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Mohler: Catholic teachings on papacy ‘anathema’

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Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, renewed his longstanding denunciation of Roman Catholic doctrine in the wake of the election of Pope Francis, saying its teachings on the papacy, the church and salvation are “anathema.”

While much of the commentary about Francis has focused on the pontiff’s background and what he might do as pope, Mohler used the occasion on Thursday to denounce the institution of the papacy itself as reflecting a false view of church.

Mohler said evangelical Protestants can be “thankful for the co-belligerency” of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in sharing their support for the “absolute nature of truth,” the doctrine of the Trinity and the opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

But “evangelicals can get very confused” between cooperating with Catholic cultural conservatives and actually sharing their religious views, Mohler said in a podcast posted on his website Thursday. He lamented fellow cultural conservative Gary Bauer’s USA Today commentary saying evangelicals and Catholics are allied on “essential” issues.

Mohler cited the Catholic doctrine that the pope, as the vicar of Christ, can at times make infallible proclamations of doctrine:

“Evangelicals looking at all the ceremony and all the liturgy and all the secrecy and all the mystery must understand what is crystal clear in official Roman Catholic teaching, and that is that the pope has the opportunity and the responsibility under the powers that are supposedly invested in him, to be a conduit of divine revelation.

“That is something that is anathema, absolutely foreign, absolutely in contradiction to the evangelical principle of sola scriptura — of Scripture alone — and of the affirmation of scriptural authority within the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mohler has made similar statements before. In 2000, he called the Roman Catholic Church a “false church” teaching a “false gospel.” He has said that, while Catholics and Baptists acknowledge that individuals in each other’s churches can be saved, they have irreconcilable differences over their definitions of church.

In his podcast, Mohler again rejected teachings that the “pope has the power to dispense merits, to forgive sin, to extend indulgences.”

He also said the Catholic Church wrongly refuses to accept that salvation comes through faith alone in Jesus rather than through a combination of faith and works, a crucial point that led to the break from Rome by the 16th century Protestant Reformers.

“The Reformation of the 16th century required a rejection of papal authority and power” and of the papacy as “an unbiblical office that inevitably compromised the authority and sufficiency of Scripture,” Mohler said.

The Archdiocese of Louisville declined to comment, spokeswoman Cecelia Price said.

The Rev. Frank Ruff, a western Kentucky priest who has long been involved in formal and informal dialogues with Southern Baptists, was disappointed by Mohler’s remarks.

Ruff noted that in 1999, the World Lutheran Federation and the Roman Catholic Church approved a statement that they have fundamental consensus their doctrines of justification, which should “no longer have a divisive force.” (Some Lutheran bodies, however, dissented.) The World Methodist Council signed on to a similar statement in 2006.

The dispute “has really been removed from the wall of separation,” said Ruff, a member of the Glenmary Home Missioners order and a sacramental minister at parishes in Elkton and Guthrie, Ky. “They came to a conclusion in 1999 that what they said about one another (during the Reformation) was an overreaction, and they retracted that.”

Ruff said Mohler is “operating out of old information, probably from the 16th century.”

Mohler, however, said that even in a recent statement, now-Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said that justification is by faith but “would not add that crucial word ‘alone.’”

Southern Baptists in 2001 announced the end of a long-running “conversation” with Roman Catholics over theological and other issues, in which Mohler and Ruff participated. Ruff said he still attends Southern Baptist meetings when he can to keep up dialogues. The two denominations are the largest nationally and in Kentucky.

Separately, Mohler criticized news of the Obama administration’s plans to send Vice President Joe Biden to Francis’ installation. While the Vatican is technically a state, “this is a religious statement being made by a government that supposedly doesn’t make religious statements,” he said.

Mohler has been president of the seminary in Louisville, one of the nation’s largest, for two decades.

H/t Associated Baptist Press.

 

 


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