Progress? You decide . . .
24 Friday Feb 2017
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It’s actually an easy answer, although very hard to do. Dr. Walther answered it, back in 1883 at the dedication of our St. Louis Seminary.
“”When our synod, the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, thirty-six years ago met for the first time in the God-blessed city of Chicago, it was a small, despised little band of only twelve poor congregations. The church which in this country still called itself evangelical-Lutheran lay in utter ruin. The teaching of our church was unknown territory for it. The small number of preachers who still knew something about it and wanted to stick to it were considered people with limited mental capacities, and the hope was that they would soon die out. The Lutheran Confessions were hardly known even by name anymore, and they were considered documents of earlier unenlightened times, now long obsolete. Instead of Luther’s doctrine in the church that called itself Lutheran, the teaching of Zwingli and obvious rationalism was in vogue, coupled with fanatic methods of conversion. … To want to transplant the Old Lutheran church, which submitted to every letter of the Word of God, to this land of untamed love for liberty seemed in real fact to be a completely hopeless, worse than foolish undertaking. But far from letting itself be made to falter, our synod did not ask: What must we do to become large and numerous? But it only asked: What must we do to be found faithful before the Lord of the church ? Our synod knew that success was not in its hands. Success is therefore left to God.” (C.F.W. Walther, CJ, 15:3, p.226-7)
We must be faithful before the Lord of the church. Nothing less. Then it is up to God, and he has never failed us, and never will.
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Indeed NEO, much easier said than done once the institutions, the rites themselves and the disciplines have all but disappeared and the vocations of the religious seem to have changed to concentrate upon political social justice issues. The Church is no longer the Loved Mother Church which animated a family that was tied together as brothers and sisters in a family that shared the pain, the struggles and joys equally and looked after each other without any expectancy of some bureau of the state to take care of us. We survived by the love of each of us for one another and precisely because we loved the Church founded by Christ unreservedly. I wonder if it will return again or if it will dwindle to a small despised remnant.
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Quite, Scoop, I understand. I know you don’t, but far too often traditional Catholics appear far too concerned with the Church, not the Lord. Please the Lord, and the rest will follow. It’s why the LCMS (where that quote came from) is growing while the ELCA is shrinking and dieing. Remember what he wrote there, in 1853 (more or less) the LCMS was 12 poor churches, a remnant church that had been exiled from Germany, even having some of its clergy imprisoned there for their faith. Now it is one of the world’s largest, not only in the US, but in South America and Asia as well.
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Well any properly formed traditional Catholic sees the Church as both the visible life of Christ on earth and as the Bride of Christ that forms Christ’s family on earth for their final end. So yes, to love the Church is to love Christ above all. When we start separating the two we tend to defile the Church while we claim to love the Lord. I don’t think you can separate the two: to love Christ is to love the Church. She is the visible presence of Christ that binds us all together, feeds us with the Sacraments and prepares us for our final end.
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We believe the same, but that’s how some read, it may well be not what they believe, though to be fair.
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I think that before the dissolution of the Church as the center of life for the Christian it is hard for those who were later raised in the Church to even imagine what once before never needed mentioning. It was simply what it was; a tight knit family and the center of life that actually cared how we fared in this life and where we would spend our eternity.
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That’s likely true, probably for us all. I do wonder though, if some of that wasn’t because of a dearth of other things, as well. All things to do with community seems to be in decline.
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All I know is that this video resonated with me as I witnessed much of the same. I was 19 when the Second Vatican Council ended and 23 when the Novus Ordo began in full swing. The changes in my Catholic friends was dramatic and society as a whole lost a pillar that seemed to prop up a civility that hasn’t existed since. There is no doubt that at this same time wine (drugs), women (free love) and song (rock & roll) became the prevailing culture and instead of remaining a haven for those who lost their way and were looking for a way back, the Church became more like the degenerated society that emerged during those days. So was it the chicken or the egg? I don’t know for sure but it shouldn’t have effected the overall community of believers; the same yesterday, today and forever. That’s what is fundamentally missing . . . a place of unsurpassed stability for the human soul.
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Yes, it’s very much of a chicken or egg question. I, and you, know there were a whole bunch of societal changes going on at the time, as well, a good many of which echo down to the present, not to our benefit. It’s why I’ll likely end up in the LCMS someday, they are just about the only church around that didn’t in some measure succumb. But there are things I like about where I am as well, so it’s not that easy. But it’s why I always sympathize with you, and yes, that video spoke to me as well, in some measure.
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Yes, there are so many things in society that did not exist in a vacuum. The Vietnam War and the drafting of kids that reached 18 years of age were not prepared for this abrupt departure from the ordiliness of life and family sort of threw the youth into full-out revolt against the culture that previously provided so much protection. All of a sudden the world was no longer ordily and there was a lust to experience all that life could offer for our enjoyment.
Again, though, despite the change in secular society, the changes in our religious houses, began to bow to the new world order that was in its embryonic state. Now it is gone, and some are out there looking for what we lost and it seems to be gone. I don’t know if we can get it back though Michael Matt is hopeful that we can . . . but so much has to happen if that is going happen. It is beyond us mortals to fix this and we can only hope that God will lead us back to the loving arms of Mother Church and once again become the center our our lives.
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The RCL for tomorrow, transfiguration, Matt. 17.1-9 is reminder that faith is embodying God’s living law, Jesus (viz John 13.34 ff), thus life is for living. Peter’s lame response to build booths (feast of booths perchance) is wrong, shrines, albeit laws are detrimental to a lived faith.
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Let us not forget tomorrow’s Epistle Reading – 2 Peter 1; 16-end
“And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.” 2 Peter 19.
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Scoop and Neo,
I find myself agreeing with both of you and sharing your angst. I don’t know if that is the right word, That deeply moving video has a great lesson for us living in the West.
Here in Britain Islam is making steady progress and I fear that as Christians we are going to face persecution. It will certainly weed out the men from the boys, to use a common metaphor. Immigration and the rising birthrate among “British” Muslims is soon going to overtake the Christian population. That includes the nominal variety who have only a weak link with the Faith.
Europe as a whole has become much less Christian. We are living on borrowed Christian capital but it is running out. I fear for the future, yet at the same time pray that by the Grace of God people will come to their senses and to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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When I think of all the ‘movements’ in society that came together at once it is astounding. In the expression of that new society the word ‘heady’ seems to come to mind. Everyone was rushing toward a new era . . . a new age . . . the age of Aquarius. It was exciting.
The Civil Rights Movement gave this society in its earliest stages a just cause to fight for and thus created a ‘folk song’ movement that bespoke ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ for the oppressed and was eventually taken over by Communist and Marxist sympathizers (and a call for hedonism) and ended with newly created militant groups appearing such as the Black Panthers . . . non-violence became passe in the twinkling of an eye. Cities burned and college students rioted. Hippies moved from their little home towns to LA, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Boston in droves . . . they have remained liberal havens ever since. Mostly agrarian based black families from the south moved North to the cities and took refuge in government housing projects and were transformed into a victim class that remains to this day.
Lumber mills, stone quarries and steel plants closed their doors and agriculture was taken over by mega-farms run by corporate farmers. The poor were given the bread and circuses of welfare to help end the riots and the hatred that was brewing in every culture that became the amalgam of the new left; blacks, hispanics, hippies, educators, psychologists, politicians, NGO’s that favored this cause or that, and the Church fought with these newly ‘oppressed’ victims and enabled them to add a sense of morality to their disparate causes.
Birth control pills became so common that we no longer even asked if a woman was on them or not . . . it was understood that they did. The Churches said little or nothing a scant 10 years after they villified rock and roll music as the devil’s music. But on the free sex movement and the new hedonistic movements they said nothing. Abortion finally was the final act of a Church that no longer held any sway over the moral ethos of this emerging new world order.
Saul Alinsky, Mao, Che Guevara, William Burroughs, Alan Ginsburg became required reading. The old classical curriculum in schools was thrown into the ash heap of history and we now had advanced classes in things like ‘women’s studies’, ‘black studies, or ‘community organizing’. The Churches applauded the changes.
So yes, Malcolm, it shouldn’t surprise anyone how these things go: immigration of Muslims into a Western European Culture that had fought hard for its Christian identity in the past is being invited to snuff out its last smoldering ashes with their new status of ‘victims of oppression’. Sharia alone and the fecundity of the Muslims should tell us that this is suicide for our future. Pope’s of old could tell us, if we would only open the history books, that Muslims and Christians do not mix or fare better than do Muslims and Jews . . . let us not forget that the Muslims were cheerleaders and allies to Hitler during WWII.
We are seeing a backlash now . . . but is it enough to stave off the slide into the ditch? I don’t know. But it does look to me that whatever we do now has the importance of shaping the world to come both in Europe and in the Americas. Are we going to be a globalized society, a Christian society, a Marxist society. Will there be national borders in our future, will there be choices for Christians to move to in the future? We seem to be claiming the importance to invite them to choose a Muslim culture or a Christian one and yet they are quickly showing themselves to be transforming our cultures into something rather like that which they left. When the whole world is Muslim . . . I wonder what that will mean for Christianity. Will there be a place for the Christian refugee? Scary times, I’m afraid, and I don’t think we have much time to decide how to answer all the questions that are being posed to us.
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good comment, Scoop.
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Scoop, to continue your diatribe: https://joelhirst.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/the-recipe-for-revolution/
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And with the additional hindsight of 38 months this article has proven to have hit the nail square on the head. http://thatthebonesyouhavecrushedmaythrill.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-catholics-are-saying-about-these.html
Progress? You decide…
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Malcolm, what I can’t understand is this article: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/02/25/new-bbc-head-religion-gave-islamist-extremists-platform/
Now, using this wiki article showing the breakdown of religion in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom, there are 33% of the population that either don’t care or are too scared to identify with any religion. 7% are other (including Muslim) and a whopping 60% Christian. BUT, your BBC has had a Muslim as head of religion and ethics since 2009! In London 48% are Christian with 13% Muslim, and have just elected as mayor a Muslim!
Is this total fear that you will be beheaded if you don’t kowtow to their every want and desire? Or is it that the Christians have had the wool pulled over their heads by the liberals for so long that they truly don’t have a clue? Islamic jihad is a worldwide phenomenon with death totals increasing daily. By the looks of it, Britons seem not to care! Please help, is my conclusion in error?
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Scoop, thought this was great. We need to call it “our friendly Jesuit work of ‘re-interpretation’…the Biblical Jesus vs. the Modern Jesus…Which Jesus will you follow? Progress? You decide…
http://thatthebonesyouhavecrushedmaythrill.blogspot.com/2017/02/re-interpreting-jesus-and-his-order.html
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And if you don’t like that one….Hotel Sanctae Martae: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5sn_vkDLBo
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