Roman Roads
The Catholic Alternative to Nihilism
J.Bottum
July 1, 1996
MY FRIEND DAVE'S FIRST MISSTEP on those treacherous slopes of Christian faith came when he found himself wondering about the New Testament's insistence on the role and importance of the church. As an American fundamentalist he had always held a form of sola scriptura and personal interpretation so unconsciously extreme that Martin Luther himself would hardly recognize it. But there in sacred Scripture he found the talk of "the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood"—talk of binding and loosing, talk of the Rock against which "the gates of hell shall not prevail," talk of that "great mystery" concerning Christ's espousal of his Church. In the nineteenth century, perhaps, when American Protestantism was simply the omnipresent drapings of the public square and American Protestants were more confident about who the enemy really was, Dave might have stopped his tumble in one mainline Protestant sect or another. But nowadays there is only one resting-place for American believers who begin to think that ecclesiology is of deter- mining importance in joining a community of believers. Two years ago, Dave was received into full communion with the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Some other theological question could have led to Dave's conversion, I suppose. The skein of theology is tightly tangled, and to tug on one thread is to tug on them all. Like John Henry Newman, Dave might have begun by wondering about the relevance of a consecrated priesthood, or the importance of apostolic descent, or even the significance of the sacraments. To think too hard on any of these is to become so entangled that (to Americans for whom, sad to say, the Eastern Orthodox churches seem inexpressibly alien) only Rome can sort ...
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