The Essence of Protestantism

Private judgment

There is no Pope of Protestantism. Each Protestant acts as his or her own Pope, council, and priest. Catholics call this fundamental principle private judgment in contrast to the public nature of the Magisterium.

Preservation and rejection of Tradition

All Protestants keep part of the Catholic tradition and reject part of the Catholic tradition. Catholics are united to Protestants by what the Protestants preserve from the Catholic tradition and are separated from them from them by what the Protestants reject from the Tradition.

Taking part of the Tradition and rejecting part of the Tradition is called heresy, from the Greek verb that means "to select." By contrast, the Catholic Church claims to have kept the whole of the Deposit of Faith.

Gimme that Old Time Religion

The original Protestants, inspired in part by the spirit of the Renaissance, were backward-looking.

"The stream is purest at its root." The longer the stream flows downhill, the more it is corrupted by other things.

"We have got to get back to the garden."

The Church of the Future

Some Protestants have abandoned historic Christianity and, inspired in part by the Enlightenment, look forward to some imagined future Church.