Catholic and Mormon: A Theological Conversation

by Stephen H. Webb

“As for the first question, I wouldn’t have joined the Reformers. I’m pretty conservative about social change and skeptical about radical challenges to the status quo. I respect religious authority too much to call for a religious revolution. Speaking as a Protestant with regard to the second question, I don’t think the issues the Reformers were protesting are still alive in the Catholic Church. So I guess I don’t have any personal grudges against Catholicism. I admit I protest in my own way against secularism and atheism, but not against Catholicism. And as for the third question, about the social and theological results of the Reformation: socially, as you know, it led to chaos, war, and the rise of the modern nation-state to fill the vacuum left by the end of Christendom, while theologically it led to incredible intellectual confusion resulting in the fragmentation of the church we see today. So no, I guess I don’t think it was worth it, for the world or the Church.”