I’ve Got 95 Theses but the Pope Ain’t One

(For now, anyway.)

When evangelicals stop preaching sermons on Gran Torino and dropping iPods from helicopters on Easter, I’ll start caring about Fatima.

I mean, do I have a Spiritual aversion to the “ceremonies, vows, works, and merits” of my brothers and sisters across the Tiber? Yes, and it is strong, theological and visceral.

But we are Keystone Kops over here. We are the Million Stooges, the overflowing clown car.

I think one reason the Reformation was so brilliant, so powerful, so swift in its spread, and still such an anchor—honestly: Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, et.al., but especially Luther, make me feel sane—for many of us today is because as it was taking shape and rescuing hearts, there was no Protestant Church yet to discredit it.

I never even noticed the ad for the Pope’s book at the top of the page until someone pointed it out to me. But for the last two weeks I have been honestly chagrined to keep seeing the word Evangel with a post beneath it that had nothing explicitly (and usually not implicitly) to do with the gospel.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Lift My Chin, Lord 

Jennifer Reeser

Lift my chin, Lord,Say to me,“You are not whoYou feared to be,Not Hecate, quite,With howling sound,Torch held…

Letters

Two delightful essays in the March issue, by Nikolas Prassas (“Large Language Poetry,” March 2025) and Gary…

Spring Twilight After Penance 

Sally Thomas

Let’s say you’ve just comeFrom confession. Late sunPours through the budding treesThat mark the brown creek washing Itself…