C. S. Lewis On Roman Catholic Innovations

The Roman Church where it differs from the universal tradition and especially from apostolic Christianity I reject. Thus their theology about the B.V.M. I reject because it seems utterly foreign to the New Testament: where indeed the words “Blessed is the womb that bore thee” receive a rejoinder pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Their papalism seems equally foreign to the attitude of St Paul towards St Peter in the Epistles. The doctrine of Transubstantiation insists on defining in a way which the N.T. seems not to countenance. In a word, the whole set-up of modern Romanism seems to me to be as much a provincial or local variation from the central, ancient tradition as any particular Protestant sect is. I must therefore reject their claim: tho’ this does not mean rejecting particular things they say.

C. S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931–1949, ed. Walter Hooper (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 646–47.

note

  1. i.e., the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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