Library

My little library is, in a way, deep in history and consists of:

• Bible, Revised Standard Version
• The Republic of Plato; Allan Bloom
• Four Witnesses; by Rod Bennett
• Athanasius; Peter J. Leithart
• The Confessions; Saint Augustine
• Gregorian Missal; Solesmes Abbey
• Dante’s Paradise; Anthony Esolen
• Seven Comedies; William Shakespeare
• Complete English Poems; John Donne
• Everyman Chesterton; ed. Ian Ker
• Collected Works; Flannery O’Connor
• Writings; Gerard Manley Hopkins
• The Liturgy of the Hours; unabridged
• Compendium of the Catholic Catechism

I entered the Catholic Church on Easter 2007 at an age of fifty seven, having come from a charismatic Wesleyan background.

I have the luxury of setting my own curriculum, in the establishment of which I’ve found useful A.G. Sertillanges’ little book, The Intellectual Life. My investigations center around the apparent paradox of Christologies seeming to be close together when their related Ecclesiologies are far apart.

We live in the 9th & 9th neighborhood of Salt Lake City, on the Wasatch Range in Utah at the western side of the Rocky Mountains, having moved there from the Virginia section of the Southern Blue Ridge Province in the Appalachian Mountains. I’m a member of St Ambrose parish and go there for daily Mass.

Thomas Gwyn & MaryAlice Dunbar

Knowledge of the Father

The second reading for the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours for the Wednesday in the first week of Ordinary time:

From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop

Knowledge of the Father consists in the self-revelation of the Son

No one can know the Father apart from God’s Word, that is, unless the Son reveals him, and no one can know the Son unless the Father so wills. Now the Son fulfils the Father’s good pleasure: the Father sends, the Son is sent, and he comes. The Father is beyond our sight and comprehension; but he is known by his Word, who tells us of him who surpasses all telling. In turn, the Father alone has knowledge of his Word. And the Lord has revealed both truths. Therefore, the Son reveals the knowledge of the Father by his revelation of himself. Knowledge of the Father consists in the self-revelation of the Son, for all is revealed through the Word.

The Father’s purpose in revealing the Son was to make himself known to us all and so to welcome into eternal rest those who believe in him, establishing them in justice, preserving them from death. To believe in him means to do his will.

Through creation itself the Word reveals God the Creator. Through the world he reveals the Lord who made the world. Through all that is fashioned he reveals the craftsman who fashioned it all. Through the Son the Word reveals the Father who begot him as Son. All speak of these things in the same language, but they do not believe them in the same way. Through the law and the prophets the Word revealed himself and his Father in the same way, and though all the people equally heard the message not all equally believed it. Through the Word, made visible and palpable, the Father was revealed, though not all equally believed in him. But all saw the Father in the Son, for the Father of the Son cannot be seen, but the Son of the Father can be seen. The Son performs everything as a ministry to the Father, from beginning to end, and without the Son no one can know God. The way to know the Father is the Son. Knowledge of the Son is in the Father, and is revealed through the Son. For this reason the Lord said: No one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son has revealed him. The word “revealed” refers not only to the future – as though the Word began to reveal the Father only when he was born of Mary; it refers equally to all time. From the beginning the Son is present to creation, reveals the Father to all, to those the Father chooses, when the Father chooses, and as the Father chooses. So, there is in all and through all one God the Father, one Word and Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation for all who believe in him.

The Son performs everything as a ministry to the Father, from beginning to end, and without the Son no one can know God. The way to know the Father is the Son. Knowledge of the Son is in the Father, and is revealed through the Son. For this reason the Lord said: No one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son has revealed him. The word ‘revealed’ refers not only to the future — as though the Word began to reveal the Father only when he was born of Mary; it refers equally to all time. Form the beginning the Son is present to creation, reveals the Father to all, to those the Father chooses, when the Father chooses, and as the Father chooses. So, there is in all and throught all one God the father, one Word and Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation for all who believe in him.

Christmas Homily

Nothing miraculous, nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is given to the shepherds as a sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, one who, like all children, needs a mother’s care; a child born in a stable, who therefore lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God ’s sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the shepherds be able to see that this baby fulfills the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder” (Is 9:5). Exactly the same sign has been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.

God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes as a baby – defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practice with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.

The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God’s new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: “God made his Word short, he abbreviated it” (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28). The Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos; the eternal Word became small – small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this night that the brightness of God’s love may enfold all these children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind needs so much more than the material necessities of life….

And so we come to the second meaning that the Fathers saw in the phrase: “God made his Word short”. The Word which God speaks to us in Sacred Scripture had become long in the course of the centuries. It became long and complex, not just for the simple and unlettered, but even more so for those versed in Sacred Scripture, for the experts who evidently became entangled in details and in particular problems, almost to the extent of losing an overall perspective. Jesus “abbreviated” the Word – he showed us once more its deeper simplicity and unity. Everything taught by the Law and the Prophets is summed up – he says – in the command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37-40). This is everything – the whole faith is contained in this one act of love which embraces God and humanity. Yet now further questions arise: how are we to love God with all our mind, when our intellect can barely reach him? How are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has “abbreviated” his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created. During the festive meals of these days let us remember the Lord’s words: “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite those who will invite you in return, but invite those whom no one invites and who are not able to invite you” (cf. Lk 14:12-14). This also means: when you give gifts for Christmas, do not give only to those who will give to you in return, but give to those who receive from no one and who cannot give you anything back. This is what God has done: he invites us to his wedding feast, something which we cannot reciprocate, but can only receive with joy. Let us imitate him! Let us love God and, starting from him, let us also love man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new way!

And so, finally, we find yet a third meaning in the saying that the Word became “brief” and “small”. The shepherds were told that they would find the child in a manger for animals, who were the rightful occupants of the stable. Reading Isaiah (1:3), the Fathers concluded that beside the manger of Bethlehem there stood an ox and an ass. At the same time they interpreted the text as symbolizing the Jews and the pagans – and thus all humanity – who each in their own way have need of a Savior: the God who became a child. Man, in order to live, needs bread, the fruit of the earth and of his labor. But he does not live by bread alone. He needs nourishment for his soul: he needs meaning that can fill his life. Thus, for the Fathers, the manger of the animals became the symbol of the altar, on which lies the Bread which is Christ himself: the true food for our hearts. Once again we see how he became small: in the humble appearance of the host, in a small piece of bread, he gives us himself.

All this is conveyed by the sign that was given to the shepherds and is given also to us: the child born for us, the child in whom God became small for us. Let us ask the Lord to grant us the grace of looking upon the crib this night with the simplicity of the shepherds, so as to receive the joy with which they returned home (cf. Lk 2:20). Let us ask him to give us the humility and the faith with which Saint Joseph looked upon the child that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit. Let us ask the Lord to let us look upon him with that same love with which Mary saw him. And let us pray that in this way the light that the shepherds saw will shine upon us too, and that what the angels sang that night will be accomplished throughout the world: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.” Amen!

Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Homily, 2006

Rejecting Remarriage after Divorce

In all of Christendom, only the Catholic Church rejects remarriage after divorce. While it is true that annulment sometimes gets abused, the main point is that only the Church affirms completely the permanence of marriage, for better or worse, til death do us part. Only the Catholic Church takes to heart the high romantic view of marriage set forth by Christ Jesus.

Women and Mary

At a bible study recently, I was asked what I thought about the Virgin Mary. Not an easy question to answer and, in this case, I was particularly bumbling I think. Part of the difficulty is due to the intersection of several large areas of discourse: ecclesiology, gender roles in modern society, the Church both militant and victorious, marriage, and the specific position of the Virgin Mary within the Church. I ended up emphasizing Mary as ‘icon of the Church’ but I’m not at all sure if that came close to answering Bill’s question.

One of the blogs I read regularly has started a series related to this: over at The Roman Road, Nikki remarks that

For me, it was overwhelming to find a place where motherhood was affirmed without reservations or exceptions; it’s not just a patronizing nicety that the Church offers. I haven’t even gotten to the matter of Mary yet, which I’ll address later in this series. I will say that the fact that Catholics embrace Mary, rather than sweeping her under the rug as a footnote (except at Christmas, of course) lends to a more respectful view of motherhood.

Words

Philosophers seek for truth and meaning,
While poets just play with words.
Thinkers look for the essential thing,
But I keep hearing the verbs.
If ideas are what’s essential,
And words are inconsequential,
Will philosophers give some sign of their bind
In being forced to rely on what poets find?

St Ambrose Christmas Liturgy schedule

Christmas Liturgy Schedule at St Ambrose
(1975 East 2300 South, Salt Lake City)

Christmas Eve Masses: (Sat., December 24)
4:00 pm— Christmas Eve Family Mass with Children’s Choir
7:00 pm— Christmas Eve Vigil Mass
11:00 pm—Christmas Mass at Midnight

Christmas Day Masses (Sun., December 25)
9:00 am— Christmas Mass of the Day
11:00 am—Christmas Mass of the Day
1:00 pm—Mass in Polish

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God (Jan.1st)
7:45 am, 9:00 am, 11:00 am

Finding a Parish in Salt Lake City

In looking for a parish in Salt Lake City, I want a parish with a  daily Mass and a choir that I’d like to join, even if I don’t wind up in the choir. A trilingual parish would be ideal.

I ended up registering with St Ambrose parish.

Some Salt Lake area Masses

Sunday

7:45 – Mass at St Ambrose

8am , 1st Sunday- Latin Mass, St James, Ogden

Weekdays

7am – Mass at St Ambrose

7:30am – Lauds & Mass – Cathedral of the Madeleine

6pm Wednesday – Latin Mass – St James the Just, Ogden

Saturday

9am – Latin Mass, St Martin de Porres
3:30pm – confession at St Ambrose
5pm – Vigil Mass at St Ambrose

Sung Services at the Cathedral of the Madeleine

Sundays

• 10:00 AM Lauds
• 11:00 AM Mass
• 5:00 PM Vespers and Benediction

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

• 5:15 PM Mass

Holy Days

• 12:00 Noon Mass
• 4:30 PM Vespers
• 6:00 PM Mass

Here’s a video of the Madeleine Choir School in concert:

Other Area Resources

St John’s Anglican, Park City (my wife’s congregation)

Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, Ogden Valley

Also, the Sacred Music Colloquium XXII will be held at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah; Dates are June 25-July 1, 2012.

Needing the Church’s Magisterium

Bryan Cross concludes a posting about why we need the Church’s magisterium over at Called to Communion with:

Faith, by contrast, “believes and professes all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” Because faith does not presume eccleisal deism, faith submits to the Church that has always been there, even before the sixteenth century and all the way back to the Apostles, in the humility that is the very opposite of the pride that takes to oneself an ecclesial and interpretive authority that has not been given to oneself by those already having that authority. This is what St. Thomas Aquinas explained about the relation between faith and the Church, namely, that faith in Christ is faith through the Church Christ founded.⁷ It should be of no small concern that one’s position is indistinguishable in principle from a case of the rebellion against divinely established authority. In order to justify separation from the already existing magisterium, one must have a principled basis for distinguishing rightful dissent from rebellion. And “following my own interpretation of Scripture” is no such principled basis, because it is common to all the heretical and schismatic sects and their founders.

We need a magisterium in order to have an ecclesial faith, rather than a me-and-my-Bible [along with whoever happens to agree with my interpretation] faith, and because otherwise Christ would not have established a magisterium in His Church, and enjoined us to “submit” to them and “obey” them as persons who keep watch over our souls (Heb 13:17). Christ chose and authorized Apostles not to force the early Church to choose between following the Apostles and following the Holy Spirit, but so that they could follow the Spirit by following the Apostles. Similarly, Christ’s promise concerning His Spirit leading men into all truth is not a promise that the Spirit will guide private interpretation or private bosom-burning into all truth. It provides no ground for certainty “that I am being guided into all truth” for those persons separated from the magisterium and following their own interpretation of Scripture along with others who share that interpretation. Christ’s promise that the Spirit will guide “you” into all truth has been understood in the visible Church as a promise that the Spirit will lead the Church through the magisterium He established. That is precisely how we can have confidence to know that we are being led by the Holy Spirit, and not co-opting the Spirit to sanction our own private interpretation or subjective bosom-burning.

As is often the case, comments to the article there are just as interesting as the article itself (see link above).

Catholic Common Worship

Whether wesleyan or lutheran, the evangelical coming into the Roman rite of the Church via The Catechism of the Catholic Church is apt to be disconcerted by the hymnal in use at their parish. This is the case whether that hymnal is Glory & Praise or The Parish Book of Chant in that the hymnal does not represent the entire communion, though it may well represent the particular parish community.

The vital core of Wesleyan spirituality is, I might argue, best represented in the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the People Called Methodists which well deserves a place among the many spiritual resources of the church catholic and which is at the core of subsequent Methodist hymnals. The modern United Methodist Hymnal in the USA and the British Methodist hymnal, Hymns and Psalms are symbols of the unity and coherence of Methodism.

Likewise, the Lutheran Book of Worship used by various Lutheran communions here in the United States “expresses the unity of the people of God and their continuity with Christians across the ages. In the liturgical tradition are the gestures, songs, and words by which Christians have identified themselves and each other” (from the Introduction). Rather then representing a particular agenda or segment among Lutherans, the Lutheran Book of Worship aims to represent the entire communion. Interestingly, this hymnal includes Thomas Aquinas’ Adoro Te Devote and Pange Lingua, albeit in English translation, neither of which are in Glory and Praise, a hymnal popular in many Roman Catholic dioceses.

My point is not to criticize any particular hymnal in the pews of any Roman Catholic parish but rather to point out that those hymnals are not instruments of unity in the way that Methodist or Lutheran hymnals are. Also, my Wesleyan background is obvious in thinking of the hymnal not as just a Sunday songbook but rather as a resource for spiritual formation second only to the scriptures. Neither is it my intention to urge the creation of such a hymnal. Rather, the functional equivalent of those protestant hymnals is to be found elsewhere within the Catholic Church.

Throughout the world among both laity and religious, the liturgical unity of the Catholic Church, beyond the Mass itself, is represented not in commercial hymnals but rather in The Liturgy of the Hours or, as it is alternatively known, The Divine Office. This is the basis of common worship within the Catholic Church, although its use is scattered outside the clergy. It is the one liturgical document which crosses various various internal boundaries in a manner similar to the protestant hymnals mentioned above.

The four volume edition, while expensive, is more useful than one volume abridgments. There is also a fairly complete version http://universalis.com/ available online.

In a recent general audience, Pope Benedict XVI remarked: “I would like to renew my call to everyone to pray the Psalms, to become accustomed to using the Liturgy of the Hours, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline.”

Conveniently, at the Cathedral of the Madeleine on weekdays:

7:30am – Lauds
8:00am – Mass
5:15pm – Mass
5:45pm – Vespers

How the Church Lost Her Soundscape

Over at First Things, Peter Leithart writes about How the Church Lost Her Soundscape and concludes:

Expertise is one of the values of modern culture, but expertise has always had a limited scope. We trust experts in physics and computer programming and perhaps foreign affairs. But the suggestion that there are experts in aesthetics, musicians who know what music one should appreciate, is greeted with hostility, also in the church. “I know what I like” stops every argument, buttressed by “Musical taste is subjective.” Lebanese organist Naji Hakim has lamented that in the Catholic Church “many in positions of liturgical responsibility, with no musical education as regards technique or aesthetics, have come to believe in a tabula rasa, denying any lineage whatsoever.” Professional musicians have been “sidelined” as “the lost common denominator has become the rule.” He wonders whether Catholics “realize the level of mediocrity which the present liturgy has reached.”

The church created the soundscape for Western Christendom because she cultivated her own musical life in the liturgy that united human voices with the angelic choirs of heaven. I can hardly imagine a more worrisome sign of worldliness, or clearer evidence of the church’s identity crisis, than our eager renunciation of our own soundscape and our determination instead to reproduce the world’s.

“For all its variety, pop music is dismally monophonic. Transgression is encouraged, so long as it doesn’t get too close to the music.” ..reminds me of my dad’s critique of 60s pop music.

Favorite Pop Albums

• Time Out of Mind – Bob Dylan
• Tell Tale Signs, v2 – Bob Dylan
• Orphans:Bawlers – Tom Waits
• Tell Tale Signs, v1 – Bob Dylan
• Mule Variations- Tom Waits
• Blood on the Tracks – Bob Dylan
• Modern Times – Bob Dylan
• Bad as Me – Tom Waits

Walking is good

It takes me a while to prepare for Mass. While getting to the parish early helps, even better is being able to walk there, especially early Sunday morning when streets are quiet.

Christian Marriage Doublespeak

From an article on the Dalrock blog about the common, and heretical I would add,
Christian marriage doublespeak:

One factor which undoubtedly plays a role here is the widespread adoption of feminism by Christian and secular women alike.  The knee jerk blame the husband tendency which I have described above shows how immersed modern Christianity is in modern feminism.  Fellow blogger Laura Grace Robbins captured my own thoughts when she wrote:

I’m starting to think the feminism in Christianity cuts much, much deeper than I originally thought.

This is relevant both because a general sense of unhappiness is the philosophical foundation for modern feminism, and because we know that women who try to be the leaders in their marriage are very likely to be unhappy as a result.  As I mentioned earlier, Christian women hold some truly outrageous beliefs when it comes to marriage and being “true to themselves”.  It is no wonder that millions of these women are unhappy.  Like the wife in Fireproof, many have decided that their husbands should submit to their leadership.  Christians could of course address this if they weren’t deeply mired in the very feminism at the source of the problem.

The problem will not be addressed, I think, as long as Christians have the heretical view that remarriage while one’s spouse is alive is not adultery.

Hurricane

I’ve been more of a fan of N.T. Wright’s scholarly writings than of his popularizations which he signs as Tom Wright. His new book, Simply Jesus, which he signs as N.T. Wright, is at first glance more popular than scholarly; however, that just goes to show that the best scholarship hides itself.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the end of chapter 5:

But, as we draw these introductory chapters to a close, we return to the image of the perfect storm. We have felt the force of the western gale: the relentless power of Rome, its emperor, its armies its steely-eyed ambition to rule the world. We have sensed the buildup of hope and the national aspiration within the high-pressure system that emerged from the age-old stories of Israel, producing a complex but coherent narrative in which many of Jesus’s contemporaries believed themselves still to be living, in which indeed they were eager for the denouement, the fulfillment, the great final day. These two by themselves would have been enough, and were enough in many other instances, to produce a terrible storm with devastating results.

But, from the moment Jesus of Nazareth launched his public career, he seems to have been determined to invoke the third part of the great storm as well. He spoke continually about the hurricane of which the psalmists had sung and the prophets had preached. He spoke about God himself becoming king. An he went about doing things that, he said, demonstrated what that meant and would mean. He took upon himself (this is one of the most secure starting points for historical investigation of Jesus) the role of a prophet, in other words, of a man sent from God to reaffirm God’s intention of overthrowing the might of pagan empire, but also to warn Israel that its present way of going about things was dangerously ill-conceived and leading to disaster. And with that, the sea is lashed into a frenzy; the wind makes the waves dance like wild things; and Jesus himself strides out into the middle of it all, into the very eye of the storm, announcing that the time is fulfilled, that God’s kingdom is now at hand. He commands his hearers to give up their other dreams and to trust his instead. This, at its simplest, is what Jesus was all about.

The Redemption of Suffering

Over at The Roman Road, there’s an excellent little series on the theology of suffering, a topic dear to my heart from years of preaching/encouraging in a devotional service at a local nursing home.

It is also a topic very relevant to our modern cultural which is so Corinthian and which requires a focus on ‘Christ, and him crucified.’

The Endless Courtship Fantasy

From the Dalrock blog, on The Endless Courtship Fantasy:

Fireproof:  This is the Christian contribution to the endless courtship genre, and is celebrated as exemplifying modern Christian’s commitment to marriage.  Hero fireman Caleb Holt (Kirk Cameron) must convince his wife Catherine (Erin Bethea) not to frivolously divorce him.  To do so he undertakes a 40-day test to prove his worthiness to his unhaaaapy wife.  While he is doing this his wife is busy flirting with other men, and is no longer wearing her wedding ring.  A doctor she is flirting with unexpectedly learns that she is married when the hero arrives at the hospital with an injured arm after rescuing a young girl.  From the plot summary on Wikipedia:

As he continues his 40-day challenge, Caleb begins doing more household chores and running more errands for Catherine, and leaves her roses. Caleb even smashes his computer to pieces with a baseball bat in order to remove the temptation of viewing internet pornography. Nevertheless, Catherine, who is led by some colleagues to think that Caleb did all these things with an ulterior motive in mind, is still intent on divorce. When she later learns that the equipment needed for her mother’s medical care has been paid for in full, she arranges a lunch date with Dr. Keller, thinking he was the benefactor. Caleb discovers Dr. Keller’s relationship with Catherine and immediately informs him that he won’t let him have Catherine without a fight. Catherine’s friends misinterpret the confrontation as a threat, but they do not tell her since the Holts’ marriage doesn’t concern them. Dr. Keller (who is actually married) breaks off his relationship with Catherine.

Eventually Caleb completes the test to his whorish wife’s satisfaction, and she gladly takes him back.

Welcome the Weak

We are to welcome the weak in faith, encourage the poor in spirit and build up what is broken down.

Is that done in practice, however? Instead, does not our modern Donatist blow at the weak flame, disparage cultural Christianity, and strive to restrict ‘Christian’ more than most ancient Pharisees tried to restrict their faith?

The representative statement ‘If Christ is not Lord of all, He’s not Lord at all’ is, I think, not representative of a robust Christianity. Rather, it is either spiritually naive or a heretical view in the same category as fifth century Donatism. Cultural Christianity is a good thing. Not the only thing, or even the main thing, but a good thing nonetheless if we are to avoid cultural nihilism.

Marcello Pera’s book Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies which I nickname ‘Calling Ourselves Christians’ has more on this topic.

Of course, one has to balance this welcoming with not letting the faith get diminished or, as Saint Paul says [Romans 14:1] ‘As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions.’

The Sacrament of Marriage

Over at Called to Communion, Bryan Cross has an excellent article on the Sacrament of Marriage. Here’s a brief excerpt:

This doctrine is perceived by many people in our generation as scandalous, because divorce and remarriage have become so commonplace. The notion that divorce allows remarriage is rooted in a fundamental difference between the Protestant and Catholic doctrines concerning marriage. According to the Catholic Church, Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. This means, among other things, that Christ did not merely remove Moses’s permission of divorce (Mt. 19:7-8; Mk. 10:3-4) and restore the original order of marriage (Mt. 19:6), while leaving married couples with no additional grace to live the married life. Rather, under the New Covenant the marriage of two baptized persons is accompanied by special grace from God such that the spouses may fulfill their marital and parental responsibilities in union with Christ and His Body, the Church. In this way, Christian marriage is an efficacious sign, communicating to the couple the grace it signifies regarding the indissoluble union of Christ and His Bride, the Church. It also makes Christian marriage (i.e. marriage between two baptized persons) a matter subject to the Church, because sacraments belong fundamentally to the stewardship of the Church.

But one of the Catholic doctrines that the first Protestants rejected is precisely the Catholic teaching that Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. The inevitable consequence of this rejection is that in societies sufficiently influenced by Protestantism, marriage comes to be conceived and treated as merely a civil matter, and hence, by default, merely as a legal contract. As the Catholic Encyclopedia article on “Divorce” states regarding the practice and belief of the first Protestants, “Jurisdiction in matrimonial affairs was relegated, on principle, to the civil law, and only the blessing of marriage was assigned to the Church.” Of course many Protestant couples are wedded in a religious ceremony before a pastor in a church building, not before a judge. But because of the Protestant denial of the sacramental character of Christian marriage, what takes place during that ceremony, from the Protestant point of view, is still only the formation of a legal bond, one that the State has the authority to dissolve. . . .

Favorite Movies

• Bread & Tulips
• Bye, Bye, Birdie
• Casablanca
• His Girl Friday
• Kate and Leopold
• Pride & Prejudice 2005
• The End of the Affair
• The Lady Eve
• The White Countess
• True Grit 2010
• Twelfth Night 1996
• You’ve Got Mail