Recently I accepted my mother’s invitation to visit her church on their 125th anniversary celebration.  It was a bit unnerving as well as enlightening. The building is stunning since its most recent renovations, in spite of a catastrophic fire and even more catastrophic “renovation” in the 1970s.

I was impressed by the art  and the craftsmanship involved in restoring that old German Gothic building.

Ostensibly I was baptized in that church, though I don’t have a certificate, a picture or even a date. It likely did happen – Roman Catholics, like confessional Lutherans, baptize children as soon as possible after birth. As devout an RC as my mother is, she would have had it done (and the priests would have seen to it) but any records she was given were lost- probably in the flood of 1987 when most of the crud in my parents’ basement was submerged under four feet of sewer water. The church also had a major fire in 1974 in which many of their records were destroyed, so no help there. And the diocese in Columbus has never bothered to answer my phone calls or e-mails, so they likely have no record either.

I don’t think they would have offered First Communion or allowed interminable hours of CCD to be offered to an unbaptized heathen. So the date of my baptism is likely known only to God or the long deceased priest who did it.

I was raised in the RCC but I left when I was fifteen, after reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church. By the parameters stated therein, I cannot in conscience be a Roman Catholic.

To be fair, growing up RC in the 70s and 80s was a confused mish-mash. Vatican II was a new thing and it was hard to understand the difference between the old guard and those who would like to see the church become a free for all happy Hippie gathering much like today’s ELCA.  Though to be fair, being in a conservative rural area, the worst we saw of Vatican II’s negative influences was the occasional dreadful “folk” mass and the vegan hippie couple who didn’t eat meat or shave and wouldn’t let their kids watch TV.

Vatican II did address many of the Reformers’ issues with Rome- wider access to Scripture and study for lay people and celebrating mass in the local language. But Vatican II never addressed the primary reason I cannot in conscience “come home to Rome.”

In the 9th Canon of the Council of Trent the Gospel is pronounced to be anathema:

One of the most true and sure of the promises of Jesus is shot down in this canon, in spite of the teaching of the Apostle Paul:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10 (ESV)

Is salvation a question of the sufficiency of Jesus’ propitiation alone for our sins or of His sacrifice AND our response to it?

When Mom’s parish Pastor spoke to me at the anniversary celebration Mom presented me as sort of a “lapsed Catholic” though I have been Lutheran for the past 35 years. He was a nice enough guy and certainly as all RC priests are, highly educated. I made it clear that I am a confessional Lutheran, to which he responded, “Would you like to talk about coming back to the One True Church?”

I was taken a bit off guard and didn’t want to get into an in depth theological showdown – though I should have replied that I was baptized into the One True Church when I was baptized. Too bad I wasn’t that quick on the draw.

His invitation to return to Rome, while it was well intentioned and sincere, made me see and hear in my mind’s eye (and ear) the words of my Pastor at my confirmation:

P: Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?

R: I do, by the Grace of God.

Here I stand, God willing. I freely attest the catholicity of Christ’s church, (i.e. that being an LCMS Lutheran is not necessarily essential for salvation) but I cannot profess the exclusivity nor can I endorse the extrascriptural trappings of Rome.

I pray not to be influenced by beautiful buildings and defaulting to my childhood, but to be guided and transformed by Scripture alone, rightly preached and taught. God have mercy.