Tag: marriage

Welcome to Protestant Land

Published on by D. G. Hart45 Comments

William Oddie wonders about the state of Roman Catholicism in ways never conceived by Jason and the Callers:

What exactly is going on, when Bishops and parish priests can so radically differ about the most elementary issues of faith and morals—about teachings which are quite clearly explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church—and when simultaneously one Cardinal describes such teachings as “crazy” and another simply expounds them as the immemorial teachings of the Church? Does nobody know what the Church believes any more?

Day One without a Washcloth

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

I know this boarders on tmi, but why is it that Europeans and Turks don’t furnish hotel patrons with a simple washcloth? I get it that Americans are not in the habit of outfitting bathrooms with bidets — but neither are the Irish or the Turks. So what is the aspiring ablutionist to do? When it comes to the handy devise of said washcloth, I am willing to use that dreaded phrase, “human flourishing.”

That said, this morning’s rituals in Dublin (where I am doing some research while not crawling from pub to pub — kidding, dear but you’re probably not reading) included a full Irish breakfast in the hotel’s dining room. There I brought along a recent issue of First Things (to keep away the friendly tourist) and found a readable discussion of Robbie George’s proposal that churches should get out of the civil marriage business (April 2014). As a side point, I was struck by the number of appeals to the deeply theological accounts of marriage and how the secular version is merely an inferior copy. For one, Scripture itself doesn’t say that much about marriage, though the analogy of the church and Christ does give lots of wiggle room — yet it is only an analogy, like a piece of bread and a thimble of wine is a meal. For another, complaints about the inferior nature of secular marriage strike me as yet one more version of Christians bellyaching about the loss of Christendom — oh, how inferior a secular republic is to the deeply textured presence of faith in medieval Europe. Put not your hope in princes, their territories, or their marriages.

None of the Protestant contributors to this discussion picked up on what George’s proposal would do for Protestant ministers. Since Protestant churches know nothing of marriage as a sacrament, since marriage is a common institution not reserved for believers, the only kind of marriage that Protestants offer is a secular version. In our records we don’t keep a special class of members who are married. We have no instruction from Scripture that pastors are supposed to perform marriages (and I can’t think of any explicit cases or instruction from the Old Testament that would have led the apostles to think they needed to perform marriages, though I didn’t score high on my English Bible exam). And we have nary little instruction from Scripture about a happy home except for that impossible stuff about wives submitting and husbands loving (what pastors cover in marriage counseling before a ceremony is a true mystery — do ministers really know anything about finances or balancing a checkbook?).

So I’ll take the challenge. I propose that Reformed churches encourage their pastors to get out of the marriage racket. At the very least, it puts us out in front of that difficult situation when a gay couple wants to make an example of one of our congregations. At the most, what do we lose? So we as a body of believers accompany a couple and their witnesses (the signed ones) to the city courtroom to observe a civil marriage ceremony. Would that be so bad? Imagine the savings on flowers and wedding party attire.

On the other side, I could see abandoning the wedding ceremony for its inclusion within a Sunday morning worship service, sort of like the vows that new members take before the observance of the Lord’s Supper. So the couple would go forward, the pastor would offer some brief instruction about marriage, bride and groom would take their vows, return to their seats, and participate in the rest of the service. The reception? Coffee hour.

Imagine the even more savings!

Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice No More?

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

I like Ross Douthat and all, but the inside Roman Catholic baseball discussions of divorce at his New York Times blog — NEW YORK friggin’ TIMES!! — are perhaps more appropriate for a parochial website like CTC than at the place for all that’s fit to print. Here’s a recent sampling. First Douthat quotes Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry:

I think this is a grace we often overlook. God’s law is as hard as His mercy is infinite. And none of us are righteous under the law. And none of us, if we are honest, can even be said to want to be righteous under the law, in every single dimension of our life. But, particularly in these delicate and demanding aspects of sexual life and life situations, the grace of wanting to want God’s will is already very precious and important. And is it not in those phases, where we are broken down, and all we can muster the strength to pray for is to want to want, or even to want to want to want, that the Church should be most present with the succor of her sacraments?

… If I am a divorced-remarried-unchaste person and, during the eucharistic liturgy, I cry out in my heart, “O Lord! I do not understand your law, and I do not have the will to follow it, but I love you, and I beg you for forgiveness of my sins and the grace to want to want to follow in your footsteps and to be able to humbly receive your body”, is this a contrition that is “sufficient” for me to be able to receive the Body of Christ?

I think so.

Douthat replies in part:

Whatever the complexities and shades-of-gray involved in human sin, it is very clear in Catholic teaching that the medicinal effect, the “succor” of communion, is inseparable (like a two-dose drug) from the succor of a good confession, and you simply can’t make a good confession, and thus be in a position to benefit spiritually from communion, if you don’t intend to take some positive step to separate yourself from a gravely sinful situation or arrangement. To use a higher-stakes version of the professional case Gobry references — if you work at a job that by its nature requires grave sin for full participation (let’s say, I dunno, you’re a lieutenant for the Wolf of Wall Street in his salad days), and you make a confession of sin but have no plan of any kind to disassociate yourself from the business, your confession is by definition insufficient, and saying “I do not have the will to stop defrauding people, Lord, but I pray to gain it” is a sign that you should be praying and not communing.

The same logic, then, would apply to someone in an institutional arrangement that amounts to public adultery under the church’s definitions. You need not have the full desire to change (of course everything is grayer than a term like “perfect contrition” might suggest), but the desire to have the desire is not enough: You need to have some intention to change your life, some idea of alteration, to confess and commune in good conscience.

Can anyone possibly imagine a Reformed Protestant writer for the New York Times blogging about union with Christ or the ordo salutis and the bearing of these debates on denominational politics with reference to American citizens that belong to NAPARC communions? If not, then why do some argue that the anti-Catholic prejudice still exists in the United States? I am well aware that it used to and I can well imagine Paul Blanshard‘s jaws tightening if he were to encounter Douthat while surfing the Times’ webpages. But Ross Douthat free and frequent comments on Roman Catholic faith and practice at the newspaper considered one of the most secular in the nation sure needs to be added to the calculations of anti-Catholic prejudice.

The Call Thickens

Published on by D. G. Hart66 Comments

Jason and the Callers have nothing on Ross Douthat for explaining what’s at stake in current debates about marriage and what they mean for the Call to Communion:

. . . what’s being proposed and discussed and debated among some of the church’s bishops and cardinals — with, it would seem, the blessing of the pope — is something significantly different: An official mechanism whereby a divorced and remarried Catholic could, without having their previous marriage declared invalid, do penance for any sins involved in their divorce and then receive communion without their new marriage being a moral impediment to reception of the host. In practice, this would move the church in the direction of Eastern Orthodoxy, which has traditionally allowed pastoral exceptions for second marriages, but it would so in a more ambiguous way — effectively creating a kind of second tier of marital unions for Catholics, whose existence the church would decide to “tolerate” (in the words of Cardinal Walter Kasper, the leading voice making the proposal) but “not accept.”

Now one can debate the practical effects of such a proposal (I have various thoughts, but again, I’ll save them). And one certainly can, as the Orthodox and many Protestant churches do, make reasonable theological and biblical arguments for accepting second marriages in some form. But here’s the crucial problem: The test for changes to Catholic practice isn’t just supposed to be “what practical consequences are likely to ensue?” and the bar that such changes need to clear isn’t just supposed to be “what can be reasonably defended by thoughtful Christians?” Rather, the primary test and crucial bar alike are supposed to be “what can be reasonably defended in the light of what the Roman Catholic Church has historically affirmed and taught?”

Seen in that light, it is very hard for me to understand how this kind of change wouldn’t create some pretty significant internal problems for Catholic doctrine as currently and traditionally understood. Saying, with Cardinal Kasper, that second marriages can be tolerated but not accepted implies a zone of human conduct that one might call “tolerable sinfulness,” which is an idea that church teaching does not currently support. (And which if it did support would have all kinds of moral and doctrinal implications, extending well beyond this particular debate.) And whatever individuals and pastors decide to take upon their own consciences, declaring the reception of communion licit for the remarried-but-not-annulled in any systematic way seems impossible without real changes — each with its own potential doctrinal ripples — to one or more of three theologically-important Catholic ideas: The understanding that people in grave sin should not generally receive the Eucharist, the understanding that adultery is always a grave sin, and/or the understanding that a valid sacramental marriage is indissoluble.

Which in turn would mean that if he actually made this kind of change — and, as I said in the column, I do not think he will, but it is being debated with his apparent encouragement, so the possibility has to be addressed — Pope Francis would be either dissolving important church teachings into what looks to me like incoherence, or else changing those same teachings in a way that many conservative Catholics believe that the pope simply cannot do.

Now I am obviously neither a theologian nor a church historian, so my judgments on an issue like this are hardly (ahem) infallible. But in following the controversy, the arguments that this sort of move would not require a doctrinal change seem fairly weak. There is the claim that it would be a strictly disciplinary change, not a dogmatic one … but unlike many other disciplinary issues (from Friday fasts to priestly celibacy), this seems like a case where the discipline is more or less required by a doctrine or doctrines, and to alter one is to at least strongly imply an alteration in the others. There is also the invocation of practices from the early centuries of the church, when some second marriages may have been handled in this manner, and the suggestion that under such a reform the church would be simply returning to an ancient practice. But the entire theory of the development of dogma, which is central to defenses of continuity in Catholic teaching, would seem to militate against the idea that the consistent witness (and to this layman, it really does look pretty consistent) of the second millennium of Catholic history, complete with martyrs and dogmatic definitions, can safely be set aside because of some highly ambiguous cases from the first millennium.

Now these are not points that would trouble many liberal Catholics, who often reject the intertwined ideas of consistency in Catholic doctrine and papal infallibility, and for whom the idea of a pope willing to alter doctrine might be a consummation devoutly to be wished. But for conservative Catholics, many of whom have spent the John Paul and Benedict eras arguing that on a range of controversial questions the whole issue isn’t just that the church shouldn’t change, but that it can’t … well, if a change like this did happen, however hedged and with however many first millennium antecedents invoked, that conservative argument would at the very least look weaker than it did during the last two pontificates.

And since it isn’t a small argument … since the church’s claim to a constant, non-contradicting authority lies close to the heart of why many conservative Catholics are conservative Catholics … well, that’s why the “schism” possibility seems worth raising, because hard-to-process theological shocks are where institutional fractures often start. It’s one thing for conservative Catholics to serve as a kind of loyal opposition during this pontificate — to learn to doubt a pope, or disagree with his rhetoric or decision-making, while remaining faithful to the office and the church. It’s quite another if one of those papal decisions seriously calls into question the doctrinal continuity that’s the very root of conservative-Catholic loyalty. And there just isn’t a recent model apart from the Lefebvrist schism for how that kind of more-Catholic-than-the-pope dissent would practically work.

But once again, I could be completely wrong, about either the problematic nature of the shift being discussed or the likely conservative reaction to the change. All I can say for certain is that a development like this would leave me more doubtful than before about the consistency of Catholic doctrine and the nature of the church. But I’m not sure what to read into these feelings: While I obviously fall into the conservative camp in the Catholic culture wars I’m also on the less-rigorous, more-latitudinarian end of the conservative-Catholic spectrum, so I tend to expect that what unsettles me should unsettle the more rigorous even more … but it could also be that if I were more rigorous I’d be more trusting and less suspicious, and less likely to see (invent?) discontinuities where they might not actually exist. I’m not sure …

Wouldn’t it show their Protestant past if the Callers were so candid in their descriptions of the communion to which they call.

The Husband W-w, the Wife W-w

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Do disagreements stem from antithetical w’ws? Toby Jenkins thinks so:

Ultimately, there really are only two worldviews: Does the created order belong to God to do with as He pleases, and therefore we should endeavor at every level to direct our culture and our pleasures and/or approvals in accord with His revealed holy precepts for life? Or, as the masters of our own destinies, should we live as though the assertion of ancient Greek naturalist philosopher Protagoras is true, namely that, “Man is the measure of all things”?

In that worldview, no one should try to impose his or her views on anyone else because everyone is free and responsible enough to do whatever he or she wants, “so long as it doesn’t harm me” (which, by the way, we all know is simply rationally and practically untenable).

Unfortunately, many of our individualistic 21st century peers naïvely assume that merely imagining we can live as such anthropological islands somehow magically trumps divine revelation’s accurate portrait of the solidarity of Old Testament Israel [Deut 28-30; Josh 7], the New Testament church [1 Cor 12-14], communities in general [Matt 12.25-26; Eph 4; Phil 4.2-3], and even all humanity [Rom 5]). What one person advocates will inescapably affect the community, despite the denial of the naïve.

Where one locates himself on the scale of these two worldview poles will determine how he interacts with any issue, whether it be broader matters such as politics, economics, or environment, or more specific and personal concerns like work ethic, family construct, health care, organizational affiliation, etc.

So what are a husband and wife to do when they have an argument?

Simply telling someone who doesn’t follow Jesus Christ that he or she is wrong and you disagree with his or her conclusions will usually only spark an unresolvable debate (not because the issue is unresolvable, but because the darkened anti-God, self-preserving mind will always ultimately reject holiness [Rom 8.7-8; Titus 1.15-16]).

True dat.

So, the discussion might be better served if you simply communicate to your conversation partner that you realize the ground from which you derive your perspective seems to be at odds with what grounds his or hers, and that the worldviews from which you take your opposing stances are obviously fundamentally different. You can even tell your friend that you realize you probably won’t reach a consensus because of that; but at least both of you will have the opportunity—whether or not that opportunity is seized with honesty—to examine your worldviews before the face of the thrice-holy God who would not have us grope around in darkness for how we should live.

Or perhaps we don’t try to press the metaphysical or epistemological issue all the time. Maybe I avoid attributing my wife’s point to her Satan. Maybe instead I simply look for a way to resolve the issue and find a way to live with a green wall in the bathroom. And perhaps if I compromise, or she does with me, it is not an instance of betraying Jesus.

The Further Appeal of Sola Scriptura

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

Why is it that Jason and the Callers use the Bible against Protestants but not against the bishops?

The lesson of all this is that God is not impressed by numbers. Yes, our Lord wants all men to be saved. But they will be saved on His terms, and if they will not heed Him on His own terms, He is willing to wipe them away and start all over again. He has delivered His truth and His commands, and if people are not willing to keep them, He will blot them out – even if He has to blot out an entire nation or even a race and start all over again from scratch. In none of these historical examples does God ever suggest that He will mitigate His law, relax His discipline, or soften His demands just because a large – sometimes very large – portion of His people are living in disobedience. He would rather wipe out the huge amount of dissenters and start fresh than relax even a single point of His commands on their behalf.

This is extremely relevant given current discussions about mitigating the Church’s long standing discipline of denying communion to people living in adulterous “second marriages.” The contemporary wisdom, exemplified by Cardinal Kasper, suggests that because there are so many Catholics living in this state who cannot receive communion, there is an “abyss” between Church practice and the real experience of couples in concrete circumstances. If the Church were to continue to deny these people communion, we might lose a lot of people. Therefore, we need to accommodate their rebellion by softening our discipline.

This is not the way God works. God is not impressed by the number of people living in “second marriages”, nor is God afraid to lose them all and work again from a remnant. Reflect again on that passage from Exodus; God had done wonders to bring these people out of Egypt and had given them the Law in a manifestation of divine glory unsurpassed in the Old Testament. According to the census at the time of the Exodus, Moses led 603,550 men out of Egypt (Num. 1:46); a massive throng of humanity! Even so, when they all rebelled, He was prepared to destroy them all and start all over again with a single man – essentially, go back to the starting point he had established with Abraham centuries before. He was not impressed with the numbers of the rebels; no angels made the argument that an abyss existed between God’s demands and the concrete pastoral circumstances of the Israelites that needed to be bridged; they held no committee meetings on the “problems” of Israelite religion. “Let me alone that I may consume them.” God was ready to destroy them all and start over again with a single man. And note that it was not by pleas of mercy for the Israelites that Moses’ intercession saved them, but by appealing to God’s glory and His own word.

You see, God is not afraid of working through a remnant. Cardinal Kasper is.

Too much skin in the game?

Sola Scriptura Has Its Moments

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

Carson Holloway explains why the Roman Catholic Church teaches what it does about marriage and divorce (and in doing so sounds like a Protestant):

It turns out, then, that the Church’s rather rigorous teaching on marriage is based not on the words of some little known celibate old man, but on the words of one very well known and important celibate young man. The teaching is based on the words of Jesus Christ, whom faithful Catholics believe to be God. Perhaps, then, Christians at least, and even all those people who claim to respect Jesus as a moral teacher, could cut the Church some slack and acknowledge that it has good reason to think that it is not just imposing some man-made morality on human beings but in fact preserving what was delivered to her by her divine founder.

And there you have the logic of Protestantism, a form of reasoning that makes sense to most Christians unless they are trying to protect the prerogatives of specific offices. Sometimes the word of God really is a lot more compelling than the word of men (even episcopal ones).

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.

Insider Vatican Baseball

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Pope Francis has appointed a new batch of cardinals and the Roman Catholic Church appears to be heading toward the global South:

Five notable hallmarks distinguish this first batch of cardinals named by the Argentinean Pope, including universality, attention to the peripheries of the world, and a break with the tradition of giving the red hat to the heads of 8 major Italian dioceses.

Universality is the first hallmark. The 16 new cardinal electors come from all five continents: 6 from Europe, 5 from Latin and Central America, 2 from Asia, 2 from Africa, and 1 from North America (Canada).

The second hallmark is a distinguishing aspect of this pontificate: attention to countries and peoples on the peripheries of the world that suffer from poverty, diseases, violence, natural disasters, and for whom life is a daily struggles 5 of the new cardinals (including 4 electors) come from Haiti, the Antilles, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, the Philippines. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Americas, often hit by violence and natural disaster. Nicaragua is also among the poorest countries in the Americas, and struggling with political tensions. The Antilles are islands in the Caribbean, where so many live on the bare minimum. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in Africa. The Ivory Coast has been plagued by civil war, internal strife and much poverty. The Philippines suffers from widespread poverty, natural disasters and the conflict in Mindanao. Both Haiti and the Antilles have never had a cardinal before.

Another particularly striking aspect is the Pope’s decision to break with the tradition that the heads of the nine major Italian dioceses should be cardinals. Since the Lateran Pacts in 1929, it was customary to assign red hats to the archbishops of nine major Italian sees beginning with Rome and, in descending order by reason of the number of faithful, Milan, Turin, Naples, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice. That is no longer the case.

Pope Francis by-passed Turin and Venice, and gave a red hat instead to the archbishop of Perugia, Gualtiero Bassetti, vice president of the Italian bishop’s conference, a pastoral, meek and prayerful man, the qualities the Pope likes in a bishop. It’s interesting to note that the last archbishop of Perugia to be given a red hat was Gioacchino Pecci, the future Pope Leo XIII, in 1853.

A fourth significant feature is that Pope Francis has kept the new European electors to a minimum. Four hold senior positions in the Roman Curia and will receive the red hat: Parolin (Italy) – the Secretary of State; Baldisseri (Italy) – Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, a body the Pope wants to strengthen with a view to developing synodality in the Church; Muller (Germany) – the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a man that is very close to Benedict XVI who appointed him to this post in July 2012; Stella (Italy) –the Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy.

In this context, the choice of the two other European electors stands out: Nichols of Westminster (England) and Bassetti of Perugia (Italy), both of whom he appointed to the Congregation for Bishops earlier in the month.

The fifth significant aspect of the list is that the Pope did not give a red hat to any of the Presidents of the Pontifical Councils as had been the practice in recent decades, nor did he give one to the Prefect of the Vatican Library and Archives. In this way he is diminishing future expectations in the Roman Curia, and putting a curb on careerism.

It came as no surprise that the Argentinean Pope gave five red hats to Latin and Central America, where more than 40% of the Catholics of the world live. As expected he gave one to his successor in Buenos Aires, Mario Poli, and to the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Orani Joao Tempesta who hosted the World Youth Day last year. He also recognized the archbishop of Santiago del Chile, Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, and the archbishop of Managua, Leopol Brenes Solorzano. But he surprised again by naming as cardinal, Chibly Langois, the bishop of Les Cayes and President of the Haitian Bishops’ Conference.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis is going to have to figure out what do with his bishops in the global West:

Two groups of noted German theologians have bluntly outlined how church teaching does not align with the concerns or lifestyles of most European Catholics in response to a Vatican questionnaire on Catholics’ attitudes on issues like contraception and same-sex marriage.
Church sexual teachings, say the representatives of the Association of German Moral Theologians and the Conference of German-speaking Pastoral Theologians, come from an “idealized reality” and need a “fundamental, new evaluation.”

“It becomes painfully obvious that the Christian moral teaching that limits sexuality to the context of marriage cannot look closely enough at the many forms of sexuality outside of marriage,” say the 17 signers of the response, who include some of Germany’s most respected Catholic academics.

The theologians also propose that the church adopt a whole new paradigm for its sexual teachings, based not on moral evaluations of individual sex acts but on the fragility of marriage and the vulnerability people experience in their sexuality.

Just part of my service to Jason and the Calllers who don’t have time to report on all their church’s doings. They’re welcome.

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?