Medjugorje
“The commission, which has been working in strict secrecy, is studying the shrine and in particular reports of Marian apparitions at Medjugorje which began in 1981.”
Some people know that I am very skeptical of this event being a true apparitions. I will neither support it or deny it until the investigation is complete. My largest concern, however, is that if the events at Medjugorje are deemed inauthentic there will be a lot of disillusioned people.
The Sameness Mentality
This tweet by @rare_basement (a girl) arrived in my twitter timeline today:
"why cant i be pope. this is the WORST sexism"
Actually, I'd say it is the BEST sexism. Why? Well, the reason she can't be pope is that she can't be a Bishop. Why? Because you must be a guy to validly receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Why? As John Paul II put it, the Church doesn't have the authority to change what Christ established. The Church's authority is limited. She cannot augment the Deposit of Faith that was passed to the Church by Christ through the Apostles. She is a steward of God's decrees. She is not an innovator, modifier, or redactor of the Catholic faith. Christ alone has the authority. A ramification of this is that the Church can't change the all male priesthood because Christ established it. Even if the Church wanted to admit women to the priesthood, she doesn't have the authority to do it. She can't.
So, why does this get branded as a form of sexism? I think it has to do with two contemporary mentalities. The first is that there is a belief that the sexes are in a power battle. The second is that there is a belief that the solution for a perceived lack of equality is to deny the distinction between the sexes and impose structures that support this denial.
There was a famous song performed by the characters Annie Oakley and Frank Butler in the production "Annie Get Your Gun." It captures the mentality of the "war between the sexes." Everyone knows the words, "Anything you can do I can do better." Men and women are typed as being competitors in a struggle for power and prestige. There may be some truth to this in our society today. However, such a competition ought not exist in the community of the faithful. We must reject the "conflict theory" view of human life. Power, if it may be so called, resides simply in holiness, not position.
Joined to this mentality is the erroneous belief that equality equals sameness. While this is a common belief it is more false than the conflict theory approach. At least there is evidence for conflict theory! However, sameness is an assertion. It is an authoritarianism of the secular will. Biology and the whole of the natural order deny the proposition of sameness. Nietzsche would call the imposition of sameness a perfect example of "slave morality." He would be mostly correct. Even the contemporary virtue of diversity is opposed to the sameness mentality. But for some reason such diversity is anathema in our culture when applied to the sexes. But the Church is a great supporter of diversity. She is not bound by the errors of any particular culture or time.
When all things are considered the Church, and the faithful Christian, is able to affirm the dignity of each person and of each difference that expresses the perfection of humanity. It would be an act of violence against the dignity of the diversity of God's creatures if we were to embrace the sameness mentality. We would do violence to both masculinity and femininity if we were to confuse the two.
This is one reason why it doesn't make sense to have women as priests. We call priests father for a reason. Their function in the Church is essentially fatherly. It is not essentially motherly. A mother can never be a father, nor can a father ever be a mother. For one to try and replace the other would be to do violence to the dignity of both fatherhood and motherhood. One only needs to point to the disfunction of our contemporary culture as a proof of this.
When women want to be fathers or when men want to be wives or both desire to be neither there is something profoundly wrong with society. We definitely have these problems in our own society today. What I have said here will be nonsense to the worldly. However, we are not supposed to be of this world. We are in the world but not off the world. Many people say that this problem will be solved by helping restore the family. Maybe the beginning is really through reforming the priesthood?
From the Pope's Pen
A very interesting Motu Proprio was published today. It's actually pretty awesome when one considers the ramifications. I know at least one provision in the document that will be very controversial:
“§ 3. In particular, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that charitable agencies dependent upon him do not receive financial support from groups or institutions that pursue ends contrary to Church’s teaching. Similarly, lest scandal be given to the faithful, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that these charitable agencies do not accept contributions for initiatives whose ends, or the means used to pursue them, are not in conformity with the Church’s teaching.”
In short: No George Soros money.
This document doesn't just clarify the rights and responsibilities of the Bishops with respect to Charitable institutions and giving in their local Church. It actually sets down some pretty awesome rules for the way in which Charitable work must not be considered apart from the sanctifying mission of the Church.
This is an important document for reigning in groups that work on the fringe of Catholic teaching or with only the barest amount of Ecclesiastical Oversight.
I'm looking at you Pax Christi. Orthodoxy is essential to the mission of service.
I'm looking at you Priests for Life. Ecclesiastical oversight is essential to the mission of service.
Stop
Seriously people.
Stop trying to blend religions. Christ said that he is the way, the truth and the life. Nobody, I say it again, NOBODY comes to the Father except by him.
Let me simplify:
Jesus Saves ... that is all.
There is no guru, no method, not alternate. There is no other claimant to the throne of heaven.
All salvation is from Christ and his Church. it doesn't matter how you feel about this. It doesn't matter if you disagree. It doesn't matter how comfortable you are with God or his Church. The reality is simple. There are not many ways to heaven. There is only one way.
God does not need to accommodate himself to you. You need to accommodate yourself to God. I know that every teacher, soccer coach, guidance councilor, priest, pastor, and <insert authority figure here>, has told you that your opinion really matters. They have puffed us up so high with a level of pride that will eventually condemn us. But in this area, your opinion doesn't matter. Humility requires you to change. Humility requires you to submit. Humility requires you to turn to God. It doesn't work the other way around.
Stop trying to impose your preferences on God. He is God! To him all knees will bend. His job is to be God, our job is to love him with everything ounce of our very being. Don't fool yourself. God doesn't need you. He doesn't need your approval. He doesn't need your consent. Nothing you do can add anything to his glory.
Rejoice! God doesn't need you.
God wants you!
Seek his face.
Flesh
So, I have this class on the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The more I read the more disturbed I become at his view of God. But, maybe more frightening is his view of human nature.
He isn't the only person in this contemporary era to have a flawed understanding of human nature. Think about your own human nature. What comes to mind? It's complicated, right? But, most of us, if we are honest, will recognize a stark dichotomy within us. We will see a lot of beauty and mystery. Man is a wondrous animal. Look at the art! Look at the thought! The heights of human goodness transcend the tips of the mountains. Yet, at the same time, our depths are depraved. Aquinas even states that man without law devolves to behavior lower than the brute animals. The atrocities that we are capable of are worse than demonic. Yet, the disorder, the depravity, is not properly part of our nature.
The doctrine of Original Sin is essential for understanding man and Christ. Our proper nature, our original nature, does not possess the disordered passions that we currently experience. It does not possess the weakened will that we have. It does not possess the dulled intellect. These characteristics that we all experience are not proper to our nature. They are results of the sin of Adam. Our nature has been distorted.
Now, this is important for us because it lets us know important information about ourselves in treating the illness of vice and sin. But, it also let's us know what Mary is not. Mary, remember, because of the Immaculate Conception, does not participate in Original Sin. Those three things are not present in her. She is as Adam and Eve were before the fall. This is important because it tells us something about Christ. Christ received his human nature from Mary. He inherited from her a human nature undefiled by Original Sin.
So here is the problem with von Balthasar on this point. He presents to us a flawed image of Christ's humanity. In his work "The Heart of the World" he presents Christ as having experienced irrational disordered emotions. It is important to not get confused here. Emotions are good. They are part of our nature. The problem after the fall is that they are no longer harmoniously ordered by reason. It is this sort of humanity, fallen humanity, that he attributes to the person of Christ. This is a serious error.
The motivation for this is to try and present a God who experiences the same disordered state that we experience in the face of tragedy. But, the reality is very different. Christ is the savior not because he experiences exactly what we experience. Christ is the savior because he takes all things that are proper to man and through his redemptive act in the Paschal Mystery he restores the right relationship between God and man. He redeems what is proper to the human nature. He does not redeem what is not proper to the human nature. In the resurrection those things that are improper to human nature will no longer adhere to us. They have no part in Christ.
We must take seriously the statement that Christ was like us in all ways except sin. All the debates about the knowledge of Christ, the will of the Christ, the affective life of Christ in our contemporary time are colored by this same impoverished understanding of human nature like that found in von Balthasar. We must resist this temptation.
Idolatry
I'm disturbed.
I'm really, really disturbed.
The more I listen to people, even priests, the more I'm convinced that most people have replaced God with an idol of their own making. My first realization of this came to me when one of the brothers was recounting a story about a class he was taking. The professor wanted to know how we can account for God condoning and commanding violence in the Old Testament. One student said that she was uncomfortable with a God like that. Wait. What!!!?? Seriously!!!??
This sort of thing sends me SO ANGRY!
This is only one example of the way people recreate God in our own image. I hear people do it all the time. Philosophers and Theologians are always trying to make God less than what he is. I think they are genuine in their desire for God. However, they often lose sight of the ramifications for their statements.
They want God to be surprised. They want God to be changed by our prayers. They want God to suffer along with us. But, what they don't realize is that if God does any of these things then he is not God – he is unworthy of worship. Let me break it down:
- Surprised God = God lacking knowledge
- Changed God by prayers = God lacking in knowledge & goodness
- Suffering God = God lacking power
In the end, all of these things do violence to the absolute perfection and transcendence of God. If God is limited in his knowledge, power, perfection, goodness, etc., then he is not God, he becomes a thing among other things.
The young lady wasn't comfortable with a God who commands violence. I'm not comfortable with a God who lacks the ability to command violence. I'm not comfortable with a constrained God. I'm not comfortable with an image of God that isn't God!
I don't want this post to be about the philosophy of God. I simply want to point out that God is more than all these things. The world says that God needs to be relevant. What it means by this, however, is that God needs to be an emotional salve for my emotional wounds. On the contrary, God is not relevant in this way. The world wants us to believe that God needs us.
No!
God doesn't need any of us. It is the fact that God doesn't need us that makes his love for us all that more great. We don't increase his glory, we don't add to his goodness, we can't change him, we can't effect him. We can't DO anything for God. But, it is because of all this that his act of creation is so awesome. We do nothing for God, but he does everything for us. His love for us is unmerited, undeserved. There is no way for us to merit or deserve his love. He simply grants it because he loves us.
It's that simple.
So, who cares if you aren't comfortable with God! The reality of God doesn't hinge upon your comfort level. But, your existence hinges upon God's reality.
We can't punish God with our doubt or disbelief.
We must learn to not explain away God's actions. We simply need to try and understand the vastness of the mystery of God. We need to smash the Golden Calf in our mind and turn again to the true God who is infinitely transcendent.
God is beyond anything you can conceive of in your mind.
If you can conceive of God ... that's not God.
Martyrdom
I've been thinking a lot about martyrdom.
A number of Catholic authors have been writing about this. It is being said that historically there are 5 stages of persecution. We are currently at stage 4. The current relations between the Church and our State and our popular culture are near the breaking point. I was recently informed that a stable, healthy women's religious community is daily praying for the grace to endure martyrdom. I know these women. They're not crazy. Their foundress isn't an odd character. These women are reading the signs of the times. The signs all say WARNING!
There are two types of martyrdom – red and white. Red is, of course, being killed out of a hatred of the faith. White is the long process of the death to self. It is essentially what we would recognize as the traditional way to holiness. But I think that secularism has bred a new sort of martyrdom. One that has only become tangible in this post-Christian era.
I don't know exactly what to call it. I'm thinking it's color is beige. Why beige? Beige is boring, bland, and forgettable. This is the only sort of Christianity that is acceptable to contemporary secular culture and the secular state – Beige Christianity.
Similar to white martyrdom it has a self-inflicted dimension. By trying to encounter the world we have accommodated ourselves to the world. We have abandoned the radical counter-cultural impetus of our holy religion. We have set it aside of our own accord. Our internal solidarity has been abandoned. Our liminal identification has been abandoned. Our non-identity with any particular time or culture has been abandoned. This is the insight of the traditionalists. They sense that our identity as Catholic's has been compromised. Unfortunately, their response has often been an irascible and poorly reasoned impetus toward traditional expressions of the faith. Their insight is not a bad thing, but it doesn't really address the heart of the problem. It only treats the symptom.
The other part of this martyrdom is imposed from the outside. This is secular society actually imposing its ideology on the Church. This imposition has a double movement. There is the enticing aspect that draws individual Christians away from an authentic practice of the faith by presenting things that appear to be desirable rewards for becoming secular. I have in mind both the popular media and popular culture. Through these very powerful forces we are attacked both in body and in mind. The other aspect is a coercive movement. Here, the force of law is used to compel the Church to comply with secular ideology. The HHS Contraception Mandate is one clear example. However, there are a lot more examples. Everything from zoning regulations to tax code laws can be used to the disadvantage of the faith.
You could call this a bureaucratic persecution. It has the effect of sapping the energy and resolve of the faithful. It's the spiritual equivalent of standing in line at the Motor Vehicle Department. It's a progressive process of taming those aspects of Christianity that would challenge the sentiments, morals, and assumptions of the secular world. It makes us lazy Catholics with flabby souls. It itself isn't beige, this persecution makes us beige.
We can only resolve the problem if we first realize that we are being subtly persecuted. We are like the proverbial frog in boiling water. But, now that we're aware we must re-evangelize others, pulling and pushing them out of their lethargy. We must regain a sense of our destiny as Christians. We must boldly reject what the secular world has done to tame the faith. We must reject an anthropomorphic God. We must restore a sense of the sacred. We must restore our public devotional life. We must stand-up to the powers of this world who would try and bend our consciences to their will. We must cease accommodating ourselves to the world and we must cease accommodating ourselves to the worldly.
Either we'll convert our culture and we'll be free to seek white martyrdom, or the red martyrdom will begin. Either way, Christ is triumphant.
Musical Guest
I would like to introduce my readers to my friend Frank La Rocca. He is an amazing composer. The first time I heard his music was at St. Margaret Mary's Parish in Oakland, CA. He had written a Mass in honor of the ICRSS priest's 25th anniversary of Ordination. It was an experience that I will always cherish.
“Drawing upon influences as diverse as Josquin, Byrd, Stravinsky, George Crumb and Arvo Pärt, his music has been described as possessing a “luminous beauty” with “a profound sacred sensibility” and as “a modern evocation of the radiant spirituality of ancient chant.””
I was at the release party for Frank's first solo album the other day. It was a wonderful crowd of his friends, family, colleagues and students. If you are interested in Contemporary Sacred Music I would highly recommend getting to know the works of Frank La Rocca.
It couldn't hurt to purchase his album either.
No, it's not yet on Amazon or iTunes. But, owning the CD is worth it. The Album art is beautiful and the descriptions of each piece in the jacket (I think that is what they still call it), are worth having. Even the artwork on the CD itself communicates the beauty of its content.
Enjoy!
Also, for Sacred Music nerds: Frank gave a talk at Notre Dame on Sacred Music. The full transcript is on the Notre Dame Sacred Music Blog. Just follow the link.
We Don't Need No Stinking Evidence
At least, this is often the problem with much of what passes as Scripture Scholarship these days. This is not an indictment of all contemporary Exegesis. I know some fantastic guys in the field. However, they are a persecuted class.
I have already seen some pushback against the third Jesus of Nazareth book by Pope Benedict XVI. I have even seen a brief article mocking the Holy Father's claims by a popular tech magazine. That's right! A tech magazine. Folks should really stick to what they know. Reach too far and you might just fall off the mountain side.
However, my friend Mark Brumley has written a short piece in defending the Holy Father's claim that literally all evidence points to Jesus being born in Bethlehem as opposed to those who claim that Jesus was born in Nazareth. Mark, however, makes a more important point: arguments from silence should not be taken seriously. Unfortunately, many contemporary theories in biblical scholarship stem from either silence or inference. Unfortunately, such claims are taken very seriously.
“In other words, the only places we can go for information regarding the birth of Jesus are the gospel accounts. They give no indication of Jesus having been born in Nazareth but they insist he was born in Bethlehem.”
Go Go Go
One of the strongest pulls in the United States is work. Technology hasn't made this any better like it promised. We are always working. One of the professors at our school says that this is a direct result of the implicit atheism of the modern age. She says that the depression of the modern era effected Europe by sending them into a state of helpless immobility. However, in the United States, she said, we just became really busy. This is definitely my experience. As the years have gone on it has only gotten worse. We are so busy that we have become obsessed with productivity methods. Just look at the plethora of productivity apps available for your electronic devices, the books, podcasts, etc. litter the ethos of current American culture. Literally, we are so busy we can't keep up with our work, so we develop methods so that we can do even more work. It's insanity!
Make no mistake. This is a symptom of a society that lacks true Hope. When we expend so much energy on earthly tasks, how concerned are we with heavenly tasks? We need to reject this cultural trend. Busyness does not lead to holiness. Rather, silence is necessary. Peace is necessary. Contemplation is necessary. Yet, underneath each of these things is something else. In order to live out this call toward contemplation must have leisure.
Leisure?
Yes, leisure. I love how this goes against our American mentality.
Leisure does not mean having the time to sit around and do nothing. It's time that should be used for pursuing virtue and contemplation. It is only in the context of leisure that we can attain to our highest happiness. It could be said that heaven is a perpetual state of leisure.
But we can't wait to attain to the life of contemplation in the next life. We must start that life now in this earthly state.This goes for all of us. Both the layman and the monk must make time for leisure. Yes, even monks get caught in a sort of "rat race" mentality. The monastery isn't a complete refuge from the world. Each monk brings a little bit of the world into the monastery. This is even more true with those of us Religious that have a vocation that takes us frequently into the public square.
Sometimes, as Religious we forget that we need leisure. Often we mistake our Regular Observances for leisure. This is a false understanding of Regular Observance. Public acts of worship like the chanting of the Divine Office or the Celebration of the Mass are not leisurely activities. Rather, they are our most profound work. They are our Opus Dei. Our first job is to fulfill these public obligations of worship with and for the Church. The graces that stem from these are more powerful and effective than any apostolic work or internal ministry we can do. To believe the contrary is to fall into the American sense of usefulness which is fundamentally a form of Utilitarianism. Worse, it could be a type of Pelagianism. Either way it at least looks like either some sort of Messiah complex or a convenient way to avoid intimacy. We must always remember the saying, "there is only one Savior and I am not he."
The activities of leisure are not necessarily bound up with public works. Study, Holy Reading, personal prayer and devotions, communal recreation, these are activities of leisure. These are essential. if we do not take a significant time to embrace silence and enter into these sort of activities then we will never be able to attain to the habit of contemplation. Without contemplation we will never be able to live a properly balanced, happy and holy life.
Our daily labors are not unimportant. I don't want to create a false dichotomy. i just want to point out the current pressing problem. We as a people are currently work oriented. We don't really need to learn how to work more or work harder. Rather, we need to learn how to slow down and make time for leisure. It will make our life more fulfilling and our work more fruitful. We need to learn how to properly balance time for work, refreshment, and leisure. We ought not spend too much time in any of these categories of life. We must learn to enter into each as completely and intensely as possible. For me, as a Dominican, these life categories will be filled with different content than the average layman. However, the common human need is to have a balance between the three.
I would challenge everyone to regularly evaluate their life and see if each of these areas are properly balanced. If not, rearrange what needs to be rearranged. If you can't rearrange then it is probably time to cut something out of your daily life.
