In recent decades it has become quite common for Protestants to make the claim that they are both catholic and evangelical.  By “catholic” they mean that they are part of the Church of Jesus Christ, which we and they describe in the creed as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.  Some like to speak of “the catholicity of Protestantism”[1] or “evangelical catholicity.”  Ten years ago two Lutheran theologians established in Minnesota a “Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology,” the avowed purpose of which is “to retrieve, in the light of the Reformation critique, neglected treasures—doctrinal, institutional, and liturgical—of the catholic tradition.” 

For me, and I suppose for many of us, this trend within Protestantism raises the question whether Roman Catholics can aspire or claim to be evangelical as well as catholic.  Should not our church seek to live by the gospel of Jesus Christ?  Or are we content to be classified as unevangelical Christians. 

The term “evangelical” does not have a single well-defined meaning.  The mendicant orders of the thirteenth century—the Franciscans and Dominicans—were evangelical in the sense that they aimed at a purer expression of the gospel ideals within Catholic Christianity.  The sixteenth century witnessed the birth of many “evangelical” movements, such as the Society of Jesus, that were Catholic to the core.  The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola is essentially a set of meditations designed to bring about a conversion inspired by the Gospels and to impart a way of life patterned closely on that of Jesus and his original disciples. 

Since the sixteenth century, the term “evangelical” has come to denote certain particular forms of Protestantism.  In continental Europe Lutherans are to this day known as “Evangelicals” (evangelisch) because they cherish what Paul meant by the gospel: the good news that God, through sheer mercy, justifies sinners who place their faith in Jesus Christ.  In eighteenth-century England the term “evangelical” came to designate a party in the Anglican communion that opposed the “catholic” tendencies of the high church.  In place of sacraments, liturgy, and hierarchy, the Evangelicals emphasize scripture, preaching, and faith.  British Methodists were tireless in the zeal to proclaim the word of God throughout the world. 

In its American form, “Evanglicalism” grew out of the awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It attaches special significance to a once-for-all moment of conversion and personal experience of having been saved.  Many Evangelical Christians, especially in the South, are theologically conservative.  Some are Fundamentalists. 

At the Council of Trent the Catholic Church gave its official response to the Protestant Reformation.  It asserted its intention to preserve the purity of the gospel, which had been promised through the prophets in Holy Scripture, and then promulgated by Christ, who ordered that it be preached to all creatures as the source of all saving truth and moral instruction (fontem omnis et salutaris veritatis et morum disciplinae) (DS 1501).  The Council described Scripture and tradition as means whereby the gospel is transmitted to successive generations.  Trent’s teaching is in some sense evangelical because it accords primacy to the gospel as the source of saving truth.  But in understanding the gospel as a norm for conduct as well as for faith, the Council repudiates Luther’s sharp contrast between law and gospel.  Trent denies that faith in God’s mercy, without observance of the commandments, suffices for salvation (DS 1569-70). 

The four centuries between Trent and the Second Vatican Council represent a growing cleavage between Protestant and Catholic Christianity, each dwelling on, and sharpening, its difference form the other.  Catholicism prided itself on being the Church of hierarchy, sacraments, and law; Protestantism pointed to grace, the Bible, and faith as a means of salvation. 

In the ecumenical climate of the twentieth century, Protestants and Catholics began to read one another’s works more sympathetically.  Evangelical Protestants, as I have said, sought to reawaken their catholicity, which had become dormant.  Conversely, Catholics reaffirmed certain evangelical themes such as interior conversion, biblical piety, and the imperative to evangelize. 

Vatican II registered this change of attitude.  A word count of the occurrence of term “gospel” and its cognates is instructive.  Vatican I, in the nineteenth century, had used the term “gospel” only once and then only to designate books in the New Testament.  It did not use the word “evangelization” at all.  Vatican II, by contrast, used the word “gospel” (evangelium) 157 times, the verb “evangelize” eighteen times, and the noun “evangelization” thirty-one times. 

Paul VI first brought this evangelical shift to public attention to his apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi.  The whole purpose of the Council, he said, was “to make the Church of the twentieth century ever better fitted to proclaim the gospel to the people of the twentieth century” (2) – in other words, to evangelize.  By “evangelization” he meant not only oral proclamation but the entire process of bringing the gospel to bear on individual lives, families, cultures, and societies.  Understood in this way, he said, evangelization is “the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity.  She exists in order to evangelize” (14). 

Pope John Paul II, in the footsteps of Paul VI, has equated the entire mission of the Church with evangelization.  At Santo Domingo in 1983, he launched his program of “new evangelization”—a theme to which he has returned in countless addresses and letters, not least in the encyclical Redemptoris missio (1990). 

For us Americans the post-synodal exhortation Ecclesia in America (1999) has special importance.  It is a ringing endorsement of three essentials of evangelical Christianity; personal conversion to Jesus Christ, the priority of Scripture, and missionary proclamation. 

Personal conversion to Jesus Christ is the leitmotiv of the entire exhortation.  The first chapter, which sets the tone, bears the title “The Encounter with the Living Jesus Christ.”  Conversion, John Paul insists, means a radical change of mentality and of attitudes; it requires personal assimilation of the values of the Gospel which, he says “contradict the dominant tendencies of the world. ‘The encounter with the living Jesus Christ’ must be constantly renewed since this encounter, as the Synod Fathers pointed out, is the way ‘which leads us to continuing conversion’ “ (28). 

As a means to this personal encounter and conversion, the Exhortation points to Holy Scripture (26).  The Synod Fathers, according to the Pope, recommended the importance of promoting “knowledge of the Gospels, which proclaim, in words easily understood by all, the way Jesus lived among the people of his time.  Reading these sacred texts and listening to Jesus attentively, as did the multitudes of the mount of the Beatitudes, or on the shore of the Lake of Tiberias as he preached from the boat, produces authentic fruits of conversion of heart” (12).  At another point the Pope declares:  “The Church in America ‘must give a clear priority to prayerful reflection on Sacred Scripture by all the faithful.’  This reading of the Bible, accompanied by prayer, is known in the tradition of the Church as lectio divina, and is a practice to be encouraged among all Christians” (31).  Again in the last chapter the Pope writes:  “Everything planned in the Church must have Christ and his Gospel as its starting point” (67). 

The third priority, missionary proclamation, follows almost automatically from the first two.  “The first impulse coming from this transformation [produced by encounter with the living Lord] is to communicate to others the richness discovered in the experience of the encounter.”  Those who respond to the call of Jesus to “come and see” (Jn 1:38-39), as did the Samaritan woman, go forth and invite others to “come and see” (Jn 4:29). 

The Apostolic Exhortation can therefore assert:  “The basic task for which Jesus sends out his disciples is the proclamation of the Good news, that is, evangelization (66).  The rapidly changing situation of the Church in the world calls for a new evangelization, which must have as its “vital core . . . a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the person of Jesus Christ” (66). 

 Ecclesia in America goes on to say that the Church cannot be satisfied with merely nominal Catholicism.  Lest her members go elsewhere in their search for vibrant faith, the Church must instill in them a faith that is conscious and personally lived (73).  Nor can the new evangelization be restricted to revitalizing the faith of regular believers; it “must strive as well to proclaim Christ where he is not known” and thus to engage in what John Paul II calls “the mission ad gentes” (74). 

The three elements of evangelical religion form a vital circle.  Evangelization arises out of personal conversion through meditation on the Gospels, but evangelization in turn leads to biblical study and conversion.  Meditation on the Bible leads to deeper conversion and sharpens the impulse to evangelize. 

As a result of the evangelical turn in Catholic teacher, the charismatic renewal of the 1970s, and the pro-life movements of the past thirty years, numerous interchurch consultations have taken place, both on the international level and especially here in the United States.  A number of individuals and private initiatives have sought to narrow the gap between Evangelicalism and Catholicism.  In Madison, Wisconsin, there is an organization under Catholic sponsorship that goes by the name, “The Evanglical Catholic.” 

How far can the convergence go?  Can we look forward to a Church that equally well be called Catholic and Evangelical?  There is surely room for greater convergence, which should result in benefits for both.  Catholics, without ceasing to be Catholics, can accept central features of Evangelical Christianity.  They can place their trust in the Lord Jesus as personal Savior, provided that this includes trust in the Church and the sacraments as the instruments through which the Lord normally speaks and comes to us.  Catholics can accord a certain primary to Scripture as the word of God in written form, provided that they read Scripture in the light of tradition, which is likewise from God.  Catholics can and should be committed to evangelization, provided that they understand evangelization as including sound doctrine, transformation of culture, and reform of social structures. 

Evangelicalism, for its part, can greatly benefit by retrieving the riches of tradition, giving greater attention to doctrine, liturgy, sacraments, ecclesiastical office, and social engagement.  But Evangelicalism would lose its specific identity if it abandoned its Protestant interpretation of the Reformation watchwords:  Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and Scripture alone.  They could hardly affirm all the dogmas of the Catholic Church and still be Evangelicals in the accepted meaning of the term. 

I would distinguish, therefore, between the substantive and adjectival use of the terms “Catholic” and “Evangelical.”  Persons who are Catholics, with a large “C” and in the substantive sense, can be adjectivally evangelical (with a small “e”).  Conversely, Protestants who are Evangelicals in the substantive sense, can be adjectivally catholic, with a lower-case “c”.  Substantively, one must be one or the other.  To combine the two is like squaring the circle – a goal that can always be approached but never quite attained.