Set Your Sights Even Higher

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Forget about trying to be Jesus. Now be creator.

. . . teaching our children how to cooperate with God in the work of creation is a perfectly fitting job for us as Catholic parents.

Genesis points out five tasks given the human race in the Garden: marriage, fruitfulness, rule, work, and worship. In all these tasks, we become more fully human and, for the baptized, become more profound participants in the life of the Blessed Trinity through Christ. Let’s look at them briefly.

Hasn’t Mark read his catechism? Every Western Christian knows the difference between creation and providence:

315 In the creation of the world and of man, God gave the first and universal witness to his almighty love and his wisdom, the first proclamation of the “plan of his loving goodness”, which finds its goal in the new creation in Christ.

316 Though the work of creation is attributed to the Father in particular, it is equally a truth of faith that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together are the one, indivisible principle of creation.

317 God alone created the universe, freely, directly and without any help.

318 No creature has the infinite power necessary to “create” in the proper sense of the word, that is, to produce and give being to that which had in no way possessed it (to call into existence “out of nothing”) (cf DS 3624).

319 God created the world to show forth and communicate his glory. That his creatures should share in his truth, goodness and beauty – this is the glory for which God created them.

320 God created the universe and keeps it in existence by his Word, the Son “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Heb 1:3), and by his Creator Spirit, the giver of life.

321 Divine providence consists of the dispositions by which God guides all his creatures with wisdom and love to their ultimate end.

322 Christ invites us to filial trust in the providence of our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 6:26-34), and St. Peter the apostle repeats: “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” (I Pt 5:7; cf. Ps 55:23).

323 Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. To human beings God grants the ability to cooperate freely with his plans.

But when you give them an inch a co-mediatrix, they take a mile a co-creator.

Could This Happen in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod?

Published on by D. G. Hart167 Comments

Would confessional Lutherans have ever fallen for the Alex Marlarkey story of dying and going to heaven and coming back to life? (Wasn’t the last name a tip-off?) Would confessional Presbyterians be so gullible for that matter?

Here’s one account of what happened:

Tyndale House Publishers has stopped production of the book and DVD of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven after the book’s coauthor and subject, Alex Malarkey, released a statement retracting the book’s contents.

In an open letter, the self-described “boy who did not come back from heaven” wrote:

Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short.

I did not die. I did not go to heaven.

I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible.

It is only through repentance of your sins and a belief in Jesus as the Son of God, who died for your sins (even though he committed none of his own) so that you can be forgiven may you learn of heaven outside of what is written in the Bible . . . not by reading a work of man. I want the whole world to know that the Bible is sufficient. Those who market these materials must be called to repent and hold the Bible as enough.

In Christ,
Alex Malarkey

This isn’t simply a question of good or bad theology, pietist or confessional piety, someone who naively thinks Christians don’t intentionally mislead or someone who has a healthy respect for the ongoing effects of original sin. It is a question of ecclesiology. Belonging to a communion where pastors and others vet who gets admitted to fellowship (the Lord’s Table), where pastors receive scrutiny before being ordained, where church officers monitor what seminaries teach, and where education committees subsidize instructional materials for church members — all of these structures contribute to an identity for church members that prevents individual Christians from being at the mercy of the market and its hucksters (and the editors who enable the hucksters).

Which is to say that not only does evangelicalism lack ecclesiology. In place of the church evangelicalism has the market. The publishers, parachurch agencies, magazine promoters, conference sponsors — these are the structures that “minister” for a price to your average born-again Christian who worships at some independent tabernacle, celebration center, or even a local congregation. And without any shepherds to police the sheep and the wolves, your average Christian has to figure out for himself whether other Christians really do manipulate best-seller lists or turn the NFL into a sacred cow.

Social Gospel Coalition Unraveling?

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Would the Pope attend Bobby Jindal’s Prayer Rally? I don’t think so.

Jindal, a self-described “evangelical Catholic,” epitomizes the political and religious coalition of evangelical Protestants and Catholics in Louisiana.

“Evangelical Catholicism,” if we are to use Jindal’s phrase, is a peculiarly American creation. It’s a version of Catholicism with roots in the anti-communist movement of the post-World War II era, when prominent Catholics like Bishop Fulton Sheen adopted a style of pro-America rhetoric that matched Protestant revivalists like Billy Graham. This partnership was codified in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, as Jerry Falwell launched his “Moral Majority” and quickly discovered that Catholics comprised roughly a third of the political action group’s membership.

Prominent politicians have continued to embrace this brand of Catholicism, including lifelong Catholic Rick Santorum and Catholic converts Jindal, Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich and Sam Brownback. Then there are non-Catholic politicians like Mike Huckabee — a former Baptist minister and governor of Arkansas — who reacted to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate with the announcement, “Thanks to President Obama, we are all Catholics now.”

It’s hard to imagine Pope Francis ever attending “The Response.” Unlike the organizers of the prayer rally, the pope doesn’t endorse American exceptionalism, creationism, biblical literalism or the rapture. He also doesn’t encourage AFA-style animosity toward LGBT people. Asked about his position on homosexuality, the pope responded, “If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge? They shouldn’t be marginalized.” Compare this to Jindal’s defense of the AFA’s support for “The Response,” an organization with a leader that believes “being an active homosexual should disqualify you from public office.”

But more telling, American Catholics don’t share the same history as evangelical Protestants. A church of immigrants, Catholics in the 19th and early 20th centuries were the targets of religious persecution and xenophobia at the hands of a Protestant establishment. Back then, many believed the nation was in crisis because of the perceived menace of the Catholic Church to American values.

Teach Us To Number Our Commandments

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

Cardinal Dolan thinks Roman Catholics and American culture need to recover biblical teaching on sex (finally a bishop other than the Roman one):

We rarely, if ever, speak about it. (Just ask Pope Francis! Did you see that, on his flight to Asia last week, a journalist asked him if he would condemn contraception. He replied, “Why are you always asking about that?”)

I’m not proud about the fact that we rarely speak about the sixth and ninth commandment. Why don’t we? One reason might be that, decades ago, we probably did speak way too much about it. A second might be that it’s so controversial. And a third is that we’re still so embarrassed by the sex abuse scandal that we’re gun-shy. . . .

one of our most pointed challenges, as a Church, and, for that matter, as a culture, is to regain the high ground on the nobility of God’s design, to present it credibly and fresh to ourselves, one another, and a society that has reduced sex to culture’s most popular contact sport.

Do the captains of Team Religion in America recognize that players on the team don’t even follow the same play book when it comes to counting the Decalogue?

And does the good Cardinal not see that by blurring church folks and Americans Team Religion has compromised the discipline of the Team’s players? Maybe if all churches worried more about their own members and less about the “other kind” of Americans, the results would lift the boats of the whole nation.

Postscript: meanwhile, Boniface detects in certain apologists — ahem, Mark Shea, who swims in the same hip Northwest culture that Jason and Christian (without the Callers) do — the difficulty the fellows with all the apostolic authority face even from some of their most enthusiastic supporters:

. . . this thread demonstrates some inherent problems in the neo-Cath position: To what degree will we see that alleged orthodoxy to the Church is really just a matter of supporting what is viewed as “current policy”? Is there not a problem with viewing a perennial discipline as merely “policy”? Is not the value of discipline and tradition severely downgraded. if so? And if these sorts of matters are simply the “current policy” that can change the way it changes with each American presidential administration, what tools does the Church really have to ensure discipline and continuity in the long run?

Ultimately, the neo-Cath strategy is to insist loudly that certain things can never be changed so long as the current Pontiff does not want to change them; then, when the “policy” changes with another pontiff, suggest just as loudly that such matters were never immune from change to begin with. I’m not suggesting the practical question of whether or not to admit persons with deep-seated homosexuality to the seminary is a doctrinal question or that infallibility is on the line here; I am suggesting that reasoning that the Church’s very old discipline on this matter (it goes back to Trent and before) can be seen as merely “current policy” is destructively reductionist.

Who Is Scratching Whose Head?

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

A number of bloggers are struggling with Pope Francis’ comment about family planning and Roman Catholics “breeding like rabbits.” On the one side are those who think Francis is only speaking to the wider public and would choose his words more carefully if addressing the faithful exclusively:

When Francis speaks to the mainstream media, like it or not, he is choosing to speak to non-Catholics. Faithful, practicing Catholics are not his primary audience. If you are expecting Pope Francis to be speaking to you as a practicing Catholic when he addresses the media, you will be devastated.

From the other corner comes the spin that those outside the church don’t know how to take Francis’ off the cuff statements:

The Church has never taught that Catholics are to have as many children as possible. They can use abstinence, including the selective abstinence of “Natural Family Planning,” to limit the number of children they bear.

Yet such nuance is bound to be lost on the Pope’s secular audience. Just as his comments saying that Catholics should not be “obsessed” with abortion have been used as cudgels against political candidates who oppose abortion and gay marriage, Francis’s rabbit comment is likely to be used as yet another weapon against Catholics faithful to church teaching.

Damned if we get it, damned if we don’t.

But the point about Pope Francis saying things the way he does because he is speaking to non-Roman Catholics raises an interesting (to me) question. Why does the pontiff carry on a conversation with the wider world and how do I get to join it? I mean, if the pope’s jurisdiction is truly universal, then he is my pope as much as Jason and the Callers. In which case, if I have to listen to him, shouldn’t he have to hear from me once in a while?

Or is it the case that the universal jurisdiction of the papacy only extends to a spiritual authority which Francis has by virtue of certain Christians being in fellowship with him?

It seems to me that papal discourse is still caught between the older Unam Sanctam outlook of the papacy as the highest authority even above temporal authorities, and the newer Vatican 2 conception that sees church power largely in spiritual terms (except within Vatican City which has its own police, prison, bank, and postal service). Protestants in the United States took a long time to figure out that when Reinhold Niebuhr spoke, he wasn’t speaking for or to all Americans. But the coverage and following of the papacy surely hasn’t captured the distinction between the real power that the papacy has over Roman Catholic life and institutions, and the apparent moral authority that appears to give the pope permission to speak about everything Satan to tsunamis. Meanwhile, no one seems to notice that no one cares what other bishops might have to say. For all of Francis’ talk of collegiality, he is hogging the limelight. And do journalists actually realize that even if they don’t believe in papal supremacy the way the cover the Holy See indicates they support papal supremacy.

I’m sure Jason and the Callers could clear all of this up (if they ever commented on the contemporary state of the communion to which they call).

Winning

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

Unless the local priest can be just like Jesus Francis, why bother? Why not go to church with the flabby evangelicals?

After a television interview, I was talking with a young producer who told me of her experience. She had been raised Catholic, but stopped going to church in college. Now she is engaged and was encouraged by her fiancé and Francis to give the church another try. After going to church a few times, she felt called to go to the sacrament of reconciliation. It was a disaster. The priest yelled at her and told her that everything bad that had happened to her was because she had not gone to confession in 10 years.

There will be no “Francis effect” if when people return to the church they do not meet someone like Francis at their parish. Going to confession today is like playing Russian roulette. You don’t know whether you will meet the compassionate Jesus or some angry, judgmental crank who thinks it is his job to tell people how bad they are. This is a form of abuse about which the church has done nothing.

Nor should we limit our focus to the clergy. Parish staff can be tempted to clericalism, and parish communities can ignore new parishioners who can feel lost in a crowd of people.

Try this experiment. Go to a Catholic church you have never attended and see how long it takes before someone initiates a conversation with you. Then go to an Evangelical church and try the same experiment. The Evangelicals will win every time.

Papal audacity only goes so far (sort of like wishing after hearing White Horse Inn that Mike Horton and Kim Riddlebarger could be your pastors).

The Antithesis for Foodies

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Another attempt to blame it on the French Revolution (but which trencherman would not, with Woody Allen, prefer the Napoleon to Beef Wellington?):

“A retrospective examination that goes from today back to the Middle ages immediately reveals that our notion of cooking, the system of flavors that seem to us ‘naturally’ desirable, is significantly different from the one that for ages—not only during the Middle ages, but even a few centuries ago as well—people considered good and looked for in foods. Contemporary cooking (in Italy and other european countries) has a primarily analytic character that tends to separate sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy, reserving for each one an autonomous place, both in individual foods and in the order of the meal. This kind of practice is allied with the idea that cooking must respect, insofar as possible, the natural flavor of each food, different and particular from one time to the next, and for that reason keep each one separate from others. But these simple rules do not constitute a universal archetype of cooking that always existed and was always the same. They are the result of a minor revolution that took place in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. . . . Renaissance cooking, medieval cooking, and, going back even further, ancient Roman cooking had evolved a model based principally on the idea of artificiality and the mingling of flavors. The preparation of a single foodstuff, as well as its position within the meal, corresponded to a synthetic rather than an analytic logic: to keep together rather than separate.”

This was not merely a philosophy of cooking. Medieval cooking was “a cuisine of contrast that is in search of balance, the ground zero where distances between flavors are abridged.” Cooking aimed for that balance of contrasts not only for culinary reasons, but for moral and ethical reasons: Diet was embedded in a notion of the soul as well as of the body.

I’m not sure these guys have been watching Chopped.

If No Call to Prayer at Duke . . .

Published on by D. G. Hart80 Comments

What’s with the High Mass at Princeton?

After leading an Ignatian retreat in Boston, Father Carlos Hamel FSJC will be coming to Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey and publicly offering a High Mass in the University Chapel at 9 PM on Tuesday February 3 for the Aquinas Institute. There will be a reception afterwards. This will be, to our knowledge, the first, non-Nuptial, Traditional Latin Mass in the University’s Anglo-Catholic inspired chapel and has special significance as Princeton Alumnus Brother Gerhard FSJC will be serving Mass as well.

Why no respect for Princeton’s Presbyterian heritage? Where’s the outrage?

A Bible Sampler

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

This looks like the best reading plan for a guy who puts things in chronological order for a living (read someone licensed to do history). But other considerations led to Max Lucado.

Yikes.

Doesn't Being Protestant Count for Anything?

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

It is one thing to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. It is another to claim him as one of your own. That distinction seems to be lost on the left and right of U.S. Roman Catholics. First, from Catholic Vote an attempt to turn King into a social conservative:

I too have a dream, that across this land, every one of us will feel the marks of God’s infinite and unselfish love in our hearts and recognize that we are not flesh-bound automatons, but as St. Paul tells us, created spiritual beings made for a higher purpose than mere selfishness and self-gratification. I have a dream today, that we will at last fulfill the promise of our founders and of Lincoln and of Dr. King, and that all God’s children, black babies and white babies, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will all be allowed to live and to grow and to know the love of a mother and father, and that even the least among us will be finally be treated with dignity as human persons in both body and soul.

But only Michael Sean Winters can up the ante:

“Always faithful to the Gospel.” Another part of Rev. King’s legacy that is too often overlooked is that he was a preacher of the Gospel. He was not simply a civil rights activist. He was not a social commentator per se. His vision sprang from his Bible. His doctorate was not in political science or engineering. He was most at home behind a pulpit not a lectern, and he tended to turn most lecterns into a pulpit. King was not afraid of the fact, certainly obvious to him, that preaching the Gospel would be divisive but he did not indulge the kind of culture warrior tactics that characterized subsequent generations of politically active clergy. His commitment to non-violence affected his tactics: He did not demonize or degrade others, even while he condemned their actions and confronted their attitudes.

What likely makes up for the difference between Dr. King’s Protestantism and these bloggers membership in the Roman Catholic Church is race. If you can claim an African-American for your “side,” especially one of King’s stature, you move your set of convictions closer to the mainstream while beefing up your reputation for not harboring unacceptable prejudices (which strikes me as a form of microaggression — seeing King’s skin color but not paying attention to his ideas). But shouldn’t the authority of the Pope (which King didn’t recognize) or doctrinal truth (which King may have fudged) count for more than this?

In today’s ideological struggle between religion and secularism, though, Team Religion doesn’t ask too many questions (except when it comes to Islam).