The 7 Habitus

I’m Baaack

2010-10-22T12:58:00.000-06:00

I haven’t posted here in nearly 7 years, so it seems fitting to come back to The 7 Habitus. I stopped writing here because I felt I was unable to write many things without being more caustic, one way to put it, than necessary. Perhaps, now, I feel I’ve calmed down a little, or perhaps watching events of the last couple of weeks, I see more than ever, the need for some rational discourse.

I’m referring, of course, to the Bill O’Reilly appearance on The View, last week, and the somewhat related event of NPR firing Juan Williams for commenting on feeling nervous when he saw Muslims in full Muslim garb in an airport.

I have to admit, I thought The View episode last week was a rather trivial event, not deserving of the attention it was getting. First of all, it was a given that the majority of females on the show would not like Bill O’Reilly, or come close to agreeing with him. It was only mildly surprising that, at some point, one or more of those women would walk out on him. Liberals don’t like being disagreed with, period. Besides, who really cares what Whoopi Goldberg or Joyce Behar think about any topic? They’re entertainers, obviously not thinkers. I really can’t understand why, when someone appears in one or more movies, they are suddenly experts in a wide range of subjects, many of which they haven’t the foggiest notion about.

But then came the firing of Juan Williams, who was fired for commenting on what O’Reilly said on The View.

Many commentators have looked at the Williams episode as a matter of the right to free speech, and to some extent it is. Still, in the end, NPR has a right to fire anyone they please, for whatever reason, as long as they are acting in accord with the terms of any existing contracts between employee and employer. Juan Williams pissed them off, so they fired him.

Yet, taken together, both episodes offer the American public of a severe problem in our country. The problem is the inability to tolerate ideas contrary to one’s own. I’ll have to say, the problem appears to be much more severe among those who take the “liberal” point of view. Whoopi Goldberg and Joyce Behar disagreed with Bill O’Reilly. Rather than calmly discussing the question he raised, whether or not Muslims attacked the U.S. on 9/11 or not, they got mad and stormed out. They simply could either not come up with valid reasons why they opposed his thinking and that left no recourse but to curse him and walk out. It was a very childish, immature display.

In William’s case, NPR, a network that supports so called “tolerance” and “diversity”, couldn’t handle someone who doesn’t agree with them 100% down the line. It may have been that, a factor in that intolerance was that Fox News reaches, by far, a much bigger audience than NPR ever will, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t tolerate dissent, even from one of their own. Even when he wasn’t really dissenting.

Don’t misunderstand, I’ve seen this intolerance from some on the right, but the tendency is much more pronounced on the left.

The thing that concerns me is that we are facing very important issues, the outcome of which will affect us and our descendants for many generations. We face mounting financial difficulties, growing threats from, frankly, Muslims, overseas, and we seem unable to find the wherewithal to sit down and discuss these matters intelligently. Instead, we have to resort to anger and revenge. It’s not a prospect that offers a lot of hope.

2003-09-09T08:17:00.000-06:00

The New 7 Habitus

The set up of the new 7 Habitus site has gone so well, there is no reason to delay the permanent change over any longer than necessary, so after 15 September, I will no longer post to this site. I will leave this up and running but all posts will be at the new location.

The New 7 Habitus Site

2003-09-08T13:13:00.000-06:00

I now have the new 7 Habitus Site set up and it looks like there is no reason to defer the permanent transfer beyond 15 September. I will, for no good reason, continue to dual post anything I have to post until then, then I will only post on the new site.

Please feel free to check out the other blogs at St. Blogs.org

Flos Carmeli
Fructus Ventris
The 7 Habitus
Caritate Dei
Catholic Light
Eternal Rebels

and again, of course, St. Blogs.org

Pax et bonum

2003-09-07T11:58:00.000-06:00

St. Blogs.org

It appears that, rather than switching to Typepad, The 7 Habitus has found a home at St. Blogs.org. The new address will be http:7habitus.stblogs.org. I plan to make the final change by 1 October in order to give me time to get the blog template set up and get used to working in a new format. Until then I will continue primarily to post here. I apologize for the confusion, but I just learned about St. Blogs.org late this past week and think it a wonderful idea.

I am making this change primarily for the reason that I like the idea of "one stop shopping" for St. Blogs member blogs. Just think, if all St. Blogs blogs were on one domain (Richard probably just had a heart attack) what that would mean. Instead of the interminable lists on each individual blog we could post just one reference :St. Blogs.org and easily be able to find any Catholic blog. Also, there are the advantages that Moveable Type offers, such as categories for blogs, Track Back, and numerous others.

My only reservation is that I am not a programmer and will have to spend a bit of time learning to work with Moveable Type. Oh well, who said an old dog can't learn new tricks?

RCIA

2003-09-07T09:10:00.000-06:00

It appears that I will be participating, at least to some limited extent, in the RCIA program in my parish this year. We have a new DRE in the parish and except for me and one other, there’s an entirely new team. I am looking forward to it, although I will not be able to be involved every week between now and Easter Vigil.

The groups in the past year or two come to the Church as the result of a conversion, although not from having been Protestant. In other words, they are not necessarily Protestants who have come to a conversion experience; they are coming to the Church with little, if any, previous exposure to the faith. This is not the typical background for an RCIA candidate. I wonder if this new way of coming to the faith represents a trend around the country, but I think it somewhat remarkable. It seems that, with the cultural environment being what it is, especially here in Colorado Springs, that most people would take the easier approach and join an evangelical Christian church, of which there are many here in the Springs. Catholics are not known for their evangelization skills. Make no mistake, I think this is a wonderful and heartening trend, but it strikes me as a bit odd.

Around this time of year, as RCIA begins in most parishes (will we ever get away from the "school year" model?), I think back to my own conversion to the Church. It was, in many ways serendipitous and, I am convinced, that it was the work of the Holy Spirit. Left to my own devices, I would never have found my way to Rome; I simply could not have done it on my own. It was really rather easy, I didn’t really even begin learning Church doctrine until after I had received the Sacraments; I just knew God was leading me to the Church. There were a few difficult times, times when I thought I must be crazy, my coming from a Scots Presbyterian background and all. But, I pressed on, and as I look back, I realize it could only have been the Spirit at work.

So, I guess, in some ways, my own experience is not all that much different from that of most RCIA "classes". Perhaps, the Holy Spirit is working to build His Church and we all need to be reminded that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it -- even with the likes of me among its members.
While ile the trial period continues this post also appears at The 7 Habitus on Typepad.

A short post tonight.

2003-09-04T19:16:00.000-06:00

Over the last couple of months I've been very frustrated with my writing and have not done a lot of posting. I picked up a book this past weekend that explained that what I was going through was relatively common and that the best cure was to "just do it." I thought it fair to warn you that I have been just writing and probably not much of whatever I have written should be taken very seriously. I promise, over the next week or so I will try picking some topics in a lighter vein. I'm trying to find my purpose in life again -- at least as far as blogdom goes, and I guess there are times that I let the rant and rave come on too easily. Steven recently wrote that his blog had not turned out exactly as he had hoped it would. I know the feeling and trying to get back on track is even harder.

Paz y bien

While the trial period continues this post also appears at The 7 Habitus on Typepad.

The Ten Commandments

2003-09-03T19:42:00.000-06:00

Lately there has been quite a brouhaha over a statue, or monument, or something weighing several tons, inscribed with the 10 Commandments, firmly planted on the grounds of the Alabama Supreme Court. The furor has degenerated, properly or improperly, to an argument between Christians and non-Christians over the role of religion in public life.

Cal Thomas wrote a column that appeared in our local newspaper today in which he generally berates Christians for taking an active part in this drama. He claims that the only real reason many Christians/conservatives are wrapped up in this debate is that it is useful as a political fund-raising ploy and that it serves as nothing more than a distraction for Christians from their real task (which he does not clearly define).

To be honest I am of two minds over this drama playing out in the Deep South. I do not believe there is any way to say that this monument, placed on government property, is an attempt by the state to "make any law regarding the establishment of religion." If it serves any purpose, it is a reminder of the root of our entire concept of law -- the 10 Commandments, and more broadly, God's law written on our hearts. Thomas denies that the 10 commandments, other than the two dealing with the prohibition of murder and theft, have anything to do with secular law. He says "The rest are about relationships between God and man and between human beings." What is law if it does not involve prescriptions concerning the relationship between human beings? I would remind Thomas' readers that this country, until recently, had laws against adultery, sodomy, and even doing business on the Sabbath (long-time Texas residents will remember the famous "blue-laws").

Beyond specifics, however, the 10 Commandments prescribe a general norm of moral conduct for human beings -- love of God with heart, mind and strength, and love of neighbor as oneself. Today, in even so-called civilized discourse, both of these ideas have been lost. God has become an outlaw, and our neighbor is more often looked upon as an obstacle to our own freedom, rather that a human person created in the image of God. In many cases, we have even lost respect for, not only ourselves, but anything that might be considered worthy of respect or reverence. We do what we can to debunk whatever is sacred, or even respectable. A female religious, for example, can write of the Virgin Mary that she was really an early feminist and some fantasy figure invented by the early Church to replace the goddess Isis!

On the other hand, I can see the point that would cause someone to say this fight was much ado about nothing. The change that needs to be made needs to be made within the court house, not on the lawn in front of the court house. In the interest of pushing a secular materialist agenda, the courts have taken upon themselves far more authority than they really have. They have injected themselves into every aspect of our lives, even our spiritual lives, and they are not interested in promoting anything but their own agenda. This is the pattern that must be changed.

I think the ferocity of Christian support for the Alabama justice showed that Christians are aware of what has been going on, that they are not a small and ever dwindling minority, and that they are willing to take a stand against the trend to outlaw religion from public life. This idea would have been abhorrent to the founding fathers of this country. Christians have taken this stand, perhaps, out of a feeling of powerlessness, but it is one point that needs to be made whenever and wherever it can.

While the trial period continues this post also appears at The 7 Habitus on Typepad.

A Fine Mess

2003-09-02T18:38:00.000-06:00

There was an interesting article on the front page of my local newspaper today -- it seems the Archbishop of Canterbury sees difficulties ahead for his church. "The question is not whether we can avoid mess, but whether we can hang on to common convictions about divine grace and initiative” This in an article by the archbishop in New Directions magazine. He is, of course, referring to the recent ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, in New Hampshire. This vote this past summer has presented the ECUSA with the very real possibility of schism, not only within the ECUSA, but within the Anglican communion as a whole. It seems the Archbishop's solution is reorganization.

Williams writes that this might be "worth looking at structures in Anglicanism that don't either commit us to a meaningless structural uniformity or leave us in mutual isolation."

I'm not sure exactly what the archbishop means, but he seems to be saying, "well fellas, instead of splitting in a nasty schism, lets split officially. Let's just put a wall between the liberals and conservatives so they don't have to get together too often, but we can all still call ourselves Episcopalians (and keeping those funds coming in)." It seems to be this is not an entirely satisfactory solution.

On the one hand, it represents a failure to face the problem, and a severe problem it is, of whether the Bible is to be believed or not by Episcopalians. It ignores the question of whether or not there are any limits to human moral conduct. It seems to be a sort of sweeping the problem under the rug. The problem for the Episcopalians is not in the organization, it is with some of those within the organization. It seems to me that simply creating more structures within the Anglican community now presents large difficulties in the future. What do they do when some small minority within the church decides it is fitting and proper to ordain practicing pedophiles to the priesthood? Do they then create yet another reorganization, made up of yet smaller groups? And what of the issue after that? Can they become cell-like and divide infinitely?

On the other hand, it seems to me that a real solution is structurally almost beyond reach of the ECUSA. The solution would be that the Archbishop of Canterbury, assuming he were so inclined, step in and nullify the silliness that took place in the United States this summer. He should step up and insist that what happened at the ECUSA convention goes beyond all known Biblical norms and is, therefore, invalid. The problem is, though, that he has no power to do this -- there is no final teaching authority within the Anglican Communion. In effect, they lack adult supervision, and thus are doomed to an endless cycle of child like self-indulgence on whatever happens to be the latest social trend. There's no stopping them.

All of which reminds me of the profound sense of gratitude Catholics should bear to our Holy Father and the Magisterium of the Church. This represents, not a "meaningless structural uniformity", but the guaranty by the Holy Spirit that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Jesus' Church.

2003-09-02T17:52:00.000-06:00

Typepad
Well, since everyone seems to be talking about it I decided to try it. Effective today, I am taking advantage of the 30 day free trial offer on Typepad and have set up a 7 Habitus blog over there. For the next 30 days I will post all posts to both sites and let you know the result.

I am already somewhat pleased with the initial ease of set up and layout options, etc. Let me know what you think.

Paz y bien

2003-09-02T06:46:00.000-06:00

In the Beginning

Paul almost invariably starts his letters with some variation on the words "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle . . .” James begins his letter in almost the same way, as does Peter. I have begun noticing these introductions lately and wondering about them. Why do these writers seem to think it so important to begin a letter stating who they are, what they are about, especially since those who originally received these letters probably knew very well who the writers were? Why did Paul think it so important that he declare it over and over again that he was "called" to be an apostle?

I've thought about what would happen if I began every one of my blog posts in this manner -- "Ron, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to write silly things on the Internet." I guess this might accomplish a couple of things. First, it would remind me exactly what my priorities for this blog should be -- to serve Christ in everything I write. It would set the tone for each post and help write things that built up the Church and those in it, rather than anything that would tear it down. It might also remind me that whatever talent or ability I may have, I have through no fault of my own. I might also remember that any talent I have was given to me for use in furthering the Kingdom of God.

I have also tended to think of these introductions as being intended to remind the reader that he or she too is "called" to some specific role in the Kingdom. Perhaps there is something to this. We all need to be reminded of these things. But these formulaic introductions have become so familiar that we glance over them in order to get on to the real meat of the letter. However, the writers of the Epistles began those letters in this way for a reason, and no part of Scripture is meaningless. Perhaps this is the most important reminder of all.

2003-08-29T13:23:00.000-06:00

Some Assistance Please

Can someone please tell me how to change the color of the font, or a section thereof, within a post? Would be nice to do this once in a while.

2003-08-29T11:38:00.000-06:00

A Feminist Mary

The following is from a review of the book Our Sister, published in the July 18 issue of Commonweal.

Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., has been thinking about such questions for a long time. She has now published a major theological study on Mary, and it is a very impressive work—comprehensive, erudite, critical, and passionate. Truly Our Sister does not begin, as do so many theological treatises, with scriptural foundations, followed by sections on patristic literature, medieval theologies, Reformation controversies, and modern developments. For Johnson, there is too much ambiguity in the history of Marian devotion for this approach to make sense; ineluctably we stand in a broken relationship with the whole tradition. Instead, she begins with “fragments in the rubble,” salvageable elements from the past, and then turns to what, in Johnson’s view, is the key event of the theological development: the emergence of women’s voices in theology, and especially the voices of women in poor countries and marginalized minorities. Her goal is to develop “a Marian theology rooted in Scripture read through women’s eyes with feminist hermeneutical methods.”

Wouldn't you just know it. Now Mary is not our Mother, she is Our Sister!

2003-08-23T20:39:00.000-06:00

An Update

A few weeks ago I wrote that I am now using an AlphaSmart Dana to do these blog posts. At first the change from the Palm disconcerted me a bit, perhaps that is one reason I haven't done as many posts as I had prior to making this change. One difficulty is that, since the Dana does not have a color screen, at night if the light is not really good it is very hard for me to see anything I try to type. During daylight hours this is no problem whatsoever and I find the Dana an almost perfect tool to write with -- it is light, compact, and the screen is a nice size, even if it is not a color monitor. I have now found a solution to the problem of working at night, I purchased a small, battery powered book light which gives just enough light to make night time typing possible. So, in short, the AlphaSmart is going to be around for a good long time.

+ + +
Steven over at Flos Carmeli has been doing a series of posts on Phillip Yancy's book Soul Survior, and is starting another series on another of Yancy's books. I was quite interested in this since Yancy is, I think, a Protestant. The reason I have been following Steven's posts is my own uncertainty about reading Protestant authors. I should explain.

About 6 months or so prior to my reception into the Church, I swore off reading anything Protestant, almost to include C. S. Lewis. This continued until about 3 years after my coming into the Church when I took a philosophy course through Franciscan University at Steubenville. One of the texts was Lewis' The Abolition of Man and also parts of Mere Christianity. I softened and have read some things by a few Protestant authors over the last few years. Then, this summer, the Episcopal Church went through its meltdown, and as I posted a week or two ago, I was reminded of the real problems with Protestantism and thought I should return to strictly Catholic reading and thought.

Then, along comes Steven with his Soul Survivor series. What to make of this? Much of what Steven quoted, and certainly his comments on those passages, was at least interesting, if not thought provoking. My wife made the point, which I think Steven has also made recently, that it is always appropriate to read good writing. So, I went out tonight at bought two Phillip Yancy books -- Soul Survivor and The Jesus I Never Knew. I bought these two because they were the only Yancy books that I could find at our local bookstore. I may offer some comments of my own on these as I read them, not to copy Steven nor to compete with him, but to see if, after reading them, I am convinced one way or the other about the propriety of Catholics reading books by Protestant authors.

2003-08-22T20:48:00.000-06:00

It’s Getting Hairy

The headline of an article, apparently supplied by the New York Times, in our local newspaper this week caught my eye, it read: “Hair: It separates us from the apes.” Of course, I found this idea immediately intriguing since I am a kind and optimistic fellow and bear a rather high view of my fellow human beings. I had not thought of hair as being one of the primary factors separating them from apes, in fact, if asked, I would have made a number of other more important distinctions. For example, I don’t know of any blogs published by monkeys. I know of no great works of art produced by apes in the last few centuries, nor have I seen any chimps driving on the Interstate to work each morning (well, maybe one or two but that is beside the point). As for science, I know of no great contributions to the field by apes other than substantial confusion.

In any case, our author very confidently asserts that it is precisely at the point at which we humans started losing our body hair that we parted company with our simian ancestors, this based on a study of the subject done by a group of professors in England. The article is remarkable on a number of different levels. First is the rather blind acceptance of the “fact” of evolution that underlies much of the nonsense in the rest of the article. I’m sure the possibility that the theory of evolution itself might be questionable never crossed the authors mind, judging by the pap found in the rest of the article, perhaps there is good reason for this – personal experience may be at work here.

In any case, it seems that the great question left unanswered by this scholarly study is why humans should have lost their hair as part of the evolutionary process. The article points out that this is “a question that long has been beyond the reach of archeology and paleontology.” Little wonder, judging by the results of this study. Among the possible reasons for hair loss is that we humans, in the process of transitioning from ape to human, went through a semi-aquatic stage (the webbing in our hands provides the evidence for this idea) and shed hair in order to improve speed under water. Have you ever seen an ape go for a swim? Another theory is that loss of hair helped our ancestors keep cool as they “ventured beyond the forest’s shade and across the hot African savannah – though naked skin absorbs more energy during the day and loses more during the night.” Lets see, we left the forest and decided to go bare so we could burn to a crisp in the hot sun and find no relief at night. Ummmm.

Another researcher poses another possible solution – we lost our body hair to free ourselves from external parasites, this trait becoming subject to sexual selection. “Among newly furless humans, bare skin would have served as a signal of fitness. The pains women take to keep their bodies free from hair may be no mere fashion statement but the latest echo of an ancient instinct.” I get it, we decided to go “furless” so we could be sexy and girls would look good in Playboy.

I guess I’d like to know just how our ancient ancestors decided to lose their hair. It seems that no other animal on earth (except for the Cornish Rex which, I believe, is the work of a deranged ape) has gone through the same transformation because there are more advantages to having fur than not having fur. Why would some fool ape have made such a decision? A more important question, though, is how we can reverse the situation. As I grow older that question becomes more critical day by day.

2003-08-16T15:23:00.000-06:00

Who's Right?

The following is excerpted from an Associated Press report posted on the web:

“Until very recently, all Christian branches agreed that same-sex activity was immoral because of their age-old understanding of God's will taught in the Scriptures.
Most of the world's Christian bodies maintain that belief. But in the last quarter-century, liberal scholars from some so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations in Europe and North America have argued against traditional Bible interpretations, often in books from church publishing houses. They say the Bible's overwhelming overall message is loving acceptance and justice for all people.
This has gradually influenced leadership circles in the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and United Methodist Church. Yet the new biblical theories have failed to convince legions of rank and file American churchgoers.
To go to the source of the argument, two biblical passages are crucial:
- "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22, an Old Testament law repeated with the death penalty in Leviticus 20:13).
- "God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error" (the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:26-27).
Conservatives say God fixed the sexual pattern in Genesis 2:24: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." Jesus repeated that teaching twice in the Gospels: Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9.
At the Episcopal convention, the Rev. Kendall Harmon of South Carolina said that the Old and New Testaments send the same message that sex is limited to a woman and a man. "There is no tension, no qualification, no development and no equivocation," he said.
Another conservative point: No biblical verse hints at approval for same-sex activity.
Liberal authors commonly say Leviticus 18 was part of a Jewish purity code that barred practices associated with paganism, including many laws Christianity eliminated, for instance the kosher rules in Leviticus 17. Conservatives reply that the gay ban is embedded alongside laws against adultery, incest, bestiality and child sacrifice that Christianity kept.
Regarding Romans 1 and other New Testament passages, liberals often say these were merely meant to oppose same-sex activity that was exploitative (using slaves or boys). A related argument: Paul thought men were heterosexual in nature and should shun homosexual acts, but some today believe people are born with a disposition toward being gay.
In the heftiest conservative book on the subject in recent years, "The Bible and Homosexual Practice" (Abingdon), Robert A. J. Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary argues in detail that all same-sex variants were well known in the ancient world - so it's obvious the Bible opposed same-sex activity across the board, not just certain types.
But the Rev. Walter Wink of New York's Auburn Theological Seminary, a United Methodist clergyman, disagrees with Presbyterian Gagnon's reading of Scripture.
"The Bible has no sex ethic," Wink says. "It only knows a communal love ethic" exemplified by Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself, which requires Christians to understand gays' experiences.
Societies' changing codes of sexual conduct should be assessed against that standard and in light of modern knowledge, he says.
Wink acknowledges that "a lot of churches are not going to change" for the present, but he's convinced they will eventually shed old Bible interpretations that are "life-denying and intellectually dishonest."
"In 50 years most of us will look back and say, 'Why were we so slow? Why was this so difficult?'" he said.
Bishop-elect Robinson believes biblical conservatives will "come to know that they are wrong, in this life or the next one."
Gagnon agrees that the traditional view is not popular in universities or the media. But he insists that the Bible's entire authority is under threat. If people can deny such a clear and specific scriptural teaching, he says, it raises questions about the point of adhering to the faith in the first place.
Says Gagnon: "When we reach the point where it is no longer the word of God for us in any meaningful sense, there is no more reason to be part of organized Christianity."”

There are several interesting points that this story brings to mind.

First, the story points out the central problem faced by our Protestant brothers and sisters – no final teaching authority, no way to define doctrine. Here we have folks on two very different sides of an issue, and both claiming to rest their views on the authority of Scripture. It should be clear that the idea of sola scriptura is flawed. Obviously both sides to the debate on human sexual conduct can’t be right; Scripture does not contradict itself. But where can Protestants turn for a final authority? It seems that without the authority of a teaching Magisterium it is almost impossible not to slip into the fog of error.
A second point comes to mind and is found in the quote: “They say the Bible's overwhelming overall message is loving acceptance and justice for all people.” Our liberal friends seem to think that it is God’s nature to accept whatever we happen to want to do, whenever we want to do it. They appear to believe that God is just sitting around in heaven loving us and approving of everything we do. They also seem to think that God’s nature is capable of changing with the times. The problem with this idea, of course, is that is defines away the problem of sin; if whatever we do is “okay” then no mode of human conduct can be considered sinful. Of course, if there is no sin there is little need for redemption, or for God for that matter. God does love us, but as the above quote points out, God is also just. As Paul wrote in the book of Romans, he gives us what we deserve. He also measures what we deserve by an absolute standard – truth and good do not change with the times. There is nothing is Scripture that would lead us to think otherwise.
It is also interesting that it appears to be the goal of the “liberals” here to simply wait out those more orthodox Christians. It seems clear that the majority of folks in the pew do not wish to sanction “same-sex” marriage. It doesn’t matter to those leading their churches though. Their strategy is not to appeal to truth but finally to simply wear down the opposition. This has been the strategy of “liberals” for a long time. It began with the 1930s Lambeth Conference that sanctioned divorce among Christians, and continues to this day. We are allowing the erosion, perhaps the destruction, of a Christian civilization bit by bit, one brick at a time. It’s like the apocryphal frog placed in a pan of cold water on top of a stove. As the heat is turned on he is oblivious to his predicament until he is boiled alive. I believe we Catholics are called to try to oppose this effort wherever and whenever we can. It seems clear that most of the mainline Protestant denominations are being slowly dismantled from within and will not long be around to help us. I believe that, in the long run, it won’t work because the liberals are forgetting one thing, the victory against evil has already been won and there is one Church that will not be worn down. I think this is one thing that Catholics can give thanks for at all times.

2003-08-15T10:40:00.000-06:00

The Assumption

Today is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We are celebrating today the fact that the Blessed Virgin was assumed into heaven, body and soul. I think the importance of today for me is that it is a reminder of what we all have to look forward to.

Today's first reading for Mass is from Revelation:

God's temple in heaven was opened,
and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in the sky;
it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns,
and on its heads were seven diadems.
Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky
and hurled them down to the earth.
Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth,
to devour her child when she gave birth.
She gave birth to a son, a male child,
destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod.
Her child was caught up to God and his throne.
The woman herself fled into the desert
where she had a place prepared by God.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
"Now have salvation and power come,
and the Kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Anointed One."

2003-08-13T19:52:00.000-06:00

A Miscellany

Since my trip to Alaska my whole routine has been disrupted and I've been reading other blogs and not getting much posted on my own. To get back into the routine I offer a few thoughts on a couple of different topics.

Luther

Christine over at Christus Victor has done a couple of posts on Luther and the difficulties one encounters when delving very deeply into both his personal life and his theology. Coming from a Protestant background Luther has been a figure of interest to me but I must confess that he remains an enigma.

Luther was an Augustinian priest - he studied and taught theology at the university level, and yet it seems he was unable to understand the most basic of the Church's teaching on justification. The source of his difficulties seem to lie more in personal and psychological problems rather than theological differences with the Church. He seems, in fact, to have been somewhat ignorant of theology. Here lies the enigma: what drove Luther to do what he did? I have never read a satisfactory explanation of Luther's motivation in tacking in 95 theses on the door. I wonder of anyone out there can "splain me, Lucy?"

Faith

We are confronted every day with those who wish us to water down our faith. The ECUSA has just elected a bishop who is living in an openly homosexual relationship and has voted to bless gay unions. A US senator, a practicing Catholic I believe, has stated publically that he thinks there are many "good" Catholics who practice contraception and support abortion. But, I believe it is intellectually and morally impossible to proclaim oneself a Christian and live a life contrary to God's expressed will.

To proclaim that one is a Christian and yet deny central teachings of the Christian faith is to proclaim a contradiction, it's nonsense. This is the issue that brought about my conversion to the Church. The pastor of my church was preaching something totally contradictory to what I understood Scripture to be clearly saying. I knew we couldn't both be right while at the same time basing our understanding only on Scripture. There are many who support homosexual clergy who would also say sucth things as, for example, that we shouldn't take Jesus' miracles quite so seriously. Many people today seem to accept it as truth when someone says "Well, you know, when Jesus fed the 5,000 he didn't do a miracle, everyone had fish sandwiches with them and he just encouraged them to bring them out and share." It never occurs to them that, one, if that were indeed what happened, it would hardly be remarkable and no one writing of the event later would have even bother to write down a brief description, much less the detailed account of the event we find in Scripture. They also seem to have little idea what damage they are doing to their faith. Fr. Thomas DuBay writes:

". . . we need to bear in mind that the virtue of faith is total. According to St. Thomas the person who embraces heresy regarding one article of faith has regarding the other articles not faith but only 'an opinion according to his own will.'" What is going on with the Episcopal bishops and the U.S. senator is an acceptance of personal opinion regarding human sexuality, not traditional Christian teaching and practice. For a Catholic this is morally impossible - you can't have just a piece of the pie, the one you like, you have to have the whole pie. To say one part is wrong is to say the whole thing is false.

Steven (at Flos Carmeli) has been writing about seeking the truth lately and I agree with him on the importance of doing so. Without truth we are lost in a fog of unreality - we are insane. The problem our ECUSA friends have is that they have become accustomed, even sought, to live without a teaching authority, a Magisterium. They deny the very validity of such a thing. It seems the only refuge for those who wish to sincerely seek the truth is Rome.

2003-08-08T07:14:00.000-06:00

Error

On Tuesday of this week, our Episcopal brothers and sisters in Christ did a remarkable thing: they appointed a bishop of their church someone whose life is a repudiation of what a Christian life is supposed to be. Not only is the new bishop an openly practicing homosexual, he is a man who some years back abandoned his wife and children in order to pursue his willful lifestyle. It is indeed remarkable that such a man should be considered fit to serve as a Christian bishop of any denomination.

Josef Pieper wrote that man is a creature capable of self-destruction by failing to control excess in his life. He also noted that these self-destructive excesses typically are found to be of a sexual nature. Here we have an instance of an entire Protestant denomination engaging is self-destruction by embracing the self-indulgent excess of one individual. The Episcopal church has abandoned truth in the name of diversity. It really does not matter if further schism takes place as a result of the election of "Bishop" Robinson; the ECUSA has left the Body of Christ.

In the last couple of years I have, perhaps in reaction to experiencing the excessive zeal of a convert, tried to find an intellectually honest way of relating to our separated brothers and sisters in Christ. Recognizing the critical importance of keeping alive a dying Christian culture, I have looked for things that we share rather than things that separate us.

There is a major stumbling block to my ecumenical desires, however. It seems that, cut loose from the anchor of truth, our Protestant brothers and sisters are cutting themselves off from the heart of Christianity. The problems in the ECUSA are a graphic example of this occurring; it shows what can happen when truth is denied and placed second to human self-centeredness and sinfulness.

In a way, though, our separated brothers and sisters can do nothing else. Without a teaching Magisterium it is in the nature of Protestantism to drift in skepticism and relativism. To be Protestant is to believe that there is no final authority on matters of faith and morals but the self. This is clearly demonstrated by the actions of the ECUSA, they are simply ignoring whatever authority Scripture may possess in this matter in favor of their own agendas. The Bible has clearly been rejected in favor of a majority vote and this, without the authority of a teaching Magisterium, is almost to be expected. Truth can never be made subject to a vote. Yet, as I said, our separated brothers and sisters in Christ, having rejected the teaching authority of the Church, are almost destined to this kind of error. This makes them, as allies in the struggle against an increasingly pagan and hostile culture to Christianity weak and wounded allies at best, if not opponents. By elevating self above the authority of the Body, they have already met the culture half-way.

I know there are many sincere Protestants who love Christ and are willing to make any sacrifice for Him. But until they are ready to sacrifice their own authority for His, they can never fully succeed. There is little to prevent them from following their own desires wherever it may lead them; even to the embrace of a sinful, self-destructive lifestyle.

2003-08-04T06:41:00.000-06:00

North to Alaska
I will be travelling to Alaska later today and will be back on Friday. I ask your prayers for me while I'm travelling.

Paz y bien

2003-08-02T21:40:00.000-06:00

Old Books

I have come to like old books. If I have a choice between ordering a new edition of a book and combing the used book websites, its Alibris every time. I have acquired this strange matter of taste since coming into the Church in 1995; there are many classics of Catholic spiritual literature that are out of print and cannot be obtained except through web sites like Alibris. After I ordered the first couple of these books I noticed something that made me a fanatic for these books -- there is almost always something about the book, either what the author wrote or some indication in the physical appearance of the book, that reminds me that 30 years ago or more there was such a thing as a Catholic culture.

First, as I said, I am a convert; I did not grow up as a Catholic. I did grow up in a neighborhood with many Catholic families, not a few of whom I was friends with. I remember going out with these friends in high school and having to accommodate their meatless Friday observance. I remember their desire to eat out late on Saturday night and rise early for Mass on Sunday morning, to observe the rule that one ate nothing after midnight on Saturday night until one had attended Mass sometime on Sunday. It behooved one to go to Mass early. I remember all of that but was not a part of it. I say this because I may be mistaken in what follows and if I am, I ask forgiveness and understanding for my ignorance.

My friends took their religion seriously. They would not think of not going to Mass on Sunday, of having anything to eat before Mass, of not eating fish on Friday -- it just wasn't done. Their faith made a difference in their lives. For me, growing up Presbyterian, there was no such visible difference made in my life by my so-called faith; there were no rules of religious practice that had any effect on my day to day existence. That is the difference I noticed in the old books by Catholic spiritual writers -- they were Catholic and took it as a matter of course that Catholic readers spoke their language. It set one a bit apart to be Catholic and their Catholicism shows through in their writings. Just one minor example, one writer invokes St. Benedict and St. Bruno without bothering to explain who St. Bruno is; he takes it for granted that everyone knows who St. Bruno is. I've never heard of St. Bruno. Most of these authors refer to saints, as well as, customs and practices that were obviously familiar to any Catholic living 50 or 100 years ago that are now perhaps practiced by Catholics but not commonly written about. They talk about a person making regular acts of faith, acts of sorrow and resignation, acts of the will, etc. How often are these things spoken of today as if they were common practice in the spiritual life of most Catholics?

The difference also often shows in the things the former owners of these books did to the books. For example, one of the books I bought was from the library of Mary Manse College in Toledo. Inside the front cover there is a book plate with the library catalog information on it. The book plate is a black and white engraving of a nun holding a book in her hands surrounded by three or four young ladies, wearing what appears to be something akin to togas, sitting at her feet, on the floor, in rapt attention. One girl is sewing something, the others, if I remember correctly, are holding books or note books and are obviously enthralled with what the nun is saying. The library catalog info was handwritten on this book plate, in a nice lady's hand, with a fountain pen. Today we would think this kind of thing hokey, in fact, totally unsophisticated. Yet, there must have been a time when people took something like this seriously, or at least did not think it laughable. The book I am referring to was published in 1969, not that long ago.

I don't know if our times are better than those of, say, the 1950s or even late '60's, but they are different. Today, the lives of most Catholics are indistinguishable from those of their pagan neighbors; they often do not observe the Friday fast, seldom go to Confession, may have something to eat right before and/or right after Mass (sometimes something provided by the parish!), and may have no idea what an act of the will is. Josef Pieper, in the 1970s could write "Every child knows that in the list of the cardinal virtues fortitude comes third." Can we so easily toss off that kind of statement today? The loss of a Catholic culture means, I think, a loss of faith. I wish we could recover both.

In the mean time, I will continue to order old books.

2003-07-31T19:12:00.000-06:00

Academia Nuts, cont'd

You may have noticed that I have been missing in action for a couple of weeks now. The simple truth is I didn’t think I had much to say. I was also thought that, while people often need to be reminded of the truth, they don't necessarily need to be reminded by me. I was struggling with the fact that posting sometimes not really well thought out ideas on the world wide web for all, or at least a few, to read, smacks of a certain self-confidence, if not arrogance. Steven's post of yesterday was a great help in that regard.

And there is something to say, at last.

As you have probably have heard, the American Psychological Association has studied those of us who hold to conservative principles and determined that we are, in a word, nuts. My first reaction was, "Well, it takes one to know one." I soon realized, however, that this reaction might need to be fleshed out a bit, that you, my reader, might wish for some further elaboration.

This study comes out of Berkeley, you know, the place of which Dorothy Parker once said, "There is no 'there' there." There still isn't.

This Berkeley study is the product of so-called "scholarly" psychological research; I place it at the scholarly level of a fourth grader who is barely squeaking by. These scholars don't know that there is a difference between, on the one hand Hitler and Mussolini, and on the other Ronald Reagan. They seem not to realize that Hitler and Mussolini were not only not conservatives, they were leftists, National Socialists to be exact. It seems to me this error displays a rather abysmal knowledge of history, if not psychology. To put the difference in practical terms, Reagan would have laughed at these "scholars", Hitler would have shot them.

The study does conclude with the point that although conservatives are less "integratively complex" than liberals "it doesn't mean they are simple-minded." No, but these scholars are.

Yet, there is a caution that the appearance of this study raises in my mind -- for the word "conservative" substitute "Christian" and think of the gulags. For the first time, there is an attempt, a laughable attempt, but an attempt nevertheless, to classify a set of political and social beliefs as a mental illness. I have a feeling there will be more such attempts, and once society has acquiesced to the idea that conservatism is a mental illness, the next set of beliefs to be attacked will be religious. Who, ten years ago, would think that anyone would consider a political viewpoint to be subject to the study of psychologists? Who, today, is willing to take seriously the idea that ten years from now, Christian faith will be the subject of study of a bunch of Berkeley psychologists?

2003-07-17T20:39:00.000-06:00

Terminator

I don't know that I have ever disclosed this most momentous fact, but I have written most of my blog posts on a Palm using the Docs to Go program. I do this for several reasons. It allows me to type these things seated in a comfortable chair not hunched over a desk, a real advantage for someone with a tremendously bad back. Another reason is that I don't have to type these things directly into Blogger on the Web thereby avoiding the dangers of typing a long post and losing it all to Blogger instability. My remote posting method also provides me some time to ponder what I have written before actually posting it (yes, I do sometimes think about these things) and allows me to keep a copy of my posts in Word on my computer.

However, a new era, of sorts, has dawned. I have a new machine called an AlphaSmart Dana which runs Palm programs but has a significantly larger screen and a full sized key board. It is also all one piece, the screen and the keyboard, offering a certain structural stability previously unavailable with the Palm and its separate keyboard.

I don't know why I'm doing a post on this except to share with you my enthusiasm for novelties. Also, I thought today about the first computer I ever purchased.

It was back in the late 1970s that I shelled out a significant sum, both for then and for now, for a used IBM "Portable Computer." I was practicing as a CPA then and had a client with a turpentine processing plant who needed to keep better track of his inventory. Anyway, my "Portable Computer" was portable only in the loosest sense of the word -- it weighed at least 40 pounds and was about twice the size of the first IBM PCs. The tiny black and white screen was built into the face of the unit. I guess you could describe it as a computer only in the loosest sense of that word too. It used tape cartridges the size of a small book for storage and all programs had to be custom written -- no VisiCalc, no Windows, just good old Basic programming, sequentially accessed. My programmer owned a taco stand; he couldn't make a living just selling tacos or just doing programming, so he did both in the interests of survival.

I hated that computer. It seemed to me to have a malevolent streak. It worked at the slowest possible speed, was reluctant to part with information except under extreme duress, but required constant attention both from me and from the programmer. I would have believed, back then, that it was original the inspiration for Terminator 3. My only really happy experience with it was when I sold it, shortly before the first real PCs came out, without significant financial penalty. One of my few brushes with good timing.

Ever since then I have both owned a computer and held a deep seated, almost visceral, fear of the experience. There are evil spirits in this world, I'm convinced of it.

2003-07-12T10:32:00.000-06:00

Signs of the Times, II

This post is in response to the very interesting series of comments by Steven and Tom to my first "Signs of the Times" entry. Their comments show, I think, the tension all of us are subject to in trying to balance the spiritual and the corporeal realities of our lives. They also, incidentally, show the difference between the Carmelite and the Dominican spiritualities that was very evident and interesting. Each of these gentlemen is being quite true to his respective third order vocation.

First, I would like to make a clarification. When I used the term "current events" I was not saying we should try to keep up with every news story that comes across the wire. The fact that we are in an age of information overload is, itself, a "sign of the times." (Just look at nearly anyone today over the age of 10, living with headphones almost permanently grafted in place, jiggling and jumping to some silent, unimaginable tune, lost in an electronically imposed and controlled isolation; graphic evidence of the growing idolatry of self.)

What I was referring to by the term "current events" was more trends, signposts, in society today; the recent Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v Texas being one example. I agree with Steven that it is not possible, nor desirable, to keep up with every story that comes across the wire, but there are things that, as lay Catholics, we have an obligation to be informed about and, if nothing else, pray about. I would say, contrary to what Steven seems to be saying, that the state of our culture and our spiritual welfare are very closely linked. (I wonder, Steven, if you meant to be as despairing as you sounded in your comments?)

I disagree with the statement that Steven made that "reflection on eternal things is by far the better path" if the implication is that our earthly existence is evil and our spiritual existence is good. I believe we are called to direct our earthly existence in accordance with God's purpose; we are to achieve our ultimate destiny of eternally sharing in God's life in heaven. But we must accomplish that goal here on earth trying to bring as many others with us as possible. Writing off the things of the earth, and concentrating only on our own holiness, is not, I believe, what we are put on earth to do.

I would like to offer here, in support of my contention the definition of vocation found in the latest edition of the Catechism. It reads:

Vocation-The calling or destiny we have in this life and hereafter. God has created the human person to love and serve him; the fulfillment of this vocation is eternal happiness. Christ calls the faithful to the perfection of holiness. The vocation of the laity consists in seeking the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. Priestly and religious vocations are dedicated to the service of the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation."

We are to seek to live holy lives, do individual acts of charity where we can, but also maintain an active engagement with our culture, trying to direct temporal affairs according to God’s will. Again, this doesn't mean keeping up with every news story, but I think it means keeping up with the trends. I also do not believe that the "temporal affairs" referred to here means only our personal duties and responsibilities.

Tom, I believe, is correct in his comments about such things as the popularity of the Matrix movies (a denial of the uniqueness of each human person and his creation in the image of God) and the state of mainline/oldline Protestantism today. If we do not know the state of the society we live in, we will have no idea what or how to preach the Good News.

The SCOTUS decision in Lawrence v Texas is a sign we should all be familiar with and do whatever we can to oppose. I will quote from an article by David Frum in the latest National Review concerning the breakdown of the family in Canada that is the result of the similar decisions in their courts:

"Here's what didn't happen when the Canadian government announced that it would comply with orders of a high (but not supreme) court and write gay marriage into the law of the land. There were no protests from the country's religious leaders: only mild expressions of concern."

Between 1995 and 2001 the number of cohabiting couples in Canada rose by 20%; at the same time the number of married couples rose just 3%. According to Frum "Some 500,000 Canadian children now live in cohabiting households." Frum also says:

"The spread of cohabitation seems to have taught Canadians to think about family life in new ways. They are increasingly willing to think of family as a revolving-door arrangement (the average cohabitation lasts only five years), in which persons move in and out of the lives of their own and other people's children."

This all is coming about, as mentioned above, with no comment or apparent involvement from Canadian religious leaders. If we, as committed Catholics, do not do whatever we can to oppose such trends, however feeble our efforts, the US will become like Canada and Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, lost in sin and separated from God. Our efforts may indeed be feeble and we may never see whether they succeed or fail, but we are called to make them. Mother Theresa said the God does not ask us to be successful, only to be faithful.

I close with a quote from Christopher Dawson on the dangers of separating religion and culture:

"But this does not mean that religion and culture are two separate worlds with no relation to each other. The assumption of such a separation has been the great error of the Western mind during the last two centuries. First we have divided human life into two parts - the life of the individual and the life of the state - and have confined religion entirely to the former. This error was typical of bourgeois liberalism and nowhere has it been more prevalent that in the English speaking countries. But now men have gone further and reunited the divided world under the reign of impersonal material forces, so that the individual counts for nothing and religion is viewed as an illusion of the individual consciousness or a perversion of the individual craving for satisfaction."

(By the way, Tom, the SFO rule, which goes back to 1978, does not preclude going to movies or being involved in the culture. It does advocate a life of simplicity, but SFO's go "from the gospel to life, and from life to the gospel." We are to faithfully fulfill our duties proper to our circumstances of life. I know of nothing in the rule that limits SFO's to specific activities and I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding. But then, the Spirit moves where He will.)

2003-07-08T20:11:00.000-06:00

Another Apology

I am lagging behind on posts lately. I mentioned a week or so ago that my wife had bunion surgery. It was on her right foot and she cannot drive, so I am driving her to work. This adds an extra two hour communte to my day and is slowing me down on other activities. At least I am doing something useful for a change.

I am working on a response to Steven's and Tom's comments to my last post, they both brought up good points and I need to make some clarifications, at least. Bear with me.

Paz y bien.

2003-07-04T09:09:00.000-06:00

Signs of the Times

I have tried to impose a rule upon myself in doing this blog: I will post nothing except that which I have spent time in prayer and meditation over. I have frequently, especially lately, broken that rule to the point that it lies in powdery ruins somewhere in the bottom of my computer.

I am not proud of the fact that I have not spent serious time in thought, prayer, and meditation over everything I have written on this blog. I know it shows, for one thing, and this alone does not bring glory to God.

In fact, one reason why I am going to spend some time over the next month or so meditation on Fides et Ratio is to try to instill something of the element of deliberation, dare I say thought, into what appears on this blog; I want to try to remove myself from reacting to current events. I also wish to establish a regular schedule that includes prayer, meditation, and writing. I hope, in the process, that the result will be, indeed, to truly bring glory to God with this blog.

However, I realized that there is an underlying, unarticulated assumption that has been in the back of my mind regarding this purpose. It is that I have assumed that writing out of the fruits of prayer necessarily means emphasizing comments on Scripture and the writings of the saints, possibly also including great literature within my purview.

But I have been wondering if that is a valid assumption?

On the one hand, it seems that, but for a very few of us, keeping up with current events is a difficult and time consuming process. The time used trying to keep up with the news could, in most cases, be better spent reading and praying, then, if we must, writing about what comes out of our prayer. I am still tempted to say this is the best course for most of us Catholic bloggers.

However, there is another way of looking at this that comes out of my personal experience, which is this: One of the ideas that brought about my adult conversion experience was the realization that God is Lord of everything we are and do. Our faith in Him must influence all aspects of our lives. I was a Protestant when I came to this realization and since then I have come to see that the Catholic idea of vocation is a most apt presentation of this truth. As lay people our vocation is to bring Christ to temporal affairs, to bring Christ's influence to bear upon the temporal world.

If we are to live our vocation, then we must be, at a minimum, fairly well informed about what is going on in the world. Further, it seems we should be able to express how our faith should, or could, influence current events; we should be able to explain to others how Catholics view the events of the day. In other words, we should be able to explain why it makes a difference being Catholic.

Conversely, the "signs of times", the social, cultural, and even spiritual climate of the society can have a profound effect on our spiritual life. How many of you have been told, in the face of barely noticeable efforts to present the Gospel to someone "Well that's what you believe, but don't try to impose your beliefs on me!" Or have you ever been told that any personal expression of religious faith might even be a violation of the law.

In our public life, how many times have we seen or heard news stories about a Nativity scene on public property, or prayer in the public schools, violating the principle of separation of church and state and being “hurtful" or, even, "offensive" to those who do not wish to acknowledge God in their lives.

The effect of these types of societal influences is profound and reaching. For example, in May, a Cardinal of the Church, speaking at a supposedly Catholic university's commencement exercises, set off an uproar when he enunciated the constant teaching of the Church concerning human sexuality and moral conduct. His remarks were deemed "hurtful" to the homosexuals in the audience. The pagan influences of society seem to be stronger than that of the Church, even within the Church. (I would submit, incidentally, that an eternity of separation from God would be infinitely more "hurtful" than hearing the truth of Church teaching from a prince of the Church.)

These are examples of a society that is becoming increasingly pagan and materialistic. While claiming the ideals of "tolerance" and "diversity" it is becoming more and more intolerant of any sort of religious belief and expression. It is a society bent on elevating man to the place of God.

The way we seek to influence our society and the way our society influences us, have a profound effect on our relationship with God; they may even determine whether or not we are able to worship freely and openly. We ignore them at our peril.

I still believe that my now shattered rule is still valid and I will try to abide by it in the future. I share, I guess, St. Francis impetuousness and that is not always a good thing. But, I do not believe there is any topic that, after careful thought, prayer, and meditation, is excluded from comment on a Catholic blog.

2003-07-02T08:30:00.000-06:00

Fides et Ratio

I am going to begin the long planned (if not anticipated) series of posts on John Paul II's Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio. This is the first in the series and is a short backgrounder on why I would attempt to do such a thing.

I have held off mostly due to a sense of fear and trembling at appearing to be qualified to offer comments on one of our Holy Father's Encyclicals; I am not so qualified. Unless, that is, I make clear that I am doing this not as a scholar, especially not a scholar in philosophy, but rather as a Catholic layman who has benefited from reading this document. Church documents are valuable sources, for us laymen who are willing to make the effort to work our way through them, of providing answers to the questions: What does the Church really teach and Why does the Church teach the way she does? What can we learn from her that will improve our lives by bringing us closer to Christ?

I don't know that I can explicate the answers to these questions. Perhaps I can at least stimulate your interest to read the document itself, just to keep me honest

.

2003-06-29T17:31:00.000-06:00

The Best Laid Plans . . .

I was looking forward to a leisurely week, free to write and read unimpeded by work, a week off with nothing to do and no travel plans. My wife had surgery to correct a bunion on the 20th and, since then, has been off her feet. I took the week off to be of what assistance I could; the first extended time off I have had in a while. I have been at sixes and sevens all week, perhaps you can tell from by blog posts.

I had great plans to get a lot of writing done during the week, what with all the free time, and reading too. I did get a lot of writing done - none of it what I had planned to work on. As I said in a previous post, I did get my "virtues" project done, the one I had worked on for a year or so, but I had not planned to work on it at all. Now that I have what seems like a good first draft, I have been wondering if I shouldn't throw it in the trash.

I got some reading done too, similarly, nothing of what I had planned to read, and I'm almost sorry I read what I read.

I have more luck getting specific projects done when I am working and seem pressed for time than when I am unimpeded by having to maintain a schedule and have the leisure to do as I please. I seem better able to accomplish goals when there appears to be insurmountable obstacles in the way.

Last night at Mass was the one regular part of my weekly schedule that I adhered too. It was wonderful; I was back in my normal routine. It dawned on me that routine, order, in our lives is vital. What would we do with unlimited leisure? This is the fallacy of those social engineers who think that, simply by creating the proper institutions and providing the right Governmental assistance, they can make life perfect. They can't. I know now that living in a world without worries would drive me nuts.

I'll be glad to get back to work.

2003-06-28T15:54:00.000-06:00

Men Without Feet, II

Yesterday’s SCOTUS decision in Lawrence v Texas is appalling for several reasons. One, it virtually guarantees that future Court decision will be based more on the desired social outcomes than on social precedent. Justice Kennedy has made it clear that any future case that comes before the Supreme Court can be decided on the theory of “substantive due process” – the same theory used in the Roe v Wade Case. It also likely ended the right of states, any state, to regulate not only sodomy but homosexual marriage and any other item on the so-called “gay rights” agenda within its borders.

Russell Kirk summarized the beliefs of Edmund Burke on the nature of government in 3 major points:

1. "The temporal order is only part of a transcendent order; and the foundation of social tranquility is reverence. Veneration lacking, life becomes no more than an interminable battle between usurpation and rebellion. . . . He is emphatic that the first rule of society is obedience - obedience to God and the dispensations of Providence, which work through natural processes."

2. "After the order of God . . . comes an order of spiritual and intellectual values. All values are not the same, nor all impulses, nor all men."

3. "Physical and moral anarchy is prevented by general acquiescence in social distinctions of duty and privilege. If a natural aristocracy is not recognized among men, the sycophant and the brute exercise its abandoned functions in the name of a faceless 'people.'"

It seems to me the SCOTUS decision in Lawrence comes close to the abandonment of these three degrees of order in favor of chaos. It abandons reverence and obedience - the order of God; it abandons the order of spiritual and intellectual values, and it abandons the order of social distinctions. It is the fruit of the great "leveling" project that has been going on in the West for nearly 100 years. We are being "leveled" to the existence of brutes. Our moral understanding and judgment, one of the things that raises us above the level of animals, is being eradicated from society. This in the name of a spurious notion of "diversity," by which is meant a very carefully defined, rigid pattern of thought, deviation from which cannot be tolerated. It goes without saying that this pattern of "acceptable" thought is hostile to both God and man.

May God help us.

2003-06-27T09:01:00.000-06:00

Comments

Aging can be a good thing. With maturity, one grows in perspective on the difficulties, trials and tribulations of life. One also grows in gratitude for each new day and the miracle of a wildflower or a bluebird, or a new fawn in the backyard, busily eating the plants in the garden. There are, however, difficulties to be overcome. One of these is failing eyesight.

It seems with this new version of Blogger (there is good reason for the old adage: If it ain't broke, don't fix it) my comments box has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. I just realized, after trying to do a reply to Steven's last comment, that I have no idea what I wrote, I couldn't see it.

So, in the future, I will reply to comments by a post, at least until the situation on the screen is remedied.

Note to Blogger/enetation/whoever or whatever is responsible for my disappearing comments window: Not all who do blogs are teenagers!

2003-06-26T20:27:00.000-06:00

Lawrence v. Texas

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law. As I understand the decision, the Court declared that the state has no right regulating the private conduct of individuals.

It so happens, that I have been reading Russell Kirk's book, The Conservative Mind, which deals with the history of conservative political thought since the time of Edmund Burke. I would like to provide a quote from Burke cited in Kirk's book:

"'Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants', says Burke.’Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among those wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individual, the inclinations of men should be frequently thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can be done only by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.'"

C.S. Lewis wrote about "men without chests." What we have become is men without feet, we have lost track of the foundational ideas upon which our civilization and our culture are founded. We have nothing left to stand on but the stilt-like stumps of our cut off legs.

What we have forgotten is that government is a gift of God's loving providence to us, intended to elevate us above the level of mere animals. As Kirk puts it, its purpose is to govern those who cannot govern themselves. Our Christian civilization has always viewed Government as one of the implements of our salvation, protecting us from the moral collapse caused by the surrender of society to the uncontrolled passions of the individual. This Supreme Court decision is another step in the elevation of the passions of the individual over society; another nail in the coffin of Christian civilization as we know it.

2003-06-25T14:05:00.000-06:00

Apology

I have not been very consistent in the last week or ten days in doing posts here, but there is a reason.

About a year ago I became inspired to try to become a writer, or at least to try to learn to write in order to help further the Kingdom. Part of that inspiration was an idea for a book that came to me in a moment. I thought that in order to get the idea on paper I should try to write a sysopsis, perhaps an article covering the main points of idea. Until last weekend I found the task impossible, and I have electronic copies of the 10-12 false starts to prove it. I prayed about this and believed that either 1) I was mistaken and was not intended to be a writer or, (2) was badly mistaken about the inspiration of my subject. I even began working on a mystery novel. Anyway, Monday morning, (I think this idea was gestating over the weekend) with some time off, I sat down and had the article complete after about 6 hours work; it just came all at once.

Anyway, I have been working on a mystery and polishing my article which is now on a shelf where it will sit for a week or so.

I have also been doing some heavy reading in works by Russell Kirk, Christopher Dawson, and Edmund Burke and hope to concentrate on doing some posts about this reading while I am on vacation between now and Monday. I am also going to attempt a book review which I do with great trepidation; I do not believe I am truly a critic.

Paz y bien

2003-06-24T20:45:00.000-06:00

Metaphysicians

Edmund Burke once wrote:

"Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thoroughbred metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like that of the principle of evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated evil."

I guess Burke didn't like theorists.

I suspect the reason for this is that he understood, as so few people do these days, that theories, unless they have a positive effect on practice, unless they are based on tried and proven practice, are useless.

I think Burke understood that if we profess to believe in something, that belief should have some positive effect on the way we act; if we profess to be Catholic we should appear to the world to be Catholic.

I bring this up apropos of a post done in the last day or two by Kathy over at the Gospel Minefield. It seems that she had a friend who apparently did not believe that Kathy, because of some books she had for her children and other nefarious actions could not believe that Kathy was Catholic enough and has cooled the friendship.

First, let me say that I hope this situation reverses itself. The loss of a friend, for whatever reason, is a real loss. I pray that this friendship will be recovered.

But, Kathy's post reminded me that this is a fairly common situation. I can think of a person in a parish I once attended who made a very formidable show of being completely disdainful of everyone else at Mass. I can also think of those who troop into Mass at the last minute and suffer through the liturgy with a certain grim determination which turns to very evident anger when the priest deviates in the least from the published rubrics, and then leave immediately upon receiving Communion. These stories are legion. I pray for all such who are trapped in the net of super-Orthodoxy. They have become what Burke might call "thoroughbred metaphysicians." The rules, for many of them, have become more important than living the kind of life which the rules are intended to bring about. I don't believe this is a happy situation for anyone, but it surely exists.

I guess I write this to remind myself of these dangers; it is important to know the faith and accept as true what God has revealed of himself to us through both Scripture and Tradition. But unless we are able to make the truths of the faith real in our lives, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love others as ourselves, the teachings of the Church are useless to us. They become idols and will lead us away from God instead of to Him.

2003-06-18T10:28:00.000-06:00

Trust

Steven has done a wonderful post on trusting God, if you haven't seen it please take a few minutes and see what he has to say.

Paz y bien

2003-06-15T06:48:00.000-06:00

Culture Wars III

That men may know wisdom and instruction, understand words of insight, receive instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; that prudence may be given to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— the wise man also may hear and increase in learning, and the man of understanding acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.—Proverbs 1:2-6 (RSV)

Peter has written a comment to my Culture Wars II post; I am grateful for his thoughts. However, while he disagrees with the post I am afraid he has shown that he is the one who misses the point.

In his comments Peter seems to be saying that all they were hoping for from the Georgetown commencement speaker was a nice, uplifting, and meaningless little speech that would send them on their way feeling good about themselves. If this is the case, they should have invited someone from the cast of Saturday Night Live, not Cardinal Arinze. By inviting the Cardinal to speak, what did they think they were going to hear? If the commencement exercises of a major Catholic university are not the time or the place to hear the truth about matters of life and death, what is?

The events of this years commencement exercises demonstrate that one thing they did not want to hear was the teachings of the Church -- Truth. It seems these events highlight serious flaws within our universities, especially within our Catholic universities, that must be corrected if we are to survive as a civilization.

The fact of the matter is Truth is never inappropriate, no matter the occasion. The real problem with the Cardinal's speech was that it is more important to the faculty and students of Georgetown U to be “inclusive and uplifting” than to hear the Truth. I contend that Cardinal Arinze's speech would not have caused the furor it did were it not for the fact that, at Georgetown University, hearing the truth was painful. I suspect that the Cardinal's speech caused many on the Georgetown campus to feel less than good about themselves.

Twenty-five years ago, in 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard University. I would like to quote from his introduction:

"Harvard's motto is 'Veritas.' Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth is seldom sweet; it is almost invariable bitter. A measure of bitter truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary."

Anyone who would offer us truth is truly our friend; one who would hide the truth from us must be considered a mortal enemy. The central problem we face as a civilization today is that we have let our concentration flag in favor of a counterfeit ideology; we prefer the anesthesia of inclusivity and diversity to the scalpel of Truth. Cardinal Arinze did not come to the Georgetown campus as a heartless repressor of good feelings but as a friend and true truth teacher.

On the other hand, barbaric behavior is never acceptable in civilized society, no matter what the occasion.

The very idea of a university is that it should be a safe place for open intellectual discourse. Our universities, however, have become places completely intolerant of ideas contrary to the prevailing ideology. When ideas contrary to the accepted party line become intolerable we are in trouble as a civilization. It is well to remind ourselves, as Russell Kirk pointed out, that the Latin roots for ideology and idiocy are the same. When we refuse to grant another person the respect due him as a fellow human being by hearing him out we have sunk into a condition of barbarity.

One theology professor at Georgetown, by getting up and walking out on a Cardinal of the Church who was presenting the most basic teachings of the Church, gave one final instruction to the graduating students of Georgetown. I suspect she was trying to reinforce four years of such instruction.

First, she taught that is perfectly appropriate for a Catholic to be in open dissent from Church teachings, hardly a desirable point of view from someone aspiring to be a Catholic theologian. Second, she demonstrated that ideas contrary to modern, secular-humanist teachings are not to be tolerated on a university campus. Her actions make it abundantly clear that “diversity and inclusivity” have strict limits on the Georgetown campus. For a member of the faculty of a so-called Catholic University to walk off the dais when a Cardinal of the Church is speaking goes beyond rude; it displays real ignorance, as in, a lack of civilized knowledge. It demonstrated, and even worse, taught barbaric behavior. As Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew:

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

The scandal of her conduct is that she is in a position to be a teacher of the truth taught otherwise. Lets not forget that her actions were in support of those who openly engage in conduct considered gravely evil by the Church.

Peter, my post was not "a blind attack" on Georgetown University, (nor is this an attack on you). I do not have to be a member of the Georgetown University "community" to understand what went on its commencement ceremonies in May. The problems involve issues deeper than the good feelings of the faculty and students of Georgetown University; they involve issues of life and death – eternal life and death. On that day in May, Georgetown demonstrated that it has failed as a Catholic university and by so doing failed us all.

2003-06-12T07:46:00.000-06:00

Mark Shea's Article

By the way, I hope you will read and enjoy Mark Shea's article on the new media in Crisis magazine.

2003-06-10T20:07:00.000-06:00

Why Blog

Mark Shea had a nice article in the most recent issue of Crisis on blogging, St Blogs Parish, and Catholic blogs in general. One thing that he seemed to be implying though is that blogs are primarily an alternative news source for the major media outlets. While this is true to some extent, I don't think that is the only purpose for a blog; it is not my purpose anyway.

I take my example from my father-in-law who was a life long newspaperman and writer. In the late '70s he and I (and a few other folks) started a weekly newspaper in El Paso. The idea was that in a weekly format the truth behind the headlines could be explored more deeply. The paper could at least attempt to answer the question "Why?" instead of just "who?" and "what?" While the paper was something of a critical success (I wrote only one article for it, a restaurant review, of all things, and can take no credit for that) it was hardly a financial success and finally folded. However, I think the principle is important.

Most of the major scandals today have one thing in common -- they stem from a failure to ask the question "Why?" They stem from a failure to ask why we should follow the teaching of the Catholic Church.

You could ask, for example, why is it important to understand that there is such a thing as objective truth? Just ask the now resigned editors of the New York Times. As World magazine pointed out this week, if you reject the notion of objective truth, why should you be surprised that your newspaper publishes fiction? For that matter, why should you care, what difference does it make? For the New York Times the distinction between fact and fiction became blurred, at best, and thus Jason Blair could get away for several years with plagiarism, made up stories, and who knows what, with no one the wiser. What is even more disturbing is that people about whom he wrote stories and who knew that his "facts" were made up did not protest. They simply accepted that stories in the New York Times could not be expected to be true!

Or you could ask, as the theology faculty at Georgetown University seems to wonder, why the Church teaches that homosexuality and other sexual perversions are gravely sinful. What harm could living the homosexual "lifestyle" be? Just ask certain Catholic bishops across the country. They know first hand the harm that can be done, and are still suffering the consequences.

Protestant friends have expressed their condolences to me in the past year over the situation in the Church. I don't think condolences are necessary. I think the situation that surfaced early last year is a perfect example, not of a failure in the Church, but of what happens when we fail to follow Church teachings.

You could also ask "why do we need a magisterium making authoritative pronouncements and trying to repress our God-given freedom?" Just ask the members of my former Presbyterian denomination. The Presbyterian Church USA is currently losing members at the rate of 35,000 per year over the issue of the ordination of homosexuals. Cut loose from any authoritative magisterium they are forced to determine church teaching by majority vote. This solution is one doomed to failure, since truth can never be determined by vote. It seems likely that the PCUSA (aptly named, by the way) will soon pass from the scene, the victim of an inability to accept the Magisterium of the Church.

The crucial "why?" question that hardly anyone asks these days is "why does the Church teach the things she does?" Society, and the Georgetown theology department, simply seems to assume it is because the Church is mean spirited and wishes to be "hurtful" to those who do not conform to her harsh and judgmental norms. If these folks were to ask the question and honestly try to come up with an answer, they would find out that it is because the Church wishes to protect us from harm. The Church understands that we are creatures of God created in His image; we are "designed" to operate in certain ways by our designer. When we fail to do so we can expect problems to arise, as we can see all around us.

My purpose for this blog has been to attempt on my part to understand why it is important to know what the Church teaches about us as human beings. It should be obvious that what we believe affects what we are. Too often today the secular-materialist worldview of society is unquestioningly accepted as valid; until more people ask why we should believe this, and then take action to answer the question honestly, we should not be surprised that more, and greater, scandals come to dominate our headlines.

2003-06-06T19:31:00.000-06:00

Culture Wars, II

John Da Fiesole over at Disputations has done a post in response to my Culture Wars comments. In his post he asks, what practical influence the bishops have in our lives. Good question. I believe that as Catholic laity we bear a huge responsibility for the state of the culture we live in and we can't blame our failure on our bishops and priests. As is clear from the Cathechism, it is our vocation to affect the temporal affairs and bring them under God's influence. Bishops and priests cannot do this for us.

However, the fact that very often our bishops have little practical impact on our daily lives is a glaring example of a pervasive problem that exists today. There are a couple of recent incidents that highlight the problem we have with our bishops. These problems to not exist with all bishops, my any means, but they do exist.

The most important event was Cardinal Arinze's Commencement address on May 17 at Georgetown University. I will quote from the Washington Post's coverage of the story:

"The cardinal was several minutes into his speech when he said the family 'is under siege' and 'opposed by an antilife mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce.'
After the cardinal said the words 'mocked by homosexuality,' associate theology professor Theresa Sanders, who was seated on stage, walked out. A few students also left, says Mohsin Siddiqui, a 2002 graduate who was at the ceremony.
'I thought what he said was incredibly offensive,' he said. 'With all due respect for the cardinal's opinions, I don't think he should have been voicing them. This came from out of the middle of nowhere.' "

I hope it is obvious to all that the Cardinal's remarks did not "come from out of the middle of nowhere" but straight out of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I think it is also interesting that this graduate from a "Catholic" university would think that Cardinal Arinze was simply delivering his "opinion", as if this was some merely personal point of view of his which might, under different circumstances, change in the next day, or week or month. And, I must ask, what kind of a "Catholic" university would tolerate a theology professor who would be so rude as to stand up and walk out on a Cardinal of the Church expounding the official teaching of the Church?

But this is exactly the problem; this kind of thing is common, almost unexceptional, in our modern secularist society. It results from two things, one is that those in a position to teach the truth have chosen to teach untruth, lies. Second, the bishops where this kind of thing is rampant have chosen to ignore it.

In order for the laity to resist and reform the culture, they must know the truth; many of them do indeed know the truth. The next question is, what do we do with the truth we know? We can either disregard it or we can shape our lives by it. As individuals we have this freedom to make this choice. If we make the wrong choice we are not free to influence others to make the same mistake. As Jesus said:

“But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea”

All too often, today, we all, bishops included, ignore false teaching and just hope it will go away. It won't. Unless, that is, we take active steps against it. The lead for these kinds of active steps should be coming from our bishops. If the bishops were doing this, they would be playing a very prominent role in our daily lives by being our leaders and teachers in the faith. To the extent that this is not happening, we, the laity, are hindered in our struggle in against the culture in which we live.

The second of the two events I mentioned shows that having the courage of our convictions is truly possible.

In April of this year, the editors of Touchstone magazine published an article which said, in effect, that it was impossible to, at the same time, vote Democratic and be a Christian. They characterized the Democrat party as the party of abortion and sodomy. This article apparently generated a firestorm of criticism and a great many cancelled subscriptions. What did the editors of Touchstone do? I'll quote just one paragraph from their response:

“There has been much response to Touchstone’s April issue, in which the Democratic part) was characterized as godless, and portrayed a,, If having developed in recent years into some thing no Christian can in good conscience support. Subscriptions have been angrily canceled and declaration that we will be prayed for received. More attention has been given to this issue than any other we have published. The most common criticisms are that Touchstone, a religious magazine, is now dabbling in politics, where it has no business, and that the April issue was in fact a Republican party tract in which the editors displayed their political preferences more than their Christianity. What, one suspects, some of our off put correspondents wished to see in subsequent issues is some kind of muted apology that we were in some places a bit rough and high handed, along with a good natured admission that good Christians can have varying opinions on these matters. But we don't think they can. Things have gradually but surely come to the point where we must say that to the degree Christians have been co-opted by the Democrats, they are no longer good."

Would that more of us had this kind of courage.

2003-06-01T10:18:00.000-06:00

Culture Wars

Fr. Rob over at Thrown Back has written a couple of good posts concerning the effect of culture on our faith, and vice versa. I'm not writing this as a criticism of what he has written, but rather to point out another way of looking at the question.

Fr. Rob had someone post a comment rejecting the idea that the laity bears any responsibility for the current state of the culture we live in. Fr. Rob posted a response to these comments to the effect that both laity and clergy bear significant responsibility for the problem and this is true. However, I think he is being too nice to those of us in the laity because I would say that, indeed, the laity bears, by far, the greater portion of guilt for the sorry state of the society we live in.

I say this based on the definition, found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church of the term vocation. This definition reads:

“The calling or destiny we have in this life and hereafter. God has created the human person to love and serve him; the fulfillment of this vocation is eternal happiness. Christ calls the faithful to the perfection of holiness. The vocation of the laity consists in seeking the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. Priestly and religious vocations are dedicated to the service of the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation.”

According to the Catechism, it is the laity that has the vocation to bring the Kingdom of God to the world. We are the ones charged with making the society we live in Christian, not the clergy. The duty of the clergy is in service of the Church -- to support our efforts in bringing Christ to the marketplace. I would also say that, based on this definition, we the laity have failed miserably.

It should be evident to all that, rather than converting our culture, instead of transforming society, we are the ones who have been transformed.

It may be true that in the last 30 years or so we have not had the greatest support from our priests and bishops, but I would agree with Fr. Rob that this is more our fault than theirs. To paraphrase Barzun, perhaps we have the bishops we deserve.

We are not victims. We, as laity have failed our vocation because we have allowed the culture to overwhelm us. I don't think many of us could say that our lives look any different than those of our pagan neighbors, that we actively and unabashedly live our faith.

While it is true that many of the bishops we have are a somewhat sorry lot, we have no business whining and complaining about them -- our track record is no better. The priests and bishops of the Church cannot live out our vocation for us, they cannot do what we have the responsibility to do.

The solution to the problem, I think, is for us laity to admit there is a problem. There are a great many things we can do, once we have taken this fundamental step. We can begin taking our faith seriously and living as if it really mattered in our lives. We can spend more time in prayer and adoration of the Holy Eucharist, we can pray for our bishops and our priests, we can engage our neighbors in a loving way about the truth of the Church and Jesus Christ. We can, quite simply, be active witnesses to our faith. Who knows, doing this might be a positive influence on our priests and bishops and encourage them to change their ways. It might be the indication they need that there are indeed Catholics who are willing to truly be Catholic.

Until we can say we are doing all we can to live out our vocation faithfully we should not be complaining about what someone else is not doing.

2003-05-27T09:34:00.000-06:00

On Travel

I will be on travel this week and may not have internet access, for which I anticipate great withdrawal pains. However, I should have a post ready by Friday when I hope to return.

Please keep me in your prayers this week.

Paz y bien

Ron Moffat

2003-05-20T20:39:00.000-06:00

Academia Nuts, cont'd

Scientists in England have conducted an experiment involving monkeys and computers and proved that monkeys are really smarter than we think they are.

The experiment consisted of placing a computer in a cage with a bunch of monkeys. I suspect the motivation for this springs from a Darwinist belief that if you gave a monkey enough time with a keyboard he (or she) would end up writing out the complete works of William Shakespeare. In the event, that didn't happen, but something more interesting did occur.

To understand why I say this, you need to know how the monkeys reacted to the computer. It seems that at first they simply ignored it. You don't know how many times I've wished that I had done the same thing when someone first introduced a computer into my space. So far, so good for the monkeys. Their next reaction was to hit the computer with a rock. This is where I usually end up after a particularly frustrating session with a computer; sometimes I use a hammer, sometimes a chair, but the idea is the same. The only difference is that this is where the monkeys started, not where they ended up. They cut out the frustrating part and proceed to the ideal final end of most computers -- I detect signs of intelligence here. Finally, they apparently engaged in episodes of throwing monkey poop at the thing. Although I think the rock is better, I can certainly understand the sentiment.

After passing through these distinct stages in their relationship with the computer they finally began typing on it. And what did they type? Pages and pages of little more than the letter S with a few As and Ls thrown in for good measure. No Shakespeare, but at least they had arrived at the, shall we say human, reactions that almost inevitably occur in any endeavor with a computer and they didn't have to worry about getting anything done. You know the old saying "S... happens!"

The truth of the matter is that monkeys, no matter how much time is involved do not produce anything like literature, much less like William Shakespeare. That is the difference that our politically correct intelligentsia wish so hard would go away. Monkeys are not created in the image of God, men are, and that makes all the difference in the world.

2003-05-16T11:42:00.000-06:00

The Journey

Thomas Merton wrote that faith means action. We do not understand God and then commit ourselves in faith to Him, we make the commit first, then we act. He writes:

"We do not see first, then act, we act then see. It is only by the free submission of our judgment in dark faith that we can advance in the light of understanding: credo ut intelligam. And that is why the man who waits to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey."

In the New Testament blindness is taken as a symbol for lack of faith. The blind man is never able to see and thus never able to undertake the journey which we must all make in the solitude of our souls. He cannot commit to any journey because he cannot see the road ahead. Those who can see, while not knowing where the road will lead them, nevertheless can see the road itself and take the first steps along it.

Seldom do we know where the road will lead. It is as if we begin our journey on a dark, moonless night, seeing its outlines only dimly, as if by nothing more than candlelight. We undertake the journey in faith, not knowing but trusting.

It is only as we progress on the journey that dawn begins to break in the light of faith. We must all, each of us in his own way, make the initial commitment, and take the first step, on the journey of faith. Then understanding comes.

I think we are called, once we have begun the journey, to keep moving on the road. That is the most difficult part. There are many crossroads. Often times, having chosen a particular path on the journey, it is only in looking back that I understand how God was leading me, giving me directions and sustenance on the journey. Sometimes it seemed that the path I chose lead to great difficulty and trial, but looking back I was able to see from the "map" of my life, that God was working then to make the rest of the journey more fruitful, leading me closer to the final goal.

It is clear to me that faith involves commitment which means that it is not, as popularly believed today, an emotional balm or a crutch for those unable to face the reality of life. It is not an escape because it must affect the very depths of our being; otherwise undertaking the journey can never be done. Moving out, changing the focus of our lives, is not something that anyone would do only as an escape. Beginning the journey itself means throwing away the crutches, standing up and taking the first step on the journey of a lifetime.

2003-05-15T19:54:00.000-06:00

Mall Monks Interview

Every once in a while someone comes up with a new approach to an age old problem. Francis did this in his time by taking those in religious life out of the cloisters and putting them with the people; asking nothing but promising the way to eternal life. Bishop Richard Hanifen the recently retired bishop of Colorado Springs had such an idea when he suggested to a group of Franciscan Friars that they take the Gospel to the people. So, on the 23rd of November 2001, the Mid-American Province of the Capuchin-Franciscans, took a bold step to bring the Gospel to the people in Colorado Springs. On that day they opened a small storefront chapel in the Citadel Mall in Colorado Springs. The storefront had space for three small rooms, one served as an office for the friars and two rooms which served as “confessionals” to offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There was also room for a small chapel, seating approximately 15 people in which to celebrate Mass at noon each day. Since that time the apostolate has grown and now seats at least 65 people for the celebration of Mass twice daily and once on Saturday. In the 12 months ending in April, 2003 over 9,500 people have attended Mass at the Catholic Center. A local Catholic bookstore has moved next door to the Catholic Center.

Five friars now work under the direction of Fr. Eugene Emrisek with over 60 volunteers also helping each week. The “Mall Monks”, as they are now popularly known, operate The Catholic Center entirely on donations from those who visit the Chapel.

The Statement of Purpose published by "the Mall Monks" on their web site reads as follows:

In the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, the Capuchin Franciscans at the Citadel strive to provide a spiritual resource center that offers peace, reconciliation, and guidance to those who may feel a spiritual emptiness in their lives. Just as St. Francis tried to meet the needs of all who came to him, the Capuchins hope to assist Catholics and non Catholics alike. The Capuchins at the Citadel will:

• Provide a spiritual presence "in the marketplace"

• Offer Mass at specified times for those in need of a location to attend services

• Provide extended hours for the sacrament of reconciliation

• Work to spread the Word of God to populations that would not regularly attend a local church

•Attempt to answer spiritual questions and inquiries and assist individuals with answers or solutions if available

•Provide a source of guidance for those in need of referrals to other Catholic or non denominational agencies in the Colorado Springs area

•Provide vocation discernment

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Father Curtis Carlson OFM Cap., and ask him about The Catholic Center in the Citadel Mall.

1) The Capuchin Friars operate a Catholic Chapel, complete with worship space and “confessionals” in the Citadel Mall in Colorado Springs. This is really "takin' it to the streets." Whose idea was it to open a Catholic Chapel in the Citadel Mall?

Fr. Curtis - In the Spring 0f 2001, our Capuchin province leadership, with the support of the friars, felt they wanted to try a new type of ministry in a new place and so they spoke to two bishops in Kansas and Bishop Richard Hanifen here in Colorado Springs. The response from Bishop Hanifen was to open a chapel in a mall or to take this parish or another parish. Taking a parish wasn’t something new but the idea of opening a chapel in a mall was new and innovative and the new form of ministry we were looking for.

2) In your Statement of Purpose you state that you intend to "provide a spiritual presence in the marketplace" which you are doing quite literally. What effect do you see this very visible presence having in the marketplace?

Fr. Curtis - We do get various kinds of reactions. We are different enough, we are not just another store, and having the Church in the mall and having religious in brown habits is very noticeable. Sometimes people find us a curiosity, something to smile about or inquire about. Others are grateful to literally have everything under one roof; they are able to do some shopping, get a bite to eat and still make daily Mass and go to confession in one trip. During Mass we can still hear the comments of people passing by and they often express surprise that this is going on here. We also have helped bring customers to the mall; people have told us that they did not come very often to shop here but now that we are here they come to see us and stay to do some shopping also.

3) You state that you are available to be of service to non-Catholics. Have you had many people who are not Catholics visit the Chapel?

Fr. Curtis - Yes we have. It is convenient for practicing Catholics who want to come to daily Mass and go to confession regularly, and there are those Catholics who maybe have not been very active who find this a safer and easier way to come back to the Church. A parish office is not open as long during the day and the priest may not be there or he may be busy. They know there is a priest is available here 11 hours every day. The hall way is sort of neutral territory and all they have to do is step across the threshold. We always have a volunteer at the front desk so that if we are in private with someone or celebrating Mass, there is always someone to greet them. We have had many non-Catholic Christians who just like to stop and talk or ask a few questions, and many non-Churched people who have no one to go to, who apparently recognize us as someone who is compassionate and helpful and who will be good to them. I have had one gentleman who was quite aggressive and had a poor understanding of the Catholic faith and I was able to talk to him for a while and clear up his misconceptions.

4) Have you been able to assist anyone seeking a priestly or religious vocation?

Fr. Curtis - Yes. Of the friars I am the one designated as the vocation contact person and so there are actually several men and women who have come by in the last two years. Some have come in one time and others have come in more often. In two cases, one man and one woman have pursued a religious vocation.

5) Have you seen many people who have, for whatever reason, been away from the Church for a while, perhaps even years and who now wish to return? Has the chapel provided many people an easy way back to the Church?

Fr. Curtis - Yes, because they have been away they are not part of a parish they don’t know anyone and don’t know a priest. They don’t know us either but because we are here it is easy for them to come back. Some have just stopped by to talk while working up the courage and determination to go to confession and renew their connection to the Church. But yes, we have had people who have been away as long as 20 or 30 years.

6) Finally Father, St. Francis saw his vocation as both embracing poverty and preaching the "good news". The Citadel Mall is, I think, fairly described as an "upscale" shopping mall. There is not much poverty in evidence here. How do you see the mall ministry fitting in with your Franciscan vocation?

Fr. Curtis - Francis himself often preached in the plaza in medieval Italy. Each village had a central plaza area where there were merchants and often the Church and government buildings in the same area. The early friars would go to the central plaza area where there was commerce going around where the people were. A crowd could easily gather if they were interested in hearing them. The mall is where people gather, children and adults of all ages, they come to buy things, they come to the food court, they come to just hang around. So there is a very real comparison between what St. Francis did and what we are doing, people come to the modern day plaza and people can come to us. As far as poverty, we don’t sell anything and so we are not part of the consumer mentality in terms of being a business wanting to make money. The things we provide are spiritually beneficial to people. We don’t really participate in the consumer aspect of the larger establishment here; we don’t knock it but we are not part of it here. We provide religious services and have a very definite outreach which many malls might not allow.

7) Thank you, Fr. Curtis

If any of you feel called to help in this effort toward the “new Evangelization” I sure the “Mall Monks” wouldn’t mind.

The Catholic Center
The Citadel Mall #3046
750 Citadel Drive East
Colorado Springs, CO 80909

2003-05-08T19:34:00.000-06:00

Academia Nuts, cont'd

The following definitions are taken from the Mirriam-Webster College Dictionary:

Worry - a)Mental distress or agitation resulting from concern usually for something impending or anticipated: anxiety b) an instance or occurance of such distress or agitation.

think - from (L) tongere - to exercise the powers of judgment, conception or inference: reason, 2a) to have the mind engaged in reflection.

Please keep these in mind while reading the following post..

Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema thinks women think too much. Now, of all the problems we are faced with in society today, the last one I would have suspected was too much thought. Dr. N-H has done a study though. In her study she found that 57% of women and 43% of men are "constantly brooding about a boss' remark, an argument with a spouse or a child's C+ in school. Overthinking can lead to an increased sense of sadness and an inability to solve problems." This quote comes from a story in the Colorado Springs newspaper which apparently takes all of this seriously. However, keeping in mind the definitions above, most of us would call this situation worry, not thinking. Worry, if one takes the dictionary definition seriously is an emotional problem, anxiety, while thought involves the use of the mind -- it involves reason. We are describing two very different situations. One of which is apparently unknown to the good doctor.

But, in modern politically correct terms, it sounds better to say that one is overthinking, rather than that one is over wrought. It sounds better to encourage someone to stop thinking than to tell them that they are likely to pop off the twig from apoplexy brought on by an anxiety attack. You see, we are afraid to call things by their right name. This is why we can call partial birth abortion "intact dilation and extraction."

Presumably, the cure for "overthinking" is "underthinking" but it seems that there is quite a bit of that going on here already and no cure in sight. I have to wonder though, if this trend continues, if we won't soon have a generation of people living in this world who are so deluded as to the real state of things that they won't be able to think at all. Perhaps then we will have a state of reverse evolution and the term "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!" might be truer than we'd like to feel, uh, think.

2003-05-07T11:18:00.000-06:00

A Thank You

I would like to issue a thanks to some folks that is long overdue.

As you may know, this writing idea came upon me suddenly about a year ago. One of the first things I did, other than just start writing stuff in a notebook, was attend the Writers Conference at Franciscan University in September last year. There, two of the speakers were especially helpful. Bert Ghezzi was very encouraging and an all around nice guy; his session was worth the price of admission. The other was fellow blogger Mike Dubriel from whom I first learned that there was such a thing as a "blog". Thanks to both of them.

Also thanks to my other fellow Catholic bloggers. So many of you have also been nothing but encouraging, Steven at Flos Carmeli, Cathy at the Minefield, The Barrister, and a number of others. I'm grateful to you and just wanted to let you know, I think we should do that once in a while.

Thank you

2003-05-06T20:18:00.000-06:00

Coaches Foul Out

In the last few days 2 coaches, Alabama's football coach, Mike Price and Iowa State's basketball coach Larry Eustachy were fired for "embarrassing" their schools. The acts that resulted in their respective terminations were, in Price's case hanging around strip joints, and in Eustachy's case partying in inappropriate ways with college girls.

I imagine there have been a whole range of reactions to these events in the sports press, I don't know since I'm not a big sports fan. I did read the reaction of a sports columnist in our local newspaper that I thought was perfectly stunning in its thick headedness. The column is so obtuse as to be almost funny, except the ideas presented are really quite dangerous.

The sports columnist takes exception to the firing of the coaches and gives, basically, three reasons for his position. First, he says that their actions were not illegal which he seems to assume means they should therefore not be considered immoral. Second, he says that the rules governing coaches’ behavior in these types of situations are subjective and unclear, and therefore, the coaches should not be held accountable to these vague rules. Third, he seems to be saying that the coaches, when presented with these types of temptations should not be expected to be able to control themselves. This line of reasoning is remarkably wrong headed.

Let’s consider another type of situation that was once legal in the United States -- slavery. Early in America's history slavery was legal; would our homegrown sportswriter say that such a situation was morally correct? I don't think he would. But then one must ask the question, if slavery is immoral, why do we think it is immoral? Can it be that slavery, which was once legal, was then moral and only became immoral because the laws were changed? I don't know many people who would make that argument. But then why is human slavery considered always and everywhere to be immoral?

The reason is, of course, because it denies a human person, created in the image of God, the right to live his life in a fully human way, as a free being. It denies that person the right to make moral choices and reduces him to the level of an animal. This is wrong because it violates God's law. If there is no such thing as God's law, there is no reason why human slavery should be considered immoral; such things are merely subject to the whim of the majority in society, at any time they can be changed. The weak become subject to the arbitrary exercise of the will of the powerful.

The local sports columnist says that men cannot be expected to exercise self-control when presented with, especially when presented with, sexually tempting situations. He thinks such expectations are unreasonable. But if this is true, then it is impossible to expect human beings to act as human beings, with will and intellect, rather than animals subject to only instinctive behavior. This is precisely the argument used to justify slavery -- the slaves were not human beings capable of acting in a human way. They were, it was argued, only animals who could rightly be bought and sold and who could only be trained to work like animals. Of course, this was nonsense and it is nonsense to say that supposedly mature men are incapable of controlling themselves when faced with tempting situations. These men failed to act humanly. Instead of mentoring the children to become responsible adults under their tutelage they themselves wanted to become like children.

The final argument, that the rules that determine what type of conduct is "embarrassing" are not easily understood by most adult human beings, and especially coaches, is preposterous. If they are such complete idiots that they are unable to figure them out for themselves, all they need to do is consult the 10 Commandments. Our sports columnist asks, "What laws did [these coaches] break?" The answer is that they broke God's law. These laws are not obscure, they are self-evident, and they are written on the heart of each one of us. We know in our hearts that it is wrong to enslave another human being. We know in our hearts it is wrong for adult, married men, to party with college girls and strippers. We recognize these actions as severe character defects in those who perform them. If we try to deny this, we end up denying our very humanity; we become slaves to whatever temptation happens to appear under our noses.

These men deserved to be fired.

2003-05-04T18:23:00.000-06:00

Belief vs. Unbelief

I had the chance to talk to my Evangelical neighbor Craig this past week and he mentioned that he had been thinking about a topic that had been occurring to me also. The way I was phrasing it was that we modern scientific Americans have lost our sense of the supernatural; Craig put it more simply – the problem facing Christians today is that of unbelief among believers.

I don’t know how many times I have run across someone whom I know to be a fairly faithful Catholic who has made a statement to the effect that they don’t believe in miracles. They put this in different ways, hardly ever directly, but the meaning is clearly there. They may say, “Oh, you know, Jesus didn’t really feed the 5,000 with just two loaves and a couple of fish, all those people had bread and fish McNuggets with them and they shared.” These kinds of statements reflect a kind of crisis in the Church today, a crisis of faith. If the miracle of the loaves and fishes cannot be believed, how can the miracle of the Resurrection be believed?

Thomas Merton wrote, in The Ascent to Truth, that to believe one must choose to believe. A person can faithfully go through all the motions of worship at Mass, day after day, year after year, but unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice of oneself, all that person is doing is going through the motions. It has no interior effect. One of the reasons for a crisis of faith today, as Merton points out, is that there is a failure to think. People will take the word of Barbara Striesand on matters of faith and morals, but never that of John Paul II. People will listen to the Dixie Chicks, never to their Bishop, unless he happens to agree with the Dixie Chicks. Because people become famous as entertainers in society today, they gain instant credibility in matters affecting the deepest issues of life. This kind of thinking shows a loss of the ability to think.

If we are unable to think clearly, we will be unable to have a real living faith. First, we will not be able to understand what it is we believe, and second, we will not consider our faith important enough to make the sacrifices that Christian faith calls for. Merton wrote “Faith means war.” He meant that to have faith is to die to ourselves and be born again as a new creation; it means giving up the trivial distractions of this life for the eternal rewards of the next. It means living, not as an independent person, reliant only on oneself, but living as a branch of the True Vine, dependent only on Christ. To live in faith means to make war on our very selves.

This is the crisis the Church faces today. It is a crisis because too many people do not know there is a battle to be fought. It is a crisis of belief vs. unbelief.

2003-04-27T09:08:00.000-06:00

SDG

To Blog or Not to Blog

I have to admit that for some time I have been at a loss for blog topics. I have been working on an idea for a couple of magazine articles but I am told by those who know that I should not post them here -- magazines apparently like to print things that have not been previously published, even if they have only been published on the Internet. So something that is of real interest to me is, for the time being anyway, off limits.

To help with this difficulty, I have been looking over a few volumes of anthologies of essays, "the greatest essays in the history of the world" type of thing. This effort has been undertaken in the hope of mining a few topics that might be considered timeless treasures for use by a somewhat desperate blogger. In looking over these volumes a number of interesting observations came to mind.

I noticed that essays used to be a very common form of written communication and reflect the social, intellectual, and spiritual concerns of their writers and that from the 16th to the early 20th centuries these concerns did not greatly change. Essays written since the 1500s, and there are a great many of them, are generally well written, entertaining, and informative. Most of them are mini works of art and cause the reader to look at life in a new way, and with a greater appreciation for beauty and truth. These essays are universally well written and often entertaining explorations of human life. For example, in the 16th century, Sir Francis Bacon wrote an essay On Truth, in the 18th century Lord Chesterfield wrote an essay On Affectation, both topics men of every age can benefit from. In the 20th century Hillare Belloc wrote an essay On the Departure of Guests and E. B. White wrote a hilarious essay on The Death of a Pig, helping us all to share in the joys and trials experienced by a writer who wanted to try his hand at working a farm in Maine.

However, beginning in the 1940's a sea change started taking place. About this time skepticism sets in and the beauty of our existence and the possibility of good become subjects for doubt, if not rejection. Our human existence becomes something that causes despair rather than joy. Joan Didion wrote a piece, At The Dam, about the Hoover Dam, that makes one wonder why men would dream dreams and bother to make the effort to have them come true. Norman Mailer wrote a piece on Miami that is positively depressing.

It is as if these modern writers think that truth is a function of time and that we, having lived after all other people in history and having learned everything there is to learn from them, feel qualified to discard as false and mean spirited everything the ancients took to be true. This is the peculiar arrogance of the modern university dwelling intellectual.

The final thing that struck me is that after the early 1950's the number of essays deemed worthy of publication in these anthologies is greatly diminished, virtually disappearing by the 1970's. I began to wonder if, now that we have reached the 21st century, the blog has not taken the place of the essay. If this is true and we bloggers are taking the place of such writers as Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Chesterfield, Hillare Belloc, or E.B. White (might as well dream lofty dreams) then perhaps a certain obligation is imposed on us as writers. At least I feel a certain obligation to try to write only that which is informative, uplifting, or at least entertaining. This is what I will try to do in the future with this blog, whether I have anything to write about or not.

A postscript:

For what seems the longest time there has been only one comment posted to The 7 Habitus, that was Carl Olson’s taking me to task for my comments on dispensationalism and I thank him for it. However, I am becoming increasingly curious as to the possible reasons for this paucity of reader feedback. I know a few people read this every week, but I am not after numbers, the main purpose of this exercise is, after all, to gain experience as a writer worthy of being read. I am not there yet. However, I think, that most bloggers look forward to some interaction with their readers.

It has occurred to me that there are several possible reasons why no one makes a comment to what they read here. One is that, recognizing the obvious brilliance and sweeping perspective of the writer there is simply nothing left to say. I comfort myself with this idea from time to time but then reality sinks in. It could be because what I am writing is of no interest to anyone. If this is true I would appreciate hearing it, it would help both the reader and the writer for this truth to come out. It could be that the readers keep checking back to see if I have finally given up on this thing. At times I imagine some great Internet pool predicting how long I will last, with great sums, perhaps lives, at stake. Well, maybe not.

I guess there are many other reasons why no one has any comments, but I would really like to hear your reason.

2003-04-22T18:35:00.000-06:00

Apologetics and Dispensationalists

<b>This post represents the clarification promised in my previous post concerning my views on our Apologetics priorities. I have now received Carl Olson's book Will Catholics be Left Behind and will begin reading it tonight. I believe, based on my first observation, that the book is a proper response to the problems discussed below, ie., it is aimed at presenting the truth of these issues to Catholics who may well be innocent of them.

The Catholic Church teaches that, since her founding, coincident with the descent of the Holy Spirit on the waiting Apostles at Pentecost, she has possessed the fullness of truth. She believes that this fullness of truth is guaranteed to her by the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit in her midst.

Since her founding two millennia ago the Church has faced two great challenges to the fullness of truth which she possesses. One came with the Protestant Reformation and it's elevation of the judgment of the individual over that of the Magisterium of the Church. The other finds its roots in the Enlightenment. The present day heritage of the Enlightenment is the predominantly secular-materialist worldview that we live with today.

There is a qualitative difference between these two challenges faced by the Catholic Church. The difference is that the children of the Reformation, while challenging the teaching authority and unity of the Church do not deny Christ, nor do they deny the necessity, for the most part, of obeying the two Great Commandments Jesus gave us, love of God with heart, mind and strength, and love of neighbor as one loves oneself. While they may not possess the fullness of truth they do possess elements of the truth and share in communion with the Church, albeit an imperfect one.

Those who subscribe to the predominant secular-materialist worldview of today’s society, however, deny absolutely even the possibility of the existence of not only a Supreme Being but of the existence of objective truth and the possibility of moral absolutes that govern human behavior as well. This worldview that is so evident in our universities, our media and our courts is inimical to the interests of the Church. It allows no possibility of communion with the Church and many of its proponents would be just as happy if the Church were eliminated from any presence in society.

There are numerous examples of this already occurring. For example, a student in Washington State who won a scholarship had it withdrawn when it was learned he planned to major in Pastoral studies. An abortion protester was sued under RICO statutes by pro-abortion foes when his protests began to have an effect. Christmas displays in city parks that had been set up for years have suddenly become horrible violations of the "separation of church and state" clause. (By the way, has anyone ever actually found that clause of the Constitution?) One party in the 2002 US elections attempted to portray Christians as religious bigots and/or zealots, indistinguishable from the Islamic Fundamentalists who killed 3,000 people at the World Trade Center. Many people unquestioningly accept the idea that if Christian believers are not blood-thirsty, baby-killing terrorists, in league with Al-Queda, then they are intellectual and emotion simpletons, who must be excluded from any role in society.

This hostility is not, however, directed only against Catholic Christians. It is directed against Christians of every stripe; there is no particular discrimination between Catholics and Protestants. It results in the situation we have in society today where abortion has become a "right" and moral limits on personal conduct are denied.

I would say that all Christians share a common bond because they all understand that God created us as human beings for a purpose, there is a supreme goal set for each of our lives. The goal is to spend eternity with God in heaven. Anything that keeps us from reaching that goal must be overcome; there is nothing more important in our lives. Outright rejection of Christ and God’s law written in our hearts will keep us from reaching that goal. I believe the modern, secular-materialist worldview present in society today represents, with its rejection of both God and his Commandments, a huge threat to our ability to practice and profess our Christian faith and achieve our final destiny. Failing to resist it may well mean eternal separation from God.

While we wish to bring our separated brothers and sisters in Christ to the fullness of truth, it is just as important to present the truth of Christ to society in general. Our Protestant brothers and sisters, however lacking in the fullness of truth they may be, remain, nevertheless, brothers and sisters in Christ -- separation is not divorce and estrangement.

My original post questioned the fact that so many Catholics seem to spend a lot of time getting worked up over the very visible presence of Dispensationalist theology in the literary market place today. It seems to me that dispensationalists, while they may be in error in regards to the truth as we understand it are still Christians. They do not deny Christ. They may even be anti-Catholic, but they do not represent the danger to Catholics that the secular-materialist worldview so prevalent in society today does.

It may also be that views about society and culture that come out of dispensationalist theology may be questionable, or even goofy. I don't know about this and will have to read Carl Olson's book to gain some insight into this question. Where they are in error they should be confronted with the truth. But judging from the Doctrinal Statement published by one of the preeminent dispensationalist seminaries in the country, I don't see a completely anti-Christian worldview contained therein. It seems not greatly different from that of many Protestant statements of faith.

The point of my post, then, is that it seems, in terms of our apologetics effort, we should consider our priorities.

Christopher Dawson writes that the problem facing Catholics today is not that of being a minority in a predominately Christian culture, the problem facing Catholics is confronting an increasingly secular-materialistic culture. The culture today has made great headway in divorcing religion from nearly all other aspects of human life. One of the reasons this is so is that many Catholics are so poorly catechized in the truth of the faith that they easily fall prey to the pressures of society all around them. They have no way to resist because they don’t even realize there is anything to resist. Their lives are virtually indistinguishable from those of their pagan neighbors, when they should be quite different. They may also be falling prey to the overtures of Evangelicals or Fundamentalists, again from ignorance of the differences in Christian belief between Protestants and Catholics. However, I believe this is our fault, not theirs.

It seems to me all of this places a very high priority on teaching Catholics the basics of the faith so as to more effectively challenge the secular-materialist worldview of society. A second priority is presenting the fullness of truth to our separated brothers and sisters in Christ. I think at times these priorities are reversed. We find it easier to argue with our Protestant brothers and sisters for the very reason that we speak different dialects of the same language. But the generally accepted attitude present in society today is that religion is to be removed from every corner of society; unless this view is challenged and a return made to the Christian traditions of Western society, it will make little difference whether we agree with our Protestant brothers and sisters or not. As Benjamin Franklin said, we should all hang together or we may well all hang separately.

We may well be fiddling while Rome burns.

2003-04-19T10:19:00.000-06:00

Left Behind

I would like to post an email I received from Carl Olson in response to an email I sent him in response to his comment on my Left Behind post. I thnk he misunderstands my intent in the post and I will do a further explanation by early next week.

I have ordered his book and hope that you all will too, as I think it should be an interesting discussion of trends in society that he sees resulting from the dispensationalist movement.

I hope you all have a blessed Easter.

Paz y bien

Dear Ron,

Thanks for the response and for the additional explanation. I'm glad you contacted me, for it gives me a chance to apologize and to explain myself a bit better. I apologize first because my note was rather brusque and even a bit antagonistic. I did not take your post to be critical, but I did overreact a bit to it, and I apologize for my harshness.

My book was written not to merely critique the Left Behind series, but to provide a thorough explanation and refutation of premillennial dispensationalism, especially (and I emphasize this) in the context of history and Catholic teaching. In addition, my book provides a great deal of catechetical material. In fact, it is meant to be very catechetical. As a former parish catechist, one of my lifelong goals is to catechize and teach the Catholic Faith as best I can.

The main reason for the catechetical content of my book is because the vital issue in all of this is NOT end times events as much as Christology and ecclesiology. The real disagreement between dispensationalists and other Christians, especially Catholics, is not over the identity of the Antichrist or the place of America in end times events, but rather the nature and mission of the Church and her relationship to the Kingdom. To that end, I don't spend time tracing all of the various dispensationalist ideas regarding Iraq, China, the U.S., Russia, etc. (however, you can read my article on that topic here: http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=200)

I think you'll agree that the topics of the Church and the Kingdom are very significant, and not to be taken lightly. In my book, I actually spend very little time talking about the Left Behind stories, but show how those books are simply another form of propagating a view of history, God, Christ, the Church, the Kingdom, and the Bible that is seriously flawed, but incredibly influential. The dispensationalist method of reading the Bible has influenced Americans, including Catholics, in ways most people cannot even fathom. It's not a matter of conspiracy, but simply the power of this belief system and how it appears to interpret Scripture. Many of it's individual tenets have been adopted, often unwittingly, by many folks, skewing their perspective on issues as varied as the Middle East, the Bible, salvation, the Catholic Church, and so much more.

Paul Boyer, a non-Catholic historian and author of the excellent book, When Time Shall Be No More, has written the following:

"I advance two related arguments: first, that prophecy belief is far more central in American thought than intellectual and cultural historians have recognized, and second, that in the years since World War II the popularizers of a specific belief systemdispensational premillennialismhave played an important role in shaping public attitudes on a wide range of topics from the Soviet Union, the Common Market, and the Mideast to the computer and the environmental crisis" (When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. ix.)

I have found, in my personal experience, that many Catholics are being sucked into dispensationalist ideas and tendencies, often without knowing it. My book seeks to provide them with sound Church teaching, backed by the Catechism, numerous Church documents, and the writings of sound theologians. The table of contents to be my book is as follows:

Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? An Introduction

PART ONE: The Story of the Rapture . . . and So Much More
1. The Parousia, the Rapture, and the End Times
2. Catholics and the Left Behind Phenomenon
3. Book of Confusion or Revelation?
4. The Millennium: How Long is a Thousand Years?
5. Millenarianism: Early Church to John Nelson Darby
6. Dispensationalism and the Rapture in America

PART TWO: A Catholic Critique of Dispensationalism
7. The Kingdom, the Church, and Israel
8. "Bible Prophecy" and Interpreting Scripture
9. Unwrapping the Rapture

CONCLUSION
10. The Catholic Vision

List of Key Terms
List of Key Persons
Selected Bibliography

---------

As you can see, I do "fry" many big fish. :-) I spend an entire chapter examining the book of Revelation; another address the issue of the millennium. Another is devoted to the Church, the Kingdom, and Israel. An entire chapter, the final one, provides readers with a Catholic vision of history, salvation, and end times events.

My book should not only help Catholics, but provides the thoughtful dispensationalist with a great deal of material that will be hard to refute or ignore. It also presents the Catholic Church and her beliefs in a way that I think it is compelling, educational, and even inspiring. In short (and I am running long), this is the book I wish I could have read about ten years ago.

Anyhow, I hope this explanation is helpful. Thank you for your interest in my book. I would welcome your comments once you have read it. And you are free to pass along this info to anyone you know, or post it on your blog. Thank you and God bless!

Pax Christi,

Carl Olson
Editor, Envoy
carl@envoymagazine.com

2003-04-16T19:57:00.000-06:00

Cowboys

I've had a thought crossing my mind in the last few days and had even done a first draft of this post when, low and behold, President Bush echoed something of the same theme in his speech in St. Louis today. So, since it appears that great minds do indeed think alike, it is time to do another post.

I began thinking about the topic for this post after buying the first Country & Western album I have ever acquired. The album is Toby Keith's Unleashed with his song The Angry American. I couldn't resist. I began to wonder why I bought it when it occurred to me the reason is that it portrays something of America that we haven't seen much of since the Viet Nam war. The song is by an American who is not ashamed to be an American. It is a song about a proud nation that is willing to stand and fight for its principles. The guy who wrote it is pretty clear what those basic principles are, too. He believes in honesty, fairness, justice and truth. This is what America has been about since the day the Pilgrims landed in the east coast of this continent. The country has been about sincerely and honestly following one's well-formed conscience and doing the right thing, loving God and neighbor, defending the weak and seeing that everyone is treated fairly. We have lost sight of this in the last several years in an orgy of self-indulgence, but perhaps times are changing.

We haven't always done a perfect job of living up to our ideals, but the ideals have been there none the less. These ideals are the reasons that immigrants from other countries, my father and mother included, have come here and been proud to be Americans, forsaking their own nationalities and heritage.

There is a unique aspect of the American character that has been on display for all the world to see in the last month or so. This unique characteristic comes, clearly, from America's Christian heritage and it is as beautiful as it is simple. President Bush today described it when he talked about American soldiers who, one minute were engaged in fierce combat with their enemies and the next were caring for and treating enemy wounded and burying enemy dead.

On a larger scale, I believe it is nearly unique in the history of man that a nation would invade another nation with no intention of colonization or conquest. America engaged in the war in Iraq for two purposes, one was self-defense, the other was ridding Iraq country of an evil, abusive government. When this adventure is over it is the sincere hope of the United States Government and its people that Iraq stands as a free, self-governing nation. This may be idealistic, but it is typically American. I think there is a good chance that this idealistic enterprise will succeed. Iraqis are already protesting in the street and that is a remarkable thing; it shows that they feel safe to do so with Americans temporarily in control of the country.

The reason I say this comes from our Christian heritage is that it displays an inherent recognition that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights". When an American soldier treats the wounds of a man who was, only minutes before trying to kill him, is that not forgiveness acted out seventy times seven? The former enemy has the same right to be treated with dignity and respect as any American soldier; Americans would not brutalize an enemy soldier just for the sake of seeing him suffer.

President Bush has been called a "cowboy" by some of our erstwhile European allies. When I was growing up this was not a label for someone who was wild and uncontrolled, but someone who was capable, reverent, hard working, independent, and confident. I think it is not a bad thing to be a "cowboy", because a cowboy is the proto-typical American. To refresh our memories of exactly what a "cowboy" has stood for in this country I quote below "The Lone Ranger Creed".

The Lone Ranger Creed!
By: Fran Striker

"I believe that to have a friend,
a man must be one.

That all men are created equal
and that everyone has within himself
the power to make this a better world.

That God put the firewood there
but that every man
must gather and light it himself.

In being prepared
physically, mentally, and morally
to fight when necessary
for that which is right.

That a man should make the most
of what equipment he has.

That 'This government,
of the people, by the people
and for the people'
shall live always.

That men should live by
the rule of what is best
for the greatest number.

That sooner or later...
somewhere...somehow...
we must settle with the world
and make payment for what we have taken.

That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever. In my Creator, my country, my fellow man."

Not too bad, for a cowboy.

2003-04-09T19:59:00.000-06:00

Truth

Mark, at Minute Particulars, (commenting on a post by Steven at Flos Carmeli) makes two statements that I would like to take at least minor exeception to.

The first is a statement that he actually (properly) refutes in the rest of his post. The only reason I call attention to the statement is that I make a plea for care in the use of terms, especially the word truth. The reason I am concerned about this is that I think we are all affected by the perception abroad in the world today that truth is relative, the "your truth is not my truth" syndrome. The part of his post that I take exception to is as follows:

"But even if his suggestion really does boil down to a double-truth claim: a truth revealed by faith contradicting a truth from reason alone, or vice versa. . ."

I hope it is evident to everyone that truth 1) cannot be "double-truth", and 2) cannot be contradicted. If something is true, it is true. A truth revealed by faith may not seem to correspond to anything we know by reason or science, but if it is true it will never be contradicted by reason or science, it is true.

The second statement is as follows:

"When folks say that they will continue to believe in something that reason has demonstrated to be impossible, they are being foolish, or rather, they aren't really saying anything intelligible because they are in essence saying "A is A and A is not A at the same time in the same respect." They might as well say 'blambo forstine inblims abadaba.'"

Here is another case in which some care might be exercised. It seems to me that if I say I believe in the Resurrection I am saying I believe in something that my reason tells me is certainly out of the ordinary, if not impossible. If I say that I believe that Jesus ascended physically into Heaven, I am saying I believe in something my reason tells me no one could ever do. If I say I believe that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul and divinity, I am saying that I believe in something that my reason tells me is impossible. My reason has demonstrated to me that a person who was crucified 2,000 years ago could not possibly be entirely present in every Host in every Tabernacle in every Church everywhere in the world, at the same time no less.

We do believe in things that our reason tells us are impossible, but not unreasonable, and these things are called miracles.

I guess my point is that our reason, being finite, does not serve as the ultimate arbiter of what is true or not true, what we are to believe or not believe, at least not when it is used in the scientific way. In fact, I might go so far as to say that it would be very hard for us to know any truth solely by reason due to the fact that our minds are so finite when faced with the reality of God.

Back to the main point of Mark's post, which, by the way, is covered in an excellent way in our Holy Father's encyclical Fides et Ratio, truth revealed by faith may be known by us in a different way than one revealed through reason, but it is no less true.

2003-04-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

Pacifism

Steven at Flos Carmelli has done another post that got me thinking. I had not planned to write anymore about either the war itself or the justification for it but Steven's post has made me overcome this reticence.

He asks the question, "Is pacifism justified?" When I began to write this post my answer was "perhaps". Having thought through the issue a bit I think it is possible to say simply “no, it is not".

First it might be helpful to define the word pacifism. Pacifism could be defined as a refusal to bear arms or resort to violence to settle disputes (on moral grounds). It means that the person who declares himself a pacifist believes that it is never legitimate to use violence to deter others who are, say, pursuing a morally unacceptable, even lethal, course of action.

I believe that, although those who claim to be pacifists generally seem to think they are taking the high moral ground, they are in fact indulging in a serious moral failure. To understand this we need only to consider the origins and outcome of World War II, i.e., the responsibility of national governments to protect their citizens from external threat.

When national leaders fail in their responsibility we have a situation such as that faced by the Western Allies prior to World War II. In the decade leading up to the war, the 1930’s, the leaders of Britain and France decided to appease Adolph Hitler in order to obtain a short-term peace. The result was that millions of people were killed in a war that could easily have been averted had the leaders of the Allies been willing to demonstrate to Hitler that his aggressive inclinations would not be tolerated. Hitler, as he himself later admitted, would have been easily stopped and probably destroyed by Allied action in 1933 or '34. The Allied leaders did not oppose Hitler when it would have been easy and instead plunged their nations, and the United States into a World War that saw, among other atrocities 6 million Jews go to their deaths. The fact of the matter is appeasement never works.

I believe that the present conflict in Iraq closely follows the parallel with Hitler and World War II. Many people will say that Saddam Hussein is a mere tinhorn dictator who has no capability to inflict harm on "our side." That is exactly what was said of Hitler in the early 1930's. We would do well to remember that the tinhorn dictator Saddam Hussein has already killed over 2 million people; there is little reason to believe that he would stop there.

It should be clear that I believe the primary reason the war in Iraq is being fought is to defend the citizens of the United States from the external threat of terrorism and from the even greater overall threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. It would be a truly wonderful thing if, in addition to achieving this goal, we also achieve the goal of bringing peace, democracy, and freedom from oppression by a cruel tyrant, to the people of Iraq, but that is not the main goal we should be seeking.

I believe this is a war to protect our most cherished freedoms. We should all be mindful of the tendency for Islam to equate religion with the state and to believe that the only way to evangelize was at the point of the sword. The ideas of the dignity of the human person, human free will, and a loving, personal, merciful God are foreign to Islam. We have seen, up close and personal, the practical effects of this "worldview" and its implications at the World Trade Center in New York City. Those who are afraid that the war in Iraq will bring a wave of terrorism to the United States have very short memories; it has been here since September 11, 2001.

In the end it seems to me that pacifism is a kind of withdrawal from the responsibility to choose good and avoid evil. It is a kind of nihilism that says nothing is any more important than anything else and we should all just "live and let live." As I have said before, if there is nothing worth dying for, there is nothing much worth living for. There are plenty of people in the world who are more than willing for us to die for their beliefs.

In contrast to this attitude, I am reminded of God's instructions to the Israelites as they were about to enter into the Promised Land. In certain towns they were told to destroy every living thing in the town, every man, woman and child -- nothing should be left alive. The reason for this apparently cruel and arbitrary instruction is too often missed. It was not that the enemies of Israel could not be converted, it was the threat posed to the Israelites of being converted to the paganism of their enemies. That danger was so great and the Israelites were so spiritually weak, that the presence of their enemies could not be tolerated; they had to be destroyed. We in the West are in the same or greater spiritual danger today -- we live in a society that is rapidly becoming more pagan than Christian. We should be willing, if necessary, to oppose those who would destroy us with whatever force is necessary to stop them, it is a matter of life and death, both physical and spiritual. We should not tolerate anything that separates us from God.

I do not say that war is good, only that at times it is necessary. It is not something to be sought and it can have terrible consequences for those involved in it, but there are times when the cost of avoiding it is even greater. The United States has fought wars that were not in defense of our national interests, Viet Nam comes immediately to mind, and these must be avoided. But when it becomes necessary to fight a war we should be prepared militarily, psychologically, morally and spiritually, trusting in God that his will be done. As the preacher says:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to rrefrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”

2003-03-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Rapture

Carl Olsen, over at Envoy Encore, has just published a book that looks very interesting. The title is Will Catholics be Left Behind? He has also challenged Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series to a duel, well actually a debate, on the issues raised in LaHaye’s dispensationalist theology. There are many Catholic apologists who are up in arms about the Left Behind series and a great deal of ink has been spilled concerning these books. To be honest, while I do wish to read the book, the arguments over the theology are, I think, much ado about nothing.

First of all, the dispensationalist movement is hardly a major part of Protestant theology even after the success of the Left Behind books. It seems to me this set of ideas, the rapture, and the tribulation, all of that, while becoming more prominent, is not really a major theme in mainstream Protestantism. The fundamentalist and charismatic movements are more prominent these days. When I was still a Presbyterian I had hardly ever heard of these ideas, they were certainly considered a fringe movement. The books have created quite a sensation, but I believe this is much broader than it is deep.

Second, the problem with both the theology behind the books and the drastic, even overblown, response to them, especially from Catholic apologists is that no one, “not even the angels in heaven”, to quote Jesus, really knows what will happen at the end times. Only the Father knows for sure what will happen and when. Furthermore, we are not to be concerned about such things. Jesus says we are to “Watch”. Arguing, debating, writing books, arguing Protestant dispensationalist theology is much like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. How can we ever arrive at a satisfactory conclusion? We can’t.

We should be spending our time in the more profitable activities of growing in personal holiness and spreading God’s Kingdom on earth. There is a great deal of profitable work that can be done here and we take time from them to argue impossible questions. Our concern should be the here and now, on things we can influence, not on something we are specifically told by Jesus not to be concerned with. We know that Jesus will come at a time of the Father's choosing, and we are to be prepared, that's all we can know.

As for the Left Behind books themselves, I think there is a least one thing that can be said for them: they are well written, suspense filled stories. The sheer volume of their sales leads us to conclude these good stories are being read by, not just Christians but many people in society who have never given serious thoughts to what will happen to them at the end of their lives. This is not bad. It may lead many non-believers into a Protestant church, fundamentalist or dispensationalist or whatever, but for all we know that may be the first step for many on their journey into the true Church. To see Catholic apologists attacking the ideas leading these people to belief on the basis of esoteric theological notions can’t be helpful.

I know these Catholic apologists are afraid the books will lead many poorly catechized Catholics out of the Church. The response to this fear is not to attack the books but to improve Catholic catechesis. There is much more productive work to be done here. In fact, for most people in the pews to understand why the Left Behind books are faulty, for them to understand what the Catholic apologists are even talking about, a great deal of catechesis needs to be done. Otherwise the arguments are futile.

I hope to read Carl Olsen’s book, I believe it would be helpful to understand this theology and I’m sure the book will make a contribution towards this goal. But let’s keep things in perspective and concentrate on what needs to be done here and now. Let’s figure out what’s important and concentrate our efforts there, not on subjects we can never present a real answer to.

2003-03-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

Your religion is where your love is. - Henry David Thoreau

2003-03-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

Real Freedom

In his encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio, John Paul II wrote:

"Moreover, a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? These are the questions which we find in the sacred writings of Israel, as also in the Veda and the Avesta; we find them in the writings of Confucius and Lao-Tze, and in the preaching of Tirthankara and Buddha; they appear in the poetry of Homer and in the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles, as they do in the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle. They are questions which have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart. In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives."

The way in which we answer the basic questions concerning the meaning of our existence affects the entire direction of our lives. The answers to these questions determine how we interact with the reality of our world. They affect every decision we make, every action of our daily lives. In the United States we are free to make those decisions according to the determination of our individual consciences. This freedom is founded in the Christian heritage of Western Civilization, which recognizes the dignity of the human person -- a creature created in the image and likeness of God. This is a profoundly Christian idea, as can be seen in the pages of Fides et Ratio.

At the heart of the Christian view of life is the idea that the human person is capable, and desirous, of knowing the truth about himself and the world around him. In the universal human pursuit of truth, the human person becomes more fully human through the exercise of human freedom.

Other cultures and religions answer these questions differently. They either deny that there is any answer to the deeper questions of our being, and view the human being as simply part of nature, little different from a stone or a fish, as in the case of Eastern mysticism. Or, in the case of Islam, they deny that the individual is free to answer these questions on his own. Both of these approaches to life are reactions against human freedom.

This is where most heresies fall into error, they are reactions against something or a negation of something. John Paul II writes in Fides et Ratio:

"Put differently, freedom is not realized in decisions made against God. For how could it be an exercise of true freedom to refuse to be open to the very reality which enables our self-realization? Men and women can accomplish no more important act in their lives than the act of faith; it is here that freedom reaches the certainty of truth and chooses to live in that truth."

I think our Holy Father is saying here that freedom is not exercised as a decision against God, or really against anything, but is a decision for. Freedom is not a negative, it is a positive choice to follow the truth. Society today views freedom as license, freedom from restraint in any area of our lives. It is a denial of any absolute moral value or obligation on the part of the individual. This has lead to the virtual destruction of the family in the West, with rampant abortion, adultery, homosexuality, and drug use.

It has lead to another even more insidious failure -- an unwillingness to admit that there are truths worth struggling for. It views peace as the absence of conflict of any kind, and it views that absence as worth paying any price to obtain. The problem is that this is a seeking of a negation, a seeking not for a positive goal but a negative goal; in a sense it is seeking after nothing.

2003-03-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

The Meaning of Lent

I am finally close to being back to my regular routine after last weekend's visit of old friends from Austin. I was able to travel around Colorado a bit during their visit since they have 11-year-old twin boys who wanted very badly to see some snow. There's lots of snow in Breckenridge (and a large snowstorm is forecast for "the Springs" early next week) if you are a ski buff.

I was reading a bit from Craig B.'s Page Fault Interrupt and, as usual, he has some interesting things to say from the perspective of one who, I think, is well on his way on the journey into the Church. I would like to offer a lengthy quote from a post in the last day or so:

"It is clear from reading the early church fathers that they viewed sacraments such as baptism and communion as ordinances prescribed by Jesus that, by their observance, deliver a measure of His grace to the participants. (In other words, they're not merely symbolic.) Now this view doesn't imply that He cannot or will not bestow grace through other means, only that He specifically sanctioned these for ordinary use. Some analogies frequently used are those of Jesus using mud to heal the blind, and Elisha ordering the Syrian leper to wash in the Jordan.
Why would this be? I don't know. I'm struggling with this question. While I don't think we can work our way into heaven, I don't think we can will our way into heaven either. Maybe the physical world is supposed to teach us something. We read in James' letter that faith without works is dead; maybe sacraments are tools to remind us of that fact."

Craig is right on several points here. First, the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are not just symbolic. I was thinking just today that we can gather some idea of the importance of the Eucharist to Jesus from the fact that he instituted the Eucharist in what was virtually the last act of his earthly ministry, just hours before his arrest. Would he have done something that he considered unimportant, or merely symbolic, at just that moment? It hardly seems likely.

The fact is, God created us and knows how we function. We do not just operate on a spiritual or intellectual level, we are incarnated souls and when we are resurrected it will be both soul and body. This is why we have the sacraments, to give us both a taste of the physical and spiritual realities of our existence and God's grace in our lives. So, in a sense, Craig is also correct when he says that God gave us the sacraments for our benefit.

Now, as to Craig's question why the Church has viewed the Sacraments as coming at Jesus direction. You see, to a Protestant, salvation is gained by faith alone, there is no need for sacraments or Tradition, or anything other than the act of the individual in professing faith in Jesus Christ. Taken to the extreme it means that the reality of sin is denied and overcome by a single individual decision to "accept Jesus Christ as one's Lord and Savior."

Now, accepting Jesus into our lives is something each of us must do, but there is more. It seems nearly impossible to read very deeply in Holy Scripture without understanding that what we do is important to God. The details of our daily lives are of tremendous importance to God our Father. Just read the books of Leviticus and Numbers, the history books of the Bible, Jesus Sermon on the Mount, these books are not about what we believe, they are about what we do and what we are. Jesus was asked point blank by the rich young man what he must do to be “have eternal life.” It is interesting what he did not say. He did not say, "You must accept me as your personal Lord and Savior." He did say, "Obey the Commandments", and then, "Sell all your possessions." It seems hard to deny that Jesus was concentrating on what the rich young man did throughout his life, not what he believed at one particular moment.

All of this does not mean that we earn our passage to heaven, it is equally clear from Scripture that this is not the case. But the Sacraments, the Church, the liturgical seasons, are meant to help us to repent, to "change our minds", as it says in the Greek. These things are given to us as a foretaste of what is to come and to help us, to give us the grace, to achieve it. They are all part of our preparation to spend eternity with God, as part of his family.

This is part of the reason we have the penitential season of Lent, to reinforce practices in our lives that bring us closer to God. We don't succeed or fail at this practice, this is not the objective. The objective is to change, to become something better, more pleasing and more conformed, to God. We will never know here on earth the eternal consequences, and benefits, of a Lent that we believed to be a spiritual dud. The fact is, it’s not up to us anyway, all we are supposed to do is try.

2003-03-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

The following is an AP story on the widow of Columbia astronaut Rick Husband and illustrates the faith of someone who has endured what might be considered the unendurable. I think this is a reminder of our total, daily, dependence on God's providence in our lives.

Widow of Shuttle Commander Supports Probe
March 13, 2003 03:52 PM EST

NEW YORK - The widow of the space shuttle Columbia's commander said Thursday that she strongly supports continued space exploration and believes investigators will find the cause of the accident.

"I think space travel is incredibly important to our country. There are certain risks and Rick accepted it, and so do I," said Evelyn Husband, wife of Rick Husband, who piloted Columbia on its final flight.

She's grateful her spouse, one of seven astronauts killed when the shuttle broke up Feb. 1, was able to fulfill the dream of being an astronaut he had harbored since age 4.

On the search for the disaster's cause, Husband said, government experts "are incredibly thorough and determined to find what went wrong...I feel strongly that it was not negligence. It's not a perfect world."

Husband, 44, a stay-at-home mother, has declined most media requests to concentrate on helping the couple's children, 12-year-old Laura and Matthew, 7, cope with the loss of their father. But she did several interviews in New York on Thursday.

She said her grief would have been unbearable the past six weeks without faith in God, along with support from friends at NASA and Houston's Grace Community Church, where the Husbands and the family of Columbia crew mate Michael Anderson attend services.

The spouses and children of the Columbia astronauts meet at least once a week to socialize and, occasionally, pray together, she said.

Husband said she doesn't follow the day-to-day developments in the investigation and hasn't watched television since the news broke, apart from fleeting glimpses while working out at a gym.

Rick Husband was a devoted father, she said, who prepared separate videos for each of his children just before the Columbia flight. The tapes had segments for each day he was away, following Bible readings and prayers in their devotional guidebooks. The Feb. 1 segment closed with a greeting that he'd be seeing them soon.

The last time Evelyn saw Rick, the night before liftoff, he led a brief devotional for the crew and spouses and recited Joshua 1:5-9 from memory. The biblical passage contains the words "I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and of good courage."

Husband said NASA saw to it that officers were posted to control crowds at the family home in Texas even before the family flew back from Florida.

Astronaut Steve Lindsey, a veteran of two space flights, was assigned full-time to help the family. A couple from her church who run a ministry offering free financial counseling, Richard and Janetta Curtis, calmly took charge of things like financial details, fielding telephone calls and poring through "buckets of mail" each day.

In the end, Husband said, her religious faith has been strengthened, not weakened, by the experience. "God is so close to me it's impossible to doubt," she said.

2003-03-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

[This was a post I originally prepared for Ash Wednesday. As I reviewed it, however, I came to see that it needed considerable editing and revision (perhaps still does) which I was not able to accomplish until now due to a heavy work schedule and the arrival of old friends from Austin, Texas for the weekend. I thought it might be better to post this – better late than never.]

Lenten Reflections

As a convert Ash Wednesday, and the liturgical season of Lent, is still a bit of a culture shock to me. Growing up a Protestant meant the liturgical calendar was never significant to my religious experience. The idea of fasting for Lent wasn't to be taken seriously. As you may know, most Protestants view the Lenten fast as part of an exaggerated Catholic effort to earn one's way to Heaven, and I rather unthinkingly accepted that point of view.

It has taken me a few years but now I am actually beginning to develop an appreciation for the season of Lent. Fr. Steve aptly described the reason for this in his Ash Wednesday homily. He talked about the scientific principle of entropy -- the tendency of everything in the universe to become disordered. When a system move in the direction of disorder, chaos, it takes energy to restore order to it. Fr. Steve made the point that this was true in many areas of our lives. The desk in my study is a good example. It seems that as soon as I get it cleaned up and everything put away, within a day or so it's a mess. The solution is to add energy to the system in order to restore order, to clean it up. This is true for our spiritual lives, as well. We go through the Lenten season reintroducing prayer, fasting and almsgiving into our lives. However, if we don't maintain these disciplines in the weeks and months after Easter, entropy sets in and our spiritual lives tend to degenerate. We need the disciplines of another Lent to restore order to our spiritual systems. Lent is a time to restore order to our spiritual lives.

In light of this, I have been debating the effect that the season should have on this blog. My original thought was based on meditating on our Lord's words in the Ash Wednesday Gospel reading:

"When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

I thought that perhaps it would be appropriate to take Jesus words literally when he suggests that, at least to the outside world, there should be no apparent difference in our countenance when we are fasting and praying. After all, we should be constantly at prayer, not just during the season of Lent. It seemed to me that if the purpose of this blog is attempt to show how our Catholic faith influences our daily lives in a practical way, then, perhaps it would be appropriate for there to be little apparent change in outward appearances here, in the days and weeks leading up to Easter.

However, on further reflection, I realize that Lent is a time for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving -- a time for recharging the spiritual batteries, so to speak, and the fact of the matter is, I feel the need to recharge those batteries. So it is likely that I will either reduce the posts here, or shift their focus, in order to allow you the reader and myself a little more time for where our focus should be right now, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

I belatedly wish all of you a very blessed Lenten season, looking forward to the coming of the Light of the world on Easter morning.

2003-03-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

The Law of Posts

There seems to be some sort of law of posts working in my blogging life. For the last two or three weeks I have struggled to come up with something worthwhile to write about, and I had time to write several posts if I had been able to. Now, I have several posts I wish to write and hardly have time to do one. Bear with me, I have begun drafting several and they are on their way.

2003-03-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

The Man with the Knife

Tom, over at Disputations, has done a post against the war with Iraq quoting Cardinal McCarrick. The argument is that it is immoral to kill a man with a knife in his pocket.

Now, it is hard to argue with this line of reasoning. A man walking down the street with a knife in his pocket has a useful tool available to him. Depending on his talents and natural proclivities he can use that knife as an implement to whittle a stick of wood. He can use it to skin a deer if he is a hunter. He can use it to trim a piece of rope or the branch of a tree. As a last resort he can use it to defend himself, or, if his intent is evil, he can use it as an offensive weapon. The reason it is immoral to kill the man carrying a knife is that, unless he does, in fact, use it as an offensive weapon, there is no reason to think that his intentions in carrying it are evil.

The analogy is a poor one, however, when used in the case of Saddam Hussein for a very simple reason. Nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons have only one use, which is to kill people. There are no peaceful, innocent uses, for these weapons; there is no reason to have them unless you either intend them to be a threat or you intend to use them for the purpose for which they were designed.

To return to the analogy of the man with the knife it might be useful to note that a man carrying a knife is generally free to carry it in his pocket wherever he goes. However, there are certain cases in which that knife becomes a threat and has been determined to be illegal, at an airport for example. If he takes that knife into an airport and refuses to either leave or surrender the knife the lawful authorities will use force, even deadly force, if it is necessary to disarm him.

In the case of Saddam Hussein, he has been ordered, by legitimate international authority, to disarm and has substantially refused to do so. Holding the weapons that he has, and given his proven history of having used them, and his threats to use them again, it is legitimate for the international authorities to use force, even deadly force, to disarm him.

2003-03-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past few days. I've had to work some overtime and feel like I'm trying to catch a cold.

Steven, your comment is correct and when I get back on my feet I will post a clarifying comment. I'm not discouraged about my writing at all and thanks for your encouragement.

Paz y bien to all

2003-02-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

Originality

Steven posted a comment (see below) that something I had posted made points similar to that made by deCaussade in Abandonment to Divine Providence. At first I was slightly upset (only slightly) that I might have written something that could be interpreted as plagiarism. As I began to think this over, though, I realized that trying to do an orthodox Catholic blog means that nothing I write will be entirely original.

You see, trying to write from an orthodox Catholic position means that nothing I write will be original. Revelation ceased with the Apostles and it is the task of the Church only to interpret what has already been revealed. Anyone trying to write in accordance with the teaching of the Church cannot be inventive, there is nothing new to invent.

This is the problem for those who wish that the Church to be more "progressive." The notion of progress is a human idea and applies to human activity; it signifies movement toward a goal or objective. If we believe that the Church is a divine institution, the Body of Christ on earth, and if we believe that God is infinite, eternal and perfect in all his attributes, then the Church cannot be "progressive" -- there is nothing to progress towards. The Church is already what God intends it to be. To wish otherwise is an instance of both human error and human pride.

So I, and all who wish to remain in communion with the Church, have to face the fact that the work we do as writers is inevitably going to lack originality, we can do no less.

2003-02-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

Wonderful News from Associated Press (and the Supreme Court)

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a federal racketeering law was improperly used to punish aggressive anti-abortion protesters, a major victory for people who regularly block clinic doors.
The court's 8-1 ruling applies to protests of all sorts, not just at clinics.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the majority, said that when protesters do not "obtain" property, they cannot be punished for civil disobedience with the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, an anti-racketeering law.
The court's ruling is a victory for Operation Rescue, anti-abortion leader Joseph Scheidler and others who were ordered to pay damages to abortion clinics and barred from interfering with their businesses for 10 years.
Rehnquist said that their political activity did not qualify as extortion.
That outcome had been sought by activists like actor Martin Sheen, animal rights groups and even some organizations that support abortion rights. They argued that protesters of all types could face harsher penalties for demonstrating, if the court ruled otherwise.

2003-02-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Time Management

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio wrote:

"God's Revelation is therefore immersed in time and history. Jesus Christ took flesh in the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4); and two thousand years later, I feel bound to restate forcefully “in Christianity time has a fundamental importance”. It is within time that the whole work of creation and salvation comes to light; and it emerges clearly above all that, with the Incarnation of the Son of God, our life is even now a foretaste of the fulfillment of time which is to come (cf. Heb 1:2)."

The phrase “in Christianity time has a fundamental importance” struck me as a remarkable statement. We human beings live in time, we are obsessed with time, we try to manage time, and we worry about wasting time. God, on the other hand is eternal. God does not exist in time even though he created time, God does not have to worry about the passage of time. However, God entered time when Jesus Christ came to live among men, thus, he became a historical figure; we can fix in history, at least within a couple of years, when he was born and when he died. We have the records made by other human beings of the events of his life and his death. We know what happened on earth as a result of his death -- the Church came into existence and spread throughout the world. For a brief period here on earth, eternity and time were commingled.

If time is that important to God, then perhaps we might want to learn how God used time here on earth. We can get some idea from a passage in chapter 5 of the Gospel of Mark:

And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him; and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Ja'irus by name; and seeing him, he fell at his feet, and besought him, saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." And he went with him. (Mark 5:21-24) (RSV)

Now, I don't know about you, but my reaction to Jairus, if I had been in Jesus place, would have been different. I probably would have said something like, "Gee, Jairus, I know your daughter is sick, but can you wait an hour or so. See, I've got this huge crowd here waiting for me to speak and I've got this important lesson I've prepared to teach them. This stuff is going into Scripture, you know. Just give me an hour or so and I'll see what I can do." Or else, I might have said, "Okay Jairus, just go home, I'm busy here, you're daughter is healed. Now, buzz off." That is not what Jesus did in response to Jairus request though, Mark says "And he went with him." That simple. Jesus left the crowd and went with Jairus. Why? We don't know why, we can only assume that somehow this was part of the Father's plan and worked to his glory. That is the way Jesus wanted to use his time here on earth -- to bring glory to his Father. You might say that since Jesus was God that he would naturally use his time differently than any of us regular human beings. But Jesus was human and if there was anyone on earth who had a right to feel pressed for time it was Jesus. He had only three years in which to complete his earthly ministry. And yet there is no hint in Scripture that Jesus ever felt hurried. He is never bothered by interruptions. Jesus lived in time as if it were eternity.

I, on the other hand, seem to be constantly preoccupied with efficiency and planning in order to achieve the best use of my time. And I hate others to interrupt me and spoil my plans. Perhaps there is a better way. Our Lord did not have interruptions, he simply did the next thing that was at hand and he did it for his Father's greater glory. In Matthew 6:34 Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. (RSV) Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” I think this is the heart of Jesus’ teaching on time management.

2003-02-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Today is The Chair of St. Peter

The Authority of Peter

"What can your piety decree that is more commendable, more religious, than that in the future no one be permitted to attack decrees established not so much through human as through divine decisions? Otherwise, those who dared to have doubts about God's truth may really deserve to lose so great a gift of God.

The universal Church has become rock through the erection of that original rock, and the first of the apostles, the most blessed Peter, heard the voice of the Lord saying: 'You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." Hence, who would dare beat against this impregnable solidarity, except either antichrist or the devil? It is he who, persevering unconverted in his malice, seeks to plant lies, using instruments suited to his wrath and falseness, while under the false label of carefulness he feigns to be seeking the truth. His unrestrained fury and blind impiety have deservedly marked out for themselves a reputation to be despised and shunned...

I use the freedom of the Catholic faith and without fear exhort you to be on the side of the apostles and prophets."

Pope St. Leo the Great

This was written eleven hundred years before the Protestant Reformation.

2003-02-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

Academia nuts, cont'd

This morning while I was sitting in my phrontistery I came upon an interesting, almost incredible, article by Joe Klein on the Time website. The article is on George Bush's confident approach to the coming war with Iraq.

I find the article interesting because it clearly proves something that many of us have long suspected: those in the "intellectual elite" in this country have no clue what religious faith is about. In this article Klein shows that he thinks that religious faith is little more than an emotional security blanket. To Klein faith is perhaps comforting to some folks but not real, not "scientific" and therefore, not to be taken seriously by intelligent, mature folks. This is bad enough, but Klein goes on to further silliness.

"There are religious traditions — the Jesuits, the Jews, the Shi'ites, certain suffering segments of Protestantism — for which grace is a constant anguish, a goal never quite attained but approached through learning or good works. "The Evangelicals take their marching orders from Paul, who said you have to 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,'" Martin E. Marty, the University of Chicago theologian, told me last week. "The implication is that once you've worked it out, once you've been born again, you don't have to be fearful or tremble so much anymore."

To Klein faith should, apparently, lead those who hold to it to doubt, to an ever-present emotional angst. When we come to accept Christian faith we become neurotics, it makes us more thoughtful. Piffle. I would like to present here a description of faith from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives." ‘Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.’ "

"Faith is certain." As I have written in another post, faith differs from knowledge but that does not mean it is not certain. After all, we believe that having faith involves accepting God's word as truth. It seems to me that any Christian who is in a "constant anguish" over grace is not living in faith; he or she has not accepted God at his word. Faith should lead us to a quiet confidence in God's providence in our lives and in his mercy when our days on earth are over, it should not lead us to become emotional wrecks.

I do not mean to say that because President Bush is a Christian that plays any part in his absolute certainty about the war. I do say that the President's faith should inform his decision-making decisions about the war. I would say that if President Bush is not confident that he is taking the right approach to the Iraq situation, then the country is in deep trouble. However, his confidence should not come about because of his faith in God but because of his confidence that he has a clear understanding of the situation and that what he is doing is right. In times like this we do not want a neurotic, angst-ridden President, no matter what his religious belief.

2003-02-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Lord, Liar, Lunatic
There appears to be some discussion going on around blogdom concerning the argument advanced in proof of Jesus's divinity: "If Jesus was not who he claimed to be, he was either a liar or lunatic of the first order." As far as I know this argument has been advanced by many apologists including C. S. Lewis.

On thinking about this line of reasoning it appears to me that it is equivalent to those statements made by many modern, sophisticated, and educated Catholics who are troubled by the idea of miracles. In their concern they make great efforts to explain them away. You have all heard the statement: "Well, when Jesus fed the 5,000, you know, really, they all had fish sandwichs with them (all having just stopped at McDonalds' before the rally.), he didn't really multiply the loaves as it says there."

We desperately want to explain things, to reduce them to terms we can understand.

In Fides et Ratio #9, our Holy Father tells us where the fallacy of this thinking lies:

The First Vatican Council teaches, then, that the truth attained by philosophy and the truth of Revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive: “There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object. With regard to the source, because we know in one by natural reason, in the other by divine faith. With regard to the object, because besides those things which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed, cannot be known”. Based upon God's testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an order other than philosophical knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone. Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32)."

As human beings we have the ability to reason and to love -- to make choices. There are, however, things that cannot be known by human reason. God through Scripture and Tradition has revealed these things to us. To try to conflate the two types of reason, or to try to deny one or the other type, is to reduce our humanity. There comes a point at which we must agree with the sentiment expressed on the old bumper sticker: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." We have to choose to believe or not to believe.

When we give a very practical explanation as "proof" of something in Scripture we are, in effect, denying the necessity of faith. There are some things that we cannot explain or make sense of. All of Christianity hinges on one miracle, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Try to explain that one in nice, neat, scientific terms. And if we try to deny the "lesser" miracles, how can we accept the "greatest" miracle?

Also, if we say that something in Scripture is not true, say that Jesus did not multiply the loaves and fishes but the crowd brought all that stuff with them, what do we finally accept as true? The Bible says Jesus performed a miracle, it does not say the crowed brought the groceries. The Bible says that Jesus suffered, died, and was buried and that he rose on the third day. Do we question that?

As an apologist it is tempting to try to explain, and reduce, the faith for the uninitiated. We fall into the trap of thinking that we have to tie it up for our brother or sister into a nice neat package and say, "See, it all really makes sense after all." To do this, though, is simply to do a disservice to the one being evangelized. At some point the unexplainable must be faced, the leap of faith must be made, otherwise there will never be faith. Christianity, in that case, becomes another intellectual adventure, pablum for the mind.

2003-02-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Just War

Tom, over at Disputations, has posted a quote from Peter Nixon's blog which reads as follows:

"That we can even speak seriously of the concept of a "just war" should remind us that we are the reason that Christ was crucified. Ever bullet, every bomb, every death is one more nail in His hand, one more spear in His side, one more thorn on His brow. If a Christian has a duty to pick up the sword, then let it be a grim duty, and when it is done let us clothe ourselves in sackcloth and ashes and repent of what we have made of the world God has given us."

In response I would like to post the following quotes from a couple of our Islamic brothers:

"If one allows the infidels to continue playing their role of corrupters on earth, their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger. Thus, if we kill the infidels in order to put a stop to their activities, we have indeed done them a service.... To kill them is a surgical operation commanded by Allah the Creator... Those who follow the rules of the Koran are aware that we have to apply the laws of retribution and that we have to kill.... War is a blessing for the world and for every nation. It is Allah himself who commands men to wage war and to kill. The Koran commands: "Wage war until all corruption and all disobedience are wiped out!"
Ayatolla Khomeni

"What worries me is this: One would have thought that the rapidity with which the FBI cracked the World Trade Center bombing case would have sent a powerful message to terrorists that the United States is a tough place to operate in. Rather, it has done the opposite. The people arrested last week used it as an excuse to carry an even more audacious terrorist campaign. They have gone from killing a handful of people at the World Trade Center to contemplating mass wanton murder, such as the destruction of two tunnels. One can only shudder to think what the next group is going to contemplate."
Interview with Bruce Hoffman Director of Strategy,
Rand Institute
International Herald Tribune June 28, 1993

"We must reject democracy in favor of Islam, which is the unique political system worked out by the Almighty ... Our march has just begun and Islam will end up conquering Europe and America.... For Islam is the only salvation left for this world in despair."
Sheikb Saeed Shaban Leader of the Sunni majority in Tripoli, Lebanon

We American Christians seem to have arrived at the conclusion that to fight for what we believe is somehow sinful. We seem to think that if we are challenged it is automatically against God’s will that we respond to the challenge. We want to be nice. The rest of the world has the advantage over us in this regard -- they are not afraid to fight and kill for what they believe in. They know full well that if there is nothing worth dying for, there is nothing much worth living for. I agree that we must make even this response out of love, as C.S. Lewis said it may be necessary to pray for your enemy while you are killing him. But it seems clear that the response must be made – unless, of course, we are all willing to convert to Islam at the point of the sword.

2003-02-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

Blogdom

I wonder if there is an epidemic in blogdom. Steven at Flos Carmeli and then
Robert at Classic Catholic have both remarked about the lack of comments they are receiving. The same thought has crossed my mind. Are we experiencing the general "malaise" Jimmy Carter once spoke about?

2003-02-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

On the Journey - II

Craig has posted a comment about his journey and made a couple of good points. I am a little surprised at his description of the “worship experience” at one or more Catholic parish he has attended, but still good comments.

He writes:
"My visits to Catholic parishes (aside from touristing in famous European cathedrals) have been a trip into kum-ba-yah land, with sixties-modern architecture, folkie music, and lots of Euro-leftist "social justice" talk from the pulpit that frankly inspires nausea in a conservative like myself. As far as I can tell, they aren't teaching heresies from the Catholic faith, but what I hear there doesn't inspire me to reverence. On the theory that "by their fruits ye shall know them", all this tends to make me doubt."

Except for the architecture, I didn't know there was much of this silliness left in the land and it saddens me to hear that there may be. Craig is right to be put off by it. My conversion to Catholicism was instigated by a preacher who had lost sight of God in favor of 'sixties 'feel-good" religion. The question my wife asked after one of these sermons was "Would we be willing to die for this kind of faith?" The answer was no. I think if our first experience at Mass had been as Craig described we would never have gone any further in our conversion process. That too would not be worth dying for. But then again, it would not be Catholic. Craig, or any one of us, would be right to reject it out of hand. However, I do believe (or hope) these parishes in which the focus is not on Jesus Christ and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass but rather on the "community" are becoming fewer and farther between. I encourage Craig to try to find an orthodox Catholic parish before making a final judgment about the Church.

I said in my last post on this topic, that Protestantism tends toward emotionalism. Craig correctly points out that there is considerable intellectual activity, at times perhaps too much, that is also part of Protestantism. The point I was trying to make is that there is an emphasis on feelings that tends to be part of the typical Protestant worship experience. There is a different spirituality here than in the Church and this is not all bad. Catholics tend to go to the opposite extreme and try to avoid all emotion; in fact they tend to distrust emotion at worship or at prayer. It would be good to have the two extremes meet somewhere in the middle.

Craig also says that he doesn't feel called to the Church because he sees no sign, “intellectual or emotional, that the Church possesses the fullness of truth”. Of course, in the end there is nothing that I am aware of that can guarantee us that the Church does indeed possess the fullness of truth. If there were such a thing our trust in the Church as the Body of Christ would be a matter of knowledge, not of faith.

Unless, that is, there is some basis to believe the Church is right when she proclaims that she has the fullness of truth. This was a central issue for me in my conversion and the way I approached it was to follow the famous maxim of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes said that if there were several theories of the “crime” in order to solve it one had to eliminate those theories that were impossible and the truth was likely to be whatever was left. My conversion process began when I realized there was a flaw in Protestant Christianity, which is that there is no magisterium, no central teaching authority. It is possible to say definitively what the Church teaches on any particular aspect of the Christian faith, just look in the Catechism. This is impossible on the Protestant side. To see what the Protestant view is on any particular aspect of the Christian faith you must ask each church, sometimes each Protestant. Sometimes congregations within the same denomination will not believe the same thing on any given subject. There is no single Protestant teaching on, say, baptism, communion, even salvation; the field is terribly fractured. Even the long-established, main line, Protestant denominations have abandoned their traditional Confessions of Faith in favor of the latest social fetishes, including homosexual ordination, the results of which are plaguing the Church right now. Truth is subject to a vote and, I believe, to act as if it were, is a logical impossibility. Truth is neither a function of time or of public opinion. Jesus is the Truth and he cannot be divided, there is One Truth. That leaves us with a few possibilities, the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses, the Muslims or other eastern religions, or the Catholic Church.

As I write all of this it comes to me that perhaps one possible “sign” that the Church has the fullness of truth is the Catechism. There is nothing comparable on the Protestant side and if there were it would not be binding. Individual Catholic parishes may go off in their own direction but when they do they are no longer Catholic; their actions do nothing to change the teaching of the Church. These activities are merely symptoms of the individual failings of sinful individuals. When Protestants do that they do influence the belief of the individual congregation, there is no safeguard of truth to which anyone can appeal, nothing like the Catechism exists for Protestants.

2003-02-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

Nihil Obstat

I have received my first notice on the site of the official St. Blog’s proofreader - Nihil Obstat. Said blogger has pointed out "5 Hiccups on the 7 Habitus" which, with one possible exception constitute silly spelling and/or typographical errors made by yours truly.

I have made it clear here that my primary purpose in doing this blog is to learn to write and to do so by regularly doing posts for this blog. The idea is that this effort will help me discipline myself to write regularly and will constitute a sort of writing practice. I think I have become more enthralled with the practice than with the writing.

So I think Nihil Obstat performs a valuable service both for those of us who are regular bloggers and for you the reader. One of the things I have already learned here is that writing is hard work and the technicalities involved are somewhat intimidating to me. It's not all glamour, fame and fortune. But you, the reader of this blog, deserve the best I can give you. Due to certain deficiencies in character and mental ability that may not always be up to the level of a high school sophomore, but you at least deserve to have me make the effort. So that means posts should be proofread for correct spelling and proper grammar. It means they should make at least some sense and be on topics of at least some importance and interest to you, the reader. It means they should be as in accordance with Truth and Church teaching as I can make them. And we can all be thankful that when I fail there is Nihil Obstat looking over my shoulder.

2003-02-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

Nunc Dimitis

I have promised myself that I would not delete a blog once it is posted here. This promise has created a problem for me because there are already a few posts that I would like to revise and/or correct. It seems that re-posting the revisions could easily become quite cumbersome, even confusing, after a while. The solution I have hit upon is to create a "back up" blog to which I could post the revised posts from this site. Thus Nunc Dimitis is born. There is no need to regularly visit Nunc Dimitis unless you are overcome by curiosity as to what I might be revising or correcting from this site. If you do feel such a need it is there.

2003-02-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Purpose

One of the reasons I thought to begin this blog was to work out certain ideas I had concerning the practical application of the virtues. To date I have hardly approached the topic so this is a first, feeble attempt to do so.

Virtue is an idea that has practically disappeared from our lives these days. Yet, many very popular books, best sellers, especially in the area of "time-management" rely heavily on what might be termed the practical application of the virtues. They will explicitly deny any religious foundation to what they teach and yet their ideas would certainly be familiar to St. Thomas Aquinas and many others prominent in Christian Tradition. I would suggest, though, that because of their secular orientation that these books are flawed.

I would suggest that these books fail because their emphasis is focused on helping the individual achieve worldly success. Success seems, to most of these folks, to be defined in terms of the person achieving his worldly goals and objectives: successful career, lots of toys, and eternal youth. To the Catholic mind this is putting the focus on matters of secondary importance.

The two facts that have been lost today are that 1) everything that exists exists because God created it and, 2) God created everyone and everything for a purpose. God acted with purpose and created us to do so also. The central purpose God has for our life is that when we shuffle off this mortal coil we spend the rest of our eternal life with him in heaven. He intends each of us to enjoy eternal beatitude with Him. Any attempt to define success as anything other than achieving this goal is futile, at best. This is so because it involves building our lives on the wrong premise. The focus found in the "success" books is on the human person, not the human person's creator. God is not required.

Religious faith, of almost any kind but certainly of the Christian variety has been almost eliminated from the public mind. It is no longer the central, defining theme of many, if not most American's lives. It is not even considered a subject for polite discussion in many circles. Yet, I think it fairly obvious to the Catholics among us that Christian teaching on the nature of man and God's creative action is the only possible source of real meaning and purpose for our lives. We don't define our own purposes, but we do define how we work out God's purpose for our lives. The focus on planners and calendars and PDAs to help us achieve our own selfish goals will never lead to personal "success". Only orienting our lives to achieve God's purpose will lead us to true human success. This certainly involves planning and consideration on our part, but If we do not keep in mind that our purpose is to fulfill God's will for our lives our planning and goal setting will be futile.

One question that I think most Modern, scientific materialist Americans would ask at this point is, "what makes you think this is true?" Many of the most educated Americans would say that human beings are the product of an evolutionary accident, that there is no real purpose in life other than obtaining the greatest degree of "personal fulfillment" and that when we die that is the end of the joyride (if you doubt this, please review this week's Publisher's Weekly Top 10 hardcover non-fiction best sellers listing). But there is a contradiction to be found here; they will say this and yet spend all kinds of money and effort to set themselves goals and define the purpose of their lives. We humans intuitively know that without purpose and direction we become frustrated, even neurotic, but we deceive ourselves as to where that purpose can be found. We are too proud to submit ourselves to God's will. This is why St. Francis was able to say that the second death is easy, the first, dying to self, is the hardest.

So, you are asking, where does the concept of virtue fit into all of this? That will be discussed in posts to follow. So, we have the famous "To be continued."

© 2003 Ronald L. Moffat

2003-02-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

On the Journey

I have not posted much this week. Between a heavy workload and the near blizzard conditions here in "the Springs" the week has gotten away from me.

Steven at Flos Carmeli has pointed me to the blog of a gentleman who is discerning (I think) his Christian faith and the form that faith should take. Craig (the gentleman in question) has written several perceptive posts that give a picture of one on the journey from, perhaps a very weak faith, to a growing and increasingly discerning faith. I would like to elaborate my own reactions to some of the things he has written and I encourage you to visit his site and read these posts yourself.

Craig is not Catholic but is not, I would say, anti-Catholic either. So it might be interesting to try to elucidate the Catholic position on some of his musings.

Now I have to decide how we know what we know about the faith, and what that implies; whether there are zero sacraments, two, or seven; what constitutes a "legitimate" church, and so on.

The Catechism says this about faith

#(155). "In FAITH, the human intellect and will co-operate with divine grace: 'Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.'[St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II, 2, 9; cf Dei Filius 3; DS 3010.]"

The point being here is that faith involves both the intellect and will cooperating with God. It is not something we achieve through our own efforts. The way we cooperate with God is to know his will and we know that through one or both of two sources, first Scripture then Tradition. The Church believes that these two sources constitute God's revelation of himself; we take God at his word and accept his teaching. This is the virtue of faith.

Scripture is not, in itself, all we need to have to know God's plan for our lives. It should be clear from the myriad of Protestant denominations today that "sola scriptura" at best leads to chaos. How can there be even 20,000 Protestant denominations as varied as say the Presbyterians to the Jehovah's Witnesses, each asserting in the strongest possible terms that they have only the Bible as their source of truth in matters of faith and morals? The Bible does not teach confusion, nor does it teach multiple truths, there is no such thing. It would seem to follow that there must be some other authority, the Church believes this authority is the Holy Spirit, to guarantee that what is written in the Bible is interpreted properly.

If all of this is true then we can decide "what we know about the faith" by studying both Scripture and Tradition. This is, I think, a synopsis of the Catholic position on faith and what we know to be true.

Craig goes on to make an interesting point:

"Now, I have learned a lot just through the rest of the blogosphere; a majority of the Christian bloggers are Catholic, or so it seems, and they explain their faith better than the official channels in my opinion. But I don't feel any particular call to be Catholic, and I am distinctly an outsider reading their posts. There's a wide cultural divide between Catholics and Protestants even on the Internet, and the Catholics are feeling embattled these days for obvious reasons."

He notices that Catholics, at least some of those of us who are making the feeble effort to blog, seem to have at least some idea of what the faith is. This is the core of the cultural difference between Protestantism and Catholicism -- as a Protestant it is not crucial what exactly the individual believes. In fact, in most cases the Protestant will not be able to clearly state a basis for his faith other than that he believes Jesus Christ to be his personal Lord and Savior and that the Bible is God's word and his only authority for matters of faith. Now this is a very good start but when you get down to it it's pretty thing gruel. It is sufficient for most Protestants (this is not universally true, obviously) because Protestant spirituality tends to be based more on emotion and excitement than Catholicism. This is, I think, at least part of the basis for the cultural divide that he so correctly describes.

However, Craig says he feels no call to be Catholic. He says he feels an outsider when reading Catholic blogs. I know what he means. When I was a Presbyterian and first looking into the Catholic Church it all seemed incredibly impenetrable to me. How could one ever learn all that one had to know just to be comfortable attending Mass? This feeling of separation gradually disappeared as I made the effort to learn what the Church was all about. This, I think, is a common experience for all who first come into contact with the Church. I would urge Craig, first of all, to be Christian. If he is open to the Spirit working, as the Catechism calls for, in his life and if it is the Spirit's will for him to come into the Church eventually then it will happen. The key point is that first step, the rest will fall into place.

One final point. Craig seems to perceive that most Catholics feel embattled because of the recent scandals in the Church. I do not believe this is at all true, at least among Orthodox Catholics. I think we recognize that the scandals are a prime example of the consequences of ignoring the long-held teachings of the Church in matters of human sexuality and reproduction. It is an almost inevitable consequence of the open dissent that has become so widespread in the Church in the last 20-30 years. I think we also recognize that these priests are sinners, as we all are, and we pray that they will repent of what they have done. I don't think any of us would want any of these priests to resume their priestly ministry ever, but I think we all pray for their reconciliation to the Church, which is open to all Catholics who have strayed. We may be disgusted but we are not, I think, embattled.

2003-02-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

Travels with Charley

I just finished rereading John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America. The book is a description of a trip Steinbeck took across America and back again in a pick up truck equipped with a camper. His French Poodle Charley was his only companion. This, I think, is the the third or fourth time I have read the book, the first time being when the it was first published in 1962 or '63.

At that time I was a kid living in Detroit attending high school and I was reading a book written by a man considerably older than myself; it was also a book that described a country I was familiar with.

Reading Travels with Charley now I am a man about the age Steinbeck was in 1960 and I am reading about an America that no longer exists. I am struck by the paradox. Steinbeck, in the pages of his book, is no older than he was 41 years ago, I have gone from a boy of 15 or 16 to a man approaching (at least in a couple more years) the age Steinbeck was when he wrote the book.

When I first read the book I thought it would be wonderful to have an adventure like that and, until this last reading, I think that idea never left me. When I read it now I wonder how in the world he could possibly have done it. Age is not always kind, if not to spirit, at least to body. The idea of spending three or four months couped up in the cab of a 1960 pickup truck is almost more than I can bear. I currently have a fairly new pick up truck with all the luxuries and creature comforts that can be put into a truck and I don't think I would contemplate a trip of more than 1 or 2 days journey from Colorado Springs. Pick up trucks in 1960 were work vehicles and primitive by any current standard, I marvel at his stamina and endurance.

But, if age is not always kind to body perhaps it compensates for it with kindness to spirit. I have seen many parts of the world from the North American continent, east to west, north to south, to Asia and at least parts of Europe. I guess some would say I have traveled widely and I would say that for a great part of my life I travelled joyfully. I don't regret all the travelling I have done. In fact, I have benefited greatly from my travels -- I now know I no longer need to travel. My desires have simplified.

I think one of the objectives I had when I traveled, even when I was in the military was not so much to see places but to see people and to get an idea for how they lived their lives. It was a restless curiosity that I could not then, nor can I now, explain. Yet, because of it I have come to see that whether they are Vietnamese, Koreans, Austrailians, French, Scottish or Saudis or Mexicans, while the particulars may vary, the essentials do not. Each is capable of great dignity and each is capable of great mischief. My task now is to understand how I am called to live out my life unaided by foreign example. I am called to do that wherever I am located. It seems that travel is now unnecessary, if not disruptive of the process. The value that travel has had for me is that I have come to see that the lessons to be learned are learned here, wherever I am, because that is where God can be found. It is, I think, one of life's important lessons and I think it is a lesson that Steinbeck did not learn from his journey.

2003-02-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

The Joy of St. Francis

The joy of St. Francis does not stem from the fact that he loved animals; the joy of St. Francis stems from the fact that he loved the Gospel of John. In his constant immersion in and love of that Gospel St. Francis learned the every created thing comes from God. He saw everything in creation as a pure, gracious gift from a loving Creator. Thus, everything in creation was to be treasured, not for itself, but for its Divine Providence. Yet there was a second, and more important, lesson that St. Francis learned from the Gospel of John. From John St. Francis learned that everything was destined to return to God. This, for Francis, gave everything meaning and purpose. It gave him an even greater reason to treasure not only the beauty of creation, but also the final dignity of every human person. He saw, simply and clearly, that through His Son, Jesus Christ, it was God's purpose to draw everyone and everything to Himself. That vision inspired the tremendous joy that St. Francis is known for.

2003-02-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

IN MEMORIUM - STS 107

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds-and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of-wheeled and soared and
swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie McGee

2003-01-31T15:29:00.000-07:00

The Bishop's Problem

Catholic World News Service reported the following today:

WASHINGTON, DC, Jan 31, 03 (CWNews.com) - A judge in Washington declined to sentence three gay activists for disrupting a meeting of the US bishops' conference last November, saying that the Church had done "tremendous violence" to them by denying them the Eucharist.
The three activists from the group Soulforce said they went to hotel in the District of Columbia where the bishops were meeting on November 12 to demand that they be given Communion and an explanation of why they were refused Communion the day before during Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. They were arrested for refusing to leave the private building.

In the nonjury trial, Judge Mildred Edwards, who identified herself as Catholic, agreed that the activists had broken the law by refusing to leave the hotel's lobby when requested by police and hotel officials. Although prosecutors had requested a sentence of time served-- the 30 hours they spend in jail-- Edwards said even that sentence was too harsh and did something she said hadn't done in 15 years on the bench: she dispensed with a sentence.

"Tremendous violence was done to you . . . when the Body of Christ was denied to you," Edwards said, referring to the contention of the three that refusal of Communion had prompted their actions. "As a member of your Church, I ask you to forgive the Church."

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington said the three activists were denied the Eucharist at the November 11 Mass because they were misidentified as members of the Rainbow Sash movement, a group of gay activists who had said they were planning to receive Communion as a form of protest against the Church's teaching on homosexuality. "The Eucharist is the core of our faith and a sign of our unity," spokesman Susan Gibbs said. "It is very rare to deny Communion, but since it was publicly announced it would be a protest and not a sign of faith, the Rainbow Sash group was denied the sacrament."

All three defendants, Ken Einhaus of Arlington, Virginia, Mike Perez of Seattle, and Kara Speltz of Oakland, California, said they were emotionally shattered by the refusal of Communion at Mass and went to the hotel to "find healing among the people who caused me so much suffering," Einhaus said. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit flew into Washington to testify on their behalf.

Now there are a number of points that could be made about this action by Judge Mildred Edwards and over the next day or so I will probably end up saying them. But can anyone explain to me why a BISHOP would fly from Detroit to Washington to testify on behalf of the three offenders? How clueless can you get???

2003-01-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Deleting Blogs

A week or two ago I made a sincere attempt to delete a couple of blog postings I had just done. I deleted them twice and each time they appeared to be gone. Each time they reappeared for no reason I can determine. The reason I wanted to delete them is that they were such twaddle I was ashamed of having written them. I have since convinced myself that for some reason the Holy Spirit is working to keep those blogs in place, so they will stay. I don't necessarily, however, have to point them out and draw your attention to them. The reside in well deserved obscurity.

Karen Marie Knapp did a post a few days ago on this very topic which I thought was quite insightful. One passage I would like to quote:

But embarrassment never killed anyone; actually it liberates in the long term. It's secrets that bind and kill.

I think I would phrase this a little differently, but I wish I had written it. As you may have guessed, I am stuck on the idea that what we are missing most in our culture today is truth. Thus, I might have said that it is the truth that sets us free and lies that bind and kill us. It would have been a denial of reality, a lie, to have deleted those blogs. As Ms. Knapp said (sort of) elsewhere in her post, I wrote the damn things so I might as well live with having done so.

On my trip to Alaska I came face to face with this issue on a bit larger scale. I happened to have the opportunity to meet with a Dept of Defense photographer and, since we had some time, he took to showing me all the newest and latest gadgets that he gets to work with in the course of his labors. The gear looked somewhat familiar to me but then I realized that he was holding a digital camera and that his "film" would be processed and the shots printed on a computer. Being a mid-twentieth century kind of guy I was duly impressed and amazed. That is until he started telling me how this new fangeled gear had changed the way he works.

You see, the problem is that with digital photography you can no longer be certain that what is printed out as a photograph is indeed the subject that was photographed. There are so many ways that pictures can be digitally edited and enhanced that there is no way to ensure that the photographs represent the reality of the event. This is a huge problem for our Government and they are having to institute all kinds of procedures and measures to ensure that the photograph are reliable. But he was smart enough to know that they weren't really enough. He said, "It all comes down to the integrity of the photographer."

Isn't that kind of the problem we all face these days? It is so easy to abandon reality that we are no longer sure there is any such thing as reality. If we take a picture and we don't like all the gray hair and wrinkles we just push a button and "delete" them. There we have a picture of ourselves that looks great, but we deceive ourselves if we think that we have changed the reality of our being.

In the same way, we can delete a blog post, but the reality is that our stupidity was there, at least for a while for all to see. On the other hand, maybe I'll buy a digital camera.

2003-01-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome Bishop Sheridan

Today the Diocese of Colorado Springs has a new bishop, Bishop Michael Sheridan succeeds Bishop Richard Hanifan who is retiring. We forward our best wishes to Bishop Hanifan and offer a warm welcome to Bishop Sheridan.

2003-01-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

Dissent - Final Word
I would like to do another short post to summarize my previous two posts regarding dissent in the Church. I'm doing this because I thought that, between my two previous posts, there might be some confusion as to what I was saying. I think this will be the last one on this topic.

First, I view dissent as the willful not acceptance of Church teaching in matters of faith and morals. It is an active disregard of God's will as expressed through the constant and clearly defined dogma of the Church. (Sen John Kerry yesterday gave a perfect example of this when he said that he could not be bound by Church teaching in his political career. He reasoning is that he, as President, would represent a broad range of Americans, many of whom are not Catholic. Enough said.)

This dissent can take many forms, the most common being that which arises from ignorance of true Church teaching. Many people will openly state that they do not agree with Church teaching on abortion or adultery or contraception who have no real idea what these teachings are. The reason I call this dissent is that they make no effort, in fact, they have no interest in learning the truth, they simply persist in their ignorance year after year. This form of dissent is due, I think mainly, to poor catechesis. That is, catechesis that was insufficient either due to the ignorance of the instructor or the willful dissent of the instructors themselves.

Then there is the more active version of dissent in which the subject knows precisely what the teaching of the Church is in the areas in question and willfully refuses to accept them. Think certain prominent politicians who support issues which are inimical to Church teaching and yet continue to proclaim themselves Catholic. I sometimes think, especially in light of the recent scandals in the Church that these prominent public personalities do more to affect the teaching of the Church, and the conduct of the faithful, than the bishops do. I might point out, their teaching is not for the good of the Church.

Neither of these versions of dissent is to be confused with simple and honest misunderstanding of Church doctrine. I have been accused, in a comment below, of picking on RCIA students. Nothing could be farther from the truth and if anything I have written gives that impression I hereby withdraw it. None of us who have gone through the RCIA process could ever hold that someone new to the Church would come in knowing and accepting everything there is to know. That is simply impossible; I know it was not true in my own case. What I do say is that, whether an RCIA student or a cradle Catholic, we all have an obligation to honestly seek the truth, where ever that leads us. We are on a journey to union with God and that journey necessarily involves personal and spiritual growth. Anyone honestly engaged in this process is not in dissent from the Church.

I do believe that anyone who is thinking of coming into the Church who is not willing to study, pray about and seek Gods grace in understanding the difficult doctrines of the faith should think twice before taking the final step of accepting the sacraments of the Church. I believe that anyone in the Church, say for example, the Governor of California, should think carefully about taking Communion if they are not willing to accept the Church's teaching on such issues as abortion. It is this kind of close minded obstinence that I think is contrary to God's will for our lives.

I hope this is an adequate summary of what I have written in my two previous posts on the subject of dissent.

2003-01-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

Dissent - II
Steven, at Flos Carmeli, has written an excellent post that describes at least one aspect of the process of adult initiation into the Church.

I think all of us who have converted and come into the Church have not come in with complete understanding and acceptance of all the Church teaches. Who of us in the Church today can claim to be in that position? I share the experience of Steven that as I came into the Church I had difficulties. However, as John Henry Newman wrote: ten thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt. But those who come into the Church honestly willing to admit our failings and willing to make the effort to understand what the Church's position is on any given issue is an honest seeking after the truth. I do not consider this to be dissent from Church teaching.

I consider dissent to be present in the case of someone who says, in effect, "I know what the Church's teaching is on this issue, I do not accept it and I never will accept it. Furthermore, I will do my best to make sure everyone I come into contact with knows how I feel on this issue." This is an attitude of rejection of the truth, a rejection of Christ. Anyone who is an adult and holds this position and is thinking of coming into the Church, in my opinion, should delay his or her reception of the sacraments. These folks are not in communion with the Church and would put their eternal destinies in serious jeopardy by accepting the Eucharist. Again, to use a more mundane example, would you join the Kiwanis Club if you rejected all or part of what the Kiwanis Club stood for? If not, then why would you join the Catholic Church under similar circumstances?

I think this is the point made so forcefully by Bishop Weigand of Sacramento last week in the case of Grey Davis. Here is a governor of a large state who holds himself out to be Catholic and yet rejects Church teachings that are central to its understanding of how we as human beings are to live. This, it seems to me, is an intolerable situation, both for the Church and for the governor. It is open, outright, dissent. And this is exactly the type of thing I am referring to when I speak of dissent.

This type of dissent is also practiced by catechists (commonly, I might add) who know well Church teaching, reject it, and teach their own view to their hapless students.

Steven describes an honest, open search for the truth, and even if he felt at the time that he was in a dissenting situation I do not believe he was. The difference is that he was willing to be lead by God's grace and the work of the Holy Spirit to the Truth. You can't ask more than that of anyone.

A final note. All of the above having been said, those who are in a position of dissent are still children of God. They must be treated in every way as a human person, worthy of respect, created in the image and likeness of God. We should pray for them, argue with them, love them. Where we see what we believe to be error we should point it out to them, forcefully if necessary, but do so as Christ would do so.

2003-01-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

Dissent
Steven over at Flos Carmeli has posted a comment on a post by Tom at Disputations and I feel the need to put in my two cents worth.

Steven is correct when he says that we should always treat those who proclaim themselves to be in dissent with civility, in short we should treat all with charity. These folks are not our enemies and very often they are operating out of sincere, but confused, motives. Yet there is a problem that is common among most of those who proclaim themselves in disagreement with Church teachings. That is a lack of real understanding of not only what those teachings are but why there are what they are. They simply have not been taught what the Church believes.

Since coming into the Church nearly 8 years ago I have noticed the almost incredibly poor quality of catechesis available to most Catholics. As a result, most people in the pews simply do not understand their faith. It's little wonder that they don't believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist; they don't believe the Church's teaching on abortion and contraception, and so on. For most of them it is not their fault, they have been taught that there is little, if anything, of any substance to understand and believe.

But, in the case of some of these folks their ignorance is intentional, they want things to be as they want them and nothing will change that. The young lady at Not for Sheep has more or less stated this outright. This is a serious error. It usually results from a willful decision not to teach the true teaching of the Church but to teach one’s own view of what they want that teaching to be. I know that I sat in classes during and shortly after my journey into the Church in which this was the case. This is, at best, a serious disservice to the Catechumen; it deprives them of the opportunity to truly understand what they are committing themselves to by becoming Catholic.

I think all of us, to the extent that we are able, have a duty to explore the depths of our faith. After all, every Sunday we profess our faith and acceptance of all that the Church teaches. To come to Communion while not accepting Church teaching is a serious problem.

We also have an obligation, in love and with respect, where we think we see others either in dissent from or confused about Church teaching to point out the difficulty and try to suggest the correct teaching. We should always try to do this with honey but there may be times when a 2x4 is required. Their eternal destiny may be at stake.

2003-01-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

Technical Assistance

I was wondering if someone could tell me how to link, within a post, to a post in another blog and or to my own blog?

I'm gradually learning some of this stuff but have not cracked the code on this particular procedure. I would appreciate any help.

Paz y bien

2003-01-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Doubts
When I taught RCIA I faced a common question. The question typically came from folks who were coming into the Church but were either new to Christian belief or had not been seriously committed to the faith in the past. The question they had arose generally after a period of spiritual growth and after they had developed a desire to go more deeply into their new found faith. They were troubled because they had assumed that as they become more "religious" doubts or questions about their faith would disappear. Of course, it didn't. I would point out to them that if their belief in Jesus Christ amounted to an absolute certainty it would not be faith, it would be knowledge.

Cardinal Ratzinger points out in his Introduction to Christianity that these doubts are common among believers in moments of temptation. He also points out that similar doubts are also common among unbelievers. He writes:
". . . the non-believer is troubled by doubts about his unbelief, about the real totality of the world he has made up his mind to explain as a self-contained whole.. He can never be absolutely certain of the autonomy of what he has seen and interpreted as a whole, he remains threatened by the question whether belief is not after all the reality which it claims to be."

I have a license plate from on my truck that reads: "If you're living like there is no God, you'd better be right." Faith is a gamble, there is no such thing as certainty concerning the ultimate questions. Christians know that applies to them and they take up the challenge daily. I think they sometimes forget it doesn't apply only to them.

2003-01-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

A Thank You

I would like to thank any and all of you who kept me in your prayers during my trip to Alaska. I was very conscious of your prayers. A trip that could have been very difficult and stressful was much easier than expected. I am grateful.

2003-01-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

The Case of the Running Partridge

I have learned something in the process of trying to become a writer. I have learned that I can always find a ready source of inspiration for my musings. All I have to do is simply check on the activities of some of our prominent university professors.

Take for example Dr. Kenneth P. Dial. Dr. Dial is head of a biological flight laboratory at the University of Montana. Dr. Dial has spent a great deal of time and money, as reported by Newsweek magazine, studying the activities of young birds, members of the partridge, turkey, and quail family to be exact. The fruit of this effort is that Dr. Dial has learned that within days after hatching, these young birds, will use their tiny wings to assist them to climb steep slopes and trees to escape from predators. In essence, they use their wings to give them traction. Once these young birds have done this, it appears that they are not far from developing the ability to fly. So far, so good. We now know one mechanism used by young birds to escape predators and, at the same time, learn to fly. (By the way, pity the poor birds born in Kansas; Thanksgiving dinner for them.)

However, from this study, Dr. Dial has concluded that this is the same mechanism used by “feathered” dinosaurs to learn to fly (and by implication) in the process develop the evolutionary traits that lead to the modern birds we know and love. Dr. Dial draws his conclusion in very carefully phrased language, but it is there nonetheless.

I guess I’m one of the duller members of society. Can anyone tell me how the study of the process used by turkeys to escape predators and thereby learn to fly tells us anything about where the stupid turkey came from in the first place? How does Dr. Dial have any hope of establishing, in a truly scientific manner, that so called “feathered” dinosaurs did exactly the same thing. Even better, can anyone explain to me how learning to fly influenced the genetic makeup of their turkey off spring? I learned to fly and I hope and pray that none of my progeny will ever develop feathers and live in nests as a result.

My question to Dr. Dial concerning his dinosaur theory would be: “You were there?” Short of that, there is no hope of establishing any of this as fact; it is only another dose of modern scientific-materialist theology.

The sad thing is, that this study and these conclusions have been reported in a major national magazine as another bit of “scientific” proof for the theory of evolution. Even sadder, many people reading it will accept it as fact. The only thing I see here is wishful thinking. As G.K. Chesterton said, “The only thing we know for sure about the missing link, is that it is still missing.”

2003-01-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

A Prayer of St. Francis

"Almighty, eternal, just, and merciful God, give to us wretches to do for you what we know you to will, and to will always that which is pleasing to you; so that inwardly purified, inwardly illumined and kindled by the flame of the Holy Spirit, we may be able to follow in the footsteps of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and by your grace alone come to you the Most High, who in perfect Trinity and simple Unity lives and reigns and glories God Almighty forever and ever. Amen."

This is one of my favorite prayers of St. Francis. This, to me, is St. Francis speaking, it is so simply stated. He knows who God is – Almighty, eternal, just and merciful. He also knows who we are -- “wretches”. I think when St. Francis says that though, he is speaking in true humility. He is acknowledging the simple truth of the matter, before God we are, indeed, wretches. But I think he also knows that we are destined to become God’s children, members of his adopted family. In light of this, his prayer is simply to do God’s will and to do it gladly and lovingly.

I will be praying and meditating on this prayer this week while I’m gone.

2003-01-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

North to Alaska
I'll be heading north to Alaska tomorrow and won't be back til late Friday night. I ask you if you would pray for me on this trip. It will be difficult since I have to cover a lot of territory in a short time. I would greatly appreciate your prayers.

I am trying to get a post done to "time release" while I'm gone since I do not anticipate that I will have access to a computer, much less the internet during the trip. If this doesn't work my next post will likely be on the weekend.

In Christ

2003-01-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Stacey Question – Part II

I think the comment made to Stacey by her friend is telling in that it assumes that fiction will not be as good, as worthwhile to read, as non-fiction. I think we come to accept this idea almost out of hand these days because there is such a dearth of good fiction being written. This is true, I think, of both Catholic and non-Catholic writers. But, why should we make that assumption? Why should fiction be any less important to us, or of any less quality, than any other form of literature? Why should we expect any less of fiction writers than others?

Human beings have always told stories, either to convey their history, to entertain, to inform. Think of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the book of Genesis, the great poetry and literature of the last two or three thousand years. These are not factual, footnoted, research papers, -- they are art. All of this is very much a part of our cultural heritage. Where would we be without them?

Society today exalts our own knowledge, we only value what we can measure or quantify or verify in some way. I think this is a distorted view of the world. As Josef Pieper points out, if the only valid knowledge or learning is that which we acquire by our own effort then there is no such thing as objective truth, truth is limited to that knowledge which we acquire by our own effort. It eliminates the possibility of revelation, and cuts us off from a facet of our human existence.

The result is, I think, that we are not producing great works of art. This is true of literature, art and sculpture, all phases of creative effort. I can’t think of one really good writer of fiction working today. I think this is at least partly attributable to the scientific-materialistic bent of the culture in which we live.

One of the goals I have set for myself this year is to read more fiction and poetry because in recent years I too have fallen into the trap of reading only non-fiction. I will be taking a business trip this week and hope to read two books while traveling; one is Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstacy, (sp??) the other is Joel Rosenburg’s The Last Jihad. I’ll let you know how it goes. I wonder if anyone would like to suggest other books that have been written, say, in the last 40-50 years (fiction or poetry) that they consider worthwhile reading?

2003-01-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

Stacey posted a question in the Catholic Writers Association chat group which reads as follows:

“I recently read a book. The author is a Catholic, who, based on credentials, I would assume to be reasonably orthodox in belief. (Yes, I'm being deliberately vague.) Frankly, I disliked the book very much, but I'm wondering how other writers feel about a few issues that were raised in my mind regarding the book. It is a work of fiction (and one of my friends informed me that "that's what you get when you read fiction" and perhaps she's right), so it's not like I would have the same expectations of it as I would of a non-fiction book, but having read a fair amount of Catholic fiction, I was surprised at this book. Ordinarily, I quite enjoy good Catholic fiction. The Red Hat, for example, I thought was a wonderful book, and I've thoroughly enjoyed all of Michael O'Brien's books, so I was really looking forward to this particular book and was terribly disappointed.

One concern that I had would be over "colorful" language. I'm sure that the author felt that it was "in character," but I found the taking of the Lord's name in vain to be disturbing. I would have been bothered much less by other sorts of vulgarities, which were much less frequent.

The other concern was the conclusion that was arrived at by the protagonist of the story. That character decided, at the end of the story, that Jesus matters because His message causes us to live good lives, but that if the story of the Resurrection is somewhat mythologized, that doesn't matter.

Obviously, such a conclusion is totally at odds with the truths of our faith, but I'm wondering if I am being naive in expecting an author who is represented as a faithful Catholic to have the characters of the book end up defending truth rather than giving a defense of heresy. Should I expect such a thing and be surprised when it doesn't happen, or is my friend correct in her "that's what you get when you read fiction"?”

Frank Sheed wrote that most Catholics go about their daily routine with no noticeable difference between their activities and those of their pagan neighbors. Their Christianity and Catholicism is nothing more than a patch on the same suit worn by all of their contemporaries. I think Stacey’s question highlights the problem in the world of modern literature. It sounds like the book that Stacey read is no different from so much popular fiction that is being written today. And from that perspective I don’t think that such a book can be called “Catholic”.

It seems to me that if a writer is writing from a Catholic-Christian perspective, that perspective will inform his or her writing. It will not, in the name of art, take the name of God in vain, since that is a violation of the 2nd commandment and at least borders on mortal sin. I also don’t think that it is Christian by any stretch of the imagination to portray Jesus as nothing more than a “nice guy” and the truth of his resurrection is anything more than a myth. This is New Age skepticism, not Christian faith and teaching.

As in any other area of life, if we proclaim ourselves to be Christians and Catholics and yet in our actions, or work or our art, do nothing that conforms to our beliefs, we are living a hopeless contradiction that we would tolerate in no other area of our lives. If we proclaimed ourselves to be Rock Ribbed Republicans and yet voted only for Democrat or Libertarian candidates and issues we would quickly see the inconsistency. If we claimed to be opposed to abortion and yet contributed large sums of money to Planned Parenthood I would hope that we would recognize the hypocrisy. How then, can a writer claim to be Catholic and not have his or her writing informed by her faith? Why do we accept the nonsensical in the area of our religious belief when we would accept it in no other area of our lives?

I don’t mean that a writer, or any artist, has to hit the reader over the head with his religion. J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, among others, demonstrated beautifully that writing can be “Catholic” or “Christian” and still be quality literature. To be Catholic, I think, it should first of all be good. I think there is precious little being written today that qualifies. I think Stacey’s friend’s comment highlights this point as another aspect of the problem. I will continue this in another posting.

2003-01-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

Headline in the Sunday Colorado Springs Gazette

Iguanas Threaten US Virgins

Gee, I didn't know there were any left.

2003-01-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Actually, I now have two rants and raves coming this weekend.

Keep in touch.

2003-01-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

I have had a lapse in posts due to a suddenly overwhelming work schedule. Being an accountant and it being January, I guess I should have expected it.

I am reading two or three books at the moment, they are:

John Paul II - Fides et Ratio
Willa Cather - Death Comes for the Archbishop (This for variety in my reading and out of love of the Southwest)
Josef Pieper - Leisure the Basis of Culture (Fides et Ratio led me to this, indirectly anyway)

And in the midst of all of this I feel a rant and rave coming on, this on the basis of an article in Newseek on the web. Hope you'll stay tuned.

Paz y bien

2003-01-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Circulating on the Internet - With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person that lmost went un-noticed last week. Larry La Prise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey" died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in... and then the trouble started.

2003-01-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

Beauty - For the past week or so there has been a lively discussion taking place on the pages of Flos Carmeli and Disputations on the nature of beauty. I have wanted to take part in this but, to be honest, did not believe I could contribute much, if anything to the discussion. I feel the topic is over my head, at least a bit. I'm sure the rest of this post will prove my point.

I do believe that there is such a thing as objective beauty. Things that bring us joy and uplift us can, I think, be called objectively beautiful. Beauty is joyful, true and enduring whether expressed in words, letters, paint or sculpture. The classics in literature are classics because they have endured, they have had something to say to many generations of men. The Old Masters are enduring, not because they are old but because they have something to tell all people something about themselves. Beauty brings joy because it tells us something true about ourselves. I think we sense this instinctively when we struggle to understand a difficult concept, say a math problem. After we have struggled long and hard and we finally "get-it" we get a little rush of excitement and satisfaction. I think that is one example of the type of joy that truth, and beauty, bring us.

So much of what is called "art" today is not meant to be true, or uplifting but merely shocking. It is created for no other reason and, a fearless prediction, it will not endure.

The problem I have is that there are elements of ourselves that treat beauty subjectively. I know that I certainly experience this. I like rock and roll music and especially the Beatles. But I don't believe that rock and roll can be considered objectively beautiful. Yet, I get some of the same rush listening to it as I get looking at a Rembrandt painting. I don't understand it.

In any case, this is only meant to be my own musings on the nature of beauty.

2003-01-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Faith and Reason -- I had lunch with Craig, my neighbor, today. Craig is an evangelical guy who is seriously devoted to Christ but he made a comment that is somewhat uncharacteristic for an evangelical guy to make. He said, “The Bible is not the source of truth.” (I’m quoting him from memory, which, in my case, is not as good as it used to be, so if I’m mistaken, and if he happens to read this, I hope he will correct me.) I guess I’m getting so accustomed to being a Catholic, having converted seven or eight years ago, that the comment didn’t register with me as anything unusual. Of course, he is right, but his comment got me thinking about the topic of some of the original posts on this blogsite – the relationship of truth and faith and the role our intellect plays in connection with our faith. This has brought me face to face with a task I had been deferring for a while but feel I can no longer put off, that is a study of our Holy Father’s encyclical – Fides et Ratio. And, of course, if I study it I’ll have to write about it. So perhaps this will be the first installment of a series on Faith and Reason.

Craig was right when he said the Bible is not the source of truth, God is the source of truth; God, in fact, is truth. The Bible is inspired by God, inerrant and the source of God’s revelation of himself to us, but on it’s own, it is not the source of truth. As John Paul II put it in his introduction to the encyclical Fides et Ratio “God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth” and gave us faith and our ability to reason to discern truth so that we could come know God and thereby come to know ourselves. The full introduction is probably worth repeating here to see the Holy Father’s line of reasoning
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).”
According to the Holy Father, we must come to know ourselves so that we can understand the reality of our human situation, so that we can know the world we live in and, again, ultimately come to an intimate knowledge of God himself. We are here to come to a fuller knowledge of the true meaning of our lives and to make that knowledge a part of, and a guide for, everything that we do. Without truth we are simply unable to function properly as human beings.
Now this may seem somewhat ethereal or pie in the sky, and to have nothing to do with live in modern society. But, if what John Paul II is saying is itself true, then this is the most practical activity we could engage in – it would improve our ability to do almost anything else because we would have a fuller understanding of reality. In other words, we would have a better roadmap to follow on the journey of our lives.
Stay tuned for further meditations on Fides et Ratio.

2003-01-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

Sign on a gas pump at a local station:

Please prepay in advance.

I wonder if you have to pay twice?

Headline in the National Catholic Register:

Miracle Clears Way to Mother Theresa’s Beatification

Gee, and all this time I thought she was pretty much a shoo-in.

2003-01-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

Alien Abduction?
Dr. John Mack is a psychiatrist and member of the faculty of the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mack’s claim to fame is that he has a fairly substantial number of patients whom, he is convinced, have been abducted by aliens. How does he know this? Well, they woke up one morning and their pajamas were on backwards. Now, in my younger, wilder days, I can think of a number of occasions when, upon arriving home late in the evening I probably managed to get my pajamas on backwards, not really caring if they were on front wards, back wards or on at all. I can also state that it is likely that when I woke up the next morning I wasn’t all that sure that it was odd if they happened to be on backwards. Many of you have perhaps shared that experience and might be wondering, then, how one might come to the conclusion that they were the victims of alien abduction if they woke up with their pajamas on back wards.

It seems that, in the course of the alien abduction these folks underwent a fairly thorough medical exam conducted by the aliens. The aliens, upon completing their exam and not being familiar with pajamas screwed up and, in every case, managed to get the PJs on backwards. And this is how we know they were abducted by aliens.

Now, there are a couple of points that might be made about this theory. The first is that, is it not likely that we might question the credibility, at least a little bit, of someone seeking psychiatric care? Another point is that, in every case, the abduction victims describe their captors as possessing vastly superior intelligence to that of the human race. It seems to me that if that were the case, and given that the doctor claims there have been a fairly large number of abductions that have occurred in recent years, that these aliens would eventually be able to figure out how to put on a pair of pajamas and thus conceal the fact of the abduction. In fact, it seems that, the odds being 50-50 of getting the pajamas on right in the first place, just by sheer luck they might get it right and least some of the time. But no, these aliens, who possess the intelligence and equipment and skill to conduct extensive medical exams on human victims, not to mention travel vast distances through outer space to get here, are complete failures at getting their victims pajamas back on them in the proper order. It might be mentioned that, after an academic review by his colleagues at Harvard it was suggested that Dr. Mack get away from the office a bit more often and meet some folks off campus, vary his routine a bit, you know -- get a life.

Be that as it may, there is another interesting point about Dr. Mack and the way he views these abductions. In an interview for the PBS Television show Nova conducted a few years ago, he made the following statement:

“Now, the effect of that is -- or what seems to be going on there, in a number of abductees -- not just people I see, but the ones Budd Hopkins and other people see -- is to produce some kind of new species to bring us together to produce a hybrid species which -- the abductees are sometimes told -- will populate the earth or will be there to carry evolution forward, after the human race has completed what it is now doing, namely the destruction of the earth as a living system. So it's a kind of later form. It's an awkward coming together of a less embodied species than we are, and us, for this evolutionary purpose.

However, that might not be literally true. It might be that that this is a communication to us. That perhaps we need to change our ways. It may not be that these are literally our babies. It may be a kind of expression of images of babies; or it may be that these hybrids we're told is what will have to be. It's a kind of insurance policy if the earth continues to be subjected to the exploitation of its living environment to the point where it can't sustain human and other life as it's now occurring. But it may not be literally what is going to happen. So that's one area.

Another area is the whole visual environmental and informational aspect of this in which people are shown on television screens a huge variety of scenes of environmental destruction of the earth polluted; of a kind of post-apocalyptic scene in which even the spirits have been routed from their environment because they live in the same physical and spiritual environment that we do; and canyons are shown with trees destroyed; pieces of the earth are seen as breaking away -- portions of the East Coast or West Coast.”

This statement strikes me as a bit odd in a number of ways. The most obvious is that it sounds to me like these aliens who are doing the abducting have been reading the New York Times or Washington Post, or some other material written by some of the more liberal elements of the American Democratic Party. But there is another element. It sounds vaguely religious.

Note that what we have here is an, albeit half-baked, leftist version of the creation story – we are clones of aliens who are trying to create a superior human/alien species to populate the earth after the coming environmental apocalypse. (At least he thinks the West Coast might break away, if it hasn’t already.) Also, note the phrase “perhaps we need to change our ways”, sounds like a call to repentance. Now, perhaps I’m the one who needs to see a psychiatrist, but I think all of this goes to prove one or both of two points. The first, made by St. Augustine – our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The second by G. K. Chesterton – Those who do not believe in the Christian God will not believe in nothing, they will believe in anything.

Conversion

2003-01-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days both Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli and Christopher Cuddy at The Directed Path have been writing about conversion and they made a couple of interesting points that may not be so obvious to a “cradle” Catholic.

The first point that both make, although in very different ways, is that for someone who has undergone the process of coming home to the Church, it is very apparent that the process is and must be very much at the direction of the Holy Spirit. In my own case, coming from a Scots/Calvinist/Presbyterian background, coming into the church is not anything I would have done on my own.

For many years I would have very little to do with “organized” religion (in my experience another one of the great oxymorons of all time, along with Microsoft Works) and it was only by a very strange set of circumstances that I was led to come back to my Presbyterian roots. And then an off hand remark by the pastor of the church I was attending led me, ultimately, to the Catholic Church. The remark was – “If you don’t know what you believe, how do you know you believe it?” I had to know what I believed. After 5 years or more of investigation I realized to my horror that what I believed was likely more consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church than with Presbyterianism.

When I began seriously looking into the Church I still didn’t know for sure that the Church was Christian, if the Pope was the anti-Christ, or what I was getting myself into. But I had to investigate in the name of seeking the Truth. Steven Riddle had a similar experience, his problem was with Mary, and he describes his approach to solving the problem in this way:

"An example from my life: I was raised a Baptist and entered the Catholic Church not fully in tune with all aspects of Catholic Doctrine. Most particularly, I was virulently anti-Marian. Through time, I came to be cooly neutral but said to myself, "This is not enough." So I took up the practice of praying to God to reveal to me what He would have me know of His Mother and I bowed before her statue with an "I salute you, even if I am unsure of you." Through time the "I salute you" became, "I love you." And, of course, the other half of the phrase vanished entirely. I did nothing myself to encourage that love, but now I have an image of Mary in nearly every room of my house and feel that those places lacking Marian presence are somehow empty. I went through the outward motions--obedience, after a fashion--and God did as He would with the interior. We must act on belief and pray for the interior change that makes that out action more real. We are finite--as much as we like to think we know it all, we do not--and there is no shame in not knowing. The shame comes from insisting upon our ignorance and acting upon it in such a way as to cause scandal and division."

In my case I didn’t now if anything the Church taught was true and it was only when I realized that the Church taught that the Bible was the foundation of all that it knew about God could I relax and really begin the journey home. I prayed for understanding since, if the Church taught what was in the Bible, then either I didn’t understand the Bible properly or I didn’t understand the Church’s teaching properly. In either case, the problem was mine, not the Church’s. I had to pray and hope that the Holy Spirit would enlighten my mind and heart if it was God’s will that I come into the Church.

Christopher Cuddy says much the same thing when he writes:
“Conversion is not a matter of “joining a team,” or of adding more names to a roster. It is not a popularity contest. Conversion is about following the Truth of God no matter where it leads or how much it costs. Conversion, as with all things, is ultimately about Christ—for it is only within the fraternal arms of our Lord and Savior that we can ever hope of finding true peace and joy.
Salvation is not a matter of faith in a doctrine—whether it be sola scriptura or the perpetual virginity of Mary. Salvation is about Christ. As St. Paul states in his letter to the Galatians, salvation is a matter of ‘faith working through love.’”

To come to this realization requires the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a work that anyone seriously contemplating the “Journey Home” into the Church finds him or herself allowing to go on in their lives.