Enthusiasm vs. Faith

I know that independent catholicism comes in all stripes–each group separating to emphasize some aspect of the faith it finds lacking in other communions. The particular flavor of independent catholicism I was involved in was charismatic.  We looked down on the Catholic Church and other, more established communions, because they didn’t exhibit what we deemed to be “the gifts of the Spirit”. This passage of Eugene Joly’s What is Faith? illustrates for me, that what charismatics latch onto corresponds with a particular stage in the spiritual life of a individual person.  Joly states that this stage is a valid experience in faith, but it is merely one stage of growth on the way to maturity in faith; and when this stage is taken as the fullness of faith, it leads to agnosticism. (This bears own in my own experience.)

I have spoken of the faith of the young man who has passed through the sociological habits of infancy and the subjective idealism of adolescence to find the reality of the living God. He gives himself with enthusiasm and generosity to the Jesus who speaks to him the words of eternal Life and promises him–in return for a total renunciation–a hundredfold in this world. Happy are they who have had such an experience, which will leave a mark upon all their later life. And yet this enthusiasm will not last indefinitely. The honeymoon was necessary; but it is no more the fullness of love than the happiness of the young married couple. Just as the difficulties of married life purify and deepen love, so the disillusionment which life brings with it purifies and deepens faith. In a young man’s enthusiasm there is till a good deal of idealism, and what he calls faith in God is often only confidence in his own superabundant vital powers. The young, overflowing with energy and hungry for the infinite, are easily generous and readily exclaim, Laetus obtuli universa! It will be more difficult for them to give, day after day, what they have offered all at once . . . and in words. And then there are the failures and disappointments which multiply, those which come from outside and those which result from our inward wretchedness. Nearly all converts have to go through a crisis after about a year of fervour; prayer becomes difficult, attempts to lead a stricter and more generous life become less and less successful; the great discoveries with which faith dazzled their eyes are all over; they slip into lukewarmness. Faith and certitude remain intact, but illusions vanish. The spade comes up against rock. There is great danger of giving up the struggle and settling down to a sceptical and disillusioned sort of existence. The problem is not that of maintaining a juvenile fault, but of passing beyond it, recognizing the “impurity” in an enthusiasm which was animated rather by one’s own vitality than by the breath of the Holy Spirit.

I think that the last sentence lays a finger on charismaticism within Christianity.  Although it is a valid faith expression (which is at home and completed in the one, Catholic Church), if it is taken to be more than that–the norm for everyone–it becomes animatited by its own vitality rather than by the Holy Spirit..  And that’s why when the vitality of a particular charismatic group winds down, the group splits up to seek that vitality in another–in search of the eternal honeymoon.  Hence, Fr. Dwight Longenecker recently noted:

The much praised Charismatic movement is one of the most fissiparous of them all. The splits, divides, quarrels and schisms within Charismatic Christianity alone is enough to frustrate any attempt to understand, much less categorize and catalogue.

There’s a reason why the charismatics don’t find what they are looking for in older, established communions. These communions have grown beyond the phase of being animated by their own vitality and have settled down into a deeper, more mature faith life. I call charismatics to seek beyond the charismatic definition of vitality. Investigate what animated the faith of the saints.  Investigate what the Catholic Church says about the charismatic movement.  Pope John Paul II not only recognized the charismatic movement as a valid movement within the Catholic Church, but blessed it.  You see, the Catholic Church is the home of different expressions or personalities of faith.  All these are at home and completed in the one, true faith.

Don’t Miss This One Either

This post, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker precedes the one I posted below.

Authority

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, former Anglican priest, now Catholic priest, has a great post about the nature of the Church and authority.

I became a Catholic at that point because the whole debate forced me to ask the question, “When Christians disagree about important matters how do we decide and where do we turn for the final answer?”

In other words, I began to look again at authority in the Church, and I began to examine seriously the claims to authority that the Catholic Church makes. To do this I had to discover what the Catholic Church really teaches about her own authority, and I had to get past my prejudices, misunderstandings and anti-Catholic bias.

I came to realize that for the Church to be both dogmatic and relevant to the age in which it lives it needs an infallible final authority. As Cardinal Newman said, Without an infallible final authority Christians will either sacrifice true doctrine for the sake of outward unity, or they will sacrifice the form of outward unity for the sake of what they perceive as true doctrine. They will fall either into the error of sectarianism or the error of indifferentism.

I accept that many Christians may be indifferent to this problem. All that really matters to them is how much they love Jesus. While this sentiment is laudable and the simplicity of this faith is admirable, it does beg the question, “But where is Jesus and how do I know I am loving Him and not just the fabrication of my own religious imagination or the subjective opinions of my own tradition? How do I know that I am loving Jesus and not just pursuing (and perhaps manufacturing) my own religious experiences.”

Read the whole thing (and comments) here.

“They Just Don’t Talk About All The Good Things They Do”

Dr. Francis Beckwith, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society and recent convert to the Catholicism, had this to say in the 48 min. mark of the Catholic Answers Live radio broadcast, September 5, 2007.

Catholics, because of the nature of their faith, and how much humility, and one’s quiet connection to Christ as part of the community of faith, is so important–they just don’t talk about all the good things they do. Whereas with Protestants–generally, with evangelicals–there’s this testimony time; and so we tend to think because of that that Protestants just do a lot more than Catholics. Well, that’s because the nature of the communities are such that one stresses the virtue of public testimony and the other one doesn’t, and so you’re less likely to see more witness, or experience directly the evidence of the good works, other than some people quietly doing it.

Here’s a link to the audio.

More Catholic than the Catholics

I know Protestants (independent catholics) who have been very influenced by the Catholic Church over the years, have come even to accept many of the distinctively Catholic doctrines which trouble most Protestants, yet withhold membership of the Catholic Church based on the objection that they can live out these Catholic doctrines better outside of the Catholic Church than inside her. This is a defining characteristic of independent catholics. When the Catholic emphasizes the Catholic Church’s claims to be the true and infallible Church (perhaps the paramount distinctively Catholic doctrine), the objection goes something like this: “What good is a true Church if it . . . doesn’t pastor its sheep sufficiently?” (Just fill in the blank with your favorite shortcoming of the Catholic Church.) They don’t see that this objection is grounded in the very ecclesiastical assumptions that are being challenged by the Catholic: When the Catholic tells them that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by Christ, instead of offering reasons why this is not true, they simply respond by declaring, “Yes, but we can serve Christ better outside the Catholic Church.”[1]. So, what we have here is a fundamental incapability of scrutinizing the lens through which they view the matter: (i) that the Church is not visibly one as stated in the creeds and taught by the early Church, but something men do (Catholics, badly, and them, well); which means that (ii) reform is a matter of separating from a bad group to form a good group that does it right and lives it out better; which has the effect of (iii) emphasizing true practice as the essence of true religion over and above true doctrine (a phenomenon Msgr. Ronald Knox called enthusiasm) [2].

But while these Protestants withhold membership from the one, true fold because they find her deficient in living things out, they are merely under the illusion that they are doing better. Remember, they’ve separated themselves out to form a group who’s going to do it better. They have this small band of pious people simply because they left all the sinners behind; and because they drive sinners from their ranks and repel others from even joining in the first place. There is a core–a big core–of pious people within the Catholic Church, but they retain and remain with their sinners instead of leaving them.

The Catholic family, then, is not a museum exhibit of saints, but a human family in which saints, publicans and sinners all feed from the same table. . . Goodness is a qualification for heaven but not for the Church: badness is an additional reason for becoming a Catholic. . . . I am proud to belong to a Church which retains, as no other Church retains, the affectionate loyalty of many who make little or no attempt to practice what the Church preaches. The Catholic religion is based on certain obective facts, of which the Resurrection is the most important. Facts such as these are unaffected by your conduct or by mine, and it is therefore illogical to deny those facts merely because our conduct is not consistent with our belief. The Catholic is more objective than the Protestant, for Protestants often cease to believe merely because they cease to behave, whereas many a Catholic who has cut himself off by his own actions from the sacraments continues to hear Mass every Sunday. As a boy I believed that Protestants were more moral and more truthful than Catholics. I now know that the widespread belief in the moral superiority of Protestants is due to the failure of the Protestant Churches to retain their hold on the disreputable. The reputation of the Church suffers, perhaps, from the fact than an American gangster or a Neopolitan brigand will attend Mass, whereas a criminal with a Protestant background never gives scandal to Protestants by attending Protestant services. It is this Catholicity of the Church which offends the non-Catholic, just as it was the catholicity of Christ which disedified the more exclusive Jews. Protestant Churches are clubs for good people, but the Catholic Church continues to welcome the publicans and sinners with whom Christ mixed so freely. . . . In the course of nineteen centuries the Church has discovered that sinners sometimes sin, and it is therefore not so scandalized as her critics by the frailties of her children. Like her Master, she comes to call not the righteous by sinners to repentance, and like her Master she continues to give scandal by her uncompromising hostility to fashionable sins and by her infinite charity to unfashionable sinners.
—Arnold Lunn, Within That City

Something else which feeds the illusion of living it out better is the zeal and vigor of new beginnings. Remember: the separate, pure communion is separate and pure because the pure separated themselves, but once these pure people fill their church with their children’s children’s children, they will not be so pure. It may take generations, but sin will find its way in. Meanwhile the division lives on. . . and yet another is needed. Ad infinitum. [3].Besides a fundamental misunderstanding as to the nature of the Church, these Protestants also labor under a misunderstanding or disregard of free will. God leaves us free to choose Hell. So, why can’t the Church leave us free to do the necessary work to save our souls? Like God, the Catholic Church knows that she can’t force interior conversion on people. If they don’t make that fundamental choice for God, she knows she can’t make it for them; but if they do, she provides them all the necessary helps: the sacraments, infallible teaching, spiritual direction, an apostolate or two, and massive amounts of spiritual literature from saints and other spiritual luminaries. If people aren’t availing themselves of these things, the Church can’t force them on them–just as God doesn’t force Himself on us. He calls. He woos. He’s there when we come home. But when we want to go eat slop with the pigs, well, He leaves us free to do so. [4].

1. They also don’t see that because they accept the reliability of the Catholic Church on so many points it is incumbent upon them to have reasons not to accept the reliability of the Catholic Church on this particular point.
2. Ironically, the preeminent true practice is to first be reconciled to truth. What if a Morman rejected the the evidence of the truth of Christianity, by declaring, “That’s all very well, but I can serve God better as a non-Christian.”?
3. Is this the model of the Church which Christ intended? Can it be reconciled with Scripture and Tradition?
4. “[Neither] God nor His Church forces any man’s conscience. To all He says by the mouth of his Prophet: ‘Behold I set before you, the way of life and the way of death’ (Jer. xxxi. 8 ) The Choice rests with yourselves.”—James Cardinal Gibbons, Faith of Our Fathers.
“Not even God, being loyal to His own rules, can change our minds or wills without our cooperation.”—Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. Saint Austin Review, July/August 2003

New Audio

I’m going to update my audio page (see the sidebar) soon. In the meantime, here’s something good which I listened to last night: The Papacy and the Early Church Fathers, by Tim Staples.

OK

This blog lives! Recently I’ve doubled my readership (from one person to two…see the previous post), and beyond that incredibly encouraging fact, my hackles have been raised. And so, I’ve been driven to post once more. My brother, who converted to the Catholic Church last Easter (and who makes a regular habit of leaving a half dozen or so consecutive messages on my voicemail passionately preaching the truth of Catholicism) relayed to me recently that an independent catholic of mutual acquaintance justified his separation from the Catholic Church by posing the question, “But….what is the Catholic Church doing these days anyway?”

[sigh of fatigue] OK people. This borders on willful ignorance (a despicable…and sometimes damnable…habit) and it irritates the crap out of me.

1. Alls you have to do is scratch the Catholic Church–make the slightest effort to check your caricature of her with reality–and you’ll see that she is a veritable supernova of activity. Check out Zenit.org or First Things or Catholic News Agency or Catholic World News or American Papist or the USCCB or the Vatican Information Service or the National Catholic Bioethics Center (does your communion have a national bioethics center?) to get a glimpse of what the Catholic Church is doing. But I have a feeling that this isn’t good enough. (Caricatures die hard). A lot of the stuff found on these websites are representative of the things the Catholic Church says…but what is she doing? Oh…preaching the gospel is not enough? Well, first of all, don’t underrate that. I ended up an atheist because of my own sinful choices…but I was really, really, really, helped along the way by Protestant pastors who preached opinion…not truth. Second of all, the Catholic Church also feeds the poor, visits the sick and the imprisoned, and, in general, outstrips every other communion on the planet in performing both the corporeal as well as the spiritual works of mercy. But whose counting? Well, you are, apparently; so, check out the Catholic Campaign for Human Development or Catholic World Mission or Marriage Encounter or Aid to Eastern Europe or Catholic Charities or Project Rachel or the Knights of Columbus, just to scratch the first molecule of the tip of the iceberg of the larger ice shelf. In reality, it is so easy to find out just how much the Catholic Church really does in the world, that just yesterday I heard, in the 15 min. mark of the Vatican Insider podcast, host Joan Lewis declaring in response to U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Francis Rooney’s, comments about how much the Holy See (just the guys in Rome) does for AIDS prevention in African, that “if the world could be fully aware of the…health education and welfare network on the planet of the Holy See, I think they would be totally speechless”. Notice that she is referring to just the stuff headed by the Vatican. This doesn’t count all the stuff headed by all the other bishops, priest, and laity. Oh…this isn’t good enough? The caricature lives on? Oh…the local church…what does the Catholic Church do on the local level? Well, she holds Mass daily during the week, twice on Saturday, and four times on Sunday (one of which is in Spanish), she offers the sacrament of confession at least once a week (but it’s not hard to find a parish with a priest who hears confessions everyday), she offers perpetual adoration of the Eucharist, and her members (along with clergy) have all sorts of apostolates and misc. groups one can join: the Blue Army, Familia, Opus Dei, and so on and so forth. Is the caricature dead yet? Probably not. I think what keeps this caricature alive is the evangilifundamentalicharismatical idea that it’s the role of clergy to hound people to be better Christians. Clergy is suppose to have an idea of where everyone is at spiritually and challenge them to come up to the next level. NEWS FLASH: This is what the sacrament of confession is all about. Couple that with spiritual direction and how much more challenged can you get? Not good enough. Oh…yeah…these things rely on the parishioner’s own volition and initiation. And here we get to the crux of the evangilifundamentalicharismatical caricature of the Catholic Church’s inactivity: It is the idea that Catholic clergy aren’t doing their job because they aren’t cornering people and making them love God whether they want to or not. Well, the problem with that idea of pastoring is that it’s not how God works. He calls. We respond. God doesn’t harangue us to holiness. He calls us to it. And he gives us a Church where the confessional is open, Mass is offered, the Eucharist is consumed, the truth is preached, spiritual direction is available, and opportunities for involvement abound. If you don’t grow, it’s nobody’s fault but your own. We’re all adults here. And that’s what I appreciate about the Catholic Church: She treats me like an adult. And what I resented about evangilifundamentalicharismatical culture was that I felt that I never left youth group.
2. After you go to the trouble of find out what the Catholic Church really does do, compare it with what your communion does. Note the incredibly vast discrepancy.
3. Take a nanosecond to reflect, professed lover of the historical church, on your idea and the nature of the Church. Let us say that the Catholic Church is terribly inactive. (Any institution that sticks it out for 2000 years is bound to have some lulls and periods of not-so-good-ness.) Is that a valid reason to not only remain separate from her, but perpetuate another (schismatic) communion beside her? If so, then the same goes for your communion when it falls on hard times. So every time a church hits a lull, reformation is made not from within, but by starting a new, separate, body….which means that in no time at all we have countless divisions. First, reconcile that with Scripture and Tradition. Second, tell me how the average Christian on the street is suppose to know which communion currently carries the torch…or if the communion he’s in still does…or why he’s wrong to think that the Spirit is leading him to start his own which does?
4. Realize that if you indolently dismiss all this as so much superfluous theology that you’ve opted out of reality for a caricature. And that’s dangerous.

I’m Pathetic

I can’t believe folks are still visiting this blog.  I haven’t posted anything in a very long time and it’s debatable as to whether or no I ever posted anything of substance.  At the very least, I might keep this keep this blog up for all the resources I’ve attached to it (see the sidebar: pages and other resources).  At most, I may even start posting again (if I am persuaded to do so

Major Figure in America’s Largest Independent Catholic Group Converts to the Catholic Church

Press release from Common Good:

Former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church
Received into Full Communion with the Roman Catholic Church

(Richmond, VA) Randolph W. Sly, former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church and one of the early founders of the CEC in 1992, was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, along with his wife, Sandra, on November 12, 2006 at St. Benedict Catholic Church in Richmond, Virginia.

Sly indicated this decision came from an extended time of discernment for the two of them. “We were at a point last summer personally and ecclesiastically in the CEC where I felt a change was coming. Sandy and I had found ourselves moving deeper into catholic Christianity during our tenure in the CEC. More recently, the draw toward full communion in the Roman Catholic Church had grown greater and became a very strong call in the six months prior to our conversion. We are delighted to continue our service to Jesus Christ and His Church as Catholics.”

Fr. James Kauffmann, Pastor of St. Benedict Catholic Church issued the following statement: “It was my great joy to receive Randy and Sandy Sly into the full communion of the Roman Catholic Church at the Divine Liturgy at Saint Benedict Catholic Parish on November 12, 2006. What a glorious day it was! It was also a wonderful gift to, along with Deacon Keith Fournier, work with the Sly’s during their period of catechesis leading up to their reception. Their love for the Lord and the ancient yet ever fresh Catholic Faith is an inspiration. Their prior years of service to the Lord have only prepared them for what lies ahead as they respond to God’s continuing invitation to serve Him in the New Evangelization called for by the late Servant of God John Paul II. We welcome them home and eagerly anticipate all that lies ahead for them in the fullness of Catholic faith.”

Even prior to his involvement in the CEC Sly had been known for several years as a major voice of the “Convergence Movement” where the evangelical, charismatic, and liturgical/sacramental streams of the church were coming together as “one mighty river of God.” He has been in active pastoral ministry for over 30 years, first with the Wesleyan (Methodist) Church and then with the Charismatic Episcopal Church, where he last served as Archbishop of the Eastern Province and Supervising Archbishop of the Office of Communications.

Currently, Sly is President of Common Good, a way, a work, and a movement dedicated to the four pillars of the Church’s social teaching: life, family, freedom, and solidarity with the poor. A published author and communications specialist, he is also at work on several book projects as well as other commercial writing and media projects.

The Sly’s reside in the Northern Virginia community of Potomac Falls, where they are active members of Our Lady of Hope Parish. They have three grown children, all of whom are married and live nearby.

To schedule an interview with Randy Sly, comment below or send me an email.

Saint Edmund Campion

Today is St. Edmund Campion’s feast day.  Go here for a brief introduction.

One of the most powerful books I have read is Evelyn Waugh’s biography of St. Edmund Campion. It tells the story of a young man wooed away from the Catholic faith by worldly pursuits; and who, after returning to the true faith, sacrificed all he had gained, even his very life, in an effort to restore the true faith to his homeland, England. It’s a great read; I highly recommend it. (And it’s usually pretty easy to pick up cheap at a used bookstore.)

I think independent catholics would do well to consider the English Martyrs, of which St. Edmund Campion was but one (of over a hundred). Martrys in general are signs to the rest of us of what’s important; and they are signs of contradiction, because they give up what we generally regard as important in order to keep what we generally regard (at least in practice) as less important. They surrender their heads to the ax or the hangman’s noose rather than to error; and thus they demonstrate to us the truths that are worth more than our heads. And the truths that St. Edmund Campion and the English Martyrs died for are the very truths whose repudiation is necessary for the existence of independent catholicism: the unity of the Church and the primacy of Rome.

The Anglicans really were the first independent catholics. They were the first to assert the branch theory, the novel idea which purports that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds is somehow not really one, as the Catholics and Orthodox hold, but divided into several mutually antagonistic bodies. And the Anglicans were the first to coin the term Roman Catholic, meant to imply that being part of the Church that is catholic and one has nothing to do with union with the Successor of St. Peter who presides in Rome.

Enter the English Martyrs. St. Edmund Campion and the rest of the English Martyrs died specifically for refusing to submit to these novel ideas upon which independent catholicism relies for its very existence. They declared that for one to be in saving obedience to Jesus Christ, one needed to be in His Church; and to be in His Church, one needed to be united to the Successor of St. Peter. And they backed up that declaration with the ultimate sacrifice, which independent catholics, when declaring what is, and what is not, really essential would do well to consider.

St. Edmund Campion, pray for us!

Read more about St. Edmund Campion here (by the late, great Fr. John Hardon, S.J.)

Read more about the English Martyrs at my martyrs “page” at del.icio.us

Quote of the Day

“Now few questions are more important than the question as to whether a man is or is not in communion with the Church which Christ founded.”
—Arnold Lunn, Within That City

We Must Seek – Pt. II

In his classic, The Belief of Catholics, Msgr. Ronald Knox writes about ecclesiology:

Protestants differ from us not so much because they disagree with us on this head, as because they refuse, most of them, to enter into the discussion at all.

Most of them. By-and-large, independent catholics are not among the “most of them”; for, they do, in fact, put forth some sort of ecclesiastical theory and defend it according to their professed standard of orthodoxy, i.e. Scripture and Tradition.

However, I have increasingly come in contact with independent catholics (usually former independent Protestants) who, as Knox rightly says, refuse to enter into the discussion at all. And this is odd for at least two reasons. For one, usually, the current ecclesiology that these folks hold to (independent catholicism) is something they’ve come to from something else. Second, independent catholicism is a movement largely defined by its ecclesiological claims.

So, ironically, most of the independent catholics I know, who refuse to enter into the discussion at all as to the nature of the Church, are not just members of a movement largely defined by its views as to the nature of the Church—but converts to it! Fifteen years ago, they didn’t care at all, but today they will tell you that they are as “catholic” as the Catholics or the Orthodox. Challenge them, however, to justify this view according to their standard of orthodoxy—Scripture and Tradition—and they eventually make it known that such theological arguments are superfluous to what is essential, and all that is essential, they say, is that we fall in love with God.

If that’s the case, and questions of ecclesiology are superfluous, why claim, then, to be “catholic” (and adamantly so)? For that matter, why be a member of a belief community which is at pains to assert its ecclesiological beliefs if such beliefs are, in the end, not worth anything of value, certainly not worthy of defense? And why be a member of a belief community which is at pains to assert its harmony with the early Church, Fathers, and councils if any discussion that seeks to demonstrate such harmony goes beyond what is essential?

“If we do not do our homework, we only skim the shallows of our selves.”—Peter Kreeft, “The Summa and Its Parts,” Christian History, Winter 2002.

“Those who fear the Lord will form true judgments, and like a light they will kindle righteous deeds. A sinful man will shun reproof, and will find a decision according to his liking.” (Sirach 32:16-17).

“To all such arguments against religious truth, it is sufficient to reply, that no one who does not seek the truth with all his heart and strength, can tell what is of importance and what is not; that to attempt carelessly to decide on points of faith or morals is a matter of serious presumption… ‘Seek, and ye shall find;’ this is the Divine rule, ‘If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.’” (Prov. ii. 3-5.) —John Henry Cardinal Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, VIII, 13

“Besides, what seemed to me to be the great concern of the Christian, was, to honor God, by due submission to all that He has revealed. And finally, the thought struck me, that there might perhaps be more danger in believing too little than too much.” —L. Silliman Ives, LL.D., The Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism

“Were divine truth to come to us unveiled, then faith would not bring any separation of souls and would not discriminate the noble, pure and unselfish man from the calculating, self-seeking egoist. The Kingdom of God would be so obvious that it would be a mere matter for argumentation and cold reasoning, and would not call forth magnanimous souls who show the purity of their love for the ideal and for duty…” —Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism

“But the Lord permits and suffers these things to be, while the choice of one’s own liberty remains, so that while the discrimination of truth is testing our hearts and our minds, the sound faith of those that are approved may shine forth with manifest light.”—St. Cyprian of Carthage, De Unitatis

“Parallel with our duty to obey conscience is the obligation to educate it. Otherwise, if we do wrong in ignorance, we may not be free from blame… Fidelity to conscience, then, cannot be separated in practice from sincerity in wanting to learn the truth. Human nature is uncanny in the evasions to which it may resort in order not to be convinced…” —John A. Hardon, S.J., The Catholic Catechism

The Protestant Assumption

All the Protestant sects have been set up by men who, from time to time, thought they could make a new Church, better than the old Church which had been from the beginning, and more like what they think from Scripture [and/or Tradition] the Church ought to be. . . These men were not content with the old Church, which had been from the beginning; they said, “We will make a change; we will have a new Church, which shall be a deal better;” and, indeed, they tried their hands at it. Each of these reformers wished everybody else to be content with his own new Church. As soon as he had make his reformation he said, “Now we have had quite change enough; let everything stay just as it is now. We need no more reformation.” But other people said, “No, why should not I make a reformation as well as another? I can make things better than they have made them.”. . . And in this way it is that among Protestants one new Church and sect keeps springing up after another even to his very day. It will always be so in all Protestant bodies. The Church-of-England man reformed the Catholic Church, and the Presbyterian reformed the Church of England, and the Independent reformed the Presbyterian, and the Baptist reformed the Independent, and the Quaker reformed the Baptist.
—Henry Wilberforce, Why I Became a Catholic

I was formerly affiliated with independent catholics, branch theorists, who came largely from Protestant backgrounds. And one thing that Protestantism assumes is that the Church is something that man builds (and rebuilds) from the blueprint found in Scripture. And as independent catholics, we retained that assumption, unexamined, and merely expanded the blueprint a bit by adding Tradition alongside Scripture. And we went on our merry way, forging ahead, building our new, better church, calling ourselves catholic (more catholic than the Catholics, even)—yet, never questioning that Protestant assumption or confronting the data from Tradition (not to mention Scripture) which propounds a Church that is both one and indefectibly so.

Funny thing is . . . we considered ourselves to be a branch of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church right alongside the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches; and, paradoxically, even though we set up a “new” Church, we regarded the Catholic and the Orthodox as the best and the bulk of historic Christianity, drawing chiefly from their traditions—yet we ignored what they had to say about our said Protestant assumption and the mountain of evidence each could produce against if from Scripture and Tradition.

As much as independent catholics want to be Catholic, they are only so aesthetically; for they retain their Protestant premises in regards to the nature of the Church, namely her oneness and her perpetuity. And I often wonder why it does not give them pause that they have the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches against them on this point. As much as they might regard the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as passe, institutionally speaking, do they honestly believe that the Catholic and Orthodox view on this point is not the ancient one?

The Gnosticism of Branch Theory

Check out Michael Liccione’s great blog post on the topic.

I have basically three objections to the branch theory (the idea that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is composed of several mutually antagonistic bodies–Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, etc.)

1. It cannot be substantiated. It’s nowhere in Tradition or Scripture; for, both bear witness to a Church that is indivisibly one.
2. It dismisses the tremendous evidence for the papacy.
3. It regards the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches as branches; yet, these institutions, who, were they branches, would constitute the overwhelming majority of them, reject the branch theory.

Chesterton On Dreher and PTCs

I recently picked up my weathered copy of Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. III, cracked it open, and read, in the opening paragraph, the following lines, which speak prophetically (as is GKC’s habit) to the topics addressed in my last two posts:

Until about the end of the nineteenth century, a man was expected to give his reasons for joining the Catholic Church. Today a man is really expected to give his reasons for not joining it. This may seem an exaggeration; but I believe it to stand for a subconscious truth in thousands of minds. As for the fundamental reasons for a man doing it, there are only two that are really fundamental. One is that he believes it to be the solid objective truth, which is true whether he likes it or not; and the other that he seeks liberation from his sins. If there be any man for whom these are not the main motives, it is idle to inquire what were his philosophical or historical or emotional reasons for joining the old religion; for he has not joined it at all.

Protestants Who Think They’re Catholic

Michael Liccione has a great blog entry on the topic. (Be sure to check out the comments.)

Sin In the Church

Rod Dreher, a prominent convert to Catholicism, has gone over to Orthodoxy. He cites the scandals and the general lack of community as motivators for the move. There are a couple of very insightful blog commentaries inspired by Dreher’s exodus over at Pontifications and at Chesterton and Friends, both of which get at the heart of the matter.

When I was considering making the move from independent catholicism to the Catholic Church, it was often remarked or at least implied to me that one cannot really live out his faith in the Catholic Church–meaning, that the Catholic Church is so full of problems, the chief of which being mediocrity, that one is want to find the needed nourishment to thrive spiritually. Besides being (at least in my case) wholly untrue, it misses the matter entirely. It’s looking at Catholicism with Protestant glasses. I came from a branch of independent catholicism which prided itself on taking the best of Catholicism and executing it better than the Catholics–never considering that one, rather troublesome, aspect of Catholicism: that part where the Catholic Church claims to be the true Church. If the Catholic Church is the true Church won’t there be sinners attached to her? Won’t her members, even her leaders, be tainted with sin–more so in some eras than in others? Does the reality of sinful Christians disprove the truth of Christianity? Jesus Christ is God become flesh; and when He walked the earth He chose as His closest companions men that would doubt Him, deny Him, and betray Him to death. Why should we expect any less from His Church?

We Must Seek

I’ve listened to hundreds of conversion stories, and although the converts wrestle with many different doctrines, one thing I hear over and over again is that everything essentially comes down to one thing: authority. The Catholic Church claims that it is an historical fact that Christ established Peter as the head of the Church and that the early Church saw this authority continuing in the bishops of Rome, whom they believed to be, not just the supreme head of the Church, but the very Vicar of Christ on earth. If that is true, then everything is settled: if the pope really is Christ’s vicar, then obedience to Christ’s authority means obedience to the pope’s. But, like all intellectual matters of paramount importance, this, too, has been obfuscated. Many stumble because there can be made a case against the papacy, most notably by the Orthodox. But, cannot a case be made against the existence of God, or the creation of the universe, or the divinity of Jesus Christ? Every paramount truth is surrounded by controversy; for there are always clever men who seek to justify, with their intellect, their heart’s refusal to yield to truth. Nevertheless, Christ promises us that if we seek–if our hearts are open to yielding to truth, and our intellect is actively seeking it–we will find.

If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, “For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.” I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true. I discover that the true tide and force of all the facts flows the other way.
-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Sad News

From Catholic World News:

Orthodox priest beheaded in iraq

Oct. 13 (CWNews.com) – A Syrian Orthodox priest was beheaded in Iraq on October 11, in the latest reminder of the dangers faced by the Christian minority there.

Father Boulos Iskander had been kidnapped in Mosul, and his relatives received a demand for $350,000 in ransom. The kidnappers later said that they would reduce the ransom to $40,000 if the Syrian Orthodox church in Mosul would issue a public rebuke to Pope Benedict XVI (bio – news) for his Regensburg speech.

Orthodox officials complied with the kidnappers’ demands, and posted billboards around Mosul repudiating the Pope’s remarks. The family also raised the ransom money. But the kidnappers broke off negotiations, and on Wednesday the priest’s brutally dismembered body was discovered.

Christian churches in Mosul have been the target of several recent attacks by Islamic militants, and Church officials there report that many families are leaving for safe haven in other countries. The Christian population of Iraq has fallen by nearly 50% in the past 20 years.

But remember…deeeeep down, Islam really is a religion of peace. Well, I don’t believe that for a minute. Furthermore, I take Hilaire Belloc’s view that all this is inherent to the essence of Islam and not some aberration of it, and that it will come back to haunt us that the crusaders didn’t finish the job when they had the chance. (I think, today, we are seeing the reason for and behind the crusades.)

The Well and the Shallows

Recently, I listened to a show on Catholic Answers Live called “Seeking Spiritual Direction” with Fr. Thomas Dubay, and I recalled once again the spiritual depth that one finds in the Catholic Church. I spent well over 30 years as a Protestant. I wasn’t always earnestly seeking God, but I spent a number of years doing so. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for the many things I learned as a Protestant, but now, as a Catholic, looking back in hindsight, those years seem like aimless meanderings in a desert. When I became Catholic, I was blessed to find a good confessor and, in less than a year, the advice and direction I received from this priest, propelled me further in the spiritual life than all my years as a Protestant taken together. Why is this? It’s because the Catholic Church is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tm 3:15). She is the infallible guardian of revelation and she alone interprets it rightly; hence, her teaching is the fertile soil of spiritual growth. Truth matters. It’s the truth that sets us free. As Aristotle said, “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” When we get our doctrine wrong–even the smallest doctrine concerning the nature of God or the nature of man–we end up with all kinds of spiritual consequences. Take the difference between the Calvinistic view of predestination and the Catholic view. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “It is the difference between believing that God knows, as a fact, that I choose to go to the devil; and believing that God has given me to the devil, without my having any choice at all.” And that difference began initially as a slight deviation on the theology of the nature of God. Chesterton said in his essay, “Why I Am A Catholic“, the Catholic Church is the only institution that has been thinking about thinking for 2000 years, and so it has a map of all the mistakes and blind alleys down which one could go.

Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves. The truth about the Catholic attitude towards heresy, or as some would say, towards liberty, can best be expressed perhaps by the metaphor of a map. The Catholic Church carries a sort of map of the mind which looks like the map of a maze, but which is in fact a guide to the maze. It has been compiled from knowledge which, even considered as human knowledge, is quite without any human parallel. There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.
On this map of the mind the errors are marked as exceptions. The greater part of it consists of playgrounds and happy hunting-fields, where the mind may have as much liberty as it likes; not to mention any number of intellectual battle-fields in which the battle is indefinitely open and undecided. But it does definitely take the responsibility of marking certain roads as leading nowhere or leading to destruction, to a blank wall, or a sheer precipice. By this means, it does prevent men from wasting their time or losing their lives upon paths that have been found futile or disastrous again and again in the past, but which might otherwise entrap travelers again and again in the future. The Church does make herself responsible for warning her people against these; and upon these the real issue of the case depends. She does dogmatically defend humanity from its worst foes, those hoary and horrible and devouring monsters of the old mistakes.

I’ve experienced this first hand in the confessional. My confessor, fostered on the infallible teaching of the Church, was able to help me out of the blind alleys and back onto the main thoroughfare of spiritual growth by correcting the initial deviations in my spiritual ideas (theology) that had multiplied later a thousand fold. And once on this thoroughfare, a soul has the opportunity to go wide-open. The sky’s the limit. That’s why the Catholic Church is the saint making machine that she is–her children have access to the truth that sets one free.

God did not let us wonder and wander in the darkness about the most important truths we had to know in order to fulfill our most important task in life, union with him. No human lover would allow that if he could help it. Neither did God. Papal infallibility, like every other Catholic dogma, is properly understood only by the primacy of love. Infallibility is God’s loving gift in response to our need to persevere in the unity of love and truth-which is what God wants above all because that is what he is: love (1 Jn 4:18 ) and truth (Jn 6:14). Without infallibility, uncertainties and schisms are inevitable among us fallen and foolish humans for whom Christ designed his Church. The gift of infallibility flows from God’s character. He is so generous that he does not hold back anything that we need. He is not a stingy God! The creation of the world, the Incarnation and death of Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Eucharist, and heaven are six spectacular examples of God’s unpredictable and amazing generosity. The gift of infallibility to the Church fits this same pattern.
—Peter Kreeft, Catholic Christianity

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“Woe to the Shepherds Who Mislead and Scatter”

During the first reading at Mass today, this article came to mind.

Pope Warns Against DIY Religion

From the BBC (21 August 2005):

Pope warns against ‘DIY’ religion

Pope Benedict XVI has warned of the dangers of secularism and of “do it yourself” religion, on the final day of his visit to his native Germany.

He urged an estimated 1m young people at an outdoor Mass near Cologne to hold fast to the core values of their faith.

Young Catholics should point people towards Jesus Christ in a Europe turning away from God, he urged.

In a key speech later, he set out a blueprint for the Church’s future, acknowledging the problems facing it.

“Wrinkles and shadows” had obscured the face of the whole church he told about 80 Catholic bishops, an apparent reference to the scandals caused by paedophile priests.

He told them he acknowledged the dramatic shortage of priests in Germany.

Catholic morals and ethics were in constant decline, he said, urging a future where the Church remained truly young in spirit while not pandering to youth.

The BBC’s David Willey in Cologne says it was a basically optimistic yet unusually realistic vision for the future of the Church.

Dangers

At the earlier Mass, held on the Church’s World Youth Day, crowds stretched back as far as the eye could see, the BBC’s Jane Little reports.

Many had camped out all night.

The Pope told the crowds there were dangers in people finding their own religious routes.

“If it is pushed too far, religion becomes almost a consumer product,” he said.

“People choose what they like, and some are even able to make a profit from it.

“But religion constructed on a ‘do-it-yourself’ basis cannot ultimately help us,” he said.

“Help people to discover the true star which points out the way to us: Jesus Christ.”

The Pope has said he hopes his trip will help to kick-start “a wave of new faith among young people”.

Earlier in his visit he demonstrated his emphasis on cross-faith relations, by addressing Muslim leaders and visiting a synagogue.

Pope Benedict flew out of Cologne airport on Sunday evening, ending his first foreign trip since becoming Pope in April.

The World Youth Day festival, started by the late Pope John Paul II, is held in a different part of the world every three years.

The next one will take place in Sydney, Australia, in 2008, the Pope announced at the end of the Mass.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4170204.stm

Published: 2005/08/21 17:47:36 GMT

© BBC MMVI