Time Out

Blogs, as my good friend Tim Enloe says, are thinking out loud. Well, I’ve been able to think out loud as I research in my discernment for over a year now. I now need to take a break from blogging so I can put all of my free time and energy into research. This is a critical phase for me, so please say a prayer for me. During this time my blog will be inactive. It will be at least a few months before I start posting again. As of right now the only conversation is the one in The Conscious Faith of Trent thread. Blessings.

The Conscious Faith of Trent

This [Gospel], of old promised through the Prophets in the Holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, promulgated first with His own mouth, and then commanded it to be preached by His Apostles to every creature as the source at once of all saving truth and rules of conduct.

It also clearly perceives that these truths and rules are contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions, which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down to us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand.

It is nothing short of fascinating that the interpretation of these words written in 1546 by the Council Fathers of Trent would be fiercely disputed more than 400 years later by the Council Fathers of Vatican II. The debate at Vatican II was the culmination of decades of ever-mounting change in how Rome had understood Scripture and Tradition since at least the 16thcentury. That this “new” view won the day at Vatican II only with the intervention of the pope himself in the face of an unyielding majority representing the traditional view, is representative of the extraordinary lengths that modern Rome would have to go to in order to ”deal with Trent” on this issue of Scripture and Tradition, to say nothing of the unanimous post-Tridentine understanding.

Anglican convent leaves for the Roman See

After an intensive, years-long period of prayer and discernment, the order of All Saints Sisters of the Poor will be received into the Roman Catholic Church by the Archbishop of Baltimore on Sept. 3.

 

“We are very sorry for any pain that this move might cause our friends,” said the Rev. Mother Christina, superior of the order, told The LivingChurch. “But everyone must try to follow where they feel God is leading them. We want to be sensitive to those who do not believe as we do. We don’t want to point fingers. We are after all sinners in the eyes of God.” (source)

HT: Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon

Understanding the Word made Flesh through the Life of the Church

I wrote this in reponse to Mr. Bugay, but it got much too long for a comment, so I am posting it as a new blog entry. Initially I had no intention of addressing Mr. Bugay’s comment, but since Mr. Davis picked it up, and only because he picked it up, will I do so. Let me say this before I address his comments, though. This blog entry, contrary to Mr. Bugay’s ignorant assertions, is the result of deep wrestlings with the concept of development, facts of history, and the New Testament, as well as a host of other epistemic and ecclesiological issues. In the course of these wrestlings, I’ve done anything but follow the rules about how a Roman Catholic “must handle” things. Indeed this conversation is anything but an example of how Roman Catholics must handle things, although it is an example of Roman Catholics dealing with the way things are. If there is to be a genuine conversation with me on these issues, then accusations of Roman Catholics having a “sacrilegious” understanding of God’s Holy Word, as well as imputing anything less than a love for God’s Word as a motive for approaching it, should be left out of comments. Having said this now we can move on to more important things.

Jacob’s Ladder

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:1-2; ESV)

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12:18-24; ESV)

Today as we gathered to worship through the offering of Jesus’ eucharistic sacrifice I couldn’t stop thinking about these words from the writer to the Hebrews. I was asked to help with the collection today, and as I walked to the front of the church to start the collection I just kept thinking, “The whole heavenly host is watching me right now.” The two chief moments, though, were when we were confessing our sins through the Confiteor and when father was praying Eucharistic Canon I. The former is as follows. We recite it in Latin but here is the English translation:

I confess to almighty God, and to you brethren, for I have sinned exceedingly by thought, word, work and omission, by my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault. Therefore I ask blessed Mary the ever Virgin, all the angels and saints and you brethren, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

And here are the relevant sections of the Eucharistic Canon I. They are from the beginning and the ending of the Canon respectively:

In union with the whole Church we honor Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God. We honor Joseph, her husband, the apostles and martyrs Peter and Paul, Andrew, (James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude; we honor Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian) and all the saints. May their merits and prayers grant us your constant help and protection.

For ourselves, too, we ask some share in the fellowship of your apostles and martyrs, with John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, (Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia) and all the saints.

I just kept thinking to myself, “We are in the company of these holy ones.” All Mass’s are good, but I haven’t had one like today’s in a while.

The Mosaic Law and the Cult of the Saints: Understanding Development

As my discernment of conversion brings three categories to light – faith & reason, faith & history, and faith & culture – I am brought back to the cult of the saints, specifically the belief that we can request the intercession of heavenly Christians. For me, it is clear that the New Testament writers do not express this belief. On the contrary, there are significant discrepancies between their understandings and the post-apostolic belief in the intercession of the saints. One of these discrepancies is captured in the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Apparently they were worried that their Christian dead may have missed the resurrection. In response to this the Apostle Paul writes:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thess 4:13-18; ESV)

a people of faith, the Spirit, and culture

I was talking with my wife the other day about the thoughts I expressed in my recent blog entry Continuing a Way of Life and Knowing, about how in the early Church the primary means of knowledge did not come by diagramming the Greek text of Paul, but rather the “life of the Church,” of which exegesis, be it allegorical, typological or literary, was only a part. I wondered with her what the Reformation implied and implies about this early Christian life. And I do mean life, by the way. Early Christianity was not a time of great Christian intellectuals logically drawing out implications for definitive propositions of the Church. For example, there was no question of, “Does the Bible teach that we can request intercession of the heavenly saints?” There was a phenomenon of the miraculous teaching that you could request the intercession of the saints!

I wonder if “Mexican Catholicism” is perhaps the best contemporary example of what the early Church might have looked like and operated, in that it shows quite clearly the interrelationship between faith, ethnicity, society, popular belief, etc. And to get an idea of how radical the Reformation was/is, I ask myself what it would look if Christian scholars began ”sanitizing” “Mexican Catholicism.” All kinds of critical questions would be asked: How old are those beliefs? What are the origins? Does anybody know why you people do this? And what’s the point of that? Who started this tradition? What are the sources? Are there any texts? What would result is a hacking away of beliefs and practices, and in the end the people would be told that the Spirit of God is not the One who has nurtured this life of theirs for centuries, but that these various beliefs and practices are corruptions. What is authentic and reliable are these few ancient texts that the scholars have recovered andput into good critical translations. 

It seems to me that this is what the Reformation did to Roman Christianity. Forget the academic and hierarchical aspects, and focus on the people. The Reformation declared to an entire people that their living faith and all of its fruits (e.g., the cult of saints and the Virgin, pilgrimages, Eucharistic adoration, feast days, etc.) had not been guided by the Spirit. But this says something about the relationship between faith and culture, I think. The Reformation says something about faith and culture. Protestants must make sure that their cultural manifestations don’t become like that of Roman Catholics. Protestant culture must be intellectually informed. As opposed to a Roman Catholic being able to recite the Hail Mary at the drop of a dime, a Protestant must be able to quote a Bible verse; as opposed to a Roman Catholic who can tell you where the major pilgrimage sites are (e.g., Lourdes), a Protestant must be able to explain the map at the back of their Bible; as opposed to a Roman Catholic who has a medal bearing the image of their patron saint, a Protestant has a “WWJD” bracelet; as opposed to a Roman Catholic locating feast days on the calendar, a Protestant can locate books of the Bible. 

This is not an argument for or against Roman Catholics or Protestants. It is an inescapable observation. It does highlight, I think, the radicalness of the Reformation. It does require that further exploration be done in the area of faith, the Spirit and culture.