As a side effect, however, each individual must shoulder the burden of testing everything against Scripture and deciding for himself the true content of the Christian religion. This leads to a situation of inevitable, unresolvable disunity which Martin Luther himself remarked upon in his letter to Antwerp, saying:
“There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds as there are heads.”One common retort to this Catholic critique goes like this:
“Ya’ll point to the disunity in the Protestant world as proof that Sola Scriptura failed and the Protestant experiment is a bust. But you ignore the disorder in your own house.
In the Catholic world here are progressive parishes and conservative ones. What good is the Pope and Bishops if you never know what you’re going to get when walking into a parish. If they’re supposed to be the answer to Protestant disunity, then it would seem the Catholic way isn’t working either.”How do we respond to this?
Dissent and Faithfulness:
The answer is to draw a distinction between two different types of disunity.
The first kind – the Catholic problem – is dissent. Say you walk into a parish and the priest says:
- There is no such thing as mortal sin
- Jesus didn’t rise bodily from the dead
- Woman should be ordained priests
- Folks should be able to remarry after civil divorce.
That’s a real problem, and his ministry will lead to disunity. However, there is no question about where he stands in regard to the Catholic faith. He’s a dissenter, perhaps even a heretic.
The situation might be compared to a person who opens up a box of Cheerios, pours them into a bowl, and finds that all the little bits of cereal are green sugary circles with no holes. Whatever else might be said of that cereal or how it managed to get in that box, you know what a Cheerio is and can be sure that those “cheerios” in your bowl are not the real deal.
Likewise, the Church gives us a body of teaching to which we’re supposed to adhere – most notably in the Catechism. Those Catholics who hold views to the contrary may give clever excuses for their dissent, but everyone knows they’re out of bounds.
So while Catholic disunity is a real problem, it has a rather simple solution: Don’t be a dissenter.
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| Not Cheerios |
Multiple Competing Orthodoxies:
The other type of disunity is what one might call “multiple competing orthodoxies”.
This is a problem wherein multiple sects seek after the truth, study the Scriptures, put it all together… and it keeps coming out different depending on who does it. They are all claiming to be the bearers of the true Christian faith while asserting a variety of diametrically opposed things, and there’s nothing which would make one group’s claim intrinsically stronger than any other’s.
To reprise the cereal analogy, you enter a grocery aisle with two dozen types of cereal. Now you’re tasked with choosing the one which is “best to eat”. The problem is entirely open-ended. They’re all different in ways both large and subtle. Plus, it’s not even clear what metric one is to use in determining which is “best”? The taste? Healthiness?
In a similar way, a single town might have 11 denominations represented. Imagine yourself strolling down Main Street trying to decide which door to enter. Doctrinally, do you to the one that says the Lord’s Supper is the real presence of Christ’s body? Or the one which says it’s a symbol? Do you commune with the one which says you can’t lose your salvation, or the one which says you can?
The answer is unclear because they’re using the same method to arrive at all these positions. And most importantly, there’s no higher standard to compare them to. Nothing which gives one an inherently stronger claim than any other. There’s no apparent way to resolve this species of disunity.
A Tangible Difference:
That’s the key difference. In Catholicville there is dissent from Catholic teaching, but anyone – even someone who isn’t Catholic – can still know what the Catholic Church teaches. The Popes and Bishops may not be able to guarantee that the priest down the street isn’t a nutcase. However, they can give us a clear standard and a roadmap home to orthodoxy for those willing to take it.
And that’s a world of difference.
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