Journeys Home (38 page)

And I tried hard and long during those first few months. There
was only one problem: It made her a stronger Catholic. And I was
the one who had to adjust.

I attended church with her occasionally, heard the Mass in the
vernacular, saw Communion given in both kinds. She told me how
Vatican II had broadened the Church's approach to other faiths.
I read that Catholics were finding that Luther's teachings weren't
as un-Catholic as they had thought. And on justification? Joan
said she believed that works, while they don't save us, let our
faith shine through.

In other words, this Catholic Church was ... so to speak ... more
Lutheran than I imagined. It was my first clue that I had been
viewing Rome through a distorted mirror -- the one held up by
my confirmation instruction. Though Vatican II had happened a
decade before that, the Rome that I was taught as a young Lutheran
was the Rome of 1517 -- at least in the way Rome presented itself
at that long-ago time. Something was different.

I could not escape that fact as Joan and I debated the spiritual
issues that summer of 1987. It wasn't an easy ride, to be sure.
Sometimes it seemed that Joan and I were speaking different languages.
I certainly didn't believe all that stuff about Mary, the saints,
purgatory and the sacrifice of the Mass, though I was hearing
things here and there that gave me pause.

But we came through that time closer than ever. And Father Karnish's
straight answer to my straight question about justification helped
convince me that Joan and I could function as a Christian couple.
If the priest who helped form Joan's faith was saying the same
thing she was, we could grow in faith together as husband and
wife.

Even so, finding some points of agreement with Catholics wasn't
enough for me to become one, though we did get married at St.
Agnes. We resolved to attend each other's churches regularly,
minister together where we could and let God tell us whether He
wanted us to join one or the other or remain in both. I needed
more proof that the Catholic Church I was hearing about from Joan
and Father Karnish was the Church that really existed.

It took me ten years to be convinced.

The moment in Denver in 1993 when I heard those astonishing words
from the Pope happened almost halfway in between those ten years.
It came at a time when our marriage was full of spiritual blessings
and professional challenges. But it seemed that we were destined
to be a two-faith couple. Joan had taken Lutheran confirmation
classes in Des Moines, where we moved after our marriage. But
she just wasn't inspired to join. Something would be missing,
she said -- something she couldn't put into words. So after we
moved to Scottsbluff in 1991, I entered an RCIA (Rite of Christian
Initiation for Adults) class at St. Agnes, intending to stop before
the point that I would have to commit myself to join.

Again, I was surprised at the level of agreement I was finding
between the two faith traditions. I remember thinking that I could
be comfortable at St. Agnes. But something kept gnawing at me.
You see, I had started RCIA instruction in Des Moines, but left
after two weeks. That priest seemed to doubt the essence of Christian
faith: Catholic, Lutheran, or otherwise.

So I asked St. Agnes' new pastor, Father Charles Torpey: Could
he guarantee me that I would hear the same message about the Catholic
faith in another parish or another diocese?

No, he said.

He was merely reflecting the varying interpretations of Vatican
II that have plagued the Church for most of the years since the
Council. But for me, at that time, Father Torpey's answer stopped
me cold.

I was used to hearing pretty much the same Lutheran doctrines
from one Missouri Synod congregation to the next. Even though
I was comfortable with what Joan believed, her family believed
and her parish believed, without the guarantee I sought, I simply
assumed the Catholic Church as a whole couldn't possibly believe
as they did.

A year later, John Paul II shook up that assumption in Denver.

As Joan and I had our second child and then moved back to North
Platte, the Pope kept doing things I couldn't ignore. The year
after World Youth Day, the Vatican released the English translation
of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Though I didn't read
it cover to cover until after I joined the Church, its release
was a profound event -- the beginning of order from the chaos
of the varying interpretations of Vatican II.

Then John Paul issued
Ut Unum Sint,
the great 1995 encyclical
on ecumenism in which he urged Protestants and Eastern Orthodox
alike to join Catholics in restoring the Church's unity. A year
later, the Holy Father went to Paderborn, Germany, and directly
urged Lutherans and Catholics to look at the complete picture
of Luther and the Reformation and approach their five-hundred-year
feud in a different way. Addressing an ecumenical audience at
the Paderborn Cathedral, he observed:

Luther's thinking was characterized by considerable emphasis on
the individual, which meant that the awareness of the requirements
of society became weaker. Luther's original intention in his call
for reform in the Church was a call to repentance and renewal
to begin in the life of every individual.

There are many reasons
why these beginnings nevertheless led to division. One is the
failure of the Catholic Church ... and the intrusion of political
and economic interest, as well as Luther's own passion, which
drove him far beyond what he originally intended into radical
criticism of the Catholic Church, of its way of teaching.

We all
bear the guilt. That is why we are called upon to repent and must
all allow the Lord to cleanse us over and over.

After nearly a decade of study and close observation of Catholicism,
I could take the Pope's words and sentiment for what they were.
The messages I first heard in 1987 had been confirmed week in
and week out from Catholic pulpits. I had absorbed the wonderful
liturgical music coming from Catholic composers. I prayed for
unity in God's Church more strongly than ever.

And yet ... I remained confirmed in my Lutheran thinking. When
it came to Mary, the saints, purgatory and so on, I had searched
in vain for a response to Luther's ancient challenge: Prove it
to me from Scripture!

In mid-1997, we moved to Omaha. As always, I started looking for
an LCMS congregation to join. I found one I thought I liked: one
that did contemporary music, one that had people I had known from
other parts of Nebraska. But something wasn't right. Something
kept gnawing at me, preventing me from becoming an official member
of the congregation. I didn't know what it was.

That Christmas, we received a gift from Sister Mariette Melmer,
a cousin of Joan's mother and a Notre Dame sister based not far
from our new home. (The Lord called her home in August 1999.)
She told Joan she thought we would find it interesting. Joan started
reading the book, then passed it on to me. It was
Rome Sweet Home,
Scott and Kimberly Hahn's story of their journeys from a Presbyterian
denomination into the Catholic Church.

It wasn't a perfect fit; I was a Lutheran reading an ex-Calvinist's
conception of what Luther believed. And yet ... here were all
these Scripture passages addressing the differences between Lutherans
and Catholics. Hahn was pointing to Scripture. And he was making
sense. For instance, his connection of purgatory to passages I
had never paid attention to before, such as 1 Corinthians 3:12 - 15:

Now if any one builds on the foundation [of Christ] with gold,
silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw -- each man's work will
become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will
be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work
each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the
foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work
is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved,
but only as through fire.

As so many ex-Protestant converts have said ... I knew I was in
trouble. It was time to answer the questions once and for all.

I was driven by something the pope had written in
Ut Unum Sint:

In the first place, with regard to doctrinal formulations which
differ from those normally in use in the community to which one
belongs, it is certainly right to determine whether the words
involved say the same thing....

In this regard, ecumenical
dialogue, which prompts the parties involved to question each
other, to understand each other and to explain their positions
to each other, makes surprising discoveries possible. Intolerant
polemics and controversies have made incompatible assertions out
of what was really the result of two different ways of looking
at the same reality. (38)

I couldn't pass up that challenge. It called on skills I use all
the time as a journalist: the translation of the jargon of doctors,
lawyers, school administrators, and others into language common
people can use. After ten years of virtual dual membership in
the Catholic Church and the LCMS, I believed I knew both sides'
theological languages well enough to test it.

The twenty-year journey was entering its final phase.

Just over a month later, on February 1, 1998, I stood over the
dishes in the sink, looking out at the winter night. The tears
kept coming. I knew I had run out of arguments. The walls of my
mighty Lutheran fortress lay in ruins around my feet. I knew I
had to become Catholic. I was nearing the end of the second draft
of what had become a forty-page paper, a conversation with myself
about my journey. I had pored through Internet pages, haunted
the libraries of our city and a nearby Catholic university, and
raided bookstores in my quest.

The Pope had been right. On several critical issues, Lutherans
and Catholics indeed said the same thing in different ways. With
others, it had been less a matter of giving up Lutheran beliefs
than coming to understand how Catholic they really were. And with
the rest -- Catholics simply had the more convincing case.

Naturally, justification was the first issue. As I sorted through
a decade's worth of evidence, I found I had no doubts left: On
this most important issue, Lutherans and Catholics were arguing
over style -- not substance. And after five hundred years of diatribes
by both sides, both faith traditions are beginning to understand
that at last!

Over time, I had come to understand that two questions govern
our lives as Christian believers: "How are you saved?" and "Okay,
you're saved -- now what?" The first refers to the moment and
means of salvation; the second, to our spiritual journey from
the moment of salvation until death. Just as Paul did throughout
Romans, we must ask and answer
both
questions together to understand
the entire picture of salvation.

Lutheran sermons typically focus on the first question, while
Catholics concentrate on the second. Consequently, each thinks
the other doesn't answer the key question. Lutherans assume Catholics
believe our totally undeserved gift of God's grace is
not
the
sole
means of our salvation. Yet the very beginning of the Council
of Trent's
Decree on Justification
freely confesses our utter
dependence on God:

If anyone shall say that man can be justified before God by his
own works which are done either by his own natural powers, or
through the teaching of the Law, and without divine grace through
Christ Jesus: let him be anathema. (Canon 1)

If anyone shall say
that without the anticipatory inspiration of the Holy Spirit and
without His assistance man can believe, hope and love or be repentant,
as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be conferred
upon him: let him be anathema. (Canon 3)

For their part, Catholics assume that "faith alone" means Lutherans
believe that "once saved, always saved." Paul didn't believe that,
as we have seen. Christ didn't teach it, either, as we see in
Matthew 7:21: "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall
enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father
who is in heaven."

We
are
totally dependent on God for our salvation, Catholics teach,
but we can throw it away. How? By willfully returning to a life
of sin and assuming we're saved anyway! Thus the
Catechism of
the Catholic Church
teaches: "Mortal sin ... results in the loss
of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of
the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's
forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the
eternal death of hell" (1861).

So ... do Lutherans believe you can throw your salvation away?
The Lutheran Confessions say yes! One of the most unequivocal
statements to that effect can be found in the "Apology" of the
Augsburg Confession, where Luther's right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon,
writes about Paul's statement that "if I have all faith so as
to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing" (1 Cor 13:2):

In this text Paul requires love.
We require it, too.
We have said
above that we should be renewed and begin to keep the law, according
to the statement (Jer 31:33), "I will put my law within their
hearts."
Whoever casts away love will not keep his faith, be it
ever so great, because he will not keep the Holy Spirit. (Apology
,
IV, 219, in
The Book of Concord,
ed. Theodore G. Tappert et al.,
Fortress, 1959; emphasis added)

Related thoughts elsewhere in
The Book of Concord
may be found
in the Augsburg Confession, VI, 1 - 2; the Apology, IV, 348 - 350; XX, 13; the Smalcald Articles, III, III, 42 - 45; and the
Formula of Concord, Epitome, III, 11.