I was intrigued to read Jordan Cooper’s Substack post on this topic. As someone who did a Tiber swim back in the day and then left it behind, the renewed interest in Roman Catholicism is certainly familiar. My years as a Roman Catholic left a deep imprint on my life and the way I look at the world, and there’s a reason for that. Now that I am an academic myself, I can see some of Jordan’s difficulties; since I am in the field of the hard sciences, I tend to look at things in a different light, either from a Protestant (and that is not univocal) standpoint or a Catholic one (and that isn’t always univocal either.)
It has often been the case when someone I know personally informs me that they have decided to make the swim, that they justify such a move with claims of intellectual persuasion based upon the strength of RC arguments. In many cases, they have never brought any of these claims or questions to me at all before making a decision.
In my case it was a little more fundamental. The “loosey goosey” attitude of the Episcopal divines I experienced growing up–especially those on the left–gave me the impression that these people weren’t sure that their belief system had objective reality. The comprehensive nature of Roman Catholicism left me no doubt that the Church did, although some of its representatives undermined that certainty. In the environment I was raised in, as a product of a long line of practical people, confirming this was absolutely essential to moving forward, and moving forward I did once I became Roman Catholic.
I recall a conversation with a student at an Ivy League University (I am keeping the details as vague as possible so as not to reveal this individual’s identity) who was raised in a traditional Protestant church prior to making a decision to convert to the RCC just prior to graduation. This student was highly intelligent, strongly motivated, and desired to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. When I asked him about his decision, I was surprised by his honest response, as he confessed simply that the RCC actually has opportunities for job placement for someone who desired to study philosophy. They had an intellectual ecosystem that Protestants simply do not have.
Years of being in the Church of God–including quite a few working at a denominational level–have convinced me that ministry of any kind is a hard way to make a living. Although haters whine about the few rich preachers, the reality is more like a classmate (who taught Physics at a community college) said about our Advanced Linear Algebra class: two or three were doing well and the rest of us were “sucking wind.” This is even more true when you expand that horizon to seminary academics. The young man or woman who wants to enter any field of endeavour needs to think about the income stream before they start.
I don’t know that it is unique to American Protestantism, but it seems particularly prominent in American churches that there is an unending skepticism toward academics within the church. Intellectual pursuits are viewed as inherently ego-stroking, or as dangerous, as if Rationalism or Postmodern subjectivism are the only possible results of academic study.
Let’s start with the last point: the fear of Postmodernism is justified because so much of what seminary academics say has such a strongly Postmodern vibe to it. One of the major shifts in heterodoxy in the last fifty years has come from saying that “this stuff really isn’t true and you shouldn’t believe it” to “this says one thing but really means quite another.” The former precipitated the beginning of the end of Main Line Protestantism in the 1960’s, which encouraged the ones who were left to shift towards the latter.
Having said that, the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition–and those of us who are schooled in it to varying degrees–gives a lot more room to discuss things than we see in Protestantism, one way or another. I am sure, for example, that some of my colleagues find the requirement of where I teach to not teach things contrary to the church’s Declaration of Faith restrictive. Both because of my academic field and my Catholic intellectual background, I do not.
An element of this is that Protestants in America tend to prioritize mission work, evangelization, and (for some) political activism. The life of the mind is always of secondary concern, and there is generally no valuing of intellectual projects for their own sake, but only for practical ministry. This latter point is not entirely mistaken, as theology does ultimately serve a practical end.
Since he brought up political activity, it’s worth restating something that, had the Protestant intellectual tradition been stronger, it would have figured out: Protestant Christianity in general and Evangelical Christianity in particular lacks the structure (in any sense of that word) to achieve its political objectives. The Southern Baptist Convention’s creation of a “shadow Confederacy” and the self-contained world that went with it achieved its short-term goals but translating that into taking over the rest of society–and the Baptists are the archetype of Evanglicalism these days–simply will not happen. In this case I am including history in general and Catholic history in particular in an intellectual tradition, one which both buttresses and undermines Roman Catholicism’s view of itself.
I recall a couple of university events occurring in the same semester when I was involved in campus ministry: one that was Protestant, and another that was Roman Catholic. The Protestant organization invited a prominent scientist to speak, who told his story about becoming a Christian, followed by comments about how immaterial souls do not exist. The Thomistic Institute hosted a lecture by Ed Feser on the relation between Thomistic metaphysics and quantum physics. If one desires a coherent Christian worldview, it is not difficult to see the appeal in the latter.
As a veteran of both the Texas A&M Newman Association at one end of my career and Faculty Commons at the other, I see his point, but I am also aware that Christian responses to the sciences in general leave a lot to be desired of. The biggest problem is that most Christian responders to these questions don’t come from the science side of the debate, and some of those (as he notes) aren’t well grounded in their own faith. I would like to present two examples of worthwhile response that are admittedly Catholic in origin: the first is My Paper on Saint-Venant at Regent University and the second The Challenge from Aquinas That Changed Mathematics.
The point of this article was simply to lay out the problem, rather than to offer some clear singular solution. It is born mostly out of my trying to understand why it is that so many intellectually oriented students feel the pull to the RCC, even when they are not entirely convinced of the veracity of their claims.
The problem with Roman Catholicism is that it sets forth its claims as all or nothing: you take all of it or you take none of it. That really isn’t true. One group that could take serious advantage of that situation are the Anglicans, but they’re either fighting heterodoxy in their own camp or trying to keep up with the Joneses in Rome. There are two things about Roman Catholicism that need crucial examination.
The first is something I mentioned earlier: Catholic history. Roman Catholicism has proclaimed itself infallible, and in 1870 extended that infallibility to the Pope. But the history of the church is more complicated. Why were medievals such as Dante so free to point out corruption in the Church? Was Leo XIV throwing shade on his precedessor Urban II (who proclaimed the Crusades) when he criticised Trump’s adventures in Iran? Why did it take so long for the Church to proclaim Mary’s Immaculate Conception when its greatest theologian–Aquinas–could not? And the Trads need to answer a serious question: how could an infallible church come up with the Novus Ordo Missae?
The second is the state of parish life. With vocations still at low levels and the priests that are left focused on a sacramental distribution of grace, the state of many parishes is that they are filled with laity whose expected duty is enshrined in the puckish statement of Cardinal Suenens: to know when to kneel, to know when to stand, and to know when to reach for their wallet. If you want to know the reason why the RCC loses so many to non-Catholic churches, the best place to start is there.
This is not meant to be a complete blow-by-blow to Cooper’s piece. He’s raised many good points and hopefully provoked constructive thought. But, as Origen would say, this blog post having reached a sufficient length, we will bring it to a close.
Positive Infinity 