The Fullness of Faith....

What drew to me to the Catholic Church, and then what called me out, was a desire to live in "the fullness of faith."

If you want to read my posts from the beginning, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
‭‭~Colossians‬ ‭2:8-10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

This Church, constituted and organized as a society in this present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although (licet) many elements of sanctification and truth can be found outside her structure; such elements, as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, impel towards Catholic unity. ~The Second Vatican Council, in n. 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium

I offer two quotes from two different authorities. One source is cited as Divine authority by both Catholics and Evangelicals (Paul’s letter to the Colossians), while the other is from a 1963 document, Lumen Gentium, from the Second Vatican Council that describes beautifully many things about the Christian faith but also claims the institution of the Catholic Church as the co-authority with Scripture. Keep these two instructions in mind as you read.

The primary purpose of this post is to assure my Catholic audience that my twenty-five years of Catholic life were rooted in a well grounded catechesis. Like Dr. Allison’s book, I have no desire to misrepresent Catholic teaching. I equally want to serve my Evangelical audience by demonstrating that much of what the non-Catholic world thinks it knows about Catholicism is based on misunderstanding or misrepresentations of the faith. I cannot emphasize enough how truly groundbreaking Dr. Allison’s book is. His is the only one I’ve seen on the market that offers a good faith critique based on legitimate documents and official Catholic teaching rather than his own interpretation of Catholic teaching. Now, to continue the story…

After becoming Catholic, I poured myself into the study of Scripture, Catholic apologetics, and I earned a Master’s Degree in Pastoral Studies from a Jesuit University. I worked in prison ministry, crisis counseling at a spouse abuse shelter, as a contractor for Catholic schools in the Seattle Archdiocese, as a Pastoral Assistant for Adult Faith Formation at an 800 family parish, taught many BIble Studies, led retreats, guest hosted a Catholic radio program, and taught a variety of faith formation classes. From 1992-2013, I devoted most of my life to the study and teaching of the Catholic faith. My heart was full, my faith firm, and every aspect of my life as a wife, mother, and minister was almost singularly devoted to what Catholics refer to as “the promulgation of the fullness of the faith.” My husband, sister, and a close friend followed me into the Catholic Church over the next seven or eight years.

Let’s fast forward to 2015. By now, I have lived in Tennessee for five years, after seventeen years in the Pacific Northwest (referred to by locals as “the PNW”). Tennessee was where I went to high school and college, so to say I felt at home is an understatement. We loved being in the Bible belt. We loved seeing Scripture verses hanging in public and private buildings. We loved the patriotism and sense of hospitality.

I jumped right into Catholic life at the one parish in our town, trying to assume the same kind of activity I did back in Washington. Being Catholic in the Bible belt is very different than being Catholic in the PNW. Suffice it to say, I did not enjoy the same freedom to teach and lead as a lay minister in Tennessee, a much more traditional diocese, than what I was empowered to do in the PNW—often cited as the most unchurched area of the country. In Washington, Catholic lay ministers were basically missionaries!

I found myself with very little to offer this new community in the way of teaching and leadership. Going to mass and, when invited to do so, teaching an adult education class from time to time for potential converts was about the most I was allowed to do with my particular gifts of teaching and studying. My husband and I tried to initiate a marriage ministry that we were involved with back in Washington, but that just ended up going nowhere. We were advised to “talk to this person,” who would then say, “You should talk to that person,” and so on. Nevertheless, I carried on with the certainty that my identity as a Catholic meant that I was living from “the fullness of faith,” which non-Catholics most definitely did not have. Let me explain what is meant by that phrase, “the fullness of faith.”

Essentially, the “fullness of faith” refers to the primary claim of the RCC, that it alone is the church instituted by Christ and it alone contains and promulgates the original deposit of faith left by Jesus and the apostles through an uninterrupted succession of popes and bishops. Sounds lofty, huh? However, when you read the Church Fathers and see how truly rich the history of Christianity is, and when you consider that for the first 1000 years, there really was only one church, it’s reasonable to concede that the core beliefs of Christianity were safeguarded and passed down through some pretty dark periods in history by the Roman Catholic Church.

After the first thousand years, The Orthodox Church split from Rome over issues around papal authority and a dispute regarding the Trinity, but by all accounts they are more in line with Catholic theology than they are to any Protestant denomination.So, truthfully, for the first 1500 years of Christendom (out of 2021), the body of faith as contained in the creeds and the Church Councils up to that period, defined Christianity. Furthermore, when you consider that as a result of the Protestant Reformation, Christianity began an exponential decline in consistency of doctrine and a near cancerous level of division among its believers, it’s not hard to find the continuous line of bishops and Popes who were appointed or ordained in a chain all the way back to Peter. You may argue that such succession has nothing to do with Divine Authority or sound doctrine (and I would agree with you on those points), but the line of succession is certainly there. It really and truly is the oldest institution on earth. Nothing comes close.

I have found some serious chinks in the armor of the Church’s claim as the “one true church,” but it should be acknowledged that there is a heavy body of teaching that properly belongs to all Christian faiths that was rooted in and protected by the institutional Roman Catholic Church for several centuries. So, when Catholics say that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of faith intended by Christ and the apostles, they mean that anything else is just a partial truth. Lutherans only have part of it, Methodists have part of, Evangelicals have part of, but only one church, according to Catholic theology, has the entire, infallible body of faith, and only one church has the divine appointment to interpret Scripture and authorize doctrine. The the mass, the Pope, the interaction of the saints from heaven, and the seven sacraments, especially the Eucharist and the belief that Jesus is present “Body, Soul, Humanity, and Divinity” in the communion elements, —all these are only found in the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, as Dr. Allison explains in the five minute video I posted in my first newsletter, the Roman Catholic Church sees itself as the intermediary between God and the believer—so you MUST be Catholic to enjoy said “fullness of faith.” That is what is meant by the “fullness of faith” and if you ain’t Catholic, you ain’t got it. That was my paradigm for twenty-five years. I embraced it proudly. I also want to be clear; I have no regrets about this part of my life. The Catholic Church introduced me to some foundational formation in my spiritual life. It introduced me to the joy of living in the Holy Spirit and walking with Jesus through the Scriptures.

Here is a five minute I found of a former Anglican priest turned Catholic explaining his own experience with finding “the fullness of the faith” in the Catholic Church:

Part of the joy of being Catholic was this deeply cultural sense of belonging. Whether or not you accept the claim of the Catholic Church as “the one true Church established by Jesus and his apostles,” there is no denying one specific thing; belonging to the Catholic Church puts you in an ancient membership that is bound by a shared sense of duty and a feeling of privilege, somewhat akin to aristocracy or very old money. As a Catholic convert, I embraced this heritage. It fulfilled me with a sense of belonging that was missing from my upbringing as a military brat raised without the bonds of family or community. My family was nominally Christian. Our identity was that we were middle class Americans. We were grounded in the material reality of living day to day. I am not criticizing it—it was actually pretty typical, but being Catholic gave me a sense of supernatural belonging to an eternal family. I loved that when we traveled we could find a Catholic Church and worship in a strange community, hearing the same Scripture passages that were being read at our home parish. In fact, the liturgy is the same anywhere you go in the world. I could go to France and walk into a Catholic Church and follow the mass with my English missal. The Catholic Church is truly the only universal institution on earth. THAT is not a small thing, given Jesus’ parting words in Matthew’s gospel in The Great Commission:

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” -Matthew 28:19-20

It should be noted that a person who is “missing the fullness of the faith” is not perceived by Catholics as having an automatic ticket to hell. The Catholic Church recognizes the salvation of all who profess Jesus as the Lord and Savior of humanity. They just believe such people are saved because of the Catholic Church, by proxy. In other words, they just don’t know any better nd if they really understood, they would be Catholic. I used to believe that as well.

 When I was a Methodist, I envied this sense of belonging to “another world” that I saw in my Catholic friends and the sense of duty that Catholics had toward their faith. I knew Catholicism was a different culture. I craved that sense of family and belonging. It was clear to me that their faith was more than a profession of belief. Their faith was a lived reality; a lived culture that stood apart from the profane material world. One step into a devout Catholic home, and you know you’re in a Catholic home. Crucifixes in the main rooms, rosaries, paintings of Mary. I still find these displays beautiful. I liken it to having photos of family mementos everywhere—reminders of the people most dear to me.

  When I became Catholic at age 27, I embraced my new found membership with the euphoric zeal that is characteristic of new converts. I dove into the experience and identity as a young lover immerses herself into the world of her beloved. My love for the Mystical Body of Christ was a twenty-five-year love affair with everything related to what I had read about God and His Church. I was like a jealous girlfriend, dismissive of any criticism of my beloved and, in fact, viewed every harmless deviation from common practice as simple (but forgivable) ignorance. It’s easy to see how readily I adopted the view that non-Catholic Christians were simply missing the depth and beauty of the one true Church. When Protestant brothers and sisters were referred to as simply missing “the fullness of the faith,” I felt sadness and, truthfully, a sense of superiority as well to non-Catholics. 

This is the belief I lived for twenty-five years. In 2015, that paradigm began to crumble as a series of experiences, historical events, and realizations came together at about the same time I came across Dr. Gregg Allison’s outstanding work in Roman Catholic Theology: An Evangelical Assessment. It is the first and only work of its kind and the first challenge to Catholic theology that I’ve ever read that did not misrepresent Catholic teaching, but actually used the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church as its starting point. This book came to my awareness after already struggling with some unmistakable inconsistencies regarding the Church’s claim to infallible authority.

As I began working closely alongside non-Catholic Christians in the Bible-Belt-South, and as I struggled to bond with my own Catholic community (through no fault of theirs), I became increasingly convinced that living in “the fullness of the faith” had little to do with institutional membership in the Roman Catholic Church and more to do with personal conviction and commitment to living a life grounded in gratitude to God’s ultimate gift, eternal life, through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. In every encounter or conversation regarding faith, I’d hear this internal voice: “They’re not Catholic...but there’s nothing missing.” I would answer the voice with, “There IS something missing. They do not have the fullness of the faith.” I kept looking for that one thing missing but the voice returned over and over, confirming,  “Nothing. There’s nothing missing.”

To put it bluntly, I awakened to a realization that there seemed to be little difference between the Catholic who attends mass out of a begrudging sense of obligation and a Baptist who can tell you the day and hour he was saved, yet feels no need to go to church. Neither is there much difference between a devout Catholic whose faith is directed to Jesus as Savior from a devout, church going, Bible reading non-denominational Christian. The Catholic hears more Scripture in the Liturgy than the Evangelical hears at church. The Evangelical is typically more eager to express the Gospel and share the Gospel. The devout Catholic likely spends more time meditating on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, while the Evangelical is more likely to reflect more on Paul’s writings to the churches. I emphasize that there seems to be little difference between these two. Since I began studying evangelical theology, that difference is becoming clearer and it is not insignificant.

In my own faith journey, I have benefitted spiritually just as much from prayers and conversations with my Protestant evangelical friends as I have from Catholic spiritual directors (a Benedictine nun, a Jesuit priest, and a Diocesan priest). While some denominational differences are irreconcilable, the core, confessional beliefs of Christianity as contained in the Apostles Creed bind the believers in a supernatural and eternal fellowship. This is what I now value more than anything else. It’s still a family membership and it is still redemption from the alienation of Adam’s sin. It is the promise of eternal life with God and eventual reunion with all believers that I hold most dear and sincerely desire for all people.

The sense of superiority I felt all those years toward my Protestant brothers and sisters, whom I sincerely believed were “missing the fullness of the faith,” has been silenced and shamed. The eyes and ears of my soul started hearing and seeing other Christians as equally valid members of my faith family, no longer as people living under a sad error. In every faith conversation I had with Baptists and Evangelicals, I came away with just as much a sense of shared gospel values as I did with devout Catholics I knew and loved.

Eventually, that internal voice , which I am not prepared to claim was the Holy Spirit just yet, actually suggested that maybe, as a Catholic, I was the one missing something. Maybe. It was hard to believe, but I could not ignore the seemingly supernatural, inaudible whisper that kept repeating itself in my heart. From everything I could see, hear, and sense, these were people living very much in the fullness of Christian faith. I learned and felt lifted up by them. I desired their prayers for me and I prayed for them. The voice kept pushing me. There’s nothing missing. Soon I began asking, what is missing in the Catholic Church? Have I been missing out on something? What can I learn from Evangelicals?