Roman Catholicism

^{Note: This article was originally posted November 25, 2005.}

^{Note: This article was originally posted December 7, 2005.}

The next time George Bush is watching Fox News and sees himself being burned in effigy in a foreign country, one of his staff needs to tell him, “Don’t take it much to heart, Mr. President. They do the same thing to the Pope!” At the risk of writing for little interest on this website, I thought I would explain what all the fuss is that the Pope stirred up in Regensburg and what that means to Bible-believing Protestants.

Before reading Thomas Merton’s little book Contemplative Prayer, [1] I had anticipated the difficulties in coming to terms with an entirely different system of theology and spirituality–in this case, one kind of Roman Catholic monastic life. I write “one kind” because I discovered that Merton himself would join Protestants in criticizing the stereotyped vices of the monastery. [2] Perhaps it’s best to say that Merton was a very influential Roman Catholic monk, writing compellingly for what he saw as the ideals of Roman Catholic monasticism.