Introduction: Treasure in Earthen Vessels

On 21^st June, 1989, I became a Christian. Convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, I sought salvation the only place it was offered: in Christ Jesus. And my life has not been the same since.

The process which led me to that life-changing decision was largely a solitary one. I say “largely” because at the time I was living in a country which was for the most part non-Christian (though it was, in its own manner, a very spiritual place). But the Lord, in His inimitably strange ways, helped me through that time, through books, through prayer, and through well-timed visits from and to Evangelical Christian friends. [1]

When, that September, I returned to Britain, I found myself faced with the novel task of regularly going to church for the first time in my life. I made a point of trying out as many different types of church as I could: I visited Pentecostals, and Baptists, and Quakers, and many varieties of both “low-” and “high-” church Anglicans. Through it all, I suspected that my home would end up being among Evangelical Protestants of one type or another. Most of the Christians to whom I had hitherto been exposed had been Evangelicals. It had been an Evangelical Anglican friend who had visited me in central Java where I had been studying music; Bible in hand, she had badgered me incessantly about her faith, and my lack of it – re-opening that God-shaped wound in my heart which I had tried hard to ignore for so long. Months of prayer and soul-searching later, it had been the father of a childhood friend of mine, a Baptist missionary in Indonesia, who had helped me patiently through my decision of faith, and in whose house I had been staying when I had finally made the prayer: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mk. 9:24, KJV). And so it seemed natural, upon taking up residence in central London, to attend one of the many fine “flagship” Evangelical churches there. I visited several such churches, as recommended by Christian friends and other members of the college Christian Union. And I was not disappointed. These churches were friendly, welcoming, full of life and enthusiasm, and prioritised fellowship and personal spiritual growth. But above all, they strove to be faithful to the Word of God: they studied it diligently, preached it with zeal and commitment, and had deep faith in its power to transform lives. As a new Christian, they seemed to offer everything I needed. Surely I could not ask for more!

And yet there were questions in the back of my mind which nagged at me. Most of these questions fell into a common pattern, and that was this: The largest group of Christians in the world were the Catholics. These Catholics, I had heard, believed certain things which made them very different from the Evangelicals. Some of their peculiar practices seemed harmless enough: it seemed that they went in for a lot of complicated ceremonial stuff which I didn’t understand, “smells and bells” and all sorts of set prayers. But they also claimed certain things about the Eucharist which were quite odd: it seemed that they believed, even in the late twentieth century, that the bread and wine at their mass really and truly changed into the body and blood of Christ! This was surely a very important claim. If it was false, then Catholicism was seriously misguided, and a dangerous distraction from the business of true Christian discipleship. But if true, then this was something quite remarkable, which all Christians really ought to sit up and take seriously.

But it didn’t stop there. For it seemed, further, that Catholics were confident enough in their beliefs that they weren’t about to equivocate or compromise on them. I was told that they claimed some sort of special teaching authority for their church, which they regarded as the same Church which Jesus had founded on the rock of Peter two thousand years ago, the Church to which all Christians in some sense properly belonged. Now it would have been possible for me to dismiss all this as nonsense – as most of my growing circle of Evangelical friends did. But the fact remained that well over half the Christians in the world were Catholics, and they clearly didn’t think it was nonsense. If I was going to decide that they were deranged, then I really ought to be sure I knew what I was talking about.

It had been a struggle, just a few months before, to decide to believe that God actually existed. It had been another struggle, some weeks after that, to decide to believe the promises of Christ. I really did not relish struggling yet further, to decide what kind of Christian to be. It would certainly have been easier to ignore the “Catholic question” – but it would have been fundamentally dishonest: the question, once asked, demanded a serious answer.

My first mass

One Saturday evening in central London, I found myself walking past a little Catholic church. I noticed on the board outside listing times of services that a “Saturday Vigil Mass” (and I had no idea what that meant) was due to start in a few minutes’ time. Being in no hurry to get anywhere else, I thought I’d go in.

Now, I knew very little about what a Catholic mass would be like. I had a vague notion that the church would be very ornate and dimly lit, and that the service would have lots of billowing incense, solemn tolling of bells, and beautiful music. I really do appreciate good music and a well stage-managed show, and so I was quite looking forward to my first Roman Catholic mass as I let myself into the church porch.

The first thing I noticed about this church was that, in contrast to almost every other church I had been to in London so far, there was no one in the porch to welcome me. The Evangelicals had always acted so glad to see me. But the Catholics didn’t seem to be doing any welcoming this evening…

Perhaps after the next set of doors, I thought, and let myself into the main church. No, there was no one here to greet me either. The church was small, brightly lit, and clean, but quite sparsely decorated and lacking in ornament. I wondered if I had by mistake walked into the church hall instead. But no, there were some people sitting there, dotted around on the pews in ones and twos, kneeling in prayer or whispering to each other in hushed tones. No one offered me a hymn-book. Or a newsletter. Indeed, no one paid me any attention at all.

I sat down in a back pew. No one joined me.

I started to look for signs of what was to come. I looked for a Bible. All the Evangelical churches had Bibles. No, this church didn’t seem to do Bibles. I looked for a hymn-book. Or a newsletter. There seemed to be nothing around to tell you what to do. No sign, indeed, that anything was going to happen at all.

And, for several minutes, nothing did happen.

Then: “Ting!” A little bell rang from the back of the church. Not a deep, profound, church-bell-type sound. Just a little “ting!”, rather like the sort of bell used in posh houses to summon a waiter. And, right on cue, up the central aisle shuffled the priest. Everyone stood up. So did I. I waited for the music to begin. It didn’t. What no hymn? No, no hymn. Just silence. And the shuffle of priestly feet.

The priest took his place facing the tiny, scattered congregation, standing behind what looked to me like a small, tall serving table. (He did look like a waiter!) And then he began. What he said and did for the next 30 minutes (for the entire service cannot have lasted much longer than that) went by me in a horrible blur. There were words, some of which I recognised (e.g. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”). There were actions, some of which I also recognised (e.g. the sign of the cross). Some of the text seemed to weave in bits of scripture (e.g. “Holy, holy, holy…”, “Lamb of God...” etc.); but most of it seemed awkward and lumpy, like a badly translated poem. The rest of the congregation seemed to know exactly what to do and say. Sometimes they stood up, sometimes they sat down, sometimes they knelt. Sometimes they spoke in a sort of rambling unison, sometimes the priest spoke on his own, sometimes there was silence. There was no singing, no incense, no tolling of bells, and no atmospheric lighting to soften the apparent starkness of the experience.

Catholicism, it seemed to me at that moment, was Christianity stripped of all enthusiasm and all beauty.

At one point in the middle of the service, the priest seemed to be speaking more on his own, and more off-the-cuff, than before. (I later learned that this was called a “homily”.) He spent most of this part of the service berating his congregation for the fact that someone had been taking the “devotional lights” (I did not at the time know what that meant) without paying for them. Therefore, he would be removing all devotional lights from the church forthwith, until full restoration was made. (I never found out how this story ended.)

The eucharistic part of the mass came and went with such a level of apparent carelessness that I almost failed to notice it was happening. The congregation seemed to approach communion with little overt reverence. They did not kneel, as even Evangelical Anglicans did, but shuffled up to the altar, taking communion standing up with what appeared to be the minimum of care. If they really believed that this truly was the body and blood of Christ, they didn’t seem to be making any effort to show it. For the first time since giving myself to Christ, I felt no desire to join them.

The mass over, the priest shuffled out the way he had come in, the congregation shuffled out in like manner, and I shuffled out into the autumn evening weighed down with an indescribable feeling of gloom. Surely there must be some mistake! I checked the sign-board on the front of the church. Was this really the Roman Catholic Church? This Church appeared to contain none of the enthusiasm of the Evangelical Anglicans, or the reverence of the Anglo-Catholics, or the scriptural zeal of the Baptists, or the spiritual gifts of the Pentecostals, or even the quiet interiority of the Quakers. Half of me wanted to run as far from Catholicism as I could. But the other half could not turn its back so easily. “God, no,” I cried out inside as I trudged back home: “Lord, please release me from this terrible choice!”

Some five years later, I was baptised, and received into the Catholic Church.

Evangelicals and Catholicism

In the meantime, the reaction of my Evangelical friends to my developing interest in the Catholic faith was, at best, mixed. A few were downright hostile, and told me in no uncertain terms all the things which they found deeply disturbing about Catholicism. Some of their concerns were about genuine points of Catholic teaching: Was the eucharistic bread and wine truly the body and blood of Christ? Was the church of Rome truly the successor to Peter? These were complicated and difficult questions, but definitely worth asking, and not sweeping under the carpet.

Some of my friends had other concerns: “Catholics worship Mary,” they said, “and the saints” – “And they believe that they can earn salvation through good works.” – “And they believe that they re-sacrifice Christ every time they go to Mass!” These accusations were even more disturbing, for they suggested a cavalierly unbiblical attitude to the Christian revelation. They turned out to be false accusations, but the fact that they were voiced was evidence of deep-seated suspicion and antipathy.

Others among my Evangelical friends did their best to steer me away from Catholicism by more diplomatic means. The reaction of one Evangelical Anglican pastor I met early on in my faith journey sums it up. After I expressed to him my bewilderment at the variety of denominations to choose from within Christianity, he did his best to reassure me that it really didn’t matter a lot what kind of church I chose to attend: “There’s very little substantial difference between any of the denominations, really. Just see what kind of church you feel most at home in,” he said. I said nothing, but perhaps through the silence he read my mind, for after an awkward pause he added: “The Reformed churches, that is…” I nodded, but I think he already suspected that we were on different wavelengths.

And therein lies the difficulty of Evangelical-Catholic dialogue: we are so often on different wavelengths. We may no longer be inclined to go to war against each other, and we may, in theory at least, recognise our common faith in Christ. But at another level we can seem to be speaking different languages. As Evangelical Anglican writer John Martin puts it, “We don’t know each other’s stories.” [2] Our respective mindsets have been conditioned by five hundred years of intellectual and spiritual apartheid, so that, as Catholic writer Andrew le Peau notes, we have “two very different ways of thinking, two different mental maps, two different ways of understanding the world and living in it.” We “very often lack a rudimentary understanding of each other and talk past each other, each seeming to fail to grasp even basic points the other is making.” [3] Often, in such dialogue, to borrow the words of Evangelical theologian Dan Clendenin, “not only the answers but even the questions are very different.” [4]

This is not of course necessarily the case across the board. There have in recent years been great strides in ecumenical dialogue amongst theologians. Read the writings of many theologians from both sides of the divide, and one can discern a level of Evangelical-Catholic mutual respect, and indeed theological convergence, which is heartening. The more that Evangelicals and Catholics know each other, and the more we truly understand each other’s mindsets, the less we seem to distrust each other, and the more we realise how much we have in common.

However, the temptation, when a Catholic and an Evangelical find themselves faced with the task of discussing their faith, is to pretend that the difference between Catholic and Evangelical is just a matter of “denominational preference”. For instance, when I told a Baptist missionary acquaintance of mine of my intention to follow the Catholic path, he replied, politely: “Oh, Catholic. Do you like that kind of style then, the pomp, the ceremony…?” One of his colleagues, upon hearing that I had entered the Catholic Church, presumed that my “passion for art and beauty” [5] had led me there. They were both mistaken, of course, but their reactions are perhaps indicative of one aspect of the Evangelical mindset, which is that denominational choice is a private matter, best worked out prayerfully between the individual Christian and his Lord: God does not, in any general sense, have denominational preferences – up to a point.

But only up to a point. For the other, balancing, aspect of the Evangelical mindset is that doctrinal orthodoxy (usually phrased as “faithfulness to the Bible”) is of paramount importance; hence the worries of the Anglican pastor whose advice I recount above. Until he suspected that I was looking outside the Protestant fold, denomination mattered little to him. But as soon as he had an inkling that I was looking elsewhere, suddenly denomination mattered more than ever before – simply because it mattered a great deal not to join the “un-Reformed churches”.

My good Baptist friends were more charitable in their reaction to my “denominational choice”. But significantly, it seemed not to occur to them that I might have made that choice for theological reasons. Their initial instinct was that I had probably chosen Catholicism because I like “pomp”, “ceremony”, “art” and “beauty” – and not because I had come to a considered conclusion that the teachings of the Catholic Church might be true. They were, by the grace of God, not openly antagonistic to my choice. Perhaps they might have felt happy about admitting Catholicism to the pantheon of acceptable Christian denominations. Surely I should accept the compliment graciously? Isn’t it only fair for us to accept each other’s denominational choices as equally valid in God’s eyes? Mutual tolerance and respect – isn’t that what we need?

Well, yes, mutual tolerance and respect are definitely exactly what we need. But things are more complicated than that, because for the Catholic, “denominational choice” is not just a private matter. It is also a corporate matter, and it is a matter about which we suspect God does have something to say. I did not become a Catholic because I preferred the Catholic option – and there is certainly nothing particularly artistic, beautiful or even remotely “preferable” about the appearance of most everyday Catholic practice. What I witnessed on that drear Saturday evening all those years ago is, sad to say, whilst an extreme example, not entirely untypical. Why then did I join the Catholic Church, when I could easily have chosen any number of far more gratifying and apparently “preferable” alternatives?

Hidden treasures and wounded bodies

The reasons for my choice will, I hope, unfold slowly through this book. However, the principal one is the difference between surface appearance and inner reality. To borrow the words of the apostle Paul, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7, RSV). The nature of the Catholic Church is one such treasure. While some churches make a point – to their credit – of trumpeting their virtues loudly to the world, the inner reality of Catholicism is, “like treasure hidden in a field” (Matt. 13:44), not always obvious to the casual observer. The treasures of Catholicism are rich, subtle and important, and can take time to discover. To a Catholic they are, to paraphrase the Lord’s words, worth selling all one has for. I am not a Catholic because of what the Catholic Church looks like, or even what the Catholic Church does, but because, I hope, of what the Catholic Church is, in the deepest, sometimes hidden, essence of her being.

Describing hidden treasures is not an easy thing to do. Small wonder, then, that it so often seems safer, more charitable, even more “Christian”, to avoid discussing our areas of difference, or at least to gloss over them politely. But if we are to truly understand each other, we will have to dig deep into our mindsets, into all the subtleties of attitude, the prejudices and misunderstandings, the ambiguities of vocabulary, the subconscious habits, and even the inconsistencies and hypocrisies, which underpin our attitudes to our common faith. We will have to strip away the years and, historically, the centuries of lazy spiritual habit, to stand naked before God again.

Shall we do this? Or shall we let sleeping dogs lie? Many people might prefer the latter option: for what is to be gained from raking over differences which are unlikely to be resolved and which may merely be an excuse for animosity? The answer lies in the words of Christ:

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (Jn. 17:20-23, my emphasis)

Let there be no doubt, therefore, that the division of the Church is not just a shame, but a sin – in the words of Reformed theologian Peter Leithart, “an oozing wound in the body of Christ”. [6] And it is not just a sin committed by distant historical figures, but a continuing corporate sin for which all of us who claim to follow Christ must take some responsibility. According to our Lord, every day that we are content with the status quo of a divided Church is a day lived in opposition to God’s will, and a denial of Christ’s mission and of God’s love for us. If we want everyone to know that God sent Jesus Christ into the world, and that He loves us all, then, according to Jesus, we are duty bound to work towards Christian unity. As Evangelical theologian J. I. Packer puts it:

However much historic splits may have been justified as the only way to preserve faith, wisdom and spiritual life intact at one particular time, continuing them in complacency and without unease is unwarrantable. [7]

Walking the footsteps of a stranger

This book, therefore, has several layers of purpose. The first is that we may understand each other better at the end of this book than at the beginning. Note that I hope for understanding, not necessarily agreement. As we have seen above, often the first thing which divides Evangelicals and Catholics is not doctrinal disagreement but difference of mindset. Much of the reason for our mutual suspicion is not necessarily that we hold mutually incompatible views about the same things, but that the difference between our respective mindsets can cloud our understanding of what we truly hold in common. Until we can begin to see into each other’s ways of thinking, any attempt to discuss doctrinal matters will probably lead to further misunderstanding. For, to people of different mindsets, the same words and the same actions can imply completely different things: misunderstanding is at least as common as genuine disagreement. This is a cultural matter as much as a theological one – and understanding each other’s religious cultures can open the door to understanding and respecting each other’s theologies, and learning to treat each other with the love which God demands of us: “Thou shalt love… thy neighbour as thyself.” (Lk. 10:27, KJV)

Therefore, if you are an Evangelical who would like to understand Catholicism better, then I make you an invitation: Come with me on a journey into a different cultural religious landscape. You may well decide that you have no desire to reside in the Catholic mindset, but I hope you will discover that preferring your own mindset will not prevent you from being able to understand, respect, or even admire that of the Catholic Church. By learning to understand each other’s spiritual mindsets and landscapes will come a realisation that we are not so different, that we do genuinely belong to the same family of Christ, and that we are fellow-workers, not rivals.

Have you ever seen the Disney movie Pocahontas? I don’t think it’s the greatest film ever made, but it has some fine songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, including “Colors of the Wind”, in which the eponymous heroine sings to the suspicious and uncomprehending Englishman John Smith:

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you,
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew. [8]

We can all be beset by the delusion that “the only Christians who are Christians are the Christians who look and think like us”. And so, if you are an Evangelical who is wary of the Catholic religious landscape, I invite you to “walk the footsteps of a stranger” with me for a while. You may, like John Smith, decide to return to the safety of England afterwards, but in the meantime you may “learn things you never knew you never knew”.

And so to my second hope for this book, which is that, by understanding each other better, by recognising our common heritage as born again in Christ, we may take ourselves one step closer to that day when, somehow, by the grace of God, we may fulfil Christ’s prayer: “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (Jn. 17:21).

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[1] If interested, see Perry Thomas, Good News from Indonesia (Parson Place, Mobile, 2008), pp. 114-118

[2] Dwight Longenecker & John Martin, Challenging Catholics: A Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue (Paternoster, Carlisle, 2001), p. 172

[3] Andrew T. le Peau, “As Different as We Think: Catholics and Protestants”, on www.booksandculture.com

[4] Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective (Baker, Grand Rapids, 2003), p. 17

[5] William N. McElrath, “[N.] and the Hound of Heaven”, from Like a Multi-Colored Batik: Heartwarming Stories from Indonesia, first draft, c. 2001

[6] in W. Bradford Littlejohn, The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity (Pickwick, Eugene, 2009), p. xi

[7] J. I. Packer, “On from Orr: Cultural Crisis, Rational Realism & Incarnational Theology”, in Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics & Orthodox in Dialogue, ed. James S. Cutsinger (InterVarsity, Downers Grove, 1997), p. 157

[8] Stephen Schwartz, “Colors of the Wind”, in The New Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs (Hal Leonard), pp. 155-156