THE CHURCH OF ROME AND PROTESTANTISM.
THE following editorial article in the Christian Advocate of March 29, 1900, is worthy of consideration everywhere. It presents anew, and in a forcible way, the truth that should always be emphasized that the only way in which Catholicism and Protestantism can possibly unite is by the apostasy of Protestantism—by Protestantism ceasing to be Protestant. And, indeed, when Protestantism ceases to be Protestant, it is Catholic, even though it still be called “Protestantism,” for Catholicism is simply naturalism under the name and forms of Christianity—“the form of godliness without the power.” The Christian Advocate says:— A few weeks ago the New York Sun denied the allegation that its very able editorials, religious, are written by a Roman Catholic. Justice Brewer, of the United States Supreme Court, who has appeared several times in the rôle of a prophet, but on close inspection appears, like many modern prophets, to be predicting merely what it would please him to have happen, says, “It is not unworthy of notice that the ancient enemies, Catholicism and Protestantism, are drawing closer together,” and declares that “the history of the past should be ignored, and each should shake hands and join in the common effort to further the common cause of a common Master.” Upon this the Sun says, editorially:— “The Church of Rome, surely, has neither abandoned, nor in any degree lessened, its claims; it still offers to Protestantism no possibility of unity with it, except on the condition of yielding to its authority and rendering allegiance to the papal supremacy. Within a very few years the pope, by refusing to accept the validity of the Anglican orders, has practically pronounced the whole Church of England heretical, schismatic, and destitute of an apostolic foundation for its ministry. The only terms Rome offers in the nineteenth century are the same as those offered in the eighteenth century, and they will be the same in the twentieth century—unconditional surrender.” “The present pope, Leo XIII, is not one step closer to Protestantism in 1900 than was Pius VII in 1800. Nor is Protestantism in its spirit, distinctive features, its very genius, any closer to Catholicism now than it was then. The strongest Protestant tendency at present seems to be to an even wider separation than in the past, for the new school of Biblical criticism, now so powerful in Protestant theology, tends logically to the exclusion of all such supernatural authority as the Church of Rome asserts. Protestantism is growing more rather than less distinctively Protestant; it is more insistent on the right of private judgment and more intolerant of the domination of church authority. Meanwhile Catholicism insists not less stoutly on that authority than it did in the days of the Reformation; it has shown no shadow of yielding. Individual Protestants, craving such spiritual control, may pass over to the Church of Rome, but Protestantism, in the exercise of its asserted private judgment, is now further from it than ever.” “The difference is deep and radical, full of great significance, and, as we have said, can not be bridged over by any gush of sentiment. The two can never come together except by Protestants’ yielding and becoming Catholics, or Catholics’ turning into Protestants. You might as well try to mix oil and water as to attempt to bring these two radically conflicting and diametrically and essentially opposing religious systems into harmony, without the complete surrender of the one to the other; and the twentieth century will not lessen that impossibility by one whit.” This is absolutely true, and such sentiments as those of Justice Brewer, though quite common, are of the same sort as those which have betrayed a large part of Protestantism, at the other extreme, into the hands of the Unitarians, anti-supernatural Biblical critics, and even avowed agnostics. If the twentieth century obliterates distinctions between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the latter will swallow up individual Protestants in ever-increasing numbers; while at the other extreme, agnosticism will flourish, and many of the most spiritually minded Protestants, distracted, will react into various forms of fanaticism; and worse, though different, forms of confusion than those that have marked the well-defined conflicts of the past will leave a large majority of the population of adult years drifting into worldliness or agnosticism, protected from suspicion and unpleasant embarrassment by a politic silence. This is not prophecy, but conclusions based upon an “if.” To say that if dynamite is ignited, there will be an explosion, is not prophecy, but truth.