How To Think About Return

Building Reformation Catholicism

Note: Substack doesn’t email subscribers about new pages on the site, just posts. For this reason, I’ve decided to put the “Method and Rationale” from a new page, “Building It,” into a post so you can enjoy it. Also, it doubles as an announcement that there is, in fact, a new page called “Building It” that starts to imagine how Reformation Catholicism could actually work.

In the main essay, I posit that being Protestant is a question of spiritual genetics, since there are no consistently held views about the Bible, sacraments, salvation, grace, sin, heaven, or hell. The positive beliefs that all Protestants share are those that Catholics and other apostolic Churches also hold. Yet this is a bit too quick. There may not be positive statements of doctrine all Protestants assent to, but there is exactly one theological commitment they all share over against Rome: not being Catholic. Objecting to the papacy, the Real Presence (pace Lutheran claims), purgatory, the intercession of the saints, the Marian dogmas, etc., is the only common thread running through the whole Protestant family. Although most Protestants today do not think of themselves as “Protest”ing anything, it is still the defining feature of their theology.

Yet the way each tradition is not-Catholic differs—it is the way a tradition rebelled against Rome that largely determined its character and in turn the development of its unique faults and fruits. The Greek “Katholos” just means “whole,” “entire,” or even “universal.” If all truth is God’s truth, then Catholics are compelled to confess that all truth is Catholic truth. Thus although the Reformation put deep schisms into the “pillar and foundation of truth,” God used these clefts to nurse new vines for the refreshment of His people. These new vines bear grapes distinct not only from the Roman variety, but from those found in other crevices. In their consummation, they will be pressed into wine, the wine of the Covenant. Crushed, pressed, and subjected to the death of fermentation, they will find a place in the Lamb’s Supper, the Mass. They will be the “fruit of the vine and the work of human hands,” ready at the Spirit’s descent to become the Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. For neither the passage of time nor the efforts of man can repair the cracks in the foundation, but only the Blood of Christ, which will fill, cement, bind, and overflow the fissures between us. 

The project, then, is this: to discover how best to make wine from new grapes. This painful process will not endanger but rather secure the unique properties of each kind, while at the same time bringing them to a fulfillment beyond their present reach. In the art of winemaking, there is no blanket procedure sure to produce a fine vintage from every crop. With the goal of fine wine firmly in mind, we will have to examine each tradition individually to see how best to preserve its charisms and fill up what is lacking.