Though very different in many ways, similar when it matters.

by Mark Coppenger

August 9, 2025, 10:05 PM

Not long ago, in a coffee shop, I found myself seated beside a genial couple with a Martin Luther biography on their table. I volunteered that I was an old Baptist seminary professor and that the book had caught my eye. They said they were Catholic, and she mentioned that she’d done work for both Catholic Digest and Our Sunday Visitor. I told them that I’d once been a subscriber to both of those periodicals as well as others, including Sursum Corda and Catholic Answers. We were all working at our computers, but, now and then, they’d indulge my recollections and questions (Q: Is limbo for unbaptized infants still a doctrine? A: No, not since 2007.) I expressed my appreciation for a number of Catholic contributions, including some medieval writings and the beauty of cathedrals just visited — Chartres and Sagrada Familia. It was a pleasant and instructive exchange.

As for the subscriptions, I secured them as a member for several years of an SBC team of eight who met annually with eight from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whether at the SBC building in Nashville, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, a Catholic order’s house in D.C.’s Brookland neighborhood, or Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. In those days, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution “On Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics,” drafted in response to the just-published “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” a document with prominent signatories and detractors. The resolution encouraged “the Interfaith Witness Department of the [SBC] Home Mission Board to pursue ongoing [and already underway] Southern Baptist-Roman Catholic conversation while maintaining our Southern Baptist confession without compromise.”

From the get-go, we stipulated that this was a “conversation,” not a “dialogue”; the aim was understanding, not persuasion or coalescence. Representing the largest Protestant and non-Protestant denominations in America, we were both convinced that the other side had it wrong on some key issues, and neither of us came to the table with a breezy, “different strokes for different folks” relativism in mind or heart.

Of course, they wished we’d cool our jets over the Five Solas of the Reformation and the “priesthood of believers,” and hoped we might come on board with their sacramentalism, sacerdotalism, and Marian devotion. But that wasn’t the agenda. Rather, we both wanted to be sure that we weren’t cheap-shotting each other along the way. In this vein, I think we persuaded them to stop calling all Evangelicals “Fundamentalists,” and they underscored the fact that we all subscribed to the Nicene and Apostles’ Creed. We learned about “folk Catholicism” and they heard us out on biblical inerrancy.

One day on our lunch break, a theology prof from one of the Loyolas asked me about the Southern in Southern Baptist, and I gave him a quick rundown of Baptist groups, including the American, National, Progressive, Conservative, and Missionary brands. I was a little sheepish in that the list suggested fragmentation, but he hastened to assure me that Catholics were tribal as well. I picked up on his Jesuit school name and asked him about their order’s distinctives. After he noted that five of their eight team members were Jesuit (the other two, diocesan priests plus a Maryknoll Sister), he offered an explanatory joke:

Three priests were playing golf and were getting frustrated as they were stuck behind a painfully slow party ahead of them. But then they noticed the golfers were blind and were working their way gradually down the course as they responded to the beeps of special golf balls, which they gingerly tapped toward the green. Immediately, the Dominican dropped his clubs and delivered a homily on the graciousness of God in providing them compensatory technology. The Franciscan hustled down the course to help them locate the balls and shield them from the sun with an umbrella as best he could. The Jesuit sized up the situation and asked impatiently, “Why don’t they play at night?”

Thus, the USCCB had, in effect, sent in the “tough guys” to deal with scrappy Southern Baptists. And then he added another funny: “There are three things that God doesn’t know — 1. How many religious women there are; 2. How much money the Franciscans have; 3. What the Jesuits are thinking.”

I picked up a third joke when I got back to Kansas City, where I had occasion to report on my conversation to a Jesuit priest from Rockhurst College, now University. Hearing the jokes, he added one he’d just heard at a retirement party: A man came to first a Dominican and then a Franciscan to ask them to offer a novena on his behalf that he might acquire a Lexus. They asked, “What’s a Lexus?” and then turned him away when he explained it was an expensive car, even though he tried to defend his purchase in terms of quality investment in the stewardship of funds. So, he tried a Jesuit, who responded, “What’s a novena?”

Not surprisingly, the USCCB team wasn’t so keen on Cardinal Ratzinger’s work at the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of Faith. I’m sure they were upset at his installation as Pope Benedict XVI, and I know they welcomed his early retirement, making way for the late Pope Francis.

Though I grew up in a small Southern town with few Catholics and a small Catholic church, I’ve had many encounters with the denomination and its legacy, so let me touch on nine others that have shaped my understanding.

Credits to The American Spectator https://spectator.org/a-southern-baptist-among-the-roman-catholics/