Details

It has been awhile since I have made a post here, mostly because nothing of much significance has happened in this area of my life since the summer.

However, I would like to give you some details about that summer discussion we had at chaplain school (as best as my memory will allow).

A bit of background
There was daily chapel for all students, held in the morning before classes began. One for Protestants and one for Roman Catholics. The Protestant chapel was the dominant one, attended by 90% (or more, in a class of 160). The Roman Catholic chapel was smaller with about 15. It was attended by Roman Catholics (of course), Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and myself. So, I was not the only non-Roman Catholic there. It was a small group which led to a greater sense of community.

I remember the first time I attended the chapel. Someone asked "Are you Catholic?" (because you can't tell by looking), and I answered "it depends on what you mean by catholic." He raised his eyebrow, and looked a bit confused, and possibly irritated. I continued "I am not Roman Catholic. But I am catholic, meaning I belong to Christ's universal church."

Occasionally there would be no official chapel on a given day for scheduling reasons, but the Catholics were insistent on having mass, especially on holy days and I would join them. The question eventually came up (knowing I was not Roman Catholic) "So, why do you join us for mass so often as opposed to the Protestant chapel?" And I told them a bit about my story and my struggles with the Protestant Church. This lead to the invitation to dinner and discussion with the priest, 2 seminarians and myself.

The dinner and discussion
We picked a night and went to dinner. We shared our stories. The 2 seminarians, as it turned out joined the Catholic church from Protestant traditions. The priest was a "cradle Catholic." We talked about a crazy man at the priest's church who wore a red collar and pretended to be a priest; our personal faith journey; how one of the seminarians worked for the state department prior to his call.

We were enjoying each others company so we decided to go over to one of the seminarian's room and have a theology-on-tap. Here we got more theological. And I found a great deal of agreement with them. We talked about the Eucharist and real presence, inter-church marriage, liturgy and the sacraments, and Vatican II.

There was disagreement concerning the nature of the church. I argued for a larger-than-structure, universal Christ-Church in which all Christians belonged. The two seminarians argued that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church, and Protestant Churches are only true in that they reflect the Roman Catholic Church. I brought up Ut Unum Sint, and Unitatis Redintegratio concerning the view of protestant churches and an eccumenism of convergence (not individual conversion). For inter-church marriages I brought up Familiaris Consorito, and how it says "The Eucharist is the very source of Christian marriage" (57) that if the Church does not allow a protestant husband and a Catholic wife to share together in the Eucharist we do harm to the foundation marriage. The Eucharist feeds a marriage.

So we were having a nice healthy discussion, finding points of agreement and were we differed. Enter the seminarian's (very) Protestant room-mate. He naturally joins the conversation but shows such cynicism toward the Catholics that it produced no useful discussion. He kept spouting things like "The Bible is the only source of authority, we shouldn't have a Pope." He challenged me once (indirectly) and asked "Why would a Protestant want to take Catholic communion?"

Later he offered an "analogy" of the Catholic Church saying it was like an exclusive club in which you have to jump through many hoops and learn the secret handshake in order to be "in." I offered another (more productive analogy) saying I see Protestants as similar to the Samaritans - separated from the temple with some strange beliefs according to the Jews, and yet Jesus said the Kingdom of God was for the Samaritans too. Protestants might act goofy and deny some pretty important beliefs, but we are like crazy unlce Frank at the family reunion - Still part of the family.

At this point it was fairly late and it was a "school night," so we all went home. I appreciated there time and being able to dig deep in some theology with some fellow seminarians and Christians.