Evangelicals and Catholics: What's the Difference?

In 1992, a group of Evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars began work on a document entitled "Evangelicals and Catholics Together". Its premise was that Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants have reached a point where, in spite of some minor differences, they agree on the essential points of doctrine. Sixteen years later, both the Pope and a leading voice in the largest Protestant denomination in the United States still seem to disagree with them.

Many reading this will obviously respond with an indifferent "who cares?" But with the 75 million American Catholics and 16 million Southern Baptists making up more than 30 percent of the country's population, it is an issue worth discussing. And Pope Benedict XVIII's recent visit to the United States has brought the issue to the forefront.

Before looking at a few of the differences that still divide Catholics and Protestants (particularly Evangelicals) 500 years after the Reformation, it is good to acknowledge the many areas of agreement. Catholics and Protestants believe the same things about God's nature and about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Catholics and Protestants also have essentially the same Bible; the Catholic Bible has the same 66 books of the Protestant Bible, but also adds the apocryphal texts. Catholics and Protestants also agree on a number of political and social issues, including opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research.

But as both Pope Benedict and R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, have stated in recent days, while there is agreement on many things, the differences continue over the most important issues. In reacting to a statement released by the Vatican last July re-asserting that non-Catholic churches were defective or not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation," and that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church, Mohler summed up the impasse this way in a recent article: