i found the following, via julie d. happy catholic, to be interesting. my question is this: can someone not be both? must you be one or the other when these tenets are applied?The Protestant imagination focuses on the gulf that separates us from God, while the Catholic view is of the sacramental nature of all that is around us. It is no wonder that while Protestant spirituality focuses on the Word of God (preaching it, hearing it, applying it) in order to repair the separation that divides us from God, Catholic spirituality focuses on finding, lifting, and releasing the Spirit of God that is sometimes hidden or latent in the world around us. This is the world as sacrament, the world incarnated...i declare: i want to be both. i am both. why must it be one or the other? can we not be woven together, using all of our efforts, our selves, to all connect and intertwine?
Where the Protestant approach to the Spirit is to analyze its meaning, the Catholic approach to the Spirit is to imagine its depths. Where the Protestant mind stops and pulls the strands apart, the Catholic mind makes further connections and intertwines the strands...Jon M. Sweeney, from Lure of the Saints: A Protestant Experience of Catholic Tradition
where does that leave me?
where does that leave you??
15 comments:
Penni: I am with you (100%) on this one....it DOESN'T HAVE TO BE "one or the other" (only if that is the desired outcome)...it CAN be both. God is certainly bigger than this "limitation" that we humans try (in vain) to place on Him. I was Protestant for the first 25 yrs of my life, then Catholic for the next 15, and then am once again attending a Protestant Church. However, in my spirit, I am BOTH. I have gleaned truths from BOTH practices of the Christian Faith (we are still in agreement that both are "Christian" paths...correct?), and they are now a part of me (inside and out). We have so much more in common, than many people like to imagine. It's not about being "right"...it's about LOVING each other. And I, for one (speaking as a Protestant), do not have an "imagination [that] focuses on the gulf that separates us [me]from God". I am focused on all the reasons that I am CONNECTED to Him... and the Sacrifice, Faith, (Amazing)Grace, Hope and Love that made that miracle possible!! Thank you for speaking your heart and mind on this....you have a Sister in Christ, standing arm in arm with you.
You probably don't want to hear what I have to say...
gayla, Try me.
as for me, I want us to be knit together, but not woven. Woven is for weenies, orange-wearing stars on thars weenies who couldn't see the beautiful goodness of being knitted together if I cracked them over the skull with it.
;)
penni, of course you can be both!!
This reminds me of James W. Fowler's "Stages of Faith." He describes stage 4 of the 7 stages that most humans go through this way:
"Stage Four is concerned about boundaries: where I stop and you begin; where the group that I can belong to with conviction and authenticity ends and other groups begin. It's very much concerned about authenticity and a fit between the self I feel myself to be in a group and the ideological commitments that I'm attached to."
From the little I know of you from reading your blog, you are WAY beyond this stage. You strike me as someone who doesn't have much trouble "understand[ing] that truth has many dimensions which have to be held together in paradoxical tension." (Fowler on Stage 5)
Lots of people never get past the boundaries phase -- they might be the most religiously observant people you know. But in an effort to define their own experience, they limit the places where they can encounter God, and I find that sad.
I like your idea of connect & intertwine. I think we need to stop labelling each other and without rejecting our own beliefs, we need to start opening ourselves up to every possible experience of the holy.
Gayla - of course we want to hear what you have to say :)
my tuppance worth is that it IS possible on an individual basis - but for our churches to recocile and work together for His Kingdom means a huge paradigm shift - and I'm afraid that pride build up over 500 years or more makes that difficult to achieve.
It will take MORE of God and a willingness to repent of putting Him in a box (by all sides) - and allowing HIm to rule and reign and give us the unity that Jesus had with the Father - ONENESS
Lots of people never get past the boundaries phase -- they might be the most religiously observant people you know. But in an effort to define their own experience, they limit the places where they can encounter God, and I find that sad.
I think this is the most profound (and sad) thing, and unfortunately this is the way it so often is.
I would have to read more of Sweeney's context, but it seems to me that he is trying to convey the fullness of Catholicism that he now experiences in opposition to his Protestant experience.
In that sense, I'm not sure you would want to be both.
If you read the quote as it is - based on the activity of Catholic and Protestant - it appears as if there is beauty in each place (preaching, hearing, and applying the Word of God, for instance). Certainly Catholicism does not pull back from the holy and beauty, to do so would be to deny its own name. And certainly, to be Catholic, is to love God's Word.
i love these responses -- gayla girlie, with a blatantly obvious "Catholic & Protestant" question like this, how on earth could you NOT think i would want to hear from you?
we are civil, we are kind, we are in charge of things that may go astray. it can be discussed without being hotly contested.
i have arrived at the point where i simply want to follow Christ. i am not sure what exactly that means, but i the Holy Spirit is doing something in me and that something is pretty huge.
:)
I think Talmida is on the right track in her comments.
I think the author that you quote has made artifical distinctions. Of course you can be both, and you can be both whether you wear the label of protestant or Catholic. Yeah, ok maybe Protestant or Catholic thought tends toward this or tends toward that, but please let's not make up artificial distinctions and categories to put people in boxes!
In some ways the essence of the Catholic Church is "both and"; Jesus and Mary, sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and on and on ...
...when I began to simply follow Christ, lead, moved by the Holy Spirit I came home to the Catholic Church. It needed be that way for all but I guess it needed to be that way for me.
I guess it's ironic, not sure, but moving into and beyond Fowler's Stage five is what liberated me to explore what turned out to be coming home to the Catholic faith.
I love this paradoxical tension expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in regard to just one of the sacraments: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments."
And there was that certain Pope whose words admonish on into the beyond of "both and"; faith and reason.
Me? No, I am not telling others what they should do but you asked where this leaves me and as best as I can express it, that's where.
And I must say an Amen to Onionboy's words as well. That's where it personally leaves me as well. "Both/And" indeed.
i like *both/and* but i also like *neither*. i am at a place in my walk where i simply want to follow Jesus (stumble after, i am awkward in my gait but tender in my heart...)
The both/and is what ecumenism is at heart. The remembering that we all come from the same source: Jesus Christ; and asking each other, "What do we have in common?" rather than "How am I right?"
Hi, gorgeous...
Now that was so worthy of a link...
Just Jesus. Only Jesus. With Jesus, I have the Father too.
Martha?
I so appreciate you.
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