Call or Shrug to Communion

Published on by D. G. Hart

I have no doubt that if Bryan Cross were pope and the CTC converts were his Cardinals, the terms for ecumenical relations would be strict, clear, logical, and above all, paradigmatic. But I am not sure that the convictions and piety of CTC are dominant among those looking for greater harmony with Protestants. Just this morning I observed in our old home news weekly a notice for a series the local Roman Catholic parish was running on understanding the church’s teaching and faith. Father Robert Barron is teaching the series and he has a website and blog named very charismatically, Word on Fire. I took a look to see what he had written in his one post about Augustine and I found this:

St. Augustine, fifth century bishop of Hippo, held that original sin had produced a massa damnata (a damned mass) of human beings, out of which God, in his inscrutable grace, has deigned to pick a few privileged souls. Thus, Augustine clearly believed that the vast majority of the human race would be damned to hell. And though it makes me uncomfortable to admit it, my hero, St. Thomas Aquinas, followed Augustine in holding that a very large number of people are Hell-bound; he even taught that among the pleasures that the saints in heaven enjoy is the contemplation of the suffering of the damned!

But eventually along came Balthasar, who through the influence of Barth, found a way around such difficult teachings:

In the twentieth century, the Protestant theologian Karl Barth moved back in Origen’s direction and articulated a more or less universalist position on salvation. He maintained that the cross of Jesus had saved the world and that the church’s task was to announce this joyful truth to everyone. The Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was a friend of Barth’s and a fellow Swiss, and he presented a somewhat Barthian teaching on this score, though he pulled back from complete universalism. Balthasar argued that, given what God has accomplished in Christ, we may reasonably hope that all people will be saved. The condemnation of apokatastasis compelled him to draw back from saying that we know all will be saved, but his keen sensitivity to the dramatic power of the cross convinced him that we may entertain the lively and realistic hope that all people will eventually be drawn into the divine love.

This lets us view Heaven as a party:

Think of God’s life as a party to which everyone is invited, and think of Hell as the sullen corner into which someone who resolutely refuses to join the fun has sadly slunk. What this image helps us to understand is that language which suggests that God “sends” people to Hell is misleading. As C.S. Lewis put it so memorably: the door that closes one into Hell (if there is anyone there) is locked from the inside not from the outside. The existence of Hell as a real possibility is a corollary of two more fundamental convictions, namely, that God is love and that human beings are free. The divine love, freely rejected, results in suffering. And yet, we may, indeed we should, hope that God’s grace will, in the end, wear down even the most recalcitrant sinner.

My suspicion is that relations with Protestants are a lot easier if Father Barron is leading the discussion instead of Bryan Cross. The loss of the threat of hell as the place where schismatics go also sure helps to grease the skids for dialogue and communion. But I am not sure it is much of a call to communion.

15 thoughts on “Call or Shrug to Communion”

  1. “Father Robert Barron is a sought-after speaker on the spiritual life-from prestigious universities to YouTube to national conferences and private retreats. The prominent theologian and podcasting priest is one of the world’s great and most innovative teachers of Catholicism. His global media ministry called Word On Fire has a simple but revolutionary mission – to evangelize the culture.”

    Wow. That last bit makes me think he should reach out to Neocalvinists. There could be some kindred spirits there. Evangelizing individuals is so much messier than evangelizing the culture.

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  3. At least Barth mucked up more than the Presbyterians.

    True. But one thing that Barth and the other dialectic theologians had/have going for them is how engaging their theology is to read. I think that is why so many Evangelicals and even Catholics (via Balthasar) want to claim him. Orthodox theology works needn’t be page turners to be of immense value, but it wouldn’t hurt to hearken back to Calvin whose style was so gripping. Sadly with Barth, he has framed a masterful theology planted firmly in midair.

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  5. Jed Paschall: Sadly with Barth, he has framed a masterful theology planted firmly in midair.

    RS: Nicely said.

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  6. Yahoo on Pope Benedict XVI:

    “Before he was elected Pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was known by such critical epithets as ‘God’s rottweiler’ because of his stern stand on theological issues.

    But after several years into his new job he showed that he not only did not bite but barely even barked.”

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  8. The RC has so many pending and critical issues you’d quit too. Ratzinger actually strikes me as a nice enough guy, but between gay clergy, pedophillic clergy, unchaste clergy(He personally oversaw-his office-every single sex abuse case for the last ten years) liberal theologians, conservative theologians, the full time job as head of state and all the attendant political pressure that comes with it, a corrupt monetary institution with ties to the italian mafia, the entire nation of Ireland giving you the finger, and an american RC populace extracting demands and compromises with the threat of not being so generous with money if they don’t get their way………..Well, you might pass this job on to the next victim as well.

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  11. Just think about CTC’s claim’s of RC parishioner’s religious fidelity to the pope and magisterium as being a primary condition or marker of ‘faithfulness’. Think about what you might know, even indirectly or through popular media, about Irish catholicism’s, CATHOLICKNESS-it’s rabid to the point of violence historically. This is an nation that has filled more RC pulpits and monastic orders than most other large nations combined. The Vatican throws the Irish bishops under the bus over the sex abuse scandals, which Ratzinger was handling at the time, and RC Ireland pushed back by closing it’s embassy to the Vatican;

    “The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church’s handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy.

    Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy to the Vatican.

    “This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history,” said a Vatican diplomatic source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

    So, what, Irish catholics, en masse, are bad catholics? Puhleeze, you very likely don’t have a worldwide RC without the Irish Religious labor pool. You think that Irish Catholics would give an audience to a prot-catholic telling them about what it means to be a ‘good catholic’?! The response would be along the lines of; ‘boy, when we want your opinion, we will give it to you.” What is CTC gonna say; Irish catholic’s aren’t familiar with the ‘conversation around the dinner table”?! The Irish catholic doesn’t get the ‘inside jokes’?! The Irish catholic just doesn’t understand? I’m sorry, the Irish catholic must have lost his paper on the ‘audacity of the pope’. They keep reading from the one entitled; “you ungrateful, corrupt, two-faced son of a seacook”

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  15. Since I live in the middle of a very heavily RC populated area, the worst part about this announcement is that it’s going to be all over the local news channels for the next several days, usurping even the regularly nightly coverage of the day’s latest gang shootings. Well, maybe after tomorrow it’ll give them all an extra reason to fast for the next 40 days. Do they still do that??

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