present, a power resides in the bodies of the saints because
of the righteous soul which has for so many years dwelt in it, or used it as its minister."

Orthodox theologians base their arguments affirming the use of icons on the doctrine
of the Incarnation: God is invisible and indescribable in his essence, but when the Son of
God became man, he voluntarily assumed all the characteristics of created nature, including
describability. Consequently, images of Christ, as man, affirm the truth of God's real
incarnation. Because divine life shines through Christ's risen and glorified humanity, the
function of the iconic artist is to convey the mystery of the Christian faith through art.
Furthermore, because icons of Christ and the saints provide direct representation of the holy
persons represented on them, these images should be objects of "veneration" (proskynesis ),
even though "worship" ( latreia ) is reserved exclusively for God.

Orthodox theologian Fr. Kallistos Ware affirms that veneration of relics proceeds
from belief in the resurrection of the body: "Belief in the deification of the body and its
eventual resurrection helps to explain the Orthodox veneration of relics. Since the body is
redeemed and sanctified along with the soul, and since the body will rise again, it is only
fitting that Christians should show respect for the bodily remains of the saints. Reverence
for relics is not the fruit of ignorance and superstition, but springs from a highly developed
theology of the body."84

Chapter 24: THE TRADITION

"Therefore brethren stand fast and hold to the traditions which you were taught,
whether by word or our epistle" (2 Thess. 2:15).

I have made many references to tradition in this text, in several different contexts.
Consequently, a short summary chapter is in order to clarify the distinction between The
Tradition or Holy Tradition, and other traditions. The term "tradition" derived from a Latin
word meaning "to hand over." The Tradition is "the faith which was once for all delivered
unto the saints" (Jude: verse 3), the sacred Deposit of Faith handed over to the Apostles by
Jesus Christ Himself.

The Reformation posited a false dichotomy between Holy Scripture and other
elements of The Tradition, which in fact includes the Bible, as well as the Three Creeds, the
decisions of the great Ecumenical Church Councils, the writings of the Early Church

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Fathers, and writings of the Saints. The notion that the balance of The Tradition somehow
contradicts the Bible is insupportable. As former Archbishop of Canterbury once wrote:
"Tradition does not mean that the Church has teachings which supplement those of the
Bible."

There are other Christian traditions and certain traditions unique to particular
branches of the fragmented Church that cannot legitimately be considered part of The
Tradition, although that does not mean they are necessarily false or wrong.

Part III WHAT IS THE CHURCH?

Chapter 25: THE TASK

Many readers, responding to arguments I have presented in this book, might be

inclined to ask: "What is it you are proposing in practical terms; a return to Medieval
feudalism and theocratic government?"

The answer is that even if it were somehow possible to erase the events of the past
500-600 years from history and restore High Medieval Christian society, that would hardly
be a worthy objective. Of course we cannot go back. We cannot erase the Renaissance, the
Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and all the scientific and
technological developments of the past 600 years. We have to live in our own time and deal
with their consequences.

The operative question is not therefore: "Do we want to return to Medievalism?" but
rather "Do we want to work toward a restoration of Christendom in our present era?" I
suspect that many late 20th-Century Christians, conditioned by the liberal-humanist ethics
of relativism and multiculturalism, would recoil in horror from the idea of a new "Pax
Christiana."

As I have attempted to illustrate in previous chapters, Western Christianity in general

has lost its nerve and its vitality; its conviction in the universal application of the Christian
Gospel. This begs the question as to whether Christians have come to regard Christianity as
just one particular "flavour" from a smorgasbord buffet of morally equivalent religious
expressions.

I contend that the latter notion is utterly absurd. If one purports to affirm the
Scriptural claims of Christ and His Apostles, and the historical claims of the Church, while
insisting on repudiation of the essential basis of the Christian Faith, what indeed is the point
of carrying on the Church as a gutted carcass? As St. Paul observed:

"But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be
not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found
false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he
raised not up, if it be so that the dead rise not.

"For if the dead rise not; then is Christ not raised: And if Christ be not raised, your
faith is in vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are
perished.

"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."85

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 However, if Christ is indeed risen, as the Church has professed for nearly 2,000
years, then this must logically be the primary focus of Christian confession, and have
profound impact on the way we conduct our lives. Unless we are prepared to confess and
witness the unique truth and authority of the Gospel of a risen Christ, then it would be far
more intellectually honest to affiliate ourselves with some other religious expression, say
Buddhism or Taoism, that does not claim to be the one, universal truth.

My central proposal in this book is precisely that one of the highest priority
objectives of a re-unified Church should be the re-establishment of Christendom in the
socio-economic and political arenas as well as the spiritual and pastoral. The principles of
the Orthodox/Catholic faith need to be applied comprehensively--not out of romantic
nostalgia for the Middle Ages--but because they are the TRUTH, the ideal blueprint for
society to pattern itself after, in accordance with Christ's Great Commission.86 Through
such application, a renewed Christendom will emerge, not a recidivist quasi-medieval
culture, but an organically coherent Christian society appropriate to our own time.

This is obviously no short-term objective, but rather a grand project for the new
millennium. It took several centuries to destroy Christendom, and it will take several more
to rebuild it. But the goal is worthy. And if Christianity cannot recover the courage of its
convictions, and once again forcefully (as the Church Militant) assert its rightful claim to
being the unique way to salvation of human souls, its temporal survival as more than a
besieged and persecuted remnant is doomed. That is one big "if," and success in such an
enterprise is far from guaranteed, but as Mother Theresa of Calcutta has observed, we are
not required to succeed, only to be faithful. "Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh,
shall he find faith on the earth?"87 Christ asked. The answer is up to us.

The pernicious distempers that afflict the corpus of Western, once-Christian,

civilization were unleashed by the fragmentation of Christendom. With no common moral
authority or common moral tradition strong enough to restrain the onslaught of evils, they
grow unchecked, and the only antidote is a re-unified, revitalized Christendom.
Ecumenization of the incoherent potsherds of the historical undivided Church is not nearly
adequate to the task at hand, and ecumenical efforts such as the World Council of Churches
have, on the evidence, been positively counterproductive, since they breed compromise
rather than steadfastness in sound doctrine. Scripture affirms that Christ taught "as one
having authority."88 If His Church isn't prepared to do likewise, it might as well fold its
tents.

A return to Christendom will require a revolution. It will require the repudiation and
overthrow of the present dominant quasi-religion of the West (and increasingly the
world)--liberal secular humanism and its catechism of rights-centric "values." The Christian
Gospel is more than capable of accomplishing this, but only if it is preached and lived with
confidence and authority.

The fundamental question boils down to what is a correct concept of the Church. Is
it merely a fluid and invisible fellowship of true believers in all the fragmented churches, or
is it something more objective and substantial?

In Orthodox/Catholic belief, Christians who willfully cut themselves off from the
Apostolic Church are also cutting themselves off from God's grace that is communicated
through the Church's Sacraments, which were instituted by Christ Himself and given to the
true Church that alone can trace an unbroken line of succession back to Christ and the

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Apostles. Orthodox/Catholics believe that many souls outside the Apostolic Church's fold
will be saved, although the Church does not recommend that they remain there. They hold
that there are non Orthodox/Catholics who believe the essentials of the Christian faith, and
yet are inhibited from accepting the Divine Commission of the Orthodox/Catholic Church
itself, not because of sinfulness or selfishness, because of what is termed "invincible
ignorance," since they have never had an adequate and unprejudiced opportunity to
consider the Church's claims and doctrines. Such Christian believers are not joined to the
visible body of the Church, but they are part of her soul by virtue of a true spiritual
communion of faith and belief in Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Church affirms that God Himself is not bound by the rules of His
Church, and thus can redeem whomever He chooses. According to Catholic philosopher
Peter Kreeft, author of "A Handbook of Christian Apologetics," "The Bible says that those
who meet Christ and reject him can't be saved. It doesn't say what happens to pagans who
never hear about him. They can't be virtuous without Christ and they can't save
themselves--nobody can. But they can receive Christ's grace without knowing explicitly that
it comes from the Second Person of the Trinity."89

Pope Pius IX wrote: "Far be it from us to dare set bounds to the boundless mercy of
God;" however, he adds: "we must hold, as of faith, that out of the Apostolic Roman church
there is no salvation, and that she is the only ark of safety....

"It is known to us that those who are in invincible ignorance of our most holy
religion, but who observe carefully the natural law and precepts given by God upon the
hearts of all men, and who, being disposed to obey God, lead an honest and upright life,
may by the light of Divine Grace attain to eternal life, for God who sees clearly, and
searches and knows the heart, the disposition thoughts and intention of each, and in His
supreme mercy and goodness by no means permits that anyone suffer eternal punishment,
who has not of his own free will fallen into sin."

So long as everyone remains content to nurture their vested interests in a particular

sectarian expression of Christianity, Church unity will never be restored. The logical first
step toward healing will be for the various Orthodox/Catholic churches to settle their own
mutual differences. There are of course many convenient theological and dogmatic excuses
for maintaining the fractured status quo, but it essentially boils down to the collective will to
unity or not. I encourage Catholic and Orthodox readers, including, if I may be so
presumptuous, the leaders of their denominations, to consider carefully what constitutes the
essential deposit of faith, and to work seriously and diligently toward healing the schism
among the several Orthodox/Catholic, Apostolic churches. Happily, small but significant
steps have already been taken in this direction. In 1965 the Eastern Orthodox and Roman
Catholic Churches lifted their mutual anathemas of 1054. and a joint commission for
dialogue between them has been established. Representatives met on at least 11 occasions
between 1966 and 1981 to discuss differences in doctrine and practice.

In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical, Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be
One), which included an invitation for re-establishment of Church unity, predicated on
Vatican II's declaration that all who are baptized and believe in Jesus Christ are truly, but in
some cases imperfectly, in communion. Ut Unum Sint articulates a clear agenda toward
Roman Catholic reconciliation with Orthodoxy as well as the fragmented sects of
Protestantism.

Commenting on this topic, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus observes: "Ecumenism is not a

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matter of creating unity but of bringing to fulfillment the unity that already exists. It is not a
simple matter of `coming home to Rome,' although full communion does require
communion with the Petrine ministry that is exercised by the bishop of Rome. One of the
most striking features of Ut Unum Sint is the way that John Paul put on the table for
ecumenical discussion how that ministry of Peter might be exercised differently in order to
better serve Christian unity. Unfortunately that offer has received slight response from other
Christians to date."90

Fr. Neuhaus, himself a convert to Roman Catholicism from Lutheranism, says that
the Catholic Church's commitment to Christian unity is "unmistakably clear," and
"unshakable," and that Ut Unum Sint affirms that ecumenism is neither "optional" nor a
mere "appendix," but rather "essential to the Church's life and mission."

In his book "Letters to Father Aristotle: A Journey Through Contemporary American

Orthodoxy," Frank Schaeffer writes: "The task or expectation of the Orthodox Church in
society is not, in my opinion, to try and reconcile Christianity to the materialistic view of
things or to reconcile Orthodoxy to Western Christianity, even if this is done under the
slogan of Orthodox witness. It seems to me that the only authentic Orthodox witness is a
call to Roman Catholics, Protestants, and other Western Christians to return to the
Orthodox way. This call is evangelistic, not ecumenist. The Orthodox Church must accept
converts but not bend to meet them, or the world, halfway. Rather than looking endlessly
for the middle ground, we must offer the non-Orthodox what we Orthodox alone can
provide: the restoration of the sense of the sacred to a severely desecrated and desacralized
culture."91

I have a lot of time for Frank Schaeffer, but I cannot agree with him on several of the
above assertions. There is an authentic Western tradition of Christianity that cannot be
casually brushed aside as irrelevant. Catholic assertions that the See of Rome alone
possesses the exclusive keys to the kingdom of God are likewise counter-productive.
Mutually dismissing one another as "schismatic," and insisting on "our way or the
doorway," in matters not essential to sound doctrine, are destructive of Christian unity and
unnecessary. It would be absurd for Roman Catholics to assert that Eastern Orthodox and
Anglican Catholics are not part of the "true church." It is equally absurd for Eastern
Orthodoxy to declare that the Western Churches, including the Church of Rome, are
outside the bounds of the true faith. If this were really so, how could the Roman Church
have produced saints like Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, or Teresa of Avila? It is
unworthy of Orthodox apologists to assert, as some do, that the faith and witness of these
saints, and millions of other faithful Roman Catholics since 1054 is somehow invalid.
Likewise it is unworthy and ridiculous for Roman Catholics to assert, as some do, that no
one can be saved outside the Church of Rome. Before Orthodox/Catholicism can make a
convincing appeal for Protestants to return to the fold en masse, it must get its own fractious
house in order.

I am absolutely not advocating a sort of soft-minded, accommodational ecumenism

and doctrinal relativism here. As I've noted several times in the foregoing text, there are
indeed minimum standards of doctrinal belief that must be affirmed and honoured in order
for a church's claim to Apostolic orthodoxy and catholicity to be legitimate, but I submit
that these standards are satisfied in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Traditional
Catholic Anglicanism, Western Rite Orthodoxy, Eastern Rite Catholicism, and Old
Catholicism at least.

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 The worthy objective is nothing short of restoring full unity of the faith.
Unquestionably, some of the disagreements separating these churches from full communion
with one another are substantive (EG: the filioque dispute between East and West), but
most of the squabbles are based in relatively minor issues of dogma and custom, or, far
worse, in accretions of prejudice, animosity, and turf jealousy. This is tiresome,
counterproductive, and gratuitously antagonistic to the restoration of the undivided Church.
I don't advocate a scintilla of compromise on essential doctrine, but I don't believe that such
is necessary to restore bona fide Christian unity.

As noted at the beginning of this discourse, Christianity is in crisis as we approach

the end of the second Christian millennium. "Either we of the Faith shall become a small,
persecuted neglected island amid mankind," wrote Hilaire Belloc," or we shall be able to lift
at the end of the struggle the old battle-cry, `Christus Imperat!'" If the Church remains in its
tragically divided state, more likely the former than the latter.

A divided, fragmented Church presents a miserable and unconvincing witness to the

world. "We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus'
claims are true, and that Christianity is true," writes Francis Schaeffer, "unless the world
sees some reality in the oneness of true Christians."92

The "oneness" Jesus spoke of in St. John 13 and 17 is not circumscribed within the
mystical fellowship of the Church invisible, as many Protestants contend. The point of the
Church is that the world will be able to evaluate the Truth of Jesus Christ on the basis of
something visible. Jesus was referring to a visible oneness among Christians.

So, the Protestant reader may be asking, what is it that I suggest he or she should do
about this? Well, certainly nothing NEW! The last thing we need in the Church is more
innovation. Rather, I would encourage the reader to do as much personal research as
possible into the history and witness of the primitive, undivided Church, and to measure
his/her convictions about what the Church is or should be against that ancient deposit of
Apostolic Faith. That done, they should consider objectively how well the communion they
currently adhere to conforms to the ancient Apostolic model and the unbroken Christian
tradition spanning two millennia.

Please ask yourself these questions. Are you comfortable and satisfied with the
doctrinal ambiguity and emphasis on individual, personal, experiential faith characteristic of
the Protestant approach? Are you weary of having to "do" faith on your own recognizance,
as it were? Do you ever have the uncomfortable feeling, "Is this all there is?" As a faithful
Christian can you honestly affirm that God desires His Church to be sundered into tens of
thousands of fragments? Can you in good conscience advocate that the Church against
which Jesus Christ said the gates of hell would not prevail is merely a fluid and ethereal
congery of individual believers? If God really does want His Church to be One, is there any
logic in the notion that this oneness should coalesce around a tradition that began with the
thinking of a few self-appointed theologians 450 years ago or less, or with a tradition
established by Christ, the Apostles, and the ancient Church Fathers at the very beginning of
Christianity?

If you apply these questions to your present denominational affiliation, and are not
comfortable with the answers that obtain, I encourage you to ask yourself what's really
important--loyalty to a particular sectarian position that you may have been born into or
adopted, or becoming part of the fullness of sacrament, faith, and worship in the 2,000 year
old tradition established by Christ, the Apostles, and the early Church Fathers? There is no

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"perfect" church bureaucracy or organization, and there never will be. As a temporal,
visible institution, the Church is composed of sinful human beings, always prone to error
and failure. But the True Church, thanks be to God, is not dependent on human virtue.

Putting broken, fractious Christianity back together again won't be easy--perhaps it

will be impossible--but unless the task can be accomplished I grimly predict that the
Christian Church will continue its backward slide into cultural marginalization. "When the
Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" The answer is up to us-- custodians of
the Deposit of Faith on the earth. If we persist in divisiveness, than the likelihood is that
Christ won't find much faith on the earth when He returns.

The End

ENDNOTES
1. The Diocesan Link, Vol 1 No. 10, Sept. 1996

CHAPTER 1
2. Lewis How, "The Traditional Anglican Communion in Canada" (pamphlet), p. 4
3. It should be noted that in terms of authoritative Tradition, I am speaking here about the
Holy Tradition of the undivided Christian Church dating back to the Apostles and spoken of
by St. Paul in the New Testament. There are also lesser Christian traditions affirmed by
Orthodox/Catholics which are not held to be wrong, but are not held to be part of Holy
Tradition either. Then there is dogma, which is also not part of Holy Tradition. See Chapter
24.
4. Miscellaneous Writings of Henry VIII (ed. Macnamara) p. 128
5. T.M. Parker, "The English Reformation to 1558," New York, Oxford, 1950, p.89.
6. Letters and Papers, vol. xiii, pt. 2, no. 1036
7. G.K. Chesterton, "A Short History of England," New York, Dodd, 1917, p.154.

CHAPTER 2
8. Philip Hughes, "A Popular History of the Reformation," Garden City, New York, Image
Books, 1960, p. 98.
9. Alexander Schmeman, "Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy," Crestwood, New York,
St. VIadimir's Seminary Press, 1977, p. 285
10. Papal legate Reginald Pole, in his opening address to the Council of Trent on Jan 7,
1546, invited the gathered bishops to begin by reflecting that it was they themselves who
were most responsible for the evils "now burdening the flock of Christ....We cannot ever
name any other cause than ourselves....If God had punished us as we deserved, we should
have been long since as Sodom and Gomorrah." (from a translation of Pole's address by Fr.
Vincent McNabb, O.P., The Dublin Review, January 1936.)
11. Tom Howard: The Christian Activist, Vol. 9, Fall/Winter 1996, p. 42
12. G.K. Chesterton, "Saint Thomas Aquinas: `The Dumb Ox' " New York, 1956,
Doubleday, p. 193
13. Robert Mercer, C.R., Anglican Catholic Church of Canada Diocesan Circular,
"Garments Gory and Miscellaneous Matters", July 1996.
14. Andrew Neaum, CR Quarterly Review, January, 1996
15. Francis A. Schaeffer, "The Great Evangelical Disaster," Westchester, Illinois, Crossway
Books, 1984, p.48.
16. Frank Schaeffer, The Christian Activist, Vol. 9, March 1996, p.45
17. Justification: the divinely ordained process by which man, from being God's enemy,

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becomes God's friend.

CHAPTER 3
18. G.K. Chesterton, "Saint Thomas Aquinas: `The Dumb Ox'" New York, Doubleday,
1956, pp. 194-195.
19. Luther wrote: "Kill them, strangle them; what else is to be done to the mad dog that
leaps at you? Strike, throttle, stab, secretly or openly...there is nothing more poisonous,
more hurtful, more devilish, than a rebel." Years later he was still unrepentant: "It was I
who slew all the peasants in the insurrection, for it was I who commanded them to be
slaughtered; their blood is on my head...But I throw the responsibility on our Lord God
Who instructed me to give this order." It is estimated that some 100,000 peasants were
killed in a few months of 1524-'25.
20. Sir Arnold Lunn, p, 56
21. Ibid.
22. "De Officio Regis"

CHAPTER 4
23. Francis A. Schaeffer, "The Great Evangelical Disaster," Westchester, Illinois, Crossway
Books, 1984, p. 22.
24. David Cayley Ed., George Grant: In Conversation, House of Anansi Press, Concord
Ont.
25. George Grant, letter to Derek Bedson, 1961
26. Raymond Delatouche, "La Chr‚tient‚ M‚di‚vale, Un ModŠle de d‚veloppement,"
("Mediaeval Christianity, a Model of Development"), Paris, Tequi, 1989.
27. However, there were a number of Pre-Reformation partial English translations and
glosses (vernacular commentaries inserted between the lines of Latin Biblical text),
including Caedman of Whitby c. 670; Aldhelm of Sherbourne c. 709; the Venerable Bede
673-735; King Alfred 849-899; The West Saxon Gospels c. 990; and Alefric also c. 990.
There were also several English translations of various parts of the New Testament in the
13th and 14th Centuries.
28. Philip Hughes, "A Popular History of the Reformation," Garden City, N.Y., Image
Books, 1960, p.68
29. Hilaire Belloc, "The Crisis of Civilization," New York, Fordham University Press, 1937,
(Reprinted in 1992 by Tan Books and Publishers Inc.) p.74
30. Sir Arnold Lunn, "Now I See," London and New York, Sheed and Ward, 1933, pp.
62-64.

CHAPTER 5
31. Frank Schaeffer, The Christian Activist, Vol. 8, March 1996, p. 34.
32. Kallistos Ware, "The Orthodox Way," Crestwood, N.Y., St. VIadimir's Seminary Press,
1979, pp. 147-148
33. Carl E. Braaten, "A Harvest of Evangelical Theology," First Things, May 1996, p. 47.
34. The Council of Trent is regarded as an obstacle to restoration of Church unity by the
non-Roman churches that affirm Orthodox/Catholic doctrine, since Trent (and the First
(1869-70) and Second (1962-65) Vatican Councils for that matter), unlike the seven great
councils of the primitive Church, was non-ecumenical. Orthodoxy recognizes only the
authority of the ecumenical councils at which East and West were represented together.
These were the councils of Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431),
Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680), and Nicaea II (787)
35. G.K. Chesterton, "St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox"

CHAPTER 6

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36. Hilaire Belloc, "The Crisis of Civilization," Rockford IL, Tan Books and Publishers Inc.
(reprint), 1937, pp. 107-108
37. Richard M. Weaver, "Ideas Have Consequences," University of Chicago Press p. 14.
38. Ibid. pp. 97-98
39. Dwight L. Moody, quoted by Richard V. Pierard, "The Unequal Yoke," p.31.
40. Richard V. Pierard, "The Unequal Yoke," pp. 34-35, ref: "Acres of Diamonds," New
York, Harper & Brothers, 1915.
41. Ibid, p. 32, ref: The New York Times, May 20, 1916, p. 10
42. C.G. Jung, "The Portable Jung," p. 495.
43. Christopher Lasch "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations," New York, London, W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1979, Preface XVI
44. Theodore Roszak, "Where The Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in
Postindustrial Society, Berkeley CA, Celestial Arts (reprint), 1972, 1989, Preface XXVIII

CHAPTER 7
45. F.L. Cross, ed., "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church," London, Oxford
University Press, 1958, pp. 104, 105.
46. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, "Dialektik f r Aufklarung (Dialectic of
Enlightenment)," trans: John Cumming, New York, Herder and Herder, 1972, p. 3.
47. First Things, May 1996, p. 84
48. National Review, February 24, 1997.

CHAPTER 9
49. Jon E. Braun, Divine Energy, Ben Lomond CA, Conciliar Press, 1991, p. 15

CHAPTER 10
50. The "filioque" clause, asserting that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the
Son, rather than from the Father alone, was added to the Nicene Creed at a synod in
Toledo, Spain by King Reccared in 589 A.D. The interpolation was initially opposed by the
Roman Popes, but was promoted in Europe by Charlemagne (crowned emperor in 800) and
his successors. Eventually, it was also adopted (c. 1014) by Rome, and, along with Rome's
assertion of universal Papal supremacy, led to the Great Schism between the Eastern and
Western branches of the Church in 1054. The schismatic process actually got underway in
the 9th century when the Pope refused to recognize the election of Photius as patriarch of
Constantinople. Photius responded by challenging the pope's right to rule on the matter and
denounced the filioque clause as a Western innovation.
51. March 11, 1996
52 Tom Howard, The Christian Activist, Vol. 9, Fall/Winter 1996, p.28

CHAPTER 11
53. Theodore Roszak "Where The Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in
Postindustrial Society, Berkeley Ca, Celestial Arts (reprint) 1972, 1989, pp. 129-130.
54. Ibid, pp. 186-187
55. I daresay that not one in 10,000 people who bandy the term "fundamentalist" about,
including those who apply it to themselves, has the slightest clue as to what it really
signifies. Alarmed by the wave of theological liberalism sweeping over North America
during this century's first two decades, several conservative American and British scholars
published a twelve-volume defense of doctrinal orthodoxy entitled The Fundamentals.

Dr. J. Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament Theology at Princeton

Theological Seminary, followed up with his book Christianity and Liberalism in 1923, in
which he correctly argued that "liberal Christianity", so-called, is not Christianity at all but a

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new religion.
The fundamentals of the Christian faith, as defined by Machen, et al., can be distilled
into 5 essential truths: 1. the inspiration and inerrancy of Biblical Scripture; 2. the deity of
Christ and His virgin birth; 3. the substitutionary atonement of Christ's death; 4. the literal
resurrection of Christ from the dead; 5. the literal return of Christ. If affirmation of these
five points makes one a fundamentalist, then true, faithful Orthodox/Catholics are
fundamentalists!
56. Ted and Virginia Byfield, "Orthodoxy," British Columbia Report, June 17, 1996, p. 31.
57. Joe Woodard, British Columbia Report, "Every man his own church," June 17, 1996,
pp. 30-31.
58. Ibid.

CHAPTER 12
59. Alexander Schmeman, "Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy," Crestwood, New York,
St. VIadimir's Seminary Press, 1977, p. 239
60. Ibid. p. 252

CHAPTER 13
61. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 125
62. See Genesis 3: 17; Romans 8: 19-22
63. Kallistos Ware, "The Orthodox Way," Crestwood, New York, St. VIadimir's Seminary
Press, 1980, p.133

CHAPTER 14
64. See St. Luke 22: 19-20
65. Session XXII (1562) Chapter 2.
66. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 135

CHAPTER 15
67. Bishop Robert Crawley, told to Joe Woodard, "A Traditionalist Breaks Tradition,"
British Columbia Report, March 31, 1997, p. 36.
68. The Revd. Dr. Brian L. Horne, "Swan Song," The Rock, Vol. 14 No. 3, Sept. 15 1996. p.
18.
69. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 144.

CHAPTER 16
70. John Meyendorf, "Byzantine Theology," Fordham University Press.
71. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 133

CHAPTER 17
72. Frank Schaeffer, reported by Kevin Quast, "Frank Schaeffer eager to share Orthodox
message," ChristianWeek, Oct. 22, 1996.
73. Ibid.

CHAPTER 18
74. "and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn son."
75. "Then He brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces toward the
east, but it was shut.

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 And the Lord said to me, `This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man
shall enter by it, because the Lord God of Israel has entered by it; therefore it shall be shut."
76. VIadimir Lossky, "Panagia," in "The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement."
W.C.C. Publications.
77. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 100

CHAPTER 19
78. Ibid p. 97
79. John L. Stoddard, "Rebuilding a Lost Faith, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1922, p.
181
80. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 99.
81. K. Ware, "The Orthodox Church," New York, Viking Press, p. 258

CHAPTER 21
82. Peter E. Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith,
Brentwood, Tennessee, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989, p. 100.
83. A.M. Coniaris, "Introducing The Orthodox Church," Minneapolis, Light and Life, 1982,
p. 146.

CHAPTER 23
84. K. Ware, "The Transfiguration of the Body," and article in "Sacrament and Image," ed.
A.M. Allchin, Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Servius, 1967.

CHAPTER 25
85. 1 Corinthians, 15: 13-19.
86. St. Matthew 28: 19-20.
87. St. Luke 18: 8.
88. St. Matthew 7: 29.
89. Quoted by Joe Woodard, "How Many Roads Lead To Heaven?", British Columbia
Report, Feb. 17, 1997, p. 48.
90. Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, October 1996, p. 83
91. Frank Schaeffer, "Letters to Father Aristotle: A Journey Through Contemporary
American Orthodoxy," Salisbury, Mass., Regina Orthodox Press, 1995, p.38
92. Francis A. Schaeffer, "The Great Evangelical Disaster," Westchester, Illinois, Crossway
Books, 1984, p.163

Author: Charles W. Moore, RR#2 Sherbrooke N.S., Canada, B0J 3C0

(902) 522-2507 Copyright © 1997 Charles W. Moore All Rights Reserved
Web published here by permission.

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