Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences: Authority, Section 1

PART II

Authority

Section I

Why the Protestant Rejection of Catholic Authority Exists, and Why It Is Relevant Today

The Protestant rejection of papal and the wider Church authority occurred because Martin Luther and the other early Reformers couldn’t get the Catholic Church (either the pope or Church Councils) to accept the novel Protestant teachings about how Salvation worked. (N.B. Each Reformer had a somewhat different take on it, but more or less basically agreed with each other. See Part III of this series.) So Luther and Co. had to either recant – formally give up their ideas – or split from the Church. They chose to split. 

• The technical term for a Church split is Schism.

Basic Facts About How Authority Works in Catholicism and Protestantism

Protestants reject the authority of both the Pope and the bishops in Communion with him, whether that unity is expressed in a general way or in a Church Council.

• In other words, Protestants reject the Authority of the “Living Magisterium” (the pope and bishops of the current day) AS WELL AS the popes and bishops of each generation back to the Apostles – the collected writings, rulings, and theology of which are collectively called “Sacred Tradition” (Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Churches).
• For Catholics, Sacred Tradition serves much like English Common Law, something binding, yet itself slowly woven together over centuries, a built-up body of doctrine. It serves as a very strong support for the Living Magisterium, and when the Living Magisterium goes against it, as today with Pope Francis, there’s no mistaking were the heresy lies.

Protestantism, on the other hand, although individual denominations have certainly built up doctrine over the last 500 years, still claims to accept only the “Word of God,” the Holy Bible, as its real Authority. (They call Sacred Tradition "the works of men".) Each Protestant generation has to ask, “Show it to me in the Word of God!” as the old-time preachers would say.

• For Catholicism, however, the Bible forms the third branch of mutual support and teaching. Sacred Tradition is 2000 years of the Living Magisterium commenting on the Bible, yet both the Magisterium and the Tradition are older than the Bible itself.
• For example, when the Council of Jerusalem was held, as described in Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament had yet to be written. The Living Magisterium of the time decided an issue authoritatively – a black-and-white decision with no fudging or wordy misdirection as a modern Progressive would produce – and thus created a tradition of clear-cut and binding legislation, all done without recourse to a written Holy Scripture.
• Any review of Sacred Tradition shows no early Church Father taught the Protestant view of salvation; it is truly novel (or was as of 500 years ago).
• Summation: the history of Protestantism shows the dangers of rejecting clear dogmas and the Authority by which these are arrived. Today there are 20,000 some odd (depending on how they're counted) Protestant Denominations. Obviously, the Living Magisterium, Sacred Tradition, and Holy Scripture all three go together and cannot be separated, or only at great peril to the Church. Some modern theologians talk against strict adherence to such clear-cut, long-standing dogmas, calling it a “prepositional faith”, which they claim is Pharisaical: a legalistic religion rather than a religion of “love”. Pope Francis seems to be of that school. (He calls Traditionalists and Canon Lawyers and so on “Pharisees.” But a religion without dogma is a mushy thing enslaved to whatever social currents ripple though human society at any given time. It is "popular" precisely because it doesn’t direct vertically to God, but downward toward the whims of popular opinion. “Fundamentalist” Protestants have no more use for “mushiness” than Traditionalist Catholics do. Church "mushiness" is a mainline Protestant or Progressive Catholic platform: its adherents believe it make belief easier, whereas it easily makes belief impossible.

Protestant Authority

In contrast, accepting only the Bible as it does, Protestantism has thus tended to stress the authority of the individual. “Read the Bible for yourself” is its Authority Motto – though individual pastors can, if they have the right mix of charisma and chutzpah, dominate their flock more than any priest can do.

• Martin Luther himself wanted to be the sole interpreter of the Bible, even though he claimed anyone could interpret for himself. (That didn’t last very long! But the aura of it has stayed with Protestantism till today. For details, see Part III.) 
• Against the Church and all its “priestcraft”, Protestants like to invoke the Biblical passage (from 1 Timothy 3:15) that “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” 
• In other words, one doesn’t need a “church” per se to be saved. (Someone once said to G.K.Chesterton that the Irish were a “priest-ridden people”, to which G.K.C. immediately replied, “precisely because they do not want to be a Squire-ridden people.”)

Conversely, in the Catholic world, as noted above, the Holy Bible is one of three legs of support. Thus, today, the Catholic Church is in full crisis mode (I’d say about DefCon 3, and edging fast toward 2) because the current pope (and many of his supporters) are clearly presenting teachings – teachings popular in some quarters – that go against both the Bible and Sacred Tradition. However, tthey’re actually teaching “mainline Protestantism” and it is a natural development of the “Spirit of Vatican II to make the Church more Protestant-like; i.e., the program initiated 60 years ago is about to achieve what it was started for.

• This could eventually lead to a Schism as Traditionalist and “Conservative” Catholics “step back from the brink”, but two Catholic Churches would be better than what you have in Protestantism: the reliance on the Bible alone (i.e., Sola Scriptura) has resulted in 20,000 some different Protestant denominations.

• A fragmented state (Schism) that Catholics deplore, Protestants institutionalized.

For more info, see PART II Section II.