On Ideolatry and Protestantism

A few strands have been coming together in my head recently. First, I have spent much of my social media time over the last couple of days arguing the foundations of the Catholic Faith with an out-and-out Protestant. Everything I wrote, he countered in a way that did not make any sense to me. Clearly, I was not making sense to him. That's not his fault nor really is it my fault but one question came to my mind, "what if I have actually got it all wrong?"

Similarly, as I suspect happens to every Catholic priest of all stripes, just as I was genuflecting before elevating the host, I heard that voice say, "why are you kneeling to a little white circle?" Again, that question arises, "what if I have actually got it all wrong?"

In reading the Roman Martyrology at Prime, I find myself wincing at the phrase "worship of holy images" because that seems to justify the Protestant accusations of idolatry and is not what Ikonography is. With holy images we venerate the saints depicted, "hyper-venerate" the Blessed Virgin depicted and worship the Lord Jesus Christ Whose Holy Incarnation allows us to depict Him. That's what the phrase "worship of holy images" means but it isn't what it says.

The more I think of these instances the more I have become convinced that people are becoming so entrenched in their ideological framework that they are beginning to worship that by defending it unreasonably - especially through cancelling the debate. More and more of us are committing Ideolatry: putting our worldview above God. This means, as I have suggested before, that we are shoehorning God into our worldview rather than letting our worldview expand to receive God.

You might say that it's a bit rich of an entrenched conservative Anglican Catholic to talk of open-mindedness when my worldview is closed to Liberalism. I take the point but I do remember at University having some truly terrible theology shoved down my throat because if I "needed to experience other traditions". To be honest, I try a live and let live approach. If people want to do liturgical dance that's their business. My opinion is that it has no place at Mass or Office but I appreciate that this is what people feel called by the Spirit to do. They might be wrong or I might be wrong but if we are both seeking to be true to the same Holy Ghost then our mistakes are going to be put right.

This is the point. The most ardent Catholic of any stripe and the most ardent Protestant of any stripe will agree on one simple fact that Jesus Christ is a historical figure who actually died and actually rose again from the dead to save humanity from Sin and Death.

I say this but there are those who call themselves Christians who deny even the reality of God Himself. And this is where we really do lose all common language and all I can do is hope and pray that we may find some method of communication. 

The main trouble with holding an ideology is that we often defend its slogans without really taking them to their logical or communal consequences. We sit comfortably within the bounds of our worldview without exploring the horizon.

I do try to practise what I preach but I know that I am far from perfect. One conclusion, though, that I have drawn somewhat reluctantly is that the Church of England to which I once belonged is ideologically Protestant and that the Nineteenth Century Anglo-Catholics with the best will in the world tried to read history as if Cranmer, Parker, Elizabeth I et c didn't intend to build a Protestant Anglicanism. The facts of history say otherwise. The Homilies that the XXXIX Articles requires read are Protestant as is the plain reading of those Articles in that the embrace a soteriology and sacramental theology different from the Primitive Church. Thus from the intention of the Establishment and those who govern that Establishment, the CofE was certainly Protestant from 1559 onwards. 

The painful reality for me is that I spent much of my life as a Protestant. 

Why painful? Is being a Protestant so bad? To my mind, Protestantism is incomplete. In removing the excesses of Papal authority, it threw out that which has been cherished from the beginning of the Church. In crying "Sola!", Protestant ideology misses that some things like Scripture and Faith are never alone nor can be separated from other aspects of Catholic belief. The one thing that has revealed to me the extent of the Protestantism of the Church of England in the 16th and 17th centuries has been the Calvinist ikonoclasm which robbed the faithful of the looking glass into the presence of the Divine. In choosing to remain in the CofE I was accepting the inherent Protestantism despite, like many others, dissenting from it. As long as I remained in the CofE, however nominal, I was accepting the ikonoclasm, the stripping of the altars, and latterly the Liberal Modernism which has changed even what little access to the Catholic Faith the Protestants had.

Thus I find that my current exploration of Anglican Catholicism is a great comfort for, together with the other G4 Churches, the Anglican Catholic Church is continuing the Oxford Movement to its logical conclusion. That conclusion is NOT Rome, at least not the Roman Church which claims ownership of Catholicism and demands inappropriate obeisance to an earthly monarch who, however venerable, holy and true, cannot possess the authority and attributes claimed. In holding the Primitive Faith of the First Millennium and using that as the basis of theology, I can read my Anglican heritage through that, discarding that which does not fit, such as Cranmer's overtly Protestant theology, and supplying what the faith teaches.

Thus I do not have to deny history, nor revise it or half-tell the story, but rather reform the reform and re-place the theological authority which has been removed.

However Protestant the CofE may be, it intended to continue the Apostolic Succession and, if there has been a breach anywhere along the line, it had been made up for by our relationship with other Catholics. But I do not believe there has been a breach - saepius officio has shown that, until 1992, the CofE had valid orders. 

Even then, the Anglican Catholic Church and her communion partners have the express intent of continuing Catholic and Apostolic Orders and thus either we are still Catholic or we have recovered the remnants of Catholicism from the Anglican Communion. Thus, whether we were Protestant or not, we are not now: we have supplied all that Protestantism lacks.

But is this not a form of Ideolatry? Do I worship the Catholic Faith that I promote or do I actually worship Christ? Now that is a good question and, to answer it, I have to look at my intentions: why do I pursue, promote and peddle the Catholic Faith. And the answer to me is clear: it is all about Jesus Christ. It is about seeing Him in the world around, of being sensible to His presence in my life and keeping Him in view. I read about Him in my Bible and I hear His words but, more, I see Him in my ikons, I see Him, touch Him and consume Him in the Mass and thus I take Him into my heart - the core of my being. He is not a theological construct but a person of History as well as Eternity. He is real and not just words in a book. The Holy Ghost convinces me of this and shows me that I can trust what the Lord says: if His body is meat indeed, then that little white circle is truly Him as He is - not through theory, but through what He tells me Himself, and I trust Him. Thus, for me, the Catholic Faith is just the room in which I meet the object of my desire, my life and my happiness. He is not my ideology but my ideology is based entirely on Him. Of course, that's not to say that there are no cracks in the walls in the room in which I meet my God. Perhaps some of those cracks become doors to other rooms.

If we hold to an ideology, then we have to recognise that it is sonething that we only allow ourselves to inhabit under the condition that we need to explore it fully so that we can function and communicate with other human beings with whom we share existence. To do otherwise would be selfish and lead to an ideology of solipsism. I do not believe the Catholic Faith would allow this on the grounds that the Saviour became incarnate to unite Christians in Him.