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Much of the difference, suggests Benedictine Father Jean Leclerq, stems from the great influence that monasteries have had on Catholic life. In monastic spirituality there is a strong emphasis upon withdrawal from the world, ascetic practice, corporate worship through the liturgy—ideals that were all carried over into the life of Catholic laymen. Along with doctrine, Protestantism strongly rejected this otherworldly spirituality. Puritanism, notes Congregationalist Historian Horton Davies of Princeton, dismissed liturgy "as a lame man might a crutch when he believed himself healed," in favor of free prayer, the Bible and simplicity. Davies quotes from a 1641 Puritan attack on Anglican Prayer Book worship as the work of "mere Surplice and Service-Book men, such as cannot doe so much as a Porter in his frocke; for he doth Service, and the Priest onely sayes service." But Davies adds that behind these polemics lay a strong theological conviction that set forms of worship deprived people of the gift of prayer and could not meet the differing needs of congregations.
Also rejected by the Reformation was the Catholic concept that it is possible to get spiritual help through others besides God. Even today, notes Quaker Douglas V. Steere of Haverford, Protestants are highly suspicious of any claims "that would declare, or even imply, that the priest, or the saints, or the Virgin, or the institutional church stand as an indispensable intermediary." Thus Protestantism puts a stronger emphasis upon individual responsibility in prayer and worship than does Catholicism.
Right to Question. In summing up, Benedictine Theologian Kilian McDonnell said that Protestants have a right to question "the noisy efficiency of much of Catholic devotional literature, the ritualism of much Catholic prayer." Equally objectionable is the "raging objectivism" of Catholic theology that emphasizes Christ's real presence in the Eucharist and ignores what is of greater importance to Protestants—"the continual presence of Christ in the believer." On the other hand, Catholics can rightly argue that "there is a profound dislocation of a sacramental nature found within Protestantism." But true Christian spirituality, McDonnell argues, requires both framework and freedom. "Without the framework the way is easily open to a prayer which is emotional, subjective, pompous; without freedom prayer becomes mechanistic, frigid, oblivious to the needs of the local church."