"Over at the webpage, Called to Communion, Catholic convert from Protestantism, Bryan Cross, has written a a very kind and thought provoking assessment of my comments on Roman Catholicism over recent years.
Bryan picks up on a point I have made numerous times, both in print and in the classroom, that Protestants need a positive reason not to be Catholic. This is a conviction I share with Catholics such as Francis Beckwith and, apparently, Bryan Cross. I cannot speak for them, but my conviction on this point derives from a number of conclusions I have drawn as a result of my academic research in sixteenth and seventeenth century Protestantism. First, it was clearly inconceivable to the typical theologian at the start of the sixteenth century that the church in western Europe would not be one. It had been so for centuries and, when the great rifts of the sixteenth century happened, it was truly something which shattered the established categories for thinking about the church. This is why both Protestants and Catholics spent much time and effort, at least until the Council of Trent, in trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Anyone who has ever read Martin Bucer will know of the pain he felt at the breach with Rome and then at the subsequent rifts in Protestantism."
For more from Carl, read:
Protestant Amnesia - Reformation21 Blog
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