- Feb 5, 2002
- 183,374
- 66,665
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Female
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
*You are in the Catholic forum*
I can understand and appreciate why some Protestants might be annoyed at the way that conversions from various Protestant traditions to Catholicism are often covered in Catholic (and even secular) media. There is a certain triumphalistic brand of Catholic apologetics, which especially proliferates on social media, that seems to share the attitude of an SEC football team running up the score against Kent State. In your face, Southern Baptist Convention!
This is not good, as my friend Mike Sabo, a Protestant editor and writer, argues in a recent piece at American Reformer that has attracted even Catholic media attention. Sabo expresses his frustration with Catholics who unfairly caricature and simplify Protestantism, and I wholeheartedly agree and sympathize with that frustration. As someone who was persuaded to leave Presbyterianism for Catholicism fifteen years ago through the evangelistic witness of other former Protestants, I believe that ecumenical debate (and really, all intellectual debate) demands that we engage with the very best arguments our interlocutors can offer.
Yet I think Sabo overreaches in his complaint, largely because he engages in the same kind of rhetoric in his criticism of Catholics and Catholic apologetics. He writes, “Catholics are regularly outraged when Protestants try to convert them, or talk as if they aren’t part of the one true, catholic, holy, and apostolic church. But these pro-Catholic apologists have no problem with proselytizing evangelicals.” What Catholics are we talking about? Sabo offers no examples. And even if some Catholics present a double standard when it comes to Catholic and Protestant debates, so what? Do Catholic claims stand or fall because some Catholics are hypocrites?
Sabo continues: “However, when Protestants, especially in the political arena, question the leading doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic Church, that’s seen as a social faux pas that will likely get you locked out of the upper echelons of the institutional Right.” I presume Sabo has examples to substantiate this claim, one also found in a recent book by prominent Protestant scholars Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, but he doesn’t give any. It also seems overwrought, given that there are twice as many Protestants in Congress as Catholics, and our president, secretaries of Defense and the Treasury, and speaker of the House are all Protestant.
Continued below.
www.catholic.com
An appeal against Catholic arguments to ‘historic Protestant positions’ is doomed to fall flat
I can understand and appreciate why some Protestants might be annoyed at the way that conversions from various Protestant traditions to Catholicism are often covered in Catholic (and even secular) media. There is a certain triumphalistic brand of Catholic apologetics, which especially proliferates on social media, that seems to share the attitude of an SEC football team running up the score against Kent State. In your face, Southern Baptist Convention!
This is not good, as my friend Mike Sabo, a Protestant editor and writer, argues in a recent piece at American Reformer that has attracted even Catholic media attention. Sabo expresses his frustration with Catholics who unfairly caricature and simplify Protestantism, and I wholeheartedly agree and sympathize with that frustration. As someone who was persuaded to leave Presbyterianism for Catholicism fifteen years ago through the evangelistic witness of other former Protestants, I believe that ecumenical debate (and really, all intellectual debate) demands that we engage with the very best arguments our interlocutors can offer.
Yet I think Sabo overreaches in his complaint, largely because he engages in the same kind of rhetoric in his criticism of Catholics and Catholic apologetics. He writes, “Catholics are regularly outraged when Protestants try to convert them, or talk as if they aren’t part of the one true, catholic, holy, and apostolic church. But these pro-Catholic apologists have no problem with proselytizing evangelicals.” What Catholics are we talking about? Sabo offers no examples. And even if some Catholics present a double standard when it comes to Catholic and Protestant debates, so what? Do Catholic claims stand or fall because some Catholics are hypocrites?
Sabo continues: “However, when Protestants, especially in the political arena, question the leading doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic Church, that’s seen as a social faux pas that will likely get you locked out of the upper echelons of the institutional Right.” I presume Sabo has examples to substantiate this claim, one also found in a recent book by prominent Protestant scholars Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, but he doesn’t give any. It also seems overwrought, given that there are twice as many Protestants in Congress as Catholics, and our president, secretaries of Defense and the Treasury, and speaker of the House are all Protestant.
Continued below.
There Is No ‘Singular Historic Protestantism’
Sometimes Catholics get accused of oversimplifying Protestant doctrines and ignoring the robust historical Protestant tradition. But there's a problem here.
