On Protestantism

Part I- Introduction and Framing of the Argument. Against Indifferentism.

I don’t think the protestant religion leads people to heaven. This belief is, particularly in today’s world, not only uncommon, but also an offensive belief to have, or even worse, a belief to express to Protestants. This is because so few Catholics or Protestants today comprehend or take seriously the mutually exclusive claims and practices of their faith.

Since the advent of the reformation up until the mid-twentieth century, this was not so. It was common for a conversion to the Catholic faith to be worthy of being disowned by one’s family, as happened ot J.R.R. Tolkien’s baptist mother when she converted. A widow with two boys, her family cut off all financial support to her as well. I do not assume they were unfeeling people. Why? Because to honest people on both sides of the Catholic, Protestant divide, it has been abundantly clear for centuries that both could not be considered legitimate forms of Christianity, that one had to be right and the other had to be wrong. But both held to a view of God that getting such things wrong would have a very severe, eternal consequence. It is commonplace today to think the most grave sins are sins of the flesh or those against the final commandments concerning relations with other people. Yet, in the past, with good reason I believe, people thought the most grave sins would be against the first commandments concerning our relation to God alone and how we honor and worship him. These are sins we often do unawares. The fact that Catholics and Protestants used to burn heretics on the other side, or that families might disown someone if they converted to the other side, well, these sorts of behaviors are rational so long as one believes in a God who, like God in the Old Testament, is quite zealous about the particularities of how he is worshiped. 

And the objective differences are clear to see. For instance, is it a great offense against Christ to worship Mary, as Protestants have always accused Catholics of doing? Or is it a great offense against Christ to refuse to honor his Mother, as Catholics have always seen the matter? When the very same action has diametrically opposite interpretations, it suggests a totally different spirit is at play. And when there are two opposing spirits at play in the realm of religion or morality, people are right to assume one is good and the other evil. So which is the good spirit? This same contradiction with Protestantism occurs at all of the most crucial moments of the Catholic faith. For instance, the sacrifice of the Mass is the most sublime act of worship we can offer God according to the Catholic faith. The reformers hated the Mass, particularly in its sacrificial aspect, and called it a gross sacrilege against the true sacrifice of Christ on calvary. Unsurprisingly, they created a religion that omitted a sacrificial Mass and Priesthood altogether. Thus, those who have followed them into the protestant religion, follow them in their derision of the Mass and Priesthood even if they have never considered the matter themselves and have nothing personally against the Catholic Mass and Priesthood.

A different example: the forgiveness of sins, so crucial to the ministry of Christ and our salvation, is this offered to us by a Priesthood, or can we go directly to God? Surely this question has to be one of the most important practical questions of the Christian life. But to a Catholic, “going directly to God” looks like a demonic trick to get people who are seeking forgiveness to avoid those who have been given divine authority to forgive sins. To the Protestant, insisting that sinners to go going to a, in many cases corrupt, Priest to have their sins forgiven is an impediment to realizing the free grace offered directly to every believer by Christ Himself.

The difference raises the question, how are our sins actually in practice forgiven and who has authority to forgive sins? But, given these differences, the question has been traditionally, which side has been deceived by demons or men led by demons? Honoring and soliciting the intercession of Mary is either pleasing or displeasing to Christ. A sacrificial mass is either how we are supposed to relate to Christ’s atonement on calvary or an abomination to calvary. Going to a priest to have one’s sins forgiven is either an extension of the ministry of Christ and the Apostles or a great distraction from it. There is no middle ground. It is inconceivable that Christ is indifferent about these matters. 

It’s clear that one side must be inviting those seeking Christ to grave disobedience, to mocking and insulting God, all in the name of honoring him. And should there be very good and humble men and women on both sides, earnest in their zeal to give honor and worship to the living God, it was not rational to presume that these good people provided evidence that both sides were right, any more than the evidence of good natured Hindus, Buddhists, or Mormons gave divine authorization to those false religions. Instead, people, I think rightly concluded: what a greater victory for the devil to have deceived such good natured souls, hungering to honor Christ but horribly decieved. And this is what both Catholicism and Protestantism have taught from the beginning: surely, this is what Satan wants most of all, to pervert the true Christian religion and to lead as many well meaning souls who are earnestly seeking Christ to hell. And there is no worse enemy than the man who is closest to you, most similar to you, who even claims your very cause and name as his own, but betrays at the most crucial moments without fail. Dante puts traitors at the lowest pit in Hell.

So, for centuries, Catholics and Protestants were sworn enemies. They condemned each other. They fought wars against each other.  When in political power, they often tried to persecute the other side. And rightfully so I think. For instance, consider the foundational text of Presbyterianism, the Westminster confession, let’s see what they originally had to say about the Catholic religion. Chapter 25.6 “There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ; nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.” Of course, this confession has a great deal more to say about what is wrong with the Catholic faith, but this is a clear and obvious example of the mentality I am speaking of, and quite frankly, am fond of, because it makes the truth of the matter so much more apparent: these are religions inspired by opposing spirits at the most crucial points. For it was inconceivable that a God, in whom there is no contradiction, willed both opposing sides, beliefs, and practices, or that such a God would not punish those who, with no remorse or repentance concerning their errors, opposed Him at such crucial points as these.

But this being said, a question to start with is: why is it offensive to Protestants, who presumably want to get to the truth of the matter about who Jesus is and how he redeems souls, when they hear this opinion expressed? Objectively, they will admit it is more loving to share the truth one sincerely believes, particularly concerning a matter so important and grave. But subjectively, internally, they instinctively feel offended, they feel as if respect is being robbed of them, of their ideas and experiences of God. For some to consider this matter openly would require an undoing of their very faith in God itself. Instead, they tend to assume a person who says such things must be a blind ignoramus following a rulebook with deductions straight from a bombastic, out-of-touch Pope, one that denies that vast majority of how people who claim to be Christian have experienced and been transformed by their relationship with Christ outside of the Catholic Church. Who can deny how many people have been “touched by Christ” through charismatic sects over the past forty years all over the globe? Or the great missionary works of Baptists or Anglicans in the twentieth century and today? Each of these movements and many others recorded millions of conversions! How can we say they were in error? And surely, someone with such a pharisaical view of God that restricts his agency to one particular tribe, or set of dogmas, or rituals and practices is woefully out of touch with the wild and ever-living God and his mysterious ways.

A common reaction to these ideas in order to quickly dismiss them is usually something like, “well then you’ve chosen a very narrow and close-minded interpretation of Christianity, Catholicism, or the Bible, one I could never sympathize with and will not consider. I believe in a God who is so much bigger than that and works through all kinds of experiences and institutions to save the lost.” One thing wrong with this sentiment is that it assumes a bigger God would be more indifferent to the truth and to the details of how he is worshipped. Is this the God we see in scripture? Not at all. The God of Jakob cares about particulars, like anyone who loves the truth. But to be charitable, in the background of this sort of response or objection is the idea that the substance of a religion (most people saying this hate the word religion so you can substitute “the Gospel” or “Christianity”, “Evangelicalism”) is something interior, private, something intimately personal. It is one’s interior relationship with God that others cannot feel or see, And the accidental, more external, properties (specific practices, morals, beliefs, rituals) should not be subject to a high level of scrutiny so long as the fundamental interior relationship with God or Christ exists. People say, “I experience God when I sing a hymn, or am in nature, or am adoring the most Holy Eucharist, or speak and pray in tongues, or when I reflect on my assurance of heaven. And these experiences are not subject to question or criticism.” Thus to criticize dogmas, symbols, or practices only demonstrates that such a person misses the heart of religion: the private interior relation to God. The Catholic faith says that externals matter, the Eucharist is, according to this point of view, an external thing, an accidental thing. Catholicism in no way denies the necessity of an interior and personal relationship to Christ, or even that the heart of this relationship is interior. Catholic Saints have always evidenced this sort of intimate friendship with Christ to the highest degree.

But what Catholicism does insist upon is that we are very prone to being deceived concerning our interior relation to God, and the best way to see this is to see how our faith is expressed in words and how our charity comes out in external acts, and how we relate to the externals themselves. For instance, do we believe all the required dogmas, do we follow its moral teachings, do we submit to the laws of the Church and it’s recommended devotions to, say, the Mother of God. To a Catholic, to love Christ interiorly and ignore His Mother exteriorly is about as crazy as someone who says they love their husband interiorly and exteriorly ignores his mother when she is around. The objective exterior offense calls into doubt the subjective, or interior orientation, regardless of what the person says or feels. We are right to question the sincerity of the love of a wife who ingnores her husbands mother supposedly out of “love“ for her husband. What makes you think this is love? That he wants this? The external act calls into question the interior disposition.

Protestants make this sort of inference this at times too. A conservative protestant questions whether a pro-lgbt Christian truly knows Christ interiorly, despite the fact he has a strong emotional connection to what he calls Christ. Yet, to those who place an overwhelming emphasis on the interior relation to Christ, what appears as wrongheaded about Catholicism is its rigid insistence on exteriors, on dogmas and rituals, on Saints and Relics. In contrast, what appears strange to a Catholic observing most protestant sects is the appalling absence of these things. Thus, people like me who put emphasis on rectitude of dogma, moral teaching, or of specific practices like when to baptise, or what baptism even is, or which group you belong to, are thought by protestants to be like the Pharisees who get caught in the externals of religion and lose the heart of Gospel. Of course I disagree, but a good way to begin responding to the objection is first to anticipate it, and explain why the stereotype occurs. 

To further oppose this objection, I’d submit that I see religion as more like a medical problem, or a pedagogical controversy. Christ went about healing and teaching, so surely the analogy cannot be too far off. But when a doctor submits a prognosis for a given disease, it’s based on a number of objective things. He issues a particular treatment for the disease, he gives a probability for a favorable outcome, but he wouldn’t quite know how to respond to a patient who said “well it seems you’ve chosen a very narrow interpretation of my disease and your limitation of my chances of recovery to one single medicine or form or treatment is close-minded.” A doctor would be likely to say in response, “I am sorry but I did not choose this, here are the facts, possible treatments, and likely outcomes. e.g. you have cancer here, there are only two possible ways to treat this sort of cancer, and one won’t work because you are too weak, so we have to try this form of treatment with this chance of bringing it into remission.” But what if a religion was like that, like a medicine to a universal human disease, and one where there were objective facts to point to and particular courses of treatment that were mutually exclusive as in medicine? In fact that is how I see it. Protestantism and Catholicism have different diagnoses and medicines to offer a sick sinful humanity, and as will be even more clear later, they cannot both be leading to ultimate recovery from the illness, either one or the other must lead away from the true remedy, a personal relationship with Christ Our Redeemer.

Similarly with pedagogy, most good teachers think there are objectively better and worse ways to teach a particular subject, and concerning the subject itself usually they are quite passionate that it is fixed, that the rules of English grammar, or the principles of geometry are objective, intelligible to all, and need to be mastered. Again, they might admit there are one or two different ways to teach geometry, each with its advantages and disadvantages. But they would shirk at the response that evidence could not apply to the selection of one pedagogy over another. A good doctor or teacher would assume someone who wasn’t willing to look at the objective facts of the matter, or seriously consider alternative treatments, didn’t truly love the subject or were not allowed to. And this is how I feel about those who patently refuse to consider the exclusive claims of the Catholic faith, who refuse to consider whether it’s teachings are more faithful to the Bible, who refuse to consider the significance of its Saints and the miracles given to support it’s more controversial dogmas. How can they truly claim to love Christ? If there was a hospital or a school that produced dramatically different outcomes and taught significantly different things and treated using different methods, wouldn’t that be worth considering to the doctor or teacher? Of course any good teacher or doctor would want to consider the differences of treatment and their correlation with different outcomes.

Well why not the believer too?  And how much more in a circumstance, like this one, where eternity is at stake! It would also be silly in either case for a dissenting physician or teacher to say, “well sure my patient or pupil isn’t objectively recovering from his disease, mastering his subject, but he is fully convinced he is doing well enough and is quite happy as he is.” I will admit that viewing things in this manner is already to begin to take a Catholic view of things, and I offer this analogy with medicine and teaching as to give you a reason why and how to consider things from the other side. For instance, one construal of the belief in assurance of one’s salvation-- i.e. that by simply believing one is saved once and for all by Christ the redeemer, one is actually saved and will necessarily inherit heaven by this faith or belief-- this belief appears to a Catholic as silly as a sick patient saying that by believing he was going to recover from his terminal illness, that he would actually recover from his illness. In many cases, this belief might actually be necessary to recover, but the belief alone is not sufficient, the doctor still knows the patient needs to take the medicine. The teacher knows the student still needs to do the requisite practice even with the belief he will master the subject. To Catholic eyes, those who peddle the belief that by believing one is saved, one will actually be saved are like quack doctors who prescribe belief alone and withhold the true medicine. This is what the sixth session of council of Trent taught on this matter:

CANON XIV.-If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema.

Translation: “Any doctor telling patients that by believing they will be healed and only through this means can a sick patient be healed, get out of this hospital!” This false belief would of course turn patients against the proper remedy! Thus, Catholics believe we are saved by faith and works, by faith and sacraments, even though faith and grace be a requisite for doing a good work or receiving a sacrament. The seven sacraments in particular are the divine medicine offered to those who have faith. Sometimes the proper medicine tastes bad, sometimes the calculus exercises are uncomfortable or non-intuitive to the student. Correction would be very disconcerting and unsettling to the patient who falsely believed that his belief alone in his being cured was going to cure him. But the good doctor would correct him and say, “no, belief in the cure and not your being cured is all that is requisite, and of course you have to take the medicine. The belief itself will not heal.” Such a patient would very likely first feel robbed of his security that a cure could be gained by something so easy as belief. Yet, in the long run, he’s much better off, if the analogy with medicine holds. And one of the key claims of protestantism is that the comparison does not hold, and that a mental state or attitude or conviction alone secures one of heaven. To the Protestant who believes saving faith includes a certitude of one’s own particular salvation, the doctor who insists upon the necessity of any other medicine than this belief leads the patient away from the cure. For this to be true, the Christian religion needs to be totally different from medicine or pedagogy, where there are concrete necessities outside of belief, though made possible to access by belief. Just like believing a medicine works is a condition of faithfully taking it. But to sympathize with the Catholic position, should you want to, the analogy is useful.

This is all to say, it’s clear to me that pointing out objective differences between different religions and their consequences should not be controversial or offensive in any way to those who truly love God. I mentioned the doctrine of assurance at the outset because it seems like the belief that makes a consideration of the objective facts or differences and their consequences most undesirable at the outset. It seems like it forbids considering whether one has been deceived. We can imagine a patient who believed his belief alone would cure him would find it rather tedious or even unsettling to look at the doctors prognosis, probability of recovery, and the advantages and disadvantages of particular treatments. To him, a consideration of a poor outlook, or even an outlook that made his recovery dependent on him taking the medicine, would be seen as a threat to his only real chance at recovery: his belief in his own recovery itself. Thus, the claim of Christ that you have to take the medicine, i.e. “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you.” John 6:53  Or his warning in Matt 7:21 about those who will be deceived, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”  Either of these scriptures must appear as a direct threat to those who are saved by belief alone, or those who think they have assurance of their salvation. Even moreso, will the catholic claim that one will be damned for holding to false protestant dogmas and pieties. To the patient who thinks he will be healed through belief alone, the medicine appears as a threat, a psychological disturbance to his peace and confidence.

A physician who loves health wants to get to the bottom of the facts and best method of treatment, an English teacher who loves grammar and teaching has no fear of learning of different methods that claim superiority, even if it meant finding out he had been using a substandard method his whole life. A Christian who truly loves Christ will always want to learn about how they could know Him better and more intimately. Just as a doctor might point out that a full conviction that one would recover might lead to a haughty overconfidence and lack of attention to the particularities of the prescribed treatment, so too do Catholic saints restrict true redeeming faith and belief to Christ alone as redeemer and the redemption He offers us, and advice against any certainty of our own particular fate which would sin against the theological virtue of hope.  

So why do so many supposed Christians take offense at the thought they have been misled and deceived? Wouldn’t they want to know? Christ says we can and should judge trees by their objective fruits, and any religion that teaches that fruits, trees, soil, and sunlight ought not to be considered in the name of one’s private, personal, interior experience of God cannot be in obedience to him. The Catholic Saints consistently teach how easily the devil tries and can twist intense, intimate, and even holy experiences of the living God into occasions for false pride, self -satisfaction, and presumptive assurance. Again it is not clear why those who claim to true experiences of God and repentance and forgiveness outside of the Catholic faith would not want to get to the truth of the matter concerning Christ’s true Church and Sacraments, unless they were given toward obeying a spirit that was consistently trying to turn good and true toward evil and false things. If someone truly gets to know Jesus Christ in a protestant community, I think when they hear there is a community that actually honors His Mother, they would want to join that community, because they would know that would be more pleasing to Christ. When these people say honoring Christ’s mother is displeasing to Him or steals honor from Christ, I have to assume they do not know the same Man I know.

A conversion to or experience of God is a reason to seek Him and the truth more ardently, not less. A doctor who has cured a patient according to one treatment does not cease to want to learn of new and better treatments. If there was a treatment that claimed to be far superior and claim to have hard evidence to support such a claim, we could assume he either did not love medicine or care about his future patients, should he fail to consider such a treatment. We would call him crazy or irrational if he said he had no obligation to consider the new supposedly better treatment simply because he had healed someone with a different method before. One reason it is so easy to reject the change in posture toward Protestantism that took place in the Catholic Church in the 60’s is that it produced terrible, rotten fruit over the past 50 years.  

But any sort of disagreement is only possible if certain things are agreed upon. Since Protestants think Catholics are deceived, and vice versa. Perhaps we can agree on deceit itself. Since both claims cannot be true, clearly deceit in this instance is an objective fact. One side must be wrong and have been led astray. Besides this, both religions claim to the Bible as authoritative and the Bible has a great deal to say about the devil and about deceit. Saint Paul explicitly warns about false apostles being led by Satan and decieving the faithful;

 2 Cor 11:13-14: For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light.

So if we can agree that the devil wants to deceive not only mankind but specifically Christians. That he wants to lead not only immoral men and men of bad will to do bad things, but he wants to deceive those aiming to lead holy and good lives, even those who dream of nothing more than to live a life in service of Jesus Christ. Yes, the devil perhaps takes greater joy in leading this last sort of man to eternal ruin just as Christ may be afflicted by a particularly grave sorrow to lose such a well meaning soul. But can we conceive that the devil, using wicked or ignorant men as his instruments, would like nothing more than to take all of the names and terms of the Christian religion, “Jesus,”, “repentance”, “conversion”, “grace,” “sacrament,” “mercy,” “forgiveness,” “salvation” and pervert them? We can assume he will want to mix some of the most wonderful aspects of Christianity, like its teaching on forgiveness and loving ones neighbor, and mix it with evil moral teachings about homosexuality or a moral laxity concerning divorce, bad media, or contraception. Yes, we can already see that Satan does these things. What confusion this would cause! Can we not see that it would be his greatest achievement and his highest goal to create a religion that accepted as much natural good as possible from the true Christian faith but did not in fact lead to the supernatural redemption of its adherents? Surely, this we can see is possible and agree that he will try to do this, even if we cannot agree upon whether he has been successful in doing so. 

In fact to return to the medical analogy, say there is a universal human disease and either Catholicism or Protestantism is the true cure for such a disease. The counterfeit cure will still at times look like a cure. For an evil doctor, who was trying to get as many people as possible to avoid taking the true medicine to heal this universal sickness, it would be in his interest to use as much of the authentic cure as possible without allowing the patients to fully recover. He might need to create a drug that gave great benefits in the short term but in the long term would be deadly. We often falsely think of the devil as being all evil or appearing only in cases of the most horrendous evil. This is false, there is no pure evil, which would be pure weakness. Satans greatest evil is to mix good and evil in order to pervert the good. Thus he likes to confuse and mix good and evil. Mormons seem to be, for the most part, very good and moral people. The substance of the religion is pretty nuts, so Satan has no reason to attack Mormons concerning sexual morality, in fact, he has let Mormons in this country excel in their practice of Christian chastity, a great source of health and strength. Of course this is only one angle of looking at it, but we can obviously come up with a reason why, because the good aspects of this heath regarding chastity help lead people into the bad and totally bogus claims of the mormon religion itself. Thus, while I have talked about division at the crucial points, it is also necessary to point out that the devil would like to use as much as possible of the good in Christianity to lead people of good will astray into false “christian” sects. The salvation army does a lot of great charity work with a Christian spirit, but as a sect they do not baptise their faithful at all, leading them woefully astray. And it is these types of contradictions that help lead those of good will astray. So back to the matter at hand, Protestants have a wonderful tradition of hymnsong, but to Catholic eyes they deny 5 out of 7 sacraments. Or Catholics have a wonderful tradition of mental and contemplative prayer, but to Protestant eyes they deny the heart of the Gospel that we are saved by faith alone. So the bad is mixed with the good according to either point of view, which is just what we should expect from Satan. 

But this reflection about mixing good and evil cuts out one of the common reactions of Christians today, which is: to be so exclusive in your faith, how can you deny all the good things that other religions do or that other Christians do and teach? Yet this falsely assumes Satan does not want good to appear in these false religions, that they might have strength and be attractive to those of good will. Of course there are good things, conversions, zeal, moral rectitude, etc, one can respond, how much worse the deceit that these good things are married with poisonous things. All it takes is a drop of poison for a hamburger to cease to be rightfully called a hamburger in the the meaningful sense of the term, but something very different and deadly. In such a case, the most important determining factor is the drop of poison, that is the crucial point of interest. A person who objected and said, well it looks like a hamburger, it still has a patty, lettuce, tomato, and nice bun is pointing out at best irrelevant things to the person eating the poisoned burger, at worst he is an accomplice in the act of poisoning. Thus, from the outset, it seems useful to figure out if and where there is poison in the Catholic or Protestant faith, rather than focus on the good things they share. People who suggest we only look at the similarities and good things in common demonstrate their hatred of the Truth and their will to be decieved and decieve others.

But where would the poison be? And what would such a diabolical religion look like, and can we determine if it would be more like the Catholic or the Protestant religion? Clearly, to sow as much confusion as possible, all of the same terminology would be used, and many of the same rituals would be used but they would rip out only the fundamental referent, a relation to the resurrected Christ and his ministry, and also to the specific things one must do, or have done to them in order to be saved. The essential things would be neglected and a host of superficial things would be promoted.

But more specifically, how would the religion deceive? Satan can corrupt those of ill will or those already opposed to Christ simply by leading them deeper and deeper into evil and away from Christ. But this class of people freely follow his direction. But what about those seeking Christ? I just mentioned that Satan will allow or even want many good things to flourish among fundamentally evil sects, so that they may be strong. Even the masons build hospitals. Mormons, as I mentioned, are remarkably chaste.

But there is another way he deceives, that is by getting them to do things that are objectively evil (like stealing something), but for reasons that are subjectively good (like stealing in order to give to the poor). Now, I have just made a distinction that will prove useful throughout this inquiry. Every act we do voluntarily has a subjective reason or intention for why we have done it. For instance, “I went to the tree to get an apple, I got the apple to eat it. I ate it because I was hungry.” But our actions also have objective reasons or intentions that exist independently of what we think we are doing when we carry out an action. If Eve from the Bible gave the previous reason for why she ate the apple someone would rightly point out “But wasn’t eating the apple objectively a rebellion against the law of God and objectively the reason for your being thrown out of the Garden? Objectively, I think you know now, you were doing much more than trying satiate your hunger.” So subjective reasons or intentions are the ones we give for what we are doing, and objective reasons are what the acts we do actually do or tend to produce. According to the Catholic faith, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, or good subjective reasons that we tell ourselves we are doing as we do objectively bad things. We so often do things that are objectively gravely evil for apparently good reasons or with good intentions. We were trying to bring about good but we made the matter worse! This is the most common method of deceit. The point is that truly good and holy people are able to do the right things objectively for the right reasons subjectively. Their internal thinking is in alignment with the objective ordering of the world or reality. 

People with addictions, for example, tend to have a deep misalignment between their subjective reasons for doing an action and the objective reason for the action itself. Many smokers I know have tended to say they are going to quit by buying one last pack of cigarettes and that this action, they tell themselves subjectively, this purchase is the first action of their new resolution to quit. Objectively, this action has nothing to do with quitting smoking, and the thought that you could quit smoking by buying a last pack of cigarettes is objectively only a sign of addiction. Instead, not buying a pack of cigarettes is an objective sign that you are going to quit. People who actually quit smoking and break the addiction get their subjectivity in line with that is objectively true. That is, they stop buying cigarettes and stop smoking them in order to quit. People who are abusive often times try to impose their will in others through insults and screaming and force. It usually has the objective effect of pushing others away from their will.

For a few more examples, consider again the doctor and teacher. The doctor is frustrated by some of the technological and bureaucratic changes in the practice of medicine. But why? Because they objectively do not lead to better care of patients, but are always pitched to him as being done with this good intention. He knows the objective rationale is profit, not better care. But that is never how things are sold to the doctors who have to adjust to them. The changes are rationalized to the doctor by giving him a personal reason to accept them that appeals to his previous commitments. Pedagogical material is always sold and pursued with the intention of improving student outcomes, yet so many pedagogical innovations do not follow through with this objectively. This sort of disconnect is a monumental source of frustration in all facets of life. But the costs tend to be much greater, because doing the wrong objective thing often leads to being less free to do the right objective thing in the future. A patient who tries to fight cancer with a better diet regimen, he may lose the ability to recover entirely with the time he wasted with an objectively ignorant method of treatment. A student who tries to learn to play the piano without ever learning the objectively optimal hand position may find playing piano well much more difficult and ultimately undesirable. So too with religion. A person who, according to the Catholic perspective, has cut themselves off from the sacramental graces of confession, and of being nourished by the living Body of Our Lord the Holy Eucharist, this person may begin, like the piano player, to lose interest in the spiritual life and intimate union with God altogether. Or, from the Protestant perspective, someone who gets caught up in the externals acts of religion, say, like fasting on Friday, cannot grasp and thereby desire the true interior freedom we have in Christ. 

So in sum, recalling the first method of deceit that of mixing good and bad, we can assume that Protestants and Catholics will agree upon many good and healthy things, yet that agreement is rightfully not the focus of the inquiry here. For considering the second method of deceit, we can surmise that that the devil is going to try to get people to do things that are objectively offensive to or leading away from Christ, and that he is going to get people to do such things with the subjective intention of honoring or serving Christ.

One last example, as most people inherit the faith either from their parents or from the people that brought them into the Church. Thus, they accept what was passed onto them with a credulity and with good intentions, even if the substance of their belief or practice was developed by men who wished to lead men astray or were being led by demons. In the US, we are taught in the schools to revere the American Flag, to never let it touch the ground. It is considered unpatriotic to fly a flag in poor condition. It is always surprising to travel in countries where this sense of propriety is absent, to see tattered Italian or Spanish flags flying from schools and homes. You never, ever see this in the US. And its a good thing, it builds civic virtue and devotion and patriotism. Its always harder for me to imagine Italians having the same sort of militairy zeal or courage while they let tattered italian flags fly in their streets.

But now imagine, there was a malevolent American who wished to destroy the Republic, starting by attacking our reverence for the American flag. Thus he started proclaiming that the deist God on which our founding documents are based most prefers if once a year flags are publicly burned on Independence Day as offerings to this watchmaker God. And only once these offerings are made will our Nation be blessed. He is very charismatic and many men follow him. There are, thus, great bonfires and flag burning ceremonies and subsequent social conflicts between the flag burning and the non-flag burning patriots, and the republic begins to disintegrate amongst this conflict.

Now think: the children of the flag burning group will grow up and think it perfectly normal and good to burn an american flag in devotion to the deist God on which our country was founded. They will come to cherish the flag burning on the 4th of July as the highest expression of their love for their country. Tears of deep effection for their country well up in their eyes each time they sing “God Bless America“ on the 4th before a pile of burning American flags. They also despise those who refuse to do this. They despise the flag honorers who refuse to honor the deist God and refuse to burn the flag and thereby bring misfortune on thier country. Worse, they see themselves as better than the flag honorers on account of their non-participation in flag burning. And we can assume those who never changed, who honor the flag in the traditional manner and despise seing it being burned, have like feelings of the other group.

But for the vast majority of the flag burners we can safely assume that most of them do the objectively bad act with subjectively good intentions. This doesn´t change the fact that objectively what they are doing is tearing the country apart and undermining its survival. It could be the case that the only person with evil subjective intentions in the whole scheme was the founder of the movement, everyone else did the bad action with good intentions, so that the country may be blessed. It doesnt change the disasterous result and that they are morally responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless. The objective act is still evil. It divides the country and leads to civil war. And to burn something valuable for no reason is to disrespect it. And the deist God of the founding fathers has no use for sacrifices. So in itself it is an objectively evil action.

I use this example because the Protestant Revolution had this same effect. Acts like saying Mass or praying the rosary were within one generation seen to be evil by a new type or group of “christians“. Praying the rosary or even showing one publically was a capital offense in post-Reformation England! Civil war ensued everywhere, and Christendom as a religious and political body on the contenent of Europe was forever destroyed.

Of course if there was much bloodshed between the two groups we can also imagine a third group would emerge that tried to promote indifference to the flag as a solution. They´d say something like, “hey, being American is more than how one treats a symbol like the flag, lets focus on the things we have in common and stop tearing our country apart. Lets look at the hearts of people on both sides and see that they mean well, and try to tolerate eachother. The flag burners will burn flags on the forth of July as a offering to the watchmaker God, the flag respecters will not. They need to accept differing viewpoints and move on.” This is a bad solution I think. People are moved to great acts of sacrifice and devotion because of flags and what they stand for. If the US did agree to a compromise between the flag burners and the flag respecters, it wouldnt be the same country it was before the conflict. People would grow up to be different sort of patriots, they would be patriots who are indifferent to how flags are treated. In the America I grew up in, every day at the start of school we recited with our hand over our hearts, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands…“ Thus indifference to the Flag as a solution means a total symbolic reordering of patriotism, a total upending of what existed before. For the vast majority of human history, a man indifferent to the flag of his country was not considered a patriot at all. And I would expect this would also effect military virtues and the character of the nation itself.

As it would be a mistake to become totally indifferent to flags to solve the problem, so much more should the indifference to doctrine and liturgy of this generation of Christians be seen as an incalculable mistake. We live in a world where this compromising mentality or spirit has totally won the day, and we are constantly ask to compromise more and more due to new conflicts that are generated by the Enemy, to the point we are now supposed to be indifferent to all the things that previously provided substance to life, God, Nation, Family (Sex and Gender). But really this mentality of compromise started in the west as a consequence of the Reformation at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1638, after nearly a century of religious war, where they agreed that states should be indifferent to religion, or at least indifferent between the Catholic and Protestant religions.

This is the mentality Christians today desperately need to reject. The God of Israel is never indifferent to the particularites of teaching and worship, to the words and symbols being used and taught and prayed by His servants. And its an aporia that the things that are the most important to humans are also the most symbolic and abstract. Thus they are quite easy to get wrong. An architects mistakes at the level of an abstract plan are much more disasterous than the small concrete mistakes of a bricklayer. Similarly a sign pointing in the wrong direction is much more disasterous to a pilgrim than incliment weather or a difficult path. Thus the more absract and semiotic things are both the most important in directing and protecting us spiritually, they are also very easy to get wrong. Its much easier to turn a sign so that it points in a false direction than to move the road itself so that it leads in a wrong direction. Nor is indifference an option, any more than disagreeing architects could decided the blueprint doesnt matter or hikers agree do do away with maps after discrepancies between them.

Catholics and Protestants should at least consider if they were raised to be a flag burner, how would they know and see the mistake? Of course, this is what we have already seen, where the most crucial acts of the Catholic faith are seen by Protestants as leading away from Christ and vice versa. Objectively, either Catholicism or Protestantism leads to Christ and salvation, not both. Just like burning the Flag is either a desecration or a worthy homage. Subjectively, both are trying to honor and obey “Christ.” The spirit of our times tells us that only the interior intention matters, only the heart. Yet Our Lord Jesus Christ commands otherwise, saying in John 4: 24 “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” I will consider the following topics in later posts, though I could consider more:

1. Sola Scriptura: Either a method unsubstantiated by scripture or Church tradition for undercutting the divine authority of the Church, cutting out essential Church practices, morals, and dogmas, and sowing confusion about the truths of the faith; Or a way to safeguard the substance of the true faith found in the Word of God against the inventions of man. 

2. Perfection, Punishment, and Purgatory- Either desiring Perfection and Punishment for sin is a precondition of going to heaven, or a fools errand that minimizes Christ´s work of the Cross which took all our punishment.

3. Assurance of salvation, either a form of pride that leads to hell in all cases save that of a rare supernatural private revelation; Or a integral part of faith itself that leads to Heaven and in many cases is a condition of going to Heaven,

4. Honoring the Blessed Virgin: Either emerges from or detracts from a love of Christ. 

5. A Transubstantial Eucharist: Either the localized presence on earth of Emmanuel, God with Us, Christ and the living, eternal Bread of Life; Or a superstition that leads people into idolatry worshiping bread and distracts people from having a true relationship with Christ. 

6. A Sacrificial Mass: Either the highest form of worship of God and how we participate in the sacrifice of Calvary; Or a sacrilege that detracts from and scandalizes the sacrifice on Calvary. 

7. A Priesthood with faculties to forgive sins: either how our sins are forgiven or misleading people from going directly to our true redeemer Christ. 

In each of these views the first view is the Catholic one, the second view the protestant one. Objectively speaking, it is ignorant to think both Protestantism and Catholicism could lead to heaven, when on all of these crucial points there is direct opposition. They do not worship or serve the same Christ. They cannot be inspired by the same Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. In later posts, I can clearly demonstrate the Catholic view on each of these five points is supported by scripture, the practice of the early Church, the medieval Church, and is the practice and teaching of the Church today. The Protestant view can only stand on rather tendentious readings of scripture. 

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