Feelin' it in the Gut

Like many traditionally minded Catholics, I have often wondered whether it was truly a good thing that Lenten observance was made so relatively easy in our modern day. Under Da Old Rulz, all of Lent was meatless and the Lenten fast (only one full meal and two smaller collations per day) extended through all of Lent. (And further back than that, abstinence extended to milk, eggs, oil, and marital relations!)

There are some who are returning, bit by bit, to a more austere observance of Lent and finding there real spiritual benefit. One family I know began some years ago to eliminate meat from their entire Lent, starting with Fridays and adding one additional meatless weekday each year until the entire season is meatless. Sweets are eschewed throughout Lent as well. More of the fast days are observed. They say that the children (and the parents!) truly yearn for Easter, the Feast that breaks the fast, and I can well believe it.

Certainly there is a carnal aspect to this—I suppose it could be reduced only to that and one doesn't want to yearn for Easter merely because one gets chocolate and ham. But grace builds upon nature. With an empty stomach it is much easier to resonate spiritually with the Psalmist who proclaims, "For He satisfies him who is thirsty, and the hungry He fills with good things" ( Psalm 107:9) It is easier to identify, at least in a small way, with our Lord's heroic fasting: "And He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry" (Matt 4:2). It is easier to enter into the spirit of penitence and yearn for the much needed mercy of the Lord: "'Yet even now,' says the LORD, 'return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.' Return to the LORD, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love" (Joel 2:12-13).

Great Lent is upon us. God be with you all.

So Who Interprets Just Like Me?

You know how once in a while you will read something that is stated just exactly the way you wish you would have stated it yourself? I just ran onto that in a great conversion story by Tom Cabeen in the February 2010 newsletter from The Coming Home Network. Tom came to the Catholic faith out of a Jehovah's Witness background. Part of his search for truth very closely parallels mine. In my own conversion story published in This Rock magazine I wrote:

what was my standard of orthodoxy, the Bible or the creeds? If I appealed to creed or "the universal belief of the Church" in order to declare something unorthodox, was I not following something besides Scripture alone? This raised questions that I couldn't answer: What is orthodoxy? What is the standard of Christian orthodoxy? I began to suspect that it couldn't be just the Bible, because none of us could agree on what the Bible says. All appeals to the Bible can be countered with a different interpretation or an outright rejection of the authority of the Bible. Increasingly I turned to the creeds and to a nebulous collection of the "universal beliefs of the Church" to assure myself that what I believed was orthodox.

Tom says this differently and really captures this particular dynamic beautifully. He writes:

During my research, I kept running across references to the "Early Church Fathers." . . . What surprised me is how they applied the Scriptures. There was no official collection of Christian Scripture when these writers put pen to parchment, but they did quote from writings which later became part of the Christian canon. Often they applied a familiar passage in a way that was completely new to me. I was intriqued by the implications of this fact.

I began to see that the Bible is not self-interpreting. Most passages can be understood in more than one way. The problem is not resolved even if one is familiar with the original languages, as were all the ancient writers. Clearly, some parts of the sacred writings are to be taken literally, some metaphorically, others allegorically or figuratively. How do we sort out which is which? I had paid a lot of money for excellent commentaries, yet often I was surprised at the variety of explanations of a given passage I found among respected commentators from differing Christian traditions or denominations.

Slowly, I came to understand that there is simply no reliable way to determine if a particular Christian teaching is true [NB: here I would say "orthodox" rather than "true"] based only on whether or not it is logical, reasonable, and seems to be supported by "proof texts" from Scripture. Some other source of authoritative interpretation is needed. Some Christians expect to receive individual guidance from the Holy Spirit; others rely on scholarship, historical sources, or reason. But none of these methods produces consensus among all commentators or interpreters.

I finally realized that this is why every single denomination uses written materials in addition to the Bible, whether a catechism, commentaries, books, tracts, or other publications. No one just hands a Bible to a potential convert and says, "Read the book and you will understand the Christian message completely and clearly." Every Christian teacher must add explanation to Scripture in order to communicate the full Christian message.

I am reminded of a very aggressive Protestant apologist who is seldom left at a loss for words. But I have seen at least one question posed to him for which he was completely unable to come up with a reasonable answer. This particular person is a Reformed Baptist by doctrinal conviction and is vociferous that the Scriptures are perspicuous, that is, they are in all important points sufficiently clear that the ordinary person can discover their true teaching. But this person has been asked several times to explain how it is that, if the Scriptures are indeed perspicuous and they perspicuously teach the Reformed Baptist faith, we just can't find any Reformed Baptists in the early centuries of the Church? Indeed, we don't seem to find any of them until well into the seventeenth century. As Baptist scholar Dr. James McGoldrick states in his scholarly study into claims that earlier groups qualify as Baptist:

[A]lthough . . . groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England (Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History. ATLA Monograph Series, No. 32. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994, p. 2).

Seems like if those doctrinal tenets are clearly taught in Scripture, somebody prior to the seventeenth century would have put them all together. I have yet to hear a really good answer to this challenge.

Now obviously just pointing out that Scripture is not self-interpreting does not by itself validate the claims of the Catholic Church. It's not a standalone argument--"See there, your system doesn't work so mine must be true." But it definitely keeps us focused on just what sort of "system" (to use a clumsy word) our Lord put in place to perpetuate the Christian faith. Did He really make it fundamentally dependent on a pastiche of writings that would not be definitively gathered into a collection for centuries and would be inaccessible to your average Christian for many centuries more? Or did He make it fundamentally dependent on His Church, an extension of His own Incarnation? I think Tom's fascinating conversion story points us in the right direction.

Beware the Google Scholar, Redux

Some time ago I wrote a piece called Beware the Google Scholar, warning of the dangers of unsubstantiated information passed around on the Internet. Well I recently took part in a discussion over on the Speak Your Mind forum. Upshot of that is that I came away kicking myself for entering into the discussion at all. Also convinced that there are many subjects that just should not be discussed in such forums. To quote The Honeymooners: "Will you tell me one thing, please? How do you get us into these fixes?

Very simple. Very simple Norton........Because I have a BIG MOOOOOOOOUTH!"

But on a specific note, I got caught being a GS. Not entirely a GS--I actually read the quote in a book (does that make me a BS'er?) In Iota Unum (pp. 9-10), Pope Paul VI is cited as saying, on Nov 23, 1973: "[T]he opening to the world became a veritable invasion of the Church by worldly thinking. . . . We have perhaps been too weak and imprudent."

Now, did I follow my own advice and really vet it before dropping it into the forum? Nope.

It appears that this quotation is actually from a general audience on Nov 21, 1973. Okay, two days off, but still an inaccurate citation. And although the author of Iota Unum does indeed at least question whether the Holy Father makes a general observation ("we") or applies the statement more specifically to himself ("We"), the context indicates pretty strongly the former. So the quotation, which has been picked up in certain circles to indicate a self-criticism by the Pope, really should not be deployed in such a way. And so, as I said before:

And such are the dangers of the Google scholar. Lesson: always, always, always check your sources for accuracy, but especially if you got the information from the Internet.

Mea culpa.

A Priest in Residence!

After almost ten years of daily prayers to God, we have a priest in residence at our Institute of Christ the King apostolate in St. Mary's Ridge, WI! My family joined this apostolate fairly shortly after it was started and we've been regulars ever since.

There have been a lot of ups and downs over this time. For several years we had the traditional Latin Mass only every other week, in La Crosse. Then Bishop (now Archbishop) Burke moved us back out to St. Mary's Ridge, where the ICRSS got its start in the United States. Shortly thereafter, we had Mass every week, with an Institute priest making the 260 mile round trip virtually every Sunday to say Mass for us after he had already said two Masses at St. Mary's Oratory in Wausau, WI. There have been some wonderful diocesan and other priests who have occasionally filled in for us, but 99% of the time we have been served, faithfully, by the Institute of Christ the King. And let it be known that, although even my family has been unable to attend Mass on several Sundays due to bad weather over those years, not one single time, not once, has the apostolate been without a priest on Sunday. Always, they have found a way to get to us. Now that is a missionary spirit.

Through the years we have seen growth, but it has been slow. For starters, we're in a very rural area, so we are not near any major population center. In the early years we advertised the apostolate to try and attract individuals and families to the area. We actually got many dozens of calls, but we were inevitably confronted with the same question: "Do you have a priest in residence?" And usually (though not always!) when we had to say No, the interested party would look elsewhere. As I expressed several times to the Institute superiors, it was a Catch 22: We can't grow without a priest in residence, but in order to get a priest in residence we need to grow.

Still, we grew. And now we have a priest in residence. Canon Glenn Gardner has come to be our priest and, starting on the first Sunday of Advent, 2009, we had our first Sunday morning Mass in almost ten years, with some over one hundred people in attendance. Now there will be a regular Sunday Mass at 10:30 am and daily Mass will be at 7 am. See here for the most current Mass times.

It is really an amazing testament to the resurgence of the traditional Roman Rite and, I think in no small measure, to the complete normalization of that Rite by Pope Benedict XVI. So now we have that thing we have been praying for: normalcy. We just want to believe as our fathers believed and to worship as our fathers worshipped. So thank you to Almighty God. To the Blessed Virgin Mary. To all the holy souls of St. Mary's Ridge. To Pope Benedict XVI for Summorum Pontificum. Thank you to Archbishop Raymond Burke and Bishop Jerome Listecki for their support of the Institute of Christ the King generally and this apostolate specifically. Thank you to Institute Superiors, Msgrs. Gilles Wach and R. Michael Schmitz. Thank you to the Institute priests who have faithfully served us over the years: Canons Olivier Meney, Richard von Menshengen, Denis Buchholz, Andreas Hellmann, Glenn Gardner, and Henri Fragelli. And thanks too to the priests of the Diocese of La Crosse, especially Frs. Redfern and Moreno, for saying the traditional Latin Mass for us. May God bless you all.

And now, if anybody wants to know more about a traditional Latin Mass apostolate in the beautiful rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin just remember......we now have a priest in residence. Drop me a line and let's discuss all the good reasons why you should move here to join us.

Kneeling for Holy Communion: Can't Be Any More Clear

I've broached the topic of kneeling to receive Holy Communion two times on this blog. Although those of us who have maintained the traditional practice of the Roman Rite have been labelled, even by certain orthodox Catholics, as "disobedient", the fact remains that kneeling for Holy Communion has always been the norm in the Roman Rite and it has never been forbidden for any Latin Rite Catholic to kneel to receive our Lord in the Eucharist.

A friend sent me a link to this video of the question being posed to Cardinal Arinze. This is a refreshingly unambiguous response. Can't get any more clear than that.

No Different Than Protestantism?

James Swan's Beggars All blog has some recent postings that assert an oft-repeated contention, namely, that the all-too-obvious turmoil in the Catholic Church today is no different than the divisions within Protestantism. I wrote a "Quick Answer" for Catholic Answers some years ago on this topic and I think it is still valid. As a traditionalist, I have to agree completely with a Protestant or any other sort of interlocutor who insists that it's a scandal for open "dissenters" (a euphemism for heretics) to be allowed to remain visibly within the bosom of the Catholic Church. The substitution of a modern "pastoral approach" to such rebellion instead of the traditional remedy of excommunication for public heresy and blasphemy has caused considerable harm. So their objection has a surface plausibility in today's context that it did not in days when ecclesiastical discpline was taken more seriously. Still, I would contend that there is a difference in kind, in principle between "dissent" within the Catholic ranks and doctrinal divisions within Protestantism:

Question:

I have heard a Protestant apologist say that widespread dissent in the Catholic Church is no different than the divisions in Protestantism and this proves that having an infallible Church to interpret the Bible is no better in practice than just reading the Bible by itself. How should I respond?

Answer:

There is a fundamental difference between the divisions that take place within Protestantism and the “dissent” that takes place in the Catholic Church. The divisions between Protestants take place because they cannot agree on what the Bible teaches on a host of issues. They continually claim that the Bible is clear and easy to understand, but their quarrels about the meaning of the Bible on all these issues undermine that claim. Their differences center fundamentally on how to understand their own central authority.

But the disagreements between orthodox Catholics and “dissenting” Catholics of various kinds are quite different. Dissenters agree with faithful Catholics that the Church does officially teach just what faithful Catholics insist it does—they just want that teaching to change. The question is never whether the Catholic Church officially teaches that contraception is wrong, or that homosexual acts are sinful, or that divorce and remarriage are not permitted, or that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood. Even between Catholics and Protestants the debate never centers on whether the Catholic Church really teaches transubstantiation, or veneration of the saints, or the Eucharist as a sacrifice, or the infallibility of the pope. All parties understand full well what the Church teaches on these and a multitude of other issues. They prove this by insisting not that the Church actually teaches something different, but rather that the Church is wrong and should change her teaching to conform to their own ideas. Groups such as “We Are Church” prove this by calling for the convocation of Vatican III in order to implement their agenda, thus admitting that their beliefs have never been part of the teaching of the Church, including Vatican II.

Thus, the Catholic Church has spoken with clarity throughout the centuries; even her enemies, whether within or from outside the Church, unwittingly admit this. And this clarity is indeed in stark contrast to the inability of Protestants to agree on even central doctrines.

All in the Family: Christians, Jews, and God

Michael Forrest and I have presented our contribution to the matter of the relationship of the biblical covenants in this article in the current issue of Lay Witness magazine:

All in the Family: Christians, Jews, and God


The reader should also note a very welcome clarification issued by the USCCB concerning the controversial Reflections on Covenant and Mission statement that was issued by a sub-committee of the USCCB in 2002:

A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Reflection on Covenant and Mission