Category: Roman Catholicism

What Must I Do to be Saved?

Published on by D. G. Hart144 Comments

Questions of epistemic certainty and episcopal authority aside, the question of how we are right with God is still the issue that divides Protestants and Roman Catholics. And, surprise, it is not exactly one of the sharpest knives in Jason and the Callers arsenal. As a reminder of those differences, here is a sampling of Roman Catholic answers to this question:

So, have you been saved?

“Yes, I believe in Jesus and received his justifying (sanctifying) grace when I was baptized into his Church. Jesus saved me. And at those times when I have sinned gravely and lost this grace, I returned to the Lord to be cleansed again by him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) where I again received his justifying grace. I am strengthened in my personal relationship with him by my worship of him and receiving him in Holy Communion at Mass; through my prayer, devotion and reading of the Scriptures; by my study of the teachings of the faith; through my good works prepared beforehand by him for me to perform while in his grace. I have been saved, am being saved, and have supernatural hope that I will be saved. I believe this because the Church, established by Jesus, through which this grace flows to me, teaches me that this is so.”

What I must do to be saved:

*I must be baptized with water and the Spirit. Mark 16:16, John 3:3-5, Titus 3:5, I Peter 3:20-21. (Exceptions: [1] If I desire Baptism but die before I can be baptized with water and the Spirit, God accepts my desire to be baptized, and [2] If I am killed (martyred) because of my faith, but I have not had the opportunity to be baptized, God accepts my death as my baptism, called the Baptism of Blood).

* I must do the will of God the Father. Matthew 7:21

* I must keep the Commandments of God. Matthew 5:19-20, Matthew 7:21, Matthew 19:17, 1 Timothy 6:14, and others.

* I must accept the Cross (suffering). Matthew 10:38, Matthew 16:24-25, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23, Luke 14:27. Phil 1:29, and others.

* I must be a member of God’s true church. Acts 2:46-47.

* I must confess my sins. James 5:16, I John 1:9, John 20:19-23

* I must heed the words of St. Peter, the first Pope. Acts 11:13-14, Acts 15:7.

* I must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ. John 6:51-58, I Corinthians 10:16-17, 11:23-30.

* I must do unto others as I would have them do unto me and love my neighbor as myself. I must feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison or give other aid to those in need. Luke 10:33 ff, Mt 25:31-46. “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are very pleasing to God” Hebrews 13:16. Good works don’t save us, but we will be judged by them.

*I must strive to be holy. “Strive for peace with everyone and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Hebrews 12:14

*I must endure (persevere) to the end. Matthew 10:22, Matthew 24:13, Mark 13:13.

A People for Everyone

112. The salvation which God offers us is the work of his mercy. No human efforts, howev- er good they may be, can enable us to merit so great a gift. God, by his sheer grace, draws us to himself and makes us one with him.79 He sends his Spirit into our hearts to make us his children, transforming us and enabling us to respond to his love by our lives. The Church is sent by Jesus Christ as the sacrament of the salvation offered by God.80 Through her evangelizing activity, she cooperates as an instrument of that divine grace which works unceasingly and inscrutably. . . .

113. The salvation which God has wrought, and the Church joyfully proclaims, is for every- one.82 God has found a way to unite himself to every human being in every age. He has chosen to call them together as a people and not as iso- lated individuals.83 No one is saved by himself or herself, individually, or by his or her own ef- forts. God attracts us by taking into account the complex interweaving of personal relationships entailed in the life of a human community. This people which God has chosen and called is the Church. Jesus did not tell the apostles to form an exclusive and elite group. He said: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19).

More or Less Powerful

Published on by D. G. Hart453 Comments

The Vatican II sensibility of Pope Francis would seem to be making life awkward for apologists who insist on papal supremacy as the solution to the diversity of interpretations outside the Roman Catholic Church. Charles J. Reid, Jr., a professor of law at a Roman Catholic university, describes how the papacy functioned as Vicar of Christ:

Historically, you can plausibly contend that the popes were exercising civil authority by the later sixth century, when Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) was forced, thanks to the vacuum of power in Rome, to rally the City’s civil forces. The papal monarchy was placed on a more permanent footing in the year 756, when the Frankish King Pepin the Short, in gratitude for Pope Zachary’s complicity in overthrowing the Merovingian dynasty, made a formal gift to the Pope of lands he had conquered in central Italy.

Henceforth, until the late nineteenth century, the popes exercised full civil jurisdiction over a substantial swath of territory, extending north and east from Rome, across the heart of the Italian peninsula, all the way to the Adriatic. This expanse of land was known as the Papal State. Popes were fully responsible for the administration of secular laws. They enforced the criminal law, they commanded armies, they resolved disputes among local landowners. They ruled, in other words, in the same way, and by the code, as any European monarch.

And this pattern persisted all the way into the latter nineteenth century. Pope Pius IX, the famous Pio Nono (1846-1878) commanded an army of 15,000 men. He commissioned a navy (the marina pontificia), complete with steamships, schooners and a well-armed corvette, the Immacolata Concezione. Pius supervised prisons and even permitted executions to go forward. He was, after all, a secular monarch in addition to being the spiritual head of a world-wide Church.

And there evolved, at the at the court of this central Italian monarch, an elaborate court ritual. The popes were carried in the sedia gestatoria — essentially an elevated chair — as they processed to St. Peter’s Basilica or to St. John Lateran. They wore as their crown the triple tiara — a crown of jewels and gold layered together in intricate, overlapping patterns symbolizing their temporal and spiritual powers. And there was also a highly elaborate form of speech and address. The Pope, of course, was “His Holiness.” A cardinal is “His Eminence,” and so forth. Ceremonies featured elaborate modes of dress that bore all of the ornaments and adornments of the renaissance courts to whose world the papal monarchy still very much belonged.

The logic of these elaborate pretensions was dealt a heavy blow in 1870, when the papal army was routed in the Siege of Rome and Garibaldi’s troops entered the Eternal City in triumph. Italy was now united politically for the first time since the Roman Emperors, and the popes retreated to the Vatican, where they still exercise secular as well as spiritual power over the precincts of that tiny (110 acre) city-state.

But once the papacy lost is monarchical mojo, post Vatican II popes settled for a role as “recognized voice of conscience”:

It was Pope Benedict XVI, not Pope Francis, who put the earth-shattering changes in motion. In what must be counted as the greatest, noblest gesture of his pontificate, he announced in February, 2013, that he would abdicate. This was unheard of. One does not renounce the weight of divine office. He was Pope by the judgment of God. And now he would surrender that title. Dante had poetically consigned Pope Celestine V (1294) to Hell for resigning the papacy. Benedict did not fear to take the same step. To his great, great credit.

And then came the circumstances of Pope Francis’ election. He appeared before the crowds of St. Peter’s Square dressed in a simple white cassock. As he robed for his appearance on the balcony, the master of ceremonies offered him the elaborate mozzetta that Benedict was so very fond of wearing. Francis politely declined, although the urban legend that sprang from the incident — which has the newly-elected Pope informing the startled master of ceremonies that “the carnival is over” — can at least be seen as a foreshadowing of future events.

Indeed, Reid thinks that Francis has adopted the right tone for the papacy:

The logic of the papal monarchy died in Garibaldi’s cannonades back in 1870. Ever since, the papacy has been transitioning to something quite different. And Pope Francis is accelerating that transition, making it complete. On his watch the papacy is rapidly becoming what it should be — a great voice and witness for world Christianity in the spirit of the Gospels. We can only wish him well in this difficult undertaking.

Reid does not explain why the Bishop of Rome’s voice should receive more attention than the Bishop of Birmingham, Alabama or see that all the years of the papacy’s monarchical bearing will not free the Roman Catholic Church from a papacy light. But his account does pose a problem for the apologists who rest so much of their case on an institution that is (and always has been) under flux.

Meanwhile, Mark Silk observes how Pope Francis is devolving church power from bishops and back to the directors of religious orders in ways that contravene John Paul II’s efforts to bring the religious under the supervision of the episcopacy. Here is what Francis said:

We bishops need to understand that consecrated persons are not functionaries but gifts that enrich dioceses. The involvement of religious communities in dioceses is important. Dialog between the bishop and religious must be rescued so that, due to a lack of understanding of their charisms, bishops do not view religious simply as useful instruments.

Here is what Silk thinks is going on:

These words recall the famous conflict between the nuns of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who staffed Los Angeles’ parochial schools, and the city’s archbishop, Cardinal James Francis McIntyre. As pointed out by Boston College’s Mark Massa in The American Catholic Revolution, the IMHs were inspired by the Second Vatican Council to recover the inspiration of their 19th-century Spanish founder, who established the order for women to live a life of service to the poor. McIntyre wanted fully habited diocesan functionaries. He appointed a commission to scrutinize the IMHs and in 1968 kicked them out of his schools.

Promulgated a decade later, Mutuae Relationes represents one of the John Paul II era’s efforts to restore hierarchical control in the wake of Vatican II. It made clear that religious orders were part of the local church — “the diocesan family” — and that their “right to autonomy” was subordinate to it. “Great harm is done to the faithful by the fact that too much tolerance is granted to certain unsound initiatives or to certain accomplished facts which are ambiguous,” the document warned.

It’s no stretch to relate Pope Francis’ comments to the investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) ginned up by the Catholic right four years ago and currently in the hands of the Vatican’s doctrinal office. Now again there are hierarchs who want nuns simply to be obedient to diocesan authority and who are hot and bothered by “unsound initiatives” and “ambiguous” facts.

In the spirit of Vatican II, which is very much his own, Francis is telling the bishops to give greater deference to the religious orders and what inspires them. The LCWR ought to be breathing a little easier.

So while Jason and the Callers and their fans think the rock of Peter is solid, it is shifting at the very same time that they insist the papacy vindicates their Christian preference. Of course, they may want to claim that Reid and Silk don’t possess the right paradigm. Or it could be that the JATC paradigm makes perfect sense when employed with head in sand.

Bishops Talking, and Talking, and Talking

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Patrick Deneen recently complained about the right-wing, GOP-supporting, critics of Pope Francis under the provocative title, “Would Someone Just Shut that Pope Up?” Deneen’s point was more to the effect that critics like Rush Limbaugh should shut up than the other way around. Either way, the piece brings attention to how much the papacy speaks and how much pundits or talk-show hosts speak more. We are surrounded by papal speech and responses to and interpretations of papal speech.

After looking at the Archbishop of Albany’s pastoral statements yesterday, I was unaware of all the speech that all bishops communicate. In fact, a quick surf around the interweb revealed that Archbishop Howard Hubbard (Albany) is restrained compared to other archbishops. Here, for instance, is a catalog of Charles Chaput’s statements, the archbishop of Philadelphia. Here are the statements of Archbishop Francis Xavier DiLorenzo of Richmond, Virginia. And here are the statements from William E. Lori, Archbishop of Baltimore. Compared to papal statements, these U.S. bishops rival in number the communications from popes like Paul VI or Gregory XVI.

Some of the bishops’ statements are trivial, such as this from Archbishop Di Lorenza on the relocation of a prep school:

An outstanding Catholic education has been provided to high school students in the Benedictine tradition at its three-story facility on Sheppard Street in Richmond’s Museum District since 1911. In 2011 the Diocese of Richmond purchased the Sheppard Street complex including the school building, the priory building, the gymnasium and the parking lot parking adjacent to St. Benedict Church to insure the viability of St. Benedict Parish.

Others like this one by Archbishop Chaput, explore tensions that Jason and the Callers sublimate:

Tocqueville saw public opinion as a great vulnerability for democracy. In a democracy – at least in theory — every man is his own final moral authority. But the reality is different. Men and women very soon discover how isolated and uninformed they are as individuals. In the absence of a strong religious or similar community, they tend to abdicate their thinking to public opinion, which is the closest that purely secular democracies ever come to a consensus. To the degree that public opinion can be manipulated, democratic life is subverted.

This is why the Founders saw religion as so important to the health of the public square:. At its best, faith creates a stable moral framework for political discourse and morally educated citizens to conduct the nation’s work. The trouble is, no religion can survive on its utility. People don’t conform their lives to a message because it’s useful. They do it because they believe the message is true and therefore life-giving. Or they don’t do it.

My point is this: The “next America” we now see emerging – an America ignorant or cynical toward religion in general and Christianity in particular — shouldn’t really surprise anyone. It’s a new America, but it’s made in America. We can blame the mass media, or the academy, or science, or special interest groups for the environment we now face. But we Christians – including we Catholics — helped create it with our eagerness to fit in, our distractions and overconfidence, and our own lukewarm faith.

Too many people who claim to be Christian simply don’t know Jesus Christ. They don’t really believe in the Gospels. They feel embarrassed by their religion and vaguely out of step with the times. They may keep their religion for comfort value. Or they may adjust it to fit their doubts. But it doesn’t reshape their lives because it isn’t real. And because it isn’t real, it has no transforming effect on their personal behavior, no social force and few public consequences. That sort of faith is exactly the same kind of religion that Symmachus once mourned. Whatever it once was – now, it’s dead.

Still others indicate the changes that were in the air after Vatican II, like this from Archbishop Hubbard in Albany:

When we speak of the Church, we are dealing with a living mystery. As the Second Vatican Council expressed it, the Church is a mystery prefigured in creation, prepared in the history of Israel, initiated by the Holy Spirit and reaching its fulfillment only at the end of time (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, par. 2). The Church is that mystery in which is made visible God’s saving presence in Christ Jesus. It is Christ’s mission that the Church is about; it is Christ’s message it strives to communicate to others and it is His ministry that it extends into the world.

Because the Church is a mystery, therefore, it cannot be totally understood or fully defined. But from its very beginning the Church has been revealed to be a community of people formed by the word of God, animated by the creative power of the Holy Spirit and sustained by the worship and service of its members. Its mission is both to proclaim the message of Christ for the enlightenment of the hearts and minds of people and to provide a place where His healing presence can be experienced. As such, the Church must always understand itself as not existing for itself but for the world. The Church can never be a mission or ministry to itself; rather it is to be a community of ministers charged with the task of bringing the healing presence of Christ to a wounded humanity.

We who belong to the Church today, then, are called to be the community described in the New Testament where all things were held in common; where Paul urged that competition should be in giving service; where Jesus said that those who would be great should be the servants of all people.

SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

In 1978, I suggested that the Second Vatican Council had given us a concept that enables us to be the Church, the community of God’s people in our day: the concept of shared responsibility. Put succinctly, shared responsibility means that each of us, by virtue of baptism, has the right and the duty to participate in Christ’s mission of praising and worshiping the Lord, of teaching His word, of serving His people and of building a community here on earth in preparation for the fullness of life together in the kingdom of heaven.

Through baptism, in other words, every Christian is brought into an intimate, personal and abiding union with Jesus and with all other Christians. This sacramental dignity unites popes, bishops, priests, deacons, religious and laity in the one body of Christ which is the Church. It also serves as a mandate to each of us to use his or her talents so that the mission of Christ and His Church may be fulfilled.

. . . the Church is a community of collaborative ministry. That is a community in which each member is challenged to see his or her baptism as a call to holiness and ministry; a community which seeks to help its members to discern the personal charisms given them by the Spirit and to enable them to employ their gifts in the mission the Church; a community whose ordained and vowed ministers see the fostering of greater participation in the work of the Church as essential to their responsibility as leaders.

This understanding of the priestly ministry which belongs to the entire Church and this emphasis on collaborative ministry have profound implications for ordained ministers, religious and the laity.

Bishops, priests and deacons, for example, must recognize and appreciate that their ordained ministry arises from the priestly call that is given to the entire Church and exists for the purpose of enabling the whole Christian Community to be a priestly people.

Still, no matter how much the bishops talk, no one except for perhaps a very few in the church pay attention to their bishop’s statements. For instance, the pastoral letter from Jose H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, a reflection on the new evangelization called for by Benedict XVI, failed to gain any press coverage outside Roman Catholic news agencies. (A search at the Los Angeles Times produced the proverbial crickets).

So why do church members and journalists and pundits pay so little attention to any bishop who is not presiding at Rome? Don’t these non-Roman bishops have charism? Are not they successors to the apostles? And what happened to the collegiality for which Vatican II called? Did St. Peter only have one set of keys made? Are non-Roman bishops chopped liver? (Ask Alexander VI.)

My explanation is that the doctrine of subsidiarity notwithstanding, the qualities of celebrity, publicity, historical associations, and nostalgia for the imperial capital all point to the papacy as an institution that detracts from the pastoral work of local bishops and priests. The government of the United States is a perfect analogy. How much do I know about the mayor of Hillsdale or the governor of Michigan compared to the news I easily follow about the president and congress of our national government? (How much, for that matter, do I know about Chinese or French politics and economics compared to what I think I know about the Affordable Care Act or the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan?)

I understand from some interlocutors that I don’t know what I’m talking about (on many things) when it comes to subsidiarity. Some have tried to instruct me that subsidiarity only applies to society, which is even what the church’s catechism teaches. But that same catechism defines as society as “a group of persons bound together organically by a principle of unity that goes beyond each one of them. As an assembly that is at once visible and spiritual, a society endures through time: it gathers up the past and prepares for the future” [1880]. Since the church is a society — “The church, as has been seen, is a society formed of living men, not a mere mystical union of souls. As such it resembles other societies. Like them, it has its code of rules, its executive officers, its ceremonial observances” — I don’t see why what’s good for one society is not good for another, natural law, grace completes nature, and all that (especially since for more of its history than not the papacy ruled over a temporal society).

If that is the case, then I (all about Protestant me) do not see why this interpretation of subsidiarity does not apply to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

Why subsidiarity does not apply to the relations among the local bishops and the pope is hard to figure. Could it be that the Vatican does not trust local authorities? If so, this suspicion has not kept the bishops quiet. They have been more talkative that most church officials. Maybe with the help of subsidiarity, the spotlight can shine less on Rome and more on places like Lansing, Michigan and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Show Me Ze Money, Lebowski

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

If you ever wanted proof of how wealthy American Christians are and how little the ordinary means of grace receive from believers’ charitable contributions, just take a look stories like this:

In its fourth annual State of Giving report, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) reveals that charitable giving to more than 1,600 of its accredited organizations increased 6.4 percent last year. Donations reached $11 billion in 2012, compared to $10.3 billion in 2011. . . .

The biggest winners among 28 categories: foundations (up 25%), adoption (up 12.2%), K-12 education (up 12%), short-term missions (up 12.1%), and higher education (10%). The presence of education among the top five is notable, given the segment has seen one of the biggest declines since 2007.

Better yet, go to ECFA’s own website where you find numbers (for 2012) like this:

Bethany Christian Services — Expenses $82,735,557 Revenue $84,569,821

InverVarsity Christian Fellowship — Expenses $84,192,000 Revenue $83,494,000

Home School Foundation — Expenses $1,790,302 Revenue $1,770,418

Evangelical Presbyterian Church — Expenses $12,097,370 Revenue $16,059,164

Desiring God Ministries — Expenses $5,784,699 Revenue $6,023,726

Gospel Coalition — Expenses $1,106,824 Revenue $1,456,923

So that Roman Catholic readers don’t feel left out (or superior), I should mention that I tried to find figures on various diocesan budgets. Guidestar will provide them for a fee. But I did run across this dated tidbit in a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Albany (why the press did not cover a church officer sporting apostolic succession and episcopal charism is beyond me):

A recent study by Bishop William McManus and Father Andrew Greeley entitled Catholic Contributions: Sociology and Policy reveals that although American Catholics earn on the average over a $1,000.00 a year more than their Protestant counterparts, Catholic financial contributions to their Church are much less than those of Protestants. For example, on the average, Protestants contribute $580.00 to their Church annually as opposed to $320.00 for Catholics. Furthermore, Catholics contribute only 1.1 percent of their income to the Church while Protestants donate at the level of 2.2 percent of their income.

More strikingly, the study finds that the disparity between Catholic and Protestant giving is the result of the dramatic change in giving patterns of contributions to one’s Church over the past 25 years. In the early 1960’s, Catholics gave the same proportion of their income to the Church as Protestants contributed. In the last quarter century, however, the Protestant giving rate remains stable at approximately 2 percent of annual income while the Catholic rate has fallen from more than 2 percent to about 1 percent.

Why has this occurred? Is it that Catholics have become stingier or more miserly? I hardly think so. Is it due to the changing levels in Church attendance? No, because Protestant church attendance has declined significantly more than Catholic in this time frame but their level of giving has not. Is it because Catholics give to our schools rather than the Church? Statistics reveal that this is not the case because parents who send their children to Catholic schools contribute more rather than less to the Church than do other Catholics.

I believe that the decline in the pattern of Catholic giving to the Church is due primarily to the lack of communication and the lack of leadership.

The Limits of Logic and the Benefits of Geography

Published on by D. G. Hart60 Comments

Jason Stellman continues his brief for Roman Catholic superiority with the twist of posting at his own blog and, making his membership in Jason and the Callers complete, at at Called to Communion. Apparently, Bryan Cross and Sean Patrick will now edit comments on Jason’s posts so that Jason can do more televised interviews. The funny thing about this arrangement is that posting at CTC has not united Bryan’s logic with Jason’s style. In fact, if Jason’s first post is any indication, Bryan’s scholasticism has taken a back seat to Stellman’s intuition. But the oxymoronic ecumenical (call to communion) polemics (we’re better than Protestants) abide.

It turns out — surprise — that Roman Catholicism makes better sense of the incarnation than Protestantism. The simple logic is that since Christ assumed and maintains a physical body that could and can be seen, an ecclesiology that features visibility beats one that invokes invisibility. But the logic of Jason’s argument is almost as confusing as his understanding of geography.

If there is a connection between Christology and Ecclesiology (Umm, hellooo ? The Church is the Body of which Christ is the Head, so I’d label this connection as “uncontroversial”), then the idea that the eternal Son assumed human nature and took on a real, flesh-and-blood body just like ours, is more consistent in a visible-church paradigm than in an invisible-church paradigm. The physical body of Christ was visible; you could point him out in a crowd or identify him with a kiss as Judas did for the Roman soldiers.

The key word here is was. Jesus’ body is no longer on earth and cannot be seen. And by sending his Spirit to be with the church after he left planet earth, Jesus could very well have been teaching that the nature of the church, its bonds of fellowship and its worship, is going to be spiritual, not visible (like Old Testament devotion was with the altar, sacrifice and priests — sound familiar?). In fact, Jesus tells the woman at the well that the new pattern of worship emerging is one where place matters less than spirit and truth. And then Jason has the problem of being so insensitive to believers whose relatives have died and no longer have bodies. Are they visible? Are they excluded from the church because they don’t have bodies? Or is it the case that an ecclesiology that so features physicality is shallow compared to one that recognizes a fellowship among those saints who are both seen and unseen. (Hint: if God the Father is spirit and cannot be seen, fellowship with the unseen is important. Duh!)

Not to be tripped up by such theological or logical subtleties, Jason stumbles on to give two big thumbs up to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist.

Is Christ present at the Table or not? Like with the question “Is the church visible or not,” the answer here is, “It depends.” If the worshiper is a worthy receiver, then yes, he indeed feeds spiritually and truly upon the body and blood of Christ. But if the worshiper is unworthy and faithless, then what he is eating and drinking is not Christ’s body and blood, but simply ordinary bread and wine. This also smacks of Docetism, as if Jesus of Nazareth could have been truly present with Zaccheus, partially present with Nicodemus, and completely absent with Judas, even though they were all standing right in front of him in the flesh.

First, Jason gets the Protestant position wrong. The unworthy receiver eats and drinks judgment. The last time I had ordinary bread and wine, I was not sinning overtly or deserving judgment. But that inaccuracy notwithstanding, second, the idea that Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper to everyone equally, just like he was to the people with whom Christ lived, walked and talked, commits some sort of Christological error — can’t remember which one — because the nature of a body is being limited in time and space, and if Jesus is not here then he can’t be here in the same way that he was here to Zaccheus. And since Jason doesn’t mention the Spirit, the person of the Trinity that helps Protestants understand Christ’s real presence in an omnipresent way, his bad logic suffers again from poor theology.

Jason’s last point exhibits a Romophilia that makes chopped liver out of the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople.

Moreover, the Catholic paradigm makes much better sense of the Incarnation by its gospel demonstrating the need for the ongoing and continual humanity of Christ. If salvation consists largely (almost exclusively to hear some Protestants tell it) in the forensic imputation of the active and passive obedience of Christ by which the sinner is legally justified in the divine court, then the need for Jesus’ humanity can be said to have expired after the ascension. But if, as the Catholic Church maintains (echoing the fathers), salvation consists primarily in the deifying participation of humanity in the divine nature, which happens by means of Christ’s glorified humanity and risen flesh, then what happened at the Incarnation was a much bigger deal than some Protestants realize.

The deifying participation of humanity in the divine nature is what the Eastern Churches call theosis. In fact, Jason’s entire post may vindicate his personal decision to leave Presbyterianism but his boosterism apparently blinded him to the substantial difficulties he raised for his own ecclesiology from Eastern Orthodox challenges. After all, Jesus never made it to Rome to found a church — if we take the physicality of the incarnation seriously. He did though found a church in Jerusalem. If Jason wanted to talk about the Jerusalem Catholic Church he might have a point. But since he wants to root, root, root for his new home church, he needs help from Bryan to make his argument coherent.

Meanwhile, Jason may want to pay more attention to what’s going on in his visible church than tilting at Protestant windmills:

I think it is obvious that Wuerl belongs to the more traditional, pilgrim model and always has. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the prophet model was invoked mostly by liberal theologians to justify their positions. In the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, it was conservatives who claimed the prophetic mantle for themselves. Both groups forgot that in the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets were reluctant to accept the mantle. Both groups forgot that the dominant Catholic mode of leadership has almost always been the pilgrim model, and when the prophet model dominated, ruin came: Savonarola, Saint- Cloud, Pio Nono. The Church is not at Her best when Her leaders are busy hurling epithets or indulging what Pope Francis has called a “self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism.” Wuerl strikes me as one of those bishops who does not over-inflate his own significance. Yes, he takes his job seriously and expects his collaborators to do so as well. But, like Pope Francis, he leaves room for the Spirit to do its work. Let us have more bishops like this in the coming year. The first test will, of course, be Chicago. No need for extensive previstas from the nuncio on this nomination as all of the candidates will be well known. The rumors of any particular names have dried up, which usually means those who are being consulted are shifting from speculation to decision. I have no idea who it will be but I will venture one prediction: Some jaws will drop. . . .

The divisions within the Church are not going away, but they are likely to change in the coming year. I predicted early on that you would begin to see cleavage within the Catholic Left between those who are thrilled by the Holy Father’s focus on the poor, and for whom that focus is enough, and those who argue for changes where no change is likely to be forthcoming, the ordination of women, same-sex marriage, etc. And, on the Catholic Right, you will see a similar cleavage between those who will allow themselves to be challenged by Pope Francis and those who will shift towards a rejectionist position, either completely gutting the pope’s words of their obvious meaning and import as Morlino did in the article mentioned above or, for the more extreme members, moving towards schismatic groups. The Left, when it gets disaffected, just walks away. The Right causes trouble. In 2014, many bishops will face the prospect of clear, unambiguous dissent on the Right and it will be curious to see how they respond.

Synod of Bishops?

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Roman Catholic websites keep talking about the upcoming Synod of Bishops, a body about which I had not heard much (after all, Jason and the Callers never point to this Synod as a slam dunk of Roman Catholicism’s superiority). So I wonder what kind of standing it has in the church and how much lay Roman Catholics actually know about it. It appears to be a kind of board of trustees that has an advisory role with the pope — one of the institutional manifestations of a collegial ecclesiology if Wikipedia is to be believed. But it is clearly a body in subjection to the Bishop of Rome:

It is for the Pope to

convoke the Synod of the Bishops

ratify the election of participants in the assembly

determine the topic of discussion, if possible at least six months before the assembly

distribute the material for discussion to those who should participate

to set the agenda

to preside either personally or through delegates over the assembly.

In addition, the Pope may appoint further participants in any assembly of the Synod of Bishops, in number up to 15% of those who participate either ex officio (the heads of Eastern Catholic Churches and the cardinals at the helm of departments of the Roman Curia) or because elected by episcopal conferences or the Union of Superiors General.

The Synod appears to have met formally 13 times since its institution in 1967, with a period during the 1990s when it convened in a “special” capacity. (The upcoming Synod will be the 14th meeting.)

After the 13th Synod in 2012, Pope Benedict issued an apostolic exhortation devoted to the theology of the Word of God (Verbum Domini). One paragraph caught my eye:

The Synod Fathers greatly stressed the importance of promoting a suitable knowledge of the Bible among those engaged in the area of culture, also in secularized contexts and among non-believers. Sacred Scripture contains anthropological and philosophical values that have had a positive influence on humanity as a whole. A sense of the Bible as a great code for cultures needs to be fully recovered.

Since the Telegraph recently ran a story about upcoming Hollywood productions on biblical narratives, I wonder if the Synod of Bishops deserves much more attention and credit than it has received:

Phil Cooke, a film-maker and media consultant to Christian organisations, said Hollywood’s epiphany had financial, not spiritual, origins. “What’s happened is they’ve understood it’s very good business to take Christians seriously, and this is a real serious market,” he said.

“For years Hollywood bent over backwards to reach special interest groups, be it feminists or environmentalists. It has finally realised that there are 91  million evangelical Christians in America.”
For their part, studio executives have taken something of a leap of faith that films in which religious figures save the world will bring big box office receipts.

That faith is based in no small part on the success of The Bible, a television mini-series shown on the History channel earlier this year, which averaged 11.4 million viewers and became America’s most watched cable show of 2013.

“It made the Bible cool to talk about again,” said Mr Cooke. “The separation of church and state in America is so strong that people had become afraid to talk about God, at work or at school. Suddenly, these Bible stories were water cooler conversation again.”

I’m still waiting for HBO to do a series on David. Talk about political intrigue, sexual scandal, and family foibles. It could rival The Sopranos.

Gate Way Integrationism

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

I have for a while now thought that neo-Calvinism’s rejection of dichotomies between the secular and sacred and its attempt to add redemptive significance to the commonest of human enterprises set a Reformed Protestant (evangelicals also since they have found Kuyperianism) up for the kind of integrationism that Roman Catholicism promotes (i.e., the integration of faith and learning, church and state, Christ and culture). This is not a cheap shot because of the parallel moves that European Roman Catholics and Dutch Calvinists made to the French Revolution. Both Christian groups viewed the Revolution in antithetical categories, viewed liberalism and secularism as anti-Christian, and responded with philosophical polemics that cultivated notions about Christian and liberal w-ws. For the papacy, neo-Thomism was the answer. For Kuyper, a romantic idealism.

Confirmation of the intellectual proximity of post-French Revolution and Kuyperianism came recently from Michael Sean Winters’ year end reflection on the Roman Catholic Church:

. . . it is fun to hear secular commentators explain their admiration for the pope by saying they are relieved he is not focused on doctrine or dogma but on helping the poor. Hello?!??!! What we call the “social doctrine” of the Church is as much “doctrine” as the Church’s teaching on the neuralgic, pelvic issues. Both flow from our dogmatic belief that men and women are created in the image and likeness of God, and by our dogmatic belief that in the light of the Incarnation, we understand human dignity differently, at a deeper level, even a more urgent level. The challenge for the Church is to explain that all of Her teachings are rooted in the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, or they have nothing distinctly Catholic about them. It is true, say, that two plus two equals four in every religious scheme, but the significance of mathematics or science or any human knowledge is a thing for philosophy and theology to determine, and, for Catholics, the role of philosophy is not independent of theology, the two must walk hand-in-hand. Pope Francis is not eschewing dogma. As regards criticisms of his economic understanding as evidenced in Evangelii Gaudium, the pope is not trying to win a Nobel in Economics. His statements are not even just moral exhortations, but something deeper, something dogmatic, something about the nature of human kind understood in the light of the nature of the Godhead.

Liberalism Rampant

Published on by D. G. Hart514 Comments

While the man in the hat (not the funny one the pope wears), Bryan Cross, and I debate the extent and significance of liberalism within the Roman Catholic Church, the pile of links that warrant a perception that Rome is far from conservative — so why would a conservative Protestant go there, mainline Protestant may be another matter — mounts.

First, a word from the archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila, on how good the good news is (beware, this may be Nadia Bolz-Weber territory):

To Christians, I encourage you to remember, as Pope Francis reminded us in the aforementioned interview, that “Christmas is joy, religious joy, God’s joy, an inner joy of light and peace.” We must be witnesses of such joy, and we must contemplate the great mystery of God, who came to dwell among us.

“With Christ,” he writes in “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), “joy is constantly born anew.”

The Pope used the word joy in his letter more than 50 times, underlining the absolute centrality of joy in the life of a Christian. He invites Christians to “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus to Christ.” He urges us to listen intently to God’s voice in our hearts, and to experience the “quiet joy of his love.”

To non-Christians, I urge you to take another look at Christmas. Look at it again with fresh eyes. Look at what we celebrate: let the eyes of your souls go past the presents, the trees, the fat Santa and red-nosed Rudolph, and stop at the center of the manger. Listen to the everlasting message of love and peace, and you will know what Christmas is all about, the God who loves you eternally even if you do not wish to receive that love. It’s a message that benefits us all.

Then a couple of responses to Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, that suggest conservative Presbyterians have room for concern. First an SSPXer’s letter to Pope Francis:

Evangelization thus takes on a salvific importance – it has a supernatural end, and this has always been understood by Catholics throughout the ages. The purpose of evangelization is primarily to save souls.

However, in Evangelii Gaudium, the impetus for Christian evangelization of other cultures for the purpose of eternal salvation is explained in terms of a “dialogue”, and the supernatural end (eternal life in heaven with God) seems replaced by a natural one. You write, “Interreligious dialogue is a necessary condition for peace in the world, and so it is a duty for Christian” (EG, 250). The obligation for Christians to evangelize is “peace in the world”, not the salvation of souls. This seems to substitute a worldly, naturalistic cause for evangelization for the more traditional supernatural one. Indeed, the two greatest issues Catholic evangelization has to respond to are said to be inclusion of the poor and world peace. (cf. 186, 217) It seems Your Holiness is suggesting that it is purely worldly concerns that the Gospel is here to address, not the salvation of men’s souls or the false religions that keep them from that salvation.

Then a brief retort from Peter Leithart, possibly a little payback to Stellman:

In the midst of many wonderful things in Francis I’s exhortation, there are some missteps. One of these comes towards the end in his pastoral advice concerning Islam. I don’t object to his exhortations to Christians to treat Muslims with dignity and love. He’s undoubtedly right that “Many [Muslims] also have a deep conviction that their life, in its entirety, is from God and for God. They also acknowledge the need to respond to God with an ethical commitment and with mercy towards those most in need.” Whether their lives are in fact for God, I have no doubt of their conviction that this is the case.

But the basis for his exhortation is mistaken, and seriously so.

Quoting Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, he says that “we must never forget that they ‘profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, who will judge humanity on the last day.’” He adds, “The sacred writings of Islam have retained some Christian teachings; Jesus and Mary receive profound veneration and it is admirable to see how Muslims both young and old, men and women, make time for daily prayer and faithfully take part in religious services.”

On both counts, Francis’s statements are at odds with the New Testament.

Next, in an ironic twist, while the Jesuits who edit America have found the era of Pope Francis to be one where — how convenient! — the labels of conservative and liberal no longer apply, the Roman Catholics who oversee the Catholic Theological Society of America received a report about the need to make room for conservatives within the organization and at its annual and regional meetings.

First America on America (thanks to our charismatic correspondent):

Third, America understands the church as the body of Christ, not as the body politic. Liberal, conservative, moderate are words that describe factions in a polis, not members of a communion. It stands to reason, moreover, that America’s fundamental commitment precludes certain self-conceptions. Since the word of God is incoherent when it is separated from the church and its living teaching office, America could never envision itself as “the Loyal Opposition.” Nor do we understand the phrase “people of God” as a theological justification for setting one part of the body of Christ against another. The people of God are not a proletariat engaged in some perpetual conflict with a clerical bourgeoisie. It is obvious to us, moreover, that a preoccupation with episcopal action, whether it bears an ultramontane or a Marxist character, is nevertheless a form of clericalism. None of this is to say that America cannot bring a critical eye to ecclesiastical events; this is, in fact, our very purpose.

. . . Fifth, America’s fundamental commitment means that we view ideology as largely inimical to Christian discipleship. Revelation is humanity’s true story. Ideologies, which are alternative metanarratives, invariably involve an “other,” a conceptual scapegoat, some oppressor who must be overthrown by the oppressed. Only the Gospel’s radical call to peace and reconciliation justifies a radical politics. Catholic social teaching is not the Republican Party plus economic justice, nor is it the Democratic Party minus abortion rights. Yet neither is it some amalgamation of the two. Catholic social teaching is far more radical than our secular politics precisely because it is inspired by the Gospel, which is itself a radical call to discipleship, one that is subversive of every creaturely notion of power. There is more to Christian political witness than the tired, quadrennial debate about which presidential candidate represents the lesser of two evils.

Sixth, our fundamental commitment means that we are not beholden to any political party or any special interest. “America will aim,” wrote Father Wynne, “at becoming a representative exponent of Catholic thought and activity without bias or plea for special interest.” Admittedly, we do harbor one bias: a preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. “The poor,” however, “are not ‘special parties’ and they usually have no ‘special parties’ to speak for them,” wrote Father Davis in 1959. America believes that the work of social justice is a constitutive element of Christian discipleship. We also share with the Society of Jesus the conviction that “the faith that does justice is, inseparably, the faith that engages other traditions in dialogue, and the faith that evangelizes culture.”

Then the place of conservative theologians in CTSA:

A.Many CTSA sessions, both plenary and concurrent, include jokes and snide remarks about, or disrespectful references to, bishops, the Vatican, the magisterium, etc. These predictably elicit derisive laughter from a part of the audience.

B.Many CTSA members employ demeaning references. For example, the phrase“thinking Catholics” is sometimes used to mean liberals. The phrase “people whowould take us backwards” is sometimes used to mean conservatives.

C.Resolutions are a significant problem because an individual member can bring to the floor of the business meeting a divisive issue that not only consumes important time and energy but exacerbates the ideological differences that exist among theologians, typically leaving conservatives feeling not only marginalized but unwelcome. (CTSA members who have trouble understanding this as a problem might ask how they would feel if they were part of a professional society that passed resolutions criticizing a theologian they hold in high regard or endorsing views they reject.)

D.In recent decades, conservative theologians have only rarely been invited to be plenary speakers and respondents.

E.In CTSA elections, there is a general unwillingness of many members to vote for a conservative theologian. Scholarly credentials seem often outweighed by voters’partisan commitments.

F.Some conservative theologians have experienced the feeling that a number of other members “wish I wouldn’t come back” to the CTSA.

G.In sum, the self-conception of many members that the CTSA is open to all Catholic theologians is faulty and self-deceptive. As one of our members put it,the CTSA is a group of liberal theologians and “this permeates virtually everything.” Because the CTSA does not aspire to be a partisan group, both attitudes and practices will have to shift if the CTSA is to become the place where all perspectives within Catholic theology in North America are welcome.

And if outsiders believed the problem was only with academics and clergy exposed to higher criticism and inclusive theology, poll numbers on the church in the U.S. reveal matters that might keep Jason and the Callers away from claims of superiority:

American Catholics support same-sex marriage 60 – 31 percent, compared to the 56 – 36 percent support among all U.S. adults.

More devout Catholics, who attend religious services about once a week, support same- sex marriage 53 – 40 percent, while less observant Catholics support it 65 – 26 percent.

Catholic women support same-sex marriage 72 – 22 percent, while Catholic men support it 49 – 40 percent. Support ranges from 46 – 37 percent among Catholics over 65 years old to 64 – 27 percent among Catholics 18 to 49 years old.

Catholics like their new Pope: 36 percent have a “very favorable” opinion of him and 53 percent have a “favorable” opinion, with 4 percent “unfavorable.”

“American Catholics liked what they heard when Pope Francis said the Church should stop talking so much about issues like gay marriage, abortion and contraception,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“Maybe they were just waiting for a Jesuit. Overwhelmingly, across the demographic board, Catholics – men and women, regular or not-so-regular church-goers, young and old – have a favorable opinion of Pope Francis.”

American Catholics support 60 – 30 percent the ordination of women priests. Those who attend religious services about once a week support women priests 52 – 38 percent, compared to 66 – 25 percent among those who attend services less frequently.

There is almost no gender gap.

Support for women priests grows with age, from 57 – 32 percent among Catholics 18 to 49 years old to 68 – 28 percent among those over 65 years old.

Catholic opinion on abortion is similar of the opinions of all American adults:
16 percent of Catholics say abortion should be legal in all cases, compared to 19 percent of all Americans;
36 percent of Catholics say abortion should be legal in most cases, compared to 34 percent of all Americans;
21 percent of Catholics say abortion should be illegal in most cases, compared to 23 percent of all Americans;
21 percent of Catholics say abortion should be illegal in all cases, compared to 16 percent of all Americans.

Finally, to round this out, some priests (even former Protestant ones) believe the church needs to recover the language of hell in its evangelistic efforts:

The most insidious cancer in the Christian church today is universalism and semi-universalism combined with indifferentism. Indifferentism is the lie that it doesn’t really matter what church or religion you belong to. Universalism is the lie that everyone will be saved because God is so merciful he will not send anyone to hell. Semi-universalism is the commonly held lie that there may be a hell, but there probably won’t be very many people there. All of these beliefs are clearly contrary to the plain words of Scripture.

Ralph writes clearly and concisely with abundant quotes from Scripture and the documents of the Church. He tells us what the New Evangelization is, answers the question “Why Bother?”, discusses the laity’s role, the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s power. He then goes on to outline the simple message of salvation: human beings are sinners separated from God from sin and they need salvation or they will go to hell.

Sorry folks. That’s the message, and the message is clear from Scripture and the unanimous teachings of the church from antiquity to the present day. Ralph goes on to advise how to share this message with joy and compassion–avoiding the “bull in a china shop” approach and avoiding any sense of being judgmental and un loving. There is no room for the Westboro Baptist approach, but plenty of room for a joyful, honest and firm proclamation of the faith.

Yikes!

Giving New Meaning to Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

From Nadia Bolz-Weber’s comments on NPR’s On Being:

I loved the emphasis on grace, the fact that God always is coming to us. There’s nothing we do to make our way to God. God is continually coming to us and interrupting our lives and wanting to be known. And I had experienced that to be true. And I was so grateful when I stumbled into a place where I didn’t have to like remove half my brain in order to believe the things that they were telling me to believe. And it just felt true to me already. . . .

I think a lot of people, when there’s suffering, when there’s tragedy, they say, well, where is God in the midst of this? Most of God is unknowable, and we should probably be grateful for that — it’s in that like I want to know, right? . . .

You know what the final judgment is to me? It’s God dying on the cross and saying: forgive them; they know not what they’re doing. That’s an eternally valid statement to me. That is God’s judgment upon us. And so, to me, if God could bear that kind of suffering and only respond in forgiveness and love, that’s the God who is present in a devastating hurricane, in that room with an abused child. So to me, God has come into the world and is bearing that, not causing it.

From a recent news story of Pope Francis:

The reason for our hope, he said, is this: “God is with us, and God still trusts us! But think about this: God is with us and God still trusts in us! But God the Father is generous eh? God comes to dwell with men, choosing the Earth as his home to be with man himself and so He can be found there where man spends his days in joy or in pain. Therefore, earth is no longer just a ‘valley of tears’, but is the place where God himself has pitched His tent, it is the meeting place between God and men, of solidarity between God and men.”

“God wanted to share our human condition to the point of becoming one with us in the person of Jesus, who is true God and true man But there is something even more amazing.” God “pitched his tent” not in an ideal world, but “in this real world, marked by many good and bad things, marked by divisions, evil, poverty, oppression and war.” He “chos[e] to live our story as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and its dramas. In doing so, he demonstrated in an unsurpassable way, his merciful inclination, full of love for humans.”

“He is God-with-us: do you believe this?” the Pope asked the crowd, to which they responded “Yes!” “But,” the Holy Father continued, “let us make this confession: Jesus is God-with-us! All together: Jesus is God-with-us!” Francis thanked faithful for their enthusiastic response.” “Jesus is God-with-us, always and forever with us in the sufferings and sorrows of history. Christ’s birth is the manifestation that God is once and for all, on mankind’s side, to save, to raise us up again from the dust of our miseries, our difficulties, our sins.”

“This is where the great gift of the Child of Bethlehem comes: He brings us spiritual energy, an energy that helps us not to drown in our labours, our despair, our sadness, because it is an energy that warms and transforms the heart. The birth of Jesus, in fact, brings us the good news that we are loved immensely and individually by God, and not only does He bring us this love, He gifts it to us, He communicates it!”

Papal Social Gospel

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

That is the conclusion that has settled after some time of absorbing Evangelii Gaudium, namely, that Pope Francis may not be a liberationist, a liberal, or a Vatican II rebel, but he is doing something different from his predecessors. (As if it were everyone but the magisterium’s job to read the tea leaves of papal pronouncements.) And it — the consensus on Pope Francis — does involve the economy (stupid).

First, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry comes straight out with criticisms of Francis’ understanding of economics, but then applauds the church’s capacity to create synergy between the permanent things of the gospel and the passing circumstances of this world:

. . . it’s simply not true that if we in the West stopped wasting food kids in Africa would have it. It wasn’t true when my parents told me so** to make me clean my plate, and it’s still not true. And pretending it is is, well, infantile. And not in a Matthew 18 way. And we can “rescue” this Francis comment by elevating it to the theological level, by saying that by wasting food we are, in a powerful sense, being ungrateful towards God’s good creation and being selfish. And that perhaps if we rid ourselves of this ungratefulness we will be made holier by grace and better able to follow Jesus’ command to feed the hungry. And I believe this is true! But that’s not what Francis is saying or, at the very least, it’s not only what he’s saying.

Second, it shows that so much can be accomplished at the level of social doctrine without getting into econo-philosophical debates about “free markets” and “trickle-down economics.” You don’t need to reform or reinterpret or innovate Catholic social doctrine to say that corruption of government officials is scandalous.

Third, because if there is any institution in the world that should put this issue front and center, it’s the Catholic Church. First because, as I’ve said, it’s already well within the bounds of Tradition and flows naturally from the Gospel.

In the Bible I read, Jesus says things about food and hunger that make me think correlating the gospel’s spiritual and eschatological categories with physical hunger and food is not the best interpretation (but I am only a Protestant with an opinion):

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, s“Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” . . . 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (John 6)

But apparently, as John Allen reports, Pope Francis is more on Gobry’s side than mine:

. . . Francis had already given himself a major birthday present 24 hours before by shaking up the membership of the Congregation for Bishops in order to lay the groundwork for a new generation of “Francis bishops.”

In the United States, attention was understandably focused on the nomination of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and the effective removal of Cardinal Raymond Burke, president of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court. Putting in the moderate Wuerl and taking the strongly conservative Burke off couldn’t help but seem a signal of the kind of bishop Francis intends to elevate in the United States.

As pope, however, Francis is responsible not just for the 6 percent of the world’s Catholic population that lives in the United States, but the whole shooting match, 1.2 billion faithful all over the planet.

In that regard, it’s worth looking at the other appointments Francis made Monday to the Congregation for Bishops — 30 in all, including 12 new members and confirmations for 18 prelates who already sat on the body.

For the sake of analysis, two assumptions need to be stipulated:

The 12 new members best reflect Francis’ personal touch, given that most of the 18 confirmations were for Vatican personnel whose jobs generally entitle them to a seat at the table;

The kind of man Francis picks for the Congregation for Bishops is, in effect, a proxy for the kind of bishops he wants this panel to identify.

If those postulates are correct, we can draw some early conclusions about what a “Francis bishop” looks like — ideological moderates with the broad support of their fellow bishops and a real commitment to the social Gospel.

(Allen goes on to comment on the Pope’s specific choices for bishop.)

Arguably the most sobering assessment comes from James Schall, a figure well regarded (and rightly so) by conservative Roman Catholics. Schall is as cautious as he is careful:

. . . if I am asked what is the overall impression left by this Exhortation, I have to say that it is very much “this-worldly” oriented. It points horizontally, not vertically. The inner life of the Godhead is not much spoken of. When the Father is mentioned, it is always in the context of the love of the neighbor whom God loves in Christ. Unlike Benedict in Spe Salvi, there is little attention given to “eternal life.” When Francis mentions the “kingdom of God,” he does not, as one would expect, cite Augustine. He mentions actual cities and is rather surprised by them. When Augustine talked of “the City of God,” he said that it began among us, but could not be achieved in this world. No existing city would ever be this Kingdom. Augustine, with good reason, was leery of the ambitions of the cities of this world.

Of course, this emphasis on actual cities is Aristotelian. We are social and political animals. What concerns Francis, if I might put it that way, is the second great commandment. He obviously does not deny the first, the love of God. But Francis’ attention is given to God’s love as it exists among us. But he thinks not enough response is given to it. He wants to improve the world by emphasizing the joy of Christianity that we can experience in our lives and worship. The love of neighbor is an active thing. This pope believes in action. He talks of contemplation at times, but with overtones of Ignatius of Loyola’s simul in actione contemplativus; we behold God’s action in the doing of what needs to be done.

Pope Bergoglio is much more oriented to modernity, to modern culture, than the previous two popes. He cites John XXIII, and sometimes Paul VI, though he certainly cites John Paul II and Benedict—and de Lubac, Guardini, Newman, Bernanos, and the various documents of episcopal conferences. He is open to modern science. He is aware of skepticism, relativism, and atheism, but he has a certain sympathy for their adherents.

So what do I think the Pope is doing with his strong emphasis on missionary activities? He lightly touches the difficulty of political obstacles in most nations of the world to allow for much real missionary work. He mentions the basic right of religious freedom and its lack in many nations. He does not name many names. So his missionary activity first begins at home. The “joy” of the Gospel is designed to be a beacon of light in the world. It can only be seen if believers themselves see it.

Modernity is, briefly, the position that no truth is found in things or in ourselves. We are free because we are liberated from all religion or philosophy that would limit our freedom, individual or corporate. Religion of any kind is an enemy to this liberty. Once this freedom is established, man can go forward, as Benedict pointed out, to create a world in his own image. Man is not made in any image of God. He makes himself in his own image. Once free of any transcendent claim, man is free to create a truly “human” world that has no outside demands of a god or nature. Science and politics with this background will be able to make man into what he ought to be.

What Pope Francis seems to be doing in this Exhortation is, as it were, to present an alternative to modernity within modernity. This alternative is itself inner-worldly. That is, the emphasis is on the effects of Christianity as it truly ought to be lived in the here and now.

Whether Schall is comfortable with this shift is another matter since he mentions that “another legitimate version” of the Christian life — an alternative to Francis’ — is to be “hated precisely because [Christians] do live as Christ asked them to live.”

Schall offers another check upon Francis’ apparently optimistic embrace of modernity:

. . . at bottom, what this Exhortation seems to be is, indeed, an answer to classical modernity that, when spelled out, does everything modernity hopes for, only better and more securely because it is rooted in the real nature of man and is open to the gifts that have come to us in revelation. The Pope’s impatience has its charm. It also has its dangers. After all, most men who have ever lived on this planet have lived in very imperfect circumstances. The Church was for them too. Few lived in really fully developed economic and political orders with scientific and technological support that enabled man the leisure and time to create a civilization. Paul VI called it a “civilization of love,” and Pope Francis would probably call it the same.

So it looks like Francis is increasingly showing himself to be in line with a Vatican II spirit that was eager to embrace the modern world and extend Roman Catholicism out of the ghetto, parish, and parochial school to the wider world of suburbia, universities, and middle-class life. Which raises the question if the pope is identifying more with middle-class life and the kind of social structures that created it than he is with the poor. That was surely the case with the Protestant Social Gospelers, a group from to which Jason and the Callers should have paid more attention.