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But rejecting Catholicism is not limited to evangelicals who are paranoid or ignorant. In the heat of the debate after twenty evangelicals signed the first Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) document, R. C. Sproul, then a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Florida, declared, "I am convinced as were the Reformers, that justification by faith alone is essential to the gospel and that Rome clearly rejects it."11 A few years earlier, John Green, a Catholic and an undergraduate at evangelical Wheaton College, had to wonder why his world religion professor lumped Buddhism, Islam, and Catholicism together as non-Christian faiths. (Green graduated with two degrees from Wheaton and remained a Catholic.)12 A Wheaton faculty member who had signed ECT 1 received a letter from a high school friend, with quotations attached from the Council of Trent and the judgment that Catholicism "is a false gospel—a terrible gospel, a gospel if believed and followed will damn a person to hell."13

Mission fields remain sites where mutual rejection between Catholics and evangelicals is strongest. When in the wake of ECT 1, articles in Christianity Today reviewed recent changes among Catholics, one letter writer complained, "Why did neither Colson nor McGrath urge us to consider Catholics as an evangelistic field desperately in need of the gospel?"14 The region that bears special witness to this kind of mutual rejection is Latin America, although some parts of southern Europe also continue to witness harsh evangelical-Catholic antagonism. The extent to which firsthand experiences of hegemonic, mechanical Catholicism can overpower recent openings to dialogue was indicated dramatically by events at the Seventh Assembly of the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF) at Heddson, England, in March 1980. When the general secretary of the fellowship invited two Roman Catholics (one a well-known charismatic) to the gathering as observers, consternation resulted among the Southern European representatives to the WEF. The Italian Evangelical Alliance withdrew, and the Spanish Alliance suspended its participation.15 Meanwhile, in Latin America, despite the mutual respect initiated by Catholic and Pentecostal ecumenical dialogues, evangelical entry into Catholic territory still can lead to church-sanctioned violence. In sum, rejection of the Catholic faith as a less than Christian religion comes in many forms from many kinds of evangelicals for a variety of reasons.

However many evangelicals of however many stripes continue to regard the Catholic Church as a dangerous enemy of the gospel, many other evangelicals are now on record with a variety of more moderate criticisms. That variety can be summarized in the following categories.

First are those evangelicals who have taken careful note of recent Catholic professions about justification by faith but who just cannot believe they could be genuine. Such voices sometimes argue that so long as Trent remains a part of respected Catholic tradition, it is impossible to take seriously Catholics who profess to accept salvation by grace alone.16 Others are not satisfied unless and until Catholics affirm the exact shape of Martin Luther's or John Calvin's definition of objective justification before God.17 Still others say that if the Catholic Church maintains its traditional practices and teaching concerning Mary, it cannot truly affirm justification by faith.18 Yet others worry that the recent declarations on justification represent the victory of a will to unity over a reliance on truth.

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