How Are You Going to Get them to Read John Mbiti once They've Read Ben Carson?

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Ever since Philip Jenkins’ (at least) The Next Christendom, people have found it fashionable to assert that the churches in the Southern Hemisphere are leaving the Christian West in the dust (of death?). The odd thing about this logic is that it missed how much Southern or Global Christianity had learned (for good or ill) from the Christian West, first through colonial churches and then through pietistically inspired non-denominational missionaries. Indeed, the West has been dominating the world for almost 500 years. Not saying that’s a great thing or a wretched development. It simply is what it is.

And now comes some evidence of the West’s dominance even in Global Christianity:

Now, a new study, polling more than 8,000 Christians in four languages across three countries, has found that African Christians aren’t reading African Christians, either.

In the Africa Leadership Study, a quarter of Central Africans, a third of Angolans, and half of Kenyans named a preacher or pastor as their favorite author. Majorities in Angola and Kenya named authors whose writings were explicitly Christian. High percentages also named African writers.

However, “overlap between the two was low, with relatively few respondents identifying favorite authors [who] were both African and Christian,” said Robert Priest, a professor of international studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who presented the findings to the American Society of Missiology.

The lack of prominent indigenous authors was also evidenced by the library holdings of five major Christian higher education institutions in Kenya, where only one African Christian (John Mbiti) ranked among the top 15 authors with the largest presence on the shelves. Kenyan Christian bookstores had a significantly different top 15, but only one African author (Dag Heward-Mills) cracked their lists. Other commercial booksellers and street vendors didn’t have any African Christian authors among their top 15.

Turns out that once you link the world politically and economically (not to mention linguistically and educationally), the Christian voices with the loudest mouths tend to dominate. (Odd though how the bishops with global jurisdiction aren’t on those lists.)

What's to Abhor?

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

One of the arresting vows that church members take in Presbyterian circles is this:

Do you confess that because of your sinfulness you abhor and humble yourself before God, that you repent of your sin, and that you trust for salvation not in yourself but in Jesus Christ alone?

Important to consider is that this is something someone who has already converted or been baptized and reared in the church is supposed to answer in the affirmative. That means that someone who is already regenerate and progressing in sanctification is supposed to affirm. After all, we don’t go straight from the conversion experience to a gathering of the congregation to receive members.

Why is it then that someone who is holy and sanctified, since these are parts of the gospel as some tell us, would abhor himself (notice too that we require the fairer sex also to abhor herself)? And why is it that we need to understand, as the gospel networkers are encouraging us to learn, that growth in holiness does not lead to spiritual pride?

We deny that assurance gained through growth in godliness amounts to a performance-based religion or necessitates an unwholesome spiritual pride. . . .

We deny that rejoicing in victories over sin amounts to spiritual pride or performance religion, although Christians may and sometimes do sin in this way.

This makes me wonder if our membership vows need to be revised. Should we add a membership vow that asks, “do you rejoice now and will you continue to do so in your victories over sin?” Or is the posture of abhorrence much more fitting for those who join the body of Christ?

Now if you believe Jesus is in some sense (hear that republicationists) like us, then you may not care for the language of abhorrence. Then again, if you affirm what Machen explained about the uniqueness of Christ, disgust with yourself may not be so bad:

Certainly Jesus had a religion of His own; His prayer was real prayer, His faith was real religious faith. His relation to His heavenly Father was not merely that of a child to a father; it was that of a man to his God. Certainly Jesus had a religion; without it His humanity would indeed have been but incomplete. Without doubt Jesus had a religion; the fact is of the utmost importance. But it is equally important to observe that that religion which Jesus had was not Christianity. Christianity is a way of getting rid of sin, and Jesus was without sin. His religion was a religion of Paradise, not a religion of sinful humanity. It was a religion to which we may perhaps in some sort attain in heaven, when the process of our purification is complete (though even then the memory of redemption will never leave us); but certainly it is not a religion with which we can begin. The religion of Jesus was a religion of untroubled sonship; Christianity is a religion of the attainment of sonship by the redeeming work of Christ. (Christianity and Liberalism, 92)

Women Grow Up

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

The flower fades.

The photographs that comprise the New York Times’ story about a photographer, Nicholas Nixon, who as taken shots of his wife and her three sisters every year for four decades are truly remarkable (thanks to our domestic correspondent). It is the photographic version of the Up Series.

Throughout this series, we watch these women age, undergoing life’s most humbling experience. While many of us can, when pressed, name things we are grateful to Time for bestowing upon us, the lines bracketing our mouths and the loosening of our skin are not among them. So while a part of the spirit sinks at the slow appearance of these women’s jowls, another part is lifted: They are not undone by it. We detect more sorrow, perhaps, in the eyes, more weight in the once-fresh brows. But the more we study the images, the more we see that aging does not define these women. Even as the images tell us, in no uncertain terms, that this is what it looks like to grow old, this is the irrefutable truth, we also learn: This is what endurance looks like.

For those of us who are beginning to know what it means to take the over in the over-under of middle age, to avoid the sense of decline that these photos capture is difficult. (And they may sober those who are still comfortable taking the under of middle age — be careful what’s coming.)

The images are also a reminder of the increasing dependence that comes with age:

It is the endurance of sisterhood in particular. Nixon, who grew up a single child, says he has always been particularly intrigued by the sisterly unit, and it shows in these images. With each passing year, the sisters seem to present more of a united front. Earlier assertions of their individuality — the arms folded across the chest, the standing apart — give way to a literal leaning on one another, as if independence is no longer such a concern. We see what goes on between the sisters in their bodies, particularly their limbs. A hand clasps a sister’s waist, arms embrace arms or are slung in casual solidarity over a shoulder. A palm steadies another’s neck, reassuring. The cumulative effect is dizzying and powerful. When 36 prints were exhibited in a gallery in Granada, Spain, viewers openly wept.

Hard not to.

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Woman Up

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

While love was hoping all things, the BBs have piled on the situation in Houston in a way that raises a number of interesting questions about persecution. Tim Bayly himself insists that the difficulties contemporary Christians confront increasingly resembles what Chicken Little faced:

. . . the persecution suffered by Christians in this country is powerful, silencing the witness and confession of the Gospel everywhere and constantly. To act as if we don’t see or care about this low-grade persecution because it hasn’t yet come for us and our job and children, or because it hasn’t yet come to our city or school system, or because our mayor is not a lesbian who is subpoenaing the sermons of the churches in our city, is to refuse to read our times as closely and well as we read the clouds. It is to sleep when we should be preparing our children to stand against social pressures, stigmas, and loss of income so in the not-very-distant future they will be able to stand against imprisonment and execution.

Sure, it sounds histrionic to speak of the iron fist of diversity, inclusivity, and pluralism as a real threat to the civil liberties of Christians today. Unless, of course, one has studied the growth of the persecution and martyrdom suffered by our brothers and sisters in Christ under the iron fist of that same diversity, inclusivity, and pluralism enforced across the ancient Roman Empire.

As an American who still thinks that the point of the United States had to do with opposition to centralized and consolidated government, I can sympathize with small-government types who object to the politics of Houston. But as a Christian, I have trouble thinking that this qualifies as persecution or that we should oppose it. After all, the New Testament is replete with calls to Christians to bear their cross:

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. (1 Pet 4:1-3 ESV)

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Cor 4:7-12 ESV)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt 5:3-12 ESV)

This doesn’t mean that Christians should be masochists who look for ways to experience pain or that we should somehow lose a capacity to distinguish quiet and peaceful lives from one characterized by affliction. But it does suggest that persecution is not something about which we should bitch. It goes with the turf and may actually be evidence (pay attention Obedience Boys) of a lively faith.

At the same time, does a subpoena rise to the level of persecution? Consider a piece by Ross Douthat some time back:

If the federal government suddenly closed all religious schools in the United States, banned homeschooling, and instituted an anti-religious curriculum in public schools, I would absolutely call it persecution. But a step like denying religious colleges access to public dollars would not rise to the same level. It would certainly create hardship and disruption, and weaken institutional religion in significant ways. But it would leave the basic liberty to educate one’s children in one’s own faith intact, and I cannot see the warrant for claiming that a given faith is “persecuted” by the government’s decision to withhold a subsidy. Again: Disadvantaged, yes; persecuted, no.

Likewise, if the government suddenly required businesses to fire Christians, or instituted a policy of discrimination that prevented them from being hired, that would clearly be a form of persecution. But having the rules of a few professions suddenly pose new ethical dilemmas for religious believers is the kind of thing that can happen in any time and place. It’s a challenge, a hardship, a form of pressure … but it’s not really persecution as I think most people understand the term.

And to Dreher’s point that this definition would imply that there haven’t been that many cases of sustained persecution in the United States — well, I suppose I think that’s right. I wouldn’t use “persecution” to describe the rules that kept Jews out of Ivy League schools and country clubs, for instance, or the experience of atheist parents before the Supreme Court rolled back school prayer, or the hostility and scrutiny that Muslims sometimes face in the post-9/11 U.S.A. Or to use my own faith to bring the distinction to a finer point: In the 19th century, the Ursuline convent riots were a case of actual anti-Catholic persecution; the climate of anti-Catholicism that produced the Blaine amendments was not. This isn’t to minimize the anti-Catholicism of the 1870s and 1880s; it’s just to say that not every form of hostility deserves the same label as the work of a Diocletian or a Nero.

And using the “persecution” label too promiscuously, I think, carries three risks beyond intellectual inaccuracy. First, as Dreher sort of concedes, it doesn’t do enough to acknowledge the vast gulf separating the situation of Western Christians and the incredible heroism of our co-believers overseas, who face eliminative violence on an increasingly-dramatic scale. Second, as I tried to suggest in the column, it doesn’t do enough to acknowledge the gulf separating the situation of Western Christians and the situation of gays and lesbians, past and present, facing persecution at the hands of religiously-motivated actors. And finally, it doesn’t actually prepare conservative believers for a future as a (hopefully creative) religious minority, because it conditions them/us to constantly expect some kind of grand tribulation that probably won’t actually emerge.

Could it be then that by invoking the language of persecution Christians are simply showing their desire to get in the line of victims? After all, this is the recent and easy way to achieve status in the United States, namely, to show that you are the object of oppression (even to the point of having your feelings hurt). But that was hardly the attitude that characterized the early Christian martyrs who knew a thing or two about persecution. Here the BBs may want to take a page — of all things — from a woman named Perpetua:

But the mob asked that their bodies be brought out into the open that their eyes might be the guilty witnesses of the sword that pierced their flesh. And so the martyrs got up and went to the spot of their own accord as the people wanted them to, and kissing one another they sealed their martyrdom with the ritual kiss of peace. The others took the sword in silence and without moving, especially Saturus, who being the first to climb the stairway was the first to die. For once again he was waiting for Perpetual Perpetua, however, had yet to taste more pain. She screamed as she was struck on the bone; then she took the trembling hand of the young gladiator and guided it to her throat. It was as though so great a woman, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, could not be dispatched unless she herself were willing.

Ah, most valiant and blessed martyrs! Truly are you called and chosen for the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord! And any man who exalts, honours, and worships his glory should read for the consolation of the Church these new deeds of heroism which are no less significant than the tales of old. For these new manifestations of virtue will bear witness to one and the same Spirit who still operates, and to God the Father almighty, to his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom is splendour and immeasurable power for all the ages. Amen.

There is persecution and then there is persecution (thanks to our mid-West correspondent).

The Protestant Dilemma Writ Catholic

Published on by D. G. Hart89 Comments

Devin Rose thinks he found all the dilemmas that haunt Protestants (and that led him to Rome). But has he along with Jason and the Callers really escaped the thicket of difficulties.

On the one hand, having a written basis for determining church teaching really comes in handy (as opposed to the slippery way that oral tradition or papal whim might operate. According to Gerhard Cardinal Mueller:

Not even an ecumenical council can change the doctrine of the Church, because her Founder, Jesus Christ, entrusted the faithful preservation of his teachings and doctrine to the apostles and their successors. The Gospel of Matthew says: “Go and teach all people everything that I commanded you” (cf. Mt 28:19–20), which is nothing if not a definition of the “deposit of the faith” (depositum fidei) that the Church has received and cannot change. Therefore the doctrine of the Church will never be the sum total of a few theories worked out by a handful of theologians, however ingenious they may be, but rather the profession of our faith in revelation, nothing more and nothing less than the Word of God entrusted to the heart—the interiority—and the lips—the proclamation—of his Church.

We have an elaborate, structured doctrine about marriage, all of it based on the words of Jesus himself, which must be presented in its entirety. We encounter it in the Gospels and in other places in the New Testament, especially in the words of Saint Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians and in Romans.

On the other hand, the dilemma for all Christians is whether they will submit to religious authority. This includes Roman Catholics and Protestants:

The hallmark Protestant idea of priesthood of all believers allows the individual — whose relationship with God is unmediated — to determine his or her fitness to receive the sacrament. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, retains a few layers of priestly and catechetical scrutiny.

Last week at the synod, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris worried that couples “do not believe that the use of contraceptive methods is a sin and therefore they tend not to speak of them in confession and so they receive Communion untroubled.” Perhaps because married women might think it inappropriate to be questioned about contraception by a cadre of celibate men.

Either way, confessors tend not to press the issue, and no one pulls married couples out of the Communion line. Few believe a solid majority of Catholic women or their husbands will burn in hell for using artificial contraceptives.

In the case of cohabitating couples, there is little the Church can do. Marriage preparation classes acknowledge its sinfulness, but priests and bishops cannot afford to turn away half of what is already a declining number of couples seeking marriage in the Church. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops advises that priests can point couples toward a holier union by “supporting the couple’s plans for the future rather than chastising them for the past.”

Yet even for Catholics whose relationships put them in a perpetual state of mortal sin, individual conscience and church authority are often in fierce tension. In practice, LGBT Catholics often rely on their own consciences in determining whether they will go forward for Communion. In some locales, it is common enough for partnered gays and lesbians to receive Communion that it only makes news when they are turned away.

Meanwhile, Bryan Cross and company have yet to recognize a dilemma that cost a night’s sleep.

Mark Driscoll is to Ray Rice . . .

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

what Tim Keller is to Roger Goodell.

At least that’s how TKNY’s quotation in the New York Times story about Driscoll occurred to me:

A front-page story in The New York Times on August 23 had suggested that Driscoll’s empire was “imploding.”

“He was really important—in the Internet age, Mark Driscoll definitely built up the evangelical movement enormously,” Timothy Keller, the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, told the Times. “But the brashness and the arrogance and the rudeness in personal relationships—which he himself has confessed repeatedly—was obvious to many from the earliest days, and he has definitely now disillusioned quite a lot of people.”

So like the NFL with Ray Rice, the gospel allies knew about Driscoll’s antics well before his pseudonymous comments went public. I know I have blogged about this before, but where was Kathy Keller with her b-s detector on this one? Why didn’t the most gospelly guys in the room warn the rest of the Christian world about Driscoll’s problems?

Maybe they need to take a page out of their savior’s playbook and call people (especially religious leaders) “fool” or “hypocrite” once in a while. If they want to start with me, their move.

Why Don't Hard Questions Occur to Christians?

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So if you were a historic Southern Baptist institution located in one of the former border states — think Kentucky — where would you want to start a branch campus? Dunbar, Wisconsin? You betcha.

The town was founded in 1888 during a period of thriving logging industry in the Wisconsin northern woods. At that time the railroad was the main means of transporting logs from Dunbar to the southern part of the state and Illinois. Before the town was officially founded there was a restaurant where a cook with the surname Dunbar worked. Whenever the railroad stopped at that part of the area they brought food and supplies for the restaurant. The railroad workers said they were bringing things “to Dunbar” the cook. Eventually when the town was founded it was after the cook’s surname.

And this is the place where Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is going to branch out.

I don’t get it.

Northland International University, an evangelical Christian school located in Dunbar, Wisconsin, will become the first campus outside of Louisville for Boyce College, Southern’s undergraduate school. The action is effective Aug. 1, 2015.

“The fact that there will be a Boyce College and Southern Seminary campus located in Wisconsin on a campus of this stature is an enormous step forward for Southern Baptists,” said Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. “I can only imagine what the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention would think to know that the reach of the SBC and its mother seminary is now of this magnitude in the upper Midwest.”

Daniel Patz, president of Northland since 2013, attended the meeting and told trustees, “This is a gift from Northland to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. But really, I feel almost, even more so, it is gift to us in order for this legacy and this mission to continue; it is the greatest mission in the world, to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.”

Paul Patz, the grandfather of Daniel Patz, founded Northland in 1958 as a camp and expanded it in 1976 to become Northland Baptist Bible Institute. One year later, Northland became an undergraduate college, adding a graduate program in 1988. Throughout its history, the school has continued to operate Northland Camp & Conference Center, which hosts camps, Bible conferences, and other ministry events. Northland has produced nearly 2,900 alumni serving in ministry across the world.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not insinuating that something shady is at play here. In this economy, any gift that an institution receives is a blessing. But when you think about the pattern of branch campuses that Reformed Theological Seminary established, first Orlando, then Charlotte, then Atlanta, then Washington, then Houston, then New York, then planet earth — I’m not sure this is the order or if these are the real campuses, but you get the point — you’re not thinking Dunbar, Wisconsin or Hillsdale, Michigan.

In which case, someone needs to ask why Dunbar? Why a place roughly twenty-five miles from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? Why not Green Bay?

More important, why isn’t anyone scratching their heads?

But I Have Stopped Beating My Wife, Really!

Published on by D. G. Hart57 Comments

I don’t know which is more annoying, Yankee fans or Christians arguing that their religion is the basis for all good things. Here are a couple recent iterations on Christianity and the West from opposite sides of the Tiber. First, the pastor who would turn the world upside down (even though like it when beverages remain in their containers — odd, that), David Robertson:

The worst place to be an atheist is in an atheist country. Conversely the best place is a country where a Christian tolerance and view of humanity is deeply rooted within the structures, institutions and psyche of the nation. The vision of a ‘benign secularism’ is at best a fantastical dream. The choice is not between a theocratic Presbyterian Taliban state run by evangelical rednecks, waffling wooly liberal clergy and authoritarian paedophile priests, or an absolutist state where religion is reduced to the status of a knitting club. Why can we not reinvent the traditional Scottish model of an open tolerant State founded upon and with the ethos of, a biblical Christianity which recognizes that neither the State nor the Church is Absolute? Our societies metro-elites want the fruits of Christianity, without the roots. That’s not how the universe works. If post –referendum Scotland is to flourish then we need to heed the mottos of our two greatest cities and make them the anthems for the renewed nation. “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain”. “Let Scotland flourish by the preaching of the Word.”

Second, from Roman Catholic professor, Donald DeMarco:

Christianity has supplied culture with invaluable benefits, including the notion that man has an inalienable dignity, that marriage is a sacred institution, and that justice and mercy should prevail. Without these benefits man is denied his proper functioning and risks being enslaved by the state. Christianity should not be reduced to something private since, in its proper mode, it confers immense benefits to culture.

More recently, two major American prelates have written thoughtful books on why Catholicism should not be private. Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., in Render Unto Caesar (2008) states that no other community than the Catholic Church understands better “why the health of our public life requires men and women of strong moral character in political service.” The Church, not the state, teaches and proclaims the importance of virtue and good character. He laments that America is now exporting “violence, greed, vulgarity, abortion, a rejection of children.”

I have no reluctance in worrying along with Pastor Robertson about the excesses of social activists, nor is it implausible that, as professor DeMarco points out, Christianity advanced certain virtues that were advantageous in ways the the pagan world’s ethics weren’t. But cheerleaders for Christianity and cherry pickers of the past will never persuade their adversaries when they ignore the bad things that Christians did, or forget about the lack of freedom and equality that accompanied established Christianity. A Christian social activist is just as scary as a secular one. Thinking that Christians running things is better than non-Christians running those same things is frankly dishonest. And here I would have thought that Christians would excel in honesty. Antinomianism anyone?

Love Hopes All Things

Published on by D. G. Hart153 Comments

So I hope the BBs won’t accuse Brian Lee of being a sissy preacher for the way he reacts to the recent news of Houston’s civil magistrates wanting to inspect pastors sermons (don’t you think they are simply doing what Geneva’s city council did to Calvin and the Company of Pastors?):

“The city of Houston demands pastors turn over sermons.” This headline, within hours of being posted on Foxnews.com, was forwarded multiple times to my inbox, with comments such as “unbelievable.”

My response? So what? Sermons are public proclamation, aren’t they?

If a government entity comes to me and demands that I turn over my sermon manuscripts, well… I think I’d be inclined to send them along. And I’d be sure to send each one with a carefully written cover letter explaining exactly how the blood of Christ redeems sinners from death and the grave. (Although good luck deciphering my rough outline, and reading my marginal handwriting. I can send you a link to the audio.)

Sermons aren’t exactly what the legal profession would call “privileged information.” (News reports suggest, however, that other “pastoral communications” might be a part of the subpoena, and insofar as those are private communications of pastors, I would fight their release.)

I grant that there are complex legal issues involved. And, seeing how it has just been a few hours since this story started to bubble up on the Fox News outrage-of-the-week radar, I make no claim to understanding the merits of the legal case.

All I can tell so far is that the city passed a controversial non-discrimination ordinance, which among other things, would allow biological males to use the ladies room, and vice versa. A petition in opposition garnered 50,000 signatures, then was thrown out on a technicality. Next, a lawsuit against the ordinance was filed, to which the city responded with a subpoena for sermons from pastors associated with churches opposed to the ordinance.

And why, I ask, should pastors be unwilling to send their sermons to whoever should request a copy?

Remember, though, that in the world of 2k, we don’t all agree on the secular stuff.

From DGH on Justification by Precision Alone Submitted on 2014/10/14 at 5:33 pm

Published on by D. G. Hart46 Comments

Mark,

You have been hanging out with Baptists too long. When you respond to the assertion, “Men may be really saved, by that grace which doctrinally they deny; and they may be justified by the imputation of that righteousness which in opinion they deny to be imputed,” with an Amen, you reveal more than you know. When you add an exclamation point, it’s tmi.

But in all seriousness, I wonder why you are not concerned about precise affirmations of justification by faith alone. Does your implicit affirmation of Reformed catholicity also include theological sloppiness (or flattening)? For instance, is this a statement that we should greet with the warm fuzzy embrace of Reformed ecumenism?

The exclusive ground of the justification of the believer in the state of justification is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but his obedience, which is simply the perseverance of the saints in the way of truth and righteousness, is necessary to his continuing in a state of justification.

Or how about this one?

The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the last day.

I wonder too if your eclectic quoting from historical sources is a Protestant version of the brick-by-brick mentality that is now afflicting Roman Catholicism:

. . . the strongest criticism of the brick by brick mentality is that it assumes that the Supreme Pontiffs have some ‘grand plan’ to restore the Church. It necessitates that we believe in some sort of supreme insight the popes have into the current crisis, some lofty vision of how to solve our current problems that we mere mortals are not privy to. Remember Benedict XVI’s “Marshall Plan” for restoring the Church? Remember how we were supposed to find coherence in the gibberish of our current Holy Father by “reading Francis through Benedict”?

This is really the terrifying crux of the matter – my dear friends, believe me, there is no plan. There never was a plan. John Paul II did not have a plan. Benedict XVI did not have a plan. Francis sure as hell does not have a plan.

Did JP2 and BXVI occasionally do wonderful things? Of course. Does Francis occasionally say something orthodox? I admit it seems to have happened. But to the extent that John Paul or Benedict or even Paul VI made some truly good moves, it was absolutely not because they had some sort of “master plan” of how to fix the crisis; rather, the opposite was in fact true. Have you ever noticed that the good things about JPII and BXVI were always erratic and mixed in with many negatives as well? In the past I have called John Paul II a “mixed bag”; all the post-Vatican II popes have been mixed bags. This is because John Paul II and Benedict were sincerely conflicted men, torn between a strong, pious pre-Conciliar tradition they cherished nostalgically, but also committed intellectually to the post-Vatican II reforms.

After the Council, when the Church was in free-fall, neither pontiff really knew what to do. They had no plan to solve the crisis they both helped create. Neither seemed to be able to reconcile their pre-Conciliar formation with their post-Conciliar experience. At the best, they seemed to have believed in some sort of vague synthesis of the traditional thesis with the progressive antithesis. Thus occasionally they did something friendly to tradition while other times working to undo it; occasionally they threw traditional Catholics a bone and other times tossed a bone to liberals; sometimes they displayed great care for Catholic Tradition while other times their disregard for it was appalling and devastating to faithful Catholics. I don’t think they ever knew how it was going to work out. John Paul II knew that the liturgy of the Eucharist had to be celebrated with reverence, but he had also committed himself to a particular form of evangelism which required things like the scandalous World Youth Day masses, the animist masses in Togo, etc. Benedict XVI, author of Dominus Iesus, certainly understood the salvific uniqueness of Jesus Christ, yet he also remained committed to a program of interreligious dialogue that brought about Assisi III and gave implicit recognition to Assisi I and II, again scandalizing the faithful.

While the conservatives bent over backwards trying to explain how all these actions were coherently orthodox and the sedevecantists coherently heretical, the fact of the matter is that there was no coherence to these actions at all. The reason Catholics disagree so vehemently about reconciling these contradictory actions is because the pontiffs themselves did not know how to reconcile them. At most they seemed to have shared a vague optimism that tradition and novelty existing side by side would somehow reconcile themselves over time.

You may think that analogy is overdone. I sure hope it is. But you don’t get to questions about marriage overnight. It may actually begin with openness to many ways of articulating and understanding church dogma.

Stay in touch.