Officials of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board announced early this year that their involvement with the Roman Catholic-Southern Baptist Conversation would end in 2002.

This statement begs the question... If NAMB executives believe they have already reached the end of what this official "conversation" can produce, then why continue this dialogue at all? Why spend more Cooperative Program funds on something that NAMB believes will not produce anything of benefit? We Southern Baptists have already published what we believe, and Roman Catholic officials have published what they believe. These publications have been officially approved by each body. No amount of private "conversation" with individuals will change these published beliefs. So, what’s the point of being involved in any more meetings?

One of the SBC team members explained to me that he sees these meetings as an opportunity to bear a Gospel witness to individual representatives of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. But if this is so, then it certainly does not require an "official dialogue" nor thousands of dollars of Cooperative Program funds to do so.

"Reconciliation" is a biblical concept if properly defined, but ecumenists often redefine the words they use. Many people are deceived into thinking the "reconciliation" being promoted is biblical, but in the terminology of Roman Catholic ecumenism, "reconciliation" means an eventual "full visible unity" with Roman Catholicism (see Ut Unum Sint). "Full visible unity" would require recognition of sacramental faith and the pope as head of the universal church. This was recently emphasized during a conference at Beeson Divinity School by ECT author Richard Neuhaus and also by a leading RCC member of the RCC/SBC dialogue, Jeffery Gros.

Now, after thirty years of "conversation" with SBC leaders, the truth is clear... although the stated goals for the RCC/SBC Conversation have been to gain mutual understanding, both teams have had other objectives as well. Some Southern Baptists participants have hoped to convert Roman Catholic leaders to a biblical faith, and Roman Catholic leaders have wanted to generally influence Southern Baptists to accept their sacramental faith as valid.

This should be no surprise to anyone. Certainly, for evangelistic Southern Baptists sharing the Gospel is an unstated motivation behind every conversation. But even with good motives assumed, SBC officials must be careful of private meetings with RCC leaders. Regardless of how well our brethren may present the truth of the Gospel, if it is done in this sort of closed-door private, official dialogue, then each participant is at liberty to publicly re-interpret what was said in the meetings any way he might chose. As with other official dialogues involving the Roman Catholic Church, this officially sanctioned dialogue continues to be used to mislead and misinform Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists alike. This purposeful process of ecumenism is so slow, so incremental, that it is seldom even recognized by many evangelicals.

Over the past few years, each time the RCC/SBC Conversation has met, it has been followed with a statement posted by RCC leaders. Consistently, these statements have advanced the false impression that Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics recognize each other as Christian communities, and as such are gradually moving toward reconciliation (full visible unity). Typically, SBC participants have allowed this public misinformation to go on unchallenged in the public arena. Thus, incrementally, many Southern Baptists have been influenced into accepting something that contradicts the Gospel we profess to believe. (As we have previously reported, there are Roman Catholic organizations in the US that actively recruit unwary Southern Baptists to assist them in establishing a Catholic presence in areas dominated by evangelical churches. RCC/SBC Conversation member Frank Ruff is a leader in one of these organizations targeting areas where Southern Baptists are strong.)

To illustrate this... on September 17, just a little over a week after the RCC/SBC Dialogue met at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the National Council of Catholic Bishops posted a brief statement about the focus of the dialogue meetings. In that statement Rome’s ecumenical agenda is again advanced, being cleverly couched in language that is generally non-offensive to unsuspecting evangelicals. Here is the text of that statement, with my comments inserted in [[double brackets]]...

Salvation Is Theme of
Southern Baptist-Catholic Conversation

http://www.nccbuscc.org/comm/archives/2001/01-164.htm

WASHINGTON (September 17, 2001) -- The understanding of salvation among Southern Baptists, and how the Southern Baptist interpretation differs from the Catholic perspective, was the theme of a recent Southern Baptist-Catholic Conversation.

Participants in this Conversation met at South Eastern Baptist Seminary, September 6-8. They discussed a paper by Dr. Rudolph Gonzalez of the Department of Interfaith Evangelism of the North American Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention. [[Dr. Gonzalez is an able theologian, and I have no doubt his was a very clear presentation of the Gospel. But here again, since all of this was presented and discussed in closed-door meetings, it is subject to being misreported or the purpose of the meetings misconstrued. This is demonstrated a little further on in this statement.]]

The paper took up themes originally outlined from a Catholic perspective by Father Stephen Duffy of Loyola University, New Orleans.

Among the themes discussed were what salvation is, how it comes about, salvation as a present reality, the means of salvation, whether salvation can be understood as assured, the salvation of those who do not know Christ, and the differences between Catholics and Southern Baptists in their social ministry as it relates to salvation.

 

For most people, differing views between Catholics and Baptists over the means of salvation may be the most well known contrast between them. For example, the Eucharist and Baptism are not sacraments for Baptists, as they are in Catholicism, and are seen as much less central to salvation. [[It may seem a small point to some, but the Eucharist and Baptism are not "less central to salvation" for Southern Baptists (and for all Bible-believing Christians); they have absolutely nothing to do with "the means of salvation." And herein is revealed a very dangerous misunderstanding regarding ecumenical conversation.

But the Scriptures teach a NARROW way, a narrow Gospel, "and few there are that find it." Does it need to be repeated that those who believe in a sacramental gospel are not true Christians, regardless of how sincere and kindly and moral and spiritual they may appear to be? Apparently, even some on the SBC dialogue team do not accept this as true or they would not endorse ECT documents which promote practicing sacramentalists as Christians.]]

Participants said the conversation was productive for both Catholics and Baptists as an occasion to clarify differences and to educate one another on what language, practice and faith really mean. There was no attempt at this Conversation to come to a common agreement, or even to present a formal report of the results to the sponsoring bodies. But the hope was expressed that the encounter will provide a service to Baptists and Catholics, who live and work together, marry one another, and provide common Christian witness in communities across the country. Catholics and Baptists are the two largest Christian communities in the United States. [[If the truth about theological differences was honestly acknowledged by all participants involved, then the statement that Catholics and Baptists are both "Christian communities" could not be made truthfully. The theological differences between what the RCC officially teaches (as stated in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church) and what Southern Baptists generally confess to believe (as summarized in The Baptist Faith and Message) are differences so fundamental and non-negotiable as to make the two systems of belief utterly and completely antithetical to each other.

It is no minor difference that faithful Roman Catholics are taught to trust in salvation dispensed to them through sacramental religious works. How much conversation does it take to say to Roman Catholic representatives, "We love you, but the gospel you believe is NOT the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and thus, we can not just stand by and allow you to publicly project the falsehood that we are all Christians together"?

Ecumenical operatives know that if the majority of evangelicals continue to be silent about this issue, if we allow RCC leaders to continue to project that we are all Christians together, then many of our children will eventually marry Roman Catholics. Why not, if they are Christians, too? Over the past thirty years this patient strategy has worked particularly well to counter Southern Baptist mission work in Catholic dominated areas. Because of the silence of our pulpits regarding this vital issue, here in south Louisiana the majority of our own children marry those raised to believe a sacramental false gospel. Most of the time we then lose our children and grandchildren, those who should be the future leaders of our churches, to a false gospel that can not save.]]

Dr. Paige Patterson, former president of the convention and president of South Eastern Baptist Seminary together with his wife Dorothy, hosted members of the Conversation during the meeting. Dr. Alan Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, shared his experience of Catholic and Protestant conversations on the occasion of the Billy Graham Crusade in that city. Sister Joan Delaney of the Maryknoll Sisters discussed her research on Maryknoll and Southern Baptist collaboration in China during the difficult days of the Second World War.

For additional information contact Brother Jeffrey Gros of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), 202-541-3020, or Dr. Gonzalez, 770-410-6346.
__________________________________
Office of Communications
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 (202) 541-3000

Generally, Southern Baptists have no idea that much of the difficulty in growing biblically conservative churches in Roman Catholic dominated areas can be attributed to the ecumenical involvements of SBC leaders over the past thirty years. SBC leaders have been tragically slow in responding to the cries of SBC missionaries whose evangelistic efforts are contradicted because of the ecumenical involvements of some Convention leaders.