Protestantism, rightly understood, brings the Christian to the great riches hidden in the Word of God. Souls are reborn, families are restored, and cities are rebuilt as the Spirit uses the Word of God to regenerate humans. We must not forget that our Protestant forefathers fought and bled for those blessings.

On April 17, 2025, The New York Post published an article titled “Why Young People Are Converting to Catholicism en masse.” In the course of this explanation, the article details the exponential growth of the Roman Catholic Church. For example, the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a 72% increase in converts from 2023 to 2024. There are many reasons for this, many of them fall outside of the purview of this essay, but one common reason is that, as one person noted while being interviewed by the New York Post, Protestantism doesn’t seem to have theological roots like Catholicism does.

This means many things, chief among them is that the Reformation is just as relevant as ever. The Roman church continues to entice us away from the purity of the truth, and as long as the Roman church continues, the issues that started the Reformation will be relevant. In this piece, I will briefly offer a defense of the Protestant positions, particularly as it pertains to the modern context, of the following doctrines: The authority of the Word of God, justification by faith alone, prayer to saints, and papal authority.

Undergirding this trend of Protestant conversion to Roman Catholicism is a subtle equivocation on what it means to be Protestant. It is an unfortunate reality that what passes as Protestantism today is not the magisterial Protestantism forged by Bucer and Calvin as they recovered the old paths. Protestantism today resembles Anabaptism more than anything. Somewhere along the line, the reasons behind the Reformation became blurred in popular culture. It is pretty common nowadays for modern evangelical Christians to buy into the narrative that the Reformation was fought over whether or not Christ was really present in the bread and wine at the table. But that is not the case. It is also common for modern evangelical Christians to walk into a staunchly Protestant service, such as a Reformed worship service, and walk away thinking, “Well, that was Catholic!” But that, too, is not the case. We must recover the Reformation, and not only recover it, but strip it of its Anabaptist garb. It is against this modern backdrop that I will be analyzing the aforementioned doctrines.

The Authority of Scripture

 Most people interested in this topic and who have done any reading on it are familiar with the arguments surrounding the authority of the Word of God. It is not uncommon for the Protestant to come in and tout that the Word of God is authoritative and therefore Protestantism is true. This is not to say that this is the Protestant doctrine, but one must understand how things are understood on the ground in order to fix the problem. After Sola Scriptura is sloppily presented, the Roman apologist is able to easily sidestep the issue by granting that the Word of God is authoritative and extolling its beauty. The Protestant is put at ease by this; this is where the Romanist makes his claim— the Bible is authoritative, but it must be authoritatively interpreted, and that is what Protestants lack.

In a culture built on top of post-modernism, this argument holds sway. Who is to say what the Bible really means? Afterall, we have all been taught since we were children that authorial intent doesn’t exist and interpretation is more or less a work of creativity. Thus, the cultural staple of post-modernism functions to undermine the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, which teaches that Scripture is able to be understood and interpreted. This weak point opens up the Protestant to seek stability, objectivity, and truth in the Papacy as the supreme interpreter of scripture.

To combat this and keep Protestants from being swept up by the Romanist claim to authority, the Protestant church must recover the proper doctrine of perspicuity. At its core, the doctrine of perspicuity is the belief that the scriptures may be read and understood, even by the layman. Christ, when confronted with traditions that conflicted with Scripture, held up the Word of God as the authority in the matter: “They teach as doctrine the precepts of men…” And his solution was not to appeal to an ultimate and unquestioned interpreter but rather to appeal to the senses of the hearer: “Listen and understand.” (Matthew 15:9-11) This means that Christ recognized that Scripture, far from being vague and unintelligible to the average reader, was able to be perceived by those who heard it.

Of course, the perspicuity of scripture must not be taken too far. In things pertaining to salvation, the Scripture is perspicuous, but that is not to say that Scripture is equally clear on all topics. It is also unwise to conflate perspicuity with private interpretation. We must teach that Scripture is perspicuous and should be interpreted within the community of believers over generations. In other words, the Church must play a significant role in interpreting Scripture, but it must not be forgotten that it is the individual believer who must perceive the doctrines of Scripture in order to have true faith.

Justification by Faith

Many are very surprised to read the Catholic catechism and find statements from the Romanists extolling the role that the grace of God plays in their salvation. For example, section 1996 states that “Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” Most Protestants, having been taught that Romanists don’t have any concept of grace, are caught off guard by these official teachings. Especially Protestants from an Arminian background, which is most Protestants at this point, are prone to believing that there is no substantial difference between the Protestant and Roman Catholic view of justification. If one is coming from a dogmatically Arminian background, this may actually be true.

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