Roman Catholicism is a deficient and degraded form of the apostolic faith. In many struggles with secularism and Marxism, conservative Protestants and conservative Catholics will often be found to have common cause as co-belligerents, but we should be aware that there is no fellowship between the light and truth of the evangelical, apostolic witness affirmed by the churches of the Reformation and the idolatry and errors of the Papacy and those congregations who render obedience to its Bishop who claims to stand in the place of Christ on earth.
Sometimes visitors to RPC remark on certain aspects of our liturgy that seem “Catholic.” It’s true that we desire to be catholic in the very best way, with a small “c,” describing the historical and universal faith of the Christian Church established by Christ on the teachings left to us by the apostles. We have little in common with big box mega-churches that structure their worship as part rock concert, part Ted talk, and part Time Share presentation. We do not believe the Church is a business or ought to be run as a consumer-oriented enterprise. The Church is the household of God, the Bride of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and everything about it ought to be otherworldly, because it is. C. S. Lewis wrote in his Preface to Paradise Lost:
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
There certainly are things that seem strange about our worship in comparison to modern evangelicalism. The pastor wears robes in the pulpit and a collar among the people. The congregation stands at stated times and participates vocally and loudly throughout the worship service. There is a large amount of Scripture read throughout the service as well as the singing of psalms and the use of common prayers from the Church’s history. If Sundays at RPC feel differently than everything else in our lives, that’s because they are different. In corporate worship, God is meeting with us to renew his covenant and bless us. We are ascending into the heavenly realm to worship alongside the true catholic (universal) Church composed of believers in Jesus from among all tribes and nations and generations.
We do not do anything in worship simply because it seems more “Catholic.” We are re-formed catholics, Christians who desire to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that is formed and continually reformed by the Spirit in obedience to the teaching of Scripture. We owe no allegiance, and will show no deference, to the Roman Pope, who as a eunuch is no one’s father, certainly not ours. We adore our sister Mary, the mother of our Lord, but refuse to pray to her or to any other saint who has passed into heaven. We affirm and celebrate the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but there is no crucifix in our sanctuary because we do not regard the Lord’s Supper to be a re-presentation of his once for all offering but the New Covenant fulfillment of the Peace Offering in which we celebrate our reconciliation to God. Nor do we imagine the bread and wine to be transformed by any priestly ritual, instead being content with the teaching of Scripture as summarized by the Belgic Confession:
“But to maintain the spiritual and heavenly life that belongs to believers he has sent a living bread that came down from heaven: namely Jesus Christ, who nourishes and maintains the spiritual life of believers when eaten— that is, when appropriated and received spiritually by faith. To represent to us this spiritual and heavenly bread Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as the sacrament of his body and wine as the sacrament of his blood. He did this to testify to us that just as truly as we take and hold the sacraments in our hands and eat and drink it in our mouths, by which our life is then sustained, so truly we receive into our souls, for our spiritual life, the true body and true blood of Christ, our only Savior. We receive these by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls.” –Belgic Confession 35
Rome’s doctrines of justification by good works, obedience to the Papacy, veneration of Mary, prayers to other saints, and insistence of later dogmas nowhere taught in the pages of Scripture are incompatible with the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We do not seek to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We do not reject anything because it might “seem Catholic” anymore than we embrace whatever may seem current, relevant, and culturally acceptable. We seek to go back to the Bible and the faith of our fathers. To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to these words, it is because there is no light in them! (Isa. 8:20) --JME
