Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 26, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
The Catholic nonprofit organization Napa Institute is pushing for more collaboration among Catholic and Protestant leaders to promote cultural values and aims that are common to both communities.
Earlier this month, Napa Institute Board Chairman Tim Busch hosted a meeting among 15 Catholic and Protestant faith leaders for the organization’s first Ecumenical Forum in New York City, according to a news release.
The Napa Institute works to promote the re-evangelization of the United States and the defense of Catholicism in the public square.
While recognizing the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, Busch emphasized that there is shared agreement on many central tenets of the faith, such as in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. Certain goals, he noted, could be better accomplished to the extent that both groups work together.
The two groups, Busch stated, “share a profound concern about rising cultural hostility to core Christian teachings and truths.”
“We all believe in the sanctity and right understanding of marriage,” he said. “We are all committed to defending the unborn and vulnerable mothers. And we know that religious liberty is a fundamental right that must be protected in modern society.”
The attendees agreed to establish a steering committee to host more ecumenical gatherings and to develop more partnerships. Busch also indicated that he would involve “a limited number of Protestants” at Napa’s summer conference.
In an interview with CNA, Busch said some of the legal and political shifts that are of common concern include the arrests of pro-life advocates protesting abortion clinics, the promotion of abortion, and the embrace of same-sex marriage and gender ideology.
Essentially, Busch said there is a “dilution of biblical teachings” in public life. He further said the American embrace of “wokeism” is “really just a form of pagan religion that promises utopia on Earth … [that] fails to recognize it’s not a free-for-all. There are certain principles all of us need to follow.”
“The devil’s really the enemy, but the devil working through people has made an abomination of God’s teaching within our society,” he told CNA.
Busch added that many Protestants no longer view the Catholic Church in a hostile way, in spite of historical anti-Catholicism within some elements of American society. He said “the hatred of Catholics [has been] significantly mitigated” in recent decades, adding there is “an opportunity today that did not exist before to collaborate.”
Catholics at the meeting included Father Ambrose Criste, a priest at St. Michael’s Abbey in California, and Bishop Steven Lopes, a bishop in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Protestant leaders in attendance included executives from Christianity Today and the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
In Napa’s news release on the meeting, Busch indicated that every attendee agreed to work together to promote common values in American culture and law and acknowledge that “spiritual warfare is real and worsening.” He added that “the path forward depends on prayer and our shared faith in Jesus Christ” as a means to advance the common good in the United States.
Busch added that his intention when he began the Napa Institute was to prepare Catholics for what Philadelphia Archbishop Emeritus Charles Chaput called the “next America.” The “next America” refers to a United States in which Christian views and Christianity are viewed in a hostile way.
“The next America has arrived, and as we confront the challenges ahead, it will help us to work with Protestants to defend our faith and the truth,” Busch wrote. “I hope this ecumenical forum is the start of many such collaborations. It may be the first time we’ve done this, but it won’t be the last.”
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Euthanasia belongs on the list of concerns. This is the pro-life issue where we still have a chance
Good news. Thank you.
How does this effort at Catholic-Protestant collaboration relate to Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which has been around for thirty-or-so years?
Working together and respectfully on some common causes can be beneficial in many ways, but some of the statements made by Tim Busch reveal a few of the ongoing problems with various “ecumenical” collaborations. Whenever important beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church are ignored or transmogrified into ideas that are not Catholic, and troubling aspects of Protestantism are also ignored or magically turned into ideas never held by mainline Protestantism, then “Houston, we have a problem.”
Consider the following pronouncements made by Mr. Busch: “We all believe in the sanctity and right understanding of marriage,”…. “We are all committed to defending the unborn and vulnerable mothers. And we know that religious liberty is a fundamental right that must be protected in modern society.”
Since Protestants believe and practice divorce and remarriage, they do not really believe in the sanctity of marriage as Catholics believe, and they most certainly do not have a right understanding of marriage, especially since contraception is considered acceptable practice by Protestants, which demonstrates a wrong understanding of marriage. To suggest that Catholics and Protestants are simpatico on marriage requires a denial of many important aspects the Church has labored many years to make clear and defend against all challengers to these most beautiful teachings.
With respect to religious liberty, it is not without some important limits, because the practice of religious liberty does not give any rights to any errors, such as the error that declares Protestantism is just another way to God. It isn’t and never can be, and such teaching cannot be changed even if a bishop or even the Pope would suggest otherwise.
Next up: Busch said there is a “dilution of biblical teachings” in public life. This is true, but Protestantism is a founding father of such dilutions if not the sole founding father.
And the clincher statement: “The next America has arrived, and as we confront the challenges ahead, it will help us to work with Protestants to defend our faith and the truth,….”
It looks like Mr. Busch is lumping Protestantism in with Catholicism, which is highly problematic. We as Catholics certainly don’t need Protestants to help defend our Faith, and there is not, never has been, and never can be even a “benign” amalgamation of Protestantism and Catholicism that becomes “our faith,” and such is impossible to be the truth.
If Mr. Busch and others of the Napa Institute believe and promote “our faith and truth” as including Protestantism, then such collaborations will do more harm than good. On the other hand, less ambitious collaborations that are more honest and do not praise error-laden beliefs and practices could be a worthy contribution to ecumenism.