The Audacity of St. Paul

Published on by D. G. Hart35 Comments

While some apologists for the pope are trying to convince us of infallibility’s flabbergasting attributes and effects, Paul — the one who rebuked the first pope — had the temerity to suggest a foundation other than infallibility for the work and witness of the church:

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Cor 3:10-15)

Just before this, Paul expresses caution about belonging to church parties, which in chapter one included Paul, Apollos, and Peter.

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? (1-4)

I wonder what he would have made of the high papalists. But perhaps without an infallible basis for wonder, I am forbidden to do so.

Lutherans Did Not Spook Machen

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Thanks to Gene Veith for the reminder:

Moreover, even among those who, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, hold that the Bible is not only an infallible rule of faith and practice but the only infallible rule of faith and practice, there have been great differences of opinion as to what the Bible teaches.

These differences do not concern merely one or two small details, but they are so extensive that they have led to the establishment of various systems of doctrine, each of which, be it remembered, claims to be the system taught in the Bible.

The Lutheran system is one system; the Arminian system, widely held in the Methodist churches until it gave place to the completely destructive Modernism which generally holds sway there now, is another; the Reformed system (often called, chiefly by its opponents, the Calvinistic system) is still another.

Which of these systems of doctrine, which of these ways of interpreting the Bible, does the ordination pledge require ministers and elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to hold?

There can really be no doubt about the answer to that question. The ordination pledge requires the candidates to hold distinctly the Reformed or Calvinistic system. That is the system which is set forth with a clearness which surely leaves nothing to be desired in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, which are the Standards of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Be it noticed that the candidates do not subscribe to the Reformed system of doctrine merely as one allowable system among many allowable systems. They do not even merely subscribe to it as the best system. But they subscribe to it as the system that is true.

Being true, it is true for everyone. It is true for Methodists and Lutherans just as much as Presbyterians, and we cannot treat as of no moment the differences which separate us from Methodists and Lutherans without being unfaithful to the Word of God.

Does that mean that we cannot have Christian fellowship with our Methodist or our Lutheran brethren? It means nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we can have very precious Christian fellowship with them.

At that point I want to utter a word of personal testimony. I just want to say that in these struggles of the last few years against blatant unbelief in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., one of the most precious gifts that God has given me––and I have no doubt but that many of those with whom I have been associated would say the same thing- has been the Christian fellowship that I have enjoyed with many of my Lutheran brethren, especially those of the “Missouri Synod.” How often, when I have felt tempted to be discouraged, has some message come to me from them bidding me be of good courage and remember that the battle is the Lord’s! How often have I in turn rejoiced when I have thought of the way in which that noble Church [I mean the Missouri Synod] cultivating Christian learning at its great Concordia Seminary and bringing up its people truly in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, has stood firmly against the unbelief and indifferentism of the day!

Will those brethren be offended if they read what I have written regarding my devotion to the Reformed Faith and my belief that it is the system of doctrine taught in God’s Word?

I feel rather sure that they will not. You see, one of the things that unite me so closely to them is that they are not indifferentists or interdenominationalists, but are profoundly convinced that it is necessary to hold with all our souls to whatever system of doctrine God’s Word teaches.

I wish indeed that they were adherents of the Reformed Faith, as they no doubt wish that I were a Lutheran. But I stand far closer to them than I should stand if they held the differences between the Reformed and the Lutheran system to be matters of no moment, so that we could proceed at once to form an “organic union” based upon some vague common measure between the two great historic branches of the Protestant Church.

Once A Bible Thumper . . .

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News of the theft of John Paul II’s blood from a reliquary in Italy made me curious about what Jason and the Callers have said about relics. Turns out they aren’t shy in their religious affections for relics, veneration of the saints, and even magic. But the difference between the Callers and the bishops is that the latter chalk up reverence for things like vials of blood from deceased popes to popular piety. The Callers, as good logocentric former Protestants, claim biblical warrant.

For instance, here is the church’s catechism on relics (the only mention according to the accompanying search engine of “relics”):

Popular piety

1674 Besides sacramental liturgy and sacramentals, catechesis must take into account the forms of piety and popular devotions among the faithful. The religious sense of the Christian people has always found expression in various forms of piety surrounding the Church’s sacramental life, such as the veneration of relics, visits to sanctuaries, pilgrimages, processions, the stations of the cross, religious dances, the rosary, medals,180 etc. (2688, 2669, 2678)

1675 These expressions of piety extend the liturgical life of the Church, but do not replace it. They “should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some way derived from it and lead the people to it, since in fact the liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any of them.”181

1676 Pastoral discernment is needed to sustain and support popular piety and, if necessary, to purify and correct the religious sense which underlies these devotions so that the faithful may advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ.182 Their exercise is subject to the care and judgment of the bishops and to the general norms of the Church. (426)

At its core the piety of the people is a storehouse of values that offers answers of Christian wisdom to the great questions of life. The Catholic wisdom of the people is capable of fashioning a vital synthesis…. It creatively combines the divine and the human, Christ and Mary, spirit and body, communion and institution, person and community, faith and homeland, intelligence and emotion. This wisdom is a Christian humanism that radically affirms the dignity of every person as a child of God, establishes a basic fraternity, teaches people to encounter nature and understand work, provides reasons for joy and humor even in the midst of a very hard life. For the people this wisdom is also a principle of discernment and an evangelical instinct through which they spontaneously sense when the Gospel is served in the Church and when it is emptied of its content and stifled by other interests.183

Now, hear the Call:

In the worldview presented to us by Sacred Scripture, we frequently see material objects take power from and serve as a connection to the person they came from—even the remains of those who have died. We see frequent examples of the importance of where remains lie and of marking the sites where those remains are laid.

In Acts 19:11-12, we see the following:

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

And in Acts 5:12-16:

Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico. None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem. And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.

And of course, miracles were also performed through Jesus’ own clothes, but lest foul be called on citing that this happened through the Godman uniquely, the examples above were performed through the agency of mere men and their clothes and shadows. So a biblical worldview must have room for inanimate objects as vessels of God’s power.

GOD OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Now, my Protestant brothers may raise the objection that these examples happened through living persons, not dead ones as is often the case with Catholic relics. Not so fast.

In 2 Kings 13:20-21, we read:

So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, behold, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha, and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.

So now our Biblical worldview has to allow for healing through inanimate objects touched by holy people, as well as the healing power of the bones of the holy dead.

A WORLD SHOT THROUGH WITH MAGIC
We do not live in a world that is qualitatively different than the world in which these things took place. In fact, you could support the idea that we should still expect these things to take place by the same logic as Reformed Christians rightly argue that it would be strange if 1st century Christians didn’t baptize their children. The truly odd occurrence would be if miracles through the agency of the bones and belongings of God’s people stopped happening.

And then there is this on the affinity between relics and the Mass:

It is one thing to dismiss something as peripheral to the faith of the ancient Church, but to dismiss something that was ubiquitous and central to devotion and even to liturgy? G.J.C. Snoek had made just this point in his monograph Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction. Snoek showed just how much the Christian liturgy itself had been influenced by the ancient cult of relics. I began to realize that dismissing saints and relics was to dismiss the same Church that gave us the Ecumenical councils, Augustine’s doctrines of grace and justification, and the canon of Scripture. I needed to look into this more carefully.

Saints and Relics as Biblical

As I explored this conundrum, the first thing I began to appreciate was just how biblical the practice really was. I realized that the veneration of relics, belief in their miraculous powers, and in the intercession of departed saints and angels was deeply Hebraic and Jewish. We find testimony to it in such places as 2 Kings 13:20-21, 2 Maccabees 15:12-16, and Tobit 12:12-15, considered especially in comparison to Revelation 5:8. (At this point, it was immaterial to me whether Maccabees and Tobit should be considered canonical texts. It was enough that they expressed a historic Jewish belief in these concepts.)

Of course, as Bryan Cross will surely remind me, nothing presented here disproves the truth of the Callers’ assertions. But it sure does make it hard to believe that they ever heard and meditated on Protestant Christianity:

Question 94. What does God enjoin in the first commandment?

Answer: That I, as sincerely as I desire the salvation of my own soul, avoid and flee from all idolatry, (a) sorcery, soothsaying, superstition, (b) invocation of saints, or any other creatures; (c) and learn rightly to know the only true God; (d) trust in him alone, (e) with humility (f) and patience submit to him; (g) expect all good things from him only; (h) love, (i) fear, (j) and glorify him with my whole heart; (k) so that I renounce and forsake all creatures, rather than commit even the least thing contrary to his will. (l)

(a) 1 John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. 1 Cor.6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 1 Cor.6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Cor.10:7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. 1 Cor.10:14 Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. (b) Lev.19:31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God. Deut.18:9 When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. Deut.18:10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Deut.18:11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. Deut.18:12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. (c) Matt.4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Rev.19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Rev.22:8 And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. Rev.22:9 Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God. (d) John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (e) Jer.17:5 Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. Jer.17:7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. (f) 1 Pet.5:5 Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. 1 Pet.5:6 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: (g) Heb.10:36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. Col.1:11 Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Rom.5:3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; Rom.5:4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope: 1 Cor.10:10 Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Philip.2:14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings: (h) Ps.104:27 These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. Ps.104:28 That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Ps.104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Ps.104:30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. Isa.45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (i) Deut.6:5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. Matt.22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (j) Deut.6:2 That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Ps.111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever. Prov.1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Prov.9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. Matt.10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (k) Matt.4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Deut.10:20 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. Deut.10:21 He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen. (l) Matt.5:29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Matt.5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Matt.10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

Question 95. What is idolatry?
Answer: Idolatry is, instead of, or besides that one true God, who has manifested himself in his word, to contrive, or have any other object, in which men place their trust. (a)

(a) Eph.5:5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. 1 Chron.16:26 For all the gods of the people are idols: but the LORD made the heavens. Philip.3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) Gal.4:8 Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. Eph.2:12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: 1 John 2:23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also. 2 John 1:9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. John 5:23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. (Heidelberg Catechism with proof texts)

Court of Sanctification?

Published on by D. G. Hart40 Comments

While wading through the snow yesterday during my Sabbath constitutional, I listened to the Reformed Forum’s interview with Mark Jones about his book on antinomianism. Again, questions surrounding justification and sanctification are still in play. At one point in the discussion, in relation to the notion that good works are filthy rags, Jones remarked that good works, of course, will not stand up in the court of justification. He stopped there but that had me scratching my head. Is there a court room of sanctification? If the problem with Lutheranism and its Reformed friends is an overly forensic understanding of the gospel, then where on earth did court of (the renovative) sanctification come from?

Richard Sibbes to the rescue (from Jones’ book):

I say there are two courts: one of justification, another of sanctification. In the court of justification, merits are nothing worth, insufficient; but in the court of sanctification, they are ensigns of a sanctified course, so they are jewels and ornaments. (45)

This may help to raise the stakes of sanctification for those who for some reason want to see a grander account of salvation than justification alone, though Sibbes sounds more like the counting house than the court room. But is it not the case that the only way you get into the court of sanctification (if such a court does exist) is through the court of sanctification justification? And at the end of the day, isn’t the court of justification the one where perfection is required and where good works cannot

merit pardon of sin, or eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come; and the infinite distance that is between us and God, whom, by them, we can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins, but when we have done all we can, we have done but our duty, and are unprofitable servants: and because, as they are good, they proceed from his Spirit; and as they are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment. (CF 16.5)

And Here I Thought the Greatest Cost was the One Christ Paid

Published on by D. G. Hart34 Comments

Brian O’Neel thinks that the process of making saints has slighted the church in the U.S.:

My conviction is born out of a project on which I’m working. I am building a database of every saint and where each is buried. This catalogue is grouped by country, then by city and then by location.

So far, Italy has 82 pages. France, the next biggest country, has 34; and Germany, with the third greatest total, has 13. Korea — which has had the faith for less time than we have — has the fourth highest total of saints by country.

The United States has six and a half pages. Not bad, you think, right? Except that many of the entries on the U.S. document are shrines and places with reliquary chapels (e.g., St. Anthony’s in Pittsburgh). Or they are places that have had the benefit of getting a Roman martyr’s remains gifted to them or have a relic, such as of St. Anne or Blessed John Paul II.

There are a few such places on the aforementioned lists, granted. By and large, however, the above registers are comprised of homegrown saints.

Is it really possible we have no more saints in our nation than those already noted? Has not every diocese produced a saint? The questions are rhetorical. Of course each has. Of course we have more. It is possible — probable, even — that the Church Triumphant gains a new American every day. Unfortunately, we don’t know of them.

He goes on to explain why local saints are preferable to foreigners:

. . . it’s one thing to imitate or pray for the intercession of St. Anthony, who lived in Padua, Italy, in the 13th century. It’s another to do so with someone who lived in your back yard, who visited the places you know, who touched the things you can still touch.

And certainly, with the experience of nearly 500 years of Catholicism on these shores (the Gospel first came to what is now the United States in 1542), we have more than enough examples of holiness to increase the known number of American saints.

Even if the U.S. has lots of saints (or potential ones), do American parishes and dioceses have the cash?

Granted, many practical impediments exist to beginning such an undertaking. Candidly, the biggest of these is the cost.

Causes of saints are hugely expensive. There are witnesses to depose, evidence to collect, out-of-pocket expenses to reimburse, occasional stipends, if not salaries, to disburse, not to mention printing of prayer cards and brochures and other expenditures. All of this can cost between $250,000 to $1 million, spread out over many years.

Indeed, part of the expense comes from the fact that it often takes decades, even centuries, to pursue someone’s canonization. (For this reason, please don’t throw away those fundraising solicitations you get in the mail from, say, the Bishop Frederick Baraga cause.)

Not to worry, though. The Early Church Fathers were all over prayer cards and fundraising.

A Supreme Bishop is a Wonderful Thing

Published on by D. G. Hart60 Comments

. . . except when you don’t follow him. Hear Bryan Cross:

Hence Clark cannot without inconsistency simultaneously stand as a Protestant on Luther’s “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason …” and decry both “cafeteria Calvinism” and the very biblicism by which Luther and Calvin justified their rebellion against and separation from the magisterium of the Church into which they both had been baptized. Clark is trying to maintain middle positions that are not available, such as the position according to which confessions formed without magisterial authority but rather as expressions of private judgments concerning the meaning of Scripture are to be treated as having such ecclesial authority, and the position in which ‘church authority’ chosen on the basis of its agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture is an actual binding authority, and not something that loses its ‘authority’ as soon as it fails to conform to the criterion by which one chose it as ‘authoritative.’ But when one sees the delusion of derivative authority, one sees that the solution cannot be to write another confession, or even revise a confession. And when one sees the farce of painting an ecclesial-authority target around one’s interpretive arrow, one sees that the solution cannot be to fire one’s arrow again, and paint another target. At that point, the paradigm begins to crumble, and one either consigns oneself to solo scriptura biblicism, or one begins to seek out the answer to the following question: Where is the Church Christ founded?

Hear Pope Francis:

“While these drawbacks are real, they do not justify rejecting social media; rather, they remind us that communication is ultimately a human rather than technological achievement … We need, for example, to recover a certain sense of deliberateness and calm. This calls for time and the ability to be silent and to listen … Effective Christian witness is not about bombarding people with religious messages, but about our willingness to be available to others “by patiently and respectfully engaging their questions and their doubts.”

Francis uses the example of the Good Samaritan as an illustration: “Let our communication be a balm which relieves pain and a fine wine which gladdens hearts. May the light we bring to others not be the result of cosmetics or special effects, but rather of our being loving and merciful “neighbours” to those wounded and left on the side of the road.” The image of the Good Samaritan was also a warning against the risks of communication: “Whenever communication is primarily aimed at promoting consumption or manipulating others, we are dealing with a form of violent aggression like that suffered by the man in the parable.”

I appreciate Bryan’s candor about Luther and Calvin’s rebellion and separation from the magisterium of his church. I don’t think it’s going to be a very effective Call to Communion (not to mention that it doesn’t do much justice to the prayer for Christian unity). But if Luther and Calvin were supposed to obey the pope, why doesn’t Bryan Cross need to?

Competing Paradigms and Church Politics

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First, a paradigm that Bryan Cross has not considered — the Italian one:

Anyone who knows the inner reality of Catholic life is well aware that at the retail level, there’s always a sort of negotiation that goes on between what the rules say and what actually happens. It’s not about hypocrisy or disobedience, but adapting universal norms to the infinite complexity of real-life human situations.

I was once at a talk given by a senior Vatican official when a questioner said he had a sin he wasn’t ready to confess but still felt drawn to receive Communion, even though the rules say he shouldn’t.

“The law of the church is clear,” the official responded. “You have to go to confession first.” Then the official said, “But now let me talk to you person to person. As a priest, I can’t substitute my conscience for yours. I can’t tell you to go or not to go. You have to make that choice in conscience, always bearing in mind that it must be a well-formed conscience.”

That’s the Italian view of law, which permeates the psychology of the church — law is an aspiration, not an absolute, which must be adapted to individual circumstances.

Second, the people’s paradigm in contrast to their bishop’s or the pope’s:

Medjugorje: On Monday, a commission created under Benedict XVI and presided over by Italy’s powerful Cardinal Camillo Ruini submitted the results of a four-year inquest into the alleged apparitions and revelations of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will be up to Francis to decide what to do, though some felt he tipped his hand in mid-November during a homily in his morning Mass in which he said that Mary “is not a postmaster sending messages every day.” In the Jan. 23 edition of Corriere della Sera, famed Vatican writer Vittorio Messori said it’ll be a painful decision whichever way it goes: If Francs rules the apparitions are false, millions of faithful who flock to Medjugorje will feel deceived and betrayed; if he says they’re authentic, it would be “devastating” for canon law, which leaves to the local bishop the right to judge such phenomena in his diocese, and two bishops in a row have said no. For that reason, Messori predicted the ruling will be that “for now” there’s no proof these events are supernatural rather than the more definitive, “there’s proof they’re not supernatural.”

Last, the transparency paradigm (which isn’t necessarily the one to use with the “millions of faithful” when it comes to apparitions):

This week, Scarano faced another arrest warrant on charges of money laundering, as prosecutors charged he paid around 60 people in cash to write checks to him for roughly 10,000 euro, then used those checks to create a false paper trail to cover as much as $10 million stashed in various accounts, including the Vatican bank. . . .

Faced with the clamor these two storylines are generating, the Vatican response so far has been a deafening silence.

Not so long ago, one could have counted on somebody loudly questioning whether civil investigators were overstepping their boundaries by intruding on the Vatican’s sovereign autonomy. One recalls, for instance, that when former Naples Cardinal Michele Giordano learned his phone had been wiretapped as part of an investigation of a real estate scam orchestrated by his brother in the late 1990s, the cardinal testily snapped, “I could have been talking to the pope!”

It’s also easy to imagine that someone might have implied, if not stated outright, that these investigations are part of a political, media, and judicial campaign to drag the church through the mud, that the charges themselves are false or exaggerated, or that the Vatican’s role in the story is so negligible as to make even mentioning it gratuitous.

This time around, however, Vatican officials seem content to allow the criminal probes to play out without protest or perceptions of interference.

While Francis has not put out a formal gag order, people who otherwise might have been inclined to pop off seem to have gotten the memo: If transparency and accountability are the new watchwords, then doing or saying anything that smacks of obstruction of justice is probably not a good career move.

If You're Not Butch, You're Not Much

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

The good Rabbi proved once again the appeal of Rush Limbaugh-style arguments to the cultural transformers. His couple of recent blasts at Old Life may have made him feel especially masculine, but I don’t think he advanced the discussion. Wait. This isn’t a discussion. It is arm wrestling (or some body part.)

But while Brett thinks that spirituality of the church Christianity “is no Christianity” because it fails to confess Jesus before men in a manly way — I guess only women read Old Life — what are we to make of his failure to be as critical of the Christian Reformed Church as he is of two-kingdom folks? Judging by his blog, he is as silent about the quirks of the CRC as I apparently am of U.S. secularizers and sodomites. Does that make him an effeminate minister (wouldn’t be a problem in the CRC, right?)?

Of course, he may not think the CRC is worthy of critique, though his comments on ordination and reception indicate ambivalence:

Today I underwent examination and passed unanimously and so I am now officially what I have been unofficially for the past 13 years, to wit, an ordained minister in good standing in the Christian Reformed Church. It seems the only minor issue was my strong rejection of open theism. I think I said that it was heresy and a canker that needed to be ripped out of the Church. I never would have imagined that sentiment could have been controversial in the least. There were also some questions about my rejection of women to hold ordained positions but apparently I convinced them that such a position isn’t akin to being a knuckle scraping troglodyte who habitually grabs and drags stray women by their hair. I probably should have worked harder to convince people that my position is the position that esteems women and reflects godly compassion for women while the contrary position in reality does just the opposite but I think most of the people in Classis’s position on that is pretty much set in concrete and not even my eloquence could have changed that.

I have mixed thoughts and emotions about my newly minted status with the CRC. First, I realize that the CRC is not a perfect denomination and has some challenges before it but as I map out the Reformed denominational landscape I do not see a denomination that isn’t without its substantial issues. In the end I think all of us, who are trying to be epistemologically self conscious about being Reformed, are, in many respects, in the same boat together, and together, regardless of what Reformed denomination we are in, we are either going to survive together or we are going to capsize together.

It does make you wonder if Rabbi Brett can be so patient with the CRC, why can’t he do the same with others with whom he so violently disagrees. Is it that neo-Calvinism of the Left is better than spirituality of the church? But if effeminate spirituality is an indication of no Christianity, what does it mean when the Rabbi apparently fails to live up to his own words within his own communion? (I qualify this because I am judging only by his blog.)

Noah Millman's On a Roll

Published on by D. G. Hart48 Comments

First he renders Inside Llewyn Davis a great movie (I left the theater scratching my head about a good movie that defied the Coen’s conventions):

There’s a poetic rightness to the fact that “Inside Llewyn Davis,” one of the best films of the year, was not nominated for Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The latest from the Coen Brothers, “Inside Llewyn Davis” does just about everything it can to alienate voters, starting with the fact that it’s about a raging misanthrope. Like “Her” but in the opposite emotional key, this is another story where form and subject are perfectly mated, and where the story wouldn’t work at all if they were not.

The Coen Brothers have always been interested in losers. But never before have they gotten us so close to the heart of one of those losers, and a loser who knows that he deserves to win, and knows he just isn’t going to, and is consumed by the bitterness of that condition. Like “A Serious Man,” this feels like a very personal film for them, but whereas “A Serious Man” wrestled with origins – specifically their Jewish identity – “Inside Llewyn Davis” wrestles with destiny, and the possibility of not having one.

Played with wonderful naturalism by relative newcomer Oscar Isaac, Llewyn Davis is a folk singer in New York in 1961, right before folk is about to explode out of its niche with the emergence of Bob Dylan. But Llewyn isn’t going anywhere. He can’t afford even a rathole apartment downtown, and crashes on the couches of the vanishingly few New Yorkers who don’t hate his guts. One of them is his more successful friend’s wife (Carey Mulligan, giving a nicely subtle performance – watch her eyes while she sings), who informs him she’s knocked up, possibly by him. Another is an uptown academic couple who are faultlessly generous with him, and whose generosity he rewards by lashing out, cursing, saying he feels like a trained poodle.

He’s got more than his share of rotten luck – beaten up by inexplicably malevolent cowboys, robbed of even his minimal royalties by his rotten manager, trapped for hours on the way to Chicago with an outlandishly insulting old jazz man who won’t stop poking him with his canes (the only out-and-out Coen grotesque in the film, played by John Goodman). But he also makes his own bad luck, telling his sister (Jeanine Serralles) to throw out his old stuff (including his old mariner’s license, which he turns out to need), refusing royalties on a ridiculous novelty song that his friend (the one he cuckolded, played with delightfully deadpan squareness by Justin Timberlake) wrote so that he can get the cash quicker (only to see the song do well), and, when he finally gets a chance to audition for a manager who could really take him places (F. Murray Abraham), picking an obscure and depressing song guaranteed to turn him away. And his response to every piece of bad mazel he suffers is the same, whether he’s obviously implicated or not: a sour conviction that it figures, that the universe has it in for him one way or another.

With one exception. In what is certainly a screenwriting joke (given the ubiquity of Blake Snyder’s book) this deeply unattractive character does one noble thing. He saves a cat. Or tries to.

Then Millman wonders about the value of using w-w to debate atheists who use Pat Robertson as an interlocutor:

If I understand [Ross Douthat’s] argument now, it is that the new atheists’ worldview lacks “coherence” – whereas other world views, including some other varieties of atheism, would not lack that coherence so drastically.

I suspect that’s true. But what I would say in response is that virtually nobody has a “coherent” worldview. I’m pretty sure I don’t. And it’s only a certain sort of personality that feels a psychic need for a worldview characterized by coherence. I might even go further and say that some religions are more prone to seek that particular grail than others. I’d certainly rank Catholicism far higher on the “seeks coherence” scale than, say, Judaism, or the LDS Church, to say nothing of faith traditions like Hinduism that don’t even have a clear mechanism for defining the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and that hence by definition cannot provide that kind of coherence.

If guys like Bryan Cross were to read more Millman and watch more movies by the Coens, would the Call to Communion be funnier and more effective?

In But Not of America (part four)

Published on by D. G. Hart95 Comments

During the Americanist controversy for Roman Catholics — Protestants had their own version with the Second Pretty Good Awakening — the question was how to bring U.S. bishops who promoted American patriotism and nationalism in ways the Vatican regarded as harmful into line with the papacy. What is remarkable about recent post-Vatican II history in the U.S. is that this question has shifted from the bishops to the laity (though only a few are raising the question). Jason and the Callers may want us to think that papal authority is just what overly opinionated Protestants ordered, but they don’t notice or try to account how their theory squares with the seemingly infinite variety of lay Roman Catholics who speak for the church in ways that used to be well above their pay, pray, and obey grade. In other words, the problem isn’t renegade bishops. It is laity who think they actually understand and can explain what a hierarchical church confesses, worships, and teaches.

Michael Sean Winters reminded me of this when he posted an excerpt from William F. Buckley, Jr.’s reaction to John Paul II’s encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.

This Tweedledum-Tweedledee view of the crystallized division between the visions of Marx, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot over against those of Locke, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Churchill makes Christian blood boil with the kind of indignation that fueled the spirit of the Christian martyrs who have died by the millions since 1917 imploring God to relieve mankind of the curse of what at the hands of the Pope in this encyclical becomes merely one of ‘two systems’ grown ‘suspicious and fearful’ of the other’s domination. Obviously, in the 102 pages one can find the ritual Christian affirmations. But they are swamped by a theological version of the kind of historical revisionism generally associated with modern nihilists. One prays that the Holy Father will move quickly to correct an encyclical heart-tearingly misbegotten.