Paranoia, Claustrophobia

U.S. Protestants and Catholics are getting neurotic about each other, says Protestant The Christian Century in an editorial for Reformation Sunday (Oct. 30). U.S. Psychoanalyst Karen Homey once cited a danger signal for personal neurosis: response that is out of proportion to the stimulus that set it off. And this, says the Century, is exactly the way Protestantism is becoming when confronted by Roman Catholicism.

"Probe a 1955 Protestant, and in altogether too many cases you will find him 'touchiest' on the subject of Roman Catholicism. After 435 years, the alarm bells still ring most wildly and the panic flags still flutter most furiously when Rome is mentioned. Not all of this response is neurotic anxiety, of course. It was Rome with whom the Reformers broke; she is the ancient foe; her truth still challenges ours . . . Yet the ferocity of some anti-Roman Catholicism this month will have more behind it than any of this. There is a neurotic Protestant anxiety about Rome which, far from safeguarding Protestantism, gets in the way of its positive self-realization and fulfillment."

The Catholics have an unhealthy attitude, too, says the Century--"Obvious claustrophobia." They feel surrounded, hedged in as a minority, and they respond by "reaching out, pressing out, pushing out, taking instant advantage of every weak spot . . ." This puts Protestantism on the defensive.

"Our problem is paranoia: persecution mania. Because Roman Catholicism has made problems for us somewhere, we begin to see its threat everywhere. We feel chronically picked on, beaten down, abused . . . The fine Italian hand (which is usually here a fairly clumsy Irish one) is seen in everything."

Slum clearance in St. Louis, a Senate investigation of religious freedom, a hassle in Princeton, N.J. over Planned Parenthood and the Community Chest--all such civil affairs may become bitter emotional issues between Protestant and Catholic Christians. "Catholic claustrophobia and Protestant paranoia--these are the matched complexes that tear up American Christendom. What bothers most at this Reformation anniversary, though, is the amount of Protestantism that thinks itself best and most vigorously expressed in terms of that suspicion and resentment . . .

"Protestant, be yourself! That is, stop defining yourself by what you are against. You are not most Protestant when you are most anti-Catholic. You are most Protestant when you are most free. And that freedom is being free even from historic fear and fascination with an ancient foe. A snarling pugnacity will win no battles, will complete no reformation. It is itself a kind of slavery, and the Reformation was and must be a bursting of every bondage save that to God."

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