Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 269

Harold Camping apologizes for errors about end-time predictions; prays for mercy

The Christian Post reports on an October 28th broadcast in which the 90-year-old Camping acknowledges (some of) his errors and prays for God's mercy:

With his speech sounding somewhat slurred and labored, Family Radio Stations Inc. founder and chairman Harold Camping sought to address in a recent message why Christ failed to return on Oct. 21 as the Bible teacher had predicted. Camping confessed, after decades of falsely misleading his followers, that he was wrong and regrets his misdeeds.

In addition to attempting to correct his erroneous teachings on the Rapture and God's day of final judgment on the world, Camping, 90, also confessed, "incidentally," that he was wrong to claim that God had stopped saving people after May 21 – the date which God's so-called "spiritual" judgment had begun.

Here are excerpts from the transcript of Camping's audio address, which can be heard on the Family Radio website:

Why didn't Christ return on Oct. 21? It seems embarrassing for Family Radio. But God was in charge of everything. We came to that conclusion after quite careful study of the Bible. He allowed everything to happen the way it did without correction. He could have stopped everything if He had wanted to. ...

We're ready to cry out and weep before God: 'Oh Lord, you have the truth, we don't have it. You have the truth.' And this is another place where we have to cry out for... There's one thing that we must remember – God is in charge of this whole business, and we are not. What God wants to tell us is His business. When He wants to tell us is His business. In the meanwhile, God is allowing us to continue to cry to Him for mercy – oh my, how we need His mercy – and continue to wait on Him. God has not left us. God is still God. But we have to be very careful that we don't dictate to God what He should do. ...

Incidentally, I have been told that I said back in May that people who did not believe that May 21 should not be the rapture date, probably had not been saved. I should not have said that, and I apologize for that. One thing we know for certain, is that God is merciful, merciful beyond anything that we would ever expect. And so, we can pray constantly, and should be praying constantly: "Oh Lord, we look to Thee for Thine mercy, and we're so thankful that we know that Thou art so merciful."

Amen and amen. "Nothing", wrote Saint Ambrose, "graces the Christian soul so much as mercy."

Previous and related Insight Scoop posts:

• Just a quick reminder that the world will be annihilated tomorrow! (Oct. 20, 2011)
• Rapture, Rinse, Repeat (May 24, 2011)
• Call for Captions for a May 22nd, 2011 Billboard (May 21, 2011)
• The Rapture: A short history and some basic facts (May 20, 2011)
• The Revelatory Quote of the Day... (May 20, 2011)
• A few thoughts about the not-so-rapturous May 21st Harold Camping Trip... (May 19, 2011)

Following "The Way": Martin Sheen discusses faith and film

Following "The Way" | A Catholic World Report with actor Martin Sheen | By Matthew A. Rarey

Once again a pro-Catholic movie has been produced without Hollywood backing, following the independently produced path pioneered by Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ. This new movie, The Way, stars another Catholic, Martin Sheen.

Sheen prides himself on being a family man, with four children and seven grandchildren. And although never awarded an Oscar, he holds an even higher—and far rarer—honor among Hollywood screen legends: this year Sheen, 71, celebrated 50 years of marriage to his one and only wife.

The Way is a family affair, too: Sheen's son, Emilio Estevez, wrote and directed it. Together father and son created something beautiful for God: a sensitively crafted, visually stunning, and deeply human work that treats the Church respectfully, appealing to Catholics as well as all men of good will journeying toward the truth.

It tells the story of a father, played by Sheen, who takes the Camino de Santiago (the "Way of St. James"), the famous 500-mile walking pilgrimage from St. Jean Pied de Port, France, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He does so in honor of his estranged son, played by Estevez, who stumbled to his death along the way. It is also a journey of faith, with the father, an emotionally distant and lapsed Catholic, returning to the faith with the help of three pilgrims he grudgingly befriends. Shot on location with the cooperation of local and Church authorities, The Way also marks a movie milestone: never before was a movie crew allowed to film inside the resting place of the Apostle James, the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela—let alone film during Mass there.

This writer saw a screening of the film in Chicago and later spoke with Sheen over the phone when the movie's promotional tour was in Miami.

Why did Hollywood turn you down, leading you to produce The Way independently?

Martin Sheen: They couldn't see producing a movie with four people walking across Spain. There was no car chase, no overt sexuality, no foul language. It didn't appeal to their sense of business. When Hollywood makes a film today, they have to have certain assurances that they'll get their money back. So our film and the whole story really did not offer what they thought would be a sure-fire hit at the box office.

We understood that. If we wanted to make that kind of movie, we would have done it. But you know, the Camino has been there for a thousand years and Hollywood has been there for a hundred years, and it's had that long to make a picture about [the Camino] and it's never done it. We realized very quickly that we were wasting our time trying to get anybody in Hollywood interested in it. So we went to Spain and got a Spanish partner.

Who financed the movie, and how much did it cost to make?

Read the entire interview on www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

"In praying for the dead, the Church above all contemplates ..."

... the mystery of the Resurrection of Christ, who obtains salvation and eternal life for us through his Cross. Thus with St Odilo we can ceaselessly repeat: "The Cross is my refuge, my way and my life The Cross is my invincible weapon. The Cross repels all evil. The Cross dispels the darkness". The Lord's Cross reminds us that all life is illumined by the light of Easter and that no situation is totally lost, for Christ conquered death and opened the way for us to true life. Redemption "is brought about in the sacrifice of Christ, by which man redeems the debt of sin and is reconciled to God" (Tertio millennio adveniente, n. 7).

3. Our hope is founded on Christ's sacrifice. His Resurrection inaugurates the "end of the times" (1 Pt 1:20; cf. Heb 1:2). The belief in eternal life which we profess in the Creed is an invitation to the joyful hope of seeing God face to face. To believe in the resurrection of the flesh is to recognize that there is a final end, an ultimate goal for all human life, "which so satisfies man's appetite that nothing else is left for him to desire" (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 1, a. 5; St Paulinus of Nola, Letters, 1, 2). This same desire is wonderfully expressed by St Augustine: "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (Confessions, I, 1). Thus, we are all called to live with Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father, and to contemplate the Holy Trinity, for "God is the principal object of Christian hope" (Alphonsus Liguori, Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, 16, 2); we can say with Job: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold and not another" (Jb 19:25-27). ...

5. Contemplation of the lives of those who have followed Christ encourages us to lead a good, upright Christian life which makes us "worthy of the kingdom of God" (2 Thes 1:5). Thus we are called to "supernatural vigilance", in the words of Cardinal Perraud (Lettre à l'occasion du neuvième centenaire de la fête pour les morts), so that we can prepare ourselves each day for eternal life. As Cardinal John Henry Newman emphasized: "We are not simply to believe, but to watch; not simply to love, but to watch; not simply to obey, but to watch; ... and thus it happens that watching is a suitable test of a Christian". This is because to watch is "to be detached from what is present, and to live in what is unseen; to live in the thought of Christ as he came once, and as he will come again; to desire his second coming" (Parochial and Plain Sermons, IV, 22).

6. The prayers of intercession and petition which the Church never ceases to raise to God have great value. They are "characteristic of a heart attuned to God's mercy" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2635). The Lord always lets himself be moved by his children's supplications, for he is the God of the living. During the Eucharist, through the general intercessions and the Memento for the dead, the assembled community presents to the Father of all mercies those who have died, so that through the trial of purgatory they will be purified, if necessary, and attain eternal joy. In entrusting them to the Lord, we recognize our solidarity with them and share in their salvation in this wondrous mystery of the communion of saints. The Church believes that the souls detained in purgatory "are helped by the prayers of the faithful and most of all by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar" (Council of Trent, Decree on Purgatory), as well as by "alms and other works of piety" (Eugene IV, Bull Laetantur coeli). "In fact, that same holiness, which is derived simply from their participation in the Church's holiness, represents their first and fundamental contribution to the holiness of the Church herself, which is the 'communion of saints'" (Christifideles laici, n. 17).

— From "Letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the Celebration of the Millennium of the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed", 1998.

Saints are sealed by God, called to be sons of God, and saved by God

The following is my "Opening the Word" Scripture column that originally appeared in the November 1, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper (you can find the readings for today on the USCCB site):

Most Catholics are understandably confused or puzzled when hearing a passage from the Book of Revelation. It is unfortunate, however, that many end up dismissing what they've heard. In so doing, they miss out on some of the most joyful passages of sacred Scripture.

Today's first reading is a perfect example of such a passage. It is read on the Solemnity of All Saints because it describes the reason we were created. Using a multitude of references to the Old Testament, John the Revelator shows what it means to be a saint, a "holy one." I wish to highlight three of the characteristics shared by all saints revealed in the seventh chapter of The Apocalypse. The word apokalypsis, by the way, refers to an "unveiling"—primarily of Christ, but also of God's fulfilled work of salvation and his plan for each of us.

The first characteristic of all the saints is they are sealed by God. Prior to judgment being sent from the throne room of heaven upon the wickedness of man, the servants of God are to be sealed, or marked, and thus set apart as holy. This imagery is drawn from the ninth chapter of Ezekiel, which describes the Lord commanding a mysterious "man clothed in linen" to go through Jerusalem and "put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it" (Ezek. 9:3-4). Those who loved God and who hated sin were saved; all others perished. The mark described by Ezekiel would protect the righteous Israelites from four rapidly approaching judgments, to be carried out by Babylon (another name used often in the Book of Revelation).

Jesus was set apart by the Father with a seal (Jn. 6:27). Those who are baptized into Christ are also marked, with the seal of the Holy Spirit, which is both familial and judicial in nature. Those marked by God belong to him; they are now of his household—the Church—and are under his authority and protection from eternal damnation (see Catechism, pars. 1295-6).

The second characteristic of saints, which builds on the first, is that they are servants and sons of God. Logic tells us it is only proper for man be a servant to his Maker. God's love, however, reveals and imparts an astounding truth: man is called to be a son of God by grace because of the sacrificial death of the Lamb. As sons, the saints are joined in the communion of the Church, the divine house of God (1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 3:5-6). An essential part of the service rendered by the saints is prayer, worship, and praise. "We know that God does not listen to sinners," Jesus told his disciples, "but if any one is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him" (Jn. 9:21).

The saints on earth and in heaven worship and praise God because of the third characteristic: they are saved from sin and death. Baptized into Christ, they rise with him to eternal life. This can be seen in the description of the Church triumphant, which is a great multitude of "every nation, race, people, and tongue," wearing white robes and carrying palm branches.

"By robes he suggest baptism," wrote Bishop Primasius (c. 560) in his commentary on The Apocalypse, "and by the palms the triumph of the cross. Since they have conquered the world in Christ, it may be that the robes signify the love which is given through the Holy Spirit…" 

Having survived "the time of great distress," saints enter into eternal joy. The final chapter of the Bible describes that joy. "There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads" (Rev. 22:3-4). That is what it means to be saint; that is the reason we were created. 

"This feast is not just for those in heaven already."

Some good food for thought from Br. Raymund Snyder, O.P., on the Dominicana blog, about All Saints Day:

This feast is not just for those in heaven already. This is a feast in which we rejoice in our hope of dwelling with God, of being in heaven. When that little girl said, "people live there," she said implicitly, "I want to live there, too. I want one of those rooms." This is what today is for. Today the Church puts before us the vision of the multitude of saints worshiping God, and we are able to say, "I want that. That is where I belong." Thinking about the eternal happiness that the saints in heaven possess is meant to make us long and yearn to share in it too. "My soul is longing and yearning, is yearning for the courts of the Lord" (Ps 84:2).

Read his entire post, "Heaven: People Live There".

What Has "All Saints" to Say to Us Today?

by Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar | From "God's Holiness In Us", in You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Sermons Through the Liturgical Year

Let us reflect for a while on the feast that the Catholic Church is celebrating today. What has "All Saints" to say to us today? Even describing someone as a "saint'; seems terribly anachronistic to us, like an echo from a world long past; indeed, many people now only use the word in a tone of mockery. It means less to us than, for instance, "a good man", someone who has dedicated himself totally to the common good or to justice, someone to whom people in trouble can go, someone who understands and steps in to help. Is such a person a saint?

Let us begin quite simply with the word saint or holy. In the ancient religions, including that of the Old Testament, it refers to a thing, an animal or a person consecrated to the deity. This thing or being was chosen by the community to be taken over by God and to be at his disposal, or an individual may have personally decided to so consecrate himself.

Thus, in this primitive sense, an animal placed on the altar of sacrifice and consumed by fire is "holy". The Levite also, however, chosen for Temple service, is "holy". And the whole people of Israel, chosen by God from among the nations to be a people for himself, is a "holy" people, consecrated to God.

Why? Because holiness is the prerogative of God, and everything that enters into his sphere is made to participate in his divinity. As far as a person is concerned this means that, if he is called upon by God in this way, he must also adopt the appropriate attitude and disposition: "Be holy", says God to his chosen people, "for I am holy." To give Israel an idea of how a man is to behave when drawn into God's circle, it is given two tables with the Ten Commandments, later to be summed up in the great Commandment, namely, to love God above all else and with all one's strength.

At this point Jesus introduces a twofold deepening and clarification of the concept. In the first place he reveals a new vitality in the nature of the God who concluded a Covenant with Israel: God not only looks for love in response to his gracious condescension to man; he himself is absolute Love, since he has given up his beloved Son for his Covenant partners-and now all men are such. Now "holiness" means being admitted into this sphere of absolute love; it means consciously entering into it and becoming assimilated to the disposition and attitude of this God of love.

In the second place, however, the act of self-giving on the part of the "holy" God is the Incarnation of his Son, who wills to take upon himself the guilt of all men vis-a-vis God; henceforth the guilt of mankind, the sin of the world, can and must be found concentrated in Jesus Christ; henceforth the presence and the forgiving love of God can and must be recognizable behind the person of every fellowman: "What you have done to the least of my brothers, you have done to me"-which is why Jesus, in his preaching, joins the two greatest "Commandments into an inseparable two-in-one: "Love God above all else . . . and your neighbor as yourself."

If we are really speaking about holiness-and not only about the good man, the humanitarian ideal, which men are quite capable of envisaging for themselves—if the word holiness is to have a real content, it must lie in the twofold Commandment of Jesus, precisely as he intends, formulates and lives it. So now, being handed over to God's sphere and laid on his altar means being inflamed by the fire of the love of God, who has gone to his death for love of us, and being assimilated, in the love of neighbor, to God's disposition and attitude, his commitment to the world. This sequence is important if we are to grasp the fundamental meaning: God's love for us is primary; it is the standard by which everything is measured, the flame that ignites our love in response.

The other is the consequence: since God's love for us embraces the whole of mankind, our love for him will also join in that movement; we too will share in his work of salvation for the world. Since the word holiness is now, once and for all, inseparable from the biblical understanding of God, we have no right to separate the love of neighbor from the love of God or (I will not say "to raise it to the level of a criterion") to make it out to be the whole content of holiness. This is true in spite of the words already mentioned on the part of the Judge of the World: "What you have done to the least of my brothers, you have done to me", and in spite of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, who simply performs an act of neighborly love and is exhibited as a model by Jesus.

One only needs to read this parable in depth to see that Jesus is here portraying primarily God's activity on mankind's behalf, his own activity as God's Son for the sake of the sick and half-dead. We only have to compare these words of judgment with the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, and we shall understand what they really mean: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 7:21). Here too Jesus is speaking expressly as the world's Judge. But the criterion of neighborly love is applied as a test of the genuineness of our love of God. What decides the issue is not words and professions of piety but action that is assimilated to the action of God himself.

Now it becomes clear why All Saints is a distinctively Catholic feast. To call a man "saint" and "holy" presupposes that he can—somehow or other—respond to God in virtue of divine grace. He will always be aware of being infinitely far behind the demand, and the more saintly he is, the more this awareness will burn within him. (Only a philistine could imagine that his response to God is generally satisfactory.) "So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy servants' " (Lk 17:10).

Because man must speak like this, because he experiences his unworthiness more and more deeply the more he responds to God, most nonCatholic Christians prefer not to apply the words saint and holy to men at all, reserving them for God alone. This is very understandable, and it is a view we can respect. Yet it does not correspond entirely to the biblical way of thinking and speaking. In the Old Covenant, as we have seen, things and persons consecrated to God really do bear the epithet "holy"; and when the Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New, Christians are continually challenged to be "holy", "blameless" or "unspotted"; and they do this, as Paul requires, by adopting in themselves the disposition of God and of Jesus Christ. It is everywhere assumed that this is objectively possible; and this, rather than the subjective feeling of one's own unworthiness, is ultimately what counts.

Related Ignatius Insight Articles and Book Excerpts by Hans Urs von Balthasar:

• The King and His Kingdom | From You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Sermons Throughout the Liturgical Year
• The Mystery at the Center of Our Faith | From To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption
• The Conquest of the Bride | From Heart of the World
• Jesus Is Catholic | From In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic
• A Résumé of My Thought | From Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | From In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic
• The Cross–For Us | From A Short Primer For Unsettled Laymen
• A Theology of Anxiety? | The Introduction to The Christian and Anxiety
• "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" | From Credo: Meditations on the Apostles' Creed

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) was a Swiss theologian, considered to one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century. Incredibly prolific and diverse, he wrote over one hundred books and hundreds of articles.

Read more about his life and work in the Author's Pages section of IgnatiusInsight.com.

Where Protestantism goes wrong on Biblical inspiration and Church authority

Dr. Francis Beckwith—who was raised Catholic, then became Pentecostal/Evangelical in his teens, then returned to the Catholic Church a few years ago—has penned an essay, "Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism". It is a pithy and direct reflection, he writes, on one of "the puzzles that led me back to the Church of my youth", specifically, "the relationship between the Church, Tradition, and the canon of Scripture. As a Protestant, I claimed to reject the normative role that Tradition plays in the development of Christian doctrine. But at times I seemed to rely on it":

For example, on the content of the biblical canon – whether the Old Testament includes the deuterocanonical books (or "Apocrypha"), as the Catholic Church holds and Protestantism rejects. I would appeal to the exclusion of these books as canonical by the Jewish Council of Jamnia (A.D. 90-100) as well as doubts about those books raised by St. Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, and a few other Church Fathers.

My reasoning, however, was extra-biblical. For it appealed to an authoritative leadership that has the power to recognize and certify books as canonical that were subsequently recognized as such by certain Fathers embedded in a tradition that, as a Protestant, I thought more authoritative than the tradition that certified what has come to be known as the Catholic canon. This latter tradition, rejected by Protestants, includes St. Augustine as well as the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), the Third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), the Fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 419), and the Council of Florence (A.D. 1441).

His fine essay brought to mind a passage from Monsignor Ronald Knox's little classic, The Belief of Catholics, first published in 1927, which helped me, many years ago, get a better sense of some of the key historical and logical problems found within Protestantism. Here is that passage, from the chapter, "Where Protestantism Goes Wrong":

For three centuries the true issue between the two parties was obscured, owing to the preposterous action of the Protestants in admiring Biblical inspiration. The Bible, it appeared, was common ground between the combatants, the Bible, therefore, was the arena of the struggle; from it the controversialist, like David at the brook, must pick up texts to sling at his adversary. In fact, of course, the Protestant had no conceivable right to base any arguments on the inspiration of the Bible, for the inspiration of the Bible was a doctrine which had been believed, before the Reformation, on the mere authority of the Church; it rested on exactly the same basis as the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Protestantism repudiated Transubstantiation, and in doing so repudiated the authority of the Church; and then, without a shred of logic, calmly went on believing in the inspiration of the Bible, as if nothing had happened! Did they suppose that Biblical inspiration was a self-evident fact, like the axioms of Euclid? Or did they derive it from some words of our Lord? If so, what words? What authority have we, apart from that of the Church, to say that the Epistles of Paul are inspired, and the Epistle of Bamabas is not? It is, perhaps, the most amazing and the most tragic spectacle in the history of thought, the picture of blood flowing, fires blazing, and kingdoms changing hands for a century and a half, all in defence of a vicious circle.

The only logic which succeeded in convincing the Protestants of their fallacy was the logic of facts. So long as nobody except scoffers and atheists challenged the truth of the scriptural narratives, the doctrine of inspiration maintained its curiously inflated credit. Then Christians, nay, even clergymen, began to wonder about Genesis, began to have scruples about the genuineness of 2 Peter. And then quite suddenly, it became apparent that there was no reason why Protestants should not doubt the inspiration of the Bible; it violated no principle of their system. The Evangelicals protested, but theirs was a sentimental rather than a reasoned protest; the Tractarians fulmmated, but it was plain this was mere summer lightning, a reflection from the Seven Hills. Only the condemnation of Colenso stands as monument of the bloodless victory of Modernism. For three centuries the inspired Bible had been a handy stick to beat Catholics with; then it broke in the hand that wielded it, and Protestantism flung it languidly aside.

I do not mean, of course, that modern Protestants do not affirm, and affirm sincerely, their belief in Biblical inspiration of some sort. But if you examine the affirmation, you will find that the whole meaning of the term has changed; it was once a literal inspiration that was acknowledged, now it is only a literary inspiration. If you need tangible proof of this, you have only to consider the amount of literary flattery which is lavished upon certain Biblical authors by modern scholarships; how they belaud the fierce independence of Amos, the profound spiritual insight of St. Paul. It was all one to our great-grandfathers; Amos, for them, was no more of a figure than Habacuc, or Paul than the author of the Apocalypse; what did it matter? It was all inspired.

The consequences of this change in the Protestant attitude towards Scripture did not become apparent at once. In the days of Westcott and Lightfoot, in the days of Salmon, the impression left on the public was that it did not matter much whether the Bible was inspired, because in any case it was true. Westcott said so, and who more likely to know than Westcott? Salmon said so; and he was not the man to commit himself to a rash judgment. The prevailing tone in English scholarship remained conservative, at least so far as the New Testament was concerned; books were still attributed to their traditional authors, their integrity was maintained in defiance of the innovators, legend was not allowed to obtrude itself as a hypothesis. If we kept to Codex Vaticanus we should be all right.

In our time, we are beginning to reap the whirlwind. Even men of moderate opinions will not, to-day, vouch for the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel; will not quote the threefold invocation of Matthew xxviii. 19 as certainly representing the views of the apostolic age; will not attach any importance to the story of our Lord's Ascension. And these things are done in the green tree; what of the dry? If these are the hesitations which Protestantism cultivates, what of those it tolerates? We have seen in our time Oxford--the Oxford that flamed with controversy over the case of Dr. Hampden--vaguely discussing whether anything could be done about a clergyman  who denied the Resurrection.

For more about Knox (himself a former Anglican), The Beliefs of Catholics and some of Knox's other books, visit his Ignatius Insight Author Page:



Related Ignatius Insight Articles:

• Why Catholicism Makes Protestantism Tick: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation | Mark Brumley
• Has The Reformation Ended? | An Interview with Dr. Mark Noll
• Evangelicals and Catholics In Conversation, Part 1 | Interview with Dr. Brad Harper
• Evangelicals and Catholics In Conversation, Part 2 | Interview with Dr. Brad Harper
• Thomas Howard and the Kindly Light | IgnatiusInsight.com
• Objections, Obstacles, Acceptance: An Interview with J. Budziszewski | IgnatiusInsight.com
• Thomas Howard on the Meaning of Tradition | IgnatiusInsight.com
• Surprised by Conversion: The Patterns of Faith | Peter E. Martin
• Reformation 101: Who's Who in the Protestant Reformation | Geoffrey Saint-Clair
• The Tale of Trent: A Council and and Its Legacy | Martha Rasmussen

The dissenting desperation of Catholic progressives...

... is analyzed at length by George Weigel in a National Review essay, "Desperate Churchmice":

Throughout this fairly rapid decline, progressive Catholicism's distinctive cultural marker has been its skepticism about the teaching authority of the Church: whether that teaching authority was formally and authoritatively addressing the ethics of human love, the suitability of women for Holy Orders, the uniqueness of Christ as universal savior, or the intrinsic evils of abortion and euthanasia. Thus it was another sign of the increasing incoherence of progressive Catholicism when several of its American paladins mounted a raucous defense of a "Note" — a kind of Vatican white paper — on international financial reform issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) on October 24. It was an extraordinary exercise: The progressives depicted Benedict XVI as a senior chaplain to Occupy Wall Street, described the Note in such overwrought terms that the gullible might have thought this white paper shared in the charism of papal infallibility, and darkly suggested that those who disagreed with the Note's prescriptions were cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing their doctrines to fit preexisting political tastes.

The irony of men such as the former editor of America, Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., and National Catholic Reporter blogger Michael Sean Winters promoting a notion of papal teaching authority more expansive than any imagined by the most wild-eyed traditionalist will not be lost on cognoscenti of ecclesiastical intrigue. This new notion of PCJP infallibility does, however, raise interesting questions — about the nature and modalities of Catholic teaching authority, about the organization of the Holy See, and about the state of Catholic progressivism in America. ...

Why the desperation? The progressives are losing; they know it, at some level; and because the idea of losing is inconceivable to those who have long imagined themselves on the right side of both political and ecclesiastical history, they tell themselves, and the rest of us, increasingly bizarre tales, like Lewis Carroll's White Queen teaching herself impossible things before breakfast. Ratzinger-as-Chaplain-to-OWS is thus a kind of desperate grasping for relevance at a moment of increasing progressivist irrelevance. They have lost inside the Church: The men and women in the growing religious orders, the men in the growing seminaries, the active younger laity, all look on progressive Catholicism as a kind of weird phenomenon of their parents' generation. And now they are losing publicly. Progressive Catholicism in America bet the farm on Barack Obama, and, as progressive Catholics begin to sense with horror that the administration is a train wreck about to happen, we may yet see even stranger tales told than that of Benedict the Left-Wing Activist.

Thomas Merton sensed the inherent implausibility of progressive Catholicism in the mid-1960s — despite his support of the civil-rights, anti-nuclear, and anti-Vietnam movements. In his student days at Columbia, Merton had known real Communists, and he wasn't much impressed with the juvenile leftism that swamped the Church in the wake of Vatican II. Merton put the complaint about progressive Catholicism and its furies about as well as it can be put in one of the "nonsense letters" he wrote to his old friend, the poet Robert Lax: "I am truly spry and full of fun, but am pursued by the vilifications of progressed Catholics. Mark my word man there is no uglier species on the face of the earth than progressed Catholics, mean, frivol, ungainly, inarticulate, venomous, and bursting at the seams with progress into the secular cities and Teilhardian subways. The Ottavianis was bad but these are infinitely worse. You wait and see."

Read the entire essay.

"But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us..."

There are probably a few Protestants who won't agree with noted Methodist/Episcopal/Protestant theologian Stanley Hauerwas on the point above, and there are probably a few Catholics who will read Hauerwas's October 29, 1995 sermon (ht: New Advent) and think, "Of course!" (Yes, count in my group. But read on.)

Yet I think that today, when many Protestants are observing Reformation Day in some shape or form, is a good time to read Hauerwas's thoughtful sermon (which I'd not seen prior to today) and consider for a moment that while there is a proper and right place for knowing what happened in the past—and addressing it with truth and charity—there is a responsibility on the part of all Christians to pray and work for real unity, knowing full well that such unity will not and cannot take place without the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.

Put another way, and echoing some of what Hauerwas says, there is a fine line between self-congratulation and self-condemnation. It's not that we (meaning Catholics) shouldn't be rightly proud to be Catholic or be willing to stand up for what the Church teaches; rather, we must remind ourselves that all is grace, by grace, and in grace—and for the glory of God.

Here, then, is the opening of Hauerwas's sermon:

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name 'Protestantism' is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church's division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God's free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of — or perhaps better, because of — the world's fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ's death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God's salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

Read the entire piece. I'll be posting a few more thoughts on Reformation-related matters a bit later today, so stay tuned if that's of interest.

"Women Need to Watch Something Other Than the Mass Media"

That's the title of a piece by Teresa Tomeo, author of Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ, Not Conformed to the Culture (also available in electronic book format), just posted on the National Review blog, "The Home Front":

There are still a few of us around who remember the counter-cultural phrase that originated from Canadian educator and scholar Marshall McLuhan but was popularized by writer and psychologist Timothy Leary: "turn on, tune in, drop out." The idea behind the slogan was to get the flower children and just about everyone else caught up in the turbulent 1960's to move away from conventional society, detach from the world, and get re-connected to themselves. Leary ran with the saying to promote his own agenda. He claimed the best way to "turn on, tune in, and drop out" was through the use of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs.

Acid trips aside, in today's media-saturated culture, where the over-sexualization and objectification of women and girls is off the charts, and where women are given all types of conflicting messages about who they are supposed to be in the 21st century, the idea of turning on to something besides Toddlers & Tiaras, The Real Housewives of Orange County, Twitter, and Facebook — and getting away from or tuning out the media at least temporarily — would be a good idea. It really is time for women to get back to basics and realize their true dignity as human beings created in the image and likeness of God.

Let's look at some of the messages women are receiving recently.

Read the entire post. Learn more about Extreme Makeover on the book's website, and read an excerpt from the book:

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