Tag Archives: Archbishop

The View From Across the Tiber

08 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith

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looking-at-the-path-of-a-christian_tChalcedon’s article, here, struck a number of chords with me, and I thought maybe another perspective would be useful. His linked article on the liturgy from the forties and fifties just made me nod and go, “I thought he was talking about the Catholic Church, not my home church”. The order of worship hadn’t changed in at least one generation, the opening hymn was verse one of hymn #1 Holy, holy, holy, not that anybody got out the hymnal, we had all memorized it at our mother’s  (if not Grandma’s) knee, the Doxology was just that, The Doxology, and that’s all the program had to say about it. The program was one page of a folded letter size piece of paper. Given that this was back in the time of the one year Lectionary, I wouldn’t take a bet that the Preacher (and that is what he was called) didn’t read the one he had written 20 years before.

When he retired, we called one of those new-fangled pastors, and darned near had a mutiny when he substituted the Nicene Creed one Sunday for the Apostle’s Creed, I never even knew the Anthanasian Creed existed till I joined my church here. Now mind you this is the pastor that confirmed me, and on our class field trip, one of the people we met was a Rev. Wright in Chicago, you might have heard of him around 7 or so years ago. That’s the UCC, all things to all men, and that’s the Roman Catholic Church, The Anglican Communion (especially the Church of England, with the added fillip of being controlled by a mostly Godless Parliament, and the Lutheran church as well. It works (sort of) when there is good will on all sides  and that’s rare. When it doesn’t you get schism and sometimes religious wars.

By my count there are at least four churches calling themselves the Roman Catholic Church:

  1. There’s the hippy dippy, anything that makes you feel good church of Nancy Pelosi, ‘The Nuns the Bus’ and such.
  2. There is the church of the people who think every innovation is bad. this is our own QVO’s church and to a somewhat varying but lesser extent Servus, Chalcedon, and yes, me as well, although on the Lutheran side. We’re the people who think the word ‘novelty’ is a curse.
  3. Then there is the great middle ground, the great majority of whom may well be poorly catechized for one reason or another, or who are just too busy trying to make ends meet, working anything up to three jobs each, to really pay attention. This is, I suspect, most of the Catholic population world-wide. they know that Jesus died for them and is Risen, they likely pray, albeit informally, and let the rest go right over their head. But they try to do the right thing, and they are indisputably Christians. Some percentage of these (some reports say about 20%) actually regularly attend worship, Mass, whatever term you prefer. Another percentage are what Protestants call C&E Christians, which stands for Christmas and Easter, when they show up, and a lot never darken the door, but they claim some church or another. Actually, that is the majority in all our churches, I know them well, I was one of them most of my life.
  4. Then there is the bureaucratic church, the people who keep the light bill paid, St. Peter’s ceiling painted, the clergy on message, the cemetery mowed, and all the niggling little details that go into running the world’s largest organization. God bless them from the Curia right on down to the janitor at the soup kitchen, without them it would fall apart.

But where it all goes wrong for Rome (and to an extent Canterbury and Stockholm as well) is that we have one man, a Godly man, to be sure, but one lonely man sitting there, trying to control this stampede of millions around the world, and if that wasn’t enough, whatever the official doctrine says, you expect him to be infallible with the (unfriendly) press in the back of the plane.

And if that still isn’t enough, you expect him to be an economic genius, and expert on all the other religions of the world, and why they’re are wrong.

And then we Protestants chime in and expect him to function as the patriarch of the west, as well, simply because he can make himself heard over the world’s din.

The man born of woman has never yet been born in this world that can do this job. Maybe Jesus could but his team was often pretty fractious itself.

And maybe it worked better a thousand years ago simply because communication was slow and Rome far away. That where subsidiarity came from, few things went past the bishop at most because it simply took too long.

Lessons? Nope, not from me, I just want you to think before you yell, and pray for the Pope if any man needs all of our prayers, it’s him.

God is Reason: Part One

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith

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SNN2112POPE---_1658367aWe have all heard so many times that “God is Love”, and so he is. It’s been talked enough about here, and everywhere else, that it has become in the popular mind all that God is. Sort of your wingman who will  accept anything you want to do. Which leaves us with the question ,  “Is that all there is?” The answer, of course is no. If it were he would be of little value to us as a guide.

But we know that is not the case, the entire structure of western civilization is built on the Christian faith (and it’s older counterpart, Judaism). This is where our moral code, our sense of right and wrong, and even what honor we have come from. Even militant atheists use our terms to argue against our God.

Early in his Papacy Benedict XVI gave a speech to the scientists at Regensburg. Likely you remember it because in it he quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, likely from perhaps winter barracks in 1391, on the difference between the Islamic God and ours. the emperor spoke rather forcefully, as befits  one whose empire and its capital would soon be besieged, and eventually lost.The press predictably, blew this up into an indictment of Benedict, and others, like Dr. Luther who held similar views. personally I think we might have something to learn from those who fought what is increasingly looking like an enemy again. But that was a minor part of what he said that day, other things were, I think, more important.

Because that day, he also spoke of a rational God. using John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

But the new Testament was written in Greek, and the word John used was Logos, which does translate as word but, it also translates as reason. And so our God is a God of Reason as well as Love.

I’m nobody’s idea of a theologian so, let’s let Benedict (who is) speak to us

John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (cf. Acts 16:6-10) – this vision can be interpreted as a “distillation” of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts being, “I am”, already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates’ attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy.

And thus we see even before Christ, the approaching rapprochement between Greek civilization and our God

In truth,immediately there was little resistance to Greek ideas and rationalism in Christianity, Chalcedon has commented how pervasive Greek culture was in Israel at the time of Christ, and once it was decided to evangelize the gentiles, it pretty much disappeared. And thus, almost from the beginning (n fact, the Septuagint itself was in Greek.

Benedict says this in relation to this:

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history – it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

I think that is exactly correct, and thus we see from the time of the Apostles themselves Christianity has learned from those others around us, adopting the wheat and discarding the chaff, as we come to an ever closer understanding of God.

All quotations are from Benedict’s address which can be found here, and we will continue soon

I started down this road by reading an excellent article called Catholic Scot: Why Be Moral?. You should as well.