going catholic?

i recently read james alison's Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-In, which is a brilliant and profound book.  one of its effects on me was to start to think seriously about 'changing sides'.

my most excellent friend paul wrote to me that he "can't see how it is possible to stay protestant after a thorough reading of JA" (JA being james alison of course).  i tend to agree, though i would put it in slightly different terms, that reading JA makes it almost impossible to not want to be catholic.

i wouldn't necessarily call myself a protestant (or anything really), but that would be the default christian label for me since i more-or-less attend a presbyterian church and all my previous church attendance has also been on the protestant side.  but i've started to think, "why are we still protesting?"  after 500 years, is a 'Protestant' movement still relevant?

it seems that, to a large extent at least, the protestant reformation arose out of a dispute over right doctrine and teaching, as exemplified by luther's 95 theses.  no doubt there was ample justification for it at the time with the institutional corruption in the catholic church, but the legacy of this focus on 'rightness', which became evident very quickly in the schism between lutheranism and calvinism, is a never ending, increasingly pedantic disagreement about just who is most right.

so now there are thousands of protestant denominations, not to mention all the independent non-denominational churches out there, because every tom, dick and harry (and of course it's almost always a man) thinks he has the true knowledge and only his way is the right way.  and you have sydney anglicanism and similar movements which have made right doctrine into fundamentalist legalism.

enough already!  it's just the blind arguing with the blind.

neither orthodoxy (right doctrine) nor even orthopraxis (right actions) are really the point.  it's ultimately about belonging.  the apostle paul wrote frequently about being 'in christ', such as in romans 8:1 ("there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" - niv).  jesus talked about being attached the vine (himself), saying "if you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit" (john 15:5, niv).  i don't think protestants really understand this, with their fixation on justification by faith, which is really just a subtler form of legalism.

of course, from god's point of view it doesn't matter what label you wear or what church you go to (or none).  but i do think it matters for us, for christians because we need to get beyond our childish arguments and to start actually loving each other as fellow stumblers trying to figure out what it means to be in this big, incredibly diverse family formed around the gratuitous love and forgiveness of god; and for non-christians because jesus was actually telling the truth when he said, "by this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."

as i hinted above, i don't like labels, and maybe even more i don't like commitment.  i like to keep my options open, to dip my toes in but not to immerse.  so it's a very hard thing for me to consider 'converting' or even identifying myself as catholic.  not to mention the incomprehension (if not outrage) such a move would produce in my most definitely protestant family.

i really don't know how this will all end up, but i'd like to start moving in the direction of joining james and paul in the big old family...