Is Rome a True Church? Part 1
Author: Chris Castaldo, PhD
August 01, 2024
When my grandfather, our family's esteemed patriarch, died, I spoke at his funeral. The parlor at Moloney’s was jam-packed with Roman Catholic friends. Like the pensive Michael Corleone (of The Godfather), I sat near the casket eyeballing visitors.
An acute feeling of loss coupled with the realization that we’ll one day stand before Almighty God and consigned to either ineffable bliss or agonizing terror for eternity heightened my emotions. At the appointed time, I approached the lectern and delivered an animated message (imagine Billy Sunday wearing a double-breasted suit, pinky ring waving). The congregation sat motionless, eyes like saucers. I concluded my homily with an invitation to receive Christ.
And then there was silence.
No one moved. Everyone simply stared at me. After a moment, it became palpably awkward, and then unnerving. Another moment passed before Monsignor Tom, my childhood priest, stood up at the back of the room and began walking forward. Everyone’s eyes followed him until he was directly before me. With a warm smile that I had come to know over the decades, Monsignor Tom exclaimed, “Christopher [you’ll have to imagine the Long Island accent], what a fine message. This is precisely the good news that we need at a time like this. I am so proud of you and thankful for the way you have served your family.”
It was a kind gesture. By putting his personal (and clerical) imprimatur on my message, Father Tom delivered me from the familial scorn that would have inevitably followed. But it was more than that. It was also a statement about the Roman Catholic capacity to recognize Christian faith in the Protestant tradition. The question, however, is whether evangelical Protestants can reciprocate.
The Status of Roman Catholicism
Protestants understandably have strong opinions about the Roman Catholic Church. For example, in response to my article on Pope Francis’s declaration, Fiducia Supplicans, a “friend” on Facebook left the following comment: “Let’s pray that this cult repents and turns from their false, accursing, different Gospel (Gal 1:6-9). And that Big Eva jellyfish quit trying to embrace them as fellow believers.”
The uncharitable and serrated edge of this comment, it seems to me, is less common today (outside of fundamentalist circles, at least), but it nevertheless contains underlying ideas common to many Protestants. Before trying to disentangle them, let me offer one more example of how the question has recently asserted itself.
When Bryan Zhang, host of the That’ll Preach podcast, wrote to thank me for being on his program, he included the following note: “One particularly popular question from our listeners is whether Protestants ought to consider Rome a true church, i.e. a church in the New Covenant. This is more about the corporate body of Rome rather than whether an individual Roman Catholic can be saved (which none of our listeners disputed).”
You’ll notice how the Facebook comment conflates the institution of the Roman Catholic Church (what he calls a cult) with the personal faith of Catholic individuals. Bryan, by contrast, distinguishes the two, recognizing (as most people do) that there are men and women in the Roman Church who possess a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, the controversial question is not whether there are Catholic Christians; it is, rather, whether Protestants should recognize the Roman Catholic institution (in her tangible structures, teaching, and practice) as legitimately Christian.
Prevailing Perspectives
Protestants tend to answer the question of Roman Catholicism’s status in one of two ways. Looking through the lens of the early creeds (i.e., Nicene and Apostles’), some understand it to be fundamentally orthodox. The rationale is simple: because the creeds uphold the basic tenets of Christianity, and Rome upholds those creeds, her apostolicity is affirmed. Roman Catholicism is thus regarded as “inside the pale.”
An alternative reading, one that probably informed the Facebook comment, is to view the Roman Catholic Church through the lens of the sixteenth-century Reformation in which the Council of Trent anathematized (pronounced to be cursed) the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Because such faith is recognized as the driving center of the biblical gospel, and Rome forcefully repudiates the doctrine, the Roman Church is therefore considered incompatible with biblical faith.
I recognize the logic in these positions, but in my opinion, both are incomplete. Yes, Roman Catholicism upholds the early creeds, but the way she receives and applies them in her imperial hierarchy, institutional organs, magisterial authority, or in accretions such as the requirement of priestly celibacy, treasury of merit, indulgences, venerating images, transubstantiation, role of Mary, and papal infallibility—to cite a few examples—is miles away from biblical teaching. In short, identifying the creeds as the basis of our unity when their appropriation leads to such divergent conclusions seems unsatisfying, to say the least.
But the second view, which affixes to Roman Catholicism a categorically non-Christian or heterodox label, also misses the mark. Before explaining why, however, we must first define precisely what we mean by the “Roman Catholic Church.”
What Is Roman Catholicism?
The challenge of defining the Roman Catholic Church grows out of her multiple layers. On one hand, in her adherence to the inspired Scriptures and the early creeds, she offers a foundational core of orthodoxy. This is what C.S. Lewis described as “an agreed, or common, or central, or ‘mere’ Christianity,” in his book by that name. Lewis explains how he had sent his manuscript of Book 2, What Christians Believe, to four clergymen, including a Roman Catholic, all of whom recognized the extent of doctrinal agreement in this Nicene core not as a watered-down, minimalist Christianity, but substantial, positive, and pungent.1
At the same time, we recognize that Rome has surrounded this doctrinal core with a dense layer of tradition that easily obscures, undermines, or confuses biblical teaching. Here, the three-tiered crown and crossed keys of the papal emblem, representing the pope’s authority to rule as Christ’s vicar, is instructive. According to the Catechism, “The Pope enjoys, by divine institution, nothing less than ‘supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls.”2 Claims such as this, which overlay Scripture with totalizing statements that are binding upon the conscience of the faithful, lead Protestants to see the foundations of Christianity as no longer accessible.
In view of this multilayered reality, how are we to assess the orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church? A serious application of truth and grace would have us recognize it as belonging to Christendom, and, inasmuch as it elucidates the orthodox core, see it as a true church, but one with major problems that often distort the gospel. In analyzing the Protestant Reformers’ response to Rome, Herman Bavinck states:
The Protestants, through firmly rejecting the church hierarchy of Rome, continued to fully recognize the Christian elements in the church of Rome. However corrupted Rome might be, there were still left in it “vestiges of the church,” “ruins of a disordered church”; there was still “some kind of church, be it half-demolished,” left in the papacy. The Reformation was a separation from the “Roman and papal church,” not from “the true church.”3
This nuanced perspective, as Bavinck noted, was the general position of Protestants from the earliest days. Martin Luther, for example, wrote: “In the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity and many great and devoted saints…. The Christendom that is now under the papacy is truly the body of Christ and a member of it.”4 John Calvin maintained the same conviction, saying: “When we categorically deny to the papists the title of the church, we do not for this reason impugn the existence of churches among them.”5 Further examples may be adduced, whether it’s from the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge6 or from J. Gresham Machen7 These men, even after the Council of Trent, acknowledged an orthodox core in the Roman Church despite its less than biblical overlay of traditions.8
Next week: Roman Catholicism and the doctrine of justification.
Chris Castaldo, Ph.D. is lead pastor of New Covenant Church in Naperville, Illinois. He is author of The Upside Down Kingdom: Wisdom for Life from the Beatitudes (Crossway, 2023), and coauthor, with Brad Littlejohn, of Why Do Protestants Convert? (Davenant Press, 2023). Chris blogs at www.chriscastaldo.com. This article originally appeared in Mere Orthodoxy.
Photo by Adrian Dascal on Unsplash.
1 The other three ministers, says Lewis, were Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2023), xi.
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 937.
3 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Vol 4. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 314-315.
4 Martin Luther, Luther Works, vol. 40, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 232. Elsewhere, Luther asserted, “The Roman Church is holy, because it has God’s holy name, the gospel, baptism, etc.” Quoted in Gustaf Aulen, Reformation and Catholicity, trans. Eric H. Wahlstrom (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962), 76.
5 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.2.12. Calvin expressed a similar sentiment in his letter to Cardinal Sadoleto, stating that despite serious differences of doctrine, “[it doesn’t mean] that Roman Catholics are not also Christians. We indeed, Sadoleto, do not deny that those over which you preside are Churches of Christ.” John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s Reply, ed. John. C. Olin (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), 69.
6 Charles Hodge’s Letter to Pope Pius IX,” http://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2010/charles-hodges-letter-to-pope-pius-ix/ (accessed on January 20, 2024).
7 J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 52.
8 Protestants ought to acknowledge that we also have our share of less than biblical traditions.
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