Richard Rex, Catholic Herald
Thursday, October 16, 2025
The pivotal doctrine of Protestantism, which arose in the 16th century, was encapsulated in the easy and elegant slogan: justification by faith alone. The other great pillar of original Protestant teaching derived from the same root. “Scripture alone” (the “Word of God”) had to be the only channel for religious truth because if such truth depended on tradition or the Church, it depended on fallen human beings and could not be relied upon. No longer anchored to the rock of Peter, these little vessels that are the Protestant denominations are towed where they will by the states that separated them from Rome. They find themselves today espousing a moral order and an understanding of humanity in flagrant contradiction of the biblicism they once avowed.
