Choosing the better part

Reading: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15:2-5; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

Today's readings contain a lot. It's one of those Sundays when perhaps the readings are too rich, too deep, too full. Both the Old Testament reading and the Gospel feature a meal. Both feature service and preparation of the meal. Of course, since it is the source and summit of our faith, this quite naturally and rightly prompts some thoughts about the Eucharist.

In our Gospel, the one serving complains to the Lord about her sister who is just sitting there, listening to Him. Jesus gives a beautiful "No" to Martha's request that He tell Mary to get up and go help her. He says no by pointing out that Mary has chosen the better thing to do and that He won't deprive her of it. In other words, He isn't going to tell Mary "Get up and go help your sister." Prayer and contemplation matter greatly.

Christian worship and service should be rooted in prayer and contemplation. The fact prayer and contemplation are often not the wellspring of liturgy and ministry is as obvious as it is sad. The Lord Himself gives us the priority. Wheher you're comfortable with it or not, the Lord calls you to have deeply personal relationship with Him.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Johannes Vermeer, 1655

By the very nature of our vocation, deacons are Marthas. In fact, both times the word "serving" appears in verse 40 of the tenth chapter of Luke, it is a translation of the Greek verb meaning "to deacon," that is, "to serve" (first diakonian- literally Martha was "pulled about through service" and diakonein- literally her sister "left" Martha to be the only one "serving").

It's easy when serving as deacon of the Mass to get caught up in what needs to be done, ensuring what needs to happen happens when its supporse to happen, etc., while trying to stay a step ahead. Even so, how a deacon moves, when he moves, the body labguage of his movement should reflect a genuine diaconal spirituality, which, like any genuinely Christian spiriuality, must be rooted in prayer.

Because we live a culture and society that values doing over being all of us Marthas virtually all the time. This is one reason why the practice of lectio divina is vitally important. For deacons, along with Liturgy of the Hours, the Holy Rosary, and the Examen, lectio divina is a vital spirtual discipline.

In my view, especially reflecting on Eucharist and prayer, the key phrase from today's readings is found neither in the Gospel nor in the reading Genesis, Rather, it is found in our reading from Colossians: "Christ in you." Not only is Christ in you (in me) "the hope for glory," it is "the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past." It is this mystery all Christians are called to reveal through our lives.

Christ comes to be in you (in me) by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is precisely why Jesus ascended and then sent the Spirit. Otherwise, He could be close to you but not in you. Before the Lord comes to be present in you through your reception of the Holy Communion, He makes Himself present in you aurally by the proclamation of Sacred Scripture. The Word is to become flesh in and through you and me. This is what makes the Church Christ's Body.

"I hope he don't hate us..."

It's Friday. Am I in love? A strange phrase that, "in love." What does it really mean to say "I am in love?" Perhaps, more to the point, what can it mean to say that?

What is love? This gets back to a familiar theme, namely that the English word "love" bears a lot of weight. Frankly, too much. Again, as my readers know Greek has four words to express different aspects this one word.

Of course, we have English words for those Greek words: for philia friendship; for eros, well, eros or erotic, which, in English, tends to be used synonymously for sex or sexual, for agape selflessness, for storge, familial love.

The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

As a Christian, I believe God- who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- is love.This not, however, reversible. Love is not God. Nonetheless, this is often reversed and to ill effect and bad affect.

Because God is triune, He is love, a relational, self-giving love. God is, in a word, agape.

So, yes, I am in love, always in love. It is inescapable, try as I might to evade or avoid. Evasion and avoidance, like the original people in the garden who, after eating the forbidden fruit, tried to hide. God doesn't seek me in order to punish me. God seeks me to love me. You know what? Sometimes I would prefer punishment.

I heard something recently that struck me. A brother deacon was talking about his experience of Christ during low ebbs, during sinful times in his life. He said that it was amazing to let the Lord "love me through it." He leaned into Christ instead of hiding in the shadows of guilt and shame.

It is unavoidable, you are in God's love. It is marvelous, revelatory to revel in the love of God given us in Christ, which is the work of the Holy Spirit. To live in the awareness of God's love is to live in reality.

Sometimes I don't know if it's harder to let myself be loved than it is to love others. But then, the one necessarily precedes the other. I am not sure I am capable of loving if I don't first experience being loved.

It's very much the case that sometimes I don't want to be loved. Even worse, there are times that being loved kind of upsets me. Beyond that there are times when I want to be "loved" in a manner of my own choosing, which is a stance utterly at odds with love. It's an attempt to take when love can only be received.

Because I suck at relationships I realize the miracle performed by those who keep loving me. It's amazing. I am making peace with the fact that I am not a example of loving well but only of being loved and I am not really great at that either.

Being loved is as risky as loving. In the catechesis for his first General Audience the day before yesterday, Pope Leo taught on the Parable of the Sower found in Saint Matthew's Gospel. He said this, which very much resonated with me, even more than his exposition of Van Gogh's painting of the sower:

We are used to calculating things – and at times it is necessary – but this does not apply in love! The way in which this “wasteful” sower throws the seed is an image of the way God loves us. Indeed, it is true that the destiny of the seed depends also on the way in which the earth welcomes it and the situation in which it finds itself, but first and foremost in this parable Jesus tells us that God throws the seed of his Word on all kinds of soil, that is, in any situation of ours: at times we are more superficial and distracted, at times we let ourselves get carried away by enthusiasm, sometimes we are burdened by life’s worries, but there are also times when we are willing and welcoming. God is confident and hopes that sooner or later the seed will blossom. This is how he loves us: he does not wait for us to become the best soil, but he always generously gives us his word. Perhaps by seeing that he trusts us, the desire to be better soil will be kindled in us. This is hope, founded on the rock of God’s generosity and mercy.

I probably could've just posted that. It's useful for me to work through all of this. I pray there may be some value in it for you, too, dear reader.

Our Friday traditio is Pixies singing their song "The Vegas Suite" I think it kind of gets to our tendency to evade and avoid, inescapability, etc.

Koinonia: One God, three persons

The end of our second reading is from the conclusion of Saint Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians. Koinonia is the Greek word translated in the New American Bible as "fellowship." Fellowship is a very weak translation of koinonia. What word would work better, you might ask? Easy. "Communion" is a much better translation.

This word can serve as a link between today's Solemnity and our observance next week of Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. You see, all this talk of being transformed, of sharing in the divine nature, of being reborn in baptism as children of Father, through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit matters. It isn't, or at least shouldn't be, just a bunch of abstract twaddle. God, who is a tri-unity of persons, is koinonia. The Church, then too, is to be koinonia.

I'll be really honest. I don't think many people, at least in so-called "advanced" countries, experience the Church as kononia. This isn't just sad. It is catastrophic when the Church fails to be what she is meant to be. Because most Catholics tend to prioritize divine unity over God's revealed tri-unity, which really amounts to a kind of material modalism, most Christians remain, in the words of Karl Rahner, "mere monotheists." Mere monotheism has practical consequences. It tends to result in mistaking strict doctrinal conformity with unity. Conformity can't tolerate diversity.

Strictly policed conformity is not unity. Genuine communion, genuine community, real koinonia doesn't just tolerate or accept diversity, it positively requires it! Just look at the filoque, the phrase inserted very late into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed that asserts that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father "and the Son" (filoque means "and the Son"). At least for Roman Catholics, acceptance of the filoque is not grounds for not being communion.

Because whether one believes the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the Father only is very fundamental, it usually results in quite different doctrinal and even practical differences. Both are Trinitarian. This is the signicance of hearing what the apostle wrote a few decades after Jesus' resurrection concerning even an very early Christian understanding of God and of the Church.

The essence of koinonia, as our Gospel reading shows is self-sacrificing love. In the New Testament, especially in the Johannine corpus (i.e., the Gospel According to Saint John along with the first, second, and third letters of John), including our Gospel for today, the Greek word agape is used. Just as the essence of koinonia is agape, the essence of agape is kenosis. Kenosis is the ordinary Greek verb for emptying. In this context, it means emptying yourself out of love.

I realize this is a quite dense reflection. But I hope it is not abstract. On the contrary, I hope it is very concrete.

Next Sunday's Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is not a celebration of the consecrated species. It is a celebration of what our communion makes us: the Body of Christ. Theologically, I am going with the late Jesuit theologian Henri DeLubac. In some of his work in historical theology, DeLubac noted that over several centuries there was a slow reversal in what was meant by Christ's "mystical" body (i.e., corpus mysticum) and his "true" body (i.e., verum Corpus). On this view, the Church in her members is the verum corpus and the mystically transformed bread and wine are the Lord's mystical Body.

Either way, koinonia created by agape made real by kenosis is what it's all about. If not this, then you must content yourself with abstract twaddle.

What I am trying to get across is stated well in our scripture reading for Evening Prayer on this Solemnity:

Strive to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were called to one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:3-6- New American Bible translation differs slightly from the one in the Liturgy of the Hours)

Die again. Die better.

Reading: Ezk 37:12-14; Ps 130:1-8; Rom 8:8-11; John 11:1-15

There is something in today's very long Gospel reading that is easy to miss. It's something I noticed a few years ago. So now, it jumps out at me each time I read it. This something happens in the middle of the drama of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This something is said by Thomas, the same Thomas who refuses to believe in the resurrection lest he not only see but feel and touch the Risen Lord's wounds.

What Thomas says after Jesus tells his disciples (in John's Gospel there are no apostles, only disciples) they are going to back to Judea, thus overriding their concerns about Jesus' and likely their own safety: "Let us also go to die with him." It is important to notice that, in our Gospel passage, Thomas makes reference only to dying, not to rising. Jesus' own dying is very present in this passage. I think especially here in the United States, we long for a Christianity sans the cross. Christianity without the cross is something other than Christianity.

Who is the "him" to whom Thomas refers? Is it Lazarus? Is it Jesus? It may be a reference to the previous observation that Jesus left Judea because he was in danger of being stoned to death, an intimation of what awaits him on his return south. Or perhaps Thomas is referring to Lazarus' death. It isn't important to resolve this ambiguity because Lazarus will, presumably, die again and, moreover, Jesus is going to die, really die, not only seem to die, as some docetic accounts, like the one in Qu'ran, understand it (see Surah 4:157).

Not exactly a denial of death, but a desired denial or at least deferral of death is present in this reading. Martha and then Mary rebuke Jesus, telling him that if he'd bothered to come as soon as he heard of Lazarus' condition he could've and, they presume, would've spared him death. What Jesus is trying to teach both his befuddled closest disciples as well as Mary and Martha is the necessity of dying in order to really live.

Our persistent dualism, which is gnostic (i.e., very human), is a big reason why we either deny the body or, as tends to be more often the case, diminish it. We seem to prefer, like good Platonists, the exaltation of some inchoate spirit over and against brute materiality. In our reading from the apostle's Letter to the Romans, when we read or hear the word "flesh," it is not just important but vital to grasp that Paul here is not referring to the body.

Lazarus! Come Out! by Tony O’Connell

In Koine Greek the word we translate as "body" is soma. In this passage, Saint Paul uses sarki, the appropriate form of the noun sarx, which comes into the New Testament in English as "flesh." Far from referring to the soft tissue attached to our bones, sarx in the New Testament refers to our "animal" nature, our instinctive drives and reactions- those things contrary to the fruits of God's Spirit. In verses 10-11 of our reading from Romans the body, soma is evoked. Sarx brings death to the soma and God's Spirit gives the body life.

Once again, love, agape, is the operative term. Jesus loved Lazarus. It was nothing but the power of his love that restored Lazarus to life. Sarx brings death. God's Spirit brings life. Jesus doesn't just talk a lot of waffle about dying to live and yadda, yadda. He undertakes this passage himself, out of love for you, an even higher love than he exhibits for Lazarus in this pericope.

Could it be that Thomas, like us, knows what it is to die but not to really live? Like Jesus's closest disciples, we don't fully grasp what it is to rise, or even to die. To employ a familiar cliché, we seem to revel in putting the cart (rising) before the horse (dying). What it means to truly die is not merely, or even really, accepting a biological given. We must resist the temptation of wanting to rise without first dying, lest our perceived rising bypasses death and is only a short-lived resusitcation, not resurrection.

What about Lazarus? Do you think after being brought back from the dead he lived life differently? Presumably, Lazarus would go on to die again. Did he die better?

Today's Collect is a nearly perfect summary of today's readings in the reality it expresses:

By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
your Son handed himself over to death

Thankful on/for a Friday

This time next week I'll be 56. It's hard to believe. I read something recently that pointed out that as many years have passed from 1980 to 2021 and as passed between 1939 and 1980. Forty-one years, to be exact. As I suppose it was intended to do, it kind of put things into perspective. Just wow!

So, it is November, which kicks off with the liturgical festival of All Saints/All Souls. I guess most of us are predisposed to having some kind of affinity with our birth months. My favorite seasons of the year are the transitional seasons: Spring and Fall. I also realize that without Winter and Summer the transitional seasons would be impossible. October here along the Wasatch Front was lovely. November, so far, has been nice too.

Yesterday I read through the draft of the USCCB's much-discussed document on the Eucharist. Given the focus and content, I am still not sure why such a document is necessary. In the beginning, the focus seems to be the importance of participation in the Eucharistic celebration. This is a theme worthy of being developed. Sadly, it isn't developed very much.

I love the Eucharist. I love Mass. Grasping the centrality of the Eucharist, which is the font from which the Church and all her activities should flow, is important. It bears repeating and reinforcing in creative and imaginative ways, attending to the audience and the context.

While the document does cite the Second Vatican Council, including its call for full, active, and conscious participation in the Mass, when discussing Christ's Real Presence, the document does not invoke what I take to be one of central sections of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy [Sacrosanctum Concilium], section 7:

To accomplish so great a work, Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, "the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross", but especially under the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20) .

Christ indeed always associates the Church with Himself in this great work wherein God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified. The Church is His beloved Bride who calls to her Lord, and through Him offers worship to the Eternal Father.

Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members.

From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree.

Instead, the document focuses on Christ present in the consecrated elements, making use of the language of substance, which, while not surprising, kind of misses the boat for a lot of people, especially since most people don't "have" a metaphysics of substance- everyone has a metaphysics, an idea about how creation and even reality work. It would be refreshing at some point to recognize that perhaps the only convincing "proof" that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ are lives of those who partake of it. This can be done without completely sacrificing the old ex opere operato nature of the sacrament (i.e., the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood whether you believe it or not). Of course, faith must be operative if participation in the Eucharist is to give the life of a Christian shape and form.

Given the language and overall presentation, I am unclear to whom this document is addressed. But, then, not being a bishop, I will defer to their collective judgment about what is pastorally required in the present moment. I think, given the rather anodyne nature of the document, I am quite certain it will pass with the required 2/3rds majority. For those who might be interested, here is a link to the draft document. Here is a link to Msgr. Kevin Irwin's take on the draft. Finally, theologian Deacon Fritz Bauerschmidt's reponse to Msgr. Irwin's article.

Because I am a sucker for a choir and because today is a beautiful day that finds me feeling rather upbeat, our Friday traditio is a very cool choral version of The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love."

Ephesians 5, marriage, & fundamental equality of spouses

Reading: Ephesians 5:21-32

For my reflection on the readings for his Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, I am going to focus on the New Testament reading from the Letter to the Ephesians. My guess is that whoever preached at your parish this weekend probably passed over this reading in silence. If the preacher didn't ignore it, he may have made a slight allusion to it to bolster a point. Of course, there is the possibility that it was misunderstood and then communicated in an inaccurate and less than helpful way. In my view, this is one of those lectionary passages for which it is important to use to the extended version. Understandably, the repetitive use of the English word "subordination" is disconcerting for a lot of people, women especially but some men, too, including me.

The first thing to point out is that Ephesians is generally not considered to be one of the seven authentically Pauline letters. In other words, the scholarly consensus, with some notable exceptions, holds that this letter was not written by Saint Paul himself. Hence, it is considered a deutero-Pauline composition. "Deutero," in Greek, means "second," as in Deutero-Canonical books. The Deutero-Canonical books are those books held by Catholics, Orthodox, and some Protestants to be inspired and so are considered scriptural. These books, such as Sirach, Judith, Baruch, Tobit, etc., are not recognized as belonging to scripture by many Christians.

Because they were indisputably written later than the rest of what Christians call the "Old Testament" and written mostly in Greek, not Hebrew, these books are called by those who hold them to be inspired as a "second canon." In the same way, the deutero-Pauline letters were perhaps written by followers of Paul but not the apostle himself. However, Christians agree that these deutero-Pauline letters are inspired and so belong in the Bible. For Christians, Ephesians and the other deutero-Pauline letters are scriptural.

Some would suggest that the passage from Ephesians that constitutes today's New Testament reading is proof that this letter was not written by Saint Paul. Judging from those letters universally held to be written by the apostle himself, when compared with the passage under consideration, Paul, it would seem, had a more egalitarian and less hierarchical view of marriage and family than what we find in Ephesians.

This passage from the fifth chapter of Ephesians, along with others both in Ephesians and in other of the deutero-Pauline letters, seems to be derived somewhat from (Greco-)Roman household codes. This particular passage, it could be also be argued, departs somewhat from authentically Pauline Christology and ecclesiology. Nonetheless, the passage is built on a foundation of an egalitarian understanding of marriage.

The Church's current Code of Canon Law recognizes the equality of spouses: "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life..." (Canon 1055 §1). Partners are equals.

Similarly, the passage from Ephesians that concerns us starts with this exhortation: "Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph 5:21). The word translated from Greek into English by the phrase "Be subordinate to" transliterates as hupotassomenoi. Indeed, it means "to be subject to." Foundationally then, for Christians and Christian spouses subordination is mutual. The rest of the passage seeks to explain how this mutual subordination works for the purpose of making an analogy.

In what follows, it would seem that the inspired author places a greater burden on the husband than on the wife. In considering this passage, we must never lose sight of how it is that Christ leads the Church. He leads us kenotically, that is, in a self-emptying and selfless way, not in a domineering tin-pot dictator, do-what-I-say, my-way-or-the-highway kind of way. To relate, let alone lead, in any other way is a rejection of the fundamental equality mutual subordination for Christ's sake requires of Christians and Christian spouses.

In this context, it also seems important to point out that the phrase "he himself the savior of the body" refers to Christ, not to the husband in this passage. Now, the husband is to give himself wholly to his wife in imitation of Christ. But our imitation, even when sincerely attempted, is only ever a pale imitation of Christ and, while it can perhaps faciliate salvation, is not ultimately efficacious for salvation. Only Christ's passion, death, and resurrection saves our bodies and our souls.

Jumping to the end of the passage, I think there are two additional things worth noting. First, is that the inspired author explicitly cited what I call the Ur verse in scripture regarding marriage. It is the same verse invoked by Jesus in his disputation about marriage and divorce in the parallel passages found in Mark 10:1-12 and Matthew 19:1-12. The Ur verse is Genesis 2:24: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body." What always strikes me about this verse is that it seems to assume that the woman is already prepared to receive the man and that it is the man who might otherwise lack the maturity and perhaps the strength to leave his parents.

Secondly, our Ephesians passage ends with the inspired author admitting that what he is trying to describe "is a great mystery" (Eph 5:32). Words always fall short of the mystery. What the author attempted is a description of Christ's relation to the Church using marriage as an analogy. Analogies, as they say, always limp. Take any analogy (i.e., x is like y) and if you pull the thread far enough the similarity disappears and you are left with two dissimilar things. To say something is like something else is not to assert an identity (i.e., x is y or vice-versa) but seeking to identify similarities for the purpose of giving an example of something that might otherwise result in lack of comprehension. Therefore, along with any similarities, an analogy also implies from the get-go some dissimilarities.

At least from a Catholic perspective, Christian marriage is intended to be a sacramental (i.e., visible and tangible) sign of Christ's relationship to his bride, the Church. When people (Christian and non-Christian alike) see married Christians- how they relate to each other, how they relate to others, the tone and tenor of their household, etc.- it should give the observer a concrete idea- albeit one that falls short of the reality to which is points as a sign- of Christ's commitment to the Church. This brings us back to the necessity of that fundamental equality of spouses.

The suitability of words for Word of God Sunday

The question I pondered yesterday was the suitability of words to convey what really matters, or even to hand on anything at all. It just so happens, that this Sunday, the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, is for Roman Catholics throughout the world, Word of God Sunday. And so, it is appropriate to look at the usefulness of words from a different perspective, the perspective of the scriptures.

Christians call the collection of texts we believe to be inspired "the Bible." "Bible," of course, simply means "book." Referencing 2 Timothy 3:16, the scriptures are described as θεόπνευστος- theopneustos, that is, "God-breathed."

It is important to note that Christians don't read the Bible in the same way many Muslims read the Qu'ran or how many Jewish people read the Tor'ah. This is just to say that for Christians, the Bible is not a rulebook. This reminded me of a remark made by Reverend Lovejoy on a long-ago aired episode of The Simpsons. Picking up a Bible, he said something like, "According to this thing, we're not even supposed to go to the bathroom." Yes, this is funny. It is even funnier when taken as a satire of how many people, Christians and non-Christians, who think like this concerning the Bible. Oh, you might be relieved to know that nowhere in the Bible is the morality of relieving yourself called into question.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, in order to discover the applicability of the sacred text for our lives, it is first necessary to understand the words not only in their context but in the milieux in which they written (see Dei Verbum, sec. 12). Failure to do this is catastrophic for faith and, therefore, for the Church.

An easy example can be found in our Gospel for this Sunday, taken from the first chapter of Saint Mark's Gospel. It is Mark's account of the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. In a mere twenty verses, the inspired author takes us through John the Baptist's ministry, Jesus's baptism by John and subsequent forty days in the desert, he Baptist's arrest by Herod, the beginning of the Lord's public ministry in his native Galilee, and the calling of one-third of the Twelve. The author of Mark captures Jesus of Nazareth's message in a mere fifteen Greek words: Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ (Mark 15, Nestle 1904 New Testament Greek New Testament).

Those Greek words and, backing up to the beginning of Mark 1:15, three more words, translate into English as something like: "The proper time has been fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has drawn near; change your hearts and have faith in the good tidings" (David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation, 64). Perhaps a more literal translation of the phrase "in the good tidings," or "in the good news," is "in the well-message." Jesus brings and is the message of well-being, of wholeness, of communion.

But the aspect I want to focus on is that of repentance. "Repent" in Mark 1:15 is the Greek word πιστεύετε, which transliterates into English as metanoeite. It comes from the Greek word metanoia. While it may certainly include forsaking your sins, more accurately it means to completely transform your outlook in light of the arrival of God's Kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ. It means to see others, yourself, the world, and even God in a new light. It means to view reality according to all the factors that constitute it. This means to see things how they really are.

In the text, both repenting and believing are used in the continuous sense: "be repenting and be believing." It is also worth noting that repenting comes before believing. I think it is important to point this out because we tend to be so risk averse. We want to know, to believe, before we act. This is demonstrated in our Gospel by Peter and Andrew as well as James and John who dropped everything and followed him at his call.

Jesus is autobaselia, the Kingdom of God in person. Wherever Christ is, there is God's Kingdom. Of course, the Holy Spirit is Christ's resurrection mode of being present among, in, and through those who receive the Gospel. But God's Kingdom is never limited by boundaries human beings try to create. This was what Jesus fought very hard against in the disputations in which he engaged throughout his public ministry. This why Jesus could point to those considered to be the worst sinners in his society (i.e., prostitutes and tax collectors) and say they were closer to God's Kingdom than those who considered themselves righteous, especially those who sought to be arbiters of God's law, the ones who sought reduce God to their own measure by establishing boundaries.

In a letter to a woman who asked him if the Bible was "infallible," C.S. Lewis replied:

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read without attention to the whole nature & purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons

National NFP Awareness Week 2016

On this day forty-eight years ago, Bl. Pope Paul VI promulgated what would turn out to be the last encyclical letter of his pontificate, Humanae vitae. In observance of the promulgation of what is perhaps the best known papal encyclical in the Church's history, each year during the week that includes 25 July, is designated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as National NFP Awareness Week. As you might imagine, that such a week is observed annually is probably unknown to most Catholics and is not promoted in parishes and dioceses. These facts tell you most of what you need to know about how the Church largely avoids the whole uncomfortable issue of marital sexuality, even during marriage preparation.

Each year National NFP week has a theme. The theme for this year is Love, Mercy, Life: Natural Family Planning, Opening the Heart of Marriage. I like the theme and wish it was more developed and more widely disseminated.

The Church's principled and unwavering opposition to contraception is viewed by many Catholics, including clergy, as embarrassingly retrograde and reactive. In fact, Humanae Vitae is a very progressive document. It is progressive in a number of related ways. The encyclical addresses responsible parenthood and makes clear that Catholic couples are under no obligation to have as many children as possible par. 10). The number and spacing of children is left to the discretion of the couple. While insisting that a couple have "serious reasons," a list of which is given, for not wanting to conceive at a given time, Humanae Vitae permitted the employment of Natural Family Planning (par. 10; par. 16). Permitting the use of various methods of NFP is still frowned upon by many self-described "traditional" Catholics. The fact that key aspects of Humanae Vitae has dissenters on both sides is a pretty good indication Pope Paul was correct. It is progressive in that recognizes what is called the "unitive" aspect of sexual relations in marriage. While the unitive dimension, properly understood, cannot be separated from the procreative dimension, it is important to a healthy, happy marriage.

It's strange to me that what is really liberating is often viewed as oppressive and vice-versa. In no area of human life is this more true than human sexuality. Nearly 50 years of sexual "liberation' have taken quite a toll on innumerable lives and on our society as whole. Nearly 50 years of sexual "liberation' have taken quite a toll on innumerable lives and on our society as whole. The most difficult aspect of NFP is that if a couple, for serious reasons, determines that they are not desirous of conceiving a child for either a determinate or indeterminate period of time is that they must abstain from sexual intercourse during the fertile period of the woman's menstrual cycle. In some instances this can be quite a sacrifice, but in most cases it is not. Not only do we live at a time and in a culture when the exercise of sexual self-control is considered unhealthy repression, but sexual gratification and self-expression is seen as the highest good and the most cherished human right.

I have posted extensively on Humanae Vitae. Instead of a comprehensive list of posts, below you will find some of the highlights:

"The predictable provocations of the Pope of Rome"

"Natural Family Planning Awareness Week"

"Amos was a prophet and so was Pope Paul"

HHS mandate: Why the kerfuffle?

"The joy of NFP"

"NFP: a faithful reality check"

"The reality of the human person"

"'Not everyone can receive this saying'"

"Humane Vitae turns 40: Updated and expanded 26 July 2008"

"Humane Vitae turns 40, part II"

Above all, I encourage you to read, or re-read, as the case may be, Humanae Vitae. It isn't very long.

Cultural resistance and creative subversion

Is there a culture war? What a stupid question. It's stupid because the only appropriate answer is another question, Who cares? As a Christian I am tired of hearing about various options. I have the option to live my faith fully, which means engaging in and not running from society and culture. Hence, the only "option" I have found attractive in the least is the one whose creator told me in person he did not want it branded as an "option"- Dr Chad Pecknold's "Dominican Option". Another person whose work is starting to influence me in these matters is Dr Michael Martin. I highly recommend his book The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics.

Triumph of the Church, by Peter Paul Rubens, ca. 1625

Let's be clear, the only leaven the Lord warned His disciples to be wary of was the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Herod (Matt 16:6-12; Mark 8:14-21; Luke 12:1). While we need to avoid bad leaven (i.e., hypocrisy, condescension, and the corruption of worldly power), we are to be leaven: "He spoke to them another parable. 'The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened'" (Matt 13:33; Luke 13:20-21). There are innumerable ways to constructively engage contemporary culture. The least effective of these is by condemning it all wholesale. The fundamental issues and questions with which women and men wrestle remain perennial. As Luigi Giussani noted, it is precisely these fundamental issues and these existential questions that constitute our humanity.

You may have caught wind of the controversy surrounding the rejection of a Church of England-produced 60-second ad featuring the Lord's Prayer by Digital Cinema Media (DCM), the firm that handles advertising for Great Britain's three largest cinema chains. Neil Davenport, commenting on this rather unsurprising development for Spiked (a secular on-line publication), noted:

The banning of the Lord’s Prayer ad may seem like a minor story, but it exposes how bereft of meaning and purpose Western societies have become. The tragedy is that this uncertainty only acts as an invitation for anti-Western Islamists to pose their ideology as the principled alternative to that of decadent, hollow Europe. A nominally Christian country in which some people deem that a 60-second advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer is ‘offensive’ has surely lost the plot

So it seems that the question for us Christians is, How do we help our society regain the plot? My answer is, through culture, genuine culture, human culture, which does not prudishly ignore any aspect of reality as we experience it, or foster a bizarre, sentimental sub-culture.

As a result, our traditio for this final Friday of this Year of Grace is The Church of England's Lord's Prayer ad:

Given that I blew at least one mind by entitling a post "Eucharist as immanentized eschaton," let me note that by asserting that the Eucharist "immanentizes the eschaton," all that I was trying to say, albeit in a philosophical and alliterative way, is that in each and every Eucharist the Lord returns and the saints rejoice. In other words, when we participate in the Eucharist we participate in the wedding feast of the Lamb, in Christ's ultimate triumph. This is how the Eucharist becomes "the only place of resistance to annihilation of the human subject." In light of this, please note 2 things:

1. Resistance, despite not having the appearance of power, is not futile

2. Resistance is both joy-filled and beautiful

In the second chapter of his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, entitled "Concentration Camp," C.S. Lewis traced back to his early years at a terrible boarding school what, in time, became a major part of his contribution to helping modern Western society maintain or regain "the plot". Referring to the resistance of the boys to their awful headmaster, "Oldie," Lewis wrote,

We stood foursquare against the common enemy. I suspect that this pattern, occurring twice so early my life [the other time was his camaraderie with his brother vice their father after the death of his mother], has unduly biased my whole outlook. To this day the vision of the world which comes most naturally to me is one in which "we two" or "we few" (and in a sense "we happy few") stand together against something stronger and larger

We all know how Lewis engaged culture. He did so by engaging it creatively. Pope St John Paul II, rather than taking up arms and joining the armed resistance against the Germans after Poland was conquered, also chose cultural resistance, thus aiding his country in maintaining the plot. In addition to resisting the Nazis, the effects of this cultural resistance were strong enough to ultimately defeat Soviet-style communism more than 40 years later.

The important thing to attend to here is that Christianity, when practiced well, is a subversive force. Don't believe me? Forget Star Wars and read St Paul, a man who very clearly set out to creatively subvert the Empire- Star Wars is a very pedestrian story by comparison. One can also consider the conditions under which Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, became human. He did not become human as the emperor of Rome, Persia, or any other powerful empire, but, to borrow John P Meier's title, He became incarnate as "a marginal Jew"; a marginal member of a marginal people living under Roman occupation. Here's something simpler yet- just recite the Lord's Prayer.

Pope St John Paul II and Michel Houellebecq

I just finished Michel Houellebecq's Submission, a novel I read carefully this week, interspersed with reading Huysmans' Marthe: The Story of a Whore. After reading Houellebecq's book, I am even more convinced of that the mystery central to reality is the Incarnation, which is, indeed, the manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. I also have no problem admitting that Islam in its finest form, which is the form with which Houellebecq deals, is perhaps in some ways better suited to worldly dominance than is Christianity. While it can be and has been used as a form social control, such a use is fundamentally at odds with the nature of Christianity.

Houellebecq grasps something very fundamental, something we see playing out in the Church right now in a big way in the wake of the Synod on the Family. It is a diagnosis that the author of Submission gives in a parenthetical note towards the end of the book, as his main character, François, summarizes an article written by one Robert Rediger:

liberal individualism triumphed as long as it undermined intermediate structures such as nations, corporations, castes [the Church, as Houellebecq describes a few pages later], but when it attacked that ultimate social structure, the family, and thus the birthrate, it signed its own death warrant...

Michel Houellebecq

Here is what Houellebecq writes concerning the Church a few pages later, as François contemplates the reasons for René Guénon's conversion to Islam:

Thanks to the simpering seductions and the lewd enticements of the progressives, the Church had lost its ability to oppose moral decadence, to renounce homosexual marriage, abortion rights, and women in the work place

In this Houellebecq can be read as echoing, certainly not exactly, Pope St John Paul II. Unlike Houellebecq's take on gender relations according to Islam, John Paul II, while firmly insisting on the difference and complementarity of men and women, asserted a fundamental equality of persons.

In his 1994 Letter to Families, Papa Wojtyla observed:

No human society can run the risk of permissiveness in fundamental issues regarding the nature of marriage and the family! Such moral permissiveness cannot fail to damage the authentic requirements of peace and communion among people. It is thus quite understandable why the Church vigorously defends the identity of the family and encourages responsible individuals and institutions, especially political leaders and international organizations, not to yield to the temptation of a superficial and false modernity...

Pope St John Paul II

This kind of critical reflection should lead our society, which certainly contains many positive aspects on the material and cultural level, to realize that, from various points of view, it is a society which is sick and is creating profound distortions in man. Why is this happening? The reason is that our society has broken away from the full truth about man, from the truth about what man and woman really are as persons. Thus it cannot adequately comprehend the real meaning of the gift of persons in marriage, responsible love at the service of fatherhood and motherhood, and the true grandeur of procreation and education

Stated pointedly, there's more at stake than many people realize.

In light of this, our Friday traditio is a repeat- Paul Young singing "Love of the Common People":

Sketching the antinomy of the anatomies of heaven and hell

In my post "Metaphysical dialectics vs Sophiology" I linked to something I posted nearly six years ago on Catherine Breiallt's film Anatomie de l’enfer (i.e., "The Anatomy of Hell"), a movie based on her novel Pornocratie: "Opposing God to nature: the denial of the ontologically obvious."

Today as I organized my den I uncovered the composition notebook I was using back in 2009, one in which I took notes on Breiallt's film. Anatomie de l’enfer is a very sexually explicit movie. The male star, in fact, is none other than controversial pornographic actor and director Rocco Siffredi. Because of this I don't necessarily recommend the movie. Due to the nature of the film I give fair warning here that what follows in this post is not for everyone. It is rather more prosaic "take" on what I took up in my "sophiological" post on Saturday:

The woman, taking an unused tampon from the box, say, referring to her "period" - "We make such a big deal of it." Then, referring to the tampon, she says, "See the space it takes up and one can't even feel it?" The same space as most human penises. Proof that intercourse the act isn't what matters, but its meaning."

My question in response to this was, "Don't act and meaning go together? Can they be separated? We tend to focus on act w/out meaning, but where there is no act there cannot even be the possibility of meaning."

A still from Breiallt's Anatomie de l’enfer

Taking the wrapping off the tampon, she says, "Look. There's a whole device to make it look complex. So one can insert it without touching one's self, keeping one's virginity intact without exploring one's genitals while inserting the tampon." She goes on to describe it as being like giving herself an injection, "As if to staunch a wound that is painful and highly sensitive."

Here's what I wrote: "Pain of childbearing, a wound a alienation between woman and man?- She says the whole operation is laughable [Chesterton made a similar observation- he was wrong, as is "Woman" in Breiallt's film- sex is beautiful. I'll stick with Wojtyla's Theology of the Body, which has been badly exploited by some Catholics to point of being almost unrecognizable], but she can't laugh because "it foretells of something terrifying that lurks in the brain of whoever designed and put his servile signature on this infamous thing. A man for sure."

Reflecting on all of this again six years later in the aftermath of reading Lewis' Perelandra, I see even more clearly that the line between awful and awesome, the line between exhilarating and terrifying, is quite thin.

The Garden of Eden, by Marc Chagall

God qua God is not a man: "God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par 239). Just as we know that God is a tri-unity of persons only because God has revealed this to us, so we know that God, while being the source of femininity and masculinity, transcends both gender and sex:

God created mankind in his image;
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them (Gen 1:27)

Because we're creatures it is impossible for us to transcend either gender or sex. Our attempts to do so flow from the original sin, which is to displace God and put either ourselves, or our idols, which are nothing but our distorted self-projections, in God's place. In attempting such a transcendence we not only reject our creaturliness, but our very selves. Self-alienation is perhaps the most pernicious effect of the primordial sin.

Too often we misread the story of the fall and see the alienation, the breaking of communion between God and humanity, between human beings, and between humanity and nature, as not only being the woman's fault, but as having something to do with sexual temptation. Contra Springsteen, Eve did not tempt Adam "with her pink Cadillac." If we allow the Creation narratives to maintain their integrity we see that there was sex in the garden before the fall. While I hesitate to write posts like this one, it is well beyond time that we put sound theology into dialogue with contemporary culture precisely through culture to set forth an anatomy of heaven.

Cardinal O'Malley on ordination

There seems to be a lot of uproar this morning about something Cardinal Seán O'Malley said last night in his lengthy 60 Minutes interview with Nora O'Donnell in his response to her question about why the Church does not and cannot ordain women. Given the cultural climate in which we live, it is an inevitable question for any prelate during such a high-profile interview.

Cardinal O'Malley with Nora O'Donnell

O'Donnell posed her question in a provocative manner, asking, if it wasn't immoral to exclude women from the Church's hierarchy. Cardinal Seán, as he likes to be called, replied simply: "Christ would never ask us to do something immoral. It’s a matter of vocation and what God has given to us." He went on to say something far more important: "Not everyone needs to be ordained to have an important role in the life of the Church." This is not only true, but very important, even vital for the Church.  Cardinal Seán's answer hints at something many of us have sought to point out over and over: the fundamental sacrament of the Christian life, the sacrament by which we are infused with divine life, born again as sons and daughters of God, is baptism, not orders. One of the greatest points of emphasis for the Second Vatican Council was the importance of Baptism, the retrieval of what it means to be baptized.

There should be no consternation over something else Cardinal O'Malley said: "If I were founding a church, I’d love to have women priests. But Christ founded it, and what he has given us is something different." If this is not your answer and you would not ordain women, if you were founding a church, then fine, you have an honest disagreement with Cardinal O'Malley about a matter that for us, as Catholics, is purely hypothetical in the most abstract sense.

I do not agree that His Eminence's answer was imprudent. On the contrary, I think it was highly prudent. His response shows two things. First, that it is not rank sexism and a commitment to inequality that keeps the Church from ordaining women. Second, it demonstrates, yet again, something the late Carlo Cardinal Martini wrote in response to the question "Why not women priests?", posed to him in his book-length dialogue with Umberto Eco, published in English under the title Belief or Non-Belief: A Confrontation- "The Church does not fulfill expectations, it celebrates mysteries."

In my view, the trouble with too many people is that they see what God has actually done in history as the only possibility and so attempt to confer on all of God's actions a kind of necessity God never intended them to have. Take the old question, Was it necessary for God to save us by means of Jesus' passion and death? Another question, Why is it necessary to go to confession? Is God not able to normatively pardon us and freshly infuse us with sanctifying grace in some other way? More fundamentally, the question I have pondered in my previous two posts- Does being a Christian give us an answer concerning creation that eliminates its mystery? By saying God does not do everything out of any necessity I only mean God could have done things differently, but, in His providence, He did not. What God has chosen to do remains definitive and binding. In other words, as Cardinal O'Malley intimated, we can't simply choose to do things differently simply because there are different ways of doing them, even some ways that have an attractive rationale.

The question, "Why does the Church not ordain women?", goes to the great mystery of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the only begotten Son of the Father, becoming a human being as a male. There is a deep logic, but it's what we might call a theo-logic (along with an aesthetic and drama), to the divine plan of redemption.

Adoration of the Children, 1620, byGerard (Gerrit) van Honthorst)

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" (Gal 4:4-6)

Let's not get bogged down in ideology. His Eminence's statement was not an ideological one.

The validity of marriage and presence or absence of faith

In an interview I did with Karee Santos for her article on the Instrumentum Laboris for the upcoming Extraordinary Synod on the Family, “Synod on the Family: A Preview of Coming Attractions,” I mentioned the possibility of gauging a couple’s faith in the manner it is supposed to be gauged when parents request to have an infant or small child baptized, that is, seek to establish that there is a well-founded hope that the couple will practice the Catholic religion prior marrying in the Church. While I agree with the concern expressed by canon lawyer Aldean Hendrickson concerning my suggestion, that “personal faith is a very difficult thing to measure,” I would simply note that we are already asked to measure, not perhaps so much personal faith, as the personal practice of and commitment to the faith, in the case of parents requesting the baptism of infants and small children under normal circumstances (i.e., in cases it is not an emergency- in an emergency, a case of life-and-death, we baptize).

It bears noting that in most situations this canonical requirement is considered to be met by the mere fact that one or both of the parents request baptism for their child, even if there is no discernible evidence, or expressed intention, of raising their child in the practice of the faith. Of course, baptism is not to be denied, but it may prudently be delayed in an effort to help the parents fulfill the promises they make when having their child baptized. It seems to me that often no effort is made to press them on points such as having completed their own Christian initiation, the frequency of Mass attendance, or reception of the Sacrament of Penance, or even being married in the Church.

Gerhard Cardinal Müller, the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a recent book-length interview, to be published in English by Ignatius Press with the title The Hope of the Family: A Dialogue with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, addressed this issue. Before considering Cardinal Müller’s words, I think it is important to note that this concern was brought to the fore by Pope Benedict in a January 2013 speech he delivered the Roman Rota. In that speech, the then-Pontiff said

The indissoluble pact between a man and a woman does not, for the purposes of the sacrament, require of those engaged to be married, their personal faith; what it does require, as a necessary minimal condition, is the intention to do what the Church does. However, if it is important not to confuse the problem of the intention with that of the personal faith of those contracting marriage, it is nonetheless impossible to separate them completely. As the International Theological Commission observed in a Document of 1977: “Where there is no trace of faith (in the sense of the term ‘belief’ — being disposed to believe), and no desire for grace or salvation is found, then a real doubt arises as to whether there is the above-mentioned and truly sacramental intention and whether in fact the contracted marriage is validly contracted or not” (La dottrina cattolica sul sacramento del matrimonio [Propositions on the Doctrine of Christian Marriage] [1977], 2.3: Documenti 1969-2004, Vol. 13, Bologna 2006, p. 145)

In a lengthy excerpt from Cardinal Müller’s interview provided by Sandro Magister on Chiesa, His Eminence, after he strongly re-asserted the dogmatic (i.e., unchangeable) nature of the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, which is nothing other than the teaching of Jesus Christ (Matt 19:1-12; Mark 10:1-12), he began to speak in an authentically pastoral manner. The assertion of the dogmatic nature concerning the indissolubility of marriage “does not,” he insists

prevent one from speaking of the problem of the validity of many marriages in the current secularized context. We have all witnessed marriages in which it was not very clear if the contracting parties really intended to “do what the Church does” in the rite of marriage. Benedict XVI made insistent appeals to reflect on the great challenge represented by no believing baptized persons. As a result, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith took note of the pope's concern and put a good number of theologians and other collaborators to work in order to resolve the problem of the relationship between explicit and implicit faith.

What happens when even implicit faith is absent from a marriage? When this is lacking, of course, even if the marriage has been celebrated “libere et recte," it could be invalid. This leads us to maintain that, in addition to the classical criteria for declaring the invalidity of marriage, there must be further reflection on the case in which the spouses exclude the sacramental nature of marriage. Currently we are in a phase of study, of serene but tenacious reflection on this point. I do not think it is appropriate to jump to conclusions, since we have not yet found the solution, but this does not prevent me from pointing out that in our congregation we are dedicating a great deal of energy to providing a correct response to the problem posed by the implicit faith of the contracting parties

It will be interesting to follow the upcoming Synod, which, as I also noted in my interview responses, did not deal in an inordinate way with the problem of Communion for the civilly divorced and remarried. It will also be interesting to read the conclusions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on this matter.

Gehard Ludwig Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The preface to Cardinal Müller’s book was written by Fernando Sebastián Cardinal Aguilar, Archbishop Emeritus of Pamplona and Tudela in Spain. In this preface, I believe His Eminence hits the nail on the head and, in true pastoral fashion, points the way ahead:

The main problem present in the Church with regard to the family is not the small number of the divorced and remarried who would like to receive Eucharistic communion. Our most serious problem is the great number of baptized who marry civilly and of sacramentally married spouses who do not live marriage or the marital life in harmony with Christian life and the teachings of the Church, which would have them be living icons of Christ's love for his Church present and working in the world

"what you receive is the mystery that means you"

Garrison Keillor's quote, "Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car," is, understandably, quite popular with many Christians and non-Christians alike. If I understand it correctly, it points out the necessity that, if you are going to call yourself a disciple of Jesus, how you act all the time matters. Innocuous enough, right?

As with so many of these kinds of popular quotes, there are some other things at work, some of which, I would say, are a bit insidious ("causing harm in a way that is gradual or not easily noticed"). Keillor is not a Catholic. Hence, it would be wholly unfair to expect whatever theology he might convey through his radio show and his writing to meet that standard. Nonetheless, there are two observations I wish to make about this over-used quote. The first has to do with reducing faith merely to morals and the second has to do with the indispensability, at least from a Catholic perspective, of "going to Church," which means to participate, fully, actively, and consciously, in the sacred liturgy, in the holy Eucharist.

Regarding my first observation, I think C.S.Lewis, when he made the analogy between being a Christian and being a gentleman, wrote about all that needed to be written. In short, being good does not make you a Christian. It's much more accurate to call a person gifted with faith, but poor in praxis, a "bad" Christian than it is to call a person who believes in something else, or nothing at all, but who does good things, a Christian.

It strikes me as more than a little arrogant to call a person who believes in something else, or nothing at all, but who does good things, a Christian. Let's be honest, Christians do not have a monopoly on doing good. That stark reality might make some Christians angry, but it's the truth.

A prerequisite for being a Christian is the realization that you are not a good person. The next realization a Christian must have is that even though you are not good, you are infinitely loved. Only love, being loved and then loving, can make us better people, by the grace of God. With Evelyn Waugh, I invite everyone to ponder "how awful I'd be if I weren't a Christian."

I think quotes, like the one by Keillor, are often used by Christians as an excuse for not going to Church. I want to ask these brothers and sisters of mine, in the vein of St Paul, "Are you really that convinced of your own goodness?" Or, perhaps, "Are you so harshly judging the 'badness' of your sisters and brothers who attend, dismissing them as 'hypocrites,' that you stay away?" That going to Church, participating in and receiving the holy Eucharist, is an indispensable part of the that process is borne out by this, from a sermon by St Augustine:

So if it's you that are the body of Christ and its members, it's the mystery meaning you that has been placed on the Lord's table; what you receive is the mystery that means you. It is to what you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent. What you hear, you see, is The body of Christ, and you answer, Amen. So be a member of the body of Christ, in order to make that Amen true (Sermon 272)

"that third way is love, we're going to love you"

Because I have not been posting much lately, it is without hesitation that I post a second time today. What I am posting is the film The Third Way. The run time for the film, without credits, is about 35:50. If nothing else, it gives us the opportunity to hear from several men and women who are homosexual. For me, this reinforced the need to listen and to love without judgment. The Church needs to be a place where we can all come, just as we are and be accepted. God will heal and change what needs healing and changing, our job is to love and to let ourselves be loved (the latter is not as easy as it sounds, at least not for me). If Christians refuse to love like Jesus loves, then who will do it?

It's important to note that the women and men who share their experiences in this film do not reflect the experiences of all men and women who are homosexual. But by sharing they give us the great privilege of listening to their stories. Regardless of sexual dispositions, or pre-dispositions, or whatever, our greatest need, as human beings, is to be loved. This goes to the core of our being, to the imago dei we all bear; we're made from Love and we're made to love. But to experience being loved, we have to see ourselves as lovable (again, not as easy as it sounds). We're not so different. I'll be so bold as to assert what for Christians ought to be commonplace- we're all disordered in some way, probably in some very "deep" way.

Another place I would draw to attention is Sarah and Lindsey's blog A Queer Calling: Reflections on the experiences of a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple. I can't begin to express how grateful I am to them for sharing their views and insights.

UPDATE: To my mind something like this film is merely a starting point, a way of helping a lot of us get over our fear of the other. One can't just watch this short movie and say, "Okay, now I get it," and leave it there. This is true for no other reason than, as I mentioned already, the experiences so generously shared by those featured in the film are not comprehensive. Like any human issue, while grasping some generalities may help, everyone's experience is different. It's safe to say that many homosexual men and women, like Joey in the film, live well-adjusted lives in committed relationships and without the self-destructive behaviors of drug and alcohol abuse. Heaven knows there are plenty of traumatized heterosexual people who engage in self-destructive behaviors and whose relationships are toxic as a result.

In a letter he wrote to Dorothy Day, Pater Tom (Merton) noted

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can

What renders us worthy is the imago dei of which we are all bearers. The divine image, in which each human being is lovingly created, is ineradicable. To use the quote by N.T. Wright, which appears in my masthead at the top of my blog: Amor, ergo sum: I am loved, therefore I am.

Becoming "like" God, or becoming Gods?

At least to much local acclaim, the "Gospel Topics" section of the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lds.org, has recently featured an essay entitled "Becoming Like God." Apparently this article was posted in an effort to explain the odd Mormon take on what Christians, especially Eastern Christians, have traditionally called "deification." The purpose of the essay is to debunk caricatures of LDS belief on this matter. Without a doubt, there are crude caricatures of this belief. Nonetheless, the piece strikes me as more than a bit disingenuous. As I hope to briefly show, the disingenuous nature of the essay arises from placing the emphasis on becoming "like" God rather than on the the traditional LDS emphasis of becoming as God "is," or a "god" in your right. As anyone who has ever made even a cursory study of informal logic knows, analogy and identity sit pretty far apart.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.

All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. the manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures" perfections as our starting point, "for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator."

God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, imagebound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God --"the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"-- with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God (par. 40-42)

This is precisely what makes the Incarnation so cosmos-shattering, or, as the authors of Paul's New Moment put it- "this Event of God becoming human is so earth-shattering that it enacts something akin to the psychoanalytic concept of trauma..."

It is important to mention up-front that Latter-day Saints clearly and explicitly reject the dogma of the triune God, perhaps best and most succinctly summarized as "one God in three in divine persons." In fact, as recently as January this year, a LDS General Authority, Gérald Caussé, who serves as second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, speaking to LDS mission presidents, reminded them of something that it seems to me the LDS frequently try to gloss over: "Among the critical elements of the doctrine of the Church that are an essential contribution of the Restoration are a correct knowledge of the identity of God, that God and Jesus Christ are separate and distinct, each with a body of flesh and bone." This teaching arises directly from LDS scripture, particularly from the Doctrine and Covenants, which book is comprised almost exclusively of a series of revelations Smith claimed to have received directly from God. In the Doctrine and Covenants we find, "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s" (130:22). It is for reasons surrounding this that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, back in 2001, definitively concluded, answering a dubium, or question, formally posed several years prior, that LDS baptism is not sacramentally valid. The LDS, however, refuting their own claim to be Christians "like we are Christians," baptize everyone and anyone who joins the LDS Church regardless of any prior baptism.

Perhaps the best summary of this distinctive LDS belief, and if not the best, at least the most famous, is something known as the "Lorenzo Snow couplet." Lorenzo Snow was the fifth president of the LDS Church. Latter-day Saints believe their president, along with the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, is a "prophet, seer, and revelator," a belief much more robust than the Catholic belief in papal infallibility. Snow served as president from 1898 until his death in 1901. His couplet states, "As man is God once was, as God is man may become." This is perfectly coherent with what is taught in LDS scripture, particularly the third chapter of the Book of Abraham and sections 130-132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. In addressing the couplet, the essay insists that not much is known by way of revelation with regard to the first half of the couplet. At least to me, it does not seem on its face to be terribly abstruse. I take it to mean that at one point God was like we are now. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, Jr.'s successor as LDS prophet, took it that way too. Young went so far as to assert during a General Conference in 1852 something he insisted he was taught by Smith, namely that Adam is "our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do." This is known as the "Adam-God" theory or doctrine.

Book of Abraham Facsimile 1

In addition to revealing passages from the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Abraham, which can be found in the Pearl of Great Price, which, along with the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Bible, is one of the books revered by Latter-day Saints as scripture, we find that there actually is a fair amount revealed about both halves of couplet. In fact, it's fair to say that the couplet arises from what is written here. Of course, as with all theology, doctrinal statements require correlating what is claimed to be revealed with the claimed sources of revelation.

While on the subject of claimed sources of revelation, it bears noting that Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the LDS Church, claims to have translated the Book of Abraham from some papyrus scrolls that he acquired by purchasing an Egyptian mummy from a carnival man. Smith made the purchase and claims to have translated the scrolls prior to the deciphering of the ancient Egyptian language, which resulted from decoding the Rosetta Stone. It became clear after the decoding of the Rosetta Stone that the scrolls, facsimiles of which have long been published as part of the Pearl of Great Price, Smith claims to have translated as the Book of Abraham were, in fact, copies of the Egyptian book of the dead.

It is in the third chapter of the Book of Abraham that the key to understanding where LDS theology fundamentally diverges from historic Christianity can be found (this is where the essay strikes me as disingenuous). It is this chapter that seeks to show that everyone, you, me, God the Father, God the Son, etc., has always existed. The official summary of Abraham 3 states, "The Lord reveals to him [Abraham] the eternal nature of spirits." This "eternal nature of spirits," it seems, is precisely what obliterates the most obvious ontological barrier between God and His creatures: being eternal, that is, self-subsistent, or uncreated. In other words, according to LDS belief, we have all always existed.

The progression, according to the LDS "Plan of Salvation" (see graphic below), works something like this: you first and eternally exist as an uncreated "intelligence," then you are born into a pre-earth, or pre-mortal existence, a "spiritual," yet embodied,state (Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8: "All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter"); from this pre-mortal existence, you are born into mortality, which is a period of testing, then, after the resurrection (there is a temporary, "spiritual", abode between death and the resurrection, a place- must be a place because you are still material- where righteous LDS people proseltyze others in a last ditch effort- this is why they perform baptisms for the dead- for you to accept Mormonism between your death and the resurrection); should you enter the highest level of the highest kingdom, called exaltation (see Doctrine and Covenants 131:1-4), sticking with Snow's couplet, you become "as God is." For those who obtain exaltation, which requires being married (see Doctrine and Covenants 131:2),

Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have call power, and the angels are subject unto them (Doctrine and Covenants 132:20)

Most telling is this passage, also found in Doctrine and Covenants 132, referring to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, states, "because they did none other things than that which they were commanded, they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods" (132:37).

In addition to the vast expanse stretching between "like" and "is," the problem I see with the essay is that there is no effort to connect the dots of what the LDS Church claims to have been revealed by God about God and man, even claiming ignorance where there is evidence. Hence, there is no attempt to show how that "revelation" bears on man's eternal destiny, but an effort to obscure what seems, based on the evidence, pretty clear. At root, because of the belief that we, like God, have existed eternally, beginning as uncreated intelligences, the main ontological barrier that Jews, Christians, and Muslims discern as existing between God and humanity is done away with, thus clearing the way for human beings to become "as God is," which is just what former Catholic priest, now Mormon, Jordan Vajda, insisted in his relatively famous master's degree thesis "Partakers of the Divine Nature." Along these lines, see my post from a few years ago- "Is Israel's God Glenn Beck's god?" That is much different than becoming as much "like" God as you can become, given the ontological difference between Creator and creature.

If I am not mistaken, the original (more precisely, the "ancestral") sin consisted mainly in the rejection of creaturliness, preferring instead to usurp God. It looks like March roared in like a lion here on Καθολικός διάκονος!

Servant of God Cora Louise Evans, pray for us.