Another Lutheran pastor heads to Catholic Church
The Layman Online, October 25, 2005
In August, The Layman Online published a story about a warning by Carl E. Braaten, one of the nation’s leading Lutheran theologians, to the president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
In the article, “Leading Lutheran scholar: ELCA’s liberal drift causing ‘brain drain’ from denomination,” Braaten lamented the exodus of Lutheran scholars and ministers from the mainline Lutheran denomination to the Roman Catholic Church. He expressed his dismay over the direction the ELCA in strong words, including “heresy,” “pious piffle,” and “empty body.” He warned that the denomination was on a “trajectory that leads to rank antinomianism.”
Braattan said his departed colleagues were “convinced that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become just another liberal protestant denomination. Hence, they have decided that they can no longer be a part of that. Especially, they say, they are not willing to raise their children in a church that they believe has lost its moorings in the great tradition of evangelical (small e) and catholic (small c) orthodoxy (small o), which was at the heart of Luther’s reformatory teaching and the Lutheran Confessional Writings. They are saying that the Roman Catholic Church is now more hospitable to confessional Lutheran teaching than the church in which they were baptized and confirmed. Can this possibly be true?”
On Oct. 9, the Rev. Tom McMichael of Hope Lutheran Church in Lynden, Wash., cited similar reasons for his resignation from the ELCA to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
“It is no secret that I, and confessional pastors like me, have become increasingly alarmed and dismayed at the direction of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,” McMichael said in a letter that is posted on Pontifications, a Web site. “On issues as fundamental as ethics, sacramental practice, liturgical life, and ecclesial self-understanding, we as the ELCA are moving farther and farther from our biblical and confessional moorings, and from the consensus of the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’ that we confess.”
He added, “I am not alone among pastors when I say that sitting through synod assemblies, participating in task forces, and reading the official pronouncements of our leaders has left me with a heavy heart and convinced me that these differences are irreconcilable. Despite my life-long commitment to and thankfulness for the Lutheran expression of the church catholic, I cannot in good conscience remain a public face to this institution. I do not want to leave the impression that my motivations lay simply in dissatisfaction with trends in the ELCA. No faith community this side of the Kingdom has a monopoly on silly and sinful members.”