D. G. Hart

Even Romans Wasn't That Long

Published on June 20, 2015 by D. G. Hart25 Comments

Boniface once again shows why he is a much more important read than Bryan and the Jasons. This time he explains why a papal letter has to be 187 pages (!!!!) long:

Modern encyclicals are a curious thing. The encyclical developed from the papal bull. The bull was a primarily juridical instrument used as a means of promulgating an authoritative judgment of the Holy See, either in matters of doctrine or governance. These could often be very short; we marvel today at reading something like Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam (1302) – which famously declared that submission to the Roman pontiff was necessary for salvation – and is only a page long! Papal bulls in the old days knew what they wanted to say and they said it.

The modern encyclical developed out of the Enlightenment period as the popes realized that broader literacy and intellectual challenges to Christian revelation necessitated using the papal bull as a means of educating the flock on Catholic teaching, and hence by the time of the French Revolution the bull had begun to transform into the encyclical, the teaching letters of the modern pontiffs.

The encyclicals of the 19th and early 20th century are lucid and clear. Their purpose is to expound Catholic doctrine and defend it against modern errors, which they do very admirably. A friend recently commented to me that in thinking back on great documents like Pascendi, Quas Primas, Casti Conubii and so forth, one can immediately recall the substance of of them and the force of their arguments. Pius XII taught that the encyclical was the normative means by which the Roman pontiff exercised his teaching office. The same cannot be said about modern encyclicals – who can easily summarize what Redemptor Hominis or Populorum Progressio are about except in the vaguest terms?

That’s not to say pre-Vatican II encyclicals were always to the point; the pre-Conciliar popes certainly had their moments of rambling – but at least their rambling was clear and fun to read!

When we get to Vatican II, a noticeable change comes about. I personally attribute this to John XXIII’s famous principle from the opening of the Second Vatican Council:

“Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.”

This principle has effected the manner in which the post-1965 ecclesia docens functions. Essentially, the post-Conciliar encyclical doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. The popes have still utilized them as a means of teaching, but rather than teaching what Catholic doctrine consists of, they have increasingly become occasions for popes to explain why Catholic doctrine is what it is.

That’s not entirely a bad thing; fides quaerens intellectum, right? But somewhere along the way the popes seemed to have dropped the declarative aspect of the encyclical in the overly optimistic hope that if we could just explain our teaching to the world – just walk them through our thinking step by step – then maybe the world would accept the Church’s message. Maybe if we simply “proposed” our rationale for belief humbly instead of declaring that we “had” the truth, the world would reciprocate and enter into a “fruitful dialogue” with Christianity that would mutually enrich everybody?

Boniface also explains why recent popes are attractive to intellectualist Protestants even while forgetting the real (or historic) source of their power:

(a) The world does not reject the Gospel because it has not been adequately explained. They reject it “because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil” (John 3:19).

(b) Even when its has opted for explaining rather than declaring the Church’s teaching, the Church has done a poor job of it because it has chosen to explain its teachings in terms of humanist phenomenology rather than having recourse to the Church’s traditional pedagogy.

(c) By focusing so much on the explanation and presentation over the declaration, the Church has unwittingly given the false impression that the validity of its teachings are bound up with the force of her argumentation, a kind of false intellectualism. She feels shaky and inadequate simply saying, “Such is the voice of the Church; such is the teaching of our Faith”; she feels she must offer a humanistic centered explanation for everything – an explanation that will “suit” the needs of “contemporary man” – with the effect that her message has become completely man-centered. “He taught as one who had authority” (Matt. 7:29) said the people of old about Christ; but when the Church forgets the supernatural force that stands behind her teaching and opts instead for an anthropomorphized message, she no longer “speaks with authority”, in the sense that her words lose their force. Hence people shrug at the latest papal document and move on.

(d) Finally, because the popes have sought for novel means to propose their teachings, encyclicals lose their strenght as teaching documents and become instead opportunities for the popes to foist their own theological or literary tastes on the Catholic people. The phenomenology of John Paul II, the Balthasarian-Hegelian-Teilhardism of Benedict XVI, and now the sort of “literary theology” of Francis. Each pontiff has opted not use traditional pedagogy, which means every pope has to “try something new” in how they choose to teach.

The irony, of course, is that the more popes “teach,” the less Roman Catholics learn.

Surely someone is smart enough among the bishops to figure this out.

Window Shut?

Published on June 19, 2015 by D. G. Hart92 Comments

When asked about the need for the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII said, “I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in.” So how can it be that the new encyclical, Laudao Si, may be an indication that the Roman church is shutting the window that Pope John opened? How especially could a seemingly open, affable, and loose pope like Francis, function as a brake on progress in the church?

Just this morning I was reading Colleen McDannell’s fine book, The Spirit of Vatican II, a reflection on McDannell’s mother and the changes that she witnessed in her pre- and post-Vatican II life. Here is part of McDannell’s account of Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:

Given that God acted within the world and not against it, people learned his mysterious designs by studying not only society but nature as well. The Constitution admitted that science and technology could foster a detached orientation toward matter that encouraged the denial of God’s involvement in life, but this need not be the case. Conducted in the correct spirit, science and technology could greatly improve the conditions of humanity. Science as well as philosophy, history, mathematics, and the arts served to elevate humanity to a “more sublime understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty.” (111-12)

The church, in other words, was opening up to the modern world of science and technology, and trying to avoid an overt association with things medieval.

Such openness is not how some are reading yesterday’s encyclical. Rusty Reno, for instance, thinks Pope Francis has impersonated William F. Buckley, Jr., and has stood up to yell “STOP” to the modern world:

Commentators are sure to make the false claim that Pope Francis has aligned the Church with modern science. They’ll say this because he endorses climate change. But that’s a superficial reading of Laudato Si. In this encyclical, Francis expresses strikingly anti-scientific, anti-technological, and anti-progressive sentiments. In fact, this is perhaps the most anti-modern encyclical since the Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX’s haughty 1864 dismissal of the conceits of the modern era.

Francis describes the root of our problem as a failure to affirm God as Creator. Because we do not orient our freedom toward acknowledging God, the Father, we’re drawn into the technological project. We seek to subdue and master the world so that it can serve our needs and desires, thus treating “other living beings as mere objects subjected to arbitrary human domination.” By contrast, if we acknowledge God as Creator, we can receive creation as a gift and see that “the ultimate purpose of other creatures is not found in us.”

In short, without a theocentric orientation, we adopt the anthropocentric presumption that we are at the center of reality. This tempts us to treat nature—and other human beings—as raw material to do with as we wish. For Francis, “a spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable.”

Of course, God is exactly what modernity has forgotten, which means that it too is “not acceptable”—exactly Pius IX’s conclusion. The Syllabus of Errors is exquisitely succinct. Laudato Si is verbose. But in a roundabout way Francis makes his own case against the modern world.

Mark Tooley seconds Reno and wonders whether we will have to give up air conditioners after Pope Francis is finished:

The new papal encyclical addressing climate change comes as I’m having central air conditioning installed in my Northern Virginia home. Likely I’m one of the last people in the notoriously muggy Washington, DC area not to have it. For nine years since purchasing my current home, which is 75 years old with radiator heat, I’ve postponed installation, trying to pretend it wasn’t needed, relying on overhead fans, window and floor units. After all, I largely grew up in the 1970s without it. My parents’ home didn’t have it (until after my brother and I moved out!). Neither did my elementary school. Central air was experienced in grocery stores, movie theaters, public libraries, and my grandparents’ house.

Currently I’m out of town, in pleasantly temperate Grand Rapids, Michigan, attending an Acton Institute conference on faith and free markets. But I can’t wait to get home and experience my new central air conditioning.

Interestingly, the new papal encyclical warns against air conditioning as a supposed contributor to climate change:

55. Some countries are gradually making significant progress, developing more effective controls and working to combat corruption. People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behaviour, which at times appears self-destructive.

Ironically, a Slate.com column, which praises the papal encyclical as “more like a poetry slam at an Occupy Wall Street rally than a formal church document,” notes that in poor countries like India air conditioning is becoming a “human rights” issue:

An estimated 300 million people there—one-quarter of the country—has no access to electricity at all. Just last month the country endured the fifth-deadliest heat wave in world history. In India air conditioning is increasingly becoming a human rights issue. This is what the pope is talking about when he discusses climate change and poverty in the same breath.

But in fact the papal encyclical implies that Indians should go without air conditioning, and electricity for that matter, as 300 million joining the grid ostensibly would heat the planet. Despite rhetoric about renewables, the provision of electricity to the 1.3 billion in the world currently without it primarily requires more fossil fuel powered electrical generators. African and Asian countries are busily building mostly coal powered plants.

Should we in the wealthy West tell the 1.3 billion that they should live permanently without electricity? Many hundreds of millions more have unreliable sources of electricity. And most people globally have no air conditioning. Would they be wrong for wanting it?

Just at the time I need to open the window to let in a breeze, Pope Francis closes it.

Been There, Done That

Published on June 19, 2015 by D. G. Hart10 Comments

Pope Francis’ debt to Calvinism:

Laudato Si’ will restate what previous popes have said on environmental destruction and its impact on the poor, but as an encyclical, the church’s highest teaching document, it will have magnified impact.

The encyclical should remind us of American environmentalism’s own intensely religious and moral roots, which have mostly been forgotten since the 1960s.

The very issues that Francis will emphasize — sin, the common good, and the harm that greedy exploitation causes society — inspired conservation and environmentalism from their earliest beginnings. Their roots, however, were in the social and religious teachings, not of the Catholic Church, but of Calvinist churches, such as Congregationalism and Presbyterianism.

In early colonial days, Puritans following Calvinist principles established communities across New England. Calvinism put special emphasis on God’s presence in the works of nature, and Puritans often went alone into the fields, woods, and hills to pray and meditate.

So that none would be poor, New England towns granted each family a share of land, which religious duty commanded they pass on to future generations in as good or better condition. Towns regulated land and timber use to ensure resources for the future.

By 1830, colonies became states, Puritans became Congregationalists, and New England towns, with their white steepled Congregational churches on the greens, became the very emblem of democracy, prosperity, and moral order.

Let the Interpretation Commence

Published on June 18, 2015 by D. G. Hart78 Comments

Now that Pope Francis’ much awaited encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, is out, we have the chore not only of assessing the document but also its reception. (I’d also like to know how many authors contributed to this, which offices in the Vatican had input, and how much the making of an encyclical resembles the drafting of a president’s State of the Union Address. But that’s — all about — me and my enjoyment of shows like West Wing and Larry Sanders.)

The confusing aspect of papal pronouncements is how much authority they have. Is Peter Kreeft’s Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Church Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church the place to start? If so, it looks like everyone who is under the pope’s rule needs to get on board:

Even doctrines not explicitly labeled infallible can be binding on Catholic belief because “[d]ivine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter,…when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a ‘definitive manner,’ they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium teaching … of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful ‘are to adhere…with religious assent’ (LG 25)” (CCC 892). Wise and good parents do not explicitly label everything they say to their children as “infallible”, yet wise and good children trust them. Similarly, we should trust Holy Mother Church, the Church of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, the Church with a two-thousand-year-long-memory, much more than we trust our own opinions.

The sign the Church attaches to an infallible teaching is Christocentric: “When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine ‘for belief as being divinely revealed,’ and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions ‘must be adhered to with the obedience of faith'” (CCC 891). (101-102)

That sets the bar pretty high and may explain why not all Roman Catholics were fans of John Paul II or why some thought he did not adhere to the spirit of Vatican II.

But maybe people disregard papal pronouncements because popes say too much and it becomes easy to regard papal teaching as mere chatter:

First, the Big Question. Why? Why is the Catholic Church entering into the fray of doubtful global warming science? Why now and why with such shrill apocalyptic exaggerated rhetoric? Why strident calls for supranational government control at the same time the actual evidence for doom grows weaker and weaker?

Consider this. Used to be in the West when the Catholic Church spoke, people listened. Reporters and politicians would come calling before writing articles or making decisions and ask, “What say you, Mr. Bishop?” And the people, when they heard what the Church had to say, listened. They considered. Sure, they sometimes rejected, perhaps even more often than they heeded. But the Church was an influence. And it liked being one.

Not so now. The West has these past fifty or so years assumed an adversarial stance towards our ancient and venerable institution. The press, politicians, and people no longer care what the clergy has to say on designer babies (i.e. eugenics), abortion, homosexual acts, same-sex “marriage”, you name it. Not when a recalcitrant Church disallows female priests, divorce, and every other thing the secular salivate over.

Some who disregard the papacy on matters like the environment think papal infallibility only goes so far and that when popes speak about matters like economics and politics they are just another guy talking (think Joe Biden). From John Zmirak‘s Bad Catholics’ Guide to the Catechism:

Q: What about when the pope writes or speaks on politics and economics?

A: Most of the time, those topics involve specific disputes about how to apply moral principles, statements of fact or arguments over what’s prudent. Infallibility can’t apply to any of those. When he’s writing on those subjects, the pope is just an ordinary man — although in most cases a wise and learned one, whose ideas we should take seriously. For instance, when Pope Paul VI wrote in Populorum Progressio that the right way for rich countries to help poor ones was to tax their citizens and send money to Third World governments, that was a suggestion worth considering. But faithful Catholics can disagree. Many have noted that there is now an extensive track record of such foreign aid, and all too often it ends up in Swiss bank accounts or being spent to prop up corrupt regimes. Pope Paul VI made a prudential judgment, and faithful Catholics are perfectly free to reject it. The same applies if a pope speaks out on immigration policies, welfare programs or Middle Eastern politics.

Q: A lot of Catholics seem to disagree with what you just said. They suggest that the Holy Spirit picks who’s elected pope, then protects his everyday statements and policies from error.

A: The Church has never said any such thing — out of deference to the First Commandment, and perhaps to avoid becoming the laughingstock of even Catholic historians.

If the Holy Spirit directly picked the popes without human agency, we’d have to ask why He picked so many illegitimate children of previous popes; so many cardinals who bribed their way to the throne; or — my favorite example — the pope who so hated his predecessor that he dug up the old pope’s corpse and tried it for heresy, before dumping it in the river. We’ve done much better with choosing popes since the Council of Trent, but the process never became magical. Sometimes the cardinals pick a weakling, a coward or a bully. Popes do have original sin. The Holy Spirit oversees the process, of course, but allows a lot of room for human freedom and folly.

The pope can’t infallibly predict the weather, draw up the U.S. budget or tell us which wars are just or unjust. Think of the five “crusades” which Pope Martin V launched against cities full of Christians for “heresy.” Popes misused their authority so often and so egregiously that it helped cause the Reformation.

Q: What about when the pope does teach about faith and morals, but doesn’t invoke the divine-infallibility veto you’ve spoken of?

A: Catholics view every other papal pronouncement in context — the context of previous solemn church teaching on an issue. So if a pope reiterates some previous teaching, with roots in the Bible and the councils of the church, we defer to his interpretation. If he says something that seems new, we judge it against those previous teachings and are free to disagree — respectfully, of course. You shouldn’t mock the nakedness of your father. But you don’t have to bring him another skin full of wine.

If one pope contradicts another, or either contradicts a council, you can rest assured that none of the statements is infallible, and the issue is still open for debate.

Q: Are there examples of popes speaking fallibly at cross-purposes with one another?

A: Lots of them. I’m sure that I’ve already tested your ecumenical patience, but if you’re really interested, read this piece. In it, I explore conflicting papal statements on slavery, lending at interest, torture and religious freedom.

Q: Those aren’t petty issues.

A: No, they aren’t. But the Church has never pretended that Jesus made each pope a magical fountain of new divine revelations and brilliant policy ideas. We do the church no favors by inflating the papacy’s claims like a balloon. Our history is full of needles which could pop it.

Okay, Protestants are confused, but so are Roman Catholics.

For that reason, why does Rod Dreher react so strongly to Jeb Bush’s understanding of Roman Catholicism:

I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” Bush said. “And I’d like to see what he says as it relates to climate change and how that connects to these broader, deeper issue before I pass judgment. But I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.”

Isn’t Jeb simply channeling Al Smith and John F. Kennedy who also had to wade through the thicket of church authority and constitutional requirements? Rod doesn’t think so:

First off, nobody believes that bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, are policy wonks, and nobody believes that they are experts at dictating economic policy. That said, Jeb Bush, as a Catholic, is not free to discard the social teaching of the Catholic Church, under which the new papal encyclical on climate change would appear to fall, because it doesn’t suit his personal beliefs. Note well that Bush doesn’t even know what Francis is going to say in the encyclical, but rejects out of hand that the Church has anything binding to say to him about economics.

Second, how is it that Jeb Bush has been a Catholic convert for 25 years, and doesn’t grasp that Catholic Christianity is not focused only on personal piety, but has a broad social dimension as well? On what grounds does he oppose abortion, then? On what grounds did he fight to keep Terri Schiavo alive as her governor? Does he reject what the Catholic Church teaches about the poor?

Well, given the lack of conformity among Roman Catholics in relation to papal teaching, Rod may well decide to forgive Jeb.

Or it might mean that all of us, including Roman Catholics, have a little Caitlyn Jenner in us. Ross Douthat picked up on Will Wilkinson’s comments on the religious significance of sex change:

One of the enduring puzzles of America is why it has remained so robustly religious while its European cousins have secularised with startling rapidity. One stock answer is that America, colonised by religious dissenters and lacking an officially sanctioned creed, has always been a cauldron of religious competition and, therefore, innovation. The path to success in a competitive religious marketplace is the same as the path to success in business: give the people what they want.

Americans tend to want a version of Americanism, and they get it. Americanism is a frontier creed of freedom, of the inviolability of individual conscience and salvation as self-realisation. The American religion does Protestantism one better. Not only are we, each of us, qualified to interpret scripture, but also we each have a direct line to God. You can just feel Jesus. In my own American faith tradition, a minority version of Mormonism, the Holy Spirit—one of the guises of God—is a ubiquitous, pervasive presence. Like radio waves, you’ve just got to tune it in.

The problem for Roman Catholics, though, is that the condemnation of Americanism as a heresy was part of the church’s social teaching. The intriguing aspect of the release of Laudato Si will be to see how much Roman Catholics, who lamented Caitlyn Jenner, wind up doing their own version of spiritual gender bending to avoid following the infallible Bishop of Rome.

Postscript: as part of Old Life’s service to instruct the faithful, here are a couple of scorecards for evaluating the authority of papal teaching.

First, the layers of instruction:

Dogma: Infallible expressions of divine revelation. Catholics owe these pronouncements the most serious response and consideration, what we refer to as “obedience of faith.” When it comes to ethics, dogma includes the most fundamental aspects of Christian morality (including those that Church has never had occasion to explicitly define as such). An example is the basic responsibility of Christians to act as stewards towards God’s gift of Creation.

Definitive Doctrine: Teachings that are not divinely revealed but are still essential to the protection of divine revelation. These teachings are also exercised with the charism of infallibility, and the faithful properly owe them “firm acceptance.” One example is the canon of Sacred Scripture.

Authoritative Doctrine: Teachings that are connected to divine revelation, but which are neither recognized as divinely revealed nor considered to be infallible. To these, Catholics owe “religious assent,” i.e., “religious submission of mind and will” (Lumen Gentium, no. 25). An example in theological ethics is the “universal destination of goods” which insists that “God destined the earth and all it contains for all men and all peoples” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 69; cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, nos. 171-175).

Prudential Judgments: Instructions through which the pope and/or bishops employ dogma, doctrine, and authoritative secular information to provide guidance on particular issues/circumstances. These instructions do not have the charism of infallibility, but the faithful are called to openly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully consider these teachings as they form their consciences. An example would be a papal judgment about whether a specific structure, institution, or practice upholds or damages the dignity of Creation—especially of human persons and particularly of the poorest and most vulnerable.

By this criteria, Laudato Si is pious advice.

But don’t forget about the genre of papal expression:

Apostolic constitutions (apostolicae constitutiones): solemn, formal documents on matters of highest consequence concerning doctrinal or disciplinary matters, issued by the pope in his own name. They are published as either universal or particular law of the Church. (Examples: the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium; Constitution on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.)

Apostolic exhortation (apostolica exhortatio): a papal reflection on a particular topic that does not contain dogmatic definitions or policy directives, addressed to bishops, clergy and all the faithful of the entire Catholic Church. Apostolic exhortations are not legislative documents. (Example: Familiaris Consortio, on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World.)

Apostolic letter (apostolica epistola): a formal papal teaching document, not used for dogmatic definitions of doctrine, but to give counsel to the Church on points of doctrine that require deeper explanation in the light of particular circumstances or situations in various parts of the world.

Declaration (declamatio): may be a simple statement of the law, which must be interpreted according to the existing law; or an authoritative declaration that is retroactive and does not require further promulgation; or an extensive declaration, which modifies the law, is not retroactive and must be promulgated according to the law.

Decree (decretum): a statement involving Church law, precepts or judicial decisions on a specific matter. It is an ordinance given by one having the power of jurisdiction (such as a bishop within his particular diocese, the head of an office of the Roman Curia, or the pope), acting administratively to promote compliance with the law. A decree announces that a given document or legislative text is in effect.

Encyclical (encyclica epistola – literally, “circular letter”): a formal apostolic letter issued by the pope usually addressed to the bishops, clergy and faithful of the entire Church. Example, Humanae vitae, concerning the Church’s teaching on birth control issued in 1968 by Pope Paul VI.

Instruction (instructio): explains or amplifies a document that has legislative force, such as apostolic constitutions, and states how its precepts are to be applied. (e.g., Liturgiam authenticam, on liturgical translation, an Instruction on the correct implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.)

Institutio: instituted arrangement or regular method, rules (as in Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani).

Motu proprio (literally, by one’s own initiative): a legislative document or decree issued by the pope on his own initiative, not in response to a request. (Examples: Apostolos Suos; Misericordia Dei.)

Promulgation (promulgatio): the process whereby the lawmaker communicates the law to those to whom the law has been given. (The official effective date on which a document is promulgated may or may not coincide with the date on which a document is actually published.)

Recognitio: confirms the review of documents that are submitted by a conference of bishops to the relevant office (dicastery) of the Holy See. Recognitio is required before the provisions of documents that modify universal law may come into effect. Recognitio thus signals acceptance of a document that may have legislative force. (Recognitio is required for all documents that modify universal liturgical norms, for example.)

Now I’m lost. Can’t we just have the Bible, Confession and Catechisms, Book of Church Order, and Directory for Worship?

Gearing Up for Fortnight for Freedom

Published on June 17, 2015 by D. G. Hart56 Comments

Some people are worried that the church is being airbrushed from history. Case in point, Magna Carta, the 800th anniversary of which occurred on my mother’s birthday:

Clause 39 – “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” – is well-known to educated people, it is less commonly recalled that Clause 1 states “that the English Church is to be free, and to have its full rights and its liberties intact”.

More importantly, the Christian origins and influence of the Great Charter are mostly ignored, a point raised in a new Theos report by Thomas Andrew, The Church and the Charter: Christianity and the Forgotten Roots of Magna Carta.

In particular Andrew addresses the unsung hero of Magna Carta, Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton, who played a huge part in drawing up the treaty and implementing it.

Some bishops were heroes, some weren’t since also missing from various accounts of the celebration is the recognition that Pope Innocent III condemned Magna Carta in the papal encyclical, Etsi Karissimus in Christo:

On behalf of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and by the authority of SS Peter and Paul his apostles, and by our own authority, acting on the general advice of our brethren, we utterly reject and condemn this settlement [the Magna Carta] and under threat of excommunication we order that the king should not dare to observe it and that the barons and their associates should not require it to be observed: the charter, with all undertakings and guarantees whether confirming it or resulting from it, we declare to be null, and void of all validity for ever. Wherefore, let no man deem it lawful to infringe this document of our annulment and prohibition, or presume to oppose it. If anyone should presume to do so, let him know that he will incur the anger of Almighty God and of SS Peter and Paul his apostles.

This should certainly complicate preparations for the 2015 Fortnight for Freedom, June 21 to July 4, 2015, “a time when our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. The theme of this year’s Fortnight will focus on the “freedom to bear witness” to the truth of the Gospel.”

Also complicating preparations are memories of the English Reformation, commonly denied by the anti-Wolf Hall crowd, which did not exactly witness the papacy rally to religious freedom:

Henry VIII, as many will recall, had six wives, whose fates are remembered by the jingle: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

But the description of the first fate is not accurate. What Henry actually wanted from Pope Clement VII was an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, a request about as common then as asking for late checkout at a hotel is today.

The problem was that Pope Clement VII was at the time virtually a prisoner of Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, whose troops were occupying Rome. And Charles V was a nephew of: Catherine of Aragon, and . . . well, you can see how it got complicated. In addition, there was a major political struggle going on. Rome’s demands for money were bleeding England dry. Henry’s leading the English church to independence from Rome was actually driven more by politics than by theology.

The motes my friend beholds in Henry’s character may have blinded him to the beams in the papacy. For example, Pope Innocent X. Innocent may have been the brand name of his bath soap, but it didn’t accurately describe the man, who spent most of his papacy satiating his grasping family’s desires and piling up works of art.

And then there was Pope Benedict IX, described by Pope Victor III as vile, foul, and execrable, who sold the papacy in order to marry his sweetheart. And who, except perhaps my friend, could forget Pope Stephen VI? He exhumed the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, and put it on trial, and, following the surely inevitable conviction, amputated three of “his” fingers. And, not finally but we must move on, let us not overlook, let us not, Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, who, and two of whose children, Lucrezia and Cesare, made their surname synonymous with ruthless corruption and sexual debauchery.

Compared to that crowd, Henry VIII was a saint.

All of which is to indicate that constructing a narrative with Christianity — Calvinist or Roman Catholic — on the right and liberating side of history is just that, a construction. Sometimes it was, sometimes not so much. But shouldn’t a church gain high marks not for being on the side of John Locke but for proclaiming the good news of the gospel? Doesn’t spiritual liberty count for anything?

For good measure, constructing the narrative of Christianity and liberty is almost as selective as identifying Roman Catholic social teaching. With the upcoming — oh my it will be great and consequential — encyclical on the environment, plenty of reminders have made the way straight for Pope Francis who will, certainly, only be building on ideas and arguments already stated and affirmed by previous popes.

But here’s a question: why isn’t Innocent III’s condemnation of Magna Carta also part of Roman Catholic social teaching? The pope was, after all, teaching about society. Heck, plenty of popes well before Leo XIII taught about the political order and the duties of Christians. The calls for the Crusades, anyone? Was that a sermon about seeking a better country in the new heavens and new earth? So isn’t the notion of Roman Catholic social teaching a forerunner of what the bishops did at Vatican II — adjusting papal authority and teaching to modern society because those medieval claims about papal supremacy and national illegitimacy were hardly going to fly three centuries after the Peace of Westphalia?

#youcan’tmakethisstuffupwhenyoucan

The Sinner's Prayer

Published on June 16, 2015 by D. G. Hart84 Comments

I worshiped at Christ Reformed Church, Washington, DC on Sunday and this was our corporate confession of sin:

Our Father, we are sinful and you are holy. We recognize that we have heard in your Law difficult words, knowing how often we have offended you in thought, word and deed, not only by obvious violations, but by failing to conform to its perfect commands, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. There is nothing in us that gives us reason for hope, for where we thought we were well, we are sick in soul.

Where we thought we were holy, we are in truth unholy and ungrateful. Our hearts are filled with the love of the world; our minds are dark and are assailed by doubts; our wills are too often given to selfishness and our bodies to laziness and unrighteousness. By sinning against our neighbors, we have also sinned against you, in whose image they were created. In this time of silent confession we bring you our particular sins.

Depressing? Yes.

Accurate? Yes.

But if sanctification and obedience are as much a part of the Christian life as the Obedience Boys and the Anti-Antinomians say, then isn’t this more like the prayer of a convert than a believer?

On the other hand, if this is a legitimate ordinary prayer for a believer — and I think it is — what ever are the critics of a justification-centric understanding of salvation talking about? If sin persists in the believer’s life to such an extent that she needs to pray prayers like this routinely, maybe the calls for obedience come across as more oppressive than inspiring.

Women

Published on June 15, 2015 by D. G. Hart51 Comments

My father may have had problems with the post about same-sex marriage, but my mother, Ellen, who was born on this day in 1923, would appreciate H. L. Mencken’s view of marriage (minus the cocktails):

Every man, I daresay, has his own notion of what constitutes perfect peace and contentment, but all of those notions, despite the fundamental conflict of the sexes, revolve around women. As for me — and I hope I may be pardoned, at this late stage in my inquiry, for intruding my own personality–I reject the two commonest of them: passion, at least in its more adventurous and melodramatic aspects, is too exciting and alarming for so indolent a man, and I am too egoistic to have much desire to be mothered. What, then, remains for me? Let me try to describe it to you.

It is the close of a busy and vexatious day–say half past five or six o’clock of a winter afternoon. I have had a cocktail or two, and am stretched out on a divan in front of a fire, smoking. At the edge of the divan, close enough for me to reach her with my hand, sits a woman not too young, but still good-looking and well-dressed–above all, a woman with a soft, low-pitched, agreeable voice. As I snooze she talks–of anything, everything, all the things that women talk of: books, music, the play, men, other women. No politics. No business. No religion. No metaphysics. Nothing challenging and vexatious–but remember, she is intelligent; what she says is clearly expressed, and often picturesquely. I observe the fine sheen of her hair, the pretty cut of her frock, the glint of her white teeth, the arch of her eye-brow, the graceful curve of her arm. I listen to the exquisite murmur of her voice. Gradually I fall asleep–but only for an instant. At once, observing it, she raises her voice ever so little, and I am awake. Then to sleep again–slowly and charmingly down that slippery hill of dreams. And then awake again, and then asleep again, and so on.

I ask you seriously: could anything be more unutterably beautiful? (In Defense of Women, 207-208)

Birthdays

Published on June 11, 2015 by D. G. Hart18 Comments

Picking up on yesterday’s reflections, what if my father were alive to read the post about same-sex marriage?

Chances are he wouldn’t have read it. I don’t think he or my mother ever owned a computer.

But what if I read the post to him? My sense is that he would have did what he did most of the time. He would have listened, asked a few questions, and maybe even asked me for something more to read about the subject. If my mother were in the room, my father would have been pleading with her — not always the most open-minded of people — not to become too upset at the boy.

And so I live with this odd sense of being one part my father when it comes to the culture war stuff, and one part my mother when it comes to the Lord’s Day and worship stuff. Call me conflicted.

And also call me despondent at least for today because this would be Jay Hart’s birthday if he were still alive. I know some celebrate June 11 as the birthday of the OPC. But fourteen years before the OPC started its ministry, my dad was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania among the Pennsylvania Germans who, thanks to the great war, became the Pennsylvania Dutch.

As much as I don’t think my father would have minded my questions from yesterday, I know he would have objected to yesterday’s Phillies’ game. So glad he doesn’t have to endure this season.

What If?

Published on June 10, 2015 by D. G. Hart415 Comments

What if same-sex marriage is not that big a deal?

What if same-sex marriage winds Christians up so that they play to the stereotype of cultural warriors and further their reputation for the last 30 years of playing lock step in culture-war partisan politics?

What if no gay couples will seek to be married in conservative Presbyterian churches because our facilities (at least in the OPC) are so unattractive that only church members hold weddings there?

What if same-sex marriage is a fad that will pass when people remember that in the Spring of 2015 Lebron James was doing something more important than a retired Decathlete?

What if Christians are showing the same level of discernment that they did about the sale and distribution of alcohol?

What if Americans realize that homosexuals are at most 3% of the population who gain more leverage when Christians antagonize homosexual advocates?

What if gays are like Shakers and cannot reproduce?

What if a pastor refuses to conduct a gay marriage and eventually goes to jail?

What if another pastor also winds up in jail?

What if another one does?

What about another?

What if Americans become agitated — as they are wont to do — about a kind of government that locks people up for holding the wrong ideas (the kind of government that some Christians sometimes want)?

What if Christians are not discerning about times?

And what if this is a much bigger story than same-sex marriage, that is, that young straight people in record numbers are not entering marriage?

The data, released by Gallup this week, show that the percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are married is definitely declining. In 2014, the most recent year available, just 16% were married, and 14% of young people were living with a partner. Meanwhile, a whopping 64% of respondents were single in 2014 and had never married. That number was even higher for men (68%) than for women (60%). “This means that not only are fewer young adults married, but also that fewer are in committed relationships,” the report concludes.

Furthermore, the number of singles has been steadily rising for the past decade: In 2005, it was at just 49% while 32% of people in that age group were married. Marriage rates for people in their 30s have also started a slow decline — just 56% of thirtysomethings were married in 2014. More are cohabitating than their twentysomething counterparts, though.

While these statistics can’t hope to reflect every relationship setup out there, they do fall in line with other recent findings: The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that over half of the U.S. is currently not married. (Incidentally, that’s about the ratio of people on Tinder who are actually single). A recent Pew report showed that the number of Americans over the age of 25 who have never been married is currently at its highest, as well. So, if you’re single right now, you’re definitely not alone.

What if gay people wanted credit for upholding an institution that heterosexual people are abandoning?

What would Christians say then?

What if I am not just asking?

Rev. Kev, Bring 'Em Home

Published on June 9, 2015 by D. G. Hart103 Comments

Kevin DeYoung, on the threshold of becoming Presbyterian, lists 10 reasons he is thankful for the PCA. The last one goes like this:

10. Opportunity. The PCA is a young denomination. I’ve moved from the oldest Protestant denomination in the country to one of the newest. There are always challenges that come with youth (who am I? what will I be when I grown up? how do I relate to those who have gone before me?). But there are also great opportunities too.

Like pursuing a gospel-driven diversity that listens and learns without patronizing and pigeon-holing.

Like engaging a wayward world with more theology, more conviction, more worship, and more of God.

Like showing the world that real unity can only be found in truth, that the richest doctrine leads to the fullest doxology, that the highest Christology produces the best missiology, and that staunchest Calvinists can be the most loving people you’ve ever met.

So, why doesn’t the Gospel Coalition join the PCA? Why don’t the allies follow Kevin and realign with a Reformed church? I understand that would mean the end of the Gospel Coalition. But if we have churches like the PCA, why do we need the Gospel Coalition

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