Question: Methodists vs. Catholics?
Today’s question actually grew out of two separate but
similar questions, “What is so different about the Catholic Church?” and, “Why
is there so much tension between the Methodist and the Catholic Church?” In order to answer either question we need to
go back several hundred years. Once we
understand how we got to where we are, our differences and any tension can be
more easily understood.
Let’s go back to the early 1500’s. At that time, no one would have referred to
the “Catholic” church but just “the church” because there really was only one church. But that was about to change. In 1517, a German priest named Martin Luther
wrote 95 complaints about the way that the church was doing business. Among these complaints was the way that funds
were being raised to build what is known as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It is a fantastic achievement of art and
engineering but it was incredibly expensive.
The man who was tasked with raising the money, John Tetzel, was an
unscrupulous man who would do anything for a buck. In order to raise money, he sold “indulgences”
which were forgiveness of sins. For a
price, you could buy forgiveness for relatives who were already dead, or even
for sins that had not yet been committed.
If you had enough money, you could buy forgiveness for having a mistress
(and keep her), or you could, quite literally, get away with murder.
Martin Luther probably did not intend to cause the uproar
that he did. His intent was to post his
list of complaints and start a dialog that would reform the abuses of the
church. But as fate would have it, the
printing press had recently been invented and instead of merely posting his
complaints on the church door, they were printed, translated, and distributed
all over Europe. Eventually, the one church
began to splinter into the Catholic Church and various groups of protestors,
known as Protest-ants.
Now jump ahead to 1534.
King Henry VIII is married to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of the former
King and Queen of Spain. But Catherine
was not giving Henry a male heir and, since England had recently had a civil
war over who would succeed the king, having an heir was a big deal. Originally, Catherine was married to Henry’s
brother who had died young and she then married Henry in order to keep Spain
happy. Marrying your brother’s widow
required the Pope’s permission but for Kings and Queens, this sort of thing
could be managed. So when Catherine wasn’t
having any male children, Henry thought that his marriage ought to be annulled
so he could marry someone else. An annulment
required the permission of the Pope but again, this sort of thing was not
entirely uncommon for royalty.
Except for one thing.
Catherine of Aragon’s nephew was Charles V, the King of
Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor.
Charles commanded an army which was just short distance from Rome. Charles told the Pope that he would be (hint,
hint) very unhappy if Henry received an annulment. Since the Pope couldn’t keep both Henry and
Charles happy, he stalled.
For several years.
Finally, Henry decided to break off from the Catholic Church
and create the Church of England, whose head was no longer the Pope, but the
King of England. And so although the
Church of England became a Protestant church, it retained many similarities to
the Catholic Church.
Skip ahead another two hundred years, and we meet John and
Charles Wesley, priests of the Church of England who felt that the church could
do better. In an effort to renew the
church, they began a movement that became known as Methodism (because of their ‘method’
of holiness). The Methodist movement took
the church beyond the walls of the church into the countryside and the
inner-city. The Wesleys and the
Methodists were concerned that the poor did not have access to the church and
the church didn’t care. That movement grew
and spread all over England and into the American colonies.
But then came the American war for independence in 1776.
Although the Church of England was the largest in the
colonies, nearly all of the priests were British citizens. When the war broke out, they left their
churches and went home. This left a
great many people without access to a priest, or to communion, or to baptism,
or a proper burial. At that time, it was
believed that not having access to regular communion, or baptism, was enough to
damn you to hell. Since there were
already hundreds of Methodist lay preachers in the colonies, John Wesley begged
his bishop to ordain some of them so that the members of the church could have
access to communion.
The bishop refused.
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(Continued in Methodists vs. Catholics - Part 2)
Note: I asked our youth to write down any questions
that they had about faith, the church, or life in general. This is a part of that series.
Other questions and answers in this series can be found here: Ask the Pastor
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