I am grieved by the negativity and glibness in some of the Protestant responses to Beckwith’s return to Catholicism (and, to a lesser extent, by the smugness I detect in some of the Catholic ones). And I am grieved that Dr. Beckwith concluded he should resign from the ETS altogether — I can see nothing in their doctrinal basis to exclude Catholics. So much for Generous Orthodoxy. (Oh, wait. ETS never signed on to that vision in the first place.)

[Sorry to be loading the comments; can you tell I’m waiting in an airport? ;-]

I share Rachel’s concerns. You can always count on Doug Groothuis to say something obnoxious and arrogant! And then you have all the converts for whom conversion to Rome is (to crib from Bono) just a glam-rock version of fundamentalism: right wing politics AND smells and bells! (For a snide commentary on this, consider the shape of the “American Catholic Church” in Walker Percy’s _Love in the Ruins._)

If I ever (finally) make my way to Rome, I’ll be a convert of the Graham Greene sort: a really bad Catholic who clings to ex opera operato as the only hope for “whiskey priests!”

The above comments are right on. I, too, was bothered by some of the “glib” evangelical and “smug” Catholic responses, but I guess that’s to be expected. While from what little I know I probably disagree with Beckwith on many things, I celebrate his decision.

Although it’s likely he’ll find affirmation of “glam-rock fundamentalism” – a great line, by the way – in the Catholic Church, he’ll also be forced to commune with plenty of folks who think quite differently. Beckwith doesn’t appear to have had a close affiliation with an actual ecclesial tradition. In the Church he’ll at least have to contend with a body that will shape and form him, at times against his will, which the generic evangelicalism of ETS and the like rarely does.