Confessions of a Catholic Fundamentalist

Apparently, I’m a Catholic fundamentalist.

The Trigger: The Lie T... David Icke Best Price: $11.44 Buy New $20.50 (as of 04:16 UTC - Details) At least, that’s the assessment of Boston College theology professor Fr. Mark S. Massa, S.J. In his recent book Catholic Fundamentalism in America (Oxford University Press), Massa warns of the threat of Catholic fundamentalists, who “combine a sectarian understanding of religion with an aggressive anti-progressive stance.” He highlights in particular seven individuals and movements “that embody the Catholic fundamentalist impulse,” and one of those case studies is me as the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.

In a chapter entitled, “On the Dangers of Swimming the Tiber: Crisis Magazine and the Premillennialist Embrace of Catholicism,” Massa takes special chagrin at my Protestant background. Mind you, it’s been thirty-three years since I became Catholic (and I was only twenty-one at the time, so I’ve been Catholic much longer than I was Protestant), but that doesn’t stop Massa from suspecting that my conversion didn’t really take. In the best line of the chapter, he writes, “Sammons may have indeed swum the Tiber, but he did so in a Protestant wetsuit that left him untouched by Catholic holy water.”

So why does Massa believe I’m still holding on to my Protestant faith, in spite of spending the last thirty-plus years working to bring people into the Catholic Church? My greatest sin apparently is that I actually believe that what the Church teaches is unchanging. Massa warns, “There is…a consistent argument in Sammons’s postings at Crisis that seems to presume that Catholic doctrine rests on an unchanging and propositional ‘deposit of faith’ almost exactly analogous to how Protestant fundamentalists understand the King James Bible.” My crime, according to Massa, is that I treat Catholic doctrine as if it were “static and unchangeable” and not “marked by development and evolution.”

5-Minute Core Exercise... Dzenitis, Tami Brehse Best Price: $2.77 Buy New $4.95 (as of 05:01 UTC - Details) Massa then invokes St. John Henry Newman to his defense, apparently assuming I’m unfamiliar with the 19th century English Cardinal. I have to chuckle, however, since as I write this I’m looking at a large portrait of Newman on my office wall, and if I turn my head I can see a whole shelf full of books either by Newman or about Newman. He’s one of my favorite saints, and I’ve read extensively about his life and his teachings. In particular, his An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was instrumental in helping me understand how Christian doctrine develops over time, which in turn helped me see how what the Church Fathers taught was fundamentally Catholic, even if at times the trappings weren’t always exactly as they are today.

But because I understand Newman’s teachings on doctrinal development, I also know that the term “evolution,” which Massa uses, is completely contrary to Newman’s views on the matter. Evolution, as it is typically understood, can include the change of something into a wholly different species. The Darwinian theory of evolution, in fact, posits that a single-celled organism can eventually evolve into a fish, or a mammal, or even a man. Doctrine, however, can never change like this. Our understanding of a particular teaching can deepen and therefore develop over time, but the core doctrine remains intact. If this is “fundamentalism,” then Newman was a fundamentalist.

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