Can I Foresee A Situation Where I Could Move to Catholicism?
I’m grateful for this question that someone asked me on YouTube this week and, because this issue of Catholic conversion is repeatedly cropping up, I feel I must attend to it again.
Since the COVID-19 debacle, (and including the high-profile cases of Gavin Ashenden and Michael Nazir-Ali), this issue is increasingly coming to my attention (in a general sense) but this is the first time I have been personally asked about it. I do understand why the question is being asked but in elaborating on my short answer (“absolutely not”), to the best of my ability, this is what I think is happening more fundamentally:
I think the great disaster of evangelicalism is becoming more plainly seen across the Body of Christ (ranging from malnourished individuals entrenched in compromised charismatic/pentecostal churches as well as those parched individuals in more compromised conservative evangelical camps). Compromise is legion whether expressed in poor Bible handling, proud cessationism, liberal theology or hypocritical calls to national repentance.
I think good people are gradually stirring and even waking up but evidently only to roll over and hit the snooze button rather than jumping directly into the cold shower.
When men like Ashenden and Nazir-Ali take the stance that they do, I do not think it is because they are bad men; when people write to me to tell of their own conversion to Catholicism, or their desire to “remain within” other capitulating expressions of the Church in order to be of help, I do not think that it is because they are false.
I think it is because they are blunt.
But blunt ignorance is not bliss; it is a breeding ground for all manner of ill. As I wrote elsewhere (and that people fell out with me about),
Like a pimp’s walk of shame from one whorehouse to another, it is a ludicrous solution for an adulterous Bride and a false, spawning ‘gospel’, to ignominiously traipse to another brothel in search of fidelity.
Nick Franks: “English Bishops Converting to Catholicism” (October, 2021)
I don’t think these people — and these questions — are false but I do think they are currently unfaithful to the plain reading of Word of God.
Blunt Church
What is going on? I think that the net result of the Body of Christ not eagerly desiring the gifts of the Holy Spirit (including the charismatics who often abuse the gifts that do continue), is that the Church are not prophetic. This is why the majority of Christians think that it was the godless governments of the nations who closed our churches, that COVID-19 vaccines were incidental and that denominationalism is slight.
When Anglican Bishops convert to Catholicism, when the disenchanted opt for the apostate Church of England or distressed disciples recognise the great evangelical disaster but chose to attend RCIA classes in response, it is like trying to cut through a block of hardwood with a desert spoon.
The Church have generally rejected the gift of prophecy whether by abuse, mis-use or outright denial and so now good people of sincere faith are opting for what, in their view, is the closest thing to “true religion”. This enchantment with the Popish walls of Rome was J. C. Ryle’s greatest fear for the Church of England and, whether by design or by default, it should be every Christian’s fear today.
My answer to this week’s question, (Can I foresee a situation where I could move to Catholicism?), is because I have been willing to be trained by anguish. I believe that I have eagerly desired and received and increasingly come to wield the gift of prophecy which (rather than some kind of predictive/futurist clairvoyance) is simply a glimpse of and understanding of the suffering heart and mind of God. Hence my inflammatory quote above.
It is not prophetic to opt for the false/extra-Biblical religion of Catholicism instead of the false/extra-Biblical religion of Evangelicalism. It is prophetic to say no to both, pay the associated costs of faithfulness and truth, and, in so doing, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit into the sanctifying wilderness.
As the Church, we have failed to be the prophetic people of God and so, when we come to our junctures of crisis, we opt for choosing a direction from that same bleary-eyed bluntness rather than being sharpened like a scalpel by the radicalisation of the Holy Spirit.
This is what I think is happening: today’s radical is yesterday’s walk in the park.
firebrandnotes.com 