Infallible Weathervane

I sent this image to Ernesto a while back, hoping to get a rise out of him. This papal hat sits on a weathervane on a chapel at Yale where my daughter took a summer program. I thought it might prompt a thread of conversation.

After all, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Evangelicals Winning!

It's enough to make me want to change sides, since my disposition is to root for the underdog, but in the recent Pew Foundation studies on the changes in religious ties, it looks like the Evangelicals are trouncing the Catholics in the competition for butts in pews. Clip follows:

Article published Feb 26, 2008
Catholic tradition fading in U.S.
Flocking to Pentecostal and evangelical churches..

By Julia Duin

WASHINGTON TIMES -- Evangelical Christianity has become the largest religious tradition in this country, supplanting Roman Catholicism, which is slowly bleeding members, according to a survey released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Evangelical Protestants outnumber Catholics by 26.3 percent (59 million) to 24 percent (54 million) of the population, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, a massive 45-question poll conducted last summer of more than 35,000 American adults.

"There is no question that the demographic balance has shifted in past few decades toward evangelical churches," said Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. "They are now the mainline of American Protestantism."

The traditional mainline Protestant churches, which in 1957 constituted about 66 percent of the populace, now count just 18 percent as adherents.
Although one in three Americans are raised Roman Catholic, only one in four adults describe themselves as such, despite the huge numbers of immigrants swelling American churches, researchers said.

"Immigration is what is keeping them afloat," said John Green, a Pew senior fellow. "If everyone who was raised Catholic stayed Catholic, it'd be a third of the country."

Evangelical Catholics?

Interesting post/debate on the Ignatius Insight blog trying to figure out whether evangelical is a term that can be properly applied to Catholics? The writer argues: " If one thinks of Evangelicalism as a renewal movement that stresses personal conversion and spiritual development, evangelism, a high view of Scripture, and fidelity to Christian orthodoxy, then one can certainly be a Evangelical Catholic, as I believe I am. If the term “Evangelical” is broad enough to include high-church Anglicans, low-church anti-creedal Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, the Evangelical Free Church, Arminians, Calvinists, Disciples of Christ, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists, open theists, atemporal theists, social Trinitarians, substantial Trinitarians, nominalists, realists, eternal security supporters and opponents, temporal theists, dispensationalists, theonomists, church-state separationists, cessationists, non-cessationists, kenotic theorists, covenant theologians, paedo-Baptists, and Dooweyerdians, there should be room for an Evangelical Catholic."

Seems plausible, but on the other hand, it seems like another area where a word could quickly lose any useful meaning... "gentleman" springs to mind. So I suppose I'm saying I have no useful opinion on this. My first question would be in regard to the writer's initial premise: "If one thinks of Evangelicalism as..." Well, do they? Or as, only? That would be a big factor in whether the rest of the premise is worth exploring. I defer to the evangelical here ... Rick, your thoughts?

A Toast To Long Life

Old World Swine links to a Reuters story on a Danish study showing the healthy effects of moderate drinking and exercise (not necessarily at the same time). He goes on to note (and I concur, with the obvious reservations around medical conditions and addiction): "Psalm 104 gives thanks to God for creating "wine that gladdens the heart of man". Jesus' first miracle was the creation of wine at the Wedding at Cana. Teetotalism as a Christian moral imperative (as opposed to an ascetic discipline) is a modern aberration, and if I may say so, a blight on American society." Lots of other good Catholic reasons for tipping one on a regular basis in the comment box, too.

A Few Thoughts on Religion and Politics From The Blair Conversion Story

There's an interesting piece in this week's America Magazine (a national Catholic weekly) on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism. A couple of things jumped out at me , particularly relevant during this U.S. presidential primary season.

Blair felt he couldn't speak publicly about his faith while in office without being perceived as either a nut or a hypocrite. America Magazine writes: "It is a grand irony that in the United States, where church and state are separated by high constitutional walls, it is helpful for politicians to speak often of God, whereas in Britain, where the Anglican Church is 'by law established' and the state officially Christian, it's advisable for politicians to steer well away from the subject."

And if Blair had spoken about his faith -- or converted to Catholicism! -- while in office, how would he have dealt, America Magazine wonders, with the questions: "how can a Catholic oversee 200,000 abortions a year, appoint Anglican bishops, encourage British experiments on embryos and approve gay marriage?" The minefield here, it seems to me, is one also walked by by American politicians. "...for a practicing Catholic, it is a no win situation. Vote with the Vatican and you are a Roman stooge; vote against and you are a hypocrite." I don't think those are the only two choices, though. Ideally, a politician in a pluralist country doesn't vote with his church or on the command of his pastor. He votes with his conscience and his reason -- and while his faith plays a major role in the formation of the conscience, the distinction remains crucial. A politician should be free to tell you how his conscience is formed, though he shouldn't have to. What matters are the positions his conscience compels him to take. And once he's made those clear, it's up to me as a voter to filter those through my own conscience (formed of course by my faith, which I may share with him or I may not) and decide how I will vote.

Blair Converson Sparks Hostility

Interesting... this bit from the Tribune speaks for itself: "Robin Shepherd, a senior fellow at Chatham House, a London think tank, said British anti-Catholicism is fading with each passing generation and the negative reaction to Blair's conversion is more indicative of British attitudes toward religion in general."

Catholic Primary Issues: Huckabee and the Catholic League, Catholics for McCain

A couple of Web-bits from the 2008 primary (January 8, here in New Hampshire):

- The Fighting Irish Thomas blog takes a swing at Catholic League President Bill Donohue for criticizing Mike Huckabee for Huckabee's Christmas television spot. Thomas writes, addressing Donohue, "it disturbs me that someone so dedicated to debunking that pseudo philosophy of separation of church and state (which, of course, is never stated as such in the Constitution) now rejects someone in the public arena that in this case (not to be confused with 'bookcase') is really one of our own." I can see both points here: to Donohue's point, it does seem a bit like Huckabee is claiming Jesus' endorsement here; on the other hand, how could anybody in position of selling himself to voters not seem to be doing that to some degree no matter how cautiously he mentioned his religious faith? It's one of the necessary complications that accompanies religion in the public square -- though certainly not an argument against it.

- Republican candidate John McCain has announced a "National Catholics for McCain Leadership Team" chaired by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and former Governor Frank Keating (R-OK). According to McCain, "I am very pleased to have the support of this distinguished coalition of Catholic leaders. I am proud to stand side-by-side with Catholics on many of the most critical issues of our day: defending the sanctity of human life, upholding traditional marriage, expanding educational choice, and defending America from the threats that we face around the globe. I have fought my entire life to protect religious freedom and human rights around the world. I look forward to working with these Catholic leaders in the weeks and months ahead as we take our shared values to the White House." You can read the whole press release here.

A Mere Christian View of Romney

This seems like as good a time as any to see just how far we are willing to go with the detente of ecuminism.

Here's a simple question: Is the fact that Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a reason not to vote for him as president?

My take is not politically correct. I've often heard it cited, and even repeated it myself that Martin Luther once said he'd rather be ruled by a wise Turk than by a foolish Christian. I've since learned that the quotation is probably apocryphal. Either way, fundamentally I disagree. In my mind, the wisdom or foolishness of the ruler isn't the question. At a certain point in the hierarchy of humanity, we recognize that the chain of authority disappears into the heavenly clouds. What gives a priest a right to interpret scripture? Why is a husband apparently given some kind of rank over a wife? Why is a judge seated above those in the court? Why does the policeman or soldier have the right to kill someone? All these powers, theoretically, are granted by an invisible ruler who commands the order of the world, but sees fit to also work within it. Great damage is done by those who hold these seats of power without proper relationship to the source of all authority. The president is the head of our nation, and in matters of state, he or she must bridge between the people and the heavenly ruler who presides over the natural order.

Every Christian is a mess of contradictions and failings. It's almost axiomatic. But they cleave unto a forgiving God and a savior who has made allowance for them and therefore they have an accurate view of the world (completely fallen) and of God (completely perfect). Wise Christians don't claim to understand the whole scenario, but they recognize the fundamental importance of perspective applied to life. All science, hubristic as its advocates may be, is a holy reminder that the universe is most likely, as Sir Arthur Eddington once said, not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine. Our attempts to make sense of it all is a fine exercise, as long as we don't ever fool ourselves into believing we've actually come close to accomplishing such a feat.

Mormonism and, in fact, most cults, are guilty of just that. They play on the inherent (and God-given) desire to understand the world by fabricating answers that seem to make sense. Christian dogma does have a poetry and beauty to it, Christian scripture is rooted in the complementary realms of fact and literature, but its rules are pretty unabashedly based in faith. There's no need to explain how the aboriginals of the American continent received Christ, because God did not set out to create such a sense of fairness in his dispensations. He has other ways, invisible to us, of exercising his justice upon the world. But Joseph Smith wanted a clearer role for his homeland, and either by deception, self deception, or satanic deception, relayed a message that was filled with falsehoods. The fact that millions of people believe it does not make it true. Obviously, at any moment, millions of people are wrong about any number of things. But when the truth in question is not a piece of trivia or current events, but the living underscore of the soul, it's pretty important.

Electing a Mormon as president is rather like buying a piece of critical software that has a bug in its kernel. It may have a slick interface and powerful tools for computing, but on the most fundamental level it is unreliable. It may operate as though it's in touch with all the software updates, but it's actually operating on it's own and when a virus enters the network or a critical fix is written by the programmer, it may not be able to process the information. Even a foolish Christian in authority has a heart attuned to God and prepared to turn on his command (Proverbs 21:1). Certainly God's will shall ultimately be done regardless of who is in office. I think the problem with electing a Turk or a Mormon is that without the proper relationship between king and Lord of All, one based in both faith and truth, God will have to take another route to achieve his will. When he cannot turn the heart of a ruler, he must turn the world.

People of Various Faiths Coming To The Defense of Christmas

Tim Jones, of Old World Swine, informs us that in Britain an group of people from a variety of non-Christian faith traditions is standing up for Britain's right to celebrate Christmas. He writes, "See, the careful planning of the social engineers will always be undermined by such common sense from common people."

The Golden Compass

We had a post about Pullman here before we quit this blog a while back, and now that the movie's come out, there's a good deal of digital ink getting spilled on it (the movie, not the post) -- especially as to whether Christians, and perhaps in particular Catholics should be wary of it or hostile toward it or embrace it as a great book for kids (Pullman is an atheist, and the general buzz is that his books are for atheism what C.S. Lewis' Narnia books are for Christianity -- highly readable but instructive allegory designed to promote a specific worldview -- in Pullman's case, that religion is bad and organized religion is worse and the Catholic Church is the worst of all). I haven't read the books -- only interviews with the author -- but Rick mentioned catching the movie and discussing here which one of us (if either of us) takes it as an attack on his faith or wants to defend it.

(Of course, whether or not adults with some formation in their faith should see the movie isn't really the issue -- the issue is whether it's propaganda against a belief system parents may be trying to instill in their children. And then whether parents should have input into and make judicious, values-based decisions about what sorts of media their children are exposed to. The answer to the latter of course, whether you are liberal, conservative, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, atheist or anything else is, yes. Duh.)

I'm thinking of picking up the book as well -- as a fan of science fiction and fantasy literature and books over movies, it seems I ought to before forming a final opinion on this...

And just in case our plan to catch this movie and review it here goes the way of many of our othere schemes that are designed to be accomplished in our "free time" ... First Things has an interesting review here. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops had a review posted as well that seemed to endorse the film ... but now it seems they've annulled it.

It's Advent and ... Weeeeee're Baaaaack

At least for a while. Rick and I talked it over and we've decided we're not quite done with this.
To get us started -- and Advent post with some comments from Rick that I wrote for my personal blog the Sunday before last:

Advent begins today – and this weekend signaled the end of Ordinary Time in the liturgical seasons. At Mass this morning, the vestments had changed, the first candle of the Advent wreath was lighted, and at home the decorations are being set up. Today I crank up the Christmas music – with some of the same intent as someone might crank up a hard rock soundtrack before entering the boxing ring. Seasons in the church –metaphysical seasons as regular and full of impact in our lives as the physical seasons. Just as autumn prompts a series of necessary changes and duties – from unpacking winter clothes to hauling in wood to putting up the storm windows – so a changing liturgical season prompts changes, visible and invisible. For me all of these changes serve one overriding function – they are a prompt, a reminder, an admonishment to realign priorities, to get focused. To reengage in the struggle on the highest level possible. The notion of getting focused feels particularly apt – it means seeing clearly. Taking off your glasses and giving them a good polishing. Jesus said in the Beatitudes, blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God. So that polishing that allows one to see clearly is a lava-rock-scrubbing-up of the soul; it stings some. All these wonderful Advent trappings ease the struggle that accompanies the end of Ordinary Time – the struggle that accompanies the effort to prioritize, to see clearly, to rise from a languorous stretch of sleepwalking and face the terrifying and wonderful notion that God is real, and because He is, that the world is real and that everything matters, and action, both internal and external, physical and metaphysical is required of us. Wish me luck. I’ll do the same for you, and wish you also a merry, merry Advent and Christmas season.

Comments

Good thoughts for the season. I haven't even begun to think about decorating for the holidays and, being steeped in the evangelical, born again, Jesus freak traditions of the Protestant fringe, my Christmas experience is far less disciplined. Each season is sort of like a mystery play in which my salvation experience is reenacted. I wander about, dead or else slightly antagonistic to the sentiments of the holiday, then, suddenly redemption falls upon me. I may just be driving to Shaws for a bag of stuffing, but like Paul on the road to Damascus, I hear a voice and see the light. I sometimes don't get the Christmas "spirit" until the night of the 24th, but it always comes. I don't participate in the lava soap soul scrubbing you describe. For me it's more like catharsis than cleansing, but I thank God for it. Also, one point of order: Maybe you took your verse from a different translation, but is it the "clean" of heart who will see God or the "pure" of heart? These seem like fundamentally different states to me. Clean regards externals, purity regards essence.

Posted by Rick Broussard 02 Dec 2007, 22:57

Interesting -- sounds to me like underneath the differences in experience lie similar results: a lot of "something" and then finally the redemptive payoff of the season. And worthwhile point for discussion on the translation -- I was going from memory (I just checked and it was correct) -- the last version I was reading was the "New American" translation, which isn't necessarily my favorite translation, but is a commonly accepted one. I'm not enough of an expert to argue for or against its validity based on earlier Latin, Greek or Aramaic words ... but (or maybe because of this) I'll take it either way. "Clean" has a variety of meanings internal and external. "Clean" or "pure", taken in the context of the passage they can be read equally validly. I'd say either is "sufficient."

Posted by Ernesto 03 Dec 2007, 08:00

This Is The End... Of Sorts...

Careful observers, and even the blind drunk among our readers, may have noticed a dearth of postings here lately. Chalk it up to fine experiment that has finally run its course. I think there were a couple of crucial nails in the coffin – 1. Rick and I just don’t seem convinced each other are going to hell, despite our religious differences. That doesn't make either of a relativist (whatever that flabby term means, Jacque Barzun might rightly point out), but are both pretty darn good pluralists, and both lean a bit more toward confidence and interest in God's love than His wrath (hope I'm not being presumptuous – this is what I get from my discussions with Rick, anyhow). Besides, it's no fun arguing the same doctrinal or dogmatic points again and again when you know the person on the other side, who wonderfully bright and understanding, comprehends them all and simply does not accept them. At this point, God's got his role to fill and grace will have its way. 2. I, for one, am un-frickin-believably busy. Husband, father, newspaper and magazine new media guy, writer, guitar player, avid reader, blah blah blah, I really shouldn’t have time for one blog. Much less two. I'll go back to posting my occasional observations dealing with religion or religious Web sites on ErnestoBurden.com. No need to further dilute an already vaporous stream. That all said, don’t be a stranger. We'll still be around. Just not here, and not with this laser-like (heh heh) focus on matters of Christian theology.

We Are What We Read

There are so many interesting psychological tidbits in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink that you'd have to rewrite the book to get them all into a summary. The gist is: how do human beings make snap decisions, and why are snap decisions so often correct. It's all fascinating, but one aspect of his multifaceted examination of the topic really caught my imagination. The concept of priming. (This is a cross post from my other blog, but there's a religious element at the end that I thought was worth sharing here as well...)

Gladwell recounts how in a study, researchers tested subjects' reactions to a simple word test. Peppered through the test were words on a particular topic: Florida, wrinkle, gray, etc. that taken together would lead the subject to think of aging. But the words weren't placed so obviously that the subject would consciously put them together. So while the conscious mind focused on the quiz, the unconscious mind found the pattern in the words and conditioned the body to respond to that pattern: in this case by making the test subjects walk more slowly, as though they had themselves aged, after leaving the test room. The priming experiments worked in a variety of situations, conditioning students to do better on tests after being primed to think of professors, or to behave more politely or patiently in an annoying situation than a group who hadn't received the same priming.

This isn't brainwashing, but it is conditioning, and I think, especially because it a conditioning that works on the subconscious, the implications are amazing. We are deeply affected by the sea of words and images and ideas we swim through each day, and perhaps more deeply even by those on the periphery of our attention. You are what you read.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with Rick once about certain, very simple religious stories can have very complicated theological repercussions by "wiring" the brain for certain kinds of belief, or the ability to experience faith in general. (Santa Claus may be a story like this.) I know the concepts are different, but they feel related somehow…

It seems as though there are possibly religious implications in this, whether in terms of our religious practices priming us to experience the numinous, scripture reading priming us for contemplation of God, or children's stories priming us for faith. And of course, one could take a negative position, that the experience of religion is somehow the result of priming experiences rather than an genuine object of that faith... to which at least one response might be that those cues needed to come from somewhere; in the original example above the experimenters were only able to prime the subjects to walk slowly by using words that connote age because there is such a thing as "old" to begin with.

Pullman Verus Lewis: Lewis Wins

Via Mixolydian Mode ... Michael Nelson writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In articles, interviews, and speeches, [Phillip] Pullman has described The Chronicles not just as "propaganda in the cause of the religion [Lewis] believed in," but also as guilty of advancing views such as, "Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-colored people are better than dark-colored people; and so on." And those are just Pullman's G-rated charges. He also has blasted The Chronicles in public forums as "one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read," "propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology," "blatantly racist," "monumentally disparaging of girls and women," and marked by a "sadomasochistic relish for violence."

The article goes on to dismiss most of Pullman's charges against Lewis' work, pointing out that, "For Pullman, it seems, Lewis's offense was merely to love what Pullman hates. Certainly there is nothing remotely as tendentious in The Chronicles as Pullman's attacks in His Dark Materials against Christianity. 'For all its history,' a benevolent witch tells Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, the young protagonists of the series, the Church 'has tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. ... That's what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.'"

Laughing Jesus?

Thinking about the Wedding at Cana - and not just because of my fondness for wine ... It also comes up regularly as a Luminous Mystery of the Rosary. I've turned over in my mind many times the chilly answer Jesus gives his mother when she tells him the wedding's run out of wine, and I've never really felt satisfied by what I ended up with. Until now, maybe.

Jesus says, "Woman, how does your concern affect me? My time has not yet come."

And then Mary says to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."

She doesn't have any doubt that he's going to do something, nor did she doubt that he would be able to solve the problem (which makes one wonder, tangentially, how she knows that this is the moment he's chosen to perform his first miracle and begin his public ministry?).

So yesterday it pops into my head, what if he's kidding when he answers her? Sometimes I'll put on a show of being falsely ornery when people ask me to do something, but usually only if we're close, as close as husband and wife, brother and sister, mother and son. Kris, for example, might say, "honey, while you're up, could you pour me a glass of that wine you're drinking." And I might say, in a really over-the-top-sort-of-huffy-pompous voice, "What, am I your servant, suddenly? I would not get you a drink if the bottle were in my hand and ..." Blah, blah, blah, and meanwhile of course, I'm pouring Kris a glass of wine and bringing it to her with all haste. And it's funny, because we both know I'm kidding and would really mean the opposite.

There are other times when I see this core script played out when someone timidly poses the question, "could I ask a favor?" and the respondent replies with a comic psuedo rebuff to illustrate how silly it is that the person should even have to ask... Question: "Can I ask a favor?" Answer: "Absolutely not." Understood meaning: "Of course, silly, I would do anything for you. All you have to do is ask me."

So what do you think? Possible Jesus is jesting here? His actions indicate that he means the opposite of what he says, that Mary's concern over the wine does mean something to him, and also that his time has come. If so, it would remind me of the way Gibson portrayed him joking with Mary during the flashback scenes in The Passion. Can anyone think of other times when Jesus expresses his sense of humor?

Adios Limbo

Vatican theologians are about to recommend getting rid of the hypothesis of limbo. The theory (not ever a dogma) was that perhaps anabaptized babies spend eternity in a state of natural happiness but not in the presence of God (heaven). I never subscribed, and say good riddance. As does our pope. According to Catholic News Service, "In the 1985 book-length interview, 'The Ratzinger Report,' the future Pope Benedict said, 'Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally -- and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation -- I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis.'"

Keeping the ... errr .. Christmas in Christmas

Via The Revealer, Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe writes:
"Sometimes the secularizing impulse goes to laughable extremes, as when the elementary school play is titled 'How the Grinch Stole the Holidays' or when red poinsettias (but not white ones) are banned from city hall. Sometimes it springs from clanging ignorance, as with the New York City policy that prohibited the display of Christian nativity scenes on public school grounds, while expressly allowing such 'secular holiday symbol decorations' as Jewish menorahs and the Muslim star and crescent. And some of it is fueled by anti-Christian bigotry or sheer misanthropic bile."

Jacoby is a practicing Jew, but doesn't feel offended by Christian symbols at Christmas. He writes, "It makes me feel grateful -- to live in a land where freedom of religion shelters the Hanukkah menorah in my window no less than the Christmas tree in my neighbor's."

His sentiment seems to sum up pluralism at its best, instead of the opposite reaction, which is relativism at its worst.

The Narnia Connection

A recent “New Yorker” review of the big-budget, special-effects-laden retooling of C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" goes far beyond commenting on the film and is, in effect, a review of Lewis himself, and of his unorthodox approach to orthodoxy. Some illuminating passages about his relation to J.R.R. Tolkien (and to Tolkien's frustrations with Lewis truculent refusal to accept Catholicism) make it interesting reading for anyone who enjoys the discourse here on Detente.

Since this blog grew out of a series of peripatetic discussions, here's a relevant excerpt:

The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: "It was through the intervention of the secretive and personally troubled Tolkien, however, that Lewis finally made the turn toward orthodox Christianity. In company with another friend, they took a long, and now famous, walk, on an autumn night in 1931, pacing and arguing from early evening to early morning. "

Blogging Through Transitions

Sitting here, blogging, in the customer lounge at the Pontiac dealership in Berlin, VT. There was a recall of the ignition-something-or-other in my car and here, as our last days in Vermont wind to a close, I'm running final errands and mulling the idea of certain samenesses that we carry now from place to place. We move with the little (but vital!) community that is our family to new places, new broader communities, but we also inhabit some communities online as well, and these follow us -- along with our e-mail addresses, our Web pages, our bloglines accounts, our Flickr galleries, our cell phone numbers, etc., etc. One of the things I've always found lovely about the Catholic Church is that no matter where you go in the world, you can attend a Mass, and even if the language is different, you know all the core elements being tapped, touched, experienced, are the same: transubstantiation transcends language, place and time and you are present at the same event all people in all places and of all times have been present at. Now I'm not at making any specific comparison to the way the Web creates so many contiguities across distance and time for us and the way God does ... but there's some vague sort of relationship tickling the back of my mind. I welcome others' thoughts on whether there's a real analogy hiding somewhere in this muddle...

Hunter S. Thompson, Catholic Perspective

Speaking of Godspy.com, the pub ran (last May, I guess, though I didn't see it until tonight) an interesting piece on Hunter S. Thompson that looks at his work and suicide through a Catholic filter... "In Thompson's case, his self-abuse obscured that side of him that was most praiseworthy and unique, his apocalyptic vision—that the swine would ultimately be separated from the upstanding. But like some hubristic protagonist of a Flannery O'Conner short story, Thompson believed the only chance the meek had of inheriting the earth was if they organized a mob, crashed the gates of the Pentagon, captured the top brass and put them on trial for their crimes."

What To Make Of This?

Came across this ad on Godspy.com and I have to say, I can't decide exactly what to make of this: The Bad Catholic's Guide To Good Living.

From the site: "In 1950 Pope Pius XII announced the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven—some seven years before Stalin’s Sputnik program put a Soviet into space. Do you think this was an accident? Oh, you are SO naïve…."

According to the Editorial Reviews on Amazon, the book is, "A zany but ultimately reverent look at the saints, doctrines, customs and folklore of the Catholic Church, with recipes for food and fun from all over the world, and crackpot, delightful party ideas. Written by a Catholic journalist and a four-star chef, it’s an entertaining guide and guerilla catechism, wrapped up in one hilarious package."

Testimonial quotes include the publisher of Godspy.com and, interestingly for Food Network fan like me, Mario Batali.

What do you think ... order a copy or ... ummm ... wait for the movie?

New Republic Writer: Supreme Court Pick Shows Evangelicals Relying on Heft of Catholic Intellectuals

In a provocative article at The New Republic Online, Franklin Foer looks at the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, the potential Catholic majority his confirmation would create, and speculates: "...the emergence of the Court's Catholic bloc reflects the reality of social conservatism: Evangelicals supply the political energy, Catholics the intellectual heft. " I don't have enough data to agree or disagree with Foer's idea on a lack of intellectuals among evangelicals, but I toss it our here because it seems to tie in with something Rick (the evangelical half of the Detente blog) wrote during a discussion a few posts back. I post it here, and apologize for not recreating the entire context of his statement. (You can read that here.)

Rick wrote: "There are a number of reasons why there might be more intellectual or scholarly converts from Evangelical camp to the R.C. People tend to grow more conservative and authority-focused as they age. The average intellectual would tend to quickly soak up all the literary oxygen in the typical E. church, simply because it's not an intellectual body. It's more based in community, emotions and instincts. Birds of a feather flock together. Bookish Christians will be attracted to the church with the biggest and oldest books. "

Now back to what Foer argues, which he refines later in the story: He says that evangelicals looking to build political coalitions to advance socially conservative agendas "didn't just need Catholic bodies; they needed Catholic minds to supply them with rhetoric that relied more heavily on morality than biblical quotation."

Finally, Foer concludes by pointing out that there are some problems that arise for Catholics out of this recruitment by socially conservative evangelical politicians ... "At the same time Catholic conservatives joined the evangelicals in battle, they have simultaneously waged a war against their co-religionists in an attempt to alter the Church's traditional preference for a strong state--a preference that led Catholics en masse to FDR's party and yielded a generation of Democratic politicians (see the Kennedys and Tip O'Neill). Led by Neuhaus and the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Novak, these conservatives want to realign papal teaching with support for an unrestrained market. As Neuhaus, the editor of First Things, has put it, 'Capitalism is the economic corollary of the Christian understanding of man's nature and destiny.' Of course, this requires some impressive intellectual gymnastics, since the last Pope and many of his predecessors were potent critics of capitalism. "

Thoughts on intellectual experience in either or both faith traditions?

All Saints and All Souls

The feasts of All Saints and All Souls usually pass by for me with the obligatory Mass attendance, prayer and thoughts about my grandparents, but I don't tend to really dwell on them or feel the shift of internal tectonic plates as they pass. This year, however, I was really struck by the power of these two beautiful feast days – the knowledge that every person who has gone to heaven is part of the same organism as little old me, and that I could ask that many holy people to pray for me, my family, the world, all at once is both mind-boggling and beautiful.

The idea of this web of connectivity (and if you think about existence outside of time, we are all potentially saints right now, even as we also muddle along trying to get it right here on earth) is both comforting (we're not alone in our struggles) and challenging (so much to live up to!).

Came across two great quotes on these feast days:

Feast of All Saints (Via CatholicGreetings.org)

The challenge of sainthood
is to go
where love takes me.

—Prayer for Daybreak and Day's End, Volume II

Feast of All Souls (Via the AmericanCatholic.org Saint of the Day newsletter)

“We must not make purgatory into a flaming concentration camp on the brink of hell—or even a ‘hell for a short time.’ It is blasphemous to think of it as a place where a petty God exacts the last pound—or ounce—of flesh.... St. Catherine of Genoa, a mystic of the 15th century, wrote that the ‘fire’ of purgatory is God’s love ‘burning’ the soul so that, at last, the soul is wholly aflame. It is the pain of wanting to be made totally worthy of One who is seen as infinitely lovable, the pain of desire for union that is now absolutely assured, but not yet fully tasted” (Leonard Foley, O.F.M., Believing in Jesus).

Anne Rice, Catholic Author

Via The Japery ... Back in 1998, Anne Rice, author of the vampire series of novels including Interview With A Vampire, relapsed into the Roman Catholicsm she'd recovered from at 18. (Yours truly suffered the same relapse in his late twenties, very early thirties, a condition which continues to this day...) Now, according to Newsweek:

In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.

I read five or ten of Rice's books (vampires and Mayfair witches) during my freshman and sophomore years in college. Partly it felt like a guilty pleasure, but I also always had the sense that the lush and purple prose transcended somewhat the standard gothic romance and was sometimes genuinely beautiful. Looking at it now through the filter of this news story, I can't help but wonder if there was something of "smells and bells" in the writing. I'm still trying to figure out by what I mean by that (maybe that the intense understanding of the merging of physicality and spirit in the texture of the Church's liturgy -- incense, vestments, stained glass, candles, and bells! -- and the texture of Rice's prose have a sort of parallel?) , but in the meantime, I know for sure I'm quite curious to read this new book.

More good discussion of this over at Open Book.

The Japery Critiques Kreeft's Vision Of Heaven

Tying into Rick's last post ... The Japery has taken Peter Kreeft to task for his answers to the question What Will Heaven Be Like? Rick and I both admire Mr. Kreeft's work, and so it's interesting to see such a negative take on this piece... The Japery says that Kreeft "applies scripture and reason with a little cheating based on absurd logical conjectures and even out-of-body near-death experience anecdotes!" He goes on to say of Kreeft, "perhaps like [Scott] Hahn, residual Calvinism is to blame for his whacky rationalism that would fit well with an Umberto Eco character--usually a deranged Jesuit or monk in his novels--who reaps all the worst results from a mish-mash of modern and pre-modern epistemes."

In any case, one of the bits the Japery dislikes most about Mr. Kreeft's speculation on the nature of heaven is Kreeft's assertion that God will wipe our memories clean of any deeply loved person who doesn't make the cut ... so that we won't suffer in that person's absence.

I don't like this idea either -- mostly because I think in a reality beyond time, the concept of memory not likely to be similar to the way we understand memory now. I did like some of the other answers Mr. Kreeft gives, and the whole Q&A is well worth reading, as is The Japery's criticism of it -- if only for its eloquently over-the-top outrage.

Visions of Heaven

Ever since I was a teenager reading my beautiful old volume of Dante's "Divine Comedy" with its lavish Gustave Dore illustrations, I've been puzzled by the raw details that human authors (and illustrators) are able to give to their visions of Hell, but how Heaven tends to blur into an ecstatic white light. This could be that the Devil is indeed "in the details," or it could be that Hell is a bit closer to home for mortals and we have no qualms about trashing it with our prejudices or presumptions. Still, if Heaven is our inheritance, then we should feel comfortable speculating a bit about it.

I've heard it said that the three most important questions for any concious being are "Where did I come from?" "Why am I here?" and "Where am I going?" I love to prattle on about origins -- don't get me started on evolution, I can be quite a bore. The question of why we are here finds lots of fuel on this site, since the Church and its nature apparently constitute some significant portion of the answer.

Assuming for a moment that everyone reading this is going to Heaven (lovely thought, by the way -- if you have doubts, drop me a line and we can discuss it), what do you expect to find there? What do you expect it to be like? No fair merely quoting scripture, though it's fine to support your own vision with scripture.

To make this into a kind of ecumenical survey, it would help to reveal your church affiliation, if any. This can be short and sweet or not. My family and I go to a conservative Baptist church right now, but my wife and I were Episcopalians and Methodists before that and in the long, long ago I was a devout Cafeteria Pagan.

I'll chime in with my vision of Heaven once the ball starts rolling. Or sooner, if no one else does.

Burying A Saint To Sell A House?

This train of thought arises as my wife and I are currently selling our house. I often ask Mary and Saint Joseph to pray for us when we make decisions that affect our home and family (and other times as well), and this case is no different.

However, I've read about a practice some people have, in addition to (or, heaven help us, instead of) prayer, of burying a statue of Saint Joseph in the yard when selling a home. Seems like superstition on its face – but one could, I suppose, imagine an argument in which you saw the act as a method of facilitating prayer. As you bury the statue, you turn your mind toward the saint, and in beseeching him to pray for you, you turn your mind, of course, to God. And once the statue is buried, the knowledge of its presence could continue to return your mind to God, which could be important during a stressful and very matter-and-money--oriented process like selling a house.

Illustrating how prevasive this practice has become, the very secular Bankrate.com Web site has an article recommending the practice, and even quotes a Catholic who tackles the superstition versus devotion question.

Here's an interesting history and description of the practice of snopes.com – a site which debunks urban legends.

And Catholic.com's This Rock says, with its customary firmness, of the practice: "What you have been told is a superstition, which is a violation against the First Commandment (CCC 2110). Burying statues to sell your house is not an approved Catholic practice. If you want to ask St. Joseph for his intercession in selling your house, that's fine. But don't go burying statues of him for this purpose."

So, your take, superstition or tool for focusing prayer? I'd say, despite the fact that one could rationalize it, that it seems more a superstition than a form of prayer… However, despite This Rock's black-and-white take on the issue, I imagine there are a rich range of Catholic devotions across a number of cultural traditions that are not formally "approved" but are sincere devotions and generally accepted by the laity and clergy alike. And I also can't help but wonder if some our evangelical and protestant readers might not wonder why I'm distinguishing between a practice like this and some of our other more standard Catholic devotions (statues, rosary beads, lighting devotional candles, etc.)? My answer to a challenge on any of those practices would be that they are tools for focusing prayer, which I suppose is no different than what the Saint Joseph Real Estate statue proponents would say, but … it feels different.

Catholic Evangelical or Vice Versa

Peter Kreeft, who I believe is a convert from the Evangelical ranks to the Roman Catholic Church, describes himself as an evangelical Roman Catholic. I was raised in the high church -- father Catholic and mother Episcopalian -- and, though never "properly catechized" in either tradition, feel an ancestral attraction to them. And yet my heart belongs to the tradition in which I found freedom from bondage, justification before God and salvation. I'm comfortable flopped on the couch in the messy house of the evangelicals, but I love to visit the tidy, posh, and lavishly decorated home of my neighbors, the Catholics.

I guess I could take a suggestion from Mr. Kreeft and call myself a Catholic evangelical, but the Catholic brand is so dominant that it tends to overwhelm. Overwhelmingness is a strength of the RC church. Flexibility is a strength of the Evangelicals.

Once again, work and home life have subsumed me and I owe Binx an answer or two. In his honor I've actually been studying a bit of history, so he doesn't get so flustered with me just popping ideas off the top of my head. Answers are in the works, but I wanted to share something I read from the notable Mr. (Dr.?) Kreeft. (Who works within an hour’s drive of me. I must plan to visit him one of these days.)

In "Fundamentals of the Faith" he writes: "How do I resolve the Reformation? Is it faith alone that justifies, or is it faith and works? Very simple. No tricks. On this issue I believe Luther was simply right: and this issue is absolutely crucial. As a Catholic I feel guilt for the tragedy of Christian disunity because the church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was failing to preach the gospel. Whatever theological mistakes Luther made, whatever indispensable truths about the Church he denied, here is an indispensable truth he affirmed -- indispensable to union between all sinners and God and union between God's separated Catholic and Protestant children."

He goes on to say that much of Catholicism has not caught up with Luther and much of Protestantism has regressed from him.

In my humble opinion, it is human pride that has created this problem on both sides. When pride contaminates the Protestant churches you get more schisms. When pride contaminates the Catholic Church you get the Protestant Church (and the inquisition, etc.). I'm not a Lutheran, but I believe he was an agent of God to reform his church. The fact that the reformation is still under way should not be a surprise coming from a God for whom a single day is like a millennia and vice versa.

Back to Purgatory Pt. 2: Purgatory, New England-Style

Just because we didn’t have enough fun with our prior purgatory posts, I relate this from Mass today ... I missed part of the homily. David is just on the far side of potty training and when he says, "Daddy, I have to go potty," we go. Meanwhile, our visiting priest was elaborating on various elements of Catholic doctrine. Kris later recalled the priest's description of purgatory (roughly quoted/paraphrased, but the word "crud" was indeed central). Keep in mind that the following quote is my recollection of what Kris recalled of what the priest said.

"Purgatory in Vermont is a cow barn. Now, you're looking up at the main farmhouse and saying, 'that’s where I want to go Jesus.' And Jesus says, 'you're not ready to meet my Father yet, first you gotta go to the cow barn.' And he brings you in there, and there are a bunch of other people, and tools on the walls. And Jesus tells you to go get him the long-handled wire brush. And you say, 'okay, what do I do to get to God’s house?' And Jesus says, 'just stand there and I'm going to clean the crud off you, so you can meet my father.' See, you've sinned and been forgiven for your sins, but the crud still sticks to you. So Jesus starts using the brush, and you say, 'Jesus, this hurts,' and he says, 'I know, but I’ve got to get the crud off you.' And he keeps working until you're clean."

The priest had the whole parish in stitches. For those of you who have actually spent time in a cow barn ... does the metaphor hold up? Evocative or just odd?

How Can I Resist!

John de Fiesole on Disputions has this great description of the Book of Tobit: "Demons, monstrous fish, love at first sight, bird poop as a major plot device, a hometown setting: it's got it all." Kids just went down for a nap, and I think I have some reading to do!

The introduction to Tobit from the New American Bible points out: "The inspired author of the book used the literary form of religious novel (as in Jonah and Judith) for the purpose of instruction and edification. There may have been a historical nucleus around which the story was composed, but this possibility has nothing to do with the teaching of the book. The seemingly historical data-names of kings, cities, etc.-are used merely as vivid details to create interest and charm. Although the Book of Tobit is usually listed with the historical books, it more correctly stands midway between them and the wisdom literature."

I find this style especially appealing ... which makes me wonder whether I need to rethink, or at least refine the point I was making here.

Back to Purgatory Pt. 1

Many interesting uncountered points have been left in the depths of the post titled "A Purgatorial Debate" so I'll bring a few to the surface, in separate posts, to make the discussion a bit more transparent.

Regarding my assertion of the commonly held evangelical belief that the Church of God is "invisible" i.e. bigger than any specific organization, Binx wrote: "But, the startling historical and biblical fact remains that this is a distinction that was never posited before Calvin. There is no such distinction in the New Testament, in fact the very opposite emerges clearly. Jesus founded one visible church led by the Apostles."

Would it be tacky of me to add that the idea of individual rights was also not posited in the first century and scripture was used to defend slavery until the 19th century? Yet the Bible, in the hands of social reformers, served as a powerful tool of liberation and today the church remains a bastion of liberty for the oppressed and the helpless. I would suggest that the modern church owes much to the early church for refining and protecting the canon (under God’s direction and protection, I might add) and the early church owes much to the modern church for never being satisfied with the edicts of men, either to limit or to expand the scripture, but have become “workmen approved, rightly dividing the word of God.” Ultimately God is in charge of the process, not the church. The church IS the process.

As for the unity of the first century church, the book of Acts lays out a different scenario, with disputes arising between Paul and Silas. And during Jesus's earthly ministry, when the disciples discovered others, not of their group, casting out demons in Christ's name, Jesus basically said, "It's cool." In 1st Cor. 12 Paul famously describes the church and the distribution of gifts within it as a body of parts, with each part performing a role and some parts more "honored" than others. This seems like a fairly vivid description of the nature of the modern "splintered" church. The problem cited by Paul is not the distinctions between parts, but rather the rivalry or dismissal between them. I suppose these verses could be seen to indicate the need for a number of different types of gifted person within each church. But the analogy also suggests that development of the Body of Christ would transform the homogenous infantile body parts into much more clearly defined, task-oriented parts. In this view, the nailing of Luther's 95 theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral door could be the ecclesiastical equivalent to puberty. Calvin may have simply been stating what had become obvious to him and others.

Another image often used in the Bible to describe the relationship between God and man is a family. Perhaps the modern church is a bit like the Prodigal Son and the grand Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions are like the faithful son who resented the father’s easy reacceptance of such a wastrel. The Catholic Church underwent a reformation (like it or not) and the Protestant church is probably due one as well. Some say that's what the evangelical movement is all about.

Bumper Stumper

A long while back, an evangelical friend and I were cynically discussing the proliferation of sappy Christian bumper stickers. Naturally we soon began trying to write our own Christian bumper stickers, just to see if it is possible to reduce theology to less than six words. I don't think anything we came up with was better than "John 3:16" on a rainbow background.

Since I haven't posted for awhile, and since Ernesto is taking the high intellectual road in his recent posts, I thought I'd toss a little fluff into the mix.

What (six word or less) Christian bumper sticker would you most be willing to put on your car? You can either mention one you've seen or write your own.

The Language of Science Is Not the Language of Theology

Via the Ignatius Insight blog (and see more discussion of this at Open Book) ... Cardinal Schoenborn said recently : "I see no problem combining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution..." This may seem to some like a clarification, but I recall thinking when I read the cardinal's New York Times op ed piece over the summer, the one which caused many people to think the Church had rejected evolution, that all the cardinal was really saying was that he rejected a version of evolution that claimed to be able to discern metaphysics as well as biology. The cardinal was attempting to reject a theory of evolution put forth by some that claims it can prove God has no role in creating the universe. Richard Dawkins, for one, in The Improbability of God, implicitly makes such a claim.

All of which has been hashed out, in more depth, elsewhere.

What I really wanted to toss out here was a piece in this month's First Things that I thought added a really interesting perspective on, and perhaps clarity to, the language we use to talk about this issue:

Critiquing Cardinal Schoenborn's NY Times article, Stephen Barr writes that the "central misstep of Cardinal Schoenborn's article" is that "he has slipped into the definition of a scientific theory, Neo-Darwinism, the words 'unplanned' and 'unguided,' which are fraught with theological meaning." Barr goes on to point out that the cardinal, while referencing some lines from the document Communion and Stewardship, neglects key passages in which it "explicitly warns that the word 'random' as used by biologists chemists, physicians and mathematicians in their technical work does not have the same meaning as the words 'unguided' and 'unplanned' as used in doctrinal statements of the Church." Barr later uses a literary example to illustrate his point (about the word 'random' versus 'unplanned', I think, not as analogy for evolution…): "Prose, unlike a sonnet, has lines with final syllables that do not rhyme. The sequence of those syllables will therefore exhibit randomness. But this does not mean a prose work is 'unguided' or 'unplanned.'" The article, from this month's edition, will be posted on the Web site at the end of the month and is an interesting read.

In the end, the article also illustrates an important concept: it's hard to have a productive discussion, debate or argument when not all the parties have agreed on how to define the terms.

God Doesn't 'Punish', But Sin Does

I've been thinking for a couple of weeks about how I would describe my understanding of God's reaction to sin, sin's effect on a person, and the way God is described at times as vengeful. I began wondering if my conception was orthodox, and upon reflection, I think it is.* Feel free to comment on that conclusion after reading my ruminations below... What prompts me, by the way, to expound on this here is a post I came across on Adrian Warnock's blog entitled, "God isn't angry with Christians when they sin."

Seems to me, when we sin, God doesn't get angry with us (or hate us or wish us ill, etc.) at all since God loves us and is infinitely generous, infinitely patient and forgiving and infinitely desiring of our ultimate homecoming. God does hate the sin itself, because of the effect of the sin, which is to cause resistance within us to God. Since God's given us free will, that blockage we build up by sin can prevent us from accepting the grace God is constantly pouring out on us. The upshot of thinking this is, when I hear language referring to God "smiting sinners" or "inflicting punishment on sinners," I automatically assume that it is figurative language (as when we read that God is surprised by something, which would be impossible for someone outside of time to be) and translate it to mean, "Those people have, by misusing their free will to sin, built up blockades against God and His grace, and are suffering because they are willingly cutting themselves off from Him." Penitence and penance are, of course, necessary, because they (with God's help, even through our best effort at shutting Him out) realign our will to accept all of what God wants to give us. So what this amounts to may be one step further even than the idea, "God isn't angry with Christians when they sin." It amounts to believing that sin certainly has a punishing effect on the sinner, but that God doesn't punish.

* Not wanting to toss all this out here without providing some reference to back up this line of thinking, I turned after posting the original piece, to the Catechism of the Catholic Church for backup. This bit is from section 1472 on "The Punishments of Sin": The text first lists the two kinds of punishments for sin, eternal and temporal, and then goes on to say, "These two punishments must not be conceived as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin." I realize, of course, non-Catholics may find this less authoritative than I do...

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