AHC: Mend protestant schisms in the USA

I remember hearing about how anglicans at one point were trying to be in communion with Catholicism at one point but it fell through. (This was in the 1970s if I'm correct.)

So here's a challenge, with a POD after 1900 make the USA's various protestant denominations catholic

I'm talking
Pentecostals
Methodists
Lutherans
Southern baptists
Presbyterians

They all have to be in communion with the catholic church or fall into near irrelevance.

Bonus points if you get mormons too.
 

Geon

Donor
First, I don't see the Mormons being allowed to join the Catholic Church unless they made major overhauls in all their doctrines. Nor in all honesty to I see the Catholic Church allowing them in if they did not do so.

The Lutherans and Presbyterians I think might join if the Catholic Church at some point repudiated parts of the Council of Trent and some of its earlier papal bulls.

The Methodists, the Pentecostals, and Southern Baptists, and let's not forget the independent Baptists and other non-denominational evangelical churches...put simply...NO WAY!
 
It would be nearly impossible to get so many churches to actually join (re-join) Catholics, but I think a coalition type settlement is possible where they recognize each others individuality and don't try to convert members of each others' faiths. Some independent Baptists and Pentecostals, no way.
 
I don't know what your background knowledge of Christianity is, but for most of these groups, there isn't any plausible path towards unity. For one thing, most of these churches are global, not just American. Catholicism in ritual and in doctrine is not compatible with the Protestant denominations, as the issue over the Papacy isn't resolvable, nor are many other issues. Mormons are completely distinct from the other denominations listed, with its own religious text and a cosmology that is completely distinct.

I suppose it is plausible that Lutherans and Methodists, both being really high on the idea of ecumenism, could come to some kind of arrangement; however, both Churches in the US have internal schisms as things stand already. The issue with the Southern Baptists is that they are more likely to internally schism than to be brought on board some new combination.
 
The basic problem with a church merger is that it leaves you with three churches: the new one and the portions of the two old ones that won't accept the merger...
 
I remember hearing about how anglicans at one point were trying to be in communion with Catholicism at one point but it fell through. (This was in the 1970s if I'm correct.)

Anglicans in the USA(aka Epsicopalians) are probably the most liberal Anglicans in the world, and as a whole would want little to do with the Roman Catholic Church. Even a lot of the High Church people(who are theologically and ritualitically closer to Rome) shirk from the conservative social stances of Catholicism.

On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the opposite issue, right-wing evangelicals and fundamentalists who'll march in lockstep with the RCC in opposing abortion and gay rights, but are privately appalled(or at least VERY unimpressed with) Maryolatry, the Real Presence, Papal authority, praying to saints, etc.

Long and the short, it ain't gonna happen. The best you can maybe hope for is to continue the trickle of High Anglicans into the RCC over women's ordination etc, but even then, my understanding is a lot of them prefer to go Orthodox anyway.
 
Being in communion with a church is not the same thing as "merging the two churches into one". For example, the Anglican churches in 1931 went into full communion with the Old Catholic Churches but they still are two separate churches. The German Protestant Church (EKD) has communion with the Old Catholic Churches since 1985.

So if you want to accelerate communion between the different churches you would at first have a catholic church that allows intercommunion (having communion between different christian denominations). After that maybe the whole process will still need decades to get to an communion agreement.

And as Protestant, honestly, merging protestant churches with the Catholic church is borderline ASB. The chance for this went down after that Martin Luther was excommunicated. And even if he weren't it would still have required huge catholic reforms which would have probably triggered a traditionalist split.
 
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