Ho-boy, as usual, some fun over at Commonweal's blog:

Crossing the Tiber - 8/18/06.
Some highlights ...

So why not join the Catholics? He [Stanley Hauerwas] prefers loyalty to one's church of origin.

At the theological level, Hauerwas cites Cardinal Kasper that "the ecumenical aim is not a simple return of the other into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church nor the conversion of individuals, even if this must obviously be mutually acknowledged when based on conscience.

In the ecumenical movement the question is conversion to Christ. In him we move closer to one another."

Hauerwas is sympathetic with friends and students who become Catholic, but at the same time he wants to say to them, "Don't do it. We need you!"

Comments keep pouring in, but one commentator wrote:

I hope they will make Catholicism more enriching and do not follow the restoration fixation of Neuhaus.


From the Christian Century article itself, which is at once sympathetic and incredulous, as if these men do this in spite of themselves:

Reno maintained that orthodox believers should not leave their home churches.

The proper scriptural response to living in ruins, he said, is to follow the example of Nehemiah, who dedicated himself to living in a devastated city.

To flee institutions in search of something supposedly better elsewhere would be to simply replicate the modern tendency to favor a posture of ironic distance over one of dogged commitment.

In a February 2005 article in First Things, aptly titled "Out of the Ruins," Reno announced that he had changed his mind.

He had come to agree with John Henry Newman, the archetype for any Anglican converting to Rome, that the Anglican via media, its prizing of the middle path between extremes, is a mistake.

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Mattox thinks the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) should have worked. Once both Catholics and Lutherans concluded that they have no substantial disagreements on the doctrine of justification—the doctrine on which Lutherans have long said the church stands or falls—then there is no reason why they should not reunite under the bishop of Rome.

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Marshall says he long ago came to the conclusion that "there is no doctrinal reason why a Christian of the Augsburg Confession cannot be a Roman Catholic."

The Catholic "extras" were not a barrier to conversion, but a bonus: "I would rather—far rather—live with the possibility of excess that accompanies Catholic understanding of Mary and the Church's teaching authority than with the complete absence of the former—and, it now generally seems, of the latter—in Protestantism.

"If disenchantment with my denomination had been the decisive issue, I would have stayed where I was." Indeed, he says, "I could not see that I had any right to leave the community in which I was baptized ... He adds, "except that right which Christ alone can give—and did."

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For is not Anglican existence in a place like Montreal (where Farrow teaches) a relic of a previous poaching effort into Roman Catholic land?

"If Episcopal disunity and competition is wrong between Anglicans, it is wrong full stop. Perhaps the crew of the good ship Anglican needs to put in at the nearest Roman harbor."

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"God has allowed us to come to faith and to practice our faith within divided Christian communities so that, forced to follow Jesus where we have been placed, we might learn repentance."

Radner continues, "No Jew . . . is ever asked by God to 'choose' between Israel and Judah." Jewish writers of scripture did not even consider such a move—rather they stayed where they were and tried to help the people be more faithful to the law of the Lord.

These converts have all been captivated by a catholic vision of the church—a vision they have come to believe is best realized in the Catholic Church.

Braaten worries that "the very persons who ought to be troubled by this phenomenon will say to themselves (perhaps not out loud), 'good riddance, we won't be bothered by those dissenting voices anymore. We wish more of their ilk will leave.'" A more widespread response might be that genuine catholicity is best promoted by the approach that Hauerwas describes, in which one refuses to despair over the church of one's baptism, believing that the Spirit can always renew the church.

Even though these six and many others have not, the fundamental principle advocated in The Christian Century piece is "stay put," a position I wholly endorse as a working premise.

And, you might read one of my classic posts related to this topic of "staying put".