Catholic Journey

Taking leave

2009-09-30T18:09:00.000-04:00

I'm not bloggin' here anymore for a couple of reasons.

Here's the first one (or, really, the first three):

Moving forward, if I blog it will be at DansLaTradition.Blogspot.com.

Nothing better than bad arguments

2009-09-21T23:35:00.001-04:00

Yes, sometimes I'm an echo chamber.

Michael Liccione's Bad Arguments Against the Magisterium

In this part, I shall rebut the argument that adherence to the Magisterium puts a Christian in no better a position to know the content of the deposit of faith than the major Christian alternatives.

I used to make some of these bad arguments. I thought I made them well... but...

the fundamental difficulty with the argument in question: there is no ecclesiologically neutral methodology for determining who interprets Scripture correctly, and who thus knows their interpretations to be binding and irreformable for the whole Church's assent of faith as distinct from tentative opinions. Some Christians appeal to a "burning in the bosom" or to their holy people of choice to confirm their interpretations; but such inherently subjective arguments can yield nothing that is rationally compelling and authoritative for the Church as a whole, without an ad hoc and doctrinally front-loaded limitation on who counts as "the Church."

I challenge thee...

2009-09-07T10:02:00.002-04:00

Over the weekend I had the great fortune of seeing my mom duel with a Johova's Witness.

It's interesting to watch two sincere believers encounter one another in that space reserved for conversion. I'm talking about the whole experience, the facial expressions, the body language, the words chosen. If you were walking down the street and saw them talking, my mom and the Jehova's Witness, you would have assumed they were old friends from way back, and that's profound all by itself but magnified in intensity when compared to the TNT deathvests—with their nails, screws and ball berings—worn by witnesses of other 'faith'.

I am so thankful to live in the United States, and I am deeply appreciative of all religions that foster a missionary zeal that's based on a principle of love, dignity, and respect. And I'm doubly thankful to have a mom who has lived this in front of me, who has always engaged missionaries from other religions precisely because she values them as human beings, regardless of their skin color, their religious affiliation, their economic background, their political persuasion.

I've thought about it all weekend long, the dueling interpretations of Scripture. This one quotes a verse and says what it means and relates it to a larger vision; the other accepts the verse but rejects the derived meaning and vision, reinterprets the verse, and offers that back as an alternative, which is, of course, declined. And so on, with lots of affectionate body language.

I could meditate all week on the nature of this encounter as an act of compassion and love; I could also meditate on the implications of 'dueling interpretations', how rival meanings are derived in the first place and whether—or to what extent—Protestantism is capable of something more than competitive interpretation. Alvin Plantinga has provided my point of departure. Now all I need is time.

Brethren, be joyful. Try to grow perfect; help one another. Be united; live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. 2 Corinthians

Comparing Scripture

2009-09-06T21:36:00.000-04:00

Comparing the section heads and section contents of, say, a Hebrew, Greek (ie, LXX), Catholic, and Protestant Bible is pretty interesting. Throw in some chronological order, and it's about fascinating.

This is a truly humbling exercise.

Trying to understand the cone of certainty

2009-09-02T09:35:00.015-04:00

The 'cone of certainty':

'Jesus' goes at the top of the cone, the place of highest certainty, and then we work our way down and out into theological and doctrinal issues increasingly less certain. I get it; is useful.

However, let's not forget that the Christian 'Jesus' is more conclusion than premise. It is increasingly difficult even for a Christian to put Jesus atop a cone of certainty and to be sure that everyone within his circle of friends naturally agrees with him about who and what this name 'Jesus' precisely means. As long as we remain artfully vague—using phrases like keep Jesus at the center of your life—then it's easy to imagine that everyone knows what we mean when we place 'Jesus' atop a cone of certainty.

I'm saying the collocation of letters 'Jesus' doesn't automatically signify an absolute meaning. Theological discourse (or theological conversation) is precisely the thing that helps us determine what we mean by 'Jesus'. But in that case, 'Jesus' would be at the bottom of a cone of theological discourse, not the top.

In that case, we'd begin with the most general statements, like, for example, we human beings are not imaginative projections but real creatures, eventually working our way down to more precise statements like Jesus is 'homoousios' with the Father.

Also, it's worth noting what the (Protestant) 'cone of certainty' (as it was described to me) leaves out.

I don't want to misstate the case or put a finger in anyone's eye, so please do assume my errors are innocent, then correct them if and when you see any. I should say too, in fairness, that the 'cone of certainty' wasn't designed to address Catholic concerns, which is perfectly reasonable. I'm not trying to say the cone is worthless or false; I'm just trying to understand it and then respond to it from a Catholic perspective.

As I said, the 'original' cone is useful; I just think it's worth saying (again and again) that presenting 'Jesus' as the certain truth presiding over an increasingly less certain 'understanding' or 'description' of him seems like a kind of fideism to me. It seems like a reverse certainty. It just doesn't make much sense.

Help me understand?

Cone of certainty

2009-09-01T09:21:00.004-04:00

Over the weekend I had the privilege of meeting and chatting about faith with a reformed guy, a friend of a friend, who was interested in hearing a little about my turn to Catholicism. For my part, I was interested in his feedback, his take on some of the issues that moved me, finally, into Catholic communion.

He brought up a number of interesting things, one of which was Richard Pratt's conception of the cone of certainty, and I've tried to create a visual of it based on the description he provided.

Is that a fair visualization? Anyone agree or disagree with the cone of certainty?

(more to come...)

The new, the old, the new-old

2009-08-30T21:34:00.003-04:00

I met a really sharp brain of a guy this weekend, PhD student—Chapel Hill—and he's working out the details of a new–new perspective on Paul for Protestantism.

Basically, for 1,800 years or so, everyone has misunderstood Paul, right? Even those responsible for the old–new perspective on Paul (ie, Dunn, Sanders, Wright). No worries, though: the new–new perspective is coming.

I listened, and I appreciated the incredible skill it takes to do that kind of thing but was also thrilled to be Catholic before, during, and after the over-dinner talk.

What denominations—with what technical innovations and socio-historico-critical breakthroughs—have yet to emerge over the course of the next 500 years?

Catholic Shakespeare

2009-08-29T10:25:00.004-04:00

Russell Hillier (Literature and Theology, 2009 23:359-363) reviews David N Beauregard’s 2008 book entitled Catholic Theology in Shakespeare's Plays:

An important study and a major contribution within the field of Shakespeare scholarship. Beauregard's book provides a wealth of convincing evidence for Shakespeare's Catholic sensibilities that will be exceedingly difficult for Renaissance scholars to ignore or to refute. Beuaregard's assured marshalling of a plethora of Shakespearean proof texts and his plain exposition of their doctrinal, sacramental and devotional content caused me … to question why a study of this kind had not been attempted long before now.

Come home

2009-08-28T12:53:00.002-04:00

Saw this at Taylor's blog: video says it all.

Catholics Come Home [dot] Org

Year 1, a retrospective

2009-08-28T09:34:00.021-04:00

The feast day of St Augustine, 28 August, is the anniversary of my first confession. As of today, I've been reconciled to the Catholic Church for 1 year.

What that doesn’t mean

Despite what some of you are thinking, I haven’t lost my critical apparatus.

= : )

I am not a Catholic because I believe the Catholic Church is an impeccable institution. As a Catholic I affirm that every institution needs renewing and reform. In fact, the Catholic Church has always been complex, dynamic, and deeply reformational. There's an immense textual record of that ongoing internal dialogue of reformation, which Catholics believe is also an ongoing dialogue with the Spirit.

Catholicism doesn't claim to be impeccable: it claims, instead, to be the bearer and guardian of the apostolic witness of God's Revelation in the person of Christ Jesus. Catholicism doesn't offer an 'interpretation' of Jesus or a 'perspective' on Christianity; instead, it comprises the apostolic witness, consists in it and proclaims it.

What's different about me

Coming to Catholicism from Protestantism wasn't a second break but a reconciliation of the first rupture. That seems really significant to me. I still sing amazing grace; I still read the Bible; I still engage in spontaneous prayer. Going Catholic doesn't mean you lose these things. Here's what I have lost:

The principle (or controlling assumption) that legitimate authority is primarily textual

I don't believe that anymore. Here's a simplified look at why:

Many generations of early Christians practiced their faith without a Bible—because there wasn't one. Even if there had been one, there was no publishing industry to make it available to individual believers. What has become Protestantism's absolute insistence on a text-based authority for Christian faith and practice was unthinkable for more than 1,500 years. Historically, Christians have relied on their priests, their churches, their liturgies—all of which were judged as authentic or inauthentic based on appeal to the normative apostolic witness. That witness obviously includes a crucial Scriptural component, but this is Scripture in the authentic tradition handed down.

Protestantism breaks that tradition. Protestantism posits, instead, a Scripture 'outside-of' all traditions, a 'Scripture-as-independent-witness' that invests its reader with more authority than any tradition or church or council 'of men'. 'Tradition', which once signified the horizon of possibilities, gets reconfigured as 'restraint' and 'suppression' of the creative possibilities of the individual—even the suppression of God. Now, following the Protestant principle, it is the individual (armed with his Bible) who is finally empowered to sit in judgment of and even redefine (if necessary) any so-called 'apostolic witness'. Rarely is this done in the name of judgment and redefinition. It's called 'discernment'; it is said to rely on the 'leading' of the Holy Spirit; it seeks to 'recover' the 'true meaning' of the text.

Whatever it's called, it's a major paradigm shift away from 1,500 years of Christian tradition. To what extent certain principles of the Protestant Reformation prefigure (or predict) the philosophical existentialism, 'despair', and finally the postmodern 'absurd' of our own time is one of several interesting questions. Doesn't it also account for the move by some Protestant denominations to legitimize as 'private matter' such things as contraception, divorce, abortion, the homosexual lifestyle, and more? Their claim, at least, is not that Scripture errs in what it seems to say about these issues, but that we have misunderstood the 'real' meaning, the 'true' significance.

Once you see that a primarily textual model of Christian authority is incoherent, you might as well sign up for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) at your local parish.

What's 'normative'?

2009-08-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

Somewhere I may have said,

"i don’t think we can encounter Jesus outside (or somehow above or alongside) the normative traditions of our Faith and Scripture..."

If I were to clarify what I meant by 'normative', I'd start by rephrasing altogether:

"the more we let go of historical Christianity—ie, the more we abandon the first 1500 years as 'primitive', 'speculative', or 'corrupt'—the more unstable and creative our understanding of Jesus becomes."

In his short book, The Fragile Absolute – or, why is the christian legacy worth fighting for?, Slavoj Zizek offers a vision of the 'real' and 'truly' Christian. When the book appeared, it was dismissed by some Christians as loose mimicry, a sort of annihilating anti-theology; too Marxist, too materialist, too postmodern, too atheist. In short, too creative. There have been objections to his use of Scripture, his conclusions, his interpretation—either too blinkered or too far afield, and so on.

Whatever we make of Zizek's argument and the subsequent rejection of it in some Christian circles (in others, of course, his analysis is welcomed), I can't help but think of another creative genius who lived 500 years before The Fragile Absolute was published. How can we be sure that Zizek is, say, another Thomas Munzer and not the new Martin Luther come to lead us out of our modern Babylonian captivity?

The Catholic approach to a question like that is entirely different than the Protestant. Both approaches have their strengths. What I love about the Catholic approach is its continuity with those who have come before. To illustrate that continuity (by way of contrast), consider JI Packer's assertion (from 1974 in chapter 2 of God's Inerrant Word) that

"apart from Augustine, none [of the Church Fathers] seemed to be quite clear enough on the principle of salvation by grace, and not even Augustine had fully grasped imputed righteousness." (p45)

What Packer describes here is the Protestant practice of filtering both Christian history and Christian Scripture through new (ie, creative) Reformation principles. For example, 'salvation' cannot be understood apart from the Reformation principle of 'imputed righteousness'. This drives a wedge between Protestants and Christianity as it was understood and experienced by countless millions over the course of fifteen centuries before the Reformation.

In effect, what's 'normative' in the Protestant approach are those Reformation principles that 'corrected' historical (or Catholic) Christianity.

In fairness, I doubt many Protestants would describe it that way: Scripture is the foundation to which they appeal. And I don't dispute that. I'm just trying to look at how the appeal itself actually works, and it seems to me that it's not an appeal to Scripture but an appeal to Scripture as it is understood and interpreted through Reformation principles (which at least imply—but in my opinion assert—that Christianity before AD 1500 was fatally, prohibitively, flawed).

What does this have to do with Zizek? If new principles are allowed to overthrow (ie, reinterpret in such a way as to replace, supplant) critical content of Revelation, as happened with the Reformation, then what principled basis is there for saying that newer principles might not come from a newer Luther, a Zizek, for example, who helps us see (as Luther and Calvin once did) that we have been blinded to the real meaning of the Scriptures?

Robert P. George on 'marriage'

2009-08-04T11:35:00.003-04:00

His article in the Wall Street Journal is worth it [link here]. It begins,

We are in the midst of a showdown over the legal definition of marriage. Though some state courts have interfered, the battle is mainly being fought in referenda around the country, where “same-sex marriage” has uniformly been rejected, and in legislatures, where some states have adopted it. It’s a raucous battle, but democracy is working.

Now the fight may head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Following California’s Proposition 8, which restored the historic definition of marriage in that state as the union of husband and wife, a federal lawsuit has been filed to invalidate traditional marriage laws.

It would be disastrous for the justices to do so. They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights.

Even many supporters of legal abortion now consider Roe a mistake. Lacking any basis in the text, logic or original understanding of the Constitution, the decision became a symbol of the judicial usurpation of authority vested in the people and their representatives. It sent the message that judges need not be impartial umpires—as both John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor say they should be—but that judges can impose their policy preferences under the pretext of enforcing constitutional guarantees.

That's just subjective...

2009-07-28T06:25:00.010-04:00

Individual consciousness—the critical, thinking self at the center—understands. Is that what we mean when we use the word 'subjective'?

Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't abandon 'subjective'/'objective' terminology altogether as misleading and unproductive. If knowing must necessarily take place in self-consciousness, then I wonder whether a term like 'subjective' is just needless repetition?

But we have to go a step further, I think. Recognizing the participation of 'self' in knowing is one thing; we also have to recognize that the 'self' is probably not the autonomous individual 'thing-in-isolation' as it's commonly conceived, right?

If Gadamer, Searle, and others are correct about 'subjectivity'—namely, that it refers not to any supposed autonomous, 'independent self' but, instead, a 'self-located-within-traditions'—then we'll probably get farther analyzing those traditions that inform our understanding than we will trying to decide who's being 'subjective' and who's being 'objective'.

To form an understanding of something is to 'see it', and seeing is made possible by contrast like the color of these words against the background of the Blogger template I'm using. Searle says we 'see' everything against a background, the Background, which is comprised of all those 'contrast' elements that make 'seeing' (or 'understanding') possible. Some that depend on biological or chemical realities could be thought of as self-derived, in a manner of speaking, but everything else is inherited from or participates in certain 'contexts', ie, 'traditions'.

So, for example, you could say there's no such thing as a subjective interpretation of the Bible: All interpretation is always already a participation in traditions. What difference, if any, should this make to the Christian who's studying the Bible?

Next Reformation?

2009-07-27T06:09:00.009-04:00

There is a Cartesian modernist approach to hermeneutics—which depends on the critically rational, individual thinking self at the center of interpretation. It's implicit in Raschke's Next Reformation, page 98,

The Next Reformation will be about faith, and faith alone. Here we stand. We can do nothing else.

The "we" is somewhat misleading there since it assumes a communion in the Protestant approach. Where is the communion? On what basis—other than a principle of 'collective' individual conscience—can Luther's 'here I stand' be changed to 'here we stand'?

Contrasting the hermeneutics of the (pre-modern) Church Fathers with the modern (Protestant) alternative, Thiselton writes

pre-modern theories of interpretation might seem to represent a hermeneutic of innocence. But this is because, in contrast to the Cartesian modernism, pre-modernist Christian thinkers [ie, Church Fathers] realized how much depended on the contextual framework of tradition... [W]hereas in post-modernism recurring patterns of tradition are viewed as objects of intense suspicion, as devices of power to sanction monarchical, feudal, or bourgeois socio-political values, in the pre-modern ecumenical Christian world the framework remains an object of trust, because it embodies the testimony of the community to the historic apostolic faith as definitively revealed in Christ. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen and Augustine did not doubt that a wilful departure from the boundaries of that tradition projected the individual into a sea of uncharted relativism.

If that's true, the next Reformation longed for by Raschke and others will not be about any Solas. We've tried the Solas; we've had a go at the 'my-Bible-says' approach and made Jesus' prayer for unity in John 17 an abstract ideal. The Christian longing for a next Reformation is evidence of what went wrong with the first, namely, the suspicion and finally the rejection of the contextual framework of tradition as normative.

Baptism: I'll take mine Christian and Apostolic, please.

2009-07-25T06:38:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine turned me on to CARM's argument against Baptism, which is also an argument for baptism: ie, not sacrament but ceremony instead. Insofar as CARM's essay seeks (admirably) to highlight the importance of faith for salvation, the argument might look, at first glance, somewhat like Paul's in 1 Corinthians, where Paul seems willing to drop the sacrament in order to preach the gospel.

In fact, CARM specifically cites 1 Corinthians 1:14-17 to make its case:

Paul said that he came to preach the gospel, not to baptize: "I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel..." (1 Cor. 1:14-17). If baptism is necessary for salvation then why did Paul downplay it and even exclude it from the description of what is required for salvation? It is because baptism is not necessary for salvation.

But is Paul promoting the gospel at the expense of baptism? Are faith and baptism like two similarly charged magnets, increasingly antagonistic the closer they're brought together? Here's how I'd respond.

First, let's define a crucial assumption that informs CARM's approach and ask whether Paul shares it. You can find the assumption at the end of CARM's first paragraph:

we are saved by faith alone and anything else we do, including ceremonies, will not help.

CARM draws a very precise distinction between faith and ceremony that is difficult to support historically. It's especially difficult with sacraments like Baptism. Insisting on or forcing the distinction creates a kind of tension, as in the following paragraph where we're told,

you need to know what baptism is. It is a ceremony that represents an outward representation of an inward reality. For example, it represents the reality of the inward washing of Christ's blood upon the soul. That is why it is used in different ways. It is said to represent the death of the person (Rom. 6:3-5), the union of that person with Christ (Gal. 3:27), the cleansing of that person's sins (Acts 22:16), the identification with the one "baptized into" as when the Israelites were baptized into Moses (1 Cor. 10:2), and being united in one church (1 Cor. 12:13). Also, baptism is one of the signs and seals of the Covenant of Grace that was instituted by Jesus.

This is some fast-paced proof-texting meant to firm up the argument with credibility. However, the verses cited simply don't support the crucial assumption of the claim. At all. None of them. Where, for example, in 1 Corinthians 10:2 does Paul say or imply that Baptism is mere representation, ie, (dead) picture cut off from the (living) reality of the salvation it mimics? In fact, Paul explicitly argues the opposite:

I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:1-4)

We read these verses too fast, I think. Study the development of the thought as the text presents it:

I want you to know... that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

Baptism is not presented here as 'downplayed' afterthought or ceremonial surplus. Christian baptism is the very thing prefigured in Israel's Exodus—not 'baptism' as mere sticker that can be peeled off the reality of God's salvation. No, not that, because that's a false notion of baptism, and it's also a false choice. We don't have to choose between faith/salvation on the one hand or baptism/ceremony on the other.

To illustrate as much, imagine yourself among the "mixed ancestry" fleeing the Egyptians: Suppose a well-meaning would-be prophet stops to warn you to stop following Moses and start following God. How would you have responded to that false choice?

I think it's highly unlikely that you could have imagined an essential distinction between 'faith in God' as He revealed himself within the sacred traditions of the Old Covenant, on the one hand, and another 'faith in God', a purported 'truer faith' or 'authentic faith' that could only be received by those willing to step outside the ceremonies and traditions of the Old Covenant.

You had to go with Moses under that cloud—you had to follow him down into the mouth of the water—in order to emerge, to come out redeemed and moving now with the whole people of God to

the mountain of your inheritance—the place where you made your seat, O LORD, the sanctuary, O LORD, which your hands established. (Exodus 15:17)

Despite what CARM says, baptism as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 10:2 is not a ceremony meant only to identify Christ as our mediator any more than passing through the Red Sea was merely a means of identifying Moses as the mediator of Israel. There's a great deal more to it than that. Paul sees in God's miraculous deliverance of the Israelites—through and in the waters of the Red Sea—a profound illustration of God's miraculous deliverance of Christians through and in the waters of Christian baptism. It's not the water (by itself) nor the ceremony (by itself) nor even the faith (disembodied, abstracted, idealized) that makes us partakers of the Covenant: God accomplishes our salvation—it is He who makes us partakers of the New Covenant—and He does so within the context of the sacred traditions of the Church. As 1 Corinthians 12:13 has it,

by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.

Do you see it? It's not our faith that makes, does, or effects any union with Christ (who is the "one body"), though faith is present and presupposes a content (ie, tradition, complete with doctrine, theology, ceremony); it's not our pastor, though he's there, by God's grace (and also presupposes a tradition, complete with doctrine, theology, ceremony); it's not the water either, though it's wet and proximate in the stream, the pool, the font. Our union with Christ—which is what the word 'baptism' signifies—is a work of the Spirit. The grammatical Subject, the Actor, He who effects the action in baptism is the Spirit of God. The same Spirit who acted in the cloud and in the waters to save Israel continues to act in the waters of our baptism.

Let's return to work through some of CARM's questions:

If baptism is necessary for salvation then why did Paul downplay it ["I'm thankful that I baptized none of you"] and even exclude it from the description of what is required for salvation?

This is a good question (though the second part is loaded with additional assumptions that would require another post to carefully unwrap and test). Unfortunately, it's a rhetorical question, meant as a preface to the already assumed answer,

It is because baptism is not necessary for salvation.

But Paul's "I baptized none of you" (Greek = not one, nobody) can, in fact, be understood in a number of ways. Let's consider, for the sake of brevity, the literal meaning, which could be expressed as

I, Paul, never administered a baptism in Corinth.

This we know is false because two corrections immediately follow: "except Crispus and Gaius" at the end of verse 14 and "the house of Stephanas" in verse 16. Furthermore, the last sentence of verse 16 appears to leave the door open, as it were, to additional corrections. In other words, the sentence "Beyond that I do not know whether I baptized any one else" means, in so many words, 'I don't remember if there were others and it's irrelevant anyway'. Taken in context, then, the literal meaning of "I baptized none of you" is something like

I, Paul, am no monger of baptisms or I am not pursuing a single-minded mission of baptism.

Now, CARM would have us believe that this equates to Paul 'downplaying' baptism. But imagine this in another context. Let's say your preacher gets up this Sunday and says, as part of his sermon, "This economy is rotten, but you have to stop focusing on the stock market and start focusing on God: you have to stop looking at your 401K and start looking at Christ." Is he downplaying the importance of sound financial decision making? Is he saying that authentic devotion to Christ is incompatible with a thoughtful, calculated, and mature approach to financial decisions?

Paul is not resisting baptism, not downplaying it, not minimizing it: he's rejecting false and confused ideas about baptism, and he very carefully corrects the confusions, as we've already seen in chapters 10 and 12. And for anyone at Corinth who might not have been baptized, how could they remain so? In 1 Corinthians, Paul outlines the true nature and significance of baptism—namely, who it is that actually baptizes (the Holy Spirit), what specifically is done (we're made into the one body), and what fruit comes of it (the unity of chapter 12, the love of chapter 13, the gifts of chapter 14, and so on).

2009-07-20T11:08:00.000-04:00

Called to Communion's podcast introducing John Kincaid is a good one [here].

I was a Christian in search of a Church he says of his pre-Catholic faith, and that's such a great description of many, I think, who have come from denominationalism or non-denominationalism to the Catholic communion.

Thanks, John Kincaid, for sharing your story. And may God bless everyone over at Called to Communion.

Language and 'limits', Part I

2009-07-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

A Dynamical Object drives us to produce a representamen, in a quasi-mind this produces an Immediate Object, which in turn is translatable into a potentially infinite series of interpretants and, sometimes, through the habit formed in the course of the interpretive process, we are once more at the point of departure, and so we have to rename it using another representamen, so that in a certain sense the Dynamical Object always remains a Thing-in-Itself, always present and impossible to capture, if not through semiosis.

Yet the Dynamical Object is what drives us to produce semiosis. We produce signs because there is something that demands to be said. To use an expression that is efficacious albeit not very philosophical, the Dynamical Object is Something-that-sets-to-kicking-us and says "Talk!" to us—or "Talk about me!" or again "Take me into consideration!"

We are familiar with the indexical signs, this or that in verbal language, a pointing finger, an arrow in the language of images; but there is a phenomenon we must understand as presemiotic, or protosemiotic (in the sense that it constitutes the signal that gets the semiosic process under way), which we will call primary indexicality or attentionality.... Primary indexicality occurs when, amid the thick stuff of sensations that bombard us, we suddenly select something that we set against that general background and decide we want to speak about it (when, in other words, we live surrounded by luminous, thermic, tactile, and iteroceptive sensations, only one of these attracts our attention, and only afterward we say that it is cold, or we have a sore foot); primary indexicality occurs when we attract someone's attention, not necessarily to speak to him but just to show him something that will have to become a sign or an example, and we tug his jacket, we turn-his-head-toward.
—Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus

This is patently ridiculous what I'm about to do, but follow me. At the very least this will make you laugh.

Re-read Eco's passage but imagine 'Jesus' as 'Dynamical Object'

'Primary indexicality'—the presemiotic/prelinguistic phenomenon whereby the Dynamical Object tugs on one's sleeve or turns his head—you could exchange for... say... the grace of the Holy Spirit who calls us, and by calling enables us (we who are otherwise dead in sin) to turn, as it were, to Jesus

The 'talk', the 'speaking' elicited from us via the primary indexicality of the Dynamical Object (who is now a person, Jesus) could be read as 'theology' or 'doctrine' or even 'church'

Because the Dynamical Object as Eco describes it confounds poststructural accounts of language that deny any reality outside the words used to construct competing visions of it, I can't help but enjoy and repurpose Eco's discussion in light of the analogy of faith.

Eco explores (via Hjelmslev, Peirce, Habermas, and so on [maliciously so on]) whether 'reality' (the Dynamical Object/Thing-in-Itself) sets limits on what can be said about it in language. That strikes me as key and it's the point of this whole silly post: limits. I want to know if what's being said theoretically about language applies in any way to methods of interpretation. I want to know what constrains or limits interpretation.

In the magma of the continuum [ie, the infinite horizon of everything that could possibly be experienced and thought and said] there are lines of resistance and possibilities of flow, as in the grain of wood or marble, which make it easier to cut in one direction than another. [p53]

We're more or less accustomed to the theoretical characterization of language as 'infinite possibility', but talk like that is helpful precisely because it's poetic. In reality, if "lines of resistance and possibility" really do exist, then linguistic possibilities aren't infinite. Really giant big, perhaps, but not infinite. When John Searle says (as many do) that compositionality in language has the practical effect "that with a finite stock of words and a finite list of rules for combining them into sentences, you can generate an infinite number of new sentences," he's exaggerating; juxtapose the statement with "lines of resistance and possibility" and the exaggeration could look, in fact, like misdirection. Language, it seems to me, is not a system of unlimited possibility: there is a reality it keeps bumping into.

Can we say anything at all like that about interpretation? Are there limits to what can be said by those who would interpret Bible verses?

Chalk

2009-07-16T13:01:00.004-04:00

I couldn't help myself, and I thoroughly recommend you do this: chalkboard paint. But for the old paneling, I'd have gone floor to ceiling with it because, as you know, chalkboards are always too small, right? Exactly.

In the end, I used a sheet of MDF eight feet long and four feet high.

The letters along the bottom are for Two-Year-Old. He's tall enough to try his hand at copying in the space below the letters. He scribbles now, but he'll get there. He sings the alphabet, so we're almost... we're close... we've very nearly... and then he's off to fetch Gordon and put him in timeout. Kids.

Word 'contains' meaning?

2009-07-11T22:48:00.002-04:00

Honestly, help me out here. Is 'meaning' a thing contained in a word? Even if you think this is a silly question, I'd still appreciate your honest answer. Are words containers of meaning?

If you don't like the expression, can you suggest an alternative way of describing the relationship between word and meaning?

Sentence meaning

2009-07-11T09:09:00.006-04:00

Searle's approach to sentence meaning is pretty helpful, I think. Above, for example, you can see that he posits a sentence meaning independent of any authorial intent. It's the conventional or systematic ('semantic' or 'grammatical') meaning.

You think the distinction's obvious, but I'm not so sure. When I get the time, for example, I'd like to discuss a few instances in The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church where the distinction might add some much needed clarity.

'Catholic' interpretation and Lewis

2009-07-09T11:42:00.000-04:00

Real appreciation demands [that we not] let loose our own subjectivity upon the pictures [ikons, ie, any representational object] and make them its vehicle. We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interests, and associations. We must make room for Botticelli's Mars and Venus, or Cimabue's Crucifixion, by emptying out our own. After the negative start, the positive. We must use our eyes. We must look, and go on looking till we have certainly seen what is there. We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand that any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)

It is not only our own 'ideas' about, say, Mars and Venus which must be set aside. That will make room only for Botticelli's 'ideas', in the same sense of the word. We shall thus receive only those elements in his invention which he shares with the poet. And since he is after all a painter and not a poet, this is inadequate. What we must receive is his specifically pictorial invention: that which makes out of many masses, colours, and lines the complex harmony of the whole canvas.

—CS Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (1961)

The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church—written by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1994—outlines interpretive strategies. I've already blogged about it, and don't mean to bore you, but I'm still mulling it over and have more to say about it. There's a lot to think about. Much to do.

Here's an interesting exercise: What do you think CS Lewis would make of the Pontifical Biblical Commission's report?

I like that quotation of his (above) a lot. I'm not sure how practical it is to ask people to lay aside their "own preconceptions, interests, and associations" as "completely" as possible; on the other hand, I can't help wondering if Lewis meant that 'laying aside' in quite the way we might automatically assume today, more than 40 years after Derrida's Of Grammatology.

He missed the linguistic turn, Lewis. Maybe not entirely—right?—but mostly. Just enough to make him irrelevant for most. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, Ten more years of Lewis: if only we could have had ten more years of the guy, but then I wonder who I think I'm kidding. The truth is, I wish he were still smoking his pipe at us and writing today. Which would make him 110 years old.

Anyway... Lewis: Would he find the pontifical report familiar or alien?

Unwind yourself... or else.

2009-07-02T09:48:00.005-04:00

They seem entirely unrelated, yes, but when I ran into the old French proverb,

Tant grate la chevre que mal gist

I thought about King Louis' advice to Mowgli, "Cool it, boy."

Skeat quotes from Cotgrave's early seventeenth century dictionary when he says the proverb applies "to such as cannot be quiet when they are well" ([source], see entry for 'Grater').

To better understand the proverb, however, you need the proverb's gloss that appears under Cotgrave's entry for 'Chevre' [here].

In short, the operose goat scratches and scrapes at the ground to make a soft spot to lie down ('gist' = 'gésir')—and in the process unearths a knife that is used, later, to cut her throat in a sacrifice.

Moral of the story: Cool it, boy – unwind yourself.

Seriously, I sometimes think everything we need in life is taught in Disney's Jungle Book.

On appearance and absence...

2009-06-30T06:30:00.008-04:00

Now, as I see it, the language in which we express our religious beliefs and other religious experiences, is not a special language, but something that ranges between the Ordinary and the Poetical. But even when it begins by being Ordinary, it can usually, under dialectical pressure, be found to become either Theological or Poetical... I think the words 'I believe in God' are Ordinary language. If you press us by asking what we mean... we might say 'I believe in incorporeal entity, personal in the sense that it can be the subject and object of love, on which all other entities are unilaterally dependent.' That is what I call Theological language... In it we are attempting, as far as is possible, to state religious matter in a form more like that we use for scientific matter. This is often necessary, for purposes of instruction, clarification, controversy and the like. But it is not the language religion naturally speaks. We are applying precise, and therefore abstract, terms to what for us is the supreme example of the concrete.If we do not always feel this fully, that, I think, is because nearly all who say or read such sentences (including unbelievers) really put into them much that they know from other sources—tradition, literature, etc. But for that, it would hardly be more information than 'There are 15 degrees of frost' would be to those who had never experienced frost.
And this is one of the great disadvantages under which the Christian apologist labours. Apologetics is controversy. You cannot conduct a controversy in those poetical expressions which alone convey the concrete: you must use terms as definable and univocal as possible, and these are always abstract. And this means that the thing we are really talking about can never appear in the discussion at all. —CS Lewis, The Language of Religion

What's your approach?

2009-06-26T20:13:00.020-04:00

What’s your approach to reading the Bible?

It’s more rare than it used to be, but you still run into the idea that there are two ways to read the Bible: either you simply read it, right there, in black and white (a transmission theory of reading especially popular 1800-1890 [source]), or you read into it, over-complicate or ruin it with a bunch of rhetorical-critical mumbo jumbo.

But there’s no way around it: all reading is methodological. Even ‘plain reading’ of the sort that claims to ‘listen’ to what the Bible 'says' can’t keep—despite the change of verbs—from describing a way it’s done, a course to follow, which implies the rules of rhetoric and a critical organ to effect them.

There’s the Bible: to encounter it we have to ‘approach’ with everything that word implies.

Of course, it’s possible to not know your reading approach and manage, nevertheless, to read with much satisfaction. In the same way, I’m sure mid flight I could take over the stick and fly the plane with the kind of thrill only ignorance can provide. But imagine, for a moment, you’re on the plane with me and we’ve got to land.

The same thing's true for language. Talking on the phone or typing a twitter, we haven't got a clue what a participle is or the rules that govern the clause it makes. Everyone uses the if- and what-cleft locution, though only one in a hundred can name and explain it. Still, it's the grammar that makes the phone call and the twitter comprehensible. Nobody would suggest that some of us communicate and some of us junk up our communication with grammar.

To read: it means, then, exercising particular methods or approaches. The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church—compiled by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1994 (henceforth simply Interpretation)—is a general survey (and evaluation) of Bible-reading approaches. Is your approach among those discussed? An important claim of Interpretation is that theoretical/critical approaches to reading the Bible—ie, 'scientific' approaches—have been incredibly helpful for opening our eyes to what's really there in the text.

I can believe it. But I wonder... once I admit that scientific exegesis really provides indispensable data for reading and interpreting the Bible, have I (at least) implied that the scientist, the professional, the hoary academic, is more qualified to read it? Is the Bible in some sense a specialist's book likely to be misunderstood by anyone trying simply to read it? Interpretation tries to answer this, but I'm not sure it succeeds. I'd like to know what you think.

Before you teach...

2009-06-22T14:39:00.021-04:00

We are so familiar with the erotic tradition of modern Europe that we mistake it for something natural and universal and therefore do not inquire into its origins: but a glance at classical antiquity or at the Dark Ages at once shows us that what we took for ‘nature’ is really a special state of affairs, which will probably have an end, and which certainly had a beginning in eleventh-century Provence. (CS Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford, 1970 reprint from 1936; page 2)

The erotic tradition to which Lewis refers is the courtly love sentiment of the late middle ages, the so-called religion of love characterized by humility, courtesy, and adultery—the “dishonorable” love dismissed (but not overcome) by the Victorians. Much of this courtly love tradition seems perfectly natural to us because it’s deeply impressed in the development of literature and art in Western culture and remains an integral component of love stories today. In his Allegory of Love, Lewis makes the point that courtly love isn’t a natural component of the human condition despite its feeling so familiar to us, so matter-of-course. People aren't born with it. People learn it.

Lewis traces the development of courtly love, breaks down its ethics, describes the tension between the world of the courtly lover and the other world, the one it so often parodies—the Christian world. Now, setting aside all the details of his argument, the fascinating survey of medieval authors and texts, the only point I’d like to make is this: although Lewis shows that courtly love isn’t a natural state of affairs for humanity, he never suggests that love, in the end, is an empty word, an interchangeable textual cipher, mere schrift.

Lewis argues that love—as it comes to us through the courtly tradition—isn't natural, but this in no way means that Lewis thinks any true nature of love is unknowable; nor does Lewis promote the idea that love is merely a "social construction" without any positive content. No, indeed: despite all the twists and turns of language—and Lewis knows much about them—despite also the very real difficulties of representation, the confusion and misunderstanding embedded in cultural concepts (eg, the “Ovid misunderstood” formula described at page 7), despite all that and more, Lewis believes in real love. It really exists. It can be reliably known and not in spite of language but in it, with it. He's pretty conventional like that.

Now it could be that Lewis is deceived; maybe he’s just naive. There is a critical approach to texts that would say just that: whether deceived or naive, Lewis is flat wrong. Love—this critical approach would say—is only understandable as a term by comparison with what it is not. And not only love, either, but all words, all signs, are differential like that, which shouldn't inspire a lot of confidence in language's ability to bring us together around the truth. So we have two incompatible positions here: Lewis is writing about love and believes that he's writing about something real, something knowable, something capable of being articulated as truth in language; for others, though, things known in language—things like love—can't be appreciated for their truth value. For them, language isn't about truth at all. Language is about power.

Granted, from this other position—this critical perspective so deeply suspicious of language—it might still be interesting and worthwhile to study different conceptions of love, how they have emerged over time, how they inform current love ideals in Tokyo or Bergen. But no one should be trusted who suggests, as Lewis does, that there is some final reality, natural or universal, to which the word love points referentially and with reliability. Language is a differential system; language is always, ultimately, about language and not about any real world.

Behold: Poststructuralism.

It's only an opinion, but I think poststructuralism is the single most devastating threat to Christian faith. When you lose language—if you lose language—you've lost everything despite your air-tight syllogisms and your arguments from design. Whatever you've got that counts as foundation—whatever structure or system that holds your faith together—is a smoldering flake if language is as poststructuralism says, a differential system wherein meaning must necessarily be postponed, perpetually deferred back into more and yet more language. If poststructuralism's critique of language is permitted—indeed, if it isn't refuted—then faith doesn't stand a chance.

If I worked for Catholic High School X and were responsible for interviewing teaching candidates for positions in history or literature or religion, I'd make time to ask, What do you know about poststructuralism (or what might be called deconstruction)? What's wrong with the poststructural approach? What's a legitimate linguistic alternative to it?

Which is why I'm not teaching though I've wanted to for a number of years. I don't believe I'll be qualified to teach the disciplines I know and love until I can answer those questions. But... I'm writing this post to put myself on notice: I'm finally—finally!—getting very close. Please pray for me. I have so much to learn.

Truth and representation

2009-06-16T12:23:00.002-04:00

The application of [the historical-critical] method to the Bible necessarily led to discussion. Everything that helps us better to understand the truth and to appropriate its representations is helpful and worthwhile for theology. —Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church

What is the difference between "truth" and "its representations"?

I'm asking sincerely. Anyone?

Knights of Columbus set new records

2009-06-15T14:22:00.003-04:00

Go Knights!

Economic Crisis Spurs Knights of Columbus Charity
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, JUNE 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The Knights of Columbus set new records for charitable donations and volunteer service hours last year, despite the economic crisis.
Today, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, also a ZENIT weekly columnist, released the information of the past year's activities in a meeting at the group's international headquarters.
He reported that charitable contributions by the knights amounted to over $150 million, which is $5.1 million higher than the previous year.
The data, compiled from an annual survey of all the local chapters, showed some 68.8 million volunteer service hours by knights to charitable causes.
The organization noted some 413,000 blood donations collected by the knights, and 156,295 service hours given specifically to Habitat for Humanity.
The Knights of Columbus has some 1.75 million members in North and Central America, the Philippines, Guam, the Caribbean islands and Poland. It was started in 1882 by the Servant of God, Father Michael McGivney.

Pray for Peace in Iraq

2009-06-15T12:51:00.003-04:00

With my friend, BC, before his return overseas.

Please pray for peace in Iraq, the great constitutional republic that continues to struggle against terror from within and the calculated interference of lesser governments like Iran.

May God fill you with His peace, BC, protect you, and use you as a minister of His grace to your wife and children, your family and friends, and all those you encounter overseas. You are ever in our thoughts and prayers. What a privilege it is to be your friend.

Dogmatic foundations

2009-06-07T16:30:00.001-04:00

When the earliest Christians argued passionately in favor of what Catholics call the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, they were often responding to and correcting heresies like docetism. I think that’s fascinating and hugely under appreciated.

The point? Church dogma is structural, architectural, which is why (at least for the early Christians) any loss of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist weakened the reality of everything else. If your take on the Real Presence goes wobbly, so wobbles your Incarnation.

For many of us, Christianity can’t survive the pure abstraction. It becomes something else. Precisionist legalism or secularism. Political activism. Agnosticism. Denominationalism. Mysticism. Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ism. You’ve got what you think are good reasons for making the break with all that Catholic dogma, but the more you break, the less you have—or the less precisely—and the Church Fathers seemed to have understood that clearly.

I've been thinking about this in relation to a paper by Guy Mansini, OSB, of the Saint Meinrad School of Theology in Indiana.

It is a commonplace to say that Christian prayer is scriptural, that it is based on the Bible or that it is informed by Scripture, or some such phrase. I wish in this essay to defend this commonplace, but in a quite precise form: Christian prayer is scriptural, where Scripture is understood and appreciated dogmatically, that is, according to the Church's understanding of the nature, authorship, and unity of the Bible. [Abstract here]

That's huge. Heavy implications.

Rosary

2009-06-07T16:00:00.001-04:00

So what's the big deal about rosary anyway?

In a word, meditation, which for the Catholic refers to the application of soul, memory, imagination, intellect, and will in prayer. It begins as a curiosity, a what is this formulaic babel, anyway? But it becomes a truly beautiful thing you can't stay away from very long. Not Babel but Pentecost.

Despite the discipline it requires—the formula—praying the rosary means giving up neither the immediate creative impulses of spontaneous prayer nor the intimacy of prayer directly addressed to Christ. After a decade of Ave Maria, for example, I often find myself praying, suddenly, for people I haven't seen since high school—the Grunden and Miller families, Lankford, Dorris, Inglett and more, many more. Here we are, Christ: have mercy on us and fill us with your peace.

Memorizing the formula, the prayers, allows you to concentrate on the content, the feeling, the meaning of the prayers you're praying. You apply all that—the images and meanings, the petitions, praises and invocations—to the people (and circumstances) for whom you're praying. It's not "Hail Mary, mother of God, pray for us"—I mean, it is, but that little "us" usually expands into specific and concrete spontaneous prayer for people like Victoria Dulay and her family; Dad and Bill and Brenda and Mary; Sylvia Shy and her family; DanZan; Chris and Dana; Joseph and Shawna; Saegaerts—beautiful Saegaerts; the Settle, Willis, and Bennett clans; Nathan and Celest; Justin and Shelley; Phil and Jeannine; Scott and Leatherwoods; Tiff and Rich; the Beck family; Michael and Gina; the Peveys; Collins, Rostad, and Adkins families; Deacon Omar, and too many more to list.

And the mysteries: When I'm meditating on the Glorious Mysteries, for example, and praying for my son (or the Slatter children; or Lucy and her unborn sister; or Kelci, Cam, or Connor; Elizabeth, Isabelle, or Ian; little Mia Jay, or Ethan, or any one of a dozen others), The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost becomes an occasion to pray for and imagine the Holy Spirit becoming a deep and abiding reality in his life. I'm praying for his Pentecost. I'm recalled to my own. Pentecost becomes less a thing that happened to the Apostles so long ago and more a present reality to which we are all called. Today. All of us.

Your clumsy first rosary becomes, with time, a real investment.

I often introduce other elements to the rosary: the Nicene Creed instead of the Apostles', for example, and sometimes in the Latin I'm trying to memorize; halfway through a decade I'll often sing the Sanctus; after each decade I'll run a companion decade of the Jesus Prayer, and so on, through the end; sometimes I break out in spontaneous prayer after any given decade—sometimes in the middle—invoking the cloud of witnesses (Saints like Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. James, St. Augustine, St. Stephen, St. Christopher, St. Brendan, and so many others): pray for us.

And they do. And often I think about what heaven will be like, when we arrive, finally, and discover who it was that prayed for us. Prayer is not anonymous, and the rosary is a great reminder of that.

Apostolic succession

2009-06-05T13:00:00.003-04:00

Dave Armstrong on apostolic succession:

...this belief of the Catholic Church [in apostolic succession] ...is also grounded in Scripture: St. Paul teaches us (Ephesians 2:20) that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles, whom Christ Himself chose (John 6:70, Acts 1:2,13; cf. Matthew 16:18). In Mark 6:30 the twelve original disciples of Jesus are called apostles, and Matthew 10:1-5 and Revelation 21:14 speak of the twelve apostles. After Judas defected, the remaining eleven Apostles appointed his successor, Matthias (Acts 1:20-26). Since Judas is called a bishop (episkopos) in this passage(1:20), then by logical extension all the Apostles can be considered bishops (albeit of an extraordinary sort).
If the Apostles are bishops, and one of them was replaced by another, after the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, then we have an explicit example of apostolic succession in the Bible, taking place before 35 A.D. In like fashion, St. Paul appears to be passing on his office to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:1-6), shortly before his death, around 65 A.D. This succession shows an authoritative equivalency between Apostles and bishops, who are the successors of the Apostles. As a corollary, we are also informed in Scripture that the Church itself is perpetual, infallible, and indefectible (Matthew 16:18, John 14:26, 16:18). Why should the early Church be set up in one form and the later Church in another?
All of this biblical data is harmonious with the ecclesiological views of the Catholic Church. There has been some development over the centuries, but in all essentials, the biblical Church and clergy and the Catholic Church and clergy are one and the same.
The historical evidence of the earliest Christians after the Apostles and the Church Fathers is quite compelling as well: there exists virtually unanimous consent as to the episcopal, hierarchical, visible nature of the Church, which proceeds authoritatively down through history by virtue of Apostolic Succession.
St. Clement, bishop of Rome (d.c.101), teaches apostolic succession, around 80 A.D. (Epistle to Corinthians, 42:4-5, 44:1-3), and St. Irenaeus is a very strong witness to, and advocate of this tradition in the last two decades of the 2nd century (Against Heresies, 3:3:1,4, 4:26:2, 5:20:1, 33:8). Eusebius, the first historian of the Church, in his History of the Church, c. 325, begins by saying that one of the "chief matters" to be dealt with in his work is "the lines of succession from the holy apostles..." {tr. G.A. Williamson, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965, p.31}
With regard to the threefold ministry of bishop, priest (elder/presbyteros), and deacon, St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, offers remarkable testimony, around 110 (Letter to the Magnesians, 2, 6:1, 13:1-2, Letter to the Trallians, 2:1-3, 3:1-2, 7:2, Letter to the Philadelphians, 7:1-2, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8:1-2—the last also being the first reference to the "Catholic Church"). St. Clement of Rome refers to the "high priest" and "priests" of Christians around 96 (1 Clement, 40). Other prominent early witnesses include St. Hippolytus (Apostolic Tradition, 9) and St. Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis, 6:13:107:2), both in the early third century.

[Source]

Murder is not pro-Life

2009-05-31T18:36:00.002-04:00

Someone shot and killed a celebrated abortionist. At his Lutheran church, no less.

[here's the story]

Christians everywhere should condemn the doctor's murder, pray for him and his family, along with the shooter.

There is no possible justification for killing abortionists. None.

As a committed pro-Life Catholic, I abhor this twisted, evil, despicable crime.

What happened after Notre Dame?

2009-05-29T11:21:00.005-04:00

Here's the Catholic University of America panel discussion, via CNN.

Couple of things that struck me:

Kmiec is asked 'what Obama has actually done to limit abortions in any meaningful way that might justify a Catholic voting for him' (my paraphrase). Kmiec provides the purely gestural 'Obama is helping poor people improve their financial situations' (also my paraphrase) ...

...

...because the McCain/Palin team would have worked tirelessly to keep poor people impoverished? I honestly do not understand what point Kmiec is trying to make with that one. It seems too easy, too sloppy, too desperate a reason to choose Obama over McCain. Especially for someone of Kmiec's stature.

The Left and the Right disagree about how best to achieve the end goal of economic prosperity: but it is a fact that both the Left and the Right want to see poor people's economic lives improve. Thus, it's strange and not a little bit confusing that Kmiec included that bit in his answer.

Kmiec also cited the NIH's position on stem cell research, which seems to me a completely worthless answer to the question he was posed. The reason everyone on both the Left and the Right made note of the NIH position on stem cell research is because that position represented a reversal of Obama's stated campaign goals and objectives.

In other words, Obama in campaign-mode made it perfectly clear he wanted federal funding for the kind of stem cell research entirely at odds with Life and the Church's settled opinion. So I'm completely confused why Kmiec thinks the current NIH position—which is not Obama's position and certainly not reflective of Obama's campaign—is evidence that helps justify a Catholic's vote for Obama.

How does Kmiec fare in this discussion? I was surprised at the weakness of his positions. His opening statement seemed full of Obama campaign rhetoric—the giant, bold, flourishing, inspiring announcements of what Obama is going to do to save the world, which seemed incredibly shallow for this (or any other) substantive discussion. Everyone agrees that brand Obama is first-in-class when it comes to inspiring giant hope. I tried but didn't hear Kmiec name any actual evidence or specific administration appointment or any program or presidential initiative that actually supports the Life cause in any measurable way. Not one.

Compare that to George's very specific lists of presidential appointments and initiatives that are antithetical to the Life cause. George makes the very credible case that Obama's position on Life precludes any hope for common ground on all of the key Life issues—from care for those born alive after attempted abortions to partial-birth abortion, late-term abortions, parental notification, conscience protections, in short, everything.

Though calling for cooperation, Obama's specific actions and appointments in every instance undermine the Life cause. All Kmiec could say, in response, was something like 'my Catholic vote for Obama was still a legitimate vote because Obama wants to improve healthcare, save the environment, end war, and help the poor.' I don't mean to be controversial or disrespectful, but when I place that on a scale opposite the 50 million actually lost in the United States, the soaring campaign slogans look despairingly light and fluffy.

Kmiec's is a position that just seems so surprisingly weak, particularly on the human rights and justice fronts that George articulated so effectively. Have I missed something?

Robert George on what divides us

2009-05-29T10:55:00.002-04:00

President Obama knows that an unborn baby is human. He knows that the blood shed by the abortionist’s knife is human blood, that the bones broken are human bones. He does not deny that the baby whom nurse Jill Stanek discovered gasping for breath in a soiled linen bin after a failed attempt to end her life by abortion, was a human baby. Even in opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was designed to assure that such babies were rescued if possible or at least given comfort care while they died, Barack Obama did not deny the humanity of the child. What he denied, and continues to deny, is the fundamental equality of that child–equality with those of us who are safely born and accepted into the human community.
During his campaign for the Presidency, then-Senator Obama was asked by Rick Warren: When does a baby acquire human rights? In reply, the future president did not say, “well it depends on when a baby (or a “fetus”) comes to life, or becomes a human being.” He knows that an unborn baby is alive and human, and he did not pretend not to know. His response to Pastor Warren did seem to express doubt of as to when rights begin, saying that the question was “above his pay grade.”
But Obama’s record as an activist, legislator, and now as President makes clear his view that an unborn baby, or even a baby outside the womb like the one discovered in that soiled linen bin by Jill Stanek, possesses no rights that others are bound to respect or that the law should in any way honor. Throughout his political career, Obama has consistently and fervently rejected every form of legislation that would provide unborn babies or children who survive abortions with meaningful protection against being killed. Indeed, he has opposed even efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would discourage the practice, limit its availability, or directly favor childbirth over abortion.

His belief, and his policy, is that abortion, if a woman chooses it, is not wrong. That is why he is not personally opposed to it. There is no wrong there to oppose. Indeed, the President made crystal clear his view that abortion can be an entirely legitimate and even desirable option, when he said that if one of his daughters made a mistake and became pregnant, he would not want her to be “punished with a baby.” In such a case, he saw abortion as the right solution to a problem—a solution that we should be happy is available, and that we should make available if it happens not yet to be available. Without it, a young woman would be “punished.”

Read the entire piece for it's full impact: Source.

Praying for vocations

2009-05-29T09:58:00.010-04:00

This is an old-school friend of mine—now a Greek Orthodox monk, Father Parthenios. He's a fixture in our vocational prayer, along with so many others. As Catholic converts, we have the luxury of not knowing exactly, precisely, how to do everything Catholic: I don't know, for example, if "praying for vocations" is supposed to mean prayer for new vocations only—ie, asking God to move in the hearts of young men to pursue ordination. That's certainly what we pray for, but we also pray for all the active clergy and religious we know. We feel so honored and so blessed to know them, and we love them very much.

If you're praying for vocations, will you consider adding Father Parthenios to your prayers? Here is my friend and my brother—a spiritual father—with a life consecrated to our Lord Jesus Christ: pray for him.

I also want to recommend a book he encouraged me to read which has had a profound impact on my life:The 'Jesus prayer' ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," read the book and see 2616 in the CCC) pops up in my mouth and in my mind all the time now. Reading the book also gave me the opportunity to review prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which blew me away (as the Catechism always does). I figured a great way to thank Father Parthenios would be to pass along his recommendation to everyone who comes here (all three of you). Thank you, Father Parthenios, and may God richly bless you and fill you with His peace. You are such an encouragement to me.

Why I'm not a Rob Bell enthusiast...

2009-05-27T16:40:00.005-04:00

...the Bible is open-ended. It has to be interpreted... (via Velvet Elvis)

Rob Bell is spot on: reading is a very complicated activity. Reading always involves interpretation, and any ten people might come up with ten interpretations of a given Biblical issue. More, if they're creative. You might get twenty interpretations from only five English majors, for example. Thirty from two lawyers. The Bible is open-ended. Got it.

I like Bell on the problem of interpretation. What I object to is his response to it. For example, Velvet Elvis appeals to what Bell calls ancient rabbinical understanding in a discussion of Jesus' identity. Want to really understand Jesus? You'll have to ask the ancient Jews—they'll know best since Jesus was, after all, an ancient Jew.

But ancient rabbinical understanding is neither uniform nor univocal. Witherington says as much, pointing out that the rabbinical understanding to which Bell appeals is neither ancient nor contemporary with the time of Christ but a later development. If that's true—and Witherington is qualified, I suspect, to settle the question—then Bell's approach is anachronistic. It's wrong. Will it matter to his fans? Probably not. Should it?

There's also the matter of skipping over at least 1,500 years of Christian understanding. Rabbinical understanding is certainly important, but would the average reader of Rob Bell feel at all encouraged to seek out what the Apostolic Church Fathers thought of Jesus? Do Bell's fans even notice the leap over ancient Christian history and ancient Christian writings?

In some ways, I think Bell and his supporters haven't appreciated the full impact of the Bible's open-endedness. If it's truly open-ended, then I want to know how open-ended. Is there a scale? Is the open-endedness measurable? Is the Bible like a bit of Homi Bhabha, for example, like a poem or a flick of impressionistic paints, a 12 on a scale 0-10 where 10 = textual carnival?

You get that impression, I think, when Bell announces the problem—the Bible is open-ended—then appeals to ancient Jewish practice (to really ground and shore up his interpretation of Jesus) only to be informed by Witherington that his appeal is factually invalid. Doh! Where does it end? What else in Bell's velvety book is wrong?

Don't you wish, sometimes that Paul were here to weigh in on questions like these? In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul says, "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter," but this must look a little naive to a lot of people today. Stand firm? On what? We've recognized that the Bible is open-ended: now we have to admit, in turn, that Christian "tradition" is a competitive landscape—everyone standing firm on his and her own interpretive traditions of sometimes more and sometimes less merit (some of them stretching back to the sixteenth century, some of them to last week). The truth of Paul's Traditions has given way to my truths and my traditions today, at this moment.

Of course, the real issue behind Biblical interpretation is authority: Who has the authority to govern or temper or constrain the almost limitless possibilities of textual interpretation?

Or to ask it another way: Did Jesus know that textual interpretation is so open-ended—would cause such massive disagreement, schism, denomination—yet give us nothing to mitigate it?

The Catholic Church's response to this is solid, Biblical, and unequivocal.

Porn

2009-05-26T16:00:00.002-04:00

Sheesh: this blog of mine has no sense of humor.

This post is no exception: I'm simply suggesting you read the Fathers for Good article on porn, which ends with

“Where there is a spiritual component to the recovery, we have seen great success,” he says. “The Lord doesn’t want this darkness to interfere with the great sacrament of marriage.”

American Principles Project calls for renewed attention to the porn issue, concluding that

What does not seem plausible to me is that anyone who is informed can insist that the pornography all around us contributes to human liberation rather than degradation, nor that those who are involved in its production, purveyance, or even its defense are the friends of freedom.

New Testament Church

2009-05-24T08:02:00.025-04:00

The pomp and pageantry of the Catholic Church is sometimes used as evidence of the Church's fall from 'New Testament' grace. The early Church, they say, wouldn't recognize in the Catholic Church's gilt and gloss the simple Christian faith of the Bible, and I think this longing for authentic New Testament origins is a good thing.

I have a friend (like a brother) who loves his (Protestant) 'New Testament' church precisely because it offers an alternative to denominationalism. I'm not a denomination, he says, but a Christian attending a church that follows the New Testament model. Get back to the basics is the idea. Dig down to the roots. I like it and think it's healthy.

The Catholic Church does glitter. I love Gregorian chant—the Miserere mei—the slow and deliberate way that individual syllables are teased out for all their beauty and significance. But is it bad, necessarily? Is there something inherently suspicious about an ornamental liturgy, a sometimes dazzling iconography, an elaborate institutional polish?

There is a powerful argument in favor of the Catholic Church's pageantry: as with Gregorian chant, we ornament what we love so deeply; we lavish and luster all that glorifies God, contributes to our Faith, inspires us to worship, to kneel and bow and awe: venite adoremus!

The Church is much more than a gathering of sinners, though it is certainly that as well. Lest we forget the price that bought us, the Spirit that sanctifies us, the Covenant that transforms us: Let us acknowledge that the Church has her very being in Christ, is His body, is the force and movement of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Furthermore, if the early Christians might not recognize the splendor of the Catholic Church today, I think we have to admit that they'd certainly recognize the content of the Faith. Where, in the Protestant 'New Testament' church is confession and penance? What happened to Mary? Where have all the Saints and Martyrs gone? Why is Eucharist (and Baptism) celebrated as an intellectual or doctrinal gesture? Where is the bishop? Why no Confirmation?

The paradox of the 'New Testament' church is that it doesn't square with what is known, historically, about the early Church's Faith and Liturgy. The attitude today is that we can understand how to create a proper church from reading the New Testament, but the early Church wasn't made that way—there was no New Testament for hundreds of years. In fact, the letters that would eventually comprise the New Testament were read and venerated in an already established, stable, concrete network of Churches.

It had to come from somewhere, that Church. To understand where it came from and how it operated, you'll need to read the Didache, the Letter to the Corinthians, the writings of St Ignatius of Antioch, St Polycarp, and so on, in addition to the New Testament. You'll have to immerse yourself in early Christian history, which will likely lead you to an astonishing conclusion. The Church of the New Testament doesn't have to be recreated because it's still around today—to the praise and glory of Christ Jesus.

Catholic Newt

2009-05-21T11:23:00.003-04:00

Newt Gingrich was recently asked about his upcoming trip to Rome and whether or to what extent his conversion to Catholicism might impact his trip:

I don't know that it's much different. That's part of what led to my conversion is the first time we [he and Callista] went to St. Peter's together. It's St. Peter's. I mean, you stand there and you think, this is where St. Peter was crucified. This is where Paul preached. You think to yourself, two thousand years ago the apostles set out to create a worldwide movement by witnessing to the historic truth they had experienced. And there it is. The last time we were there we were allowed to walk in the papal gardens and you get this sense that is almost mystical.

The moment that finally convinced me [to convert] was when Benedict XVI came here [to the United States] and Callista in the church choir sang for him at the vespers service and all the bishops in the country were there. As a spouse, I got to sit in the upper church and I very briefly saw [Benedict] and I was just struck with how happy he was and how fundamentally different he was from the news media's portrait of him. This guy's not a Rottweiler. He's a very loving, engaged, happy person.

I'd first seen Pope John Paul II when he came to the U.S. when Carter was president and I was a freshman congressman. And I [later] met him as Speaker. The other sense is that the church has had two of its most powerful popes back to back, in their intellectual ability to engage the secular world on behalf of Christ. And the weight of all that, and going with [Callista] to church every Sunday to the Basilica [in Washington, D.C.], a magnificent church with a wonderful mass. In that sense I felt differently a long time ago, which is why I converted.

And part of me is inherently medieval. I resonate to Gothic churches and the sense of the cross in a way that is really pre-modern.

Asked if his conversion had changed his political outlook, Gingrich responded,

The whole effort to create a ruthless, amoral, situational ethics culture has probably driven me toward a more overt Christianity. I'll give you an example. As a college student at Emory when the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional [in 1963] after 170 years of American history, I didn't notice it. As a graduate student at Tulane I probably would have said it's a good decision.

I've now had an additional 40 years to think about it. And I think about the world of my grandchildren. I don't think American children are healthier, safer, and better off today than they were in 1963. So I have actually become more conservative in response to the failure of the liberal ethos to solve problems.

[source]

John Piper's "No"

2009-05-21T08:22:00.000-04:00

Praying early

2009-05-20T13:57:00.002-04:00

Bumped into this and had to share it. Our little guy likes praying too—almost 2 years old—but he's not quite able to cross himself yet. He tries but gets stuck at his forehead as he says, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, A-men!

You can learn a lot from kids praying. I used to think, when I was younger and knew it all, that kids praying were simply parroting. Perhaps that's sometimes true. I know for a fact, now, that often it's not. When Brendan and I pray together at night, he prays. He tells me who he wants to pray for, and he's careful about it—not blurting out names but thinking through options.

Is it significant? It is to me. He's chosen all kinds of people to pray for too: Fathers John and Jose, both sets of grandparents, each by name; uncles and aunts and cousins and teachers and playmates and even the wild turkey who lives on the property and sometimes scares him. Yes, even Tom Turkey.

Archbishop Chaput's Statement on Notre Dame and Father Jenkins

2009-05-19T14:15:00.003-04:00

This very specific and very firm official statement is remarkable. Here's all the clarity you could want with regard to what it means to be "Catholic."

Most graduation speeches are a mix of piety and optimism designed to ease students smoothly into real life. The best have humor. Some genuinely inspire. But only a rare few manage to be pious, optimistic, evasive, sad and damaging all at the same time. Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president, is a man of substantial intellect and ability. This makes his introductory comments to President Obama’s Notre Dame commencement speech on May 17 all the more embarrassing.

Let’s remember that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was never about whether he is a good or bad man. The president is clearly a sincere and able man. By his own words, religion has had a major influence in his life. We owe him the respect Scripture calls us to show all public officials. We have a duty to pray for his wisdom and for the success of his service to the common good -- insofar as it is guided by right moral reasoning.

We also have the duty to oppose him when he’s wrong on foundational issues like abortion, embryonic stem cell research and similar matters. And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness. Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade.

In doing so, Notre Dame ignored the U.S. bishops’ guidance in their 2004 statement, Catholics in Political Life. It ignored the concerns of Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Notre Dame’s 2009 Laetare Medal honoree – who, unlike the president, certainly did deserve her award, but finally declined it in frustration with the university’s action. It ignored appeals from the university’s local bishop, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, more than 70 other bishops, many thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics. Even here in Colorado, I’ve heard from too many to count.

There was no excuse – none, except intellectual vanity – for the university to persist in its course. And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it.

These are hard words, but they’re deserved precisely because of Father Jenkins’ own remarks on May 17: Until now, American Catholics have indeed had “a special expectation, a special hope for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world.” For many faithful Catholics – and not just a “small but vocal group” described with such inexcusable disdain and ignorance in journals like Time magazine -- that changed Sunday.

The May 17 events do have some fitting irony, though. Almost exactly 25 years ago, Notre Dame provided the forum for Gov. Mario Cuomo to outline the “Catholic” case for “pro-choice” public service. At the time, Cuomo’s speech was hailed in the media as a masterpiece of American Catholic legal and moral reasoning. In retrospect, it’s clearly adroit. It’s also, just as clearly, an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses. Father Jenkins’ explanations, and President Obama’s honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education. Together, they’ve given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be “Catholic” in the public square.

Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George has suggested that Notre Dame “didn’t understand” what it means to be Catholic before these events began. He's correct, and Notre Dame is hardly alone in its institutional confusion. That's the heart of the matter. Notre Dame’s leadership has done a real disservice to the Church, and now seeks to ride out the criticism by treating it as an expression of fringe anger. But the damage remains, and Notre Dame’s critics are right. The most vital thing faithful Catholics can do now is to insist – by their words, actions and financial support – that institutions claiming to be “Catholic” actually live the faith with courage and consistency. If that happens, Notre Dame’s failure may yet do some unintended good.

[source]

Notre Dame and Benedict XVI

2009-05-18T06:38:00.010-04:00

Given Obama's Notre Dame honor and speech, I thought it might be worth revisiting the Holy Father's address to Catholic University of America in 2008:

Your Eminences, Dear Brother Bishops, Distinguished Professors, Teachers and Educators,
"How beautiful are the footsteps of those who bring good news" (Rom 10:15-17). With these words of Isaiah quoted by Saint Paul, I warmly greet each of you - bearers of wisdom - and through you the staff, students and families of the many and varied institutions of learning that you represent. It is my great pleasure to meet you and to share with you some thoughts regarding the nature and identity of Catholic education today. I especially wish to thank Father David O'Connell, President and Rector of the Catholic University of America.
Your kind words of welcome are much appreciated. Please extend my heartfelt gratitude to the entire community - faculty, staff and students - of this University. Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News. First and foremost every Catholic educational institution is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth (cf. Spe Salvi, 4).
This relationship elicits a desire to grow in the knowledge and understanding of Christ and his teaching. In this way those who meet him are drawn by the very power of the Gospel to lead a new life characterized by all that is beautiful, good, and true; a life of Christian witness nurtured and strengthened within the community of our Lord's disciples, the Church.
The dynamic between personal encounter, knowledge and Christian witness is integral to the diakonia of truth which the Church exercises in the midst of humanity. God's revelation offers every generation the opportunity to discover the ultimate truth about its own life and the goal of history. This task is never easy; it involves the entire Christian community and motivates each generation of Christian educators to ensure that the power of God's truth permeates every dimension of the institutions they serve. In this way, Christ's Good News is set to work, guiding both teacher and student towards the objective truth which, in transcending the particular and the subjective, points to the universal and absolute that enables us to proclaim with confidence the hope which does not disappoint (cf. Rom 5:5). Set against personal struggles, moral confusion and fragmentation of knowledge, the noble goals of scholarship and education, founded on the unity of truth and in service of the person and the community, become an especially powerful instrument of hope.
Dear friends, the history of this nation includes many examples of the Church's commitment in this regard. The Catholic community here has in fact made education one of its highest priorities. This undertaking has not come without great sacrifice. Towering figures, like Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and other founders and foundresses, with great tenacity and foresight, laid the foundations of what is today a remarkable network of parochial schools contributing to the spiritual well-being of the Church and the nation. Some, like Saint Katharine Drexel, devoted their lives to educating those whom others had neglected - in her case, African Americans and Native Americans. Countless dedicated Religious Sisters, Brothers, and Priests together with selfless parents have, through Catholic schools, helped generations of immigrants to rise from poverty and take their place in mainstream society.
This sacrifice continues today. It is an outstanding apostolate of hope, seeking to address the material, intellectual and spiritual needs of over three million children and students. It also provides a highly commendable opportunity for the entire Catholic community to contribute generously to the financial needs of our institutions. Their long-term sustainability must be assured. Indeed, everything possible must be done, in cooperation with the wider community, to ensure that they are accessible to people of all social and economic strata. No child should be denied his or her right to an education in faith, which in turn nurtures the soul of a nation.
Some today question the Church's involvement in education, wondering whether her resources might be better placed elsewhere. Certainly in a nation such as this, the State provides ample opportunities for education and attracts committed and generous men and women to this honorable profession. It is timely, then, to reflect on what is particular to our Catholic institutions. How do they contribute to the good of society through the Church's primary mission of evangelization?
All the Church's activities stem from her awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself: in his goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known the hidden purpose of his will (cf. Eph 1:9; Dei Verbum, 2). God's desire to make himself known, and the innate desire of all human beings to know the truth, provide the context for human inquiry into the meaning of life. This unique encounter is sustained within our Christian community: the one who seeks the truth becomes the one who lives by faith (cf. Fides et Ratio, 31). It can be described as a move from "I" to "we", leading the individual to be numbered among God's people.
This same dynamic of communal identity - to whom do I belong? - vivifies the ethos of our Catholic institutions. A university or school's Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction - do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self - intellect and will, mind and heart - to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God's creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold.
From this perspective one can recognize that the contemporary "crisis of truth" is rooted in a "crisis of faith". Only through faith can we freely give our assent to God's testimony and acknowledge him as the transcendent guarantor of the truth he reveals. Again, we see why fostering personal intimacy with Jesus Christ and communal witness to his loving truth is indispensable in Catholic institutions of learning. Yet we all know, and observe with concern, the difficulty or reluctance many people have today in entrusting themselves to God. It is a complex phenomenon and one which I ponder continually.
While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will. Subsequently we observe, with distress, the notion of freedom being distorted. Freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in - a participation in Being itself. Hence authentic freedom can never be attained by turning away from God. Such a choice would ultimately disregard the very truth we need in order to understand ourselves. A particular responsibility therefore for each of you, and your colleagues, is to evoke among the young the desire for the act of faith, encouraging them to commit themselves to the ecclesial life that follows from this belief. It is here that freedom reaches the certainty of truth. In choosing to live by that truth, we embrace the fullness of the life of faith which is given to us in the Church.
Clearly, then, Catholic identity is not dependent upon statistics. Neither can it be equated simply with orthodoxy of course content. It demands and inspires much more: namely that each and every aspect of your learning communities reverberates within the ecclesial life of faith. Only in faith can truth become incarnate and reason truly human, capable of directing the will along the path of freedom (cf. Spe Salvi, 23). In this way our institutions make a vital contribution to the mission of the Church and truly serve society. They become places in which God's active presence in human affairs is recognized and in which every young person discovers the joy of entering into Christ's "being for others" (cf. ibid., 28).
The Church's primary mission of evangelization, in which educational institutions play a crucial role, is consonant with a nation's fundamental aspiration to develop a society truly worthy of the human person's dignity. At times, however, the value of the Church's contribution to the public forum is questioned. It is important therefore to recall that the truths of faith and of reason never contradict one another (cf. First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, IV: DS 3017; St. Augustine, Contra Academicos, III, 20, 43).
The Church's mission, in fact, involves her in humanity's struggle to arrive at truth. In articulating revealed truth she serves all members of society by purifying reason, ensuring that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths. Drawing upon divine wisdom, she sheds light on the foundation of human morality and ethics, and reminds all groups in society that it is not praxis that creates truth but truth that should serve as the basis of praxis. Far from undermining the tolerance of legitimate diversity, such a contribution illuminates the very truth which makes consensus attainable, and helps to keep public debate rational, honest and accountable. Similarly the Church never tires of upholding the essential moral categories of right and wrong, without which hope could only wither, giving way to cold pragmatic calculations of utility which render the person little more than a pawn on some ideological chess-board.
With regard to the educational forum, the diakonia of truth takes on a heightened significance in societies where secularist ideology drives a wedge between truth and faith. This division has led to a tendency to equate truth with knowledge and to adopt a positivistic mentality which, in rejecting metaphysics, denies the foundations of faith and rejects the need for a moral vision. Truth means more than knowledge: knowing the truth leads us to discover the good. Truth speaks to the individual in his or her entirety, inviting us to respond with our whole being. This optimistic vision is found in our Christian faith because such faith has been granted the vision of the Logos, God's creative Reason, which in the Incarnation, is revealed as Goodness itself. Far from being just a communication of factual data - "informative" - the loving truth of the Gospel is creative and life-changing - "performative" (cf. Spe Salvi, 2). With confidence, Christian educators can liberate the young from the limits of positivism and awaken receptivity to the truth, to God and his goodness. In this way you will also help to form their conscience which, enriched by faith, opens a sure path to inner peace and to respect for others.
It comes as no surprise, then, that not just our own ecclesial communities but society in general has high expectations of Catholic educators. This places upon you a responsibility and offers an opportunity. More and more people - parents in particular - recognize the need for excellence in the human formation of their children. As Mater et Magistra, the Church shares their concern. When nothing beyond the individual is recognized as definitive, the ultimate criterion of judgment becomes the self and the satisfaction of the individual's immediate wishes. The objectivity and perspective, which can only come through a recognition of the essential transcendent dimension of the human person, can be lost.
Within such a relativistic horizon the goals of education are inevitably curtailed. Slowly, a lowering of standards occurs. We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom. We witness an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing, is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk', bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love.
How might Christian educators respond?
These harmful developments point to the particular urgency of what we might call "intellectual charity". This aspect of charity calls the educator to recognize that the profound responsibility to lead the young to truth is nothing less than an act of love. Indeed, the dignity of education lies in fostering the true perfection and happiness of those to be educated. In practice "intellectual charity" upholds the essential unity of knowledge against the fragmentation which ensues when reason is detached from the pursuit of truth. It guides the young towards the deep satisfaction of exercising freedom in relation to truth, and it strives to articulate the relationship between faith and all aspects of family and civic life. Once their passion for the fullness and unity of truth has been awakened, young people will surely relish the discovery that the question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of what they ought to do. Here they will experience "in what" and "in whom" it is possible to hope, and be inspired to contribute to society in a way that engenders hope in others.
Dear friends, I wish to conclude by focusing our attention specifically on the paramount importance of your own professionalism and witness within our Catholic universities and schools. First, let me thank you for your dedication and generosity. I know from my own days as a professor, and I have heard from your Bishops and officials of the Congregation for Catholic Education, that the reputation of Catholic institutes of learning in this country is largely due to yourselves and your predecessors. Your selfless contributions - from outstanding research to the dedication of those working in inner-city schools - serve both your country and the Church. For this I express my profound gratitude.
In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church's munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it.
Teachers and administrators, whether in universities or schools, have the duty and privilege to ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice. This requires that public witness to the way of Christ, as found in the Gospel and upheld by the Church's Magisterium, shapes all aspects of an institution's life, both inside and outside the classroom. Divergence from this vision weakens Catholic identity and, far from advancing freedom, inevitably leads to confusion, whether moral, intellectual or spiritual.
I wish also to express a particular word of encouragement to both lay and Religious teachers of catechesis who strive to ensure that young people become daily more appreciative of the gift of faith. Religious education is a challenging apostolate, yet there are many signs of a desire among young people to learn about the faith and practice it with vigor. If this awakening is to grow, teachers require a clear and precise understanding of the specific nature and role of Catholic education. They must also be ready to lead the commitment made by the entire school community to assist our young people, and their families, to experience the harmony between faith, life and culture.
Here I wish to make a special appeal to Religious Brothers, Sisters and Priests:
Do not abandon the school apostolate; indeed, renew your commitment to schools especially those in poorer areas. In places where there are many hollow promises which lure young people away from the path of truth and genuine freedom, the consecrated person's witness to the evangelical counsels is an irreplaceable gift. I encourage the Religious present to bring renewed enthusiasm to the promotion of vocations. Know that your witness to the ideal of consecration and mission among the young is a source of great inspiration in faith for them and their families.
To all of you I say: bear witness to hope. Nourish your witness with prayer. Account for the hope that characterizes your lives (cf. 1 Pet 3:15) by living the truth which you propose to your students. Help them to know and love the One you have encountered, whose truth and goodness you have experienced with joy. With Saint Augustine, let us say: "we who speak and you who listen acknowledge ourselves as fellow disciples of a single teacher" (Sermons, 23:2). With these sentiments of communion, I gladly impart to you, your colleagues and students, and to your families, my Apostolic Blessing. (SOURCE)

Thank you, Lord, for this pope, our Holy Father, who has not been silent about the many pressing issues facing Catholic education in the United States. May all of us listen carefully.

Seeking dialogue, sort of

2009-05-15T09:52:00.012-04:00

Notre Dame's Father Jenkins sends a letter to graduating seniors and tells them that there

is much to admire and celebrate in the life and work of President Obama. His views and policies on immigration, expanding health care, alleviating poverty, and building peace through diplomacy have a deep residence with Catholic social teaching. As the first African-American holder of this office, he has accelerated our country’s progress in overcoming the painful legacy of slavery and segregation. He’s a remarkable figure in American history and I look forward to welcoming him to Notre Dame.

Despite its brevity—and its complete silence on Life issues—the letter says a great deal. It stays on message, reiterating what Father Jenkins and his supporters believe is most important: that Notre Dame and the Catholic community

be a place where people of good will are received with charity, are able to speak, be heard, and engage in responsible and reasoned dialogue.

What's so weird—almost a little creepy—is that Father Jenkins continues to repeat this refrain while ignoring the reasoned response that his bishop and so many others have offered him. It's difficult to believe in the sincerity of his call for—and celebration of—dialogue and discussion when he refuses to dialogue with anyone critical of the Obama honor.

To see what responsible and reasoned dialogue looks like, consider Ramesh Ponnuru's Thinking Through Notre Dame:

Surely, I thought, one speech, even by a sitting president, cannot compromise the Catholic Church’s witness against abortion and related evils... But as the debate unfolded I was quickly reminded how surprisingly little people understand, both Catholics and non-Catholics, about Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life...

Commentators on the dispute have ignorantly brought up Catholic teachings on other matters, especially the death penalty and the Iraq war, to suggest that the objectors are being rank partisans. In truth the Church does not oppose either the war or capital punishment in the same way, and with the same strength, that it opposes abortion.

It would be truer to say that [Catholicism] opposes the abortion license the way it opposes policies of white supremacy... [I]nstitutions committed to racial equality before the law cannot honor people who oppose it — however exemplary those people may be in other respects — without in effect declaring that the harms the victims of racial supremacy suffer are unimportant.

Support for white racism brings instant illegitimacy to advocates of green energy or universal healthcare. Even if you're personally opposed to white supremacy but govern, nevertheless, in such a way that white racists and their institutions are protected, funded, and advanced around the world, nothing you have to say about poverty or immigration will matter much. You'll be something of a joke, and rightly so.

So it is for abortion. It's not a pollywog—not a scab or krill or bacterium—in the womb but a person, a human being, most vulnerable, most valuable. Victimized. Aborted. Here stands a President most dedicated to advancing Abortion Lobby goals, and here's Father Jenkins and Catholic Notre Dame pretending they can ignore it.

Breaking down Burke

2009-05-13T06:13:00.004-04:00

Father James Schall at Ignatius Insight breaks down Archbishop Raymond Burke's keynote address delivered at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, May 8, 2009. Archbishop Burke is Prefect for The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, or Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Catholic Church.

Here are some highlights of Father Schall's breakdown:

The legal and physical attacks on the unborn are related to a new and radical understanding of the family. Burke attacks the first principle of deviation from marital good. "At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality—which would have us believe that the inherent procreative nature of the conjugal union can, in practice, be mechanically or chemically eliminated, while the marital act remains unitive." To this view, Burke simply says: "It cannot be so."

...evidence of the effects of this mentality is that "contraceptive" societies are quite literally dying. They are aging. They do not have enough spirit and energy to reproduce themselves. Their families are being replace by imported labor. The most revolutionary movement in the world today arises through the replacements of populations that have practiced abortion and contraception by the children of those who do not practice it. There is no way to make this supposedly "private" choice really private. The consequences are everywhere visible when there are no or few children to be seen.

"With unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation upon the faithful, indissoluble, and inherently procreative love of a man and a woman in marriage, and, in violation of what nature itself teaches, to replace it with a so-called marital relationship, according to the definition of those who exercise the greatest power in our society."

The president's choice of his staff, Burke observes, is "remarkable for the number of major officials, including several Catholics, who favor the denial of the right to life to the unborn and the violation of the integrity of marriage and the family." There is, moreover, a "consistent pattern of decisions by the leadership of our nation which is taking our nation down a path which denies the fundamental right to life to the innocent and defenseless unborn and violates the fundamental integrant of the marital union and the family."

"It grieves me to say that the support of anti-life legislation by Catholics in public office," Archbishop Burke admitted, "is so common that those who are not Catholic have justifiably questioned whether the Church's teaching regarding the inviolate dignity of innocent human life is firm and unchanging." This consequence, of course, is what scandal formally means. Christ warned most solemnly about it. It is not a joke or matter of indifference. It is the matter subject to the severest judgment of which Benedict spoke so eloquently and soberly in Spe Salvi.

To understand how Archbishop Burke is being received by the Left in this country, see the emotionally charged comments at the bottom of Jesse Holland's Huffington Post.

Fr. Corapi on Notre Dame

2009-05-07T19:46:00.000-04:00

Racial Catholic

2009-05-07T07:00:00.004-04:00

Am I a white Christian? Caucasoid Catholic? Honkified member of the body of Jesus?

Honkified is a term I've taken from Albert Cleage, c. 1968, who said—among a great many other interesting things—"I'm not saying, 'Wouldn't it be nice if Jesus was black?' Or 'Let's pretend that Jesus was black.' I'm saying that Jesus WAS black."

For some, race isn't an ideological or provisional or strategic classification of human beings but a biological reality—indeed, the very foundation of being, the great lens through which all else must be seen. Such was the case with Cleage, who was by no means mainstream. His obsession with race nevertheless lingers everywhere in our culture, even in something as mainstream as the modern Catholic Church. Consider, for example, the Black Christ of St Cecelia's Catholic Church in Detroit.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory got me thinking about this when he was reported (in La Stampa) as having said that Barak Obama's election in the United States represents "a great step for humanity... If Obama at the White House is like the first man on the moon, the same thing can certainly happen for the throne of Peter."

When we look to Rome, do we see a white man who is pope? Should we calculate first the pigmentation, process what we think is biological data and all it supposedly signifies, then understand the Church office within that racial context? I don't say that Archbishop Gregory wants us to do that because I don't believe he does. Instead, I think our Archbishop has opened the door to a valuable discussion about the role of race in our Faith.

Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:9-11:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.

One can't help but read "the old nature with its practices" as being precisely that critical apparatus that makes distinctions between people on the basis of their race and class—ie, whether they be "Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, [or] free man."

You lie to one another, says Paul, when you pretend that social or racial distinctions truly exist among you. Indeed. In important and indisputable ways, the pope is neither white nor black. The pope—his nature renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator—transcends race, as all Christians do, and it seems to me that we should be saying so every chance we get. Benedict XVI is not more pope to people of lighter pigmentation; neither is my Archbishop less my bishop because his skin is darker than mine. The Church's holy offices, along with all her children, have been founded on a truth that disintegrates racial divisions—permanently antiquates (indeed, invalidates) them.

Consider Christopher Dawson's description of the early Church:

The unity of the [early Church] was essentially a supernatural unity, depending not on external circumstances but on the spiritual union of the faithful with one another in Christ. This union was realized above all in the sacraments which were the channels for the transmission of the life of the Spirit and the means by which the faithful were incorporated into the divine organism or mystical body of which Christ is the head. (102)

In the [early Church], rich and poor, bond and free, Roman citizen and foreigner all met on a absolutely equal footing. (127)

The equality of the footing isn't measured by first separating all believers into their respective racial categories and then determining who among which groups exercise authority. God forgive us. Through the ministry of the Church, we are being drawn into Christ—all these divisive specters like race are thereby exorcised. Christ is all and in all. To understand and embrace that is to entirely reject any politics of race.

Of the Galatians passage cited above Chrysostom says,

...for having said, 'We are all made children of God through Faith,' he does not stop there, but tries to find something more exact, which may serve to convey a still closer oneness with Christ. Having said, 'ye have put on Christ,' even this does not suffice Him, but by way of penetrating more deeply into this union, he comments on it thus: 'Ye are all One in Christ Jesus,' that is, ye have all one form and one mould, even Christ's. What can be more awful than these words! He that was a Greek, or Jew, or bond-man yesterday, carries about with him the form, not of an Angel or Archangel, but of the Lord of all, yea displays in his own person the Christ.

Or we could say, he carries about with him the form, not of a white man or black man, but of the Lord of all, yea displays in his own person the Christ.

Lord, thank you for providing, through your Son, the racial healing that this world longs for. Thank you for our pastors, our bishops, and our pope who lead us all in unity to our final hope.

Credo...

2009-05-05T09:44:00.000-04:00

What do you believe in?

Question to Father Jenkins of Notre Dame

2009-05-01T14:57:00.000-04:00

Devastating:

I’d like to ask this of Fr. John Jenkins, the Notre Dame president: Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama—the young, pregnant Notre Dame woman sitting in that graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or the Notre Dame man who believes that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just dining-room talk?

Read the entire piece for full impact: here.

Roman Catholic – a paradox?

2009-04-28T10:05:00.001-04:00

The phrase Roman Catholic signals an interesting paradox: Catholic is a word that seeks to transcend the limitations of the particular to embrace the whole... but there's that modifier Roman which insists on a particular limitation. The phrase Roman Catholic, in other words, is somewhat self-contradictory. It's moving in two different directions at the same time. Right?

Well... maybe. Insofar as the phrase Roman Catholic is used to describe those Christians who recognize the apostolicus primatus—ie, the primacy of the pope—then the phrase is more helpful than self-contradictory. Here's how:

The Church is comprised of doctrinal content and communion: the matter and form of belief together with fellowship (agreement, unity). The Church, for example, is not a racial communion, is not concerned with national origin and so on—which simply means no one is interested in inspecting your genealogy or your passport before you're allowed membership. Thus, the Church is catholic by definition. It's universal. Calling it Roman Catholic simply highlights what communion actually means—ie, all the bishops agreeing together and all agreeing with the Roman bishop, the Chair of Peter. Looked at this way, there is no self-contradiction at all. Both terms, Romanus and catholicus, are moving in the same direction—they even describe each other.

Veneration – the Real object

2009-04-20T15:26:00.000-04:00

There is a criticism of the Catholic veneration of saints which suggests the Catholic has misunderstood that we’re all saints.

But it seems to me that Catholicism only teaches what we already know in our hearts: some saints are distinctly heroic, inspiring, and full of faith in super-abundant ways while other Christians, like me, for example, are pretty far from emblematic, laudable, or heroic. God doesn’t love me less, it’s true, but haven’t we gone off track somewhere when we imply or assert that everyone, no matter what he does with his life, is just as saintly as the next so long as he believes in Jesus?

I’m not self-deprecating: I’m just being honest—I haven’t accomplished much in my 37 years compared to a Gregory of Nazianzus, for example, or Justin, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Augustine, Brendan, James, or Benedict. I’ve spent most of my adult life essentially denying the power of Jesus Christ, while Christian martyrs have quite literally spent their lives proclaiming it. Is there no difference between us? Is God entirely indifferent to the (often very difficult) choices some of us make—the suffering that some endure—in pursuit of holiness?

The testimony of the New Testament is pretty clear in my view. We are all saints, it’s true, but some lead lives that sing of Christ—and that’s worth venerating, canonizing, emulating, and handing on to the next generation precisely because it glorifies Christ.

Thank you, Lord, for those incredible Saints who have gone and are going before us, leading us closer to you.

I love my parish...

2009-04-13T14:57:00.000-04:00

...and don't say it often enough.

Thank you, Lord, for Father John, Father Jose, and Deacon Pat—and thank you for the many people who make up our little parish community.

Chrism Mass, St Peter's, 9 April 09

2009-04-10T06:20:00.000-04:00

Two paragraphs from the Holy Father's homily...

To be immersed in the Truth, in Christ – part of this process is prayer, in which we exercise our friendship with him and we come to know him: his way of being, of thinking, of acting. Praying is a journey in personal communion with Christ, setting before him our daily life, our successes and failures, our struggles and our joys – in a word, it is to stand in front of him. But if this is not to become a form of self-contemplation, it is important that we constantly learn to pray by praying with the Church. Celebrating the Eucharist means praying. We celebrate the Eucharist rightly if with our thoughts and our being we enter into the words which the Church sets before us. There we find the prayer of all generations, which accompany us along the way towards the Lord. As priests, in the Eucharistic celebration we are those who by their prayer blaze a trail for the prayer of today’s Christians. If we are inwardly united to the words of prayer, if we let ourselves be guided and transformed by them, then the faithful will also enter into those words. And then all of us will become truly “one body, one spirit” in Christ.

To be immersed in God’s truth and thus in his holiness – for us this also means to acknowledge that the truth makes demands, to stand up, in matters great and small, to the lie which in so many different ways is present in the world; accepting the struggles associated with the truth, because its inmost joy is present within us. Nor, when we talk about being sanctified in the truth, should we forget that in Jesus Christ truth and love are one. Being immersed in him means being immersed in his goodness, in true love. True love does not come cheap, it can also prove quite costly. It resists evil in order to bring men true good. If we become one with Christ, we learn to recognize him precisely in the suffering, in the poor, in the little ones of this world; then we become people who serve, who recognize our brothers and sisters in him, and in them, we encounter him.

Source: Gregor Kollmorgan at New Liturgical Movement

Trashing the Church

2009-04-09T09:24:00.000-04:00

The Times has a worthwhile review of Ian Linden's new book, Global Catholicism. I'm less interested in the review as "a discussion" of Global Catholicism and much more interested in the review as "review," ie, what this review tells us about reviewing, how it's done.

First, there's the question of tone. The opening lines promise a kind of open-minded even-handedness, which immediately distinguishes a good 'review' from, say, a worthless rant of ignorant prejudices:

...it is clear that the Catholic Church, in particular, remains remarkably robust... Secularists might be surprised to learn that the Church is the largest single supplier of health care and education on the planet, the principal glue of civil society in Africa, the strongest bulwark of opposition to the caste system in India, and a leading player in global campaigns for sustainable living. It provides almost the only charitable presence in Chechnya, and other blackspots often forgotten by the rest of the world.

That's a very nice thing to say and provides a measure of balance for the more negative appraisals to come. The review's author, Rupert Shortt, might have gone entirely negative—this is, after all, the Catholic Church he's writing about, right? But no: the mark of a good review is balance, what you might call "fairness" or even "tact."

Of course, having begun with the good, he must not fail to acknowledge the bad of the Church, and we have to admit it aint perfect, right? Shortt's list of Church abuses isn't lacking (let's number them), his analysis deservedly scolding, and keep in mind that he is, after all, reviewing a book that is understandably skeptical of Catholicism. So... here's 34 assertions Shortt makes about the Church:

The Church's leadership is often poor
Teaching the sinfulness of artificial contraception is a catastrophic mistake
On reproductive matters, the Church is wrong-headed and chronically irresponsible
The Vatican's inhabitants are sheltered from the real world
Popes enjoy absolute power, but only because of railway systems
Catholics view the Orthodox as locked in a suffocating embrace with nationalist forces
Benedict XVI stridently resists delegating any power
Benedict XVI sees Africans and Asians uncritically as either mere converts or opponents instead of critical agents and complicated human beings
Joseph Ratzinger is a chameleon, deceptive, an embodiment of contradictions
Benedict XVI is a hardline architect of centralized Church government
Many objective observers see Joseph Ratzinger as a new Grand Inquisitor
Joseph Ratzinger is no stranger to severe misjudgments
Joseph Ratzinger is unpredictable, experiencing vertiginous dialectical moments of complete reversal in theological opinion
The once young, open-minded Joseph Ratzinger became a sort-of conservative reactionary after witnessing, as a professor, the sinister student protests of 1968
Joseph Ratzinger is prone to chase windmills, originally targeting Marxism as the big threat to the Church but—whoops!—now that Marxism's dead he says the big evil is postmodern relativism
Joseph Ratzinger's outlook on Church affairs and human nature is unremittingly pessimistic, which is constantly evident in all his work from the 1970s
Joseph Ratzinger would really be just another obscure academic if it weren't for the unilateral decision of Pope Paul VI to make Ratzinger an Archbishop
As Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger just couldn't keep his highly partisan, personal opinions under wraps
Ratzinger compromised his tenure as Prefect by playing both sides as referee and theological competitor
As Prefect, Ratzinger was known for his excessively zealous, fiercely worded documents
Ratzinger's Prefect tenure was marked by contentiousness
Ratzinger actually believes that the supposed truths of Christianity are really true
Ratzinger defines discipleship as submission to strong central control
Ratzinger's bitter and self-righteous writings and speeches are exaggerated and offensive
Ratzinger insulted everyone by suggesting that non-Christians and non-Catholics may be in spiritual peril
Vatican condemnation of homosexuality is offensive and suggests the Church doesn't love gay people
Despite Vatican II, the Church has no clue what it's relationship with the world is or should be—when the Church attempts to address the issue it only weakens its position with simplistic bunk
Ratzinger is firmly against the idea that tradition evolves and doctrine develops, and thus contradicts the Church he purports to lead
Western secular society is more compassionate than the Church because society accepts everyone regardless of whether or not the Church labels them a pariah
The Church's position on divorce is childish
Many Catholics argue that Joseph Ratzinger is not a credible pope, and saying so makes them good Catholics who respect the office of pope
Joseph Ratzinger is often just silly, as when he warned Catholics against yoga and Eastern meditation practices
By donating some of his money to help translation efforts of the Lotus Sutra, and by admitting to admiring the Buddhist-inspired Siddhartha, Ratzinger shows himself to be mired in contradiction
Benedict XVI is an old, tired, caretaker pope, trying to stave off what will be a full democratic revolution within the Church to end the cruel papacy as we know it

I know what you're thinking: Only thirty-four? In truth, I may have missed a criticism or two, but the point is that good reviewing—the kind you can earn a very good living by—requires that you trash your subject. Balance and tact? That's for freshmen. Fair judgment? Calling Balls! on the Catholic Church is fair judgment! ...right?

; )

Honestly, you have to laugh out loud at some of them, number 11, 22, and 31 especially, but others are really carefully designed to wound Catholics, as with number 26—love of him (or her or it or us) is entirely incompatible with condemnation of any kind, is the sentiment.

You can only truly love me by accepting everything about me, supporting and encouraging me to pursue whatever I may desire.

That is, of course, a sentiment entirely without witness in the Christian tradition—unknown in the early Church and absent in any of Jesus' teaching—yet it is enthusiastically paraded as a devastating revelation of Christianity's hypocrisy. People like Rupert Shortt know it's disingenuous (libelous, malicious) but employ it anyway, at least rhetorically, because they know it's effective, emotive. The other 30-something criticisms are remarkably stupid, but that's where we are today, especially with newspapers.

Still, the review and the sentiments therein are timely considering the Notre Dame affair and the ongoing fight over what it means to be Catholic, whether there are such essentials as stable doctrinal content and communion.

Thank You, Lord, for this pope Your shepherd.

Protecting conscience rights

2009-04-08T06:23:00.000-04:00

The USCCB has a helpful website unpacking the Healthcare Conscience Rights that the Obama administration intends to dissolve. The US Department of Health and Human Services is taking public comment until Thursday, and the USCCB encourages all Catholics to provide their feedback.

Susan Wills has a piece entitled From Choice to Coercion: it's not enough for the Obama administration that abortion be a legal choice; instead, everyone should have to pay for abortions, and healthcare workers should be forced to perform them. This is government at its creepiest.

The company you keep...

2009-04-07T22:02:00.001-04:00

I heard tonight that one of Obama's advisors referred to the Knights of Columbus as foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression or somethingorother.

That's especially rich: I just filled out an application for membership this weekend. If I am admitted, I hope the jackboots have good arch support... flat feet and all.

Notre Dame and St Joseph's: What does it mean to be "Catholic"?

2009-04-06T20:20:00.000-04:00

On the heels of the Notre Dame scandal we get word that St Joseph will host Chris Matthews as commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctoral degree in communications—Chris Matthews of the now-(in)famous Obama leg thrill, Matthews the committed supporter of abortion. Nor will either of these challenges to Catholic identity—Norte Dame’s nor St Joseph’s—be the last we see this year. You can expect more of this in the months to come, and you can be certain that much good will come from it.

As a result of these unfortunate invitations, for example, people are asking what exactly it means to self-identify as “Catholic,” which strikes me as a topic with profound promise.

In his works like Called to Communion and Introduction to Christianity, (then) Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) describes Christianity as an invitation to receive the gift of new life. Invitation and gift are the key words—the gift is free, in so far as we can’t earn it, can’t conjure it up, manufacture or in any other way coerce it, and the invitation implies a community. Come and receive...

The Bible presses this home when it describes Christians as sheep, when New Testament authors refer to their congregations or addressees as children. In other words, if you’re looking for a religion that celebrates your strength and power, your brilliant individuality, your high-voltage intellection, your stupefying beef, then Christianity will likely disappoint. Alas, God isn’t lost without you and isn't depending on you to devise the best way to know and worship Him. God is in fact trying to save you—He’s trying to give you Himself and not as an abstract idea but in the person of Jesus Christ as He is known and communicated in the Church He founded.

Thus, Christianity—as Catholics know and experience it—consists of doctrinal and theological content but also communion: the local church with its pastor in communion with their bishop who is himself in communion with the other bishops and, of course, with the Holy See. Take away the doctrinal content, alter or otherwise seek to mature it, and you no longer have a Catholic Christianity but a unique congregation in a state of protest; retain the content but abandon the communion and you no longer have a Catholic Christianity but a unique congregation in a state of protest. Christian—sure, by all means—but not Catholic.

For Catholic Christianity, abortion is not one moral issue among others—you see Notre Dame and their apologists move quickly to set abortion alongside such issues as war and poverty, environmentalism and so on. That's perfectly understandable, but it's entirely inconsistent with clear and unambiguous Catholic teaching. Catholicism recognizes that there is room for legitimate debate and disagreement about war, environmentalism, even the death penalty; abortion, however, is intrinsically evil. To the extent that Notre Dame, other institutions, and individual Catholics realign (or redefine) abortion, they misalign themselves with the Catholic communion. They should have the courage to say so... seems like.

A lenten mission mass

2009-03-31T15:53:00.000-04:00

"What or who is beyond saving—beyond redemption? The 9-11 hijackers? Those who place road-side bombs to kill and maim our troops? Jeffrey Dahmer?"

"...whether he's called God, or Christ, or Allah—he's the same God..."

"...when the moment's right—as the commercial says, speaking about something else..."

There's three of the more memorable lines I'm taking home from a lenten mission mass I attended. I wouldn't call them scandalous remarks, but they're certainly very interesting in a distracting sort of way.

The last one, with its weird allusion to Cialis, was especially peculiar (if not alarming). He said it, and for several seconds my mind raced to find another possible referent than erectile dysfunction. Nope. Definitely (inexplicably) an allusion to Cialis commercials, delivered with a grin and dry chuckle—in a lenten mission mass, in a completely unrelated meditation on Simon of Cyrene and Veronica (of the Via Crucis). The word you're looking for is gauche.

What could it possibly mean? I asked myself over and over as the homily continued.

I don't envy public speakers, and the homily has got to be an unspeakable trial situated, as it is, in sacred matter. The prayer and ceremony that make up the Catholic mass are a celebration of a sacrament, the service of the Eucharist, which is a profound reality of the presence of God and conveyance of his grace. If you're not a Catholic, imagine for a second that you are—that you believe this sacrament stuff—and then imagine it's your job to say something at such an event. I'll grant you that any act of public speaking is a menace, but the homily has got to be an exceptional threat.

So when a priest says something I just can't understand or stomach, I'm always already understanding and forgiving—even thankful—for that reason alone. There are more and better reasons to respect a priest's homily despite the iffy riffs, but the incredible responsibility of the homily is, all by itself, a good one.

Still, it's worth suggesting that, at least terminologically, God and Allah do not refer to the same thing. You have to say it, in fact, because the casual (post)modern assumption—evident in the priest's remarks—that language is a pure system of possibility is much less than half the story. It's possible, certainly, that the term Allah, at least theoretically, equates to the Christian term God (depending on a half-dozen qualifications), sure. But let's eventually ground ourselves in the real world, right?

What exactly do we stand to gain (as Catholics or human beings) by dreaming up last-second conversion scenarios of satanic Muslim terrorists and anthropophagi? Does that kind of theoretical speculation really do anything for us, does it sharpen the contours of our faith? Really? I'm not convinced but I'm still mulling it over.

God help me to listen more carefully, with more sincerity, more tact, and always be willing to yield the benefit of the doubt. God bless our priests, every single one of them, loaded as they are with such awesome and sacred responsibilities like homiletics.

Modern Babylon

2009-03-29T17:06:00.000-04:00

I'm finally reading The Formation of Christendom by Christopher Dawson—recommended by Deacon Omar—and it's even better than I expected.

Today in America [this book was first published in 1965]... all different forms of religion and irreligion coexist and share a common culture. There is no longer any exclusive dominion of one form of Christianity, not even an exclusive dualism of Catholic and Protestant, but a spectrum in which every shade of religious belief is represented. Churches and rites which in the past and in the Old World existed in such isolation that they were hardly conscious of one another's existence have been brought face to face with one another here and jostle one another in the streets of the modern Babylon. In some respects we are reminded of the situation at Rome and Alexandria in the first centuries of Christianity. The situation is painful in as much as it exposes the scandal of Christian disunity in its full dimensions. Yet at the same time it offers an opportunity such as has never existed in the world before for Christians to meet and understand one another. Without such an understanding there can be no hope for a return to Christian unity.

General Info Links:
Christopher Dawson—Christ in History
Google Books
Rediscovering Christopher Dawson
Notre Dame—Christopher Dawson Resources

Nuptiality

2008-12-19T06:41:00.000-05:00

"Body of Christ" in Paul, says Ratzinger, has three inner-Biblical sources:

The Semitic conception of the 'corporate personality' — ie, we are all Adam, a single man writ large. Compare that to Descartes' 'cogito' wherein only the individual is intelligible.
The Eucharist — "The bread we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because it is one bread, we, the many, are one body"
Nuptiality — ie, the Biblical philosophy of love, which begins with the Genesis account of union, "the two shall become one flesh... a man cleaves to his wife," making a single new existence, and culminates in 1 Corinthians, "he who cleaves to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him."

Number three plunges me into some kind of serious meditation in prayer and, obviously, in the Mass. More than some commemoration, more than a sacred rite of identity, Eucharist is a love act wherein two subjects are fused. Remember all that bride and groom talk from your New Testament? It's Eucharistic theology — a nuptial mystery. When you approach the altar in this frame of mind, you really want everything to slooooow down. You fall headlong into worship.

Paul uses Marriage to help us understand what's happening in Eucharist, but by doing so he is also telling us something about the sacredness of our Marriages. Jesus prayed in John 17 that we Christians would be one unified communion: We answer, "Yes Lord," and unambiguously, through our Marriage and our Mass.

Scripture Determines vs Interpretation Determines

2008-12-17T16:40:00.000-05:00

Reformed Theological Seminary’s virtual campus (hub of the online programs) provides resources to its students. One such resource available on the RTS website is a master’s degree thesis written in 2003 and available here [link].

Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to be anything more than I am: a simple Catholic convert who is probably more confused than the average Joe and certainly less informed. I’m an authority on leisure and nothing more, so at no time will I presume to address the author of this thesis nor personally impugn him in any way.

Let us pretend, at least, that the author is unknown, which strictly speaking is true: I don’t know the author and am sure his life is richer for having not known me. Let’s have done, then, with any more talk of authors and stick to texts instead.

I’d like to look at the formal Thesis Statement, where the master’s thesis promises

to demonstrate what the whole of Scripture determines to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ (the one doctrine necessary for entrance into the Church of Christ and necessary to be correctly preached by any group claiming to be a Church of Christ).

Strictly speaking, is it correct to say that the Scripture determines what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is—as if it’s the Scriptural text that makes the determination? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to name the reader as the active agent? After all, the process of determination is usually called "interpretation," and human beings interpret, not texts. A text is a heap of words on a ream of pages, right? Granted, in the case of Scripture we Christians believe the words to be extraordinarily peculiar, almost unbelievably valuable—indeed, words from God.

But let’s be honest: Scripture doesn’t wrap itself in a smoking jacket, take a chair at the head of the table, and then expound its determinations to us. It’s a text, Scripture, and we’re the ones who make determinations about the text (ie, "interpretation") with more or less rigor.

Now, I understand the Protestant appeal to Scripture. After all, any discussion about what the Gospel actually is (or what "Church" means, or how one might be saved) must appeal, sooner or later, to an authority. Prior to Luther and the other “reformers,” Christians had always appealed to the authority of the bishops, the pope, Church Tradition, and the Bible: in short, the one, holy and apostolic Church—ie, the Holy Text, yes, but within the living and authoritative Christian Tradition that produced it in the first place.

After the Reformation, Protestants could appeal to Luther or to Calvin (or one of the others); they could appeal to some Church Tradition, depending on which Reformer they followed and at what time in his career they followed him; they could appeal to Scripture or to personal opinion, but eventually the leaders of the protests died, the protest movements faced internal disagreement that gave rise to protests within protests, so that today you can drive 30 miles and pass 63 different Protestant churches (we just did this last weekend).

Protestants often tell me that really those 63 different churches mostly agree. Yes, they agree that "church" is something you can make, armed with your Bible and your own personal interpretive apparatus (ie, "opinion"), which guarantees denominational fracture and poisons Christians against one another. They agree to disagree.

I don't think it's unfair to portray Protestants today—having lost all authority of our bishops, our pope, and our catholic Church Tradition—as having only Scripture and personal opinion they can appeal to. And given the choice between those, I’d pick Scripture too and did for more than 25 years.

But the inescapable problem is that Scripture is not the authority but is itself the product of authority: the authority of our bishops, our pope, and our catholic Church Tradition. This "our" I'm using, by the way, includes you, for this is your Christian heritage too. Scripture is a collection of extraordinarily valuable words that still need to be interpreted within the wider Christian tradition we belong to.

That’s the key: interpretation within. Because it still needs to be interpreted, Scripture itself isn’t the answer to the authority question—and was never intended to be: Scripture is the very thing that demands an answer to the authority question. You might say, Scripture begs the question.

The RTS master’s thesis promises "to demonstrate what the whole of Scripture determines to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ," and in so doing skips politely over the single biggest challenge facing Protestantism, namely, that it embodies, as its name suggests, a crisis of authority.

When You’re Asked (or Accused) About Indulgences

2008-12-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

Long before the Reformation, the Church not only recognized the existence of abuses, but also used her authority to correct them. [source]

That’s a crucial statement, I think, for anyone who wants to examine the issue with sincerity and honesty. You sometimes encounter the idea that “reformers” (like Luther) had the guts finally to call out the Roman Catholic Church on its scandals and abuses.

I’m sure the reformers had guts, but neither the abuse of indulgences nor the criticism of any abuse was new in the 1500s.

And now, a few historical highlights (borrowed from here):

The Council of Clovesho in England (747) condemns those who imagine that they might atone for their crimes by substituting, in place of their own, the austerities of mercenary penitents.
Against the excessive indulgences granted by some prelates, the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) decreed that at the dedication of a church the indulgence should not be for more than a year, and, for the anniversary of the dedication or any other case, it should not exceed forty days, this being the limit observed by the pope himself on such occasions. The same restriction was enacted by the Council of Ravenna in 1317.
In answer to the complaint of the Dominicans and Franciscans, that certain prelates had put their own construction on the indulgences granted to these Orders, Clement IV in 1268 forbade any such interpretation, declaring that, when it was needed, it would be given by the Holy See.
In 1330 the brothers of the hospital of Haut-Pas falsely asserted that the grants made in their favor were more extensive than what the documents allowed: John XXII had all these brothers in France seized and imprisoned.
Boniface IX, writing to the Bishop of Ferrara in 1392, condemns the practice of certain religious who falsely claimed that they were authorized by the pope to forgive all sorts of sins, and exacted money from the simple-minded among the faithful by promising them perpetual happiness in this world and eternal glory in the next.
When Henry, Archbishop of Canterbury, attempted in 1420 to give a plenary indulgence in the form of the Roman Jubilee, he was severely reprimanded by Martin V, who characterized his action as "unheard-of presumption and sacrilegious audacity."
In 1450 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Apostolic Legate to Germany, found some preachers asserting that indulgences released from the guilt of sin as well as from the punishment. This error, due to a misunderstanding of the words "a culpa et a poena", the cardinal condemned at the Council of Magdeburg.
Sixtus IV in 1478, lest the idea of gaining indulgences should prove an incentive to sin, reserved for the judgment of the Holy See a large number of cases in which faculties had formerly been granted to confessors.

Abuse has always crept in, and abuse has always been condemned by the Church. This begs the question of whether the practice of indulgences is valid in the first place, and we’ll look at that too, in another post.

But right now I think it’s pretty significant that Christians from 700 to 1563 (from the Council of Clovesho to the Council of Trent) called for an end to any abuse of indulgences. If you include St Cyprian’s complaints about lebelli abuse, you can tack on another 450 years of Catholic condemnation of abuse (ie, AD 250-1563).

The Protestant objection, on the other hand, is not, as far as I can tell, a call to end abuse. The Protestant today decries the indulgence itself—that any such system was ever abused is technically a secondary issue. Abuse might reflect, for example, that Catholics are easy dupes or prove their depravity or whatever. Regardless, the Protestant objection is to the indulgence itself.

And it’s crucial to realize this protest in all its force: Christian practice from St Cyprian to Martin Luther (some 1,300 years’ worth of Christian life) was deceived, wrong, blind, according to the Protestant perspective. Only with Luther and the “reformers” do Christians finally get the truth, namely, that indulgences are sulfurous make-believe, designed specifically to be abused, a tool of the very Devil himself.

"Reformation," terminologically, no longer refers, here, to a removal of abuse or a renewed holiness but abandonment or deletion, reformation by re-creation.

And that's precisely what happened in the Reformation: Catholic altars were broken, churches burned, images destroyed, liturgy and doctrine and Bible all replaced by new liturgy and doctrine appropriately censored and Bible with fewer books. You aren’t reforming the church in such a scenario: you’re making a new one.

I sometimes bump into the sincere Protestant’s very good question,
Why can’t Catholics understand that Luther was one of the good guys, seeking to end abuse and reform the Church?
And I hope this post provides a helpful (if incomplete and unconvincing) answer: Luther, by calling indulgences make-believe nonsense, doesn’t call the Church to end abuse. Instead, Luther called Christians to abandon the Church and create their own.

How does one reconcile that with John 17?

Hold Fast

2008-12-09T06:49:00.001-05:00

Enter the baptismal font... and you can be quite certain that absolutely all your sins are forgiven, both what you have contracted by being born of your parents in line from Adam with original sin (that's the sin that has you running with your baby to the grace of the Savior), and what you have added in your life in thought, word, and deed—they are all forgiven, and you will come up out from there, as from the presence of your Lord, with the assurance that all your debts have been cancelled.

That's St. Augustine in his Sermon 56, specifically addressing the line in the Our Father "forgive us our debts, as we too forgive our debtors." We must forgive in order to be forgiven, Augustine says, and we can be certain that if and when we approach Baptism having truly forgiven others, we too obtain the certain gift of God's forgiveness for ourselves.

Hence, I'm still thinking about Brendan's baptism (some three days ago), about the confusion and mixed emotions Protestants and Catholics sometimes have when they attempt to share a Sacrament like Baptism, when the Catholic sees, for example, Protestant friends and family unable even to trace the sign of the cross on their baby.

We make the sign of the cross before we pray to collect and compose ourselves and to fix our minds and hearts and wills upon God. We make it when we finish praying in order that we may hold fast the gift we have received from God. In temptations we sign ourselves to be strengthened; in dangers, to be protected. The cross is signed upon us in blessings in order that the fullness of God's life may flow into the soul and fructify and sanctify us wholly.
—Romano Guardini, Sacred Signs

It's almost inconceivable that Christians would protest even the sign of the cross as sincerely as they do. Actually, that is a little dramatic—to say it like that—when what I'm really trying to convey is the longing (like a kind of pain) for the protest to end and reconciliation to rain down.

A Protestant friend says to me, "Some day I'd like to hear what you think baptism does for your son," and I'm thankful for any opportunity to discuss it, but I'm also eager to point out that what I think about the Sacrament is almost completely superfluous: let's discuss instead what the Bible teaches, what the Church Fathers believed, and what Christians have been doing for a couple thousand years. That's a great deal more compelling than any personal opinion, isn't it?

But we can't reconcile others, and that's really what I'm writing about here, or rather, what I'm trying to get at: namely, that we want one Church, a single Body of Christ, as Christ himself described in prayer,

I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. —John 17

Reconciliation is the work of the Holy Spirit. What Catholics can do in the meantime is love and respect those who protest the Church: hold fast to your parish, your Church, and as many friends and family members as you possibly can. Despite the schism, we are still brothers and sisters, sharing (despite our differences) in the same Grace and Love of God the Father in Jesus Christ. Hold fast and pray for reconciliation.

On Friendship

2008-12-07T19:55:00.000-05:00

When you know that your family's well-being—spiritual and otherwise—is another family's top priority... well, you have something very special.

After Brendan was baptized Saturday, we told his godparents, "Well, you're stuck with us now... now we can finally be ourselves and you're just plain stuck with us, irrevocably." They thought we were joking, which still cracks me up!

But seriously, how do you thank people for loving you and your children?

Brendan's godparents are teaching us what family of God looks like, what it feels like. And they're teaching us a great deal more as well. People say you have to work so hard on love and friendship, and I'm sure there's a lot of truth to that; Dan and Kristin, on the other hand, bring you the other kind of friendship, the kind that feels like a great big sigh of relief, like a natural and organic calm and peace, a vacation: the thing defined precisely by it's lack of hard work and funk. Oh they sacrifice and strip gears to be there for you, but then they always manage to leave you feeling like the hero, the clutch player, as if you've been the one to bless and encourage and build up.

I don't think we can thank the people who love us. They wouldn't know what to do with the thanks anyway, I suspect. I'm praying that God teach me, instead, how to love like that; how to be a friend, how to contribute to this family of God the way my son's godparents do.

The Eve of Baptism

2008-12-05T20:48:00.000-05:00

By the mystery of your death and resurrection, bathe this child in light, give Brendan the new life of baptism and welcome Brendan into your holy Church.

Tomorrow is the boy's baptism, and we're deeply moved by the rite we've been able to practice this week. Neither of us has ever attended a Catholic baptism, so this will be the first for all three of us, and it's just beautiful, the rite, the ceremony; I don't know what else to call it: beautiful.

When Protestants hear that we Catholics believe baptism saves our children, I know they're protesting the idea that ritual saves. Ritual can't save anybody, they're thinking. But that's not what we believe, exactly: it's not the ritual that saves us but the Spirit of Almighty God who moves and acts in a mysterious way in the waters of baptism. Turn off your cell phones, go to a quiet place, and re-read the book of Acts for yourself: God is the one who saves us, mysteriously. We are not symbolically buried in Christ, and we are not symbolically adopted as children of God: we are radically transformed and really, genuinely adopted within the context of water baptism not in spite of it.

It is a profound mystery, and it is not given only to adults: the New Testament is but one collection of ancient Christian writings that suggests the first converts also baptized their entire families with the expectation of salvation. In addition to the New Testament, we have the evidence of the Church fathers and more, and honestly this is not something over which Christians should be divided but something Christians should be celebrating. Everyone agrees that salvation must come to us as a gift of God, and Brendan's baptism is not a private, individual rite but a dynamic reminder to all of us that we are, indeed, children of God, in Christ Jesus, a single community—the very body of Christ—by the will of God, the grace of God, the love of God. All of us. Brendan's baptism is inextricably linked to his parents' journey of faith, his godparents' too, the faith and life of his parish, and so on, encompassing the entire Church.

This is just awesome stuff, exciting and sobering at the same time. We're just so thankful.

Invisible Creatures

2008-12-04T11:41:00.000-05:00

When heaven no longer opens up above to reveal the fellowship of the angels and saints, the pilgrim Church becomes dreary and desolate; in fact, she forgets that she is a pilgrim, that she has the joy of journeying through trials and tribulations to the heavenly homeland...
The earth has grown poorer, and so have we, since the widespread loss among Christians of a sense of the reality of God's invisible creatures...
Without the knowledge our faith gives us of the angels, the invisible dimension of creation is in danger of fading from our minds, and with that will fade the complementarity of heaven and earth, of the spiritual and the bodily, of nature and grace, which embraces the whole scope of creation. Living communion with the angels guards us against forgetting the invisible dimension of the Church...

That's from Christoph Schonborn's book entitled Loving the Church. I know what he's talking about because it's difficult for me to keep mindful of this communion and very easy for me to think of "the heavens" as the dreary overcast of the sky, like today. On the other hand, I know what happens to me on those rare days when the living communion breaks in on my ho-hum everyday. And man what a difference.

How does one keep fresh in mind this living communion with the saints and angels?

More on God's Word

2008-12-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

In God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office, Ratzinger's discussion of Luther strikes me as so honest and open:

[For Luther] a tradition is a human regulation, with which man hides himself from God, no, rebels against him, so as to take his salvation into his own hands instead of hoping for it from the grace of God.... Thus, tradition... is set in opposition to the gospel of grace: 'For the chief article of the gospel must be maintained, namely, that we obtain the grace of God through faith in Christ without our merits; we do not merit it by services of God instituted by men.'

That is exactly the criticism of Catholicism that I have heard (and have held) over the years, and the way Ratzinger lays it out makes it sound like a devastating critique of Catholicism. Does anyone think he answers the criticism as strongly (or moreso) as he presents it?

I also thought that Ratzinger's description of the Catholic and Protestant perspective on the word, ie, the Bible was dead on. In Catholicism, office is the criterion for the word—office guarantees the word; in Protestantism it's the other way around (p44):

[T]he word appears as the criterion for office, which is ultimately to be tested by the yardstick of the word and is thereby also liable to be rejected. The word has become independent.

In other words, Catholicism begins with the living witness, apostolic succession, which is the guarantee for both the word and its interpretation. Protestantism, on the other hand, begins with the word, the Bible, as an independent authority, THE independent authority that makes a "church" possible.

Isn't this one of the best ways to describe the difference between the Catholic and the Protestant?

Augustine on Baptism

2008-12-02T07:10:00.000-05:00

[AD 415] Anyone who would say that even infants who pass from this life without participation in the Sacrament of Baptism shall be made alive in Christ truly goes counter to the preaching of the Apostle and condemns the whole Church, where there is great haste in baptizing infants because it is believed without doubt that there is no other way at all in which they can be made alive in Christ...

[AD 395] When you shall have been baptized, keep to a good life in the commandments of God, so that you may preserve your baptism to the very end. I do not tell you that you will live here without sin, but they are venial sins which this life is never without. Baptism was instituted for all sins; for light sins, without which we cannot live, prayer was instituted. What does the prayer say? "Forgive us our debts as we too forgive our debtors." We are cleansed only once by baptism; by prayer we are cleansed daily... In the Church, therefore, there are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in Baptism, in prayer, and in the greater humility of penance...

[AD 412] It is an excellent thing that the Punic Christians call Baptism itself nothing else but 'salvation' and the sacrament of Christ's body nothing else but 'life'. Whence does this derive except from an ancient and apostolic tradition by which the Churches of Christ hold inherently that without baptism and participation at the table of the Lord it is impossible for any man to attain either to the kingdom of God or to salvation and life eternal? This is the witness of Scripture...

Baptism (continued)

2008-11-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

The phrase [in the Creed] about forgiveness of sins... refers to the other fundamental sacrament of the Church, namely Baptism; and from there it very soon came to include the sacrament of penance. At first, of course, baptism was the great sacrament of forgiveness, the moment when a visible transformation took place. Only gradually, through painful experience, did people come to see that even the baptized Christian needs forgiveness, with the result that the renewed remission of sins granted by the sacrament of penance advanced more and more into the foreground, especially since baptism moved to the beginning of life and thus ceased to be an expression of active conversion. Nevertheless, the fact remains even now that one cannot become a Christian by birth but only by rebirth: Christianity only ever comes into being by man's turning his life around, turning away from the self-satisfaction of mere existence and being "converted." In this sense, baptism remains, as the start of a life-long conversion, the fundamental pattern of the Christian existence,as the phrase [in the Creed] about the "remission of sins" is intended to remind us. But if Christianity is regarded, not as a chance grouping of men, but as the about-turn into real humanity, then this profession of faith goes beyond the circle of the baptized and means that man does not come to himself if he simply abandons himself to his natural inclination. To become truly a man, he must oppose this inclination; he must turn around: even the waters of his nature do not climb upward of their own accord.
— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity

On Baptism

2008-11-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

We're preparing for our son's baptism, and I like to look back at Protestant resources whenever I review Catholic teaching or approach a sacrament for the first time.

Here's the Moody Handbook:

The sacramental system of the Roman Catholic church was primarily the work of the Council of Trent in Catholicism's counter-reformation.... The Council of Trent affirmed that (water) baptism is necessary for salvation, that baptism of infants is legitimate, that adult believer's baptism is unnecessary, that keeping the law is still essential—faith alone is inadequate. The core of Roman Catholic teaching on baptism is that it is necessary for salvation and, in fact, produces salvation. It also unites the person with the church....

While Roman Catholic theology has a number of doctrines in common with conservative Protestant theology (Trinity, deity of Christ, etc.), there are many deviations from Orthodox theology. A fundamental difference is the authority of tradition in addition to the authority of the Bible. In its outworking, tradition in a sense supersedes the authority of the Bible because tradition and church councils make decrees that countermand and/or add to the explicit teachings of Scripture.

I am humbled by exercises like these. The way Moody suggests that the sacraments are a product of the Council of Trent is deeply misleading. The sixteenth century Council did not invent the sacraments; furthermore, the Catholic view of sacraments like baptism isn't outside the circle of "Orthodox theology" that Moody purports to draw.

Published by the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, and thus in no way binding on all Protestants, the Moody Handbook of Theology can't seriously present itself as the authoritative standard for orthodox Christianity. Moody's theological handbook is one voice, one among many protests, and it is an important voice, but it simply has no authority to say once and for all what is orthodox (or authentically Christian) and what is not, least of all for Protestants, ironically. As its name suggests, Protestantism reserves the right to make up its own mind, which is why the Moody Bible Institute will never be able to act as the norm and guarantee of orthodoxy, despite its very good intentions.

This illustrates what happens so often when I encounter a sacrament, like baptism, and review the differences between my Protestant origins and my new Catholic identity: Always the sacrament momentarily fades into the background and the real bone of contention emerges. Who has the authority to define what is authentically "Christian," and thus, orthodox? Who gets to draw that circle?

When the Moody handbook says that tradition—for the Catholic—"supersedes the authority of the Bible," it wants to assert that the Bible alone is the only real authority for the true Christian, that is, a Protestant Christian. But if that were the case, there would be no need for any Moody Handbook of Theology in the first place. In fact, the need for a handbook that spells out the truth of something like baptism illustrates that the Bible is simply not enough for the Protestant.

The Bible says, for example,

When they heard this [Peter's preaching], they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is unto you and to your children.

Repent and be baptized—the promise is unto you and to your children. Does Acts 2 teach us that after we are convicted of our need for salvation, we should simply ask Jesus into our hearts? Does it teach us that only those who are old enough to understand the message and feel convicted should be baptized? Does it show us that there is no substantial connection between baptism and forgiveness?

Moody fails to acknowledge that Protestants depend on their traditions—expressed sometimes in famously un-Biblical euphemisms like "ask Jesus into your heart"—to diminish the significance of Biblical passages that very clearly contravene their merely symbolic interpretations. I'm thinking of passages like Acts 2, cited above, Acts 8, John 2, and dozens of others.

Reading the Bible alone, it's not at all clear how someone could honestly conclude that baptism is a mere symbol, an extra, unconnected in any essential way to the salvation Jesus and his apostles preached. Jesus himself said, "Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." Can we really conclude from this that baptism is just a nice gesture?

I am not trying to be controversial or in any way unkind. Two observations only: My Protestant resources that define and explain Catholic faith and teaching always leave me asking, "How is it that Catholics can be so stuck on formal ritual that threatens to impugn grace?" Conversely, my Catholic resources that define and explain Catholic faith and teaching always leave me asking, "How could Protestants have overlooked this?"

With one very conspicuous exception (you know who you are), I don't know Protestants who read, for example, God Is Near Us or The Spirit of the Liturgy or God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office or Introduction to Christianity or Called to Communion or Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church. As a Protestant, I certainly never read any actual Catholic teaching; nevertheless I felt myself adequately informed about what Catholicism really is, what it has to say for itself, and what it offers me. So what does that tell you about me, back then? Does it suggest to you that I did, in fact, have a firm grasp on what Catholicism is? Truly, I was entirely ignorant.

The second observation is that—despite what Moody says—Catholic baptism is thoroughly biblical and consistent with historical Christianity (that is, Christianity as it is expressed in the writings of the Church Fathers, historical Church Councils, and more). That link to Tradition isn't a liability; rather, it's a living dimension to the Body of Christ into which we have been baptized, all of us, Protestant or Catholic. For Catholics, then, it's simply not accurate to describe Tradition as superseding anything. For example, my love for my wife is in no way superseded and thereby diminished by my love for my son: those relationships inform one another, in a way feed one another, and certainly shed a great deal of light on one another. By contrast, baptism understood as mere symbol must work very hard indeed to find historical continuity with Christian orthodoxy; it must finesse and nuance a great number of biblical passages that are inconvenient.

Admittedly, I'm simplifying things in my own way. The section dealing with baptism in the Catechism of the Council of Trent runs some 37 pages; Stephen Ray's apologetic book Crossing the Tiber can't tackle baptism in less than 82 pages. All by itself, the subject index for "baptism" in The Catechism of the Catholic Church is close to 3 pages long, for there is much to say, more to read, and even more to cross-reference and pray about.

Veterans Day

2008-11-11T22:02:00.000-05:00

I am so thankful for our veterans, the men and women in our armed services, and I am so blessed to be in a parish that prays so much for those heroes. Amazing human beings. Thank you so much. God bless you, keep you, and bring you home safe.

Reversing Abortion Policy: Obama's Change

2008-11-11T11:26:00.000-05:00

Here's the link: Obama Transition Team Prepares to Axe Pro-life Funding Rules

Rev. Patrick Mahoney reportedly says

If Mr. Obama reverses the 'Mexico City Policy,' which forbids groups that receive American aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, it would greatly increase abortions around the world... [and] show a complete and blatant disregard for the faith values of millions of American Christians...

I'm sympathetic, naturally, to Rev Mahoney's position, except that it's worth pointing out that millions of American Christians voted for Obama and couldn't possibly have been ignorant of his abortion policy.

I think a lot of Christians are still trying to understand what happened in this election and can't yet come to terms with the fact that self-described (and church-going) followers of Christ are indifferent to US abortion policy.

Celebrating Liz

2008-11-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

All day I have been celebrating my wife, thinking about the way Brendan comes alive around her, works so hard, like me, for her attention and affection.

I've been thinking of her influence in my life, in Brendan's life, the way she chases him down for bath time with familiar hands, hands that know him too, gathering his floating alphabet, washing his arms and legs, his rounded belly; the way he watches her when she speaks, hearing again, afresh, that rhythm and tone he's heard since the womb; that smile he so easily catches from her when she laughs.

There's no way to talk adequately about it, but I can slip into the experience and live there for hours and never picture the same scene twice, the million different laughs, the sighs, the way he crawls up onto her and hides in her neck, the complete peace of his breathing, with his eyes closed in some profound absence while she rocks him.

When you talk to her about this, she's completely unaware, even skeptical, as if you've been talking about some mystical religious experience or aliens from outer space. She has no idea what a force she is in our lives, that she is our precondition. We love her so much, and we've been celebrating her all day.

2008-11-07T06:21:00.000-05:00

Whoever assented to this [Christian] creed renounced at the same time the laws of the world to which he belonged; he renounced the worship of the ruling political power, on which the late Roman Empire rested, he renounced the worship of pleasure and the cult of fear and superstition that ruled the world...

I believe that it is of decisive importance for the correct assimilation of the Creed today that we should see these events in their proper context. It is only too easy for us to regard the Christian refusal, even if it meant the loss of one's life, to take any part in the cult of the emperor as a piece of fanaticism appropriate to an early period; excusable, perhaps, for this reason, but certainly not to be imitated today... it is important to realize that this refusal was far from being a piece of narrow-minded fanaticism and that it changed the world in a way in which it can only be changed by the readiness to suffer. Those events showed that faith is not a matter of playing with ideas but a very serious business: it says no, and must say no, to the absoluteness of political power and to the worship of the might of the mighty in general—"He has put down the mighty from their thrones" (Lk 1:52); and in doing so it has shattered the political principle's claim to totality once and for all. In this sense the profession "there is only one God" is, precisely because it has itself no political aims... it forms the only definitive protection against the power of the collective.

—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christinaity

International Opinion and US Elections

2008-11-06T13:24:00.000-05:00

People's opinions matter. Garr Reynolds writes (here) about world opinion with respect to Tuesday's US election, and he doesn't just talk about but very helpfully shows you international opinion. But what's often missing from such discussion is how opinions are formed. International opinion matters, and I think we can all agree on that, but we can't leave unquestioned the process by which that opinion is formed.

Consider Father Thomas Williams, for example, who spoke to NRO about Italian popular opinion of Obama specifically and the US elections generally:

While Italians undoubtedly follow U.S. politics more closely than Americans follow Italy's, still they know relatively little. They get almost all their information from the Italian daily papers and evening news, which are as biased as the mainstream American media, if not more so. In past months they have universally painted Obama as the savior not only of the U.S., but of the world. Since alternative media have yet to blossom in Italy the way they have in the U.S., people generally receive just one side of every story.

If we're assuming that international opinion about US politics is studied, well informed of policy debate from balanced sources, of sufficient pith, then the visualizations Garr Reynolds shares really do tell us something hugely consequential. But I suspect there's a lot of truth in Father Williams' critique of Italian opinion. Not the whole truth, certainly, but something worth discussing.

Historic Election

2008-11-05T08:45:00.000-05:00

We've chosen the next President of the United States, and there's much to be thankful for. My father was a student at Georgia Tech when the university was forced to matriculate its first black students. Now, our nation's next President is a biracial graduate of Harvard University.

If you don't think that's a big deal, I doubt there's anything I can say to change your mind, but it's a big, bold deal full of promise.

I voted for McCain, and I didn't threaten to leave the country if he lost. Good thing, right? Obama will be my next President too, and I'll be praying for him and the rest of us. Mostly we need to learn how to disagree without disrespecting one another because there really are some worthwhile things we can accomplish together.

Congratulations Obama. Let's all work honestly over the next 4 years to clarify policy positions and debate those positions with candor and good will.

Culture of Life

2008-11-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

The other day a doctor I know referred to James Dobson as a "child abuser" because of Dobson's refusal to repudiate spanking. It struck me as particularly ironic given this physician's enthusiastic support of the Democratic Pary, which remains deeply committed to promoting even the most extreme forms of abortion (relevant source here).

So... spanking our offspring is intrinsically evil, but killing them is scandal-free?

In conversation it seems we ask less and less whether or not that little organism, with its own unique human signature—the DNA, the fingerprints, the somersaults—is actually a human being. The ultrasound doesn't lie. I keep my boy's ultrasound with his other baby pictures for that reason, in fact. He wasn't a human being, and thus a baby, because he was wanted by his biological parents. Even the Planned Parenthood nurse, counseling in favor of abortion, calls the thing destroyed a "baby" (source here).

In other words, your fitness for the species does not depend on how much you're loved and wanted by the people around you; your humanity isn't decided after your inconvenient needs have been measured. At conception, the only possible outcome for you is human being, and around this sacred truth people of all political persuasions can and should embrace.

Augustine on the Sacrafice of the Mass

2008-10-22T20:17:00.000-04:00

If then you are the Body of Christ and his members, it is your own mystery that is set down upon the table of the Lord. You receive your own mystery and you answer "Amen" to what you yourselves are... For you hear the words, "The Body of Christ," and you answer, "Amen." Be a member of Christ, in order that your "Amen" may be true... Hear what the apostle says, "We who are many are one bread, one Body" [1 Corinthians 10:17]. Understand this and rejoice! ...One bread! Who is this "one bread"? The many are one bread! Recall that one does not make bread from one grain of wheat, but from many! You have been exorcised in baptism, and on that occasion you were ground, so to speak. When you were baptized, you were in a sense kneaded. And when you received the fire of the Holy Spirit, you were in a sense baked. Be therefore what you see, and receive what you are.

—Sermon 272

Cancer in Developing Countries

2008-10-17T17:06:00.000-04:00

Source.

During morning rounds, my young intern presented Ali Shehzad, a 17-year-old laborer with T3N1M0 colon cancer, who had to quit school after completing eighth grade because of his father’s death. He is the only son among six children; his mother and one eight-year-old sister work as maids, each earning $20 a month. My intern had recently attended our weekly journal club and knew about the superiority of fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin (FOLFOX) over fluorouracil. He wanted me to arrange $10,000 for Ali’s treatment. When I said funds might be difficult to obtain, he broke down and said he would not take no for an answer. We decided we would look for some donors.
The next bed had a 16-year-old high school graduate, Saira, who was doing extremely well in school and had now developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The parents were determined to save the child, even if it meant selling all their possessions—including a small mud house and two goats. After my rounds, her father came to my office and started crying. Between sobs, he kept saying, “Doctor, please save my daughter. After Allah, you are the only one who can help me. Please take everything from me, just save her. She is such a good student and we were pinning our hopes on her to help her younger siblings after she completes her studies. I can contribute approximately 15% of the total cost of treatment over 3 years but cannot afford the full cost of treatment.”
A 30-year-old mother, Leila, with locally advanced breast cancer, was sitting in the next bed with an odd mixture of hope and despondency in her eyes. Her husband had left her 2 years previously and she had a 4-year-old son who was sitting with her because there was no one at home to look after him. “I’ll go through whatever I have to,” she said. “I just want to see my son grow up. There is no one else to look after him.” We had given her first-line treatment with FAC [fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide] with a significant clinical response, but four additional cycles of taxane therapy was not feasible: at $2,000, the drug was too expensive. We decided to send her for surgery and radiation.
The next patient was a young girl with dyspnea, Rukhsana, with osteogenic sarcoma who came back after 2 years with lung metastases. She had responded extremely well to chemotherapy and surgery initially, but her parents could not afford to bring her for additional treatment. Her father had now sold his motorbike to get her treated. When I explained that the cure was no longer possible, given that her disease has now spread to her lungs, he could not understand. “Do you want more money?” he asked. “You can have it as soon as I sell my house, but you must cure my daughter at all costs.”
Pakistan is a third-world country. I work at a government hospital in Pakistan where more than 95% of patient incomes range from $30-$100 per month. According to official figures, nearly 44% of the population is either extremely poor, ultra poor, poor or vulnerable (ie, their monthly per-adult consumption range 659 to 1098 rupees [US $13 to $19 per month]). These patients rely on resource constrained government facilities for health care. For them, any state-of-the art treatment is merely a dream. Cytogenetic and flow cytometry for leukemias are a luxury the patients cannot afford; no funds for diagnostics are available. The GDP for health care is 0.51% of the total budget.
Intense poverty, coupled with lack of governmental commitment to health, means that the health care situation for the poor is grim. Health insurance is only available to approximately2%of the population. To exacerbate matters, ubiquitous illiteracy causes poor compliance with treatment. Patients are generally unaware of the impact cancer has on their health, and the consequences for their families. They fail to comprehend that delays in treatment can cause fatal complications.
The department of oncology, Jinnah Hospital, is a tertiary care center located in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city (population 5 million). We have a 50- bed medical oncology unit with a separate radiotherapy department. These facilities cover a 300-mile radius, catering to 10,000 new cancer cases annually. Our patients receive a hospital bed, consultation, and some laboratory tests for free. A special grant from the government of approximately $66,000 forms the annual budget for medicines; an additional $15,000 to $20,000 comes from private donations. This meager sum is all there is to purchase chemotherapeutic drugs for 99% of our patients. This money is distributed based on a number of considerations: curability, age, ability to share the financial burden, and in cases of leukemias, whether the family can arrange donors for blood transfusions. It is never enough. The average cost of six cycles of FAC for adjuvant breast cancer treatment is approximately $800; single-agent cisplatin, which we use for ovarian cancers, costs $300. For colon cancer, six cycles of fluorouracil and folinic acid are $200.
Invariably, someone loses out. When we explain the treatment costs and associated morbidity and mortality to patients, the immediate responses vary from pleading for help to stoic pragmatism. It often takes a day or more for the enormity of what we have said to hit them. That is when the parents come crying and begging; some may even be hostile. All have one thing in common: the hope that funds will somehow, miraculously, be arranged, allowing their loved one to get well again.
Treatment of leukemias poses special ethical problems, as the vast majority of poor patients are young. The total cost of treatment per patient, including transfusion requirements, is approximately $20,000. The most common causes of mortality are infection and bleeding. Infections are especially difficult to treat, given that we cannot afford to purchase expensive antibiotics or antifungal drugs. Poor personal hygiene—not only of well-wishers, but also of ill trained hospital staff—compounds the problem; repeated training has had little impact.
Quite often, the patients bring blood products from private, low-quality blood banks to conserve their resources. These products come from professional, poorly screened donors who often have hepatitis or are drug addicts. As a result, seroconversion of leukemia patients for hepatitis B and C is nearly 20% after induction and consolidation. Warnings about the dangers of improperly screened blood products carry little weight with cash-strapped and illiterate caregivers. It is common for patients to arrive late for consolidation or not show up at all; typically, they come with relapsed leukemia a few months later. Despite these problems, approximately 15% of patients complete their treatment and survive.
Two years later, my intern, having completed his residency in medicine, came to my office to say goodbye before leaving for the United States for medical training. There was, I thought, a new maturity to him; he seemed to understand now the complexity of the problems we face. He remained eager though, to try to fix these problems and inquired about the patients he had known.
The report was mixed. Ali Shahzad completed his treatment with FOLFOX and developed severe neuropathies. He was unable to continue working as a laborer, but was lucky. Not only had we managed to find a donor for his treatment, but he had also bought an autorickshaw that he drives for a living now, taking our nurses out for their weekend shopping.
Saira, our patient with acute lymphoblastic leukemia is receiving her maintenance therapy and is doing well. She has completed high school with a superior result and is now applying to college.
Rukhsana was dead. Leila died too, after developing widespread metastases. When she came to know that her disease was incurable, she wanted me to make arrangements for her son after she died. She and I went to the SOS Children’s Village to register him, so that he would have a place to stay after her death. Her son Omer stayed with her in the ward throughout her illness, with his grandmother constantly at her side. For many of his visits, she was unconscious, and when I conducted rounds he would look at me with tear-filled eyes. “Why is Amma not talking to me?” he would ask. “I want her to feed me.” Sometimes he would lie next to her and talk to her, putting his small fingers in her hair. Every 3 to 4 weeks now, I go to the SOS Village to visit Omer. He would run to me and hold my hand in his little hand and just look at me, again with tear-filled eyes. I finish telling the story to my intern and get back to work.
I wish there had been more we could do, that we had had more money, that somehow Leila and so many like her could have been saved. But there is still something, however small, that I can do. On my way back home, I stop over at the SOS Village to see Omer. He comes running to me to show me the prize he recently won in class. “He’s been waiting expectantly for you for the last 2 weeks,” the warden tells me. I look at Omer, at the smile on his face. I think of Leila, and hope that Omer and his generation can do better.

Sunday Letter

2008-10-05T13:45:00.000-04:00

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.

—Philippians 4

Aurelius Augustinus: entirely Catholic

2008-09-30T07:50:00.000-04:00

A Protestant told me that she loves St Augustine (AD 354-430): it was her way of saying,
Look, you Catholics aren't the only Christians with a sense of historical continuity... I know St Augustine's story and consider him to be a bulwark of Christianity.
Embrace it: attempts to define common ground are sometimes rare and always full of possibility. Her nod in Augustine's direction sent me scurrying out to have a closer look at the Saint from Hippo. Here is what I found:

Augustine calls the Church of Christ the "Catholic" Church and "Holy Mother Church"; he appeals to the authority of the Apostles as well as the authority of Church Councils when discussing the obligation that Christians have to the Sacraments of the Church [Letter to Januarius, AD 400]

Augustine believes that infants should be baptized, that the effect of baptism is not dependent on their will but on God's, and that such a baptism literally regenerates (ie, "reborn") the infant [Letter to Boniface, AD 408]

Augustine believes in a "corrective fire which is for those who are saved... more severe than anything a man can suffer in this life"—which is commonly called purgatory [Explanations of the Psalms, AD 392-418]

Augustine believes that "the Sacraments give salvation" [Explanations of the Psalms, AD 392-418]

Augustine believes in one Lord God and in one corresponding Catholic Church which he describes as the "Handmaid" of God and "our Mother"—the same Church we are to "cling to" and not blaspheme [Explanations of the Psalms, AD 392-418]

Augustine believes that the Sacrament of Confession brings us "to life again," that Jesus' saying "whatever you loose on earth" applies to the Church [Explanations of the Psalms, AD 392-418]

Of those who have left the Catholic Church, Augustine says "by the same word, by the same Sacrament you were born [ie, baptism], but you will not come to the same inheritance of eternal life, unless you return to the catholic Church [Sermons, AD 391-430]

Augustine believes that the prayers for the dead—along with other observances such as commemorating the dead in the celebration of the Mass and alms giving—are "not offered in vain" but are "works of mercy" which should never be doubted [Sermons, AD 391-430]

Augustine believes in the perpetual virginity of Mary [Sermons, AD 391-430]

Augustine believes in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of Eucharist, and participation in the Holy Sacrament makes us members of that same Body of Christ [Sermons, AD 391-430]

Eduardo Verástegui and Abortion

2008-09-25T10:54:00.000-04:00

God's Word: Apostolic Succession

2008-09-24T06:31:00.000-04:00

From God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office

Ratzinger says the concept of apostolic succession was formulated in the anti-Gnostic polemics of the second century. "Gnosticism was opposing its confused religious philosophy to the Christianity of the Church and claimed that this was a secret tradition passed down from the apostles."

How did the early Church respond? They asserted that the way and word of gnosis were not, in fact, the Way and Word of Christ. To what authority did they appeal?

The office of bishop

Apostolic sees

About the office of bishop, Ratzinger writes, "Tradition is indeed never a simple and anonymous handing on of teaching but is linked to a person, is a living word, that has its concrete reality in faith." In other words, there may have existed secret teachings or secret quasi-Christian traditions, but they could neither be trusted nor regarded as apostolic if they were in opposition to the bishops.

Christians confronted with Gnostic (or other) claims could point to those congregations in which the apostles themselves had worked or those to whom the apostles had written letters, ie, we know these claims are false because they go against the teaching of the apostolic sees. The men leading those congregations could trace, by name, their spiritual ancestors back to those apostles. The apostolic see was thus put forth as the criterion for what could truly be called "apostolic," authentically Christian.

Ratzinger emphasizes that the early Church regarded "right" tradition/teaching as follows:

Apostolic authority in the living word of the preaching Church, necessarily embodied in the bishop and the apostolic see.

"Right" tradition, authentic apostolic teaching, is not a secret (or otherwise concealable) bit of information with a life of its own. No. It's not about authorized bits of information: the truth of Christ is not a disembodied collection of teachings but an incarnate word that we receive through the preaching of authorized witnesses, the living succession/tradition of the apostolic Church.

Consider Romans 10:14-15:

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things!

"Thus it becomes apparent," writes Ratzinger, "that 'apostolic tradition' and 'apostolic succession' define each other. The succession is the form of the tradition, and the tradition is the content of the succession."

God's Word: Primacy & Episcopacy

2008-09-23T07:14:00.000-04:00

From God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office

On Primacy: The Church teaches that

The pope enjoys direct ordinary jurisdiction (in the sense of true episcopal authority) over the entire Church
In his official position (in the sphere of doctrine), the pope enjoys infallibility: his decisions are irreformable of themselves and not simply in virtue of their subsequent confirmation by the Church
In the sphere of communion, "only someone who is in communion with the pope is living in the true communion of the Body of the Lord"

On Episcopal Office: The Church teaches that

Bishops succeed in the place of the apostles: they are appointed by the Holy Spirit, by divine law, and thus are not instruments of the pope
The pope can not substitute his own authority for that of the bishops
Episcopal jurisdiction is not subsumed within papal jurisdiction
Bishops are not the officials of a foreign sovereign

An ellipse with two foci: that's a picture of primacy and episcopacy in the Church. According to the Vatican Council, says Ratzinger, "not only episcopalism but also papalism in the narrow sense should be regarded as a condemned doctrine." For those who would try to elevate either primacy or episcopacy to the exclusion of the other, Ratzinger says the Church's official position is a both... and position, not either... or. Both "are divinely given factors of the Church," and the Church is not on one side or the other but occupies a new position aptly described by Karl Rahner as communion: "the Church is, in her inmost nature, communio, a sharing of and fellowship in the body of the Lord."

Praying for Vocations

2008-09-22T07:18:00.000-04:00

Gracious and loving God
help the men and women of your parish
to hear the call to server your Church.

Our needs are great
and our people thirst for your presence.

Open the hearts of many,
raise up faithful servants of the Gospel,
dedicated holy priests, sisters, brothers, and
deacons, who will spend themselves for your people
and their needs.

Bless those who are serving now
with courage and perseverance.

Grant that many will be inspired
by their example and faith.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

This week, we're participating in the Elijah Cup program at church, and we'd appreciate you praying with us for the needs of your community and ours.

Pray for Unity

2008-09-18T15:46:00.000-04:00

I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me... Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are... I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.
—Jesus as recorded in John 17

Here's Kreeft on unity (link).

Thursday Reading

2008-09-11T07:28:00.000-04:00

Let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God; whoever serves, let it be with the strength that God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

—1 Peter 4:8-11a

We're in: Confirmation & First Communion

2008-08-30T14:25:00.000-04:00

The joke and the invitation

2008-08-16T13:41:00.000-04:00

A Presbyterian friend of mine recently made a joke:

Cathedral ceilings are great and all—could powerfully affect worship—but Protestants can't really afford the luxury because they don't sell indulgences.

It's pretty funny in an ironic sort of way.

I chuckled and thought immediately of the Protestant practice of selling vials of water from the Jordan, or prayer cloths; I thought about how Protestants memorialize with engraved faceplate whoever purchased the piano, or the pew, or the window or even door of their church. I thought about the Protestant pastor who described to me and Liz how a 10% tithe to his church's bank account was "God's minimum." I thought about all the promises of blessing and good favor given to Protestant churchgoers if they'll just put money in the collection plate.

But I didn't chuckle for long. I got sad. You can tell the really good jokes: they make you cry.

Of course, the joke also highlights the guilty pleasure Protestants have when they float into a Catholic cathedral. It really is impressive. Unfortunately, the Reformation had some pretty strong and fairly deadly iconoclastic currents, so Protestants don't have cathedral ceilings because they burnt them down. They took axes to their pipe organs. Theaters were banned. Statues demolished. Pictures, ornaments, altars, crucifixes, and shrines all went up in the smoke of bitter Protest.

Anyway, the Catholic Church's teaching on indulgences is clear and consistent, Biblical and even beautiful. It's worth studying. (Resource 1, Resource 2, Resource 3, for starters.)

It's also worth noting that every Catholic who sold an indulgence 500 years ago did so in violation of his Church's teaching, ie, committed a sin. Catholics do that, you-know. So do protesting Presbyterians. Unfortunately the gotcha approach—Ah ha! Catholics sold indulgences!—obscures the fact that each of us has sinned, and when we do so we don't invalidate God or His Church or His Church's authority. And thank God, too.

The real question is one of reform, and the Catholic Church flatly condemned all irregularities related to indulgences and thoroughly reformed. Fortunately, indulgences remain an important element of Church teaching because they're real. They don't make sense to Protestants in part because Protestants don't have any context for them: Protestants don't recognize any real Office of Peter or real Treasury of Merit; they have no real Penitential Rite nor any real Eucharist (it's a symbolic ordinance). Like the organ, the painted ceiling, and statuary, core Christian teachings (that stretched back fifteen centuries in Luther's day) were thrown out of Protestant churches.

But they continue to flourish. Cathedral ceilings and sacred art really do affect Christian worship. There's more to it than art. People of all Protestant denominations are welcome and invited to come and see, come and experience, come and worship. It is your Church, after all. Come see what it is you've been protesting.

The Assumption

2008-08-15T17:50:00.000-04:00

This morning’s Mass was my first celebration of the Assumption of Mary.

Salve Regina... I have been singing it in my head all day.

It’s really quite a shock, the difference between what Catholics believe about Mary and what Protestants think Catholics believe about Mary.

I am so thankful for this morning.

Abortion and the Catholic vote

2008-08-08T10:03:00.000-04:00

On more and more refrigerators across America, photos of brothers and sisters in mommy’s womb from just a few weeks after conception are already encouraging children more and more to find abortion abhorrent. The young easily identify with their siblings with tiny fingers and toes in the womb, and perceive with dark dread what it would be like if they had been aborted.

Michael Novak (at NRO) explores the liberal Catholic vote. Here are some highlights:

Partial birth abortion means a baby is partially delivered, the head is punctured, and the brains are suctioned out. Then President and Democrat Bill Clinton refused to sign legislation that would have banned the grim "procedure"

As an assemblyman in Illinois, Democrat Obama supported the same position as the Clintons: partially deliver a baby, yes, puncture her skull, and suction her brains; that professing Catholics can accept this position is an outrage

Obama believes that abortionists should be able to put to death infants who survive a first attempt at abortion; the federal legislation was called the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and Obama opposed it

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) publicly rebuked U.S. bishops who seem unaware that abortion is intrinsically evil, an altogether more sinister category than capital punishment or war

Catholic prudence is opposed to doctrinaire bullying, it's true, but Catholic prudence used as a cover for cooperation with intrinsic evil is diabolical and not Christian

The secular Catholic doesn't want to impose his morality on others when it comes to abortion, but he is quite happy to impose his morality on others when it comes to a host of other moral issues, including war and capital punishment

What guarantees the integrity of the Bible?

2008-08-06T06:43:00.000-04:00

Crossing the Tiber: Evangelical Protestants Discover the Historical Church

Stephen Ray quotes RC Sproul (a hugely influential Protestant theologian) as having said that the Bible is "a fallible collection of infallible books." I haven't read that in context, so I can't claim to know exactly what Sproul is arguing. But isn’t the statement a little… well… nuanced? I mean, you encounter a statement like that and you want to ask, Look, is the Bible reliable or not? If the collection itself is fallible, then what on earth guarantees that any of the books (any of their content) should truly be regarded as sacred?

I have no idea how I would have answered this question two or three or even ten years ago. Would I have claimed internal witness? Would I have shrugged and said it didn’t matter?

At least on some level, the Bible is a historical artifact. We know what writings went into the Hebrew Bible and what New Testament letters were considered Apostolic. Over the course of about 400 years—the landmarks being the Council of Rome in 382, the Council of Hippo in 393, and the council of Carthage in 397—a rule, or canon, of Scripture was recognized and not arbitrarily, not accidentally.

Recognized by whom? The Catholic Church. Christians. But this had been a process worked through diligently by bishops and congregations and councils, real people who had to preserve the faith they received from the Apostles, fight heresy, exercise authority, and struggle for unity; this was a living exercise of tradition, Catholic Tradition.

Of course, I’m not really aware of a Protestant denial of the Catholic Church’s role in compiling, canonizing, and preserving what is today called the Bible. That history is more or less settled. The real issue at play isn’t history; instead, Protestants must grapple with authority. The quotation attributed to Sproul is a bit confusing, but it very clearly denies any infallible authority for the Catholic Church in securing Sacred Scripture. Scripture is here now, he seems to be saying, and it's less important where Scripture came from and how; it's more important that we discern what it means to each of us, individually, or in our own circles.

That is, of course, an invitation to denomination and faction and sect. Imagine for a moment if that position had been adopted by the Christians of the first through the fourth centuries. Suppose they had agreed that a Christian can, by relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, make his own canon and follow his own private interpretation. What would the outcome have been? Think it through.

The Catholic alternative: whether you’re Tertullian writing against Marcion around 212, St Cyril of Jerusalem (around 350), or St Augustine (between 397 and 427), the criteria of canonicity for Christians is Catholic Tradition. In other words, the authenticity of the sacred text is guaranteed by the authenticity of the Tradition. Outside the Tradition, all bets are off.

And Stephen Ray poses an important question for all of us: on what authority is your canon fixed and sealed? Suppose someone argues (as Luther once did) that certain books like Revelation, James, or Hebrews should be removed? To what final authority will you appeal to stop it? Suppose they want to add the Gospel of Thomas: who empowered you to tell them they can't?

Here Catholics appeal to the Tradition that gave birth to the canon in the first place. I have no idea what Protestants appeal to, honestly.

Please pray for Cameron

2008-08-01T20:27:00.001-04:00

If you're the praying kind, please say a prayer for our buddy Cameron S. and his parents. Cameron took a bad fall, spent a day and night in hospital, and is still nursing a concussion.

We can't pray too often or too much for our friends and family, for our children, for the children of people we love.

In the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit.

We fly to thy protection, O holy
Mother of God.
Despise not our petitions in
our necessities,
but deliver us always from
all dangers
O glorious and blessed Virgin.

O King of Peace, give us Your peace
and pardon our sins. Dismiss the
enemies of the Church and protect
her so that she never fails. Emmanuel
our God is in our midst in the glory
of the Father and of the Holy Spirit.
May He bless us and purify our hearts
and cure the sicknesses of our soul
and body. We adore You , O Christ,
with your good Father and the Holy
Spirit because you have come and
you have saved us.

And we pray especially for Cameron
and for his parents: healing for the boy
and deep peace for his mother and father.

In the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Crossing the Tiber: Sola Fide

2008-08-01T06:24:00.000-04:00

Crossing the Tiber: Evangelical Protestants Discover the Historical Church

Salvation by faith alone: sola fide (like sola scriptura) is another pillar of Protestant Christianity whose importance cannot be underestimated. You cannot work your way to heaven, according to this Reformation doctrine, earning merit, influencing God's disposition toward you. No: if you are saved in the end it will be your faith, and only your faith, that effected the blessed outcome.

Luther's own translation of Romans 3:28 is telling: "a person is justified by faith alone." Telling, because the word "alone" does not appear in the original text. Luther made the same interpolation at 5:1, "since we have been justified by faith alone, we have peace with God." When the text doesn't say what you need it to say, changing the text is an option, of course.

But it's interesting to note that the words "faith alone" do, in fact, appear once in the original text of the New Testament. James 2:24: "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone."

It's also interesting to note that the "by faith alone" approach, sola fide, didn't describe Christian faith and practice for 15 centuries. It appears as a new concept with Luther and Wycliffe. Consider, for example, JI Packer (Calvinistic Anglican theologian, author, speaker) who, in his book entitled God's Inerrant Word, says "Apart from Augustine none of [the Church Fathers] seemed to be quite clear enough on the principle of salvation by grace and not even Augustine had fully grasped imputed righteousness." In other words, Christians from the first to the fifteenth century got it wrong.

That's an incredible assertion, but it's necessary if your mission is to recreate the Christian Church from the ground up. It helps explain why Protestants so easily disregard Christian history, especially the history of the first 300-400 years, and usually have no idea who the Church Fathers are or what they taught. Why should you care? The truth came in the Protestant Reformation: all else is cast under a shadow of suspicion.

The tragedy of sola fide is the Protestant who destroys his moral life but hopes, nevertheless, in the saving faith of his youth, that powerful faith alone through which everything, somehow, will miraculously resolve. I was that Protestant for years, so I know what it feels like. I know others in that same position, and I'm praying for us all.

Catholicism doesn't teach, of course, that our works save us. No. Catholics believe in the book of Romans; we're even celebrating a year of Paul, not only depending on but seeking to renew the gift of faith. But the Church has taught for 2,000 years what the Bible (especially the New Testament) affirms: faith and works. Faith and works.

Click here for a post on sola scriptura

Click here for yet another post on sola scriptura

Crossing the Tiber: Sola Scriptura

2008-07-29T07:16:00.000-04:00

Crossing the Tiber: Evangelical Protestants Discover the Historical Church

Sola scriptura is a pillar of the Protestantism I grew up in. Sola scriptura means by Scripture alone, and it describes an approach to Christianity that says, essentially, the Bible alone gives us everything we need to know about God, ourselves, our lives. The Bible alone is the pillar and foundation of truth.

Sola scriptura establishes the Bible as the rule of faith: the Bible and no other authority. Do you want to know what Christianity is about, who God is and the purpose of life? Do you want to know the truth, for yourself? The Bible has everything you need.

That’s sola scriptura, the Protestant approach, powerfully symbolized when Protestants go to church on Sunday, each man, woman, and child carrying his and her own Bible. It is a faith of and by the book, supported by individual interpretation and private judgment.

It is a great irony that sola scriptura is nowhere taught in the Bible. Prohibitively ironic. In the New Testament, Jesus doesn't promise an authoritative book: "And I say to you, you are Peter and upon the rock of the Bible alone I will build many churches." That's not, of course, what Jesus said. He nowhere implied it. Jesus himself never wrote anything down for later generations of professional exegetes. What Jesus did do was form a Church, and it is that Church which Paul describes (in 1 Timothy 3:15) as "the pillar and foundation of truth," ie, the CHURCH and not the Bible.

Catholicism invites us to compare the sola scriptura model with the Bible itself, compare it also with the experience and teaching of the early Church, and ask if sola scriptura faithfully represents the historical norm. Go out on a limb for a second and imagine that the answer to that question is no: No, the early Church was not a faith founded on sola scriptura but grounded, instead, on Apostolic tradition and succession.

What would that mean? What effect would such a revelation have on your Christianity? Would you even care? Stephen Ray's book, Crossing the Tiber, describes his own coming to terms with the evidence. It's worth reading.

For another post on sola scriptura, click here.

On being and doing

2008-07-23T09:47:00.000-04:00

We haven't seen the latest Batman, but we expect to. So the other night we watched the first one to remember the gist, and I was struck by the line I had forgotten:

It's not who you are inside but what you do that defines you.

Or something like that. I've been imagining Catholic theological implications ever since. But I've also been thinking about applications to vocation, child rearing, even marriage.

UPDATE: Watched the new Batman 7/26. It's a frustrating movie, worth watching, but presents a different idea about being and doing. At the end of this movie, it's more important who Batman is inside, which is a complete reversal of movie 01.

If the first movie gives you much to believe in, the second movie suggests you've believed in a lie. Joker's nihilistic worldview triumphs, and all our dark assumptions about the face of government and society are confirmed.

Wittekerke Wins! (Beer Recommendation #2)

2008-07-16T12:29:00.000-04:00

Wittekerke is a beer that Blue Moon fans will really enjoy. Fans of Hoegaarden too.

I put Wittekerke, Blue Moon, and Hoegaarden to a taste test last weekend, and without a doubt Wittekerke was the better of the three. For a while now, Hoegaarden has been my beer of choice; if it's available, though, I'd now rather have a Wittekerke.

The name means "white church," and the recipe is like any other so-called white beer – spiced with coriander and orange peel. In addition to raw wheat and unmalted barley, the Wittekerke also has a bit of oats. I'm not bright enough to know what that means, but I can certainly taste the difference.

I'm told oats contribute to the smoothness of a beer, and that may be true. The first two characteristics that struck me were (1.) Wittekerke's wet, refreshing (even thirst-quenching) feel and (2.) something that I can only describe as subtlety. The spice is there, but it's not quite as obvious as Blue Moon and Hoegaarden.

It's more expensive. My six pack was over US $9, approaching $10 in fact, but (somewhat reluctantly) I admit it's worth it.

Beer Recommendation #1

2008-07-03T10:20:00.000-04:00

If you know me well, you know I love beer. Good beer. I understand beer snobbery, for example, but I lack the sophistication it requires. I thank God for beer, honestly.

So why not review beer here?

Paulaner Hefe-Weizen Natural Wheat

One-time monastic brewery Paulaner does a great job with the Hefe-Weizen. Pour yourself a glass and you’ll find a rich, golden color that’s thick and cotton-like. Call me crazy, but there’s something more natural about a cloudy beer.

The Hefe-Weizen has a very distinct fruit-mash flavor. You catch it in the nose first and know immediately that it’s fruit you smell. But even after tasting, savoring, thinking, it’s not altogether clear what fruit. I taste and then picture the overripe that used to gather around the apple trees at our first house. That smell in late summer. Rounded, definitely, like a banana or perhaps a peach. Not at all sharp like a lemon or lime but a mash, like a baked apple, not tart, not sour, but rounded, baked apple. Mellow. Apple mold, maybe?

This is a beer that will go well with a sweet barbeque or a pair of thick pork chops, a wild-rice blend with raisins, or sweet potatoes. This is definitely a winter beer for me. I need a hint of fruit mash when temperatures go below 30°F. And you also want your winter beer to fill you.

No worries there. Hefe-Weizen soaks you up. Two bottles with dinner and you're set.

God in the Dock

2008-07-03T05:58:00.000-04:00

I read CS Lewis in college, of course, but I never read much of his Christian stuff. Last week, I thought I'd try God in the Dock, part of the Collected Works of CS Lewis, which was given to me years ago by a friend who, somewhat ironically, has since lost his faith. So many unexpected twists and turns in life. Anyway, the Christian writer Lewis is honestly pretty good.

We are in no position to draw up maps of God's psychology, and prescribe limits to his interests. We would not do so even for a man whom we knew to be greater than ourselves. The doctrines that God is love and that He delights in men, are positive doctrines, not limiting doctrines. He is not less than this. What more He may be, we do not know; we know only that He must be more than we can conceive. It is to be expected that His creation should be, in the main, unintelligible to us.
Christians themselves have been much to blame for the misunderstanding on these matters. They have a bad habit of talking as if revelation existed to gratify curiosity by illuminating all creation so that it becomes self-explanatory and all questions are answered. But revelation appears to me to be purely practical, to be addressed to the particular animal, Fallen Man, for the relief of his urgent necessities—not to the spirit of inquiry in man for the gratification of his liberal curiosity. We know that God has visited and redeemed His people, and that tells us just as much about the general character of the creation as a dose given to one sick hen on a big farm tells it about the general character of farming in England. What we must do, which road we must take to the fountain of life, we know, and none who has seriously followed the directions complains that he has been deceived...

Writing in Despair

2008-06-25T18:06:00.000-04:00

I read the other Schaeffer today. "Evangelical right wing agitator" is how he describes his former Christian, politically conservative life. Judging from the sarcasm and venom of his embittered Yahoo article, I suppose Frank Schaeffer is now an enlightened progressive. Good for him.

But it's always bad to read smart people at their worst, their most hateful. Fist full of words. Aren't you ever like that? I am, and I hate myself for it. Angry, frustrated, and armed with a word processor; skilled, as Schaeffer is, but bitter and stinging. I've been that pundit, but I hope to stop hating in type. In fact I'm beginning to believe in a theory of two kinds of writing: Either you're writing to make a positive contribution to the lives of others, or you're writing to pull us all down.

Schaeffer's freewheeling vernacular ("pompous asses" and so on) and dismissive tone ("lackey" is a wincing word choice) unfortunately signal that his column is gestural in nature; there's really nothing of any substance here, just the noise you've grown accustomed to from the protesting margin that seems, from its sheer volume, to be growing in number if not in depth. Schaeffer is wicked bright, but it doesn't shine through this time.

James Dobson, says Schaeffer, is so despised by evangelical Republican voters that his opposition to Obama will actually drive those Republicans to support the Democrat this fall.

Because that's how the evangelical Republican votes, obviously: knee-jerk emotional reaction to polarizing social figure, right? See what I mean? This is an ugly gesture and not a helpful commentary, a middle finger and a smirk. Thanks, friend. I was hoping to read something depressing today.

Of course, Schaeffer's wrong about that and he must know it. I'm sure it's true that a substantial number of Christian conservatives aren't cozy with Dobson; heck, I'm not. But does Schaeffer really imagine that based on that antipathy we're perfectly willing to vote for on-demand abortion, government-run healthcare, less school choice, higher gas prices, liberal activist Supreme Court justices, more and yet more taxes?

All that just to spite Dobson?

I very seriously doubt it.