Shot and chaser (culture wars)

Note the delta on the Rotten Tomatoes move review aggregator site between audience scores for the movie "Nefarious" and professional critics' reaction to it.

Then ponder this essay by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist.

Davidson's point (not coincidentally hinted at by the wildly different reaction to "Nefarious" from average moviegoers and film critics) is this: "When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we're way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track." Moreover, "Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods -- and he wasn't wrong." 

Several commentators have since said that Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch fired Tucker Carlson over that speech, because Murdoch has peculiar notions of what "extremist" thinking is. Tucker probably saw that coming, joking even at the time that prayer is always a good strategy when you're engaged in spiritual warfare, even if the guy recommending that is -- like Carlson himself -- a mild-mannered Episcopalian.

Remembering Gerard Vanderleun

Gerard Vanderleun was a blogger whom I never met, but admired in spite of the sketchy job he'd once had editing Penthouse magazine. He left us on January 27 of this year (2023), at age 77 after a short illness. 

Gerard had a sharp mind and a generous spirit. His influential blog lives on for awhile, thanks to the good graces of his companion Jean Kaufman, who herself runs a fine blog under the nom-de-plume The New Neo.

In some ways, Gerard Vanderleun was the blogging's answer to singer/songwriter John Prine, who has also gone recently to his reward. 

"Judas: A Saint for Our Seasons" is re-posted here as a tribute to Mr. Vanderleun. I first read this essay when Gerard published it on April 18, 2014, but it may have been a re-posting of his own work from 2006 even then. Whether this essay appeared once or several times, it was originally on his own blog, American Digest. 

Like almost everything else Gerard wrote, this searing meditation on cultural failure and its implications still holds up well. 

All of the following words are his, re-presented here because they deserve to be remembered.

Judas: A Saint for Our Seasons

If we betray the people who love us, what's to stop us from betraying the country that makes us possible?

Did you ever break a promise?
Did you ever break a vow?
Have you traded love for money,
And are you happy now?

Did you kiss him in the garden
And then abandon him to fate?
Is your final sin forgiven,
Or is it far too late?

WHEN IT COMES TO DISCOVERING new ways to cheapen the human soul, the "professional intellectuals" of our society have cornered the market. So it was in 2006 when, timed carefully to cash in on the Easter holiday, the "serious" editors of National Geographic chose to release their gleanings from a sheaf of rags and call them "The Gospel of Judas."

Having risen through the echo chamber of "higher" education and survived the ruthless but quiet vetting process of their "profession," these editors knew full well that what they were putting out into the world was not a "gospel." They also knew that calling it a "gospel" would ensure greater attention and greater sales. Beyond that, the editors, secular cultists all, also got a quiet little tingle by having, in their minds, "stuck it" to the Christian church once again. As usual, such secularists love to stick it to Christianity. Addicts of auto-erotic spiritual asphyxiation, their onanistic pleasure in these deeds is only enhanced if they can be performed during the most holy days of the Christian calendar. Only then can maximum profit and pleasure be assured.

This dark thrill of denigration has the immediate benefit of pleasingly confirming them in their own Church of Zero, and the secondary benefit of being much, much safer than, say, sticking it to Islam, a faith that enforces its demands for respect with bombs and beheadings, and whose central message to all cowards is "Don't mess with Muhammad." The sad fact of our modern era is that if you denigrate Islam, you often have to bag up body parts and hose down the sidewalk, but when you denigrate Christianity the most you need to clean up after yourself is a warm washcloth.

Your gedankenexperiment for today is to ask yourself, regardless of your religious beliefs, if the editors of National Geographic, being given an ancient manuscript that "proved" the Koran was nothing more than the blatherings of some ergot-besotted Bedouin who had munched one too many hallucinogenic plants while hanging out in a cave near Mecca, would have published the same "proof" as loudly and as broadly? Would they have done so, or would they have issued a Press Release citing concerns for the "provenance" of the manuscript and their employees' safety? Regardless of your religious beliefs, you know the shameful answer.

But beyond these considerations, the publication of the "Gospel" of Judas has another, deeper and more lasting benefit to our neophytes of nihilism. It puts one of the final elements of their anti-morality play at center stage. It seeks to sanctify treason.

It was never a question of "if," but only a question of "when" our contemporary society would discover an avatar who would make treason acceptable. It only codifies the realities of their secular belief system. Treason against others or one's country has long been as common as adultery in this country. Like adultery the rate of treason is on the rise because, like adultery and similar forms of personal betrayal, it no longer has any consequences at all.

It is true that the federal crime of treason is not easily established and is rarely if ever charged. But the formal crime of treason is not what I am discussing here. Rather the more common, garden variety of treason as understood by plain people -- the rabid and unremitting hatred, expressed in word or deed, of the country that gives you the freedom express your hatred. It is the treason of the ingrate, the soul-dead, the politically perverted, and the bitter; it is, as Roger Kimball at The New Criterion discusses, the treason of intellectuals and "the undoing of thought."

It's a fact of our self-centered contemporary existence that betrayal has become one of the common forces that shape our lives. For when our own desires ride us like a drunken demon lodged on our shoulders, betrayal is the first order of the day when others seek to thwart our desires, or even when others become a mere inconvenience to our wants and whims.

We've long permitted greater and greater levels of betrayal in our society. We've codified them as law, policy and custom as far as the wishes of the individual are concerned. It is no longer sophisticated or fashionable to speak of selfishness as betrayal. That word is so harsh when, after all, we are only speaking of "differing needs," aren't we. When the betrayal of others is glossed over with phrases such as "I needed to be me," or "I needed my space," or "I needed more money," or "We were just on different paths," then the elevation of this disease of the soul from the betrayal of another into the larger realm of treason against all is only a question of degree.

The problem is that shame, a vestigial thing in many shrunken souls, persists, and shame must be driven out of the soul if the secular is to thrive. Both betrayal and treason are still weighted down by a lingering sense of shame within at the same time they are made safe from the onus of blame without. Both are permitted by our cults of personal freedom and "sensible" selfishness, but both are formed of dark matter and not easily expunged from one's soul no matter how reduced it may have become.

There was, perhaps, only one moment in history when humans "knew not what they did." In all other times we know, at the deepest level, exactly what we do when we betray another, or others, or ourselves, or our country. We know it clearly and so we bury the ugly deed deeply. Still it persists, remains and rots in the tomb of our souls. A wiser culture called this "sin" and sought to have it confessed and forgiven as meaningless in the shadow of the greatest sacrifice. Our therapeutic culture calls it "guilt" and seeks to palliate and expunge it so that we may live a guilt-free life regardless of our acts. More and more of us live in the latter culture and seek a life forever free from sin, from guilt, from the consequences of our betrayals. And yet this final freedom eludes us.

What is needed, in this secular age of self-intoxication, is a Saint who will remit our sins of betrayal; who will by his very existence sanctify treason. And who better fits this role than the man who betrayed the greatest love for the smallest change, Judas?

The worshipers of the Church of the Self need Judas today more than they need Christ, and they need Christ more than they can know. They need Him so much that they are compelled to reject Him utterly lest their shabby Church be seen as it is, a hovel made of mud and wattle, of empty objects, shabby dreams and promises broken. A statue of Judas would blend right into the niche above their television; a household god whose only requirement is an offering of silver, from time to time, or a shopping spree at the mall to secure his love and blessing; our "Saint Judas of Perpetual Extortion."

Betrayal is a common catechism in the Church of the Self. Hymns to Me are the hosannas it hurls at an empty heaven. The politics of such a church require as First Things a rejection of all things not of, by, and for the self. A religion or a country of the people, by the people, and for the people is high on the list of things to be abhorred since it requires an allegiance that is other than to the self. The Church of the Self effectively mandates treason, and we see it now manifested daily in the bright robes of "unstiffled dissent" which shroud an increasingly vicious anti-Americanism that has its roots, not in reasoned criticism, but in unreasoned hate. We hear the hate but what we have not been allowed to see is the treason behind it.

That is now "changed, changed utterly."

Now our traitors to God and Country have found a sheaf of rags that "prove" that the greatest treason was really "all good;" that Judas was really the greatest friend Jesus ever had and was, with a kiss, doing him the greatest favor ever done.

Treason, done with the kiss of "my personal freedom," proves that you do not really hate your country, you love it. You are, in the final analysis, your country's best friend. In these "new" old tales about Jesus we read that Judas betrayed the Son of God because Jesus told him to do it. Really? Or did his betrayal come, not from any request that may or may not have been made, but from humanity's persistent lust to sin freely and without even the thin penalty of remorse? Was this final treason done because this sin had been secretly blessed by God, or for the sheer dark thrill of asserting the self at the expense of life in the light?

"I betrayed my friend, because he gave me the freedom to do so. Feel my love for him."

"I betrayed my country because it gave me the freedom to do so. Feel my love for it."

Black is white. Hate is Love. Slavery is Freedom. Treason is Loyalty. That last phrase fits right in to the secular catechism, doesn't it? All it needs to become holy writ is an avatar, a solid historical personage with the power to turn darkness into light, lies into truth, and betrayal into something that was, in the final analysis, "all good."

Saint Judas, step right up to the Gates, ring that bell, and don your halo -- you the man.

The Klavan Catechism

From the 2016 memoir The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ, by Andrew Klavan:

The fact was, as a story -- even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean -- the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning.

I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalog of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve's mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it's what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History's murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are not the inescapable plot of the story we're in.

The Old Testament traces one complete cycle of that history; one people's rise and fall. This particular people is unique only in that they're the ones who begin to remember what man was made for. Moses' revelation at the burning bush is as profound as any religious scene in literature. There, he sees that the eternal creation and destruction of nature is not a mere process but the mask of a personal spirit, I AM THAT I AM. The centuries that follow that revelation are a spiraling semicircle of sin and shame and redemption, of freedom recovered and then surrendered in return for imperial greatness, of a striving for righteousness through law that reveals only the impossibility of righteousness, of power and pride and fall. It's every people's history, in other words, but seen anew in the light of the fire of I AM.

It made sense to me too -- natural sense, not supernatural -- that after that history was complete, a man might be born who could comprehend it wholly and re-create within himself the relationship at its source. His mind would contain both man and God. It made sense that the creatures of sin and history -- not the Jews alone but all of us -- would conspire in such a man's judicial murder. Jesus had to die because we had to kill him. It was either that or see ourselves by his light, as the broken things we truly are. It's only from God's point of view that this is a redeeming sacrifice. By living on earth in Jesus, by entering history, by experiencing death, by passing through that moment of absolute blackness when God is forsaken by God, God reunites himself with his fallen creation and reopens the path to the relationship lost in Eden. Jesus' resurrection is the final proof that no matter how often we kill the truth of who we're meant to be, it never dies.

[That summary right there is worth the price of the book, I think]. 

But there's more:

For years, maybe most of my life, I had languished in that typical young intellectual's delusion that gloom and despair are the romantic lot of the brilliant and the wise. But now I saw: it wasn't so. Why should it be? What sort of wisdom has no joy in it? What good is wisdom without joy? By joy I don't mean ceaseless happiness, of course. I don't mean willed stupidity for the sake of a cheap smile. The world is sad and it is suffering. A tragic sense is essential to both realism and compassion. By joy I mean a vital love of life in both sorrow and gladness. Why not? The hungry can't eat your tears. The poor can't spend them. They're no comfort to the afflicted and they don't bring the wicked to justice. Everything useful that can be done in the world can be done in joy.

Klavan's insight summoned a song for me. 

The  "Nazareth" that Robbie Robertson of  The Band was writing about pulling into "half past dead" was Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the Martin Guitar company. But we all know which Nazarene put the original town in Judea on the proverbial map. And I don't think it coincidental that the refrain of  "The Weight" is deliberately redemptive: "Take a load off, Annie" [or Fannie, if you sing it that way]. Take a load for free!

If you take a load off, what are you supposed to do with it? Jesus is the man who stepped up to say "You put the load right on me!"  Moreover, he volunteered for that.

The best kind of Christian music is stealthy Christian music. Ol' Luke ain't the only one "waitin' on Judgement Day." [Remember the stream of pilgrims going "down to the river to pray" in O Brother Where Art Thou, or Jake and Elwood Blues putting the band back together because they were "on a mission from God"? Remember the question about "Will the Circle be Unbroken" by and by, or Rick Beato pointing out that U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" has gospel music phrasing in it?].

It's not too much of a hop from "The Weight" to C.S. Lewis and what he wrote about "The Weight of Glory." Think of the same theme in two different keys. But as the Klavan excerpt (and the harmony between Levon Helm and Mavis Staples in their live recording) makes clear, the Chronicles of Narnia author wasn't the only one "surprised by joy." 

While I'm on a roll, let me drag J.R.R. Tolkien up to the bar so he can help me make the argument from Middle Earth that Frodo and Sam and the other hobbits were invited into the Fellowship of the Ring not merely for their humility, but also because the most obvious characteristic of hobbitry (hobbitdom?) is joy (in contrast to the fragile valor of the humans, the cultivated detachment of the elves, the pugnaciousness of the dwarves, and the wisdom of wizards). 

The Fellowship needed joy, which I think is why Tolkien inserted two "spare" hobbits into it for a total of four, and no more than two representatives of any other free race among the nine heroes. As Saint Paul had before them, Tolkien and Lewis saw joy as a hallmark of the Christian life. 

It's inspiring to see a contemporary thriller writer like Andrew Klavan wrestle his way into the same insight, and then surrender to it.

Sophistry of the highest order

I graduated from a nominally Jesuit-run university and was glad for having had the chance to go to college at that school. Even so, there are multiple reasons why "Jesuitical" as an adjective has a perjorative connotation, and  -- sadly -- what Pope Francis just did won't help restore luster to that word. 

Basically, Francis today approved the publication of an official "moto proprio" that pours rainwater all over one of his immediate predecessor's more popular initiatives. 

It's now clear that Pope Benedict XVI was wrong to resign in 2013 -- unless perhaps his resignation was part of a divine plan to chastise the Church for awhile, which it might well have been, based on lots of what we've seen since then.

Ironically for someone in his position, Pope Francis is no fan of the most venerable form of the Mass we have. Even more ironically, his order today shackles the celebration of the Mass in Latin by using a document form with a Latin title which means "On his own impulse."

Sheesh. This Catholic wishes that Pope Francis had more impulse control.

Here -- in part -- is why the new edict stinks (You can be gentle and call it "ill-conceived," if you like). Fr. Dwight Longenecker's pitch for "subversive obedience" got my attention, also, as did Father John Zuhlsdorf's hot take. 

Those two priests argue more persuasively (to my ears, at least) than the biretta-fearing columnist for National Catholic Reporter who says this change was forced on Pope Francis by bad behavior from people like the aforementioned Father Z.

While crossing Raleigh boundaries

Fall remains my favorite season of the year, but there's nothing quite as endearing around North Carolina as twilight in early summer. Cares seem to leach from the world for about half an hour, when the setting sun tinges the air a shade of lavender that slides almost imperceptibly into periwinkle blue. 

Skinny rabbits graze on suburban lawns, ignoring the blinking yellow-green lanterns of the fireflies that almost float by, buoyed by an alchemy of small wings and southern humidity. 

Twilight is the only time of day when, while commuting west to east, my thoughts segue from, for example, the Tuckman model of group development over to the bemused realization that "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" are actually songs about the same thing. 

Christian radio on the east side of the 40/440 split (where the same FM band flips from WSMW's "We Play Everything" format over to "HIS Radio" and its "Positive, Encouraging" tagline) runs seasonal promotions this time of year. My current favorite touts a pilgrimage to Israel with the slogan, "You haven't lived until you've toured the Holy Land with about 30 Tennessee rednecks."

Personally, I'd rather hear Gov't Mule sing "Soulshine" than listen to Tauren Wells croon his way through "Known," but that's a generational and probably also geographical thing. 

(Existential sidebar: Am I too quick to dismiss honest sentiment as cloying, or does anyone who grew up watching Marlin Perkins narrate Jim Fowler's close encounters with dangerous animals on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom between 1970 and 1983 really appreciate 'Contemporary Christian Music' as a radio format?)

It's in early summer, on this particular weekend, that one of my parish priests can preach insightfully about the "Markan sandwich" of  Jesus coming to the aid of Jairus, the synagogue official, despite being interrupted by a faithful woman with a history of hemorrhages (a story within a story =  a"sandwich," according to people who know). 

Fr. Ramirez de Paz pointed out that Jesus does not regard the woman who is healed by touching his cloak as an interruption. She is a child of God. Moreover, the wise young priest wryly observed, "To Jesus, death is not an emergency. To us, it is." 

And I did not know until it was mentioned in this sermon that the raising of Jairus's 12-year-old daughter from the dead is one of only three times in the New Testament when the original Greek text also includes the words of Jesus in Aramaic (in this case, it''s Jesus' tender invitation, "Talitha koum").

Both stories in that Markan sandwich have special resonance now that my sweetheart is blessedly and and cerfiably free from breast cancer, according to the oncologist whom she'd been treated by for more than a year.

Friend Chris, a dab hand at borrowing from the Church Fathers, observes after the fact that it's no coincidence that the woman in the story featured in the Catholic liturgy this week had suffered from hemorrages for 12 years, or that the girl whom Jesus brought back to life was 12 years old, "given that there are 12 tribes of Israel."

Pondering what faith does

Fellow weasel-watchers and I were thinking aloud about whether faith in God brings common sense. It's a good question for "Pentecost Week."

On confusion over last things

A ne'er-do-well Communist of whom Pope Francis is fond has leaked parts of what had been a private conversation between them, and what's out there contradicts Catholic doctrine, in that it has Pope Francis, who mentions the devil more frequently than many other religious leaders, suggesting that Hell does not exist.

Father Z has some thoughts about that. The pithiest of those is his wry but also reassuring and exasperated declaration: "The Pope and the Church do not and cannot change the Church's doctrine through unrecorded chats with Communist newspapermen."

Amen to that.

It's too bad that the relationship between this pope and that journalist isn't a lot more like the relationship between Don Camillo and Peppone, because (if my memory of the Don Camillo books is correct) Don Camillo was not the kind of priest to ignore error and apostasy for the sake of friendship.

David Warren, a lay Catholic journalist fresh from a thoughtful Good Friday column, also weighed in on this subject, first writing about the pope's unfortunate penchant for walking jovially into doctrinal controversies, and then explaining what a denial of the existence of hell would actually mean for Christian faith.

Both Warren and Zuhlsdorf are worth reading. John C. Wright is not as theological as those two, but his cogent thinking also illumines the gulf between Christian and Communist worldviews.

There are reliable priests, scripture study programs, and catechisms out there, even apart from the millions of earnest Christians who lean on each other while on this earthly pilgrimage toward heaven.

Me, I'm grateful for my "prayer peeps" (not all of whom are Catholic), inspired by the fierce integrity of my sweetheart, and glad that I saw Andrew Hyatt's new film, Paul: Apostle of Christ the other day. The poor lighting in parts of that film is offset by gems in its script, such as the moving recitation of the Lord's Prayer by several dozen Christians who are about to die in one of the Emperor Nero's infamous circuses.

An open letter to Rabbi Marc Gellman

(this "unity of stripes" has metaphorical possibilities)

Dear Rabbi Gellman,

I'm a lay Catholic writing to you on the advice of my friend Chuck, who says you read and respond to "God Squad" email from readers.  

Chuck forwarded your column of August 17 to me, because he thought your summary of Christian history in response to a question from a reader in Long Island, NY was informative and interesting.  

I agree with Chuck, but think you veered off the rails in this paragraph of your otherwise-cogent response:

"The split between Judaism and Christianity occurred after Jesus' death with the Apostle Paul in the first century," you wrote. "Paul found that Jewish laws concerning circumcision and not eating pork had severely limited his work in converting gentiles to Christianity, and he began to preach that keeping such ritual provisions of Jewish law [was] no longer necessary for new Christians. This violation of Jewish law plus of course the claim that Jesus was the Messiah caused a final split between Paul and the Jerusalem church led by James, and with it a final split between Judaism and Christianity."

Assertions in that paragraph are wrong for several reasons (please bear in mind that I am not a professional theologian, but I do know my Catholic catechism):

First and most importantly, Jesus himself said that He came "not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it." (Matthew 5:17). One who fulfills the law has not violated it.

Second, you've tried to pin the Christian split with Judaism on Saint Paul. That's wrong-headed. It is true that Paul preached that converts to Christ did not need to adhere to ritual Mosaic restrictions, but Paul was not alone in saying that. In chapter 10 of the Acts of the Apostles, it's Peter (not Paul) who has a vision of all kinds of food from all kinds of animals, and a voice from heaven telling him (three times!) that "what God has made clean, you are not to call profane."

With that in mind, you are also wrong to claim that there was a split between Paul and "the Jerusalem church led by James." There was no split or schism. There was, instead, a council -- the Council of Jerusalem -- to resolve apostolic differences over how Jewish a gentile had to be before he or she could become a Christian. By the end of that council meeting, Paul, Barnabas, Peter, and James were all of one accord.  

Christian scriptures note that meeting attendees in Jerusalem sent representatives to the church in Antioch with instructions to that effect, and clarification for the "brothers" (meaning other followers of Jesus) there. The next chapter of Acts even notes that followers of Jesus were first called "Christians" in Antioch. Ergo, Saint Paul was not leading his own faction. He famously rebuked Saint Peter when Peter was behaving like a hypocrite by being too scrupulous in whom he chose to eat with, but Peter accepted that fraternal correction, and the two of them resolved their differences.

I'm sure you are better informed than many other people on these matters, but may I gently suggest that your summary made the mistake that Saint Peter warned about in 2 Peter 3:15, when he said of the letters from "our beloved brother Paul" that "there are some things in them hard to understand, that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction."? 

You seem to have fallen for the misguided idea that Christianity owes more to Paul than to anyone else. Although he was critical to the spread of the new faith, Paul himself would dispute that (see, for example 1 Corinthians 15:8). Saint Peter was the one on whom Jesus said he would build a church -- and (incidentally) wouldn't that action implicitly refute your quip about how if being Jewish was "good enough for Jesus," then it's good enough for you?

Peter was also the one apostle for whom Jesus paid the temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27). And if it's anecdotal evidence of unity between Peter and Paul (indeed, all of the apostles) that you want (apart from scriptural texts like Galatians 2:9), please note that the Catholic liturgical calendar celebrates Peter and Paul together (annually on June 29). 

I know I've stood on the proverbial soap box too long.Thank you for letting me bend your ear about all this, and for treating theological questions with the respect they deserve in your "God Squad" columns.

Really?

I hope that's just stupid hyperbole that Mr. Fisher let slip in a moment of weakness that came to the attention of a copy writer who has never read Frank Sheed's Theology for Beginners.

If not, then the only suitable reply is --

You keep using that word.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Christmas 2016

In the Bleak Midwinter

by Christina Rossetti (1830- 1894)

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

Truth on that page

From the book Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young, a meditation that grabbed me in an especially powerful way this past Saturday morning.

Imputed vs. Infused

A thought I had after a road trip to Tennessee and back:

Why yes, it is sometimes possible to be more Catholic than the Pope. Fr. Dwight Longenecker explains, with the help of a Catholic deacon named Richard Ballard who was a Lutheran pastor for 25 years:

"I asked what he thought of the Holy Father's surprising and heavily stressed statement that in the matter of justification Luther 'did not err.' 

"According to orthodox Catholic theology, Luther did err," he insisted. "Luther argued for an exterior 'imputed righteousness' which means the baptized person remains a sinner, even after justification. In essence, God is merely pretending that the person is justified and sanctified, when he really isn't," he said.

"This is a major divergence from Catholic theology, which instead of 'imputed righteousness' teaches 'infused righteousness'; in other words, the baptized person really is transformed and purified by God's grace," Ballard said.

Kudos to Fr. Longenecker -- himself a convert to Catholicism -- for talking with his friend, and respectfully pointing out that when this pope chats with reporters on the papal plane (as he was doing when he praised Martin Luther too fulsomely), bad or confusing things happen.

(Photo is from a rest stop in the Great Smoky Mountains)

An Open Letter to Mike Lee

Hi Mike,

May I call you Mike? We've met, but don't know each other, and although you don't strike me as the kind of guy who stands on ceremony, I could be wrong. I'm not in your church. Moreover, I wouldn't know a "Free Will Baptist" if I tripped over one, and I've never set foot on the campus of Bob Jones University. That said, I'm a pretty good listener. When I go to one of the services you lead, it's because I want to hear what you're telling my children, and what bothers me is that lately you seem to have descended into a functional anti-Catholicism, perhaps even without meaning to.

I get that many of the people in your congregation think of themselves as ex-Catholics. The "Meet the Gospel" series that you are currently preaching hasn't done Catholicism any favors. I would not have expected it to, but have you considered the irony involved when you talk about Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans without first acknowledging that the only reason you have talking points tied to the canon of Scripture is that the Catholic Church preserved that canon for you and every other Christian?

Last week you poked gentle fun at the Catholic criteria for declaring people saints. When I asked after the service about that, you said your sole aim was to highlight Saint Paul's well-known greeting "to all the beloved of God in Rome, called to be holy." I get that; I really do. It's often paraphrased as the "priesthood of all believers," as you well know. But guess what? The Catholic Church gets that, too. Except you don't seem to care: You played my church -- the Church -- for laughs, mentioning the Vatican's "Congregation for the Causes of Saints" just to snark about how "they sound like a fun bunch to hang out with." I'm certain you are under the impression that Catholicism has complicated Jesus's message unnecessarily. As an heir of the Protestant Reformation, how could you think otherwise?

What you did not mention, but should have, is that Catholic criteria for sainthood does not contradict or ignore Saint Paul's insight; it merely allows that insight to scale up and out past local devotion so that models of heroic virtue can be admired by people worldwide. True, "saint" means "holy," and we're all called to holiness. But had you done a little more reading, you would have found that canonized saints have lots of company (Remember all the people in the Book of Revelation whose robes were "washed white in the Blood of the Lamb"?).

In other words, as much as you'd like to slam clerical bureaucracies, the Church has never claimed to know who all the saints are. You and I could -- and should -- become saints even if we're never blessed to have two verifiable miracles attributed to our intercession, Yet it's unlikely that Christians in faraway places will know of our example after we die unless that example was stellar enough for the worldwide Church to take notice of it. You want to pretend that's "unscriptural"? Ha! It's "extra-scriptural," but in perfect harmony with Scripture.

Side note, assuming that the line "Oh Lord, I want to be in that number" rings a few bells: If you associate the gospel tune "When the Saints Go Marching In" with a particular style of American music, it's New Orleans Jazz, and guess who the original settlers of New Orleans were? French Catholics. Perhaps their theology was a little more squared away than you give it credit for being.

I'd hoped that last week's failure to do enough homework for your message was a one-off, but today you went after infant baptism in similarly snarky fashion, saying that there isn't a single instance of infant baptism in Scripture. I'm beginning to wonder how many targets are in your doctrinal shooting gallery, and where you get the authority to draw a bead on them.

With respect to infant baptism not being in Scripture, my question for you is, "Are you sure?" Seriously. Here's why I ask: We know that John baptized with water "for repentance," and prophesied that Jesus would bring a greater baptism.We know that Jesus was Himself baptized by John, so that the two of them could together "fulfill all righteousness." The other baptism accounts in the New Testament are in the Acts of the Apostles, right? That book is about the early Church. If you're starting a church, as the apostles were, you don't start it with babies -- you start by converting your adult friends and neighbors. That's what they did. But the apostles also knew that Jesus had said "Let the little children come to me." Do you think Jesus was kidding? Do you think He added a caveat about how kids couldn't come to Him unless they were old enough to profess faith in His name?

And how about -- in the Acts of the Apostles -- when a Roman centurion accepts the new faith, and is baptized, "and all his household with him." Do you know for certain that there were no youngsters in that household? I don't think so. While I'm in a betting mood, let me note that you never told us where you got the idea that infant baptism started "300 years after the apostles." Did you mean to blame the Emperor Constantine for that "innovation," or did it just sound like that? If the "300 years" figure that you tossed out was not just for effect, then may I ask whether you take a similarly dim view of the statements of faith in the Nicene Creed, which actually does date from that time?

I know you love Saint Paul. We both do. Even without getting to the other inspired writers, Catholics can't help but notice how chapter 2 of Paul's letter to the Colossians says some very cool things about the power of baptism as more than a sign, and about how baptism is the New Covenant analog to what circumcision was in the Old Covenant. You pointed out that Jews traditionally circumcise male infants when they are 8 days old. What, then, is the justification for denying baptism at the same age? It either is an analog to circumcision or it isn't -- only you didn't mention that analogy. I wish you would.

I'll  end with a plea: You're welcome to argue with Roman Catholic theology, but it's a disservice to your congregation and the Catholics you don't know who love you and your congregation when you use your position as a pastor to knock down straw man arguments rather than grappling honestly with what Catholics believe and why. A two-minute trip to the Vatican web site and another round of highlighting mistakes made by John Calvin or Martin Luther won't cut it. Neither will passive-aggressive class titles like "From Pope to Hope." You can do better than that. Please do.

Serendipity

Both street and structure seem aptly named. That's the "Holy Name of Jesus" cathedral under construction on a rainy day in Raleigh.

Happy Easter

All the durable inspiration today (or any day, really) is in scripture and sacrament rather than in blog posts.

But I do think that some meditations are worth bookmarking. Myra Adams made her joy palpable in an Easter essay. And here is Gerard Vanderleun writing about what he calls his own "cut-rate resurrection," which he intuitively grasps is just an echo of the original (full price!) Resurrection:

“Still not satisfied” is not a good attitude to have if one has been resurrected. As they say in meetings, “The attitude is gratitude.” I had that for a long time. It slipped away. Maybe I should try to get it back.

Or maybe I should not.

Maybe I should just drop all that and drop the searching for the BIG MESSAGE. Maybe, just maybe, I should try to see again what we always forget: the Here and the Now of the Miracle. Maybe, just maybe, on this day, I should strive always to recall that Christ is not just the Resurrection, but “the Resurrection and the Life.”

Here is John C. Wright, novelist, in a more puckish mood:

"When you meet someone who says Easter eggs are a pagan holdover of a pagan symbol, you can remind him that during Lent the tradition was to give up eating meat and eggs, so that eating delicious, delicious eggs again after 40 [days] became a matter for ceremony. Our grandfathers lived in a more ceremonial hence more fun society, one more suited to human psychology, and so having the kids eat eggs again became kind of a game, a hide-and-seek, and the eggs were decorated, because in those days people loved kids, and were not told having children was a disease that overburdened the earth, and did not abort them in the womb."

Meanwhile, Fr. Dwight Longenecker wraps the whole Triduum up in this post:

"Christianity is the only religion that does not ignore or skirt the issue of suffering. Indeed terrible suffering is at the very heart of our religion. Our central icon is a crucifix. Our central act of worship is a commemoration and re-presentation of the execution of an innocent victim...Christianity is the one religion that plunges into the depth of the suffering [to] wrestle with the darkness and come out the other side, bloodied but triumphant."

It seems to me a double blessing that the Web makes edifying thoughts from people I have not met easy to find, even as active participation in a parish also assures me of support from people whom I do know, and people I might eventually meet.

The Holy Thursday hook

My (close) paraphrase of the beginning of the homily from Father Dan at tonight's Mass of the Lord's Supper:

"A few years back, there was a saying popular with our Protestant brothers and sisters that even made it into the rest of the culture after awhile. You probably remember that the initials 'WWJD' stood for 'What Would Jesus Do?' 

Well, I want to propose to you something much less popular, but much more useful. We are here tonight to celebrate not what Jesus would do, but what He actually did and does do. Moreover, He expects us to emulate His example."

Appreciating the pope emeritus

David Warren does appreciate Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), and in two different places.

I particularly like how Warren develops this thought:

"It is in Ratzinger’s nature to review events of the last fifty years in the light of the last five hundred: he cannot be satisfied with the immediate. Nor did he ever respond in the “media” way, to events of the last five hours or five days. First, he examines.

This is precisely the virtue — prudence in its essential form — that seems most absent from contemporary life...

We, today, as men in all ages, cannot do without the anchoring of faith, which begins in an attachment to the unchanging. The detachment from “breaking news” follows from this. I pass by the profound theological observation, that underlies all faith — that it originates in the grace of God, not in some human intention — only because I am giving an external description. A man of any culture — East or West — who is not by desire rooted in the unchanging, is not rooted at all."

Joseph Ratzinger's tenure as Pope Benedict XVI continues to influence even non-Catholics in good ways.

And as my friend John might put it, prudence is a prerequisite for thinking long-term.

Through a glass darkly with a Land Rover?

Taking cues from bible verses like Matthew 1:21, where Joseph is told what to name the baby that Mary will have and why, Christians believe that God became man to save His people from their sins. And while nothing ought to (or even could) cloud the glory of that primary purpose, I'm beginning to think that the Incarnation had some secondary purposes, too.

I think maybe one of the reasons that God became man was to show us how to be properly vulnerable.

I'm not educated enough to say who had that insight first, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn down the road that I've paraphrased Saint Ambrose of Milan or Saint John Chrysostem without knowing it. My own thought remains half-baked, so I'm blogging about it as an aid to memory.

Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians that the Lord had said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." He (Paul) had a better understanding of that paradox than I ever will, yet I think it's in the same ballpark as the idea that there is such a thing as a "proper vulnerability." Generations before that, Mary the mother of Jesus had replied to the proposition relayed to her by the Angel Gabriel with the utterly accommodating "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word."

What makes Mary an example of proper vulnerability rather than a victim of circumstance is, I think, that she chose freely for the Lord. Not being a slave to the compulsion for instant gratification also gave Mary the patience she needed to nip pridefulness in the bud, which worked to her advantage, because proud people hate their own vulnerability, but humble people understand and embrace it.

Amusingly, it's not just scripture and dimly-remembered snippets of theology that inspire thoughts like that. Everything in the foregoing paragraphs was reinforced for me by a TV commercial for the Land Rover Discovery Sport. Have you seen it? A pretty woman running sled dogs across a snowy landscape is ferried across a shallow river by a helpful man who just happens to be off-roading in his Land Rover when Little Red Mushing Hood meets the geographic obstacle that she and her dogs would not otherwise have crossed.

The commercial has continuity problems with things like seat positions in the Land Rover and a sled that magically moves from one side of the river to the other, but I don't care. The dogs are beautiful and well-behaved, the woman training for the Iditarod is ridiculously pretty, and the Good Samaritan driving a Land Rover looks appropriately rugged but non-threatening.

A model named Lauren Hastings plays the woman. The man is Ayden Gramm. The dogs are unnamed. Interestingly, most of the commercial is silent, and the man and the woman don't actually say anything to each other. Their interaction is shown exclusively through their facial expressions.

Had she not been willing to admit her need, she would not have taken the driver up on his offer for help crossing the river. I also think that although the woman was vulnerable, she was not defenseless. Her dogs (none of them purse-sized) would presumably have done what they could to keep the driver in line had he been less than a gentleman. And the driver for his part stopped his vehicle knowing that the woman could have rejected his offer for safe passage across the river. Ergo, proper vulnerability all around.

The ad is emphatically not Christian in any obvious way, but it seems to resonate with Christian themes.

Perhaps even unrequited love, painful as it is, helps us to be properly vulnerable.

When you confuse science with wisdom

Bill Maher was a guest on Stephen Colbert's TV show the other day. I don't normally watch either of them because I don't think either is particularly funny, but they had an interesting exchange when Colbert invited Maher back to church, and Maher realized the invitation was serious.

Colbert: "You were raised Catholic, right?"

Maher: "I *was* raised Catholic."

Colbert: "Come on back, Bill! The door is always open. Golden ticket, right before you. All you have to do is humble yourself before the presence of the Lord [and] admit that there are things greater than you in the universe that you do not understand, and salvation awaits you! Take Pascal's Wager: If you're wrong, you're an idiot, but if I'm riiiight, you're going to hell."

Maher, smirking: "I do admit there are things in the universe I don't understand, but my response to that is not to make up silly stories...or to believe intellectually embarrassing myths from the Bronze Age. But *you* believe whatever you want to!"

Colbert: "Well, yeah, I mean, I have a connection to our ancestors, because I, I...

Maher: "Sure...because these were men who did not know what a germ or an atom was, or where the sun went at night, and that's where you're getting your wisdom. Anyway, let's not argue!"

At that point, the conversation took a turn not in the clip that I've seen, as both men moved to another subject. What interests me, though, is Maher's chronological snobbery. He apparently believes that because the authors of inspired texts were not well-versed in modern science, they should therefore be ignored. But whether you know what a germ or an atom is has nothing to do with whether you understand (as Colbert does) that Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life."

The other problem with Maher's implicit argument is that he has no idea what wisdom actually is. Wisdom, by definition, stands the test of time; it's not wrapped up in technology. To deride the Bible as "Bronze Age" wisdom is to ignore the fact that if it is what the church says it is, then its truths are timeless.

Paraphrasing the big questions

My parish sponsors an intermittent educational and fellowship initiative for men that organizers call "Toward Discipleship." It's good stuff run by friends, and motivating enough to plant dozens of us in a conference room at ridiculously early but schedule-accommodating times on Friday mornings.

Current talks have focused on what might be called the developmental stages of authentic Christian manhood. Speakers cleverly decided to associate each developmental stage with a key question. That's an effective strategy, especially for people like me, who'd rather take notes after a talk than during a talk.

At the five-week mark, this is what I remember:

1. The key question in stage one, Boyhood, is "Am I the apple of my father's eye?" 
2. In stage two, the Cowboy phase, the key question becomes, "Do I have what it takes?"
3. A Warrior ethos appears for stage three, and the question there is "Are there things worth fighting for?"
4. Stage four is the Lover, and ideally it tempers stage 3, because it's the other side of the same coin, when you realize that not everything is or has to be a fight. The lover's question is "Can I find the good, the true, and the beautiful?"
5. Comes then the King. His question is "How do I use my power and influence for good?" Put another way, that question can be understood as an inquiry into the application of mercy: How do I raise other people up?
6. The last stage in this series (and perhaps in life) is The Sage. I'm not there yet, but I look forward to updating this post when the question posed by the sage is described.
   UPDATE: It turns out that the question for the Sage stage (ha!) is "Am I able and willing to mentor someone else?" Makes sense!