Before I came back home to the Catholic Church, I spent a bulk of my college days as a part of a predominantly Asian Southern Baptist church community. When you’re a part of this community, you can’t help but get swept up in their religious fervor. Most of the people I’ve met during my time with this community were good people sincere in their belief in Jesus Christ. Some of them were quite admirable in their devotion to Him. They truly believed they were doing God’s work and led respective lives from what I could see.
The community was led by a charismatic and beloved pastor who could draw people emotionally with his sermons. He had a team of associate pastors who would preach on days he couldn’t. In my young Protestant mindset, I thought the only ones who could preach and teach were ordained pastors, ones who had these fancy degrees and years of seminary training. I trusted these men to guide my thinking on Scripture in the right direction. After all, they did their homework.
What got me thinking about authoritative teaching began when the community allowed the laymen to preach on the pulpit. Granted, I’m sure the head pastor made sure that they didn’t go too far away from their own interpretation (instead rather expound on it), but I felt that the pulpit was a place reserved for learned teachers. Otherwise, anyone not too well-versed in Scripture could lead us astray in misguided interpretations. As a Catholic now, this would be akin to giving the laity equal chance at the homily during Mass (which is only reserved for bishops, priests, and deacons).
I didn’t know it back in college, but I was in the beginnings of my journey back to the Catholic Church. When you start to wonder “by what authority?” then you’re inching away from Protestant thinking and into the mind of the Church Jesus Christ founded.
In an upcoming series of posts, I will delve deeper into the topic of Church authority and why it mattered then to me and why it matters even more so now. In an age dominated by both moral and theological relativism, an authoritative Church, i.e. the Catholic Church, is needed to steer Western civilization from the brink.
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