Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 301

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Why I Don't Go to Church

I don't go to church to meet my friends.
I don't go to church to sing the songs I like
I don't go to church so the neighbors think I'm respectable
I don't go to church to increase my self esteem
I don't go to church to learn more about the Bible
I don't go to church to drink coffee and eat donuts
I don't go to church to have an emotional experience
I don't go to church to plan how to change the world
I don't go to church to "have fellowship"
I don't go to church to learn more about God and Jesus
I don't go to church to be a good example to my children
I don't go to church to please my mother
I don't go to church to avoid hell
I don't go to church to achieve heaven
I don't go to church to cheer on my team
I don't go to church to feel spiritual
I don't go to church to be better than everyone else
I don't go to church to boost moral
I don't go to church to launch an agenda


I don't make the church. The church makes me. 




Look not on my sins, but the faith of your church.




The church is the four men who took paralyzed me on a long journey to meet the Lord.




The church is the four men who took apart the roof--everything that separated me from my Lord and God. 




The church is the four men who brought me-- paralyzed by sin-- and lowered me down to where I ought to be--at the feet of Jesus.




The church is the four men who brought me to receive forgiveness and healing.




The church is my mother. Within the church I was spiritually conceived, gestated, brought to life, given birth, nursed and nurtured.





It's simple:




The Church is the Body of Christ and so I go to church so that the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ might preserve my body and soul unto everlasting life.

Articles Archive

The articles archive in the left sidebar has lots of good stuff in it. Most of it is free, but there are a few longer articles that cost a couple of bucks to download. Check it out and see what you think.



When this blog moves over to Patheos in a few weeks' time I'll continue to load up all my archived articles.



I would do so now, but Blogger keeps getting jammed when I try to create new pages.

Catholic Evangelism

Evangelize with holy cards.



Here's the idea: I have had holy cards printed up with a beautiful Catholic image on the front and Bible verses on the back. It makes non-Catholics think twice--"errr a Catholic holy card, but with Bible verses??!! Maybe those Catholics know their Bible after all!!"



So for example, on the back of the image of the Blessed Mother is the text:



"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, Blessed are you among women" -- Lk. 1.28




Jesus said about Mary, "Behold Thy Mother" Jn. 19.27




Jesus commanded, "Honor thy Mother"   Mt. 15.4




Mary said, "All generations shall call me blessed." Lk. 1.48




On the back of the card with Jesus in the Eucharist the text reads:



Jesus said, "Take, eat this is my body" Mt.14.22




If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh,for the life of the wordl. Jn.6.51




Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life within you." Jn. 6.53




St Paul wrote, "The cup we bless..is a participation with the blood of Christ...the bread we break is a participation in the Body of Christ."




There is also a Divine Mercy card and a Jesus-Body of Christ-Church card.



So here's how it works: Catholics buy the holy cards and hand them out like Protestants do gospel tracts. It's real easy, at the supermarket check out you just smile and say to the person helping, "Would you like one of these prayer cards? It's a reminder that Jesus loves you and I'm praying for you" or "Why not take one of these nice prayer cards?"



Or maybe you leave it at the restaurant with your tip (but you better leave a good tip!)



Or if you're too shy to do that you put it in the envelope when you pay a bill. Somebody somewhere opens those envelopes!



You can think of more ways to share the word of God and the Catholic faith. Heck, you can stand on the street corner and hand them out!



I am encouraging our people in the parish to use them, but if you would like to purchase some of these cards they are just a quarter each. Buy 20 cards for $5.00.



Five cards of each style.



If you would like some just send me an email: and I'll tell you how to make payment and we'll send them in the mail.

A Prophecy for the Church in America

A prophet is not necessarily someone who has a supernatural vision of the future. He may simply be a person who can see certain trends in the present, understand the underlying issues and therefore attempt to predict how things may go in the future.



Here are some trends I see in the American Church and how I see the future developing. The first thing is the disintegration of denominationalism. It used to be that the different Protestant groups were distinct in their theology and their style of worship. There were boundaries. You pretty much knew what to expect in a Southern Baptist Church, a Methodist Church, Lutheran, Presbyterian or Episcopal. There were clear distinctions theologically and culturally and historically.



The boundaries are disappearing fast. In all Protestant churches there is a kind of post-modern pick and mix attitude. The old distinctive markers are falling and a new experimental attitude is taking place. So a relative of mine, a young Baptist minister, enthusiastically claims to "read all those guys" meaning that he avidly reads Anglican, Catholic, Baptist, Independent and classical Lutheran and Methodist theologians. He and his generation are also open to all sorts of worship styles. Their attitude is shared by the younger generation of Evangelicals in all denominations. People are no longer Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist for life and for clear theological reasons. Instead they gravitate to a church that suits them and their lifestyle. Utilitarianism and market forces reign supreme.



The two trends within the Protestant churches seem to be toward free "mega church" type worship which conforms to the trends in society or a reaction against that to move toward "liturgy". So a neighbor who goes to a conservative Presbyterian church likes to tell me how "liturgical" they are. They observe Advent and Lent and Ash Wednesday. They light candles on the "altar" when they "celebrate communion" and every once in a while they have "Choral Evensong." Another friend tells me he goes to a Baptist Church that is "very liturgical."



I predict that the disintegration of denominationalism will continue and that trends within the Catholic Church will converge with what is happening within Protestantism to produce some very interesting and new configurations.



As the "cultural Catholics" who were leaders in the seventies and eighties continue to die off, their children will be less likely to practice the Catholic faith. As it becomes increasingly odd to be a "faithful Catholic" in our society--even leading to persecution and isolation, the Catholics without any backbone will simply stop being Catholics. If they did not have enough faith and courage to send their children to Catholic school and take the teachings of the church seriously, then if hardship comes, they will melt away.



At the same time the Catholics who remain will have the fervor and dedication of the faithful Protestants who have been moving in a liturgical direction. These Protestants are looking not only for liturgy, but for the historic church--the apostolic church. They will be increasingly attracted to the Catholic faith and as they Catholic church population shifts in a more committed direction they will feel more at home there.



This is where the new Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter may play a very crucial role. As an increasing number of Protestants explore the liturgical and historical church they will be looking for a church that is faithful to the Scriptures, faithful to the historic liturgy, faithful to the magisterium and ready to show forth a committed, radical kind of Catholicism fully committed to the new Evangelization.



The short version: two vibrant forms of Christianity will emerge in the United States--a free flowing, relevant and 'cool' kind of personalistic Pentecostalism and a renewed and revitalized and young Catholicism. The others will fade away.



But I may be wrong. I'm not really a prophet...

Dealing with the Devil

Go here for my latest post at Integrated Catholic Life-- on dealing with the devil.

Ideologies, Ideas and Idols

Is Christianity an ideology? First we have to ask, "What is an ideology?" An ideology is a good idea. But when the good idea is the only idea it becomes not only an ideology, but an idol. That is to say, it is a god that looks good, but it is a false god, and as we know, all false gods must be thrown down. False religion must be named and shamed, and not only named and shamed, but damned.



This idol appears when Christianity is twisted into an ideology. This happens when the "good idea" becomes more important than the Christian religion and the Christian religion is made to serve the "good idea." How do we know when a "good idea" has become an ideology? It is when the "good idea" becomes the idea of the good. That is to say, the "good idea" becomes the only Good. When the "good idea" becomes such it is not a delightful ideal, but a destructive idol--an idol that will devour all that is offered at it's altar--for that is what all idols do. They devour.



The worldling treats the Christian religion as simply another ideology. That is because so many Christians have turned their religion into an ideology. The difference between the Christian religion and an ideology is that the Christian religion is not a good idea. It is God's idea. That is to day, it is divinely inspired. An ideology is just a good idea that somebody thought of. It is one good idea of many, and one need not be any better than another. Communism is a good idea. So is Capitalism. Monarchy is a good idea. So is Democracy.



The difference between the Christian religion and an ideology is that the Christian religion is more than a good idea. It is God's idea. That is to say, it is revealed to man by God. It is divinely inspired. Furthermore, the Christian religion is not essentially about an idea, but about a person.



However, the reason so many people consider the Christian religion to be just another ideology is because so many Christian scholars have told them so. They have maintained that the Christian religion is merely a human construct--made up by human beings in a particular social and historical context.



In other words, Christianity is, after all, simply a good idea.  The problem is, they can't decide which good idea Christianity really embodies. So they choose the good idea they like best and then claim Christ as the authority. Allow me to coin a portmanteau word for such people: they are Christologues.



You can always spot a Christologue because their agenda is of this world, not the next. The Christologue wants to make the world a better place and believes that is what the Christian religion is all about. If he doesn't want to use the Christian religion to make the world a better place, he wants to use it to make his world a better place. The Christian religion will be used to make his church or school or family or parish or the person he sees in the mirror more agreeable and nice and more respectable and more successful.



 His "big idea" gives him an interpretative grid through which he filters Christianity. Here is one example: The big idea is the need for peace and justice. This good idea then becomes the ideology by which everything else is judged and which drives everything--Biblical interpretation, the liturgy, church governance, finance, education, social involvement and politics. The Christian faith itself becomes the servant of the ideology. This is but one ideology of the Christologue. It may be racial purity, the dominance of a particular country or political party, a feminist or homosexualist agenda. It may be the cause of "freedom". It may be the driving force for a war of aggression. It may be the spark for terrorism.



Whatever the Christologue's cause, he has hijacked the Christian religion for himself and made it after his own image. He does this because he believes in a hotch potch of modernistic ideas:



The Christologue is guilty of relativism--the idea that there is no such thing as Truth or if there is, you cannot state it in any dogmatic way. For him Truth is relative, and unknowable so what becomes important is how practical the religion is.



The Christologue is guilty of historicism--that aspect of modernism which says the Christian religion is determined by historical circumstances by people with a certain historical worldview in a particular social context. He argues that we are in a different historical context and different social structure and so all can be changed to adapt to present needs.



The Christologue is guilty of utilitarianism--that aspect of modernism which says the Christian religion is essentially practical. It is not there primarily to save souls for eternity, but to make the world a better place.



The Christologue is guilty of sentimentalism--that aspect of modernism which says the Christian religion is there to make people feel good and be happy.



The list could go one. Modern Christianity is totally infested with Christologues. This is because the smoke of Satan--which is modernism--has got into every corner of Christianity.



At the heart of this false religion is the denial that the Christian religion is of supernatural origin. It is the attempt to make the Christian religion socially relevant, personally useful, usually pleasant and always up to date.



Spot the Christologues. They are all around you. They don't even know they are Christologues for they have simply swallowed the wisdom of the world that they were given by others.



Nevertheless, the threat of the Christologue should not be ignored. Their sincere work and their "good ideas" will destroy Christianity except for the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail.

Gargle for Lent

Gargle to get rid of a cold. "Gargoyle" to get rid of sin. The Gargoyle Code that is.



If you order The Gargoyle Code today you'll probably get it in time to start reading for Lent.



The Screwtape Letters type book for Catholics has a devilishly clever letter for each day in Lent from Shrove Tuesday through Easter Day.



It's bound to entertain, challenge and inspire. Go here to order.

The Prophetic Pope

The Anchoress quotes an early book by Joseph Ratzinger on the coming trials facing the Catholic Church. Go here.

It's All or Nuthin'

In the musical Oklahoma! Ado Annie and Will Parker sing a song about love saying that it's "All or Nuthin'." What they didn't realize is that they were also making a profound philosophical and theological statement. It is All or Nuthin'.



From the ridiculous to the sublime, Blessed Cardinal Newman writes in the Apologia, "I came to the conclusion that there was no medium in true philosophy between atheism and Catholicism, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below must embrace either the one or the other."



When we say it's All or Nuthin' we are making a big assumption with Newman that the person in question has a "perfectly consistent mind." Not many folks fall into that category, and this raises the question that a young guy who is about to go into the Dominican novitiate asked me the other day, "What do you say to a nihilist?"



My smart aleck answer was, "Nothing."



The nihilist must be given the credit for having a "perfectly consistent mind" because he has considered his options and chosen to believe that there is nuthin' rather than somthin'. My reply that the answer to the nihilist is to say nothing, has a deeper reasoning.



It is this: to say nothing is not only to affirm the nihilist's own belief--which is a negation, but it is also to affirm (by silence) the value of language, and therefore of meaning. What I mean to say is that what I say has meaning. In other words, there are words, and because there are words there is the Other. I am talking in riddles, but that too is the point, because riddles are only riddles because they have answers. A meaningless riddle is no riddle at all.



To put it more simply, the nihilist has chosen nothing, so he must have nothing. He must have no meaning, but if there is no meaning, then his nihilism has no meaning. But this cannot be so because we understand what he means by saying that he is a nihilist.



The nihilist has used words to tell us that he is a nihlist, and the simple use of words assumes that words have meanings and if words have meanings, then there is not only meaning, but words to convey that meaning. No wonder then that the inspired writer says, "In the beginning was the Word."



Because we use language a human being cannot be a nihilist. A gorilla might be a nihilist, but he is not able to tell us so. If the existence of language therefore annihilates the nihilist, it does more. Not only is the Word in the beginning, but "the Word was with God." Not only was the Word with God, but the Word was God. There is more: "Through the Word all things were made that were made."



Of course, I didn't make this up, and neither did the Apostle John. It was also there in the philosophy of the Greeks, who thought all these things through before some sophomoric 'nihilist' came along imagining that there was nothing. The upshot of all this is that language not only proves that there is meaning, but if there is meaning--any meaning at all, then there must be someone who means it. If there is meaning to the universe, then there is someone who had an idea, and that person articulated that idea into words.



From that word all things were created, and they were created out of the nuthin' that the nihilist longs for. This belief we call creation ex nihilo.



Language therefore not only proves that there is somthin' rather than nuthin', but it proves that there is meaning, and if there is meaning then there is a God who creates all that is out of nuthin' at all.



How that God goes on to communicate to Man is also given in that concise chapter of philosophy at the beginning of John's gospel, for there we learn that this same Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.



Or you could say He who was All came to our Nuthin' to give us All.



All or Nuthin' indeed.