Sacrificing Catholics for Ecumenism
It’s no secret that the Catholic Church is bleeding members. According to Pew Research, those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. As such statistics continue to worsen, the emphasis on evangelization grows. Yet, few can state what that ought to look like. So much of the focus has been upon reaching “across the aisle” and attempting to assimilate with Protestants.
A recent case of a Catholic young adult group chat that was admonished by clergy for sharing memes with a jocular approach to Protestant themes serves as an example. Catholics, especially younger Catholics, are urged under the name of charity to be more open to Protestants, which is difficult if not impossible to delineate from simply being less Catholic, even though those who promote this behavior would never admit their stance with such candor.
One of the principal arguments posed against enthusiastic Catholics is that they will be offensive to Protestants and thereby drive them away. Thus, be careful about those memes, kids, lest someone might be repelled by jocularity. But this is a rather new mindset, out of lockstep with human behavior and a long chain of saints who said the truth because it was the truth and because people had a right to hear it. In Decem Rationes, Edmund Campion talked of Protestants in a way that might not be considered ecumenical today:
Throughout the whole course of fifteen centuries these men find neither to
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