The Christian spiritual tradition calls these the consolations that God sometimes sends us as a foretaste of the delights of heaven. Some evangelicals, apparently, find them so delightful that seeking consolations comes to constitute the center of their spiritual lives. Looking for consolations can lead us to question the Holy Spirit when, because of psychological difficulties or other ways in which God may be testing our faith, consolations are lacking in our prayer and worship. An attachment to and hunger for emotional experiences that repeat the ecstatic moment of conversion an attachment and hunger distinctive among evangelical Protestants we might call spiritual gluttony . It would be too easy to say that evangelicals and Catholics ought to get together because their characteristic spiritual vices complement each other.
Catholics ought to be filled with the energy and zeal that their evangelical brethren so often show.
Likewise, I think evangelicals ought to accept the authoritative voice of the successors of Peter and the apostles not as an oppressive imposition but as Christ s gift and as an aid in evangelization. After all, Jesus asked Peter to take responsibility for feeding Christ s sheep. If at times Peter s successors have seemed less interested in feeding the sheep than in fleecing them, it should still be acknowledged that Jesus wanted the sheep to be fed by Peter, and he wanted the sheep to want Peter to feed them. Since both the pastor and his flock are guided by the Good Shepherd who is Jesus, the leading and the being led are both in obedience to Christ. Catholics are sometimes prone to a partisan understanding of the Church s relation to non Catholics.