Catholics are "Dead". Protestants are "Stupid". Print
Written by Sherry   
Friday, 06 November 2009 01:37
First Things is hosting a terrific article by Gerardine Luongo, a Catholic - the sole Catholic - working in an evangelical missionary organization, CURE, in Africa.









Yep. Because - ran the script that was hammered into me as a blue eyed baby fundie - Catholics are dead. People who are spiritually "dead" do things that horrify and enrage God like worship idols instead of the living God. 'Cause spiritually “dead” people don’t know the difference.




From the Catholic side, how many times have I heard intelligent Catholics casually dismiss evangelical worship as merely "entertainment"? It happened again last month when I was working with a group of pastors and pastoral leaders at a seminar on evangelization. I asked them "What have the lapsed Catholics that you know personally told you about why they left"?


Then one woman said "mega church services are entertainment". "They just want entertainment", and a number of heads nodded in agreement.

I had to ask. " Is that the language that your friends actually used? Did they say that wanted to be "entertained"? Did they actually use the word "entertainment"? Since our goal is to understand what motivates lapsed Catholics, we need to actually listen to the language they actually use."


Slowly it dawned upon us all. The "entertainment" thesis reflected our Catholic insider judgements about what must have motivated them. But none of us had ever heard an actual, living former Catholic use that language.


When we casually dismiss mega-church worship in general as "entertainment", we mean that we regard it as shallow, emotionally-driven, ephemeral, and without spiritual or theological substance or seriousness. The spiritual equivalent of a crude, popular sit-com. That it is, essentially, spiritually "stupid".


In some circles, thank God, the "Catholics are dead, Protestants are stupid" assumptions have disintegrated over the past 20 years. But even so, you can hardly describe the current relationship between evangelicals and Catholics as bland.

These days, I am less likely to be regarded as "dead" than as the object of fascination among a certain kind of sophisticated evangelical. Sometimes it is because they are hovering on the brink of entering the Church. For others, it is because they are discovering the spiritual riches of historical Christianity.

There is a whole movement called "spiritual formation" in the evangelical world whose content and inspiration is almost entirely Catholic. I have spent some time lately with a local evangelical group committed to spiritual formation. A group in which I am the only Catholic. An essentially evangelical group using only Catholic resources, including the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. And they have told me that evangelical seminaries and colleges around the country are developing new courses of study in spiritual formation that are simply saturated with the writings of the great Catholic saints and mystics.


They don't have to. I know where the hesitancy comes from. They find it hard to believe that I am a true disciple and therefore, "spiritually alive". Because if I were “alive”, I wouldn't have intentionally entered the Catholic Church where, by definition, almost everyone is "dead".

Cause many evangelicals still presume that Catholics are spiritually “dead”. And many Catholics still assume that Protestants are spiritually “stupid”.
