Tag: Islam

Whom Are You Going to Believe?

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

Is Christianity a religion of salvation?

Christianity is a salvation religion, and it offers to save us from is sin. According to the Christian story, God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and then suffered and died on the cross, to save us from our sins. The premise upon which all this is grounded is, of course, that we humans are sinners — very serious sinners.

However, what if we are not sinners? Then it would follow that we don’t need salvation from sin. And if we are sinners but don’t feel that we are sinners, then we won’t feel the need of salvation. So Christianity will make no sense to us.

By and large we modern men and women do not feel that we are sinners, at least not in any serious sense. Oh, we admit that we are not perfect. Any one of us can draw up a list of our imperfections: we sometimes eat or drink a little too much; we often exercise too little; we don’t read enough good books; we commit little acts of impoliteness from time to time; and so on. But no really big sins — certainly no sins that are great enough for the Creator and Sustainer of the universe to become man and suffer and die in order to atone for our great wickedness.

We admit that some humans truly are very wicked — Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson, and a few others. But they are very untypical of humanity. The rest of us, normal human beings, are utterly horrified by the crimes of Hitler and company. This is proof — isn’t it? — that we ourselves are not very wicked. So we don’t need salvation from sin. And we don’t need a religion that offers this salvation. No wonder Catholicism is in decline.

So how can Christianity build on religions that are wrong about salvation?

. . . if we say that Islam is wrong about everything we are saying that it is wrong to affirm that there is one God, the God of Abraham, holy, righteous, merciful and compassionate. We are saying it is false that the prophets of the Old Testament are prophets; that prayer, fasting and almsgiving are pious works blessed by God; that Jesus was a prophet; that Mary is to be honored and venerated. For Muslims say all these things and all these things are true, as far as they go. The Church, instead of making foolish denunciations of all things Muslim instead does what St. Thomas describes: She recognizes that grace builds on nature and so takes what is good and true in any culture (even one as depraved as our own culture of warlike abortion-loving polymorphous perversity and greed) and begins proclaiming the gospel there. So, as I say, the Church affirms what can be affirmed in common with any religious tradition. One need not pretend we agree on all things in order to agree on the things we agree about. But we should listen to CCC 841 and not denounce the Church or call (as some readers did) for banning the Catechism when she challenges our muddy thinking. Our task is to learn from Her.

Do non-Christians need to be saved?

It’s a joke, I tell him. My friends think it is you want to convert me.
He smiles again and replies: “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.”

Your Holiness, is there is a single vision of the Good? And who decides what it is?
“Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.”

Your Holiness, you wrote that in your letter to me. The conscience is autonomous, you said, and everyone must obey his conscience. I think that’s one of the most courageous steps taken by a Pope.
“And I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”

Is the Church doing that?
“Yes, that is the purpose of our mission: to identify the material and immaterial needs of the people and try to meet them as we can. Do you know what agape is?”

Do people not notice the irony of Protestants feeling the need to convert to Roman Catholicism and then defending teaching that weakens the imperative to convert? Perhaps only Jason and the Callers‘ lessons in logic can lead us through this intellectual wicket.

Turkey In the Middle

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

The trip to Turkey for college honors students will not include the Harts this year — a seminar in Rome conflicts with the Turkey trip. But I continue to follow Turkish developments while finding Ottoman and Turkish history fascinating for teaching and reflection on the West and the relations between religion and secularity. (Have I mentioned that Orhan Pamuk is a gifted writer?)

Turkey is the place where East meets West. For many centuries East stood for Islam and West for Christianity (first Eastern then Roman). For the last century East has stood for Turkishness (a secular construct thanks to Ataturk and the Kemalists, who borrowed freely from the French Revolution’s laïcité) and West has stood for post-Christian secularism. The latest wrinkle in East-West Turkisk relations is an Islamic ruling party that is pro-development in a way that would make the Cato Institute happy and has led journalists to coin the term Islamo-Calvinist, a party in addition that has also sought admission to the European Union after how many decades of being a good ally in NATO. But for all of these ties between Turkey and the West, Islam apparently continues to be the stumbling block. A recent op-ed from the Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet Daily News, put it this way:

At the end of the day, being a practicing Muslim and using religion for political gains may not be mutually exclusive for some politicians. It all depends on how you look at religion and politics. But this type of questioning among Europeans demonstrates the state of confusion about Erdoğan.

In the early days of his prime ministry, he was welcomed by European leaders and applauded as the great reformer of Turkey. At one stage, even U.S. president Barack Obama said Erdoğan was among the three of four leaders he kept talking on the phone.

Nowadays, Erdoğan’s popularity has taken a dive among Western leaders. “When there is a problem in Europe, one leader takes up the phone and calls the other one and has a frank discussion. But with Erdoğan, there is no leader willing to talk to him directly about issues of concern,” a European diplomat told me. . . . What had separated Turkey from Middle Eastern, Arab, Muslim countries, despite living in the same geography as them, was the fact that we had a leadership that – as a NATO and Council of Europe member and as an EU candidate – at least tried to talk the same language as Europe. Now we have a leadership that increasingly talks a different language than Europeans. It’s no wonder that it was Rusian President Vladimir Putin who was the only one rushing to congratulate Erdoğan after his local election victory in March.

And yet, Erdoğan’s Islamic outlook (at least an Ottomanian version thereof) may actually be responsible for his unthinkable outreach to Armenians. Here is how Mustafa Akyol explained Erdoğan’s almost-apology:

. . . let me also note that this relatively more open-minded stance on “the Armenian issue” by Erdoğan and his party, compared to the rigidity of former political elites of Turkey, has some ideological roots as well. In a nutshell, Erdoğan’s “Ottomanism” simply gives him more room to be reformist vis-a-vis the Armenians (and the Kurds, for that matter), than the “Turkish nationalism” that the former elites subscribed to.

The reason is “Ottomanism” implies a broad umbrella under which Turks co-existed peacefully with other peoples of the empire, including the Armenians and the Kurds. The tragic expulsion of Armenians in 1915 was not an outcome of this pluralist Ottoman paradigm. It was an outcome of the fall of that paradigm. The Young Turks, who decided on the exodus, were subscribers of a new ideology called “Turkish nationalism,” which was, as one must see, a response to the Serbian, Greek and Bulgarian nationalisms of the Balkans.

Soon after the foundation of the Republic, the more secularist version of the Young Turk ideology evolved into Kemalism and became the official creed. Today, Erdoğan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party), which had defeated the Kemalist establishment, is building a post-Kemalist Turkey. In this view, the expulsion of Armenians and the forced assimilation of the Kurds are historic mistakes that should be corrected.

In short, the very ideology of the AKP allows itself to take formerly unthinkable steps to reconcile with the Kurds and Armenians.

In other words, Turkey’s Islamic past, seasoned as it was with encounters with the West, is capable of magnanimity that Europeans still find difficult (at least when it comes to Muslims).

I’m not pretending to be an expert on any of this, but when it comes to thinking about Christianity and the West, America as a “Christian nation,” religion in the public square, and the “forces” of secularization, throwing Islam and the Turks into the discussion always complicates categories. And recognizing the complexity of the world and humans’ experience of it should be a welcome priority for all those who measure life in square inches.

If Christians are Divided, Why So Much Talk about Common Good?

Published on by D. G. Hart18 Comments

The really cool conference — though, how cool is Nashville compared to Manhattan — sponsored by Q has generated some discussion about the common good and what stake Christians have in it. Andy Crouch thinks Christians should promote the common good since it will begin rather than end conversations. I’m not sure how defining the good as God will work (though I can imagine how food and sharing a meal might):

the common good allows us to stake out our Christian convictions about what is good for humans—and to dare our neighbors to clarify their own convictions. “In the simplest sense,” Bradley Lewis said, “the common good is God. It is God who satisfies what people need, individually and communally.” Adopting the language of the common good means owning this bedrock Christian belief and proclaiming it to our neighbors. If we are not offering our neighbors the ultimate common good—the knowledge and love of God—we are not taking the idea of the common good seriously.

If Crouch is at all representative of evangelicals, and if born-again Protestants are going to follow Joe Carter in rejecting civil religion, they are going to have to give up identifying the common good with God. Carter is properly worried about how void the word “god” is in “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance:

There is a vast and unbridgeable chasm between America’s civil religion and Christianity. If we claim that “under God” refers only to the Christian, Trinitarian conception of God we are either being unduly intolerant or, more likely, simply kidding ourselves. Do we truly think that the Hindu, Wiccan, or Buddhist is claiming to be under the same deity as we are? We can’t claim, as Paul did on Mars Hill, that the “unknown god” they are worshiping is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They have heard of Jesus — and reject him as God.’

The Pledge is a secular document and the “under god” is referring to the Divinity of our country’s civil religion. Just as the pagan religion of the Roman Empire was able to incorporate other gods and give them familiar names, the civil religion provides an umbrella for all beliefs to submit under one nondescript, fill-in-the-blank term.

So, then, should we give up religion in public life? Of course, not (even if a full-blown use of God in the Trinitarian sense is going to be divisive):

Don’t get me wrong: I think we need to stand firm on allowing religion into the “naked public square.” But we should do so defending our real religious beliefs rather than a toothless imitation. If we pray in the public square, we should have no qualms about using the true name of the God to whom we are praying.

So much for the common (whether it’s good or not).

Not even David Cameron can get away with mentioning an effete Anglicanism without taking a beating (as reported by Tim Keller’s biggest Scottish fan):

One wonders if our Prime Minister, David Cameron will be allowed to say his latest remarks on the British Broadcasting Corporation.

They have certainly caused a furore which has resulted in a letter to The Telegraph signed by 55 of the great and good, who warn of dire consequences in the Prime Minister voicing the unthinkable. Saying Britain is a Christian country has “negative consequences” and encourages sectarianism.

“In his call for more evangelism, Mr Cameron is exclusively tying himself to one faith group, inevitably to the exclusion of others,” opined Elizabeth O’Casey, Policy and Research Office at the National Secular Society. She also warned us that we are moving away from the concept of all of us being “rights-bearing citizens first and foremost, with democratic autonomy and equality, regardless of which faith they happen to have, or not have”.

Britain is apparently in danger of turning from this nice, tolerant secular country into some kind of European Syria, torn apart by sectarian strife. Beware of the Christian Jihad, the Tartan Taleban and the Charismatic suicide bombers!

To this Free Church pastor’s credit, he is not overly edified by Cameron’s vapid Christian affirmation:

I will not comment on Mr Cameron’s politics but I seriously hope they are much better than his theology. He states: “I am not one for doctrinal purity, and I don’t believe it is essential for evangelism about the church’s role in our society or its importance.” But Jesus is for doctrinal purity. It really does matter that he is the Son of God, that he was born of a virgin, that he did miracles, that he rose from the dead, that he is coming back as judge and saviour – all good theological statements.

Even so, if a vague Anglican expression cannot avoid public flack, how much are the folks who gather in Nashville deceiving themselves?

Just to illustrate how difficult it is to square any serious faith with the common good, try changing the words on this recent Chamber-of-Commerce-like missive about religious social goods (which sounds a lot like common good):

Religion Islam, especially communal religion Islam, provides important benefits for everyone in the liberal state—even the non-religious Mulsim. Religion Islam encourages people to associate with and feel responsible for others, to engage with them in common endeavors. Religion Islam promotes altruism and neighborliness, and mitigates social isolation. Religion Islam counteracts the tendencies to apathy and self-centeredness that liberalism seems inevitably to create. . . .

To be sure, religions the varieties of Islam don’t always encourage civic fellowship; to the extent a religion Islam promotes sedition or violence against other citizens, society does not benefit. And perhaps, as Gerald Russello suggests, the non-religious Muslims have come so to distrust religion Islam that they will view its contributions as tainted and objectionable from the start. But in encouraging greater social involvement, religion Islam offers benefits to everyone, believers and non-believers, too. It’s worth reminding skeptics of this when they argue that religion Islam, as such, doesn’t merit legal protection.

Why Christians need to find consolation and support from the political or common realm is a mystery (though years of Christendom provide a partial explanation. Sure, pilgrimage is tough and Christ did tell his followers that the world would hate them. So why not simply rely upon the good words of God’s word, the reminder of belonging to Christ in baptism, and the rib-sticking spiritual food of the Supper rather than constantly looking for the world to think well of us?

Let My People Go

Published on by D. G. Hart122 Comments

If the Israelis can distinguish between an Arab Christian and an Arab Muslim, why can’t Americans tell the difference between an evangelical and a Reformed Protestant? (Supply your own punchline.)

This thought experiment came to mind when reading this:

An Israeli bill will grant legal distinction between Israel’s Muslim and Christian Arabs for the first time, recognizing Christians as a separate minority. But many Arab Christians don’t want such distinctions.

The controversial bill was approved by a 31-6 vote in its third and final reading in the Knesset Monday. The legislation will also increase employment representation for Christian Arabs in Israel’s government by adding an Israeli Christian Arab to the panel of the Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity.

This will give the primarily Arab 160,000-person Christian population in Israel its own representative alongside representatives for ultra-orthodox Jews, new immigrants, women, and other religious and social groups, according to the Jerusalem Post.

What’s the problem with such a distinction? Looks like it’s the same problem in the U.S.:

“I believe most Arabs will refuse this decision,” Munther Na’um told CT of the controversial bill passed earlier this week. It distinguishes between Israel’s Muslim and Christian Arab communities for the first time and recognizes Christians as a separate minority.

“It’s meant to separate the whole family [Israeli Arabs] in political decisions,” Na’um said, speaking from his base in the northern Israeli town of Shafr Amr. Palestinians living in Israel are referred to as Israeli Arabs.

“It’s not good for Arabs, whether Christians or Muslims, or the Jews,” he said. Na’um believes that some Israeli politicians are “trying to separate us by religious status and create a political situation from that.”

“It will not be effective,” he added.

The bill was approved by a 31-6 vote in its third and final reading in the Knesset Monday. The legislation will also increase employment representation for Christian Arabs in Israel’s government by adding an Israeli Christian Arab to the panel of the Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity.

The evangelical leader downplayed the move by Israeli politicians in the Knesset which has angered fellow Arab lawmakers.

“I don’t think this will make much impact because the relations between Christians and Muslims are very close. We have the same traditions, the same culture. It will be difficult to separate us just because we are Christians and they are Muslims,” Na’um said.

In other words, the reason for rejecting differences between Muslims and Christians is political. They are more effective as an ethnic political bloc than they are as separate religious groups.

And that is about as far as this analogy goes because what Christians face in the U.S. in no way compares to the circumstances that Palestinians confront in Israel. But the point is that the aspect of American Protestantism that keeps throwing Reformed Protestants into the same evangelical goo as every other Protestant who is either outside the mainline or ambivalent about the mainline churches’ policies and programs is politics is similar to the one that unifies Arab Christians and Muslims in Israel — not what they believe but a common political foe. Ever since the Religious Right emerged as an electoral force, Reformed Protestants have been more inclined to carve up the national scene according to culture-war categories than confessional teaching. W-w my foot!

That is true except for 2kers, who know that the kingdom of Christ claims higher and different allegiances than the Republic or Tea Party.

Are Christians as Scary as Muslims?

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

In the current issues of New Horizons, I ran across an editorial note about the Islamic presence in Britain. According to the Gatestone Institute, an international policy council:

. . . Sharia courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Islamic Sharia law that are at odds with British law. Although Sharia rulings are not legally binding, those subject to the rulings often feel obliged to obey them as a matter of religious belief, or because of pressure from family and community members to do so.

I understand that Presbyterianism has never enjoyed a glowing reputation among the English — the 1640s and all that — but would it not be the case that Presbyterian courts also issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to biblical teachings that are at odds with British law. For instance, Presbyterians likely believe that divorce is a sin. British law, I suspect, does not forbid divorce (even if it regulates it).

Same goes for here in the U.S. The OPC has a constitution that requires sessions, presbyteries, and assemblies to make rulings that do not follow the laws of individual states or federal law. So, part of the OPC’s constitution (Book of Church Order) reveals a way of thinking about marriage and its norms that is not the same as U.S. law:

Accordingly, God has designed marriage for the enrichment of the lives of those who enter into this estate, for the orderly propagation of the human race, for the generation of a holy seed, and for the avoidance of sexual immorality, all to the glory of the covenant God. Husbands and wives thus have responsibilities befitting God’s purposes for their relationship. The Holy Scripture says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for [her].” The husband is to love his wife as his own body, to care for her, and to cherish her. The Holy Scripture says also, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” The wife is to submit to her husband, to respect him, and to entrust herself to his loving care. Both husbands and wives are to be faithful to each other, to assist each other in all good things, to heartily forgive each other their sins and shortcomings, and to love each other as themselves. Thus united in love, they will more and more reflect in their marriage the unity of Christ and his church.

The question, then, is whether Christians either are capable viewing themselves as outsiders under a secular government or recognizing Muslims as sharing a position similar to ours within a secular nation.

What Can Change and What Can't

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

Since infallibility has become a frequent topic of recent comments here, a couple of pieces from elsewhere may complicate the infallibility-means-superior meme of Roman Catholic apologists. It turns out that you can find as many opinions about what the church teaches (and here discipline merges with doctrine, a no-no I thought) as Carter has pills.

First, an optimistic piece from George Weigel about Pope Francis as a conservative:

Popes, in other words, are not authoritarian figures, who teach what they will and as they will. The pope is the guardian of an authoritative tradition, of which he is the servant, not the master. Pope Francis knows this as well as anyone, as he has emphasized by repeating that he is a “son of the Church” who believes and teaches what the Church believes and teaches.

Thus the notion that this pontificate is going to change Catholic teaching on the morality of homosexual acts, or on the effects of divorce-and-remarriage on one’s communion with the Church, is a delusion, although the Church can surely develop its pastoral approach to homosexuals and the divorced. As for the environment and the poor, Catholic social doctrine has long taught that we are stewards of creation and that the least of the Lord’s brethren have a moral claim on our solidarity and our charity; the social doctrine leaves open to debate the specific, practical means by which people of good will, and governments, exercise that stewardship, and that solidarity and charity.

And “the role of women in the Church”? No doubt various Church structures would benefit by drawing upon a wider range of talent (irrespective of gender) than the talent-pool from which Church leaders typically emerge. Still, in an interview with La Stampa before Christmas, Pope Francis made it clear that identifying leadership in the Church with ordination is both a form of clericalism and another way of instrumentalizing Catholic women.

So the church is not going to change, but I didn’t see anything about infallibility or the bodily assumption of Mary not changing. Instead, it looks like morality has an aura of infallibility about it. That makes sense since morality comes from God. But if the papacy hasn’t declared the moral law to be infallible, how would we know that morality is unchanging?

And then there is the back-and-forth among Roman Catholics about what the church teaches on Islam:

Consider an online debate that appeared this summer in Catholic Answers Forum about Cardinal Dolan’s visit to a mosque in New York. The debate centered around the Cardinal’s statement “You love God, we love God, and he is the same God”—a statement, in short, which seemed to echo the Catholic Catechism. The most interesting aspect of the month-long thread was that those who argued that Allah is the same God that Christians worship relied almost exclusively on arguments from authority. Here is a sample:

“It is dogma that Catholics and Muslims worship the same God.”

“He [Cardinal Dolan] has the grace of Teaching Authority. Unless you are a bishop, you do not.”

“You are discrediting Vatican II.”

“One either accepts Her teaching authority, or one does not.”

“This is not up for grabs.”

After plowing through dozens of similar propositions, along with numerous citations of the relevant passage in the Catechism, it was difficult for me to avoid the conclusion that forum participants were relying on the argument from authority because it was the only argument they had.

The trouble with the argument from authority in regard to Islam is fourfold. First, the Church has very little to say about Islam. In fact, the brief statements from the Second Vatican Council make no reference to Islam, Muhammad, or the Koran but only refer to “Muslims.” The same is true of paragraph 841 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which simply repeats the two sentences from Lumen Gentium. The second problem has to do with interpretation. For example, Lumen Gentium states that Muslims “profess to hold the faith of Abraham” but does not assert that they actually do hold the same faith as Abraham. Likewise, Nostra Aetate states that Muslims “revere Him [Jesus] as a prophet,” but does not grapple with the significant differences between the Jesus of the Koran and the Jesus of the Gospels—differences that extend well beyond the fact that the Koran does not acknowledge Jesus as God.

The third problem with the argument from authority as it touches on Islam is that there appears to be some uncertainty about whether Nostra Aetate was meant to be a dogmatic statement. . . .

The fourth problem with the argument from authority is that those who fall back on it often ignore the harsh assessments of Islam offered by earlier Church authorities. For example:

Pope Eugene IV, Council of Basil, 1434: “…there is hope that very many from the abominable sect of Mahomet will be converted to the Catholic Faith.”

Pope Callixtus III, 1455: “I vow to…exalt the true Faith, and to extirpate the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet in the East.”

Pope Pius II, papal bull, 1459: “…the false prophet Mahomet”

. . . The harsh language of earlier Church authorities can be excused on the grounds that Islam was often at war with Christianity. The more conciliatory language of Vatican II can be better understood if we realize that Islam’s aggression against Christianity seemed entirely a thing of the past at that time. But it can be argued that the irenic statements of Vatican II have helped to create a climate of opinion among Catholics that has left them unprepared for the present state of affairs vis-à-vis Islam. And the present state of affairs seems to herald a resumption of the centuries old Islamic hostility toward Christians.

I don’t know how Jason and the Callers come down on the church’s teaching on Islam, but the more I see, the more it looks like the claims made on behalf of infallibility are overblown given the way that ordinary Roman Catholics can (and have to) splice and dice the works of their bishops. At the very least, we see here more evidence that nothing and everything changed at Vatican II.

Turkey Needs the United States (not for the reasons you think)

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Do politicized Christians in the United States understand what Turkish Muslims are recognizing, that it’s not the morality but the scale of the government? Ponder this from Mustafa Akyol:

As you probably well know, Turkey has long been stressed by political tension between religious conservatives and secular nationalists, the latter also known as the Kemalists. However, that main fault line is somewhat passé these days given the emergence of a new kind of tension between the religious conservatives who had triumphed together in (OR: previous) tension from years gone by. This time, it is the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government and the powerful Fethullah Gülen Movement that are at odds with each other.

This new tension, like the old one, includes lots of mind-boggling details and jaw-dropping conspiracy theories. However, like the old one, it actually renders down to a simple question: the nature, and the masters, of the state. Since we have such an all-powerful and all-encompassing Leviathan, its control is a matter of life-and-death. Hence come all our bitter and zealous power struggles.

Another element in this new political tension is the Islamic credentials both sides have, according to their somewhat similar yet still distinct interpretations of religion. This religious element inspires a strong sense self-righteousness and causes the tension to get deeper and deeper.

But is there no way out? An interesting perspective came from an Islamic intellectual, Sibel Eraslan, who is a renowned novelist and a columnist for the conservative daily Star. She wrote:

“The [Gülen] Community-AKP conflict invites us to think more seriously on ‘secularism’… [because] the fight for political space and power among the pious forces us to look for a new referee.”

The term I translated here as “referee” (“hakem”) is a powerful word in Islam, referring to a neutral and fair judge who can settle disputes. And it is interesting that Ms. Eraslan, a pious, headscarf-wearing Muslim, thinks that this “referee” may be none other than secularism. Of course, this would not be the type of secularism that Turkey’s Kemalists have imposed for decades. That peculiar ideology, called “laiklik” (from the Frenchlaïcité), was based on the assumption that there was something wrong with religion and therefore it needed to be suppressed by the state.

What Ms. Eraslan probably implied, and what Turkey indeed needs, is a more American-like secularism. In other words, it should be based on the recognition that there is a problem not with religion, but with the concentration of political power.

North Pole Dancers

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

John Fea’s piece about the War on Christmas reminded me of an entirely new front in that potential conflict. While listening to Philadelphia sports talk radio this morning, a show that my wife wishes I would abandon because of the too frequent banter about the female form, I heard an interview with dancers from a local “gentleman’s” club. They spoke of upcoming attractions — North Pole Dancers — that feature women wearing (and then not wearing) Santa outfits that would put audience members in the “spirit of Christmas.” I understand that the birth of Jesus involved some exposed flesh of both mother and child, but to associate a direct violation of the seventh commandment (sixth for Roman Catholics) with the incarnation is well nigh unfathomable.

It made me wonder if secular Turkish culture would ever stoop so low as to try to capture the “spirit of Ramadan” in strip club events. In many cities in Turkey visitors will find advertisements (and more) for clubs that feature scantily clad women. Turkey is by no means innocent. And perhaps the market forces of Islamo-Calvinism have tempted Turkish entrepreneurs to abuse Islam for the sake of profits. But I find hard to believe that Islam could ever be so domesticated as to allow Turks to confuse something holy with something so profane.

The market forces that underwrite the American Christmas make me think that Pope Francis was on to something. Now if he could only join Reformed Protestants in a call for ending the church calendar.

Feeling Smug and Secure

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

Bryan Cross is the gift that keeps on giving:

. . . the term ‘conservative Catholic’ is a misleading and inaccurate term, because it imports a political concept into a theological realm, as though it is just as permissible to be a “liberal Catholic” as a “conservative Catholic.” In actuality, there are those Catholics who “believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God,” and those who don’t. The former are orthodox Catholics, and the latter are either material or formal heretics. This is why you won’t find the term “conservative Catholic” in the Catechism or any other Church document. Of course there is a sense in which an orthodox Catholic is conserving the faith handed down from the Apostles. But that’s not the primary connotation of the term “conservative Catholic.” The term is derived from politics, and when applied to the Catholic Church, it implicitly connotes theological relativism, which is part of the heresy of modernism.

(funny how when you apply such literalism to the Catechism on the doctrine/discipline difference, you find nothing)

Bryan continuuuuuuues:

we Catholics are in the same Church that Christ founded and which was born on Pentecost, under the same magisterium that has extended down unbroken from the Apostles, using the same canon used by the Church for her first 1500 years, and affirming the same Apostolic Tradition that all the Catholics before us have lived and died upholding. You, however, are on the outside, not even having a bishop, something that no Christian could have imagined for the first fifteen hundred years of Church history, and yet you deign to tell us that our standard of authority has no clear precedent in the early Church? We are the same Church that held the Nicene Council in AD 325, where three hundred and eighteen bishops were present. We are the Church of St. Justin Martyr, of St. Athanasius, of St. Irenaeus, St. Cyril, St. Chryostom and St. Augustine. St. Paul wrote his letter (Romans) to our principal Church, and his bones, as well as those of St. Peter, are buried in Rome, St. Peter’s being under the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. You have no Apostolic letters written to your congregation in Texas, or your PCA denomination founded in 1973. You have no bones of the Apostles. You have not a single bishop and no priests, because Protestantism abandoned apostolic succession four hundred and ninety three years ago. And this is why you have no Eucharist, by which agape is nourished in the soul.

And yet, such certainty may trouble other Roman Catholics:

“Students at some small Catholic colleges are being taught to feel that as Catholics living in America they are members of an alienated, aggrieved, morally superior minority,” says John Zmirak, who was writer-inresidence at Thomas More College in Merrimack, New Hampshire until resigning in 2012. “They are learning that they owe no loyalty to our institutions, but should be working to replace them with an aggressive, intolerant Catholic regime. In other words, they are being taught to think and act like radical Muslims living in France.” (Rod Dreher, “Benedict Option,” American Conservative, Nov/Dec 2013)

One other point, Bryan made this claim about the people in his communion:

I’m much more concerned that they are true. As the latest Pew study shows, if you want to know the truth about the Catholic Church, it is not a good idea to ask the average Catholic, since so many have been so poorly catechized. So, your method of determining what is the truth about what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, is flawed, because you are drawing from people who are not sufficiently catechized.

He did write this before the recent Vatican questionnaire distributed to the well and poorly catechized, but I do wonder if Bryan’s certainty could explain the meaning of this survey for the those who are confused:

Nearly a week after news that the Vatican has asked for the world’s bishops to distribute among Catholics a questionnaire on issues like contraception, same-sex marriage and divorce “immediately” and “as widely as possible,” there is no consensus on what that direction means.
Moreover, comparing notes from recent Vatican statements, it is hard to decipher whether the call for consultation is unprecedented or something that’s happened for decades.

The Vatican’s chief spokesman said in an interview over the weekend that the Vatican’s request for the world’s bishops to survey Catholics on how certain topics affect their lives was part of a habitual “praxis.”

Yet the official who sent the questionnaire said Tuesday it is part of a wide-ranging project to reform how the Vatican reaches out to bishops and faithful around the world.

The questionnaire was sent Oct. 18 by the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, which is preparing a global meeting of prelates for next October. Called by Pope Francis last month, the Oct. 5-19, 2014, meeting is to focus on the theme “Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization.”

If You Want A Civilizational Omelette, You Need to Break A Few Heads

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

From the gullibility-is-not-a-fruit-of-the-Spirit department:

Sometimes the story goes like this: The Catholic Church attacked the Holy Land in 1095 and relations between Christians and Muslims have been poisoned ever since. This simplistic interpretation is not only false, it misses the real significance of the Crusades. They reacquainted Europe with her past, helped bring her out of the so-called Dark Ages and mark the beginning of a new era in Western history, the High Middle Ages, which laid the foundation for transforming epochs like the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. They also led to the thought of one of Catholicism’s greatest philosophers, St. Thomas Aquinas. . . .

Intellectual revitalization is the real significance of the Crusades. Fields like science, mathematics and philosophy made more progress in the twelve and thirteenth centuries than in the preceding six centuries combined. The Black Death momentarily curbed intellectual growth in the fourteenth century, but by the fifteenth century, Europe was poised to become the world’s dominant civilization.