There are Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Charismatics, Mainline Protestants, and Fundamentalists. What do all those things mean? Mostly, they mean “Not Catholic”!
It’s hard to be more specific than that, and we do not want to be. Many of us in the 40,000 schisms are Evangelicals. We’re mostly white-collar, educated, and, in many ways, a “better class” of people. We are younger, more modern subdivisions of Mainline Protestant denominations. Some of us have “moved beyond” the Catholic Church. We tend to be “with it”.
We like to keep things vague. That way, there are endless jobs for retired ministers to do “research” on “The vital differences between the Charismatic and Pentecostal communities”. Others do “research” on “The vital similarities between the Charismatic and Pentecostal communities.”
The amount of Evangelical blather on any number of similarly important subjects boggles the mind!
We are united in watching out for the Fundamentalists. We tend to describe them mockingly as “poorly educated extremists.” They do present a danger to us.
Their faith drives them to take The Old Testament seriously. They believe in “Recent Creation” instead of the more educated position that the universe is 15 or 20 billion years old. They believe that something very much like The Flood occurred. They think The Red Sea divided and that God actually set His people free from slavery to the huge government of Egypt.
Why is that so bad? If they take passages from The Old Testament seriously, they might believe “The Catholic Passages” in The New. The Fundamentalist Protestant who believes in Recent Creation might believe Jesus was telling the literal truth when He said “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”
That Fundamentalist thinking may then lead them to realize “Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church. . .” is a true statement that began The Only Church He Founded. Then, they conclude, “I must become a Catholic because it is the the only place that provides His Body and Blood in Communion and that’s what Jesus said we needed to ‘have life’ in us. There is no other logical choice.”
Catholic Fundamentalism is wrong, if for no other reason than it makes all of us in the other 39,999 schism look as if we are all some kind of heretics.
A Protestant Fundamentalist may become a Catholic Fundamentalist. We can’t have that!
