Peter Leithart founds new Protestant sect: “Reformational Catholicism.”

hould you be struck by a sud­den impulse to run your fin­ger­nails ’cross your pate, won­der­ing what this odd hybrid “Refor­ma­tion­al Catholi­cism” could be, bear with me through this. Mr. Lei­thart is not talk­ing about the Counter Ref­or­ma­tion. Nor is he talk­ing about Catholi­cism at all—not in any sense that would be under­stood by one who knew that words mean things and the mean­ing of them is fixed. What he is rather talk­ing about (so he tells us at First Things) is “the end of Protes­tantism,” only with­out repa­tri­a­tion to the Church. In oth­er words, Protes­tant Sect No. 50,001.

DAZE MY EYES WITH THAT FEDERAL VISION

I con­fess I have not been pay­ing too much atten­tion to the con­flict over Mr. Lei­thart and his “Fed­er­al Vision.” 50,000 inter­nal squab­bles don’t much inter­est me as they used to. I became much more inter­est­ed when he pub­lished this arti­cle last month about the “tragedy” of Protes­tants con­vert­ing to Catholi­cism, his argu­ment being that old­er is not nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter. (An odd argu­ment to make in a pub­li­ca­tion called First Things.) [Arti­cle no longer available—SEA, 9/14/19.] I had a brief temp­ta­tion to respond, but Bryan Cross and Jason Stell­man had already giv­en good respons­es here and here.

But Mr. Lei­thart’s lat­est mus­ings are too bizarre to let go. They form not so much an arti­cle, or an essay, as they do a syl­labus of antithe­ses, which are occa­sion­al­ly held togeth­er by a weak glue of con­text. Here is the kind of antithe­sis you will find on the blog:

A Protes­tant exag­ger­ates his dis­tance from Roman Catholi­cism on every point of the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice. … A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic cheer­ful­ly acknowl­edges that he shares creeds with Roman Catholics. …

A Protes­tant believes (old-fash­ioned) Roman Catholic claims about change­less sta­bil­i­ty. A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic knows that Catholi­cism has changed and is chang­ing.

Some Protes­tants don’t view Roman Catholics as Chris­tians. … A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic regards Catholics as broth­ers. …

A Protes­tant views the Church as an instru­ment for indi­vid­ual sal­va­tion. A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic believes sal­va­tion is inher­ent­ly social. …

On it goes. I do appre­ci­ate Mr. Lei­thart’s will­ing­ness to call Catholics his broth­ers, and to find his her­itage in (some) Catholic the­ol­o­gy. But when words like these come from a man who, just last month, called con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism a “tragedy,” they are emp­ty of any sound and hol­low of any sting. Mr. Lei­thart’s real point in writ­ing the arti­cle seems to be this: A pox on both your church­es.

The rea­son I say that is because he is oft at pains to point out where he dif­fers from both “Protes­tantism” (which he defines as sin­gu­lar and fixed) and Catholi­cism (which he describes as always in flux). He does not seem to under­stand that Protes­tantism is a poten­tial­ly infi­nite mul­ti­plic­i­ty of sects, and thus does not find many Protes­tants left in the world. He finds them among Bap­tists, “Bible church­es,” and some Pres­by­te­ri­ans, but appar­ent­ly not among Methodists or Luther­ans. Then, when he turns his eye to the Catholic Church, what he finds is that he nev­er steps in the same stream twice.

NO MORE TALK ABOUT FLAWED RELIGION

All of which is an odd and look­ing-glass image of things. But with that as his con­text, Mr. Lei­thart attempts to pull off a dar­ing Olympic act: He places one foot on the Protes­tant steeple, a sec­ond foot on the Catholic steeple, stands lofti­ly above them both, and says, “Look, ma! No hands!”

And although Mr. Lei­thart insists that his new sect is “not bound up with find­ing flaws in Roman Catholi­cism,” his arti­cle points out lit­tle else:

[A] Refor­ma­tion­al catholic rejects papal claims, refus­es to ven­er­ate the Host, and does­n’t pray to Mary or the saints. … While he’s at it, the Refor­ma­tion­al catholic might as well claim the upper-case “C.” Why should the Roman see have a monop­oly on cap­i­tal­iza­tion?

Thus when he says that he “gives … a hearty hand­shake” to George Weigel, one won­ders what on earth Mr. Lei­thart is talk­ing about. For Mr. Weigel says that the New Evan­ge­liza­tion depends upon reg­u­lar recep­tion of the sacra­ments and Eucharis­tic Ado­ra­tion: two things Mr. Lei­thart flat­ly rejects.

Like­wise, while attempt­ing to claim a her­itage in medieval and Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion Catholi­cism, Mr. Lei­thart can not help but slap back-hand­ed returns at the Catholic the­olo­gians and doc­tors of the Church he plays at ten­nis with:

A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic … hon­ors Augus­tine and Gre­go­ry the Great … Alcuin and … Bonaven­ture, Dominic and Fran­cis and Dante, Ignatius and Tere­sa of Avi­la … as fathers, broth­ers, sis­ters. A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic knows some of his ances­tors were deeply flawed but won’t delete them from its fam­i­ly tree. He knows every fam­i­ly has its embar­rass­ments. …

A Refor­ma­tion­al Catholic rev­els in the rich­es, even while he puz­zles over the odd­i­ties, of Augus­tine and Ori­gen, Bernard and Bede.

Mr. Lei­thart is say­ing some­thing else than that the great Catholics of the past had their sins. Lis­ten to his words: He calls them “deeply flawed … embar­rass­ments.” St. Augus­tine a “deeply flawed embar­rass­ment”? St. Fran­cis of Assisi a “deeply flawed embar­rass­ment”? Tere­sa of Avi­la? Ignatius of Loy­ola? We should be clear here: Alexan­der VI was a deeply flawed embar­rass­ment. Tere­sa of Avi­la was a saint, a mod­el, a tes­ta­ment to a life lived whole and well and on fire with prayer until the end. One sus­pects that when Mr. Lei­thart calls St. Bonaven­ture “deeply flawed” and an “embar­rass­ment,” he is talk­ing not about his sins but about his the­ol­o­gy. I refuse to be embar­rassed by Gre­go­ry the Great.

STRANGE OLD TRUTHS FROM MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANS

Now, I do con­fess that I have had the same expe­ri­ence as Mr. Lei­thart. When, as a Protes­tant, I first encoun­tered the writ­ings of patris­tic and medieval Catholics, I did find them strange. They sound­ed Chris­t­ian, but not by the mea­sure of any Chris­tian­i­ty famil­iar or home to me. The Desert Fathers in par­tic­u­lar puz­zled me. But Mr. Lei­thart treats that puz­zle­ment as though it were their flaw rather than ours; as though St. Ephrem of Syr­ia need­ed to con­form to us. A Chris­t­ian who is hon­est will find “odd­i­ties” in the Bible too. Explain Psalm 137:9. Or Exo­dus 4:24. Entire books get writ­ten on “prob­lem vers­es” in Scrip­ture. Why then should one be trou­bled to find St. Bonaven­ture sound­ing a wee alien?

Here is where I part­ed com­pa­ny, long ago, from Mr. Lei­thart: I dis­cov­ered that was what was most strange in the writ­ings of Bonaven­ture, Augus­tine, Tere­sa of Avi­la, Julian of Nor­wich, was pre­cise­ly what was most true in them. I dis­cov­ered that they sound­ed strange because they were not of my age; that I should not expect them to sound like my con­tem­po­raries, or my grand­fa­ther; and that in their strange­ness was a spir­i­tu­al depth I had not con­sid­ered but should.

How­beit, where Mr. Lei­thart finds strange­ness, he says, I dis­miss it not; I believe it not. Which strikes me as non­sense.

At bot­tom, what Mr. Lei­thart attempts to do is to treat the dif­fer­ent church­es like they’re a Fri­day night potluck; to heap onto his plate what­ev­er he likes in Protes­tantism, what­ev­er he likes in Catholi­cism, and reject all else; and to call it “Refor­ma­tion­al Catholi­cism.” That’s not the end of Protes­tantism. It’s just an addi­tion­al one.

FILL THE WORLD WITH MORE SECT DIVISION

For indeed, Mr. Lei­thart views Chris­tian­i­ty as infi­nite­ly mal­leable:

Protes­tantism has had a good run. It remade Europe and made Amer­i­ca. It inspired glob­al mis­sions, soup kitchens, church plants, and col­leges in the four cor­ners of the earth. [Actu­al­ly, it was the Catholic Church that invent­ed the uni­ver­si­ty, but nev­er mind.] But the world and the church have changed, and Protes­tantism isn’t what the Church, includ­ing Protes­tants them­selves, needs today. It’s time to turn the protest against Protes­tantism and to envi­sion a new way of being heirs of the Ref­or­ma­tion, a new way that hap­pens to con­form to the orig­i­nal Catholic vision of the Reform­ers.

A church that had “a good run” does not sound to me like what Christ promised. Christ did not say, “On this rock I will build my church, and it will get start­ed 1500 years from now, and it will have a good run, after which time a guy named Peter Lei­thart will lead you into a new way and a more fed­er­al vision.”

The only way for Chris­tian­i­ty to be unit­ed is for it to be reunit­ed. The only true ecu­menism is the kind that brings Angli­cans back into com­mu­nion such that they may retain their tra­di­tions and litur­gy while still being part of the one head and the one body. Fed­er­al­ism may be the right vision for Amer­i­ca, but it is no way to have a Church. Christ did not say, “I pray that they may be assort­ed in fed­er­al camps”; he said, “I pray that they may be one.”

Refor­ma­tion­al Catholi­cism is not Catholi­cism at all. Peter Lei­thart is not “end­ing” Protes­tantism; he’s expand­ing it by one more divi­sion. With­out uni­ty in Rome, end­less divi­sion is all there is.

UPDATES

R. Scott Clark post­ed this cri­tique of Mr. Lei­thart from a Reformed per­spec­tive.

Jor­dan Coop­er post­ed this response from a Luther­an per­spec­tive. Thanks to Mr. Coop­er for tweet­ing me the link to his arti­cle.