Why We Aren’t “Just Catholic”

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

We are called to be "one" and the Early Church dealt with questions of doctrine and interpretation, like they did when they received the Holy Spirit in the upper room, when they were in one accord - by a process of mutual recognition, submission, prayer, fasting and communion. This is called the "conciliar" model of church governance, and it is the earliest, most biblical and apostolic model. We should only believe what has been received and believed by all Christians, everywhere, in every age. This is our “Rule of Faith” and it is kept and transmitted in the words of the Nicene Creed. In striving for this ideal, then, we have to ask many difficult questions, and become a part of the process of church history, and even, eventually, pick a side.

The biggest difference between my catholic understanding and the Baptist faith of my childhood is sacramental expression in the life of the Church. Baptists deny that Baptism and Eucharist are in any way real, only representing personal faith, which is believed to be the beginning and end of Life in Christ. The Historical Church believed that they were works of God, and in this way, they contributed to our salvation. No one debates that the thief on the cross was saved by his faith, but Christ Himself told us to do certain things, and as God and our Savior, we must obey Him or question the sincerity of our faith. Salvation is ultimately in Christ's hands, He calls the shots, He makes the judgments, and so we must strive to obey Him in love and in fear, realizing His place in our lives as Lord. Because the word we translate as "Justification", “δικαίωσις", does not mean to be "declared righteous" as Protestant Reformers understood, but literally to "become righteous", I now agree with the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics that salvation is not a one-time, legally justifying act, but as a life-long process of sanctification and growing together with Christ. God accomplishes this in our lives through His Word and through the Church and its Sacraments (primarily through confession of sins and sharing at the Lord's Table). It is an organic process of growth and life, not a legally defined moment, attained through praying the Sinner's Prayer (although this must happen as well). It is Life that saves us, not Law.

As for the differences between what we believe and teach and the friendly neighborhood Roman Catholic Church, I guess is a matter of historical perspective and dogma. From the outside they look fairly similar. The East and West broke from one another in 1053, after a thousand year run of communion and mutual-recognition, which was expressed in the Seven Ecumenical Councils. This communion broke because the West discovered the power of efficient, centralized management, and because they had recently forged a document supposedly coming from Constantine the Great, which gave the Bishop of Rome the authority of the Roman Emperor (Constantinian Decrentials, later debunked by one of Martin Luther's friends-turned-enemies, Erasmus). Up until this time, because of the Greek fluency of the Church, the Latin theory that God established His Church on St. Peter and his successors hadn’t gained a lot of traction, because when Christ affirmed St. Peter’s statement of faith that He was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Christ responded “You are a ‘Pebble’, but upon this ‘Rock’ (his confession) I will build my Church.” All bishops were understood to take part in the Petrine authority as guardians of the faith, “rightly dividing the Word of Truth.” However, based upon the Papal Reformation and the Ultramontanist Movement (which gave Northern Europeans a leading role in the Italian Church), when the Roman Catholic Church started to make claims of universal jurisdiction and infallibility, all the other churches broke fellowship with them and declared them heretical for believing a man, not Christ, was the head of the Church. That's where we get the Eastern Orthodox Church. The other, local, catholic churches which were equally ancient and apostolic, but who did not recognize the pope as God's one and only representative on earth. This is also how Vatican I changed the received teaching of 19 hundred years of Christian faith by formally declaring the pope’s ability to speak infallibly on matters of faith and practice, “Ex Cathedra”, and hardened the Marian doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is absent in Eastern Christian teachings.

The Romans had a long period of political upheaval, multiple contested and split papacies, and excommunication of entire countries when kings and princes didn't tow the line. The German people had been deprived of the Eucharist for many years before Martin Luther came around, because the pope was trying to extort the German princes and force them into absolute obedience. When the Reformation came along, it was merely an excuse to break away from what was already a clearly corrupt and abusive system, a theological match on an already primed powder keg. The East never went through this, simply because their bishops were never seen as heads of state or corrupted by imperial authority, and because the churches in the Greek, Slavic and Arabic speaking parts of the world were all intensely local and pastoral. Islam had forced them inward, rather than allowing them to become expansionist and imperialistic. The Reformation decided to do its own thing, politically as well as spiritually, instead of returning to the orthodoxy of the Early Church. This was one of the great tragedies of Western History, resulting in innumerable schism and different interpretations of the Bible, and resulting in over 40 thousand different denominations. It could be argued that the cause of this was not the stupidity and rebellion of Protestants, but the enormous pride and misplaced faith of the papal system.

When the Anglican Church broke from the Roman Catholic Church, there were many factors at play, not least of which was Henry VIII's adultery and debauchery. The theologians around him were heavily influenced by Luther and Calvin, and dreamt of creating a Protestant State Religion to rival the political power of Roman Catholicism. For a few generations this vision held sway, but by the time of King James, it had become clear that theologically, politically and morally, such an argument could not be sincerely made. The Church of England had to return to the local, catholic, apostolic and conciliar model of the Early Church and the Eastern Orthodox practice. This is when we had the Caroline Divines, the Scottish Non-Jurors and the Oxford Movement, all focused on restoring the Church of England to the historically orthodox practices of liturgy, doctrine and governance. Thankfully, the Anglican Church had maintained bishops, which was the ancient practice of the Early Church, so a case could be made that if they returned to apostolic teaching, abandoning Calvinism and Lutheran dogma, that they could be considered a part of the Universal Church. This question of doctrine and order is why our jurisdiction, the Ancient Church of the West, received reinforcement of its ordinal lineage from several lines of succession, descending both from the Polish and the Greek Churches - since the Anglican sources has been muddied with Protestant rebellion against doctrines and canons of the Ancient Church, and could be seen as losing sacramental validity from a canonically fundamentalist position. Eastern Orthodox and Old Catholic (Utrecht and Polish National Catholic Church, Union of Scranton) orders are recognized as "valid" (meaning fully compliant with the apostolic forms and practice) by both Anglicans and Roman Catholics, but we are not submitted to the pope or to the councils that the pope held, once there was a schism with the East.

Our church returned to the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the unbroken Church of both East and West as our rule for Church life, we maintain local episcopacies in conformity to the practice of the Early Church, and we are not under a national authority or a universal bishop (pope). Theologically, we look nearly identical to the Eastern Orthodox, with the exception that we are not Eastern and we do not accept the councils held after schism with the West (the Palamite synods held in Constantinople and their later clarifications, expressed through local synods). Liturgically, we look much like the Traditional Latin Mass, keeping the ancient western expression of worship and the ancient pattern of the Gregorian Mass expressed through the texts of the American Missal and the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. This ancient western expression has been accepted by the Eastern Orthodox under the term "Western Rite," and our bishops are some of the best examples of its practice.

Ultimately, our faith must be in Christ, we must strive to obey Him by submitting, generation by generation, to the Church that He founded and heads, and that has been bequeathed to us through the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Spirit by faithful bishops. It is not complicated. It does not require a profound grasp of history or a lot of reading. The Scriptures and a simple liturgy of worship, so that the congregation can work, fast, pray and commune with one another is all that is needed. These are treasures that have been passed down to us by the saints and martyrs of old, and that still have the power to transform and energize our spiritual life today. They are ever ancient and ever new, filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit in our praise and the Real Presence of Christ in our Eucharist.