Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

Lectionary: 666

You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.

I have recently finished Ian Ker's important biography, John Henry Newman; who was known as Cardinal when the book was written, and is now Saint. Predictably, it has affected my thoughts and feelings about being "Roman Catholic." I am the only Catholic priest in a mid-sized VA hospital, and I have to admit it, the book complicates things.

Saint John Newman was born, baptized, raised and ordained in the Anglican communion. A fervent young man he had dabbled in the Evangelical tradition before his reading of the Patristics -- the first millennium "Fathers of the Church" -- persuaded him of the necessity of sacraments, tradition, and authority. For several years he accepted the belief that English Catholicism was the right "middle way" between the rigid, often-corrupt authoritarianism of the Roman Church and the equally-corrupt, individualism of Protestants.

But, the more deeply he studied of the Fathers the more he realized his communion was essentially Protestant. It was an attempt to be church without the trappings of church. (Nor was it free of corruption!) His English colleagues attacked every effort to restore the ancient originality of the Christian communion. And many had drifted very far from the liturgical traditions and doctrinal teachings of the Fathers. Anglicans, he concluded, were essentially Arians and monophysites; they could not entirely accept the humanity of Jesus, nor their own human nature.

When I remarked to a Lutheran colleague, that "Every human being is like Jesus, having the potential to be God," he instantly retreated. The notion is entirely too Roman. But, I argued, a human being is like this ceramic cup; it can hold coffee or tea, mud or the finest French wine. It cannot attain that superb liquid on its own strength, nor should it be blamed for failing to. A human being cannot attain Godhead, but one human being was chosen for that! And his mother was also chosen to receive an extraordinary grace which will never be bestowed upon another.

More importantly, if, as potential containers of divinity we are broken and cannot be repaired, then neither can we be saved. The Fathers knew that; that's why they fought Arianism so strenuously, even when the majority of Christians were Arians!

John Henry Newman saw that also; and the doctrine kept working more deeply into his consciousness. As a writer who apparently never had an unpublished thought, he was continually suspected of being a closet Catholic.

Finally, despite the many and well-known sins of its leaders and its members in every age! the Anglican priest became a Roman Catholic. He believed the Roman Catholic Church has never lost, and can never lose, its foundation in the Apostles. The gates of Hell cannot prevail against them.  

Which brings us to today's feast. Despite our sins -- including horrific discoveries of pedophilia among priests and apparent collaboration among bishops and cardinals (and the pope?) -- we are the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. That assured fidelity is neither earned or deserved; it is God's gift of the Holy Spirit.

If you or I remain ever-so-slightly unconvinced of that doctrine, Cardinal Saint John Henry Newman was certain of it and risked everything for it -- because that is what saints do.

Sometimes it takes courage even to be grateful, and we do thank God for our Roman Catholic faith.