Tribalists All

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

While six middle-aged men continue to receive their comeuppance for challenging the soundness of rap and hip-hop, the imbroglio over whether Mark Driscoll plagiarized Peter Jones continues. (I don’t know why people are not debating whether Driscoll should even be writing books.) Miles Mullin writes a gloomy assessment of evangelicalism thanks to the structural problems that the Driscoll affair reveals:

Because of the personality-driven leadership inherent in contemporary evangelicalism, the tribalism it nurtures, and the reality that most of American evangelicalism subsists in some variation of the free church tradition, the final outcome of this story is clear. There is no authority that can adjudicate this matter other than the authority upon which both Driscoll and Mefferd have built their ministries: evangelical popular opinion. . . . Thus, regardless of whether or not Mark Driscoll truly plagiarized in A Call to Resurgence(and other books) or whether Janet Mefferd lied about Driscoll hanging up, their tribes will defend them to the end.

This is the troubling reality of the personality-based leadership that encompasses much of American evangelicalism. Often, charisma and dynamic communication skills trump character and integrity as popular appeal wins the day. And for those of us who wish it were otherwise, there is no court of appeal with the authority to hear our case.

I am not sure about the distinction between charisma and dynamic communication on the one side and character and integrity on the other. In the world of mass media no one has the kind of personal knowledge that allows us to tell whether a figure has any more character and integrity than he does charisma and rhetorical skills. Someone who actually holds an office of authority could function as an umpire in such a dispute. And said office-holder would have authority no matter what his gifts or integrity (unless of course he broke the rules that pertained to his office). In other words, an ecclesiastical officer could decide this matter (as well as an officer of the court) if Driscoll were part of a church overseen by officers who assented to church authority.

Now I can see where some might think this takes me, right in the direction of Jason and the Callers’ boy-have-we-got-a-solution-for-you appeal to papal supremacy. And that is exactly where I’d like to go since it seems to (all about) me that without temporal authority the pope’s spiritual office has descended to the levels of charisma, rhetorical skills, integrity, and character. Before Vatican 2 the papacy could claim greater authority and generally commanded it. But since the 1950s with the greater prosperity of Roman Catholics in the U.S. and greater academic accomplishments by Roman Catholic scholars, even papal supremacy does not command the conformity that it once did when the people prayed, paid, and obeyed. For instance, the Vatican’s power to police Roman Catholic universities has arguably never been weaker (despite Ex Corde Ecclesiae).

Here is one recent story where Roman Catholic professors are appealing to Pope Francis’ off the cuff remarks to challenge their administrations:

Pope Francis surprised many last month following the publication of his first full-length interview, in which he offered a less doctrinaire stance on issues such as homosexuality and abortion than any of his predecessors.

“I am no one to judge,” he said in response a question about gay people, echoing previous comments he’d made to media on the topic this summer and signaling to some that the Vatican was becoming more moderate. Somewhat similarly, the pope said that the church has grown “obsessed” with doctrine — at the expense of larger spiritual matters.

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” he said. “I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that.”

But within days of the publication of the Vatican-approved interview, which appeared in the U.S. in the Jesuit magazine America, several American Roman Catholic institutions took a harder line on those exact issues.

The apparent disconnect led some faculty members at Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount Universities, which recently dropped coverage for elective abortions from their standard health insurance plans, and Providence College, which banned a gay marriage advocate from speaking on campus, to wonder whether their administrations had gotten the message.

Meanwhile, the theologians whom John Paul II tried to make more accountable through Ex Corde Ecclesiae are raising questions of their own:

An international group of prominent Catholic theologians have called the church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality “incomprehensible” and are asking bishops around the world to take seriously the expertise of lay people in their preparations for a global meeting of the prelates at the Vatican next year.

Church teaching on issues like contraception and same-sex marriage, the theologians write, are based on “abstract notions of natural law and [are] outdated, or at the very least scientifically uninformed” and “are for the most part incomprehensible to the majority of the faithful.”

Addressing next year’s meeting of church leaders, known as a Synod of Bishops, they say that previous such meetings involved “only carefully hand-picked members of the laity.”

Those meetings, they write, “offered no critical voice and ignored abundant evidence that the teaching of the church on marriage and sexuality was not serving the needs of the faithful.”

Of course, an apologist could say that this changes nothing. The pope is still in charge. Which of course is true in a sense. But his being-in-chargedness is not exactly evident in large sectors of the church, any more than Protestants have some way to adjudicate the Driscoll affair. And if we recall how popular Francis is compared to Benedict XVI, the categories of charisma and character turn out to be as crucial for a pope’s clout in the modern church as it is for celebrity pastors among Protestants.

Which is just one way of saying that in the modern world where churches are “merely” spiritual institutions, without backup from the state — the real power in contemporary affairs, Roman Catholics and Protestants are both shooting blanks. (Eastern Orthodox may be different when you can have titles like this one — His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch.) And that may explain why so many popes, now regarded as being products of time and place, the ones who oversaw Inquisitions, abducted Jewish boys, and condemned all aspects of modern social life, had a point. If they were going to retain their power, it needed to be powerfully palpable and visible.

What Mechanism Fixes This?

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Ross Douthat describes a world that is hard to square with The Call:

There are many Catholics, as I’ve pointed out before, who dissent from church teaching on various issues in a “soft” way that doesn’t really shape their relationship to the church — and this population may be pretty content with a change in tone and emphasis (and press coverage!) that doesn’t otherwise lead to dramatic shifts. (This is roughly what John Allen has in mind when he describes Francis as potentially “a pope for the Catholic middle.”) Then, in an overlapping category, there are self-defined “liberal Catholics” for whom economic concerns are much more crucial to their self-definition than either moral or theological debates, and who are likely to be similarly content with a papacy that seems to be foregrounding and validating their issues even if it’s also reaffirming traditional doctrine on sex, marriage and the family.

Then at the opposite extreme there are liberal Catholics (and many lapsed and semi-lapsed Catholics) whose vision is more comprehensively hostile to the church as it has existed and exists, and whose temporary happiness with Pope Francis is likely to dissipate in the absence of the kind of sweeping, Protestantizing change that more orthodox believers consider not only undesirable but impossible. Where this category overlaps with the various secular and non-Catholic voices who have embraced the “Good Pope Francis” narrative, you can see the potential for an eventual large-scale backlash, of the kind that Joshua Keating hints at in a piece for Slate today, which ends up dismissing Francis’s grasp for a religious middle as all salesmanship and no substance, and the new pope himself as just another Vatican reactionary.

Then, finally, you have Catholics who are morally/culturally/theologically liberal but also realistic about the ways in which Catholicism can and cannot change — by which mean I mean that they want to see their church address and adapt to certain post-sexual revolution realities, but don’t expect or desire a revolution that suddenly makes every church-versus-culture conflict on these issues disappear.

If Jason and the Callers have an answer, I’d like to know.

Multiculturalists All

Published on by D. G. Hart115 Comments

The people lining up to defend and laud rap and hip-hop, some from the very demographic of middle-aged white men who recently started a kerfuffle by objecting to Reformed rap and hip-hop, is a curious and not entirely encouraging development. I am referring particularly to the efforts by Ligon Duncan (and now Al Mohler) to distance themselves from the panel of family-friendly Calvinistic speakers who were filmed saying what many have taken to be racist, elitist, and culturalist assertions about rap and hip-hop. I am not sure if this is a substitute for the sporty red convertible, or an attempt to show once and for all one’s integrationist bona fides. (The next time Anthony Bradley writes about racism in the white evangelical church, he should remember this incident.) But whatever the incident may say about middle-aged men with ties to a region of the country where race relations have not been good (though the rest of the country was no picnic of integration), it says lots of discouraging things about the health of our culture.

Maybe I am too old to get rap or hip-hop. Frankly, I like melody in a song. Is that Eurocentric or middle-aged? Maybe, but listening to poetry, no matter how good or vicious, with some kind of rhythm or progression of chords, has never struck me as all musically appealing. It strikes me as the “musical” equivalent of The Three Stooges’ comedy. I never was a fan of those three white guys and have never understood their appeal. But I wonder if the panelists who objected to rap would be receiving the same kind of rebukes had they said similar things about The Three Stooges — the culture out of which the humor emerges is questionable, the themes betray vicious parts of human nature, such creative expressions cannot be redeemed. For the record, “disobedient cowards” was not helpful. (Also, does it get me any street cred if I liked but didn’t love 8 Mile?)

Now, if they had said about The Simpsons what they said about rap, should I get on my high horse because I find that cartoon series to be about as accomplished as Rocky and Bullwinkle? I would hope not. Not to go all elitist on anyone, but I am convinced that as good as The Simpsons is, I don’t think it will endure. Sure, it will live on in syndication for as long as its fans have access to cable. But it is not a creative form that will stand the test of time like the one that says a book on Shakespeare has much more of a chance of gaining an acquisition editor’s attention than a book on Ricky Gervais’ original series, The Office. Yes, Shakespeare has the advantage over Gervais of being assigned in all sorts of schools, all over the world. But Shakespeare does speak to a wider and more profound range of themes than The Office, and so can reach audiences that are old and young, Asian and Canadian, boy and woman.

But I am not sure that defenders of Reformed or Christian rappers are capable of seeing the difference between The Three Stooges and Shakespeare when they analyze like this:

Culture is the milieu that emerges when lots of image bearers start playing and working with creation, and in a fallen world, it’s always a mixed bag of glory and tragedy. It’s glorious because humanity is glorious. We are shockingly imaginative, capable of great compassion and generosity. It’s tragic because we’re blind and broken, capable of hatefulness, selfishness, murder and exploitation.

Wisdom recognizes that all cultures are just such a mixed bag. This is just as true of Western European post-reformation culture as it is of medieval culture, contemporary middle Eastern culture, and contemporary Hip Hop Culture. Each has their idols. Each has their glimpses of glory. Each has a way of showing off the beauty of creation. And each one desperately needs the purifying power of the gospel. . . .

Make no mistake about it: this is a gospel issue, plain and simple. I want to say this very carefully. Christian rap is not a gospel issue because Christians need to do it, but because their freedom to do it – their freedom to let the gospel take root in the soil of their culture and bear fruit in their communities, with their voices, sounds, and heart language, is something worth dying for.

It’s a gospel issue because what they demand – abandoning and replacing their culture with something more “appropriate” – is another gospel altogether.

It’s the reason Paul wrote the book of Galatians. It’s the reason he rebuked the Judaisers. To condemn a whole culture, to demand cultural conformity is to add on to the free, culture-renewing grace of Jesus and say, “Jesus plus our cultural norms.”

I don’t know why it would be offensive to put rap and hip-hop in the same ephemeral category of The Three Stooges, The Simpsons, and Ricky Gervais. To do so is just as implicitly elitist and hierarchical as the white-guy panel was. One difference is race. But were these panelists really referring to race or to a sense that some forms of cultural expression are worse than others? Race may have played a part in their comments, though the rush to find the racist code in their language despite their explicit silence is hardly the best evidence of Christian charity. Still, the overwhelming urge to laud and defend rap as just one more valid and good cultural expression is not a good sign. It shows that the so-called conservatives in the culture wars are just as multicultural as the people who continue to promote race, class, and gender as significant categories for understanding culture.

A World Without Winners and Losers

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

We saw Philomena last week and I was relieved that the movie did not go overboard in targeting Irish nuns as the tyrants they were (as I’ve heard) before Rome adopted the post-Vatican 2 pose of embracing rather than scolding the modern world. I have heard about nuns from all sorts of cradle — now former — Roman Catholics who experienced a highly charged encounter with Christianity where the stakes for sin and disobedience could be devastating. Philomena illustrates this well in the instance of a girl, reared by nuns in a convent, who has an illegitimate child and who needs — as the nuns explain — to atone for her sin. This atonement means having the child taken away for adoption and then suffering the sorrow of lost contact with the much wanted and much loved child for the rest of her life. It may be my fundie past, but I kept wondering why the nuns did not present this unwed mother with the forgiveness of sins that comes through Christ’s atonement. “Oh, that’s right. They are Roman Catholic and don’t believe in forgiveness of sins the way that Protestants do.” Maybe that’s a simplistic conclusion. Maybe Rome was far more nuanced than that. But when you do believe the Eucharist is a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice, and that it can be said for the dead, as opposed to the Protestant/author-to-Hebrews view that Christ’s sacrifice was once for all and that it atoned for all believers’ sins, the nuns response to unwed adolescent girls makes sense. Not to mention that the film’s depiction makes sense of the former Roman Catholic baby boomers’ understanding that for the church Christianity was all about law and guilt, with little relief to be found except through penance and the Mass.

But the popular understanding of Christianity among Roman Catholics today is not so restrictive or disciplinary. Like the efforts of bishops at Vatican 2 to show a much less judgmental manner, many of the writers at various Roman Catholic websites (minus JATC) present a Christian religion that is so tolerant that it becomes universalistic and humanitarian. Michael Sean Winters, for instance, had this to say in further reflections on Evangelii Guadium:

As predicted, much of the criticism leveled at the pope the past couple of days has painted him as naïve about economic matters. I am not one of those the pope calls on the phone, but I think we all have enough of a sense of the man to know that he would plead guilty to the charge that he is not an economist. Indeed, the fact that this criticism is laid at his feet shows just how far down the slippery slope his critics are. How dare the pope not understand our economic science! How dare he ignore our charts, our data, out statistics! How naïve to suggest that our economic laws should conform to his religious vision! That is precisely his point: As a Christian, we cannot accept an economic system that results in such injustice, in which the few winners get richer and richer and the millions of losers get poorer and poorer. Such a system is unworthy of a Christian understanding of justice.

Francis, however, is after something deeper here too. Yes, injustice should set off alarm bells. But, what is wrong with modern capitalism is not just that the few winners are doing so well and the many losers are doing so poorly. It is that, in the Christian view of the world, no human being is a “loser.” A system that is predicated on there being winners and losers is wrong-headed not just when the differences between the two are extreme, as they are today. It is wrong-headed period. Humans, experienced through the culture of encounter the Gospel invites, are always winners: “To believe that the Son of God as­sumed our human flesh means that each human person has been taken up into the very heart of God” Pope Francis writes. (#178) Shame on those who treat their fellow man as if he has not been taken up into the very heart of God.

Esau, the Canaanites, the Pharisees, Herod, the Judaizers were not “losers”? Has Winters not read the Baltimore Catechism (for starters)?

183. What are the rewards or punishments appointed for men after the particular judgment?
The rewards or punishments appointed for men after the particular judgment are heaven, purgatory, or hell.

184. Who are punished in purgatory?
Those are punished for a time in purgatory who die in the state of grace but are guilty of venial sin, or have not fully satisfied for the temporal punishment due to their sins.

The fire will assay the quality of everyone’s work; if his work abides which he has built thereon, he will receive reward; if his work burns he will lose his reward, but himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. (I Corinthians 3:13-15)

185. Who are punished in hell?
Those are punished in hell who die in mortal sin; they are deprived of the vision of God and suffer dreadful torments, especially that of fire, for all eternity.

The he will say to those on his left hand, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41)

Now maybe Winters was not trying to make an eschatological point. Maybe he only meant that in this world everyone is a “winner” because of God’s providence (as opposed to redemption). Or that everyone should be a “winner.” But if Pope Francis does teach that everyone is taken up into the heart of God, then, boy, were most of the priests and nuns prior to Vatican 2 serving up some big bowls of spiritual and doctrinal wrong. As Roman Catholics used to know, not everyone was equal morally. Not everyone was equal sacramentally. The winners were the saints, the losers where the heretics and schismatics. Those in the middle had to serve time in purgatory. They all knew that being on the wrong side of the church was far worse than being on the down side of the poverty line. Poverty goes away. Even purgatory yields to heaven. But hell is forever.

But Winters is such an economic and sacramental egalitarian that he can’t resist taking a shot at Calvinism:

It is not politic in the world of ecumenical dialogue to make the point, but I shall make it anyway. The world the modern, financialized economy has created bears a creepy resemblance to the soteriological vision of Calvin, does it not? The elect, predestined few flourish while the massa damnata burn in hell. And, there is nothing anyone can do about it. In Calvin’s views on salvation, it is predestination that leaves us helpless. In today’s world, it is the “economic laws” that leave us helpless and, as Pope Francis indicates, invite a “culture of indifference.” The pope is reminding us that we cannot be indifferent precisely because we are Christians called to evangelize.

Has Winters not seen the headquarters of the OPC? Does he really mean to suggest that Calvinist churches have the kind of wealth, art, and architecture that Vatican City does (as if all that display was made possible by games of bingo)? And is Winters really unfamiliar with the Aquinas’ teaching about predestination?

Maybe he is. But it could simply be that in order to square his economic egalitarianism with Christianity, Winters needs to dumb down the gospel and eternal life so that they conform to expectations about a just and equitable economy:

Who cares if Pope Francis knows his economics? He knows that at the heart of the Gospel is good news for the poor. He did not need to consult a team of economists to write Evangelii Gaudium: His focus group consisted of only four people, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In point of fact, the poor in the gospels included not just those on poverty rolls but also the pretty well off — tax collectors, centurions, and other sinners. And their blessedness was not going to come with middle-class income. It was going to come from the house that Jesus was going to prepare.

This doesn’t mean that Pope Francis or Winters are wrong to be alarmed by income inequality. It does mean they both have some work to do to explain why economic justice is synonymous with the gospel. It also means, contra Winters, that Pope Francis should know that economics is different from theology, wealth from salvation, poverty from damnation. But if you make that sort of 2k distinction, then the pope may need to stick to his own sphere of spiritual authority and theological truth. If not, then all the people who consult the book of nature and figure out the “science” of economics have some right to criticize papal economics. This is not Christendom, after all.

Obsessive Confession Disorder

Published on by D. G. Hart453 Comments

Jason Stellman may think I am obsessed with Jason and the Callers, but every time he root root roots for the Vatican team, he winds up jeering at his former teammates. So when he tries to vindicate Roman Catholic ecclesiology, he dissects the Confession of Faith:

Consider first the realm of ecclesiology (which is related to Christology most obviously because the Church is the Body of Christ). In Protestantism, there is no single visible church, there is no single visible entity that can serve as an analogue to the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. While the people of Galilee and Judaea could have pointed their fingers and said, “That is Jesus Christ, right over there sitting under that tree, see him? No, not that guy, the one to his left. Yeah, him.” Protestants today cannot point to anything and say, “This is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church right here. No, not that one, this one.” In Protestantism, the church becomes more or less visible depending on the circumstances, fading in and out, as it were, of one’s field of vision:

This catholic Church has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular Churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the Gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them (WCF xxv.4).

But why dismiss Protestants when he could simply exalt and magnify his own magisterium (which has all that supremacy and infallibility)? Here is what Jason’s Catechism has to say about visiblity:

779 The Church is both visible and spiritual, a hierarchical society and the Mystical Body of Christ. She is one, yet formed of two components, human and divine. That is her mystery, which only faith can accept.

This might appear to vindicate Jason’s point about Protestantism lacking a single visible church. But then Vatican 2 raises its traditionalist-defying head. And what we find is that the singularity of Rome pre-Vatican 2 is subdued, thus leaving Jason to quote the Confession of Faith against HIS OWN understanding of the church:

Moreover, some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements too. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Christ, belong by right to the one Church of Christ.

The brethren divided from us also use many liturgical actions of the Christian religion. These most certainly can truly engender a life of grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community. These liturgical actions must be regarded as capable of giving access to the community of salvation.

It follows that the separated Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.

Nevertheless, our separated brethren, whether considered as individuals or as Communities and Churches, are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those who through Him were born again into one body, and with Him quickened to newness of life – that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim. For it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is “the all-embracing means of salvation,” that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation. We believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, in order to establish the one Body of Christ on earth to which all should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God. This people of God, though still in its members liable to sin, is ever growing in Christ during its pilgrimage on earth, and is guided by God’s gentle wisdom, according to His hidden designs, until it shall happily arrive at the fullness of eternal glory in the heavenly Jerusalem. (Decree on Ecumenism)

For the bishops at Vatican 2, the issue was not visibility but unity.

And if Jason spent as much time looking through the teaching resources of his magisterium and less combing Protestant teaching to which he objects, he might also find a rebuke to his own dealings with Protestants:

The way and method in which the Catholic faith is expressed should never become an obstacle to dialogue with our brethren. It is, of course, essential that the doctrine should be clearly presented in its entirety. Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism, in which the purity of Catholic doctrine suffers loss and its genuine and certain meaning is clouded.

At the same time, the Catholic faith must be explained more profoundly and precisely, in such a way and in such terms as our separated brethren can also really understand.

Moreover, in ecumenical dialogue, Catholic theologians standing fast by the teaching of the Church and investigating the divine mysteries with the separated brethren must proceed with love for the truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines with one another, they should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists a “hierarchy” of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith. Thus the way will be opened by which through fraternal rivalry all will be stirred to a deeper understanding and a clearer presentation of the unfathomable riches of Christ. (Decree on Ecumenism)

So again, why doesn’t Jason get on board with the kinder gentler version of Roman Catholicism that has only been around for as long as he has been alive? OCD?

Just In Time For Black Friday

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

Pope Francis gums up the global economy. What are the faithful to do? Since Evangelii Gaudium is only an apostolic exhortation, I presume American Roman Catholics will be heading out to the malls today along with the rest of their fellow consumers. (For proof of how indistinguishable American Roman Catholics are from American Protestants, see this.)

The earliest debates among American Roman Catholics over the pope’s latest statement concern the poor and capitalism. Those Roman Catholics on the Left are using Francis to beat up on Roman Catholics on the Right. Sean Michael Winters writes:

Anyone who was still hoping to usefully deploy the concept of intrinsic evil as the touchstone for the Church’s engagement with politics must now overcome this paragraph. The pope is aware that negative proscriptions of the moral law – thou shalt not murder – have a precision that positive proscriptions – you must care for the poor – do not. By invoking the same “thou shalt not” language, he is raising the status of the admittedly non-intrinsic evil of poverty. And, this blunt talk about the economy makes me hope that Catholic University’s business school cashed that check from the Koch Brothers already! They gave the money to study “principled entrepreneurship,” but me thinks they will not be thrilled if the school is applying the principles Francis articulates here.

In the next paragraph, for the first time in a papal text, Pope Francis specifically names “trickle down economics” and condemns it. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system,” he writes. I made the exact same point, albeit less trenchantly, in my debate with Fr. Sirico last January. But, Francis goes even further in the next paragraph, #55, when he refers to the “new and ruthless” golden calf, and the “dictatorship of an impersonal economy.” Thank you Papa Francesco for stating this. I am reading Samuel Gregg’s “Tea Party Catholic” – a review of which is forthcoming – and he constantly derides the impersonal bureaucracy of government but fails to note the impersonal bureaucracy of the modern economy. Conservative Catholics warn darkly about government bureaucrats interfering with people’s health care due to Obamacare, but fail to mention that insurance company bureaucrats have been interfering with people’s health care for decades.

Meanwhile, the Acton Institute’s Samuel Gregg and his book, Father Sirico, try to explain basic economics to Pope Francis:

There are several problems with this line of reasoning. First, opening up markets throughout the world has helped to reduce poverty in many developing nations. East Asia is a living testimony to that reality — a testimony routinely ignored by many Catholics in Western Europe (who tend to complain rather self-centeredly about the competition it creates for protected Western European businesses and other recipients of corporate welfare) and a reality about which I have found many Latin American Catholics simply have nothing to say.

Second, it has never been the argument of most of those who favor markets that economic freedom and free exchange are somehow sufficient to reduce poverty. These things are certainly indispensable (witness the failure of planned economies to solve the problem of scarcity), but they’re not enough. Among other things, stable governments that provide infrastructure, property arrangements that identify clearly who owns what, and, above all, the rule of law are just as essential.

It hardly need be said that rule of law (mentioned not once in Evangelii Gaudium) is, to put it mildly, a “challenge” in most developing nations. The lack of rule of law not only ranks among the biggest obstacles to their ability to generate wealth on a sustainable basis, but also hampers their capacity to address economic issues in a just manner. Instead, what one finds is crony capitalism, rampant protectionism, and the corruption that has become a way of life in much of Africa and Latin America.

(No doubt, the lead singer of Jason and the Callers is delighted with the pope, given his anti-globalization views, though why economic globalization is bad but spiritual globalization is good, is one of those mysteries that even development of doctrine won’t ‘splain. At the same time, Jason might find appealing papal authority that allows lots of contrary opinions to thrive within his communion.)

Arguably the best piece written so far comes from John Allen who sees a tension between evangelism and the Social Gospel:

That combination between proclaiming the faith and living it out may seem natural and compelling, but it’s often not how things really work at the Catholic grass roots.

From personal experience, I can say that one can spend a lot of time at conferences and symposia on the new evangelization without hearing much about, say, the war in Syria, the human costs of the Eurozone crisis, or the impact of global warming. Similarly, one can attend a truckload of “social ministry” gatherings without getting much on the sacraments, the life of prayer, Marian devotions or growth in personal holiness.

That’s an overgeneralization, but anybody who’s been around the block in the Catholic church will recognize the scent of truth.

Protagonists in both the contemporary Catholic renaissance in apologetics and evangelization and in the church’s social activism sometimes regard what the other party is up to as a distraction. Evangelizers sometimes say that a nongovernmental organization or a political party can fight unemployment, but only the church can preach Christ. Social activists reply by insisting that rhetoric about a loving God means little to people whose lives are broken by misery and injustice.

From the point of view of Catholic teaching, both are absolutely right, which leads one to wonder what they might be able to accomplish by working together. Promoting that spirit of common cause, one could argue, is the beating heart of “Joy of the Gospel.” . . .

The deepest ambition of “Joy of the Gospel” lies in Francis’ dream of a church that breathes with both lungs regarding mission and justice, uniting its concern for poverty of both the spiritual and the flesh-and-blood sort. The drama of his papacy, in a sense, lies in how well he may be able to pull it off.

Maybe if Vatican City would imitate the evangelicals in New York City who have figure out the third way between conservative Protestantism’s convictions about the sole importance of the gospel and liberal Protestantism’s social ministry, Pope Francis could follow Tim Keller and find his way.

Or perhaps Christians could turn to the actual words of God’s inspired and infallible word and let the apostle Paul have more authority than either Rome’s or New York City’s pope. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18) I understand it sounds fundamentalist (even Platonist) to insist on the priority of the spiritual and eternal to the physical and the temporal. But given what we know about human physical existence, Paul only makes sense. Our conditions here do not correlate to our existence in the world to come. Jesus himself said something about the poor being blessed and inheriting the earth. I don’t think he was saying that his kingdom came with running water, internet access, or a credit card. As convenient as those conveniences are, I sure hope that the new heavens and new earth bring comforts that last longer and that make Black Friday look like the passing affliction that it is.

Don't View This on a Full Stomach

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

At the same time, before a meal it may put you off eating (thanks to our Cumberland Correspondent). The it in question is a video of Tim Keller on sex and marriage in which he portrays Christian married sex as — well — see the video for yourself.

The problems here are at least a couple: 1) without violating my own code, I suspect that if pressed many married couples would not give two thumbs up to all of their sexual encounters. I also bet that many times a husband is in the mood and his spouse is not. (Has Keller not heard of the proverbial headache?) I would even put more money on the notion that baby boomers talk far more about the pleasures of sex than their parents for whom the encounter was part of marital duty (at least for the wife).

This leads to 2): Christians of an older generation (and Keller is by no means a spring chicken — should it be rooster) didn’t talk about sex or bedroom or bathroom matters. Was that wrong? No. Did it mean they were uptight in ways that boomers found constricting? Sure. But was their wisdom in not giving too much information about private matters? Yes. And to keep up this catechism, did problems accompany silence about topics not fit for the sitting room or even the kitchen? Yes. But I have trouble thinking that the current blather about our private lives has resulted in a great cultural advance.

In fact, Keller’s comments may discredit the ministry of the Word since I am not sure that the guy to whom I want to go for pastoral counsel is the one who is doing a video like this.

Then again, he has patented a variety of Teflon that not only keeps all criticism from sticking but that turns adversity into gold. I am truly in awe.

At the same time, as Carl Trueman wonders about the flap between Janet Mefford and Mark Driscoll over allegations of plagiarism, I wonder if the same question applies to Keller: “Is there an evangelical industrial complex out there or is there a morality which transcends and ultimately regulates the evangelical marketplace?” I would simply vary the question to ask whether any cringe factor or sense of propriety regulates evangelical celebrity culture. It surely doesn’t prevail in the world of Hollywood or professional athletics. But shouldn’t we know Christians by their discretion?

Ch Ch Ch Chain Gez

Published on by D. G. Hart49 Comments

More on Evangelii Gaudium:

The theme of change permeates the document. The pope says rather than being afraid of “going astray,” what the church ought to fear instead is “remaining shut up within structures that give us a false sense of security, within rules that make us harsh judges” and “within habits that make us feel safe.”

Though Francis released an encyclical letter titled Lumen Fidei in June, that text was based largely on a draft prepared by Benedict XVI. “The Joy of the Gospel,” designed as a reflection on the October 2012 Synod of Bishops on new evangelization, thus represents the new pope’s real debut as an author.

Early reaction suggests it’s a tour de force.

The text comes with Francis’ now-familiar flashes of homespun language. Describing an upbeat tone as a defining Christian quality, for instance, he writes that “an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!”

At another point, Francis insists that “the church is not a tollhouse.” Instead, he says, “it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone.” At another point, he quips that “the confessional must not be a torture chamber,” but rather “an encounter with the Lord’s mercy which spurs us to on to do our best.”

Francis acknowledges that realizing his dream will require “a reform of the church,” stipulating that “what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences.”

Though he doesn’t lay out a comprehensive blueprint for reform, he goes beyond mere hints to fairly blunt indications of direction:

He calls for a “conversion of the papacy,” saying he wants to promote “a sound decentralization” and candidly admitting that in recent years “we have made little progress” on that front.

He suggests that bishops’ conferences ought to be given “a juridical status … including genuine doctrinal authority.” In effect, that would amount to a reversal of a 1998 Vatican ruling under John Paul II that only individual bishops in concert with the pope, and not episcopal conferences, have such authority.

Francis says the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,” insisting that “the doors of the sacraments” must not “be closed for simply any reason.” His language could have implications not only for divorced and remarried Catholics, but also calls for refusing the Eucharist to politicians or others who do not uphold church teaching on some matters.

He calls for collaborative leadership, saying bishops and pastors must use “the means of participation proposed in the Code of Canon Law and other forms of pastoral dialogue, out of a desire to listen to everyone and not simply to those who would tell him what he would like to hear.”

Francis criticizes forces within the church who seem to lust for “veritable witch hunts,” asking rhetorically, “Whom are we going to evangelize if this is the way we act?”

He cautions against “ostentatious preoccupation” for liturgy and doctrine as opposed to ensuring that the Gospel has “a real impact” on people and engages “the concrete needs of the present time.”

On two specific matters, however, Francis rules out change: the ordination of women to the priesthood, though he calls for “a more incisive female presence” in decision-making roles, and abortion.

Low papalists/liberals want to see discontinuity, while high papalists/conservatives want to see continuity — from Benedict XVI to Francis or Trent to Vatican II. But the conservatives are the same folks who see discontinuity everywhere in American politics — from Bush II to Obama, or Reagan to Bush I. Seems to me both sides have vested interests in interpretations which are above their pay grade.

So Many Genres, So Many Interpreters, So Many Opinions

Published on by D. G. Hart39 Comments

The returns on Pope Francis’ recent “writing” are still being written, but a piece last week puts EVANGELII GAUDIUM (The Joy of the Gospel) in perspective. It is not an encyclical, the most authoritative form of papal communication. It is rather an apostolic exhortation:

Apostolic exhortations are often based on deliberations of synods of bishops, and this one takes into account the October 2012 synod on the new evangelization. But last June, Pope Francis informed the ordinary council of the Synod of Bishops, which is normally responsible for helping draft post-synodal apostolic exhortations, he would not be working from their draft.

Instead, the pope said, he planned to write an “exhortation on evangelization in general and refer to the synod,” in order to “take everything from the synod but put it in a wider framework.”

That choice surprised some, especially since Pope Francis had voiced his strong commitment to the principle of consultation with fellow bishops and even suggested that the synod should become a permanent advisory body.

This writer adds:

Popes through the centuries have issued their most important written messages in one of 10 classic forms, ranging from encyclical to “chirograph,” a brief document on a highly limited subject. But most of these are typically formulaic texts that do not express the distinctive voice or charism of the man who issues them. . . .

A category of document that Pope Francis has not yet produced, but in which he is likely to make a major contribution, is that of apostolic constitutions. These are usually routine legal documents establishing a new diocese or appointing a bishop. But they can also address exceptional matters, as did Pope Benedict’s 2009 “Anglicanorum coetibus,” which established personal prelatures for former Anglicans who join the Catholic Church.

An apostolic constitution especially relevant to this pontificate is Blessed John Paul’s 1988 “Pastor Bonus,” which was the last major set of changes to the church’s central administration, the Roman Curia. Planning a revision of that document was the one specific task Pope Francis assigned to his advisory Council of Cardinals when he established the eight-member body in September.

Another consequential type of papal document is an apostolic letter given “motu proprio,” i.e., on the pope’s own initiative. Such letters are used to set up new norms, establish new bodies or reorganize existing ones. Pope Benedict issued 18 of them in the course of his eight-year pontificate — most famously in 2007, when he lifted most restrictions on celebration of the Tridentine Mass; and most recently in February, when he changed the voting rules of a papal conclave less than a week before he resigned from office.

Not only do we need to keep an eye on the distinction between discipline and doctrine, but we need to pay attention to papal genres.

Whether any of this adds up to changes, reforms, winners, or losers is all the chattering bloggers’ guess. Sean Michael Winters appears to be pleased that Francis took a shot at Roman Catholic traditionalists. From the apostolic exhortation:

This worldliness can be fueled in two deeply interrelated ways. One is the attraction of gnosticism, a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings. The other is the self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. These are manifestations of an anthropocentric immanentism. It is impossible to think that a genuine evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity. (94)

Winters also likes the idea of decentralizing Vatican authority:

The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion. The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position “to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit”. Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach. (#32)

Whether this will please Jason and the Callers, or whether this will be chalked up to more papal audacity is anyone’s guess.

I myself am wondering, though, what Francis means by the gospel. The word sinner appears only two times in the 51,000-word document. The same goes for righteousness, and both of these words come directly from biblical quotations. Sacrifice appears five times, but only once in connection with Christ’s death on the cross:

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is nothing else than the culmination of the way he lived his entire life. Moved by his example, we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others, we are committed to building a new world. But we do so not from a sense of obligation, not as a burdensome duty, but as the result of a personal decision which brings us joy and gives meaning to our lives. (269)

This may explain why Francis appeals to the Second Vatican Council four times, and never mentions Vatican I or the Council of Trent. But so far, Bryan Cross is treating the exhortation as business as usual — a chance for more ecumenical dialogue. He doesn’t seem to realize that confessional Protestants would be more willing to talk — not to agree — if we knew where Rome stood, that is, if Francis still used the language of infused righteousness and original sin cleansed by baptism.

Meanwhile, I read about a new book on papal encyclicals of the social teaching variety, mentioned by Peter Leithart. The post concludes with this sentence: “The Church’s aim, [John Paul II] insisted, is not to add another ideology to the public square; the task is one of ‘imbuing human realities with the Gospel.'” What recent popes don’t seem to consider — in the light of modernism both Roman Catholic and Protestant — is whether human realities obscure the gospel to the point that, say, the gospel is little more than affirming the dignity of the human person — as if sinners don’t need to hear something about the depravity of the human person and their need for a savior. Old hat, I guess.

In 29,000 out of 30,000 Denominations This Would Get You In Trouble

Published on by D. G. Hart132 Comments

Apologists for Rome do like to number the many communions that Protestantism has provoked. At the same time, Protestants hear a lot about the superior mechanisms that Rome has for maintaining unity within a universal church.

Less do we hear from the apologists — other Roman Catholic sites on the interweb are not so bashful — about the troubling views of priests, theologians and bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. Here are a couple of recent examples that caught the eye of this vinegary Old School Presbyterian:

Will hell be empty?

Michael Voris recently came out with a video entitled simply “Fr. Barron is Wrong”, challenging the popular priest-evangelist on his repeated statements in favor of the theory proposed by the late Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dare We Hope? that it is acceptable for Christian to have good hope that Hell may be empty. Voris rightly notes that Christ Himself says some souls will definitely go to Hell on numerous occasions, and that the Church’s alleged “silence” on the definitive presence of anyone in Hell is not due to any support for the empty-hell theory, but due to the fact that the definitive presence of any one soul in Hell is not part of Divine Revelation and therefore outside the pale of the Church’s competence to define. Therefore, the fact that the Church has never “proclaimed” anyone in Hell provides no rationale whatsoever for asserting that Hell is empty.

At this point Mark Shea jumped in and accused Voris of smearing Fr. Barron wrongly with his “poison.” It is not my intention here to comment on the antagonism between Voris and Shea; I am more interested in Shea’s comments that the Fr. Barron-Balthasar “Empty Hell” theory is “perfectly within the pale of orthodox speculation” and that “at the end of the day, that’s all you have: two schools of opinion–both of which are allowed by the Church.” Thus, the Balthasarian “Empty Hell” theory is granted a legitimate place on the spectrum of legitimate opinions upon which Catholics can disagree in good conscience, and the traditional opinion that people do in fact go to Hell is also placed on the spectrum as another legitimate “option.”

Do Roman Catholic theologians teach what the church teaches?

An international group of prominent Catholic theologians have called the church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality “incomprehensible” and are asking bishops around the world to take seriously the expertise of lay people in their preparations for a global meeting of the prelates at the Vatican next year.
Church teaching on issues like contraception and same-sex marriage, the theologians write, are based on “abstract notions of natural law and [are] outdated, or at the very least scientifically uninformed” and “are for the most part incomprehensible to the majority of the faithful.”

Addressing next year’s meeting of church leaders, known as a Synod of Bishops, they say that previous such meetings involved “only carefully hand-picked members of the laity.”

Those meetings, they write, “offered no critical voice and ignored abundant evidence that the teaching of the church on marriage and sexuality was not serving the needs of the faithful.”

One reason that many Protestant denominations would not countenance deviation from church teaching and expectations is that they remember the battles with modernism during fundamentalist-like controversies and still understand theological liberalism to be a danger to Christian witness. In contrast, (overkill alert) Rome seems to have forgotten its battles with modernism thanks to the engagement of the modern world called by Vatican 2. In fact, it is curious how much latitude for downright loopy views exists in a church that has a pontiff with remarkable powers compared to a little denomination like the OPC where elders and ministers have as much power in the wider world as a customer service representative at Kroger Super Market.

When will the apologists reasons catch up with their church’s reality? And why don’t Jason and the Callers appeal to the very mechanism that is supposed to protect the church from error?

So how are we to deal with liberalism in the Catholic Church? We ought to pray earnestly for orthodoxy to flourish, support religious orders that are obedient to the teaching of church, support Catholic schools that are obedient to the teaching of the church, volunteer in our parishes and if we encounter truly egregious heterodoxy in our parishes we should contact our bishops.