What are the differences between Presbyterianism and Catholicism? A very big question! Several of you asked it – which means it’s really on people’s minds! I’ll try to give it a brief treatment, and we can talk more in class. First, you should know that there are many members of our congregation who are former Roman Catholics – well, we like to say that they are still catholics, but just with a small “c”. What do I mean by that? When we say the Apostle’s Creed, one of the affirmations toward the end reads, “I believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church.” It’s critical to understand what’s meant here. When we come to that line, Presbyterians do not understand that that word “catholic” implies membership in the Roman Catholic Church – a more specific entity, whose leader Pope Francis, is based in Rome, and whose worship practice, called a “mass”, is focused on the Eucharist (or Sacrament of Communion).
In the beginning there was only one church – whose original Bishop was Peter (he who denied Jesus 3 times on Good Friday), and was based in Rome. There’s a lot of complicated history after the early period, but basically “apostolic” means that the first apostle who became Bishop of Rome, again Peter, “passed the torch” of leadership to another bishop, who passed it to another, and so went the leadership…an unbroken succession of Bishops (Popes) going all the way back to Peter. Up until the 11th Century, there was only one “holy catholic and apostolic church” – the one based in Rome. However, there was a schism (“The Great Schism”) in the 11th Century, when the Eastern Church, based in Byzantium, broke from the Western (Roman) Church. (Here’s a helpful chart of all the schisms).
For our purposes, though, the split that involved Presbyterians (eventually) happened in the mid-16th Century, and began (more or less) with an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther. He led a protest movement against many of the abusive and non-biblical practices of the Roman Catholic Church. The beginning of the Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. Luther’s goal was not to start a new church, but reform the original one. But it became evident that this would become impossible. Thinkers like Luther, and a later thinker named John Calvin (who is the original founder of Presbyterianism) read the Bible, and came to understand the church in a different way. The church is not to be identified with a human institution (the Roman Catholic Church), and a human practice, like the succession of Popes whose office is decided by that institution. Human institutions become tainted with human sin, and power (which the church had in abundance in the 16th Century) can easily corrupt human institutions, as clearly did happen in the 16th Century. No institution – not even the church – is ever pure, and because of it’s tendency toward corruption, we can never identify the “true” church with such an institution.
So how do we identify the church? We understand that the one holy catholic and apostolic church is actually a mystical body, not defined by any denomination or human institution. It is an institution whose true membership is known only by God, consisting of believers earnestly seeking to follow Jesus; it’s apostolicity (whew, big word!) owes to the fact that Peter is the one who passed the teaching not the office to subsequent generations of Christians. Not that the institution is unimportant (the church is absolutely critical!) But the church can’t be the thing that enables us to call ourselves “Christian,” or confers on us the status of “saved”. So how to identify the church? John Calvin gave us a very simple way of identifying the church: the church exists wherever the Word (the Bible) is rightly preached, and where the sacraments (more on them later) are rightly administered. No human authority can confer the status of “church,” even though as Christians we’re required to form a church and to live in a community where common rules and discipline are part of our community life.
There are many other ways that Presbyterians and Roman Catholics (or just Catholics, with a capital C) are different – too many to describe here. But here are a few: we have a different form of church organization (much more about that in the video you were assigned); we have a different understanding of the Sacraments, obviously a different requirement for leadership (celibacy for Roman Catholic priests, was not practiced in the early church, was a point of disagreement with the early Protestants, who saw celibate priesthood as non-biblical), and the list goes on. When John Calvin set out to reform the church, he basically threw out every practice of the Roman Catholic Church that he found to be NOT justified in scripture – so that our worship and form of church government is quite extensively different.
Thoughts? Do comment below.
If a Catholic converts to presbyterian do they get baptised again
Interesting..I do hope someday we all come together as one under God.
Sincerely,
Delores a catholic
The union to the only Catholic Church must come from the protestants like Presbyterian.
They are NOT Catholics, they’re Protestants.
The ONLY church by institution by Jesus it’s THE ONLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC AND ROMAN CHURCH.
Christ only instituted one “Church”, and specifically gave Peter the “keys” to His Kingdom. That means he would be in charge until Christ returns. Granted Catholic Church can fail, because it is made up of sinners, however God has kept true to His word by not allowing it to be completely destroyed in over 2000 years.
Who created the “Presbyterian Church”, Calvin a man, I would rather follow the Church Christ Himself institutionalized, the Catholic Church.
God Bless
As an atheist, I find it hard to understand and, in fact find it a total oxymoron for you to justify a church being inadvertently created by a ‘human’, on the basis of his personal opinion in contradiction to another church’s organisational set-up. The fault your founder finds in this set-up is that the leaders of the roman church are ‘human’ and so are susceptible to son and perhaps corruption in regards to doctrine? Right? So what goes for Luther? What makes him so special that the questions he asked of the original church were proven?
To me, you have taken a fairytale, rubbed out the bits you didn’t like (with huge political/social reasons at the time) and accepted this ‘as god’s word’ (with a a small ‘g’).
What gives you the right to create a church in one humans opinion, deciphered from another’s, written by another’s?? (The original scriptors of the bibles) and claim that yours is correct?
Please, don’t feel I am attacking you or you beliefs, I just enjoy the conversation.
#my god is happiness.
For me, the issue is that so much of today’s Roman Catholicism is not Bible originated. I also feel Jesus Christ would openly welcome all to the Communion table, rather than exclude anyone, as the R.C. church does. The disgraceful large scale sin and coverup of priests’ sexual predation on innocent children is another major reason why I no longer attend mass. The church needs to grow and change with the world. That female priests aren’t considered is another drawback for me. My new church has a female minister and I can say I have never met a more gifted speaker or holy person‐ in words and deeds. My children attend church school where they learn the Bible, unlike when I went to CCD we memorized prayers and saints histories– most not in the Bible. Oh, and they taught us that non Catholics were all going to Hell! I will take that risk and couldn’t be happier with my new flock of kind, Bible-based Christians, without all the hierarchy & judgemental mumbo jumbo.
Has all this turned to each one’s understand ,,the. Word seems to be manipulated to their taste..hence staring with sects then business follows… first Catholics and the all these denominations..
It’s easy to pick and choose what elements of Catholic religion you want to receive,but following ALL the teachings of the Catholic Church are extremely hard and as Catholics we have the hardest challenges in following our faith to the absolute fullest. Being something of a subset of Catholic is cheating yourself to Gods Full Graces.