A Typology: Part Eight

The Roman Catholics
As a matter of fact, the endless and exponential division of the Body of Christ into tribes was the major critique made by the Papists against the Reformation.  It was a legitimate fear for Martin Luther, who had to just get so hopping mad that he started tacking things to churches.  The protest that eventually made Protestants a thing, was initially an attempt to get the Church in Rome to knock off the greed and power-mongering and regain it's focus on bringing people to God, rather than just charging admission to Heaven.
There was a whole lot of Popish nonsense leveled at the Reformers, but honestly that prognostication turned out to be deadly accurate.  At some point, after it was far too late, a couple of Reformed types actually acknowledged this fact, that perhaps the church would have been stronger had we somehow managed to remain unified, but by that point we were actually at the point where we were also starting to realize that perhaps power should not be the Church's department.
Oddly enough, it took until the 1960s before the Vatican actually enacted reforms that would have pacified Martin Luther and John Calvin.  Sometime during the reign of John Paul II, Protestants started to look at Roman Catholics with a little less skepticism, and Catholics started to realize that maybe Protestants weren't such Godless heathen.  Now, lifelong Protestants like me can look at Pope Francis and really feel like he actually represents Christianity pretty well.
And there's something about the rootedness and the spiritual depth of Roman Catholicism that seems really appealing.  Sure, I'm pretty solidly Protestant, because I genuinely feel called to both ministry and being married to Michele, but I can freely admit that Pilgrimage, a practice basically anathematized by the Reformers, has become a rather important part of my life.
I think the thing that I really admire most about the RCs is that they can stay together despite left-right political disagreements.  They also have such a strong brand that people who haven't been to church in years still persistently identify as Catholic.  Of course that last one is definitely a mixture of virtue and vice, but still the power of identity that the RC church wields is pretty impressive.
It is necessary to list Roman Catholics as a sort of third party in the dominant cultural division between liberal-progressive and Evangelical-conservative, because they occupy important space in both camps, while maintaining a distinct identity of their own.
In my own life I have moved from disdaining Popery, to admiring from a distance the sacred majesty of our Mother Church.  I have to feel that this at least partly due to some of the important, if subtle, changes she has made in herself of late.  The fact of the matter is that she changes so reluctantly that every inch seems like a mile.
If there is some deeply ecumenical future in store for the Christian faith, I have this suspicion that it will necessarily be rooted in Rome welcoming her prodigal children home.  It will certainly require the grace of God, but then again that's what the parable of the Prodigal illustrates in the first place.
Admittedly, for now, that's just a crazy dream... really crazy.... no seriously, I should probably have my head checked.