Coming Clean

So, the other night, I was hanging out with one of our parish priests after a 3 hour Easter Vigil Mass. We started in on the topic of homiletics, and at some point the good priest goes off on a tear about how sometimes the Holy Spirit can just take hold of you and by the end you don’t know what you’ve said.

There’s a reflective, glowy pause, after which I pipe up: “Yeah, and neither does the congregation.”

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. … The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” Luke 1:31-35

Virgin Mary, Theotokos, God-Bearer, Mother of God. Could she rightly and nobly hold these revered titles from time out of mind if the child that resided within her womb was not actually God as she bore Him?

It may seem an odd question to ask, but if we take the questions being asked today regarding embryonic stem cell research, particularly as it relates to Christian morality and ethics, it begs the question – at what point did Jesus become a person with all human (and divine) dignity?

Most Christians would sputter that the question is non-sense – clearly Jesus was fully divine at the moment of His conception within His virgin mother’s womb. And if we are to assert Christ’s divine personhood within His mother’s womb, then we must also assert his humanity. And thus we’re left to turn the question back around upon ourselves – if Christ was divine (and thus human) at the moment of His conception within His mother’s womb, then why should we not accord the same dignity to others who move through the same human embryonic state of being just as He did?

The Christian ethic is clear – embryos must be accorded the same dignity as any other person if for no other reason than that of Christ, who shared in our humanity from conception to death.

The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam

Clips from the intro to the intro

“The truth shall make you free” (John viii, 32).

What is Catholicism? By that question we do not merely ask what is that characteristic quality which distinguishes Catholicism from other forms of Christianity; we go deeper than that, and seek to discover what is its governing idea and what are the forces set in motion by this idea. We ask what is the single basic thought, what is the essential form that gives life to the great structure which we call Catholicism? Regarded from the outside Catholicism has the appearance of a confused mass of conflicting forces, of an unnatural synthesis, of a mixture of foreign, nay contradictory, elements. And for that reason there have been those who have called it a complex of opposites.

…

We Catholics do not quarrel with the methods of the religious historian, so long as he keeps within his proper limits, within the limits of historical data and proved historical fact, and so long as he does not claim in his classification of religious types to pass decisive judgment upon the essential nature of the religious structure which he has under examination. We Catholics acknowledge readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the Gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn. There is no mechanical identity, but an organic identity. And we go further and say that thousands of years hence Catholicism will probably be even richer, more luxuriant, more manifold in dogma, morals, law and worship than the Catholicism of the present day. … It is quite true, Catholicism is a union of contraries. But contraries are not contradictories. Wherever there is life, there you must have conflict and contrary. Even in purely biblical Christianity, and especially in Old Testament religion, these conflicts and contraries may be observed. For only so is there growth and the continual emergence of new forms. The Gospel of Christ would have been no living gospel, and the seed which He scattered no living seed, if it had remained ever the tiny seed of A.D. 33, and had not struck root, and had not assimilated foreign matter, and had not by the help of this foreign matter grown up into a tree, so that the birds of the air dwell in its branches. … But we refuse to see in these elements thus enumerated the essence of Catholicism, or even to grant that they are “structural elements of Catholicism” in the sense that Catholicism did not achieve historical importance save through them. For the Catholic is intimately conscious that Catholicism is ever the same, yesterday and to-day, that its essential nature was already present and manifest when it began its journey through the world, that Christ Himself breathed into it the breath of life, and that He Himself at the same time gave the young organism those germinal aptitudes which have unfolded themselves in the course of the centuries in regular adaptation to the needs and requirements of its environment. Catholicism recognizes in itself no element that is inwardly foreign to it, that is not itself, that does not derive from its original nature.

If you read the quotes below, I’m stealing some of the thunder of this post. But if you don’t trust me, read the quotes before clicking through. They are for me the highlight, though they lose some of the authenticity without the backdrop.

The wonder, it seems to me after just thirty-odd years of living, is that there is any hope for change, that nature and grace may so conspire as to lift a man out of the ruts he has dug for himself. … Just ground reclaimed, gradually and painfully, from the unsleeping enemy.

…

As the last bit of daylight drained away into cloudy darkness, Alexander and I arrived at the question of what keeps a man holding on, what makes belief possible in the face of everything that argues against it. … I gave him my own answer – that the holy people I have known had a love for something real, that they could not have loved an illusion the way they loved God.

…

I must keep the faith. If I lose the faith – if I can no longer even say with the centurion, “I believe, help my unbelief!” – then it will all be to me waste and horror. It’s not that this world doesn’t matter to me, or wouldn’t – if anything, it matters too much. But if God isn’t behind things, if love doesn’t undergird the world, then I will lose heart.

I’ve read a lot of griping about gender inequality within Christianity lately. It smacks of either (1) men feeling like women are poor, beaten down persons incapable of fending for themselves … in need of a hero or (2) penis envy (used more for cultural conotation moreso than any female desire to be equipped with a penis).

I don’t really understand what’s so hard to wrestle with here. I mean, I can understand the difficulty in nailing down the particulars, but it seems like an awful lot of word space is being used up to debate whether or not there even is a worthwhile difference and order between genders within humanity as understood by Christianity.

It seems pretty clear to me: God sets up relations between Him and humanity and has expressed those in the terms of the same gender that humanity has as a source of difference in itself. Jesus is male, and Jesus had plenty of opportunity to establish women in authority – but He didn’t. But Jesus gave a lot of time to women in His teaching, so we shouldn’t for a second think that women are some kind of second class citizen. Just different jobs for different genders that make a whole humanity and image the nature of God and His order.

Why people can’t agree on that much baffles me.

I bought a CD of gregorian chant a while back. This hymn has always been my favorite on the CD. So, I decided to find what the lyrics were (Latin runs together to my untrained ear) and mean. Given the nature of my conversion, the fruit of my search gave me much encouragement and reassurance.

Pange, lingua, gloriosi         Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory,
Corporis mysterium,             of His flesh the mystery sing;
Sanguinisque pretiosi,          of the Blood, all price exceeding,
quem in mundi pretium           shed by our immortal King,
fructus ventris generosi        destined, for the world's redemption,
Rex effudit Gentium.            from a noble womb to spring. 

Nobis datus, nobis natus        Of a pure and spotless Virgin
ex intacta Virgine,             born for us on earth below,
et in mundo conversatus,        He, as Man, with man conversing,
sparso verbi semine,            stayed, the seeds of truth to sow;
sui moras incolatus             then He closed in solemn order
miro clausit ordine.            wondrously His life of woe.

In supremae nocte coenae        On the night of that Last Supper,
recumbens cum fratribus         seated with His chosen band,
observata lege plene            He the Pascal victim eating,
cibis in legalibus,             first fulfills the Law's command;
cibum turbae duodenae           then as Food to His Apostles
se dat suis manibus.            gives Himself with His own hand.

Verbum caro, panem verum        Word-made-Flesh, the bread of nature
verbo carnem efficit:           by His word to Flesh He turns;
fitque sanguis Christi merum,   wine into His Blood He changes;
et si sensus deficit,           what though sense no change discerns?
ad firmandum cor sincerum       Only be the heart in earnest,
sola fides sufficit.            faith her lesson quickly learns.

Tantum ergo Sacramentum         Down in adoration falling,
veneremur cernui:               Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
et antiquum documentum          Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,
novo cedat ritui:               newer rites of grace prevail;
praestet fides supplementum     faith for all defects supplying,
sensuum defectui.               where the feeble senses fail.

Genitori, Genitoque             To the everlasting Father,
laus et jubilatio,              and the Son who reigns on high,
salus, honor, virtus quoque     with the Holy Ghost proceeding
sit et benedictio:              forth from Each eternally,
procedenti ab utroque           be salvation, honor, blessing,
compar sit laudatio.            might and endless majesty.

Amen. Alleluja.                 Amen. Alleluia.

They seem to have left (or been forced out of) our cultural consciousness altogether.

… and, no, charismatics do not qualify as mystics. I’m thinking more along the lines of the monastic.

… I’d like to do over time.

1. Categorizing the statements of Jesus.
- What are the parables?
- What are the exhorations?
- What are the theological statements/proclomations/dogmas?
- etc

2. Developing Christian theology with Paul “second”
- Take the Gospels and the non-Pauline epistles and see how far you get.

This second one is kinda interesting to me ’cause I was looking at wikipedia today on Sola Fide and it listed the passages used in support of Sola Fide
(17 passages in all: John 3:16 John 6:28-29 (explaining Matthew 7:21) Acts 16:31 Acts 26:18 Romans 1:17-18 Romans 3:28 Romans 4:5 Romans 5:1 Romans 10:9 Romans 11:6 Romans 14:23 Ephesians 2:8-10 Philippians 3:9 Galatians 2:16 Galatians 2:21 Galatians 3:1-3 … 9-14 … 21-25 … Galatians 5:4,5)

vs those against

(20 passages in all: Matthew 5:48 (part of the Expounding of the Law) Matthew 7:21 (part of the Sermon on the Mount) Matthew 12:36-37 Matthew 16:27 Matthew 19:17 Matthew 24:10-20 (part of the Olivet discourse) Matthew 25:31-46 Matthew 28:19-20a (part of the Great Commission) Luke 8:21 Luke 10:25-28 John 5:29 Romans 2:6,7; 13 2 Corinthians 5:10 James 1:22 James Chapter Two (Excerpts) Phillipians 2:12-13 Revelation 20:13 Revelation 22:12 1 Peter 1:17 1 John 2:3-7)

Now, I’ve always known that sola fide was Paul heavy … but only two passages outside of Paul are used to support sola fide? Granted, this is just wikipedia … so I need to dust off some old studies … but still, there is something seemingly not right about it. Furthermore, the classical position of faith and works has the support of 3 of 4 gospels and all of the apostolic writers.

If you were to treat Paul “second” to everyone else, it would seem that you would have to arrive at the Catholic position. Maybe that’s why I always had the feeling that the rest of the NT was treated second to Paul in my Protestant days?

I can’t be the first to have observed/thought this, so if anyone has any links to pass along, feel free.

The short of this post is: if I’m suppose to have faith like a child, someone should have told Paul.

Sometimes, I wonder if Paul would have been different if he had actually witnessed all Christ said and did like the other disciples.

You know, if we’re suppose to have faith like a child, it’d have been nice if Paul kinda tried to at least brings things on-level with Peter such that Peter wouldn’t say, “There are some things in them that are hard to understand …” Translation: Paul says stuff that I didn’t understand when he said it (or which I needed him to clarify because of potential confusion).

Not that that is a bad thing … but … you got to think that Paul’s letters are perhaps not the first place we should derive our system of theology from and then try to harmonize everything else with.

I know there’s a lot of desire to be ecumenical and “kumbaya” between various Christian sects. That’s all well and good. I think it’s a good thing. But I don’t think it’s going to lead anywhere, really. Not in any kind of corporate, meaningful sense. (Label me the skeptic/cynic)

Every Church or denomination has a sense that the way to be a part of their community is through Christ. And all of our ecumenicism should be about our mutual understanding of Christ. But how far can you really get when you’ve got something as fundamental as Christ as Eucharist dividing you?

I’ve heard the theology of the Real Presence of the Eucharist called an interesting hermeneutic. I disagree. It’s THE hermeneutic that separates modern Christians from those who could be considered in communion with the universal Church since the time of Christ or not. It is a question, fundamentally, about Christ.

No answers … just this nagging sense that this is the real issue: Christ as Eucharist. Secondly, how we know that. The rest flows naturally afterward. Yet so few people (Protestants especially) seem to tackle this question … well, and remain Protestant … that I’ve found, anyways.