Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

Okay that title is a little misleading, but I couldn’t resist.  Yesterday, a secondary writer on Joel’s blog posted about attending mass on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (Check the comments – I think Joel might agree with what I’m saying here).  Unfortunately, he appears to have gotten a poor sampling of Catholic beliefs about Mary.  For many (I don’t say most because a significant number probably do not even care to think about things like this) Catholics, Christ is the starting point for everything that we believe about Mary, but for some Mary is as central and thus as problematic as Protestants claim.
Yet I did want to give a counter-perspective from someone who has been on both sides of the divide (I grew up Catholic, left for a while and have now returned … I guess the technical term for me is revert).  Having been on both sides I would say that on the other end of the spectrum many Protestants, at least within the groups that I was a part, were so anti-Catholic in their perspective that Mary received virtually no attention at all.  If she was shown even an the least amount of respect other than simply as a halfway decent person, it probably would have made some uneasy.  I don’t think this is ideal either.
I guess the point that I am trying to make though is that there are always people on the fringes of a group.  And, it is easy enough to look at those fringes and think that everyone in the other group thinks that way.  But, I do not think that is a way forward.  There are many Catholics who take a much more nuanced view of Mary.  There are many Protestants who take a much more respectful and nuanced view of Mary.  It is this way with any number of issues.  So, we must be careful in whatever area we are studying not to take the fringe for the middle.

[For an example of Protestants and Catholics studying Mary together you might check out Mary in the New Testament.]

Related:

Cool iPhone App for Catholics

Claude Mariottini on Roman Catholic Womenpriests

Michael Bird has written what I think is a mostly helpful post about, among other matters, diversity of theological opinion among both Catholics and Protestants alike.  The post is in reaction to those who would pit theological disagreements as Rome (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church) against Geneva (i.e. the Reformers), as if these two were monoliths and as if no other options are available (i.e. Eastern Orthodoxy).  I applaud this part of the post and believe that the point is well spoken and much needed.

However, I think that at the end of the post he slips into what we all do at times.  He states “I can honestly say that I’d rather worship and pray with an Orthodox Catholic than with a Liberal Protestant.”  The ability to make such statements would seem to me somewhat diminished by the discussion of diversity which precedes it.  In other words who is an “Orthodox Catholic” (As an example from Bird’s discussion, someone who follows Fitzmeyer or someone who follows Trent)?  I have served in a Catholic Church for some time now and have still not figured that out.  And, I would say that if Bird takes his own comments about diversity seriously, he would probably not want to pray with many Catholics (at least that I know) who consider themselves “orthodox” since they would insist on including some of the practices he questions at the end of the post as a witness to their Catholic faith in the sight of Protestant dissenters.

It seems that all the talk of diversity is not very compatible with the Orthodox-Unorthodox (for which “liberal” is often a substitute) labels that we tend to use.  I personally am not sure how to best solve the problem of terminology that places people into categories like this but still seeks to recognize the possibility of diversity.  I tend to like to view matters as a sliding scale, rather than categories.  Yet this way of looking at matters is not very conducive to normal discourse.  “I would rather worship with a Catholic who is somewhere around the middle of the sliding scale of what one can believe and be considered Catholic.”  That does not work so well.  So, I guess until someone comes up with something better, we will continue to talk about the diversity of theological opinion that is acceptable but continue to use terms that are not so well fitted for handling that diversity.

If you are interested in reading more about current relations between Catholics and Protestants from an Evangelical perspective, one of the best books I can recommend is: