Evangelical Catholicism?

April 14, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Again yesterday another lapsed Catholic man contacted us. He has apparently been away from the church for quite awhile, and came to realize that he can’t go back to what he left.

Happily, a message planted by a parochial school teacher or nun (are they always nuns?) had stuck with him in catechism. If you can’t attend Mass or find a Catholic church on Sunday, find an Episcopal or Lutheran church.  (And he found us because we are in the neighborhood, not because of Google or any other informational source.)

Can he find the home he left here? Will he actually come to visit and attend Eucharist? Will he be surprised to find the Stations of the Cross on the sanctuary walls? Will he find grace here?  Can he grow in faith here?

“Can you drink the cup that I drink?” — Jesus

Lutherans like to say that we are “Evangelical Catholics” but that leaves both modern Evangelicals and Catholics confused. Wikipedia has an interesting article on this.  An excerpt: 

“In the era of Lutheran orthodoxy, theologians Martin Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard (especially in his Confessio Catholica) were deeply rooted in patristic theology. They saw the continuity of Catholicism in Lutheranism, which they understood not as a re-formation of the Church, but rather a renewal movement within and for the Catholic Church, from which they had been involuntarily and only temporarily separated.”

Who are the Lutherans?  This caller wanted to know if Evangelical Lutherans were different than “Evangelicals” which are so much in the news in present-day America. That was a conversation-starter.

More and more, there are not only “recovering Catholics” and “ex-Catholics” in my parish, but Catholics who still consider themselves fully Catholic and attend Mass, etc., and yet who also are drawn to our community as well. I am deeply serious about receiving and welcoming them, and concerned that I do not alienate those who are already wounded in some way with my over-anxiety to attract new people. At the same time, I am not on a “sheep-stealing” mission.

This man, whom I still look forward to meeting in person, is also gay—not surprising, given the numbers of both Catholics and gay people in America. In fact, if 10% of the population is gay, then there are more gay Catholics than the membership of the entire Evangelical Lutheran Church in America!

Having noted that, it fascinates me that the ELCA is still so exercised and preoccupied whether and how to welcome LGBT people into the Church. They have certainly spent 100 times the energy on this “issue” in the last 20-some years than they have on the question of whether and how to welcome Catholics into the Lutheran community.

I am concerned about both, and was given a mandate in my parish to be in ministry with LGBT people. As a “practicing homosexual” I could give lessons <faint laugh | old joke>. But I need to learn with much greater sensitivity what it actually means to be an Evangelical Catholic pastor in a parish which is increasingly weighted in favor of Catholic women and men who want to come back to the faith which was planted in them, but must find new soil in which it can once again grow and flourish.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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