Has Rome Changed?

"It shows how much things have changed that Wheaton College historian Mark Noll and freelance writer Carolyn Nystrom need to remind readers what Catholic/Evangelical relations used to look like. Evangelical polemics lack the bite of yesteryear, as illustrated by this 1873 quote in the introduction: 'The most formidable foe of living Christianity among us is not deism or atheism, or any form of infidelity, but the nominally Christian church of Rome'." So begins a review, in a recent issue of Christianity Today, of a book by these two writers entitled: Is the Reformation Over?: An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism.

According to reviews of the book, the authors - charitable though they undoubtedly are - recognise that there are still important differences between Protestant churches and Rome. But the review in Publishers Weekly contains a significant comment: "Only scant decades ago, [the authors] point out, Protestants inveighed against 'the formalism, the anthropocentric worship, the power mongering, and the egotism' of Rome. But now, they wryly observe, all those qualities 'flourish on every hand within Protestant Evangelicalism'." One reason for the change from the robust attitude expressed in the 1873 quotation is the tremendous weakening in faithfulness to Scripture and its doctrines within the Evangelical world since then. It is significant that the authors note how "Charismatic worship further de-emphasises the Reformation legacy, as experience rather than doctrine provides the rallying point".

But how are we to react to all the assurances that Rome has changed, and decidedly for the better? There is no doubt that she is much less monolithic today than she once was and much more open to dialogue. But what is missing in all the post-Vatican II enthusiasm is the fact that her doctrines remain fundamentally unchanged. She has, for instance, never departed from the multiplied anathemas hurled with such venom by the Council of Trent at those who held to Reformation - that is, scriptural - doctrine. For example: "If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ's sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema".

Rome's slogan of semper eadem (always the same) was ever a myth, given her continuous development of doctrine. Change there has always been in that direction, and it continues. The previous Pope did much to promote the idea that the Virgin Mary is advocate, mediatrix, and co-redemptrix. He wrote, "Mary places herself between her Son and mankind in the reality of their wants, needs and sufferings. She puts herself 'in the middle', that is to say, she acts as a mediatrix, not as an outsider."

What is lost sight of in most of the contemporary discussion is that Rome is identified in the Bible. In his book on the Apocalypse, David Brown refers to the apostasy described in 2 Thessalonians 2. On the words forbidding to marry, he states, "The reference is not to the mere creeping in of an ascetic spirit. . . . It is this spirit organised into a system and worked out by Church authority, in the specific form of a prohibition of marriage. Now, in point of fact, there is one, and only one, such body existing. The Church of Rome forbids clerical marriage, and holds celibacy forth as a holier state of life" (p 154). It is because of such teaching in Scripture that, not only in 1873, but also in 2005, we are justified in regarding Rome as such a formidable foe of living Christianity. Most certainly, the need for the Reformation is not over.