Can Jason and the Callers Gain Francis' Blessing?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Probably. All they need to do is do what these Roman Catholics did.

Then again, they might be feeling ambivalent, the way these Roman Catholics are, those whom John Allen identifies as having “the older son” problem:

Some Vatican personnel who have tried to do their best over the years in service to the successor of Peter and who may feel a bit demoralized hearing the pope describe their work environment as infested with careerism, “Vatican-centrism,” and the “leprosy” of a royal court.

Some pro-life Catholics who feel like they’ve carried water for the church on controversial and sometimes unpopular issues such as abortion and gay marriage and who now get the sense the pope regards some of their efforts as misplaced or over the top.

Some evangelical Catholics, both clergy and laity, who’ve tried to reassert a strong sense of Catholic identity against forces they believe want to play it down, who now feel the pope may be pulling the rug out from under them. Some leaders in the reborn genre of Catholic apologetics, for instance, weren’t thrilled recently to hear Francis call proselytism “solemn nonsense.”

Then again, Jason and the Callers might be too young in the faith to qualify as older sons.

Postscript: Meanwhile, Jason has become an Arminian since joining the Roman Catholic Church:

So when it comes to salvation and the five points, the paradigm shift from penal substitution to pleasing sacrifice played a big role. Once that shift occurs, limited atonement becomes sort of meaningless. With total depravity, I think a Catholic can affirm the substance of the idea while maintaining man’s free will. Unconditional election isn’t a problem, although Catholics are free to disagree. Irresistible grace can be affirmed, with some qualifications, but perseverance of the saints is untrue from a Catholic POV (since all who are baptized are regenerated, but not all the regenerated are elect to salvation).

But never forget, it’s all about paradigms.

42 thoughts on “Can Jason and the Callers Gain Francis' Blessing?”

  2. Next graf in Stelly’s comment:

    But like I said, it’s not really about having been wrong about individual doctrines. It’s more about having a broader perspective and more comprehensive paradigm, such that you can look at one of the five points and say, “Well, yeah, I guess I can still affirm that idea in that language, but why would I want to?”

    Sure, makes sense now. Another entry in the too-clever-by-half category.

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  3. Still find the whole thing odd. Maybe as a cradle protestant the novelty of Rome is attractive. But as a cradle catholic, the whole high papalist-conservative RC movement is a bit like wanting to become an citizen of Great Britain because they have monarchical rule. As a cradle you just go: “Really?! Let me tell you a few things about the Italians, the Vatican and Rome that you don’t know.” Which of course is essentially what Francis has done.

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  5. Sean, there is always an intrigue in “the new.” Never engaging real live Roman Catholic thought personally myself, the websites we here at oldlife monitor have an initial intrigue appeal at first. For me, though, it was the same thing as finding eastern (not Christian, mind you), as a teenager, think motorcycle maintenance. Once the I trigue factor wears off, you realize what you’ve been taught ad a protestant from early one really is true. It’s an eye opening experience, but after a few months, their arguments don’t hold water. They repackage the same drumbeats just hoping for the next sucker. This stuff makes me sick, pretty quick, and hence, I turn it off.

    Take care.

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  9. Maybe Jason converted because he was thinking that the church would spring for some fancy new digs:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/world/europe/german-outrage-swells-over-a-bishops-spending.html?_r=0

    BERLIN — Since being elected in March, Pope Francis has quickly made a mark with his displays of modesty, eschewing lavish papal apartments for a spartan guesthouse in Vatican City, wearing simple vestments, carrying his own bag and preaching against a Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that he said was overly insular and too often led by “narcissists.”

    Apparently, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 53, the bishop of Limburg, Germany, for almost six years, is not on the same page as his new boss.

    Roman Catholic bishops rarely serve as Page 1 tabloid fodder or top the national television ratings. But the prelate of Limburg earned this dubious distinction in 24 hours last week as outrage swelled after the news media reported the cost of the renovation of his residence, about $42 million, and a state prosecutor in Hamburg charged him with lying in a legal case.

    The bishop ordered up a palatial living room, and his apartment alone cost $3.9 million, according to Jochen Riebel, the spokesman for the body administering church property in Limburg. Mr. Riebel said the bishop lied last summer when confronted over the cost, estimating the renovation at just $13.5 million.

    Citing Mr. Riebel, the German news agency DPA itemized the work: $474,000 for carpentry and cupboards, $610,000 for art, $135,000 for windows for a private chapel, $34,000 for a conference table, $20,000 for a bathtub.

    “For heaven’s sake!” the headline atop the nation’s largest-selling tabloid, Bild, screamed on Friday. Over a graphic that showed the bishop’s living quarters and offices, it asked, “Why does the bishop need a €783,000 garden?”

    By Friday, calls for the resignation of Bishop Tebartz-van Elst were multiplying.

    The church exists to serve the weak, the sick and the poor, said Stefan Vesper, the leader of the country’s biggest organization of Catholics and among those calling for resignation. The bishop’s behavior “is not the Catholic Church,” he said.

    In September, as thousands of Catholics signed petitions for and against him, the bishop, whose diocese of 682,000 believers includes rural Rhineland but also Frankfurt, the banking metropolis, begged forgiveness from all whom he might have “hurt and disappointed.”

    After a visit from a Vatican envoy, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who was sent to investigate the growing furor, the bishop agreed to have the German church investigate his spending, which he has insisted incorporated 10 separate building projects and was mandated by preservation laws.

    On Friday, the bishop scrapped a planned trip to Israel with a church choir, but remained silent, behind the walls of the controversial residence.

    “He will have to step down; there is no alternative,” said Joachim Heidersdorf, chief reporter for Nassauische Neue Presse, a newspaper in Limburg, a picturesque small town whose cathedral dates from more than 800 years ago.

    In a telephone interview, Mr. Heidersdorf marveled that the bishop, who he said communicates with just handpicked reporters, had chosen now to talk only with the influential Bild, which published his spirited defense on Thursday but went on the attack with Friday’s front page. Television reports about the Limburg case attracted top ratings Thursday night.

    For many commentators, the case in Hamburg hurt even more than the ballooning bills for the residence. A senior state prosecutor, Nana Frombach, formally charged on Thursday that the bishop made false statements twice under oath during his legal action against the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which in 2012 reported that he flew first class on a visit to the poor in India.

    If found guilty, the prelate could face a fine. Much worse than his spending, in the eyes of Claudia Keller, writing on Friday for the daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, is the formal charge that he lied and that “till today, he is sticking hard by that lie.”

    “That is not just embarrassing and a violation of the Eighth Commandment,” she wrote. “It is the complete opposite of the life that Pope Francis imagines for his bishops.”

    By late Friday, Bishop Tebartz-van Elst, who was appointed to Limburg by Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, a German, was clearly embarrassing even the cautious leaders of the roughly 24 million registered Catholics in Germany.

    Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who said he was befuddled by the multimillions spent by the prelate when the figures emerged this week, said pointedly: “We bishops must ask ourselves, where and how we live. A new building represents a chance to send signals.”

    “Pope Francis is preaching to us all of the simple life, humility and modesty,” the archbishop said, according to the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse. “We all feel how pressured the situation is,” he added, noting that it was the first time he had heard of a prelate being formally charged by prosecutors. “That upsets me greatly. If it is confirmed in court, then we have a new situation.”

    The archbishop plans to be at the Vatican this week and said he would discuss the case with the pope. Bishop Tebartz-van Elst was reported to be flying to Rome on Saturday. Canon law experts quoted by the German news media said that only the pontiff could decide to remove the bishop.

    Bishop Tebartz-van Elst, who was ordained in 1985 and studied in France and at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in the late 1980s, was Germany’s youngest bishop when he was installed in January 2008.

    His predecessor, Bishop Franz Kamphaus, had reached the church retirement age of 75, but was apparently a cleric more in the spirit of Francis. According to Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, a correspondent for The Tablet, a Catholic weekly in London, Bishop Kamphaus moved out of the bishop’s palace into a small apartment in the adjoining seminary, using the official residence to house refugees.

    A version of this article appears in print on October 13, 2013, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: German Outrage Swells Over a Bishop’s Spending.

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  13. So what is the best estimate of % in their hierarchy that would most applaud and embrace the declaration that an “alternative lifestyle” would be cool with the Vatican?

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  14. Kent,

    Counting the ones who are themselves practicing an alternative lifestyle or not?

    That Bishop in Germany appears to have a very keen sense of design. Just sayin’.

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  17. Guys,

    You’re just not being charitable and applying the wrong principled paradigm. The pope is not always infallible; even when he thinks he is infallible, he could be fallible about that. Remember it’s only a dogmatic statement. And then, when inconvenient parts of it assert things about history that are later demonstrably wrong, that part of the statement wasn’t infallible. Somehow you are probably begging the question, too.

    Of course, there’s been a lot of crickets recently in regards to the pope’s latest statements from the individuals mentioned above.

    Francis—the gift that keeps on giving!

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  18. “Charity”, has nothing to do with it.

    Jason et al, believe that we must have Jesus, + a pope.

    And we say, “we have One Mediator, and that is Christ Jesus our Lord.” (or something like that)

    Popes are great…or not so great. When they hand over Christ Jesus and His pure gospel…God bless them (I guess it does happen every now and then – even a broken clock is right twice a day)…
    but when they put people on the religious ascendancy rat-wheel project…then they are worthless. No…worse than useless…they can be tolls of the devil.

    What was the question? 😀

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  21. From my mom:

    “Pastor ****** taught during ss on Federal Vision. Next week, too. We have his three pages of notes if you are interested. He did a good job, but one of the men KEPT interrupting to ask long questions. I wanted to tell him to be quiet.”

    There’s one in every crowd.

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  22. Robert: Of course, there’s been a lot of crickets recently in regards to the pope’s latest statements from the individuals mentioned above.

    Has anyone seen this?

    http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/pope-francis-atheists-and-the-evangelical-spirit/#comment-61494

    Andrew Presslar shuts down, checks out, no explanation: “I will not be writing or commenting on the website for the foreseeable future. So if by some chance anyone comments on any of my posts, those comments will have to be approved by another CTC member.”

    I think one of the biggest “benefits” of Francis, “the gift who keeps on giving” is that he demoralizes some of the know-it-all demagogues. He says and does things that they just plain find indefensible.

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  23. the one, being “the one” who wants everybody to be quiet?

    so that dissenters must go privately to the priest in charge later on?

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  24. John,

    I saw that from Andrew, but I figured it had to do with personal reasons. Maybe his personal reason is that the papal paradigm is slowly shattering.

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  25. Robert, I thought this comment (151) was telling:

    In the above post and some of my subsequent comments on this thread, I made a conscious decision not to criticize the Pope’s comments about atheists, which he made during a homily back in May of this year. In retrospect, I should have been more forthcoming about the problematic nature of those comments, while not abandoning the effort to express what I believe to be the fact that they are consistent with Catholic theology. I am not going to rewrite this post, or write another post trying to “translate” or explicate Pope Francis’s recent interview. That is already being done in spades by conservative Catholic bloggers. Rather, I want to point out one response to the interview which seems to actually explain why Pope Francis speaks in the way that he does, without trying to explain away the Pope’s remarks….

    I feel some despair coming from him there.

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  26. It’s not despair, John. It’s the psychic pain that comes from repeatedly banging your head on the wall, metaphorically – if not literally.
    I mean, really.
    The mouthpiece of the magnificent magisterium making comments of a “problematic nature”?

    Or 160: “Catholics make evaluative judgments of papal remarks all the time.”
    (A performative translation for the paradigmatically impaired, read “private judgement”.)

    It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

    They have been given over – but for the grace of God – to acting like mental midgets ants swallowing a mountain of elephant dung (see 140, answered of course by another elf in 142).

    They have bought into a program based upon some non sequiturs derived from some drive by appeals to scripture – at least as exprots – and the mental handicap is beginning to pinch a little. Which is what dunce caps do for those with swelled up opinions about their own free will ability to properly interpret the historically correct motives of credibility, as well as attribute infallible perspicuity to a vicar who usurps the prerogatives of the Holy Spirit.

    Hence Preslar’s stonewalling about Francis taking a hint from Poe’s Cask of Amontillado and walling up the former’s most prized idolatry belief which is the centerpiece of the CtC philosophical & apologetic pogrom of propaganda: It’s just not reasonable to think that Jesus would leave his church without an infallible interpreter.

    But we done been there before.
    Props to you for keeping an eye on these guys. I find it hard to wade through the nonsense, Call of Duty Black Ops notwithstanding.

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  27. If DgH doesn’t mind I want to semi-hijack this thread for a bit.

    I was reading an article today that made reference to the unity between Congregationalists and Unitarians in Massachusetts once Catholic migration started. Now it occurs to me that most Reformed today would consider Catholics much closer to their religion than Unitarians, i,e. the trinity is more important than sola fide.

    Is that true that there has been a complete flip on this issue? And is so, would anyone like to venture a why it is true for them?

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  32. Bob: Props to you for keeping an eye on these guys. I find it hard to wade through the nonsense,

    I really don’t do this much any more. I look at links provided by the other commenters here. Glad to see that Andrew Preslar has bowed out. There may be hope for others there as this “gift pope” keeps on giving.

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  33. Three days ago, Old Bob had a nice long chat with retiree, WTS prof, Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. Friends since he was 13 and I, 21. His mom was one of my 3 “Pauls”. We find a lot of “head scratchers” @ OLTS. I still find most of it no help, even a negative, to my Minister-attempts at our new home here at Alexian Village. Is all this anti Roman Catholic stuff the best we can do to serve our Lord? Love OBM

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  35. I thought I’d find DGH on line rather than loving his wife as Jesus loved the church! Pls. define “hipster Christian”. I Don’t think I want to be one if DGH, Eric Charter, etc. are HCs. Even though Dick Gaffin and Pete Lillback don’t agree on EVERYTHING, I think I’d like to have whatever label they have with the Lord. Sorry I weakened and revisited OLT. Love Bob Morris

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  36. Old BM, maybe the snark isn’t your sort of thing but when you ask people the gospel in a reformed much less protestant setting, and within 20 seconds the conversation has melted down to political parties, school choice and how America needs to find God again, I can’t imagine anything more relevant or necessary than rescuing the gospel from the culture wars. As far as the RC’s, if the gospel is about being earnest and doing the best you can with God’s help, one could do worse than RC. Of course, if the gospel is about the work of Christ for me and outside of me, we have reason to warn people of the soul imperiling lure of Rome.

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  39. Old Bob – Is all this anti Roman Catholic stuff the best we can do to serve our Lord?

    Erik – Yeah, it’s up there pretty high on the list. Ever heard of the Protestant Reformation or was that not part of the curriculum when Old Bob was at Westminster?

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  42. Hey, Love Bob — who’s nasty here? Suggesting that DGH is practically guilty of spousal abandonment? Wow,pietism covers a multitude of sins. I’ve seen this from prog-pietist-evanjellycals at presbytery meetings. When things don’t go to suit them and the “conservatives” are winning a point they piously call for prayer to heal all this division and then ask for forgiveness for the nasty thoughts they have about the other side. The old iron fist in the velvet glove…maybe velour or terrycloth in your case, Love Bob.

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