Beatus Vir

Part 1 of 4- Introduction

Not many years ago, I attended a lecture by Richard John Neuhaus at the Symposium on the Lutheran Confessions at Concordia Theological Seminary, entitled “How I became the Catholic I was.” The same lecture was later published in the journal First Things (April 2002). Neuhaus, who became a Roman Catholic after many years as a Lutheran pastor, admits that his presentation is “more of a story than an argument.” His journey was not, at least as he tells the story, one of evaluating the theological differences between Rome and Wittenberg, and concluding on the side of Rome. In fact, doctrinal matters are conspicuously absent from this story. What he does say is this, “I became a Catholic in order to be more fully what I was and who I was as a Lutheran” and also, “As for my thirty years as a Lutheran pastor, there is nothing in that ministry that I would repudiate, except my many sins and shortcomings. My becoming a priest in the Roman Catholic Church will be the completion and right ordering of what was begun all those years ago. Nothing that is good is rejected, all is fulfilled.”

I suspect that Neuhaus was simply being diplomatic, yet I was critical of his lecture when I first heard it. It was unthinkable that a real Lutheran could abandon the Gospel to become Roman Catholic. I knew I couldn’t. I was firmly convinced that Lutheran Doctrine, as taught in the Confessions, was the only true exposition of God’s Word. But more than this, I believed it was the faith taught by the apostles and professed by the early fathers of the Church, even if the fathers at times spoke inaccurately or incorrectly. Furthermore, I was convinced that Rome had departed from the faith of the apostles, and in this sense, was not truly catholic. I believed that Lutheran teaching was a restoration of that true catholicity which was lost in the medieval era by Rome. From my point of view, Neuhaus’ conversion was one away from catholicity.

I was critical of Neuhaus for another reason. I knew that the crux of the disagreement between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism was the doctrine of justification, the chief article of the Christian faith. It was my opinion that the doctrine of justification must have been simply sidestepped or ignored in his process of entering Catholicism, and his words that he “repudiated nothing” from his Lutheran past, was inconceivable to me. I concluded that he probably never really was Lutheran anyway.

Needless to say, Neuhaus’ presentation did not convince me to convert to the Roman Catholic Church. Nor did it play a large part in my conversion, although, I will admit that as I began to consider it, Neuhaus came to mind, and I gladly found the text online. But still, it was disappointing to me that the doctrine of justification received so little attention. I found this also to be the case in other stories of Lutherans who swam the Tiber. For me, Justification was the main issue.

Neuhaus’ conclusion, as expressed in his title and elsewhere, is that his joining the Church of Rome made him the Catholic he already was, and at the same time, fulfilled what he was as a Lutheran. Others having left Lutheranism have made similar claims, if they will admit that in leaving they have actually left. Now I wish to point out that I now regard Fr. Neuhaus with great admiration and respect. It is not my place to judge his journey into the Catholic Church, especially based on a single paper. I do not wish to offer a criticism, but rather a comparison. In difference ways, we have arrived at the same place. God works in various ways. Some Jews, Peter for example, followed Jesus because that is that natural thing for Jews, in fulfillment of what a Jew is. But St. Paul had to be thrown to the ground and blinded by uncreated Light. Paul had to repudiate his former self. If Neuhaus' conversion was like Peter's, mine was like Paul's.

I have chosen the title, “How I became the Catholic I wasn’t” to illustrate that difference. In my story, that difference is the story. As far as my conversion is concerned, it was a conversion, a change, even a transfiguration. The word “journey” doesn’t do justice to the reality. I did not become more fully Lutheran by becoming Catholic. I stopped being Lutheran. I did not decide that the doctrinal differences between Rome and Lutheranism are inconsequential, or that differences are only a matter of semantics, or could be put aside in a spirit of ecumenism. I came to the conclusion that Rome was right all along, and that their doctrine was in agreement with Holy Scripture.

No doubt, many will be bewildered to hear me say this, although some will suggest that I always had catholic leanings, at least liturgically speaking. I had been accused many times of being too catholic because I wore a chasuble, chanted, bowed, made the sign of the cross, and believed in private confession and every Sunday communion (among other practices.) From my point of view, these were not Romanizing tendancies, but ones characteristic of Confessional Lutheranism. On the doctrinal issues at stake between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism, I was firmly with Lutheranism. I was a confessional Lutheran. I also considered myself an evangelical catholic, but not, in any way imaginable, a Roman Catholic. I sided with the Book of Concord in each and every theological point against Rome.

It is for those who are bewildered, that I write the following story in explanation. It is not my goal to convert anyone else to Catholicism, and I doubt that I will. I do not wish to discuss in detail every theological issue with which I struggled, but rather hope to arouse my readers to a greater desire to know God as He reveals Himself to mankind. For those Christians who are not in fellowship with Rome, I hope that I may help them see beyond the many long standing mischaracterizations of their Roman Catholic neighbors. And I hope that they, in spite of the inadequacy of my words, come to understand their Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ-—their love for God, their zeal for truth, their sacramental piety, their devotion to Holy Scripture, and, never to be forgotten, the heartfelt desire to welcome home their separated brothers and sisters, just as I have been welcomed.

I have thought about how to tell this story for several months. What I have determined to write is more autobiographic than apologetic, more personal than theological. I hope my reader will oblige me as I recall some things which may not seem all that important to the main plot of the story. This may not be the best way to tell the story, but it is the story I am led to tell.

Continue to Part 2

Posted by Dan Woodring at 1:58 PM |  

Labels: My Conversion