Floundering in the Tiber

The elders at COPC thought I was already Catholic, and they expected me to joined the nearest Roman Catholic parish. In fact, while I was becoming more “catholic,” I wasn’t convinced of all the specific claims of Roman Catholicism.

I had a very strong inclination towards liturgical worship, apostolic succession and the Real Presence. At the same time, I wanted a church that believed the Bible and acted that way. The ideal solution would have been a conservative Episcopal parish, but "conservative Episcopal" is somewhat like "pro-life Democrat" -- you hear about them from time to time, but they're few and far between, especially in Maryland. There is a "Reformed Episcopal" parish not too far away, but after talking with some people from that denomination, I got the impression that they were just Presbyterians with collars.

So why didn’t I just become Roman Catholic? It would have been an easy thing to do. I had already been labeled a despicable papist by my former colleagues, so I wouldn't have endured much more humiliation.

The reason is simple. It’s one thing to say that Roman Catholic arguments aren’t clearly wrong, and that I could accept them if I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt in the matter, but it’s another thing entirely to confess that they are true.

Nevertheless, I owed the RCC a try, so I scouted out the local parishes. Dreadful is not a strong enough word. First, I attended a Saturday evening mass at a church down the street. It just so happened that the bishop was there, quizzing some kids before confirmation. Of course kids at that age aren't very talkative in general, but their responses to his softball questions were appalling. If it was up to me, I'd have sent them all back to class. But of course that's not the way it's done. We can't expect religious education to educate people. That would be intolerant.

As I sat there, steaming over the irrelevance of catechesis in modern Christianity, I had a chance to look around. There were no kneelers in the pews. There was hardly anything "Catholic" about the place at all. I'm not sure what would have had to change to make it into a meeting hall for the local Elks lodge.

So much for worship bringing us into the presence of God! Modern buildings rarely elicit a sense of reverence, and sometimes it seems that modern architects try to make churches as ugly and un-church-like as they can.

I visited the same church on Sunday for the regular mass. Two things stuck out like marijuana in a vegetable garden. First, the parish used altar girls. (This was before the church permitted them.) I'm not sure what I think about altar girls (I was and am completely against women's ordination), but I do know what I think of breaking the rules. If you're gonna be a Catholic parish, then doggone it, be Catholic.

The second thing was the sermon. It was from "Second Isaiah." Preaching from "Second Isaiah" is as good as putting on a placard that says, "I AM A LIBERAL." The funny thing was, it was a half decent sermon. I have no idea why the priest had to try to undermine people's faith in the Scriptures by starting off with all the higher critical nonsense.

As in all my visits to local Catholic parishes, I felt there was a spiritual malaise hanging over the place. Very few people wanted to be there, and hardly anyone paid any attention. They came out of a sense of obligation.

I'm not against obligation. If my son doesn't want to obey me because he loves me, I'd rather that he obey out of a sense of obligation than disobey. At least it'll keep him out of trouble. But all the theory about the RCC being the "one true church" rings extraordinarily hollow when you see what it's actually like at the parish level. Maybe I'm peculiar, but I'd expect there to be some life in the "one, true church," and I have a recollection of Jesus saying something about knowing them by their fruits.

On Pentecost I went to another local church. This place was older and looked more like a Catholic Church. There was art everywhere (albeit somewhat tacky, in my opinion), including the stations of the cross. That gave me some hope as I waited for mass to begin.

The music almost turned my stomach. It was horrible. It was drippy, sentimental schlock, but I'd come to realize that was par for the course at Catholic parishes these days. (I think architects and musicians are trained in the same place: an old tie-dyed shirt factory-turned-liturgical-academy run by people who haven't realized how much damage those drugs really did.)

I barely suffered through the music, which only kept me long enough to hear the worst Pentecost sermon I've ever heard in my life.

Back at the Presbyterian Church, I remember ribbing my pastor one Earth Day about how I was going to walk out if he preached an environmentalist sermon. He told me to make sure to sit up front so I could make a big enough disruption.

God bless him. We differed on a few things, but he's a good preacher. (Of course he didn't preach an Earth Day message.)

Anyway, the priest did a Phil Donahue thing and walked around the church with a remote microphone. (Is there some way to stop this? Can we strap them in to the lectern?) He held up a kids' book: Priests Who Run with the Wolves, or something like that. It was about Native American spirituality, and he was telling us how some parishioner always thought of him when he read this book to his children.

The choir had sung (ad nauseum) a simple little ditty about the Holy Spirit coming to renew the face of the earth. The priest picked up on that theme and told us that the Earth Summit (an environmental thing going on at the time) was the perfect expression of Pentecost -- renewing the face of the Earth. Through Al Gore and the other enviro-geeks, the Holy Spirit was doing his greatest work in redemptive history.

I wish I could express the violent conflict that was going on inside me while the priest spoke. Part of me wanted to laugh out loud. Part of me wanted to stand up and yell, “Begone, vile heretic.” Part of me wanted to walk out. But since it wasn't my church, I didn't think that any kind of demonstration would have any real effect. They'd just think, "Who let that nut in here?" So I walked out quietly.

I was so vexed that I considered writing a letter to the bishop. Here I was, trying to give the RCC a fair shake, and this was the smelly old tripe they were serving me. One, true church indeed!

The next Catholic parish I tried wasn't objectionable in any definable way that I can recall, but my overwhelming sense of the place was that I was in the world headquarters of all touchy-feelydom. Had a molecule of testosterone snuck in the back door, it would have been lonely.

What the Roman Catholic Church desperately needs is a bearded pope!

Anyway, back to the review of Catholic parishes. A conservative Roman Catholic friend recommended another parish, so we tried it out.

It was about the same. Sickly, trite, effeminate music. Nobody was engaged in worship; they were just doing their duty. It was otherwise unremarkable until the sermon, which was among the worst I've ever heard (except for that Pentecost sermon). The priest was speaking on the story of Mary and Martha, in which our Lord commends Mary for taking the better part -- sitting at his feet and learning -- while Martha was concerned about dinner preparations. The priest got it entirely backwards. He turned the lesson into something about hospitality. (I’ve since heard another priest do the same thing. This is why Protestants wonder if Catholics ever read their Bibles.)

We found one decent parish, which was a little farther away than I wanted to drive every Sunday, and, wonder of wonders, the priest gave a decent sermon and ... get ready ... there was a mid-week Bible study! Wow!

Of course I had to check out that Bible study, so I visited that very week. Out of a parish of about a thousand there were five men at the Bible study, including me and the priest. That was disappointing, but I felt an immediate kinship with the priest. He seemed to know his stuff, and I think he was one of the few priests within 20 miles that I would actually consult if I had a question about Catholicism.

The Bible study was mildly interesting. Most of the men didn't know what they were talking about, but there were a couple interesting conversations. But the most interesting thing was that when it was over, the priest pulled a cooler of beer from behind a chair.

Now that's my kind of Bible study!

But by this time, I was fairly fed up with the whole venture. This "one, true church" was like a pile of old leisure suits on a sale table from which I hoped to find a decent pair of pants. Okay, there might possibly be one, but is it really worth the pain of digging?

Some Catholics that I've met are very serious Christians who love the Lord and want to do what's right. And a few of them are priests. But it's a messy business finding them, and I didn't see why I should bother. I didn't really believe that Rome was the "one, true church." I was willing to give Rome a fair hearing, and I liked the idea of Christian unity around the successor to Peter, and if there had been a decent Roman Catholic parish, with good preaching and a congregation that seemed like they cared about the faith, I may have joined, despite my reservations about some Roman doctrines. But it didn't turn out that way.

What is "Catholic" Anyway?

After all this soul-searching and study and whatnot, I had to stop and ask myself what I was really looking for. I was sufficiently impressed with the arguments for a special role for Peter's successors that I would have preferred being in communion with the bishop of Rome. I would also prefer to drive a new car and drink only the best beer, but life is a balancing act: it’s either the better beer or movie night with the kids, but not both.

Union with Rome seemed like a good thing, but I wasn't convinced that it trumped all other considerations. For example, I didn’t see why it should take precedence over being in a church where the pastoral staff encouraged Christian growth and the people made genuine lifestyle changes in light of Christ’s lordship. After all, even though I believed that administrative unity with Peter was a good idea, whatever actual benefit there is in being united to Peter is already mine in Christ. St. Paul is quite clear on that.

So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God. (1 Cor. 3:21-23)

Whatever benefit there is in being in the Roman Catholic Church -- no matter what that benefit might be -- I already had in my baptism. Union with Christ gives me everything.

Now that doesn't mean that I'm entitled to sin against grace, but I was being pulled in many different directions, and I had to weigh them all and do the best I could with the options I had, and I didn't feel any great pressure to be a Catholic.

Besides, I had a family, and I had to think about their spiritual nurture. Most of that will be done at home, of course, but the church ought to be supportive. For example, our culture is saturated with sex. Movies and TV and pop songs and magazines all conspire to turn pre-teens into sex-crazed worldlings. Of course I teach against these things in the home, but if a parent’s teaching isn’t supported and reinforced in school and church, a child will conclude that his parent is a crack-pot and he’ll go with the flow -- and with his hormones.

The sad fact is that the Catholic Church does virtually nothing -- at the parish level -- to teach Christian discipleship or a Christian lifestyle. Dating and popular music and all that is just assumed. There is (comparatively) no emphasis on Scripture study or memorization. In an active, growing Protestant church, a large number of the adults and teens have been on short-term mission trips. I saw nothing comparable in the Catholic Church.

And one thing I've never heard in my entire life is somebody who says he's glad he grew up Catholic. But I've heard the opposite many, many times. Give all this, I had to ask myself: why should I put my kids through that?

Signs and ... I Wonder

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles. (2 Cor. 12:12)

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, "Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them," you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. (Deut. 13:1-4)

Right around the time I was struggling with all this Catholic stuff, a priest in Virginia started making statues cry. (There's a joke in there somewhere.) He'd touch a statue, usually a statue of Mary, of course, and it would start weeping. And then he got the stigmata. (Wimpy stigmata, from the news accounts. They were basically bloody pimples. Not that I'd want them.)

I had believed for a long time that there were two marks of a true prophet: first, what he said was consistent with the faith as it had been delivered, and second, he'd have a miraculous ministry to prove it. Generally speaking, classical Protestantism doesn't put much stock in modern manifestations of the miraculous gifts. (Pentecostals and Charismatics do, of course, but they're a recent phenomenon.) But Catholics claim that they've had miracles going on from time to time since the beginnings of the church, and they claim that this is evidence that they are the true church.

So I started looking into it a bit. What were all these miracles like? Were any of them credible? What about Fatima?

I did some reading and poking around, and it didn't take me long to conclude that I hated the whole subject. More than anything else I wanted it to go away and leave me alone. I didn't want to fool around with these claims of healings and apparitions and other silly things. Some of them seemed so trite (like making a statue cry), and easily explained by the skeptics. And the ones that seemed credible seemed so extraordinarily silly.

Anyway, here I was, wondering about Rome, and up jumps this priest with bleeding pimples on his hands and wet statues in his back pocket. At roughly the same time, I met an Orthodox fellow on the train who told me his life had been changed by a weeping icon. He said he went to see it, believed, and that he's been a faithful son of the church ever since. (He even gave me some of his prized memorabilia of the event -- newspaper clippings and so forth.)

But of course I can rustle up five or ten Protestant churches inside the Beltway that will claim that God has done miracles of healing through their ministers.

So what was I supposed to do about this? I was tempted to go to Virginia and see for myself, but I decided against that. What would I see, anyway? I might see a wet statue surrounded by a bunch of people who would embarrass the heck out of me with their beads, scapulars, spooky chanting and so forth. And God forbid that I should be seen there!

In the midst of this, somehow or other, I got hooked up with an Opus Dei priest, so I asked him about it.

Those folk in Opus Dei are serious fellas, and this priest was really something. He was kind and gentle, but not in the modern, sissy way. He was firm in his convictions, had a solid grasp of the faith, and gave very good advice. And he loaned me a book, Our Lady of Fatima, by Walsh.

I read it, and I still didn't know what to think about all this miracle business, and I still don't. As with so many other elements of Roman Catholicism, something about it attracts me and something about it repulses me. If there's really something going on, it would seem to confirm the message (but what about the Orthodox icons, and the charismatic Protestant churches?). And then again, people are horribly gullible.

The worst of it all, from my perspective, is that most of the Roman Catholic miracles have to do with Mary. Can't Joseph appear -- just once? Or can't Mary appear and tell somebody to slack off a little on her and spend some more time with Jesus? Heaven knows there’s got to be at least one Catholic in the world who is guilty of honoring Mary just a tad too much. Now that would be an apparition!

Hail Mary, full of grace,

The Lord is with thee.

Please grab your over-zealous partisans by the collar and read them the riot act.

And do a miracle or two so it shows up in the paper.

Or at least in Christianity Today.

Amen.

Maybe I had hoped that miracles would help clarify things, but God has not made life so easy. Miracles just raise more problems.

Along those lines....

One of the standard Protestant complaints against Roman Catholicism is that it is syncretistic -- that it adopts pagan customs rather than changing them. But Mary (in her alleged apparitions) seems strangely silent on the issue. If God is really sending His mother around to give special messages, why aren’t any of them the kind of things that I think God would want to say? Sure, it sounds arrogant to want God to say what I think, but I can’t be completely wrong all the time. Can’t Mary have at least one message for liberal bishops and liturgists?

“Mary Says Bishop Spong is Hellbound.”

Just once!

Anyway, all told, the whole miracle business is a tough pill to swallow and doesn't get me anywhere. Some of the miracle claims are pretty impressive -- like the Fatima apparitions -- but I have a feeling it would take lots of study to come to any reasonable conclusions about it all, and I was getting weary of the whole thing.

The Patron Saint of Dueling

Shout! But you see it still won't do.

With my colors on I can be just as bad as you.

-- "Flying Colors," by Jethro Tull.

Having been pushed out of the OPC, and not favorably impressed with the Roman Catholic parishes in my neighborhood, I had to re-evaluate my position.

I wanted to be in a church that followed the ancient Christian liturgy ("according to the pattern you saw on the mountain"). I wanted a solid doctrine of the sacraments, bishops (apostolic succession), no pope (well, yes, I did want a pope, I just didn't trust the doctrines attached to the one in Rome, who seems to have pushed his job description out of all proportion), a reasonable view of the law (I mean Moses), and otherwise your basic "mere Christianity." I'd have liked a church with a good preacher, an excellent Christian education program, and a congregation that really wanted to be Christ’s disciples.

But you can't always get what you want.

I had to settle for the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, which passes on, oh, let's see, about two and a half of the points above. But it was the best I could do.

Thus began my time of de-briefing on Roman Catholicism. I was still avidly involved in online discussions on sola scriptura, the papacy, justification -- all the normal humdingers -- and Catholic apologists were starting to annoy me. There are a lot of annoying Protestants who don't understand Catholicism but think they do. Believe me, the shoe fits on both feet, and even (this is the amazing thing!) on Catholics who converted from Protestantism.

There must be something about converting that dulls certain areas of the brain. Or maybe there’s something called “convert disease.” In any event, I suppose there is an intense desire to fit in with the new group, and that desire encourages a repudiation of the old group's ideas. “Your people are my people. Your enemies are my enemies.”

Sometimes that repudiation of the former group includes complete forgetfulness about what the old group really said, or what they meant by what they said. In my online dialogs, converts to Catholicism would tell me things about Protestantism, and I’d scratch my head and think, “Where in the world did you get that idea?”

The most amusing interaction I had with a Catholic apologist was an e-mail correspondence with a priest. It was strange because the priest didn't have e-mail, so we talked through an intermediary, and sometimes I wasn't sure if I was talking to the priest or his typist.

He wanted to convince me out of the Lutheran church, so he thought that he could accomplish this by telling me all kinds of bad things about Luther. (Lutherans do not worship Luther, nor are they bound to his private ideas, or even his public ideas. Lutherans view him as the guy God used to start the Reformation, and a good theologian. That's it. The Lutheran churches generally follow his form of theology, but they make no claim that he was perfect. Most Lutherans know that Luther said some rather horrible things about Jews and that he was prone to exaggeration and bombast.)

Here was the big, bad secret that some "scholar" had uncovered in a “study” of Luther's early life: Martin had run off to the monastery to avoid trouble with the law. He'd been in a duel, this scholar claimed, and maybe even killed a man, and sought refuge in the cloister.

It's hard to yawn by e-mail, so I had to explain to Fr. Apologist why I didn't care. First, I had just finished reading in that ridiculous Young Man Luther, cited above, so I knew what "scholars" could do with a silly theory and no evidence. (The Jesus seminar comes to mind.) Second, even if Luther had murdered somebody in cold blood, many saints have done worse. There is forgiveness, you know. Third, I'm entirely in favor of dueling. There are some things that simply can't be resolved in the criminal justice system, and dueling (or something like it) seems like a perfectly reasonable option. (I’m only joking a little bit.)

Besides, it was fun to imagine the look on his face when he read that particular e-mail.

Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t quite Lutheran yet.

After scouring the local RC parishes for a drop of testosterone and some evidence of sanity, I started looking into the conservative branch of the Lutheran Church, which had a parish marvelously close by. My wife and I visited and were immediately aghast at the bumper stickers in the parking lot of the local Missouri Synod congregation.

"Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican."

Well, okay. I tried to be broad-minded about that one. After all, a denunciation of Republicanism is entirely just, and it is not necessarily an endorsement of the Devilcrats, which is a sin leading to death (cf. 1 John 5:16). But it put me on my guard. And then I saw ...

"Pro Choice."

Now that's a hanging offense. But it may have been a visitor's car, after all.

No, it wasn't. In fact, the local Missouri Synod Lutheran Church turned out to be the most liberal one on the planet. (I’m in Maryland, and "liberal" and Maryland go hand in hand, unfortunately.) After trying for several weeks to stomach tepid Lutheranism, we eventually gave up and took the longer drive to a more conservative LCMS parish down the road.

Not that I was thrilled with Lutheranism. I had some problems with Lutheran theology, but it would do as a temporary solution until I figured out where I really wanted to be. And, since the better Lutherans don't consider themselves to have broken away from Rome (rather, that Rome distanced itself from the gospel and eventually broke away from the faith, which was preserved in the Lutheran churches) it gave me a good way to annoy the Catholic apologists who kept urging me to become a Catholic. I'd just say, "But I am Catholic. I'm a Wittenberg Catholic."

From the Trite to the Ridiculous

A Creed

I believe in God, who places joy in our souls, dancing in our toes and songs in our hearts. I believe God wanted gladness to flow like a river and so created a bountiful earth with plenty for all to share.

I believe in Jesus, who turned water into wine, partied with outcasts and sinners, and touched the broken so they could leap and dance. I believe Jesus opened the doors and set an extra place so we could feast.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who prompts us to smile, who sends us invitations to come and dine, who nudges us to openness and tenderness. I believe the Spirit is present every time we gather to break bread and is always urging us to live joyfully and walk hopefully.

Forever, I will live in the embrace of God to be a witness to resurrection joy.

-- "A Creed," used in the “contemporary” service at our Lutheran Church.

Boy, I'm sorry I had to do that to you. But it's okay. You'll be fine. Take a break and get some coke syrup to settle your stomach back down, and I promise I won’t do that again.

Well. I had thought that Lutheran churches followed the traditional Christian liturgy. I was in for a rude awakening.

The Reformed say that God may only be worshipped according to the explicit dictates of Scripture. They call this the "regulative principle of worship," and even though it's wrong -- Jesus went to Hanukkah, which is not prescribed in Scripture, and used the traditional Jewish Passover liturgy at the Last Supper -- at least the regulative principle tends to keep things from getting too ridiculous.

The Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions also regulate worship. They say worship must be according to the liturgy the church received from the Lord, and that this liturgy has been passed down and preserved in the church.

Lutherans, on the other hand, do not have a "regulative principle" of any kind. Where the Reformed and Catholic traditions place limits on worship, the Lutherans believe in liberty -- what is not prohibited by Scripture is permitted. This is how they justified keeping the basic form of the liturgy and sola scriptura too. They said that word and sacrament are required in worship, but other things that are not contrary to Scripture can be retained, for the sake of peace, good order and so forth.

(Note that on this point the Reformed and Catholic traditions could be said to have more in common with one another than either has with the Lutherans.)

So what happens to Lutheran worship when maintaining the ancient form of the liturgy doesn't seem to make for peace and good order any more? (That is, when a bunch of Baby Boomers get on the liturgy committee.) For a long time, Lutherans continued to use the traditional liturgy because, well, ... because that's what Lutherans did, and Lutherans aren’t known as wild innovators. But that was before the LCMS met the flower children of the Age of Aquarius. Those dusty old things like apostolic liturgy aren't good enough for the Blessed Folk. They have to have "contemporary" songs and "contemporary" creeds and dramatic sketches and dancing and hugs and kisses. (I'm not against contemporary anything, provided it's good quality. Unfortunately, when you link "contemporary" with "worship" it is often a synonym for shallow, banal, icky, sentimental tripe.)

So here’s the picture: the baby boomers and the church growthers march in with their agenda to reform everything according to their own image. (Why didn't their parents spank them? Think of all the trouble they'd have saved society!) The enlightened reformers are for progress, but the old guard is stuck in their ways. (The old farts!) The enlightened will tolerate no dissent. Their way is the right way, and opponents are not merely wrong, they’re resisting the Spirit (who likes shallow, banal, icky, sentimental tripe). (There’s only one thing worse than the arrogance of the flower children, and that’s when they’re on a mission from God.)

Those old fogies (who, God help them, like “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” more than “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”) don't like young people! They’re racists, too. And they don’t want a bunch of newcomers to mess up their grand little church club. They don't really want anyone to get converted, you see. (And we all know that everybody falls on their knees and begs for ... well, for something, anyway, after a few rounds of Michael rowing that boat.)

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but you get the picture, right? Tradition has been turned on its head. Nowadays, the burden of proof is always on the one who wants to keep things the way they are, because the people who want to change things are presumptively on the side of the angels. The angels are always singing new stuff, by the way.

So what's a Lutheran to do? Is there no standard in the worship of a holy God?

Well, actually, no there's not. Not in Lutheranism. Lutherans don't believe in the Sabbath. They worship on Sunday because that's what they do, not because of the commandment. (Again, Presbyterians and Roman Catholics ally against the Lutherans on this point.) And the form of worship? There really aren't any rules. They just do it a certain way because they like it, and if they like to change it, away they go. (And pity the man who stands in the way.)

Now, lest I give the wrong impression of my friends in the LCMS, we did not have this much trouble at our parish. We had some conflict over worship, but my feverish imagination started testing the limits. Those old thought experiments started going again, and I wanted to find out if there were any brakes. Did Lutheranism provide any kind of reasonable framework in which a person could be “Catholic, but not Roman Catholic”?

No, it did not, which showed me that Lutheranism is all wet in its theology of worship. It is inconceivable to me that the same God who said, "See that you do all things according to the pattern you saw on the mountain," and "Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy," now just says, "Make sure you preach the word, and have communion every once in a while, but other than that, do as you like on any day that you like."

Can Protestantism be Fixed?

Please indulge me in a little bit more foolishness about the innovators. During my sojourn in the LCMS, I was actually told that the Nicene creed is just words written by a bunch of dead guys, and they are no better than words written by some other bunch of guys (preferably in tie-dyed shirts, one is tempted to think).

The liturgy was racist, I was told, and unfit for anybody under 50, and we had to change things to attract non-Germans. (“Changing things” means having “confessions” that bemoan our inability to hear gentle voices and feel sweet whispers on the wind, and other precious moments.) There was a lot more of this kind of silliness that I will skip out of Christian charity. But you’ve got to hear a little more to get a sense for what it’s like to try to be “Catholic, but not Roman Catholic” in today’s church.

To be perfectly honest I have to say that it wasn’t all bad. We did have a “traditional” service at the Lutheran church, which, when it was done right, was amazingly good. We had communion every week, and every communicant knelt at the altar to receive the Lord’s body and blood. But there was always the tension of the “contemporary” agitators, so on and on it went.

My concern at my Lutheran parish was not just a matter of personal preference and worship styles. Try to keep in mind the theological background to all this. I desperately wanted to find, develop, or at least imagine a form of Protestantism that didn’t ultimately degenerate into the splintering silliness of Protestant ecclesiology. I wanted a traditional, confessional, conservative (in the good sense -- of holding on to the important stuff from the past), authoritative Protestant church. Liturgy is only an example, but it is an important example precisely because it’s not something you can proof text, because that’s where church authority meets its test. If Protestants can never, ever, accept the judgment of the church on something as inoffensive as the liturgy, then church authority is a hopeless case.

And the more I worked on it -- in my church, in online discussion groups, in emails, in my own head, with friends over a beer -- there seemed to be no way to instill a respect for authoritative tradition within the ecclesiological presuppositions of Protestantism.

It wore me out. I had no illusions of fixing the silliness in the modern church, but I wanted to know that things could be fixed, somehow, some time, at least theoretically. What I came to realize was that Protestant ecclesiology makes that impossible.

I know I’m making my stay in the LCMS sound pretty dreadful. It really wasn’t that way at all. I had several wonderful years, in which I learned to love the liturgy and the Eucharist. But it was also an intense time of re-evaluation for me. I was testing my “Catholic but not Roman Catholic” theories, and finding them wanting.

Over several years of trying to form a solid conceptual basis for a stable Protestant ecclesiology, I realized that several things are required. You need ...

An objective criterion for ordination (a way to know that a man is truly called and ordained, apart from your personal opinion of him),

Some kind of “once ordained, always ordained” position,

An agreement to give the benefit of the doubt to the judgments of lawful authority, and

A firm conviction that it is unlawful (or impossible) to start a new church. You have to work inside the existing one.

Without those elements, a church can’t function as the church, and those elements are inherently un-Protestant. (I’ll explain why later.)

I worked for years on trying to be "Catholic, but not Roman Catholic." I tried to imagine a situation where the church could be authoritative, but still divided. Maybe we could agree, I imagined, on certain "catholic" standards, but allow flexibility on other things.

I tried my best to make it work, but I couldn’t, and I believe it can't be done. Once your system permits the visible church to be divided, there is no way to have an authoritative church, since dissenters can always split off and start their own group, with their own standards. And if you want to say that they have to submit to authority, or that they have no authority to start another church, then you end up sawing down the Protestant tree you're sitting in.

The more I worked on it, the more frustrated I became, which sent me to my keyboard. (Writing is therapy.)

I had been working on a novel about an agnostic who became a Christian. I made him an Episcopalian -- catholic but not Roman Catholic. In the sequel, he ran into trouble with the liberal priest in his parish. My goal was to come up with a solution to the crisis of silliness in the modern church. I was too tired to try to do it in real life, but I thought I could sketch out a solution in fiction. Maybe that would be the blessing God would bring out of the curse of my struggles.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't find a single way to solve the problem, because I’ve heard ten thousand Protestant answers and objections to every attempt to impose order (or orthodoxy) on the church. And it all boils down to this: If the people don't like it, they always have the option to leave and do their own thing. The Protestant can cry and bellyache about that, he can tell people they’re wicked for doing it, he can shout about loyalty to the church and all the rest, but once the deed is done, they have to admit that the spawn of this rebellion is also a church with sacraments and ministry and gospel, so the threats and nasty words are completely hollow.

The bottom line is that once you accept the notion that the visible church can be divided, ecclesiology is dead -- there is no possibility of unity or meaningful authority.

The Cheshire Christ

At this point even my friendly keyboard was against me. Reality was a mess, and even my fictional creations poked fingers in my eye and told me that life was irretrievably bent. It couldn’t be fixed, even in my imagination.

A friend read an earlier draft of this work and suggested that I name the story, "I Found the Lord, But Where's the Church?," which made me think of the Cheshire Cat, who, as you know, sometimes appeared as just a head. It seemed to me that's how our Lord manifests Himself in the contemporary Protestant church. He is Lord, and we listen and obey. But where's His body, the church?