Category: Roman Catholicism

If Christians Thought of Themselves Less as Transformers and More as Pilgrims

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

They might receive better treatment. Ross Douthat brings up a good contrast between the Amish and social conservatives:

. . . let’s pause for a moment to consider the substance of the well-known case she cites, Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Amish families had the right to withdraw their children from education after the 8th grade. (And withdraw completely: They weren’t just petitioning for regulations allowing them to homeschool, though I believe that Wisconsin in that era had policies making homeschooling difficult as well.)

Given the usual public-policy justification for compulsory education, it is very easy to see an argument that the beliefs of Amish parents do, in fact, impose a steep cost on “other people” — with the “other people” in question being, of course, their own children, who are denied the years of education that state law and public policy deem essential to their flourishing. Indeed, from the perspective of a society that often seeks to protect children from unfit parents, and that frets endlessly about high school drop-outs and the high school graduation rate, the burden imposed on Amish teenagers by their parents’ beliefs could be seen as far exceeding the burdens involved in today’s religious liberty debates. A gay couple seeking a wedding photographer is likely to be able to find one even in the event that their preferred choice has a religious objection, and an employee who wants contraceptive coverage can usually purchase it directly with their wages for a non-exorbitant price. But an Amish teenager’s only recourse, if she wants the kind of education that the state usually deems necessary, would require an extreme, wrenching break with the family of her birth, the quest for emancipated-minor status, and the like.

But for evangelicals and Roman Catholics who comprise those opposed to gay marriage to gain a hearing comparable to the one Amish have received, they’d have to present themselves as a minority rather than the moral majority. And the dynamics of evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism — where size matters — clearly point in a direction opposite to that of people who are exiles, sojourners, or refugees. Especially when you enter the world of numbers created by democratic electoral politics, you can’t take any comfort from being a minority group. Of course, American Protestants with British backgrounds have never thought of themselves as a minority. But what happened to Roman Catholics?

Giving Old Meaning to Celebrity Pastor

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

Can you imagine the mayor of Grand Rapids taking a delegation of city officials to Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, the home of the OPC’s headquarters, to solicit last year’s moderator of General Assembly to attend this year’s assembly in Grand Rapids? I can’t. You can’t. No one can. The reason is that a moderator of an OPC General Assembly is not someone who is going to generate tourism dollars for local business. At best, last year’s moderator will show up (if not a commissioner) and plunk down maybe $1,400 in expenses between room, meals, parking, airport taxes, and miscellaneous items.

The reason for this thought experiment is the news that Michael Nutter, the mayor of Philadelphia, received a bit of a cold shoulder from Pope Francis earlier this week. For a cash-strapped city, it is not enough to be hosting a world conference on families thanks to the Archbishop of Philadelphia’s responsibility. The conference scheduled for next should draw hundreds of thousands to the city. But Nutter wanted to persuade the pope to attend. Since Nutter is not a Roman Catholic (to my knowledge) and since Philadelphia’s origins are Quaker, the only logical explanation for Nutter’s arm-twisting is commercial. With the presence of the pope, maybe those flocking to Philadelphia will double?

Such attention to the papacy, however, has its downside:

The truth is that the more the world flatters the Catholic Church by fixating on the papacy—and the more the internal Catholic conversation is monopolized by speculation about the intentions of one man—the less likely it is that the church will succeed in moving beyond the confusions and conflicts that have preoccupied it since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The church desperately needs to reclaim its cultural and spiritual equilibrium; it must find a density and richness of worship and mission and a renewed public presence, which far transcend mere loyalty to the pope. Lacking such equilibrium and self-possession, the church cannot find its true voice. But to find this voice, Catholics will have to turn not to Rome but toward one another, which is where both the problems and the solutions lie.

The fixation on the papacy trivializes the faith of Catholics, the vast majority of whom throughout history have had little knowledge of, and no contact with, any pope. Traditionally, the papacy was the court of last resort in adjudicating disagreements among the faithful. But in the last century or so it has increasingly become the avenue of first resort, determined to meddle in every theological or ecclesiological dispute. If American nuns are flirting with novel styles of ministry, the Vatican intercedes. If translations of liturgical texts incorporate a bit of inclusive language, Rome takes out its red pencil. This meddling Vatican infantilizes the church’s bishops, who seem to change their tune (as well as their dress) in response to every new papal fashion. Bishops in turn demand deference from the clergy and laity. The consequences have been all too clear: As in any heavily top-down organization, local initiatives fail to gain a foothold, or fizzle out for lack of dynamic leadership, and apathy prevails in the pews. Institutional gridlock and paralysis have become the norm. Seminaries are empty, and clerical talent is thin on the ground.

At the same time, the advantage of the papacy is the one that goes with monarchy more generally. Imagine Mayor Nutter having to fly around to all of the largest dioceses in N. America, Africa, and Europe, to persuade archbishops to attend the conference and to pay for some of their parishioners to visit Philadelphia. It would break the Mayor’s travel budget. So with one person in power comes efficiency and decisiveness (no consensus-building among committee members).

And for that reason, Roman Catholicism will have trouble ever finding the road to the spirituality of the church even when the pope’s real power is merely spiritual.

The Further Appeal of Sola Scriptura

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

Why is it that Jason and the Callers use the Bible against Protestants but not against the bishops?

The lesson of all this is that God is not impressed by numbers. Yes, our Lord wants all men to be saved. But they will be saved on His terms, and if they will not heed Him on His own terms, He is willing to wipe them away and start all over again. He has delivered His truth and His commands, and if people are not willing to keep them, He will blot them out – even if He has to blot out an entire nation or even a race and start all over again from scratch. In none of these historical examples does God ever suggest that He will mitigate His law, relax His discipline, or soften His demands just because a large – sometimes very large – portion of His people are living in disobedience. He would rather wipe out the huge amount of dissenters and start fresh than relax even a single point of His commands on their behalf.

This is extremely relevant given current discussions about mitigating the Church’s long standing discipline of denying communion to people living in adulterous “second marriages.” The contemporary wisdom, exemplified by Cardinal Kasper, suggests that because there are so many Catholics living in this state who cannot receive communion, there is an “abyss” between Church practice and the real experience of couples in concrete circumstances. If the Church were to continue to deny these people communion, we might lose a lot of people. Therefore, we need to accommodate their rebellion by softening our discipline.

This is not the way God works. God is not impressed by the number of people living in “second marriages”, nor is God afraid to lose them all and work again from a remnant. Reflect again on that passage from Exodus; God had done wonders to bring these people out of Egypt and had given them the Law in a manifestation of divine glory unsurpassed in the Old Testament. According to the census at the time of the Exodus, Moses led 603,550 men out of Egypt (Num. 1:46); a massive throng of humanity! Even so, when they all rebelled, He was prepared to destroy them all and start all over again with a single man – essentially, go back to the starting point he had established with Abraham centuries before. He was not impressed with the numbers of the rebels; no angels made the argument that an abyss existed between God’s demands and the concrete pastoral circumstances of the Israelites that needed to be bridged; they held no committee meetings on the “problems” of Israelite religion. “Let me alone that I may consume them.” God was ready to destroy them all and start over again with a single man. And note that it was not by pleas of mercy for the Israelites that Moses’ intercession saved them, but by appealing to God’s glory and His own word.

You see, God is not afraid of working through a remnant. Cardinal Kasper is.

Too much skin in the game?

Why Monarchies Are Out of Favor

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

For more of the West’s history than not (from roughly 600 to the present), monarchy has been the preferred political order. Not until 1789 did constitutional republicanism become an alternative. Since then, republicanism (rule by the few) or democracy (rule by the many) have been the characteristic features of the West’s politics. Sure, we still have a monarch in England and the Netherlands, but they function more like furniture than political figures with real power.

This trend in the West’s politics has not transferred to the West’s ecclesiology. Rule by one (episcopacy) is still popular (even sacred) for some of the West’s Christians, while rule by the many (congregationalism/independency) dominates the worlds of New Calvinism, Baptists, charismatics, and beyond. Rule by the few (presbyterianism) is practiced by a few.

All of this is to provide some context for the recent news that an English Roman Catholic bishop, Michael Campbell has used the power of rule by one to reign in a renegade deacon:

A deacon who runs a Catholic website that criticised bishops, theologians and lay groups for being out of step with church teaching has been asked to stop posting material.

Deacon Nick Donnelly has been asked by the Bishop of Lancaster to stop posting on his Protect the Pope site and undergo a “period of prayer and reflection”.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Lancaster said that Bishop Campbell had asked Mr Donnelly to “voluntarily pause” from publishing in order to reflect “on the duties involved for ordained bloggers/website administrators to truth, charity and unity in the Church.”

The site, however, is being operated by his wife, with the latest posting encouraging readers to submit their own articles. Mr Donnelly, who has agreed to his bishop’s request, told The Tablet that his wife was running the site on her own and he has “no say” over what is posted.

Protect the Pope, which received 100,000 hits a month, regularly criticised groups and individual bishops and took issue with several Tablet articles for being at odds with church teaching.

One of the curious aspects of this story is that it conflicts with what George Weigel tried to teach us about the pope’s power: “Popes, in other words, are not authoritarian figures, who teach what they will and as they will.” Well, when have monarch’s ever not been authoritarian figures except when they ran up against a constitution or parliament that supplied checks and balances? And if bishops (rule by one) have power to act unilaterally within their dioceses, why doesn’t Pope Francis have similar authority to reign in priests, deacons, bishops, and church members in the universal church?

And that makes Pope Francis’ affect all the more remarkable because at times he seems more interested in playing the court jester than the king:

“I want things messy and stirred up.”

This statement by Pope Francis to youth on Copacabana beach last summer in Rio de Janeiro during World Youth Day will no doubt become one of the iconic quotes from this papacy, not only because it is a pithy sound bite, but also because — we are learning — it seriously represents Francis’ modus operandi. He stirs things up and then waits to see what will rise out of the chaos.

Francis’ delight in stirring things up is no more evident than in the preparation for the October’s Synod of Bishops. Even before the Vatican officially announced an extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization of the family, there were signs that this event would be different.

Would You Give Up Whiskey for Lent?

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

It’s a curious post for early in a period some call Lent, but Robert Christian thinks Roman Catholics have a drinking problem:

From parishes to parochial schools to university classrooms, the Church is failing in its responsibility to talk about the pernicious impact of alcohol (and even drugs) on so many people in our society, along with the detrimental impact it has on achieving the common good. One is more likely to see devout Catholics being flip about drinking—or even romanticizing and glorifying it—than confronting the nihilism, escapism, and despair that are a big part of our nation’s drinking culture and the wreckage that it leaves in its wake. The Church takes a harder line on drugs, but how often is the topic really discussed? How often does the Church address why people turn to drug use and explain its incompatibility with human flourishing? The Church provides some assistance, but most often it comes after people have already had their lives and the lives of their loved ones (and possibly strangers) devastated by the ruinous costs of addiction. The Church can and should do better. . . .

It is strange that those who identify the emptiness of materialism, consumerism, the sexual objectification and exploitation of others, the lust for power, and other false paths to happiness are failing to address the illusory nature of the “happiness” generated by drugs and alcohol. It is downright embarrassing when one compares the Church to the world’s other religions. Buddhism, Taoism, Mormonism, Sikhism, Islam, the Baha’i faith, and various Hindu sects and protestant denominations either teach that alcohol should be avoided entirely or used in moderation (defined in such a way that many Catholics would find fairly extreme). While engaging in interfaith dialogue, the vast majority of thoughtful, virtuous young people I have met from other faiths have been teetotalers (those who abstain from alcohol entirely), while I have witnessed many of my fellow devout Catholics, who are otherwise morally serious, acting foolishly due to their consumption of alcohol. The contrast is cringe-worthy.

Not to be overly low church, but the habit of giving up something (it used to be sin) for forty days a year may not be the best way to live a life of moderation and restraint. At the same time, comments like Christian’s reveal the dark side of the old charge that Protestantism was just a cover for antinomianism. No one can outmoralize a Protestant. Even so, Rome’s version of the gospel is no barrier against taking the law lightly.

The human predicament may be that we love the law when it makes us superior, and we love grace when we are feeling low. Protestants of the good sort know that we are only superior in Christ.

Religious Tests for Having an Opinion

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

This piece reminded me of a thought I have had for a long time. It first came to me when studying neo-Calvinism and the demands of w-w thinking. But it continued to haunt me when dealing with the logician-paradigmatists over at Deduced Into Church. The thought is that Christian “conservatives” insist that philosophy precedes religion, which of course is remarkably ironic since these believers (both Reformed and Roman Catholic) are arguing for the ultimacy of faith. But to do so they use philosophical arguments about incoherence, epistemological foundations, and moral consistency that wind up making human reason, not faith or Scripture or tradition or Christ, the answer to life’s most difficult questions. Mind you, the question, “how am I right with God?” is hardly the same level of difficulty as “how do I know?” or “how do I become virtuous?”

In the post over at Imaginative Conservative, we see once again the effects of philosophical supremacy applied to fellow citizens, in this case libertarians:

Many secular libertarians hold that if there is a divine arbiter who will judge our actions, then one can’t fully enjoy the freedom, say, to consume pornography and illegal drugs, and engage in promiscuous sex. Philosopher Thomas Nagel made the point well when he admitted, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

But the impression that atheism or materialism is an accomplished host for libertarian values is mistaken. Individual rights, freedom and individual responsibility, reason, and moral realism: none of these make much sense if reality is ultimately blind matter in motion, if, as Carl Sagan said, “the cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” Libertarians may be surprised to learn that these core values—if not the entire repertoire of libertarian ideas—makes far more sense in a theistic milieu. But they need not take my word for it. The history of the West supports this view, as do the arguments of leading materialist intellectuals.

Historically, the very idea of human rights and the related idea of equality emerged over many centuries in a theistic and specifically Christian culture. In the West, major milestones include the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights (1791). A specific anthropology emerges from these documents with greater and greater clarity. Human beings are made in the image of God, and as such, should be accorded special rights and dignity manifested in law.

I don’t reject this argument, though I do wonder how conducive it is to Christian orthodoxy (Protestant or Roman Catholic) if the heterodox Christians who primarily conceived of the United States become evidence in support of belief in God. Doesn’t this wind up with a standard of minimal Christian belief rather than one of full-blown orthodoxy? And doesn’t such minimal Christianity wind up turning on fuller expressions of Christianity when they move past belief in God to the Eucharist or limited atonement as sectarian or parochial? In which case, theistic thinking can be just as hostile to serious Christianity as libertarian secularists may be?

But my objection concerns the way this argument may sound to unbelievers, the people with whom we share planet earth this side of the eschaton. If Christians insist that you cannot have ideas about political rights, or civil freedoms, or limited government without prior claims to belief in God, are they not questioning the status of non-believers in the public square? The U.S. Constitution makes no religious test for holding pubic office. State constitutions also now refuse to use religious tests for office holders. So why would Christians want to privilege theistic citizens in public debates while discrediting agnostic or atheistic citizens? Perhaps the better way of expressing that question, since I can see also sorts of ulterior motives for excluding non-Christian citizens from public debate, is why don’t the philosophically inclined Christians sense that their philosophical rigor comes across as another effort to exclude unbelief from the public life?

That’s one side of this recurring thought. The other is the great affinity that neo-Calvinism and pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism have in privileging philosophy. Both of those traditions grew up spooked by the French Revolution and carved up the universe between theism and atheism, both fought the Enlightenment with Christian philosophy or w-w, and both left a legacy of antithesis — intellectual, cultural, political. If a gateway drug for Protestant converts to Rome (the anti-revolutionary anti-modern one) exists, it could be neo-Calvinism with its bending the knee to philosophy.

Sola Scriptura Has Its Moments

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

Carson Holloway explains why the Roman Catholic Church teaches what it does about marriage and divorce (and in doing so sounds like a Protestant):

It turns out, then, that the Church’s rather rigorous teaching on marriage is based not on the words of some little known celibate old man, but on the words of one very well known and important celibate young man. The teaching is based on the words of Jesus Christ, whom faithful Catholics believe to be God. Perhaps, then, Christians at least, and even all those people who claim to respect Jesus as a moral teacher, could cut the Church some slack and acknowledge that it has good reason to think that it is not just imposing some man-made morality on human beings but in fact preserving what was delivered to her by her divine founder.

And there you have the logic of Protestantism, a form of reasoning that makes sense to most Christians unless they are trying to protect the prerogatives of specific offices. Sometimes the word of God really is a lot more compelling than the word of men (even episcopal ones).

The Change Callers Are Waiting For?

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

The Times reported last week on the “Francis effect“:

One year into his pontificate, Pope Francis remains immensely popular among American Catholics and is widely seen as a force for positive change within the Roman Catholic Church. More than eight-in-ten U.S. Catholics say they have a favorable view of the pontiff, including half who view him very favorably. The percentage of Catholics who view Francis “very favorably” now rivals the number who felt equally positive about Pope John Paul II in the 1980s and 1990s, though Francis’ overall favorability rating remains a few points shy of that of the long-serving Polish pope.

Seven-in-ten U.S. Catholics also now say Francis represents a major change in direction for the church, a sentiment shared by 56% of non-Catholics. And nearly everyone who says Francis represents a major change sees this as a change for the better. . . .

But there are other indications of somewhat more intense religiosity among Catholics. About a quarter of Catholics (26%) say they have become “more excited” about their Catholic faith over the past year (outnumbering the one-in-ten who have become less excited). Four-in-ten Catholics say they have been praying more often in the past 12 months (compared with 8% who say they have been praying less often). And somewhat more Catholics say they have been reading the Bible and other religious texts more frequently (21%) than say they have been doing so less frequently (14%). None of these questions about religious practices were explicitly tied in the survey to Francis’ papacy; the questions dealing with attitudes toward Francis came elsewhere in the questionnaire.

The survey also finds growing numbers who expect that in the near future the Catholic Church will allow priests to get married; 51% think the church will make this change by the year 2050, up 12 percentage points from the days immediately following Francis’ election a year ago. But there has been less change in Catholics’ expectations about other church teachings. Roughly four-in-ten Catholics think that in the coming decades the church either definitely or probably will allow women to become priests, about the same number who held this expectation a year ago. And 56% of Catholics think the church will soon allow Catholics to use birth control, very similar to the 53% who said this last year.

All the more reason not to put hope in princes.

Does the L in TULIP Stand for Living in Denial?

Published on by D. G. Hart52 Comments

A while back Bill Smith, Presbyterian in exile, made this observation about the ongoing debates in Reformed circles over antinomianism and sanctification:

I think I understand the problem the “obedience boys” have with the “grace boys.” It is that the “grace boys” can seem to teach grace in such a way as to make people indifferent to sin: “Sin is not such a big deal. It happens. No need to get all worked up about it. Just accept that you are a sinner and that God loves you no matter what. Bask in the knowledge you are a child of God.” I get the problem the “obedience boys” have with the “grace boys.” As far as taking exception with that portrayal of the life of grace goes, I agree.

What I don’t think the “obedience boys” get is how normal sin is. Perhaps they really do not know this reality in terms of their own experience. It could be that for them there is a regeneration-created night and day before and after story. Or, it may mean that there has been a steady upward trajectory to their sanctification without harrowing nosedives into sin or wearying discouragements of slow or no progress. Or, it may be that they do not know themselves very well. Or, it may be that their theological understanding of regeneration and conversion does not allow them to acknowledge that believers can have messy lives – chronic struggles and frequent defeats. That believers can by their messy lives inflict great damage and hurt on other believers and can be badly damaged and hurt by the messy lives of other believers. That the church is a messy place where messy lives are intertwined with and sometimes disillusioned by other messy lives.

Smith recommends that SNAFU makes more sense of how Christians should understand the presence of sin in this world (which would also apply to the neo-Calvinists and Roman Catholics prone to talk about “human flourishing“):

SNAFU – situation normal, all messed up. A National Guard radioman may have invented the term just before World War II, but it became standard, if unofficial, military jargon during the War. It was an apt description of reality as soldiers and marines experienced it. Supplies and equipment did not get where they were needed when they were needed. Battle plans went awry. Stupid orders were issued. Men found themselves in desperate situations. Usually the “human element” was in part or whole responsible. Military men came to expect mess-ups as normal.

A further indication of how few “conservative” Christians (Roman Catholic and Protestant) are willing to apply the category of SNAFU not only to persons but also to the United States, is to consider the degree to American exceptionalism resonates with self-professing believers. Defining American exceptionalism is tricky, but it generally involves a belief that the United States is singularly blessed by God, has accomplished untold good in the history of the world, and even if it has declined the nation was truly great because of its divine sanctions and virtuous performance.

It would be one thing, say through the extra-confessional idea of definitive sanctification, to argue that the individual Christian has broken definitively with sin and so now lives a life that should not be characterized by SNAFU. But to view a nation as on balance wholesome or even as an exceptional force for goodness, truth, and beauty is downright inconceivable given what we know about human depravity (think Woodrow Wilson) or about human politics (think The Wire or Homeland).

To avoid the dark thoughts that follow from Total Depravity is truly gullible. Non-believers tend to think that Christians are remarkably prone to believe all sorts of nonsense. A pronounced understanding of human wickedness should function as a hedge on such gullibility. If it does not, it explains the appeal of the “obedience boys” and the Salem Radio Network.