Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Sorry about the silence – I’ve been busy. Still am. This is just another quick “pop-in” on the same subject as below.

There is obviously no shortage of Catholics willing to bag everything good in the Church at the moment, and to do this publically. The latest example is this deplorable discussion of the legacy of John Paul II on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live with Philip Adams. His guests are Paul Collins (no surprise) and Michael Walsh, described as:

Author, historian and former librarian of Heythrop College, London. He is author of “The Secret World of Opus Dei”, an early biography of John Paul II, published by Harpers; his latest, a history of the College of Cardinals.

In fact, his book on Opus Dei and his book on John Paul II are two separate works. You can read something of what Walsh had to say about Benedict and John Paul II here before the visit to the UK. You can also read something of what Simon Rowney had to say about Walsh on Cathnews here last year.

Basically, the LNL piece on John Paul II entirely focuses on his blameworthiness (to use an ugly word) in regard to the abuse scandal. When this is the sole focus of the discussion, it is easy to see why it is a big ask for some people to see the former pope as a saint. But it seems an incredible travesty to view the life of Karol Wojtyla through this prism. It is an exact parallel – and one actually made explicit in the LNL discussion – to the way in which Venerable Pius XII is viewed through the “Hitler’s Pope” prism. Aside from the fact that a judgement of heroic virtue and personal sanctity refers to the life of the individual and not to any historical circumstances or mistakes that they may have made, it is a complete distortion of the story.

One argument that Paul Collins uses is that “saints should be role models”; and thus he approves of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, but disapproves of John Paul II. Well, go figure. If you can’t find something in John Paul II’s life and character to take as a role model for your own life, you are either ignorant or aren’t trying. Or both. Still, the Church does not make but rather recognises sainthood. The process of beatification and canonisation is not a program for making pin-up poster-boys/girls for Catholics. It is recognising people for who they are in the sight of God.

John Paul II was a gift from God to the Church and the world at just the time when we needed his strong hand and guidance. Was he perfect? No. Was he a saint*? The Church says “yes” and I, thinking with the Church, agree.

We should not whitewash the sins and failings of Catholics, certainly not the failings of our Popes. Every saint, every Catholic, is a human being. Saints are not people who never sinned, nor people who, as judged by those with the benifit of hindsight**, never made mistakes. They are people in whom the holiness of Christ shone with beauty and light for the world. It will remain a mystery to me why good Catholic people feel that they are doing the work of Christ by publically presenting the darkest view of the Church that they can achieve.

[* I am using the word “saint” in the broad sense – I know he is not yet canonised.]

[** I like this Wikipedia entry on “Hindsight Bias”:

“Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place. Hindsight bias has been demonstrated experimentally in a variety of settings, including politics, games and medicine.[1] In psychological experiments of hindsight bias, subjects also tend to remember their predictions of future events as having been stronger than they actually were, in those cases where those predictions turn out correct. This inaccurate assessment of reality after it has occurred is also referred to as “creeping determinism”.

]

The above “ad” is from Catholics Come Home, a successful (by all accounts I have read) public TV and Internet program for calling people into the Church. It used to be just about those who were brought up Catholic, but it has expanded it’s resources to include other evangelistic situations.

The thing you will notice about the ad above is that it isn’t so much about the Church – it isn’t advertising the Church as such – as about relationships with others, with yourself and with God. There are Catholic Come Home ads that do say how great the Church is, but the message of this one is simple: Repent. Turn back. Come home. It is the age-old message of the prodigal son who “returns to the Father”.

In today’s edition of The Age, Fr Erik Hodgens has another one of his rants against the Catholic Church (of which he is a priest!). What’s particularly got his goat this time is the announcement that Cardinal Pell intends to run the Catholics Come Home campaign in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

You would think that any campaign to call people to “come home” to the Waiting Father would be something that would make any ordained servant of the Lord Jesus Christ happy. But not Fr Hodgens. He launches into an attack on everything he sees as wrong with the Church. Isn’t there something wrong here to start with? It is clear that he despises leaders like Cardinal Pell, and his animosity is such that he will go to great lengths to publically attack the Church in any way that he can. Does he truly believe that by doing this he is serving his Lord?

I can’t speak for Fr Hodgens and what is going on in his heart of darkness. While I share his vision of a Church which clearly proclaims “a gospel of life, peace, forgiveness, love and welcome” – something which I think the Catholic Church is doing and actually is doing very well, even though it could always do better – I do not share his vision of what such a Church would look like.

He calls for a Church which abandons its witness to
• the indissolubility of the Sacrament of Marriage
• the grave immorality of sex outside of marriage (whether hetero or homo)
• the grave immorality of the destruction of embryos in IVF
• the criminality of killing unborn children
He says that

These issues are why thousands have left. Until these issues are reasonably addressed the cardinal can forget about these Catholics coming back.

The Catholics Come Home campaign does something which Jesus himself did. He preached the joy of belonging to the Kingdom of God and invited everyone to enter into it. He described it as a “marriage feast” to which everyone is invited. But he also said:

13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matt 7:13-14)

In short Jesus called for repentance from sin, and offered a Way of Life in which those who answered the call would experience freedom from their slavery to sin. Entering the Kingdom was not “easy” precisely because with the invitation came the demand to recognise the forces of sin at work in our lives and to begin a journey of life long conversion and repentance.

It seems to me significant that immediately after talking about the “narrow gate”, Jesus went on to say:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matt 7:15-21)

Just as we should be beware of any evangelist who comes to us preaching some kind of “prosperity gospel”, a gospel of ease and success rather than the Gospel of taking up our crosses and following Jesus, so we should be beware of any false prophet who would offer us a Gospel that ceases to expose sin for what it is and ceases to call for repentance.

The bottom line is not about bums-on-pews. The Church does not have as its mission the task of making being a follower of Jesus so easy that the Kingdom no longer makes any demands upon us personally, no longer asks us to change the way we live. It is true that many have left the Church for the reasons that Fr Hodgens outlines in his opinion piece. But these things are sins. In the name of Jesus the Church offers “life, peace, forgiveness, love and welcome” to all sinners, but the Church can never stop repeating Jesus’ call to repentance from sin.

The Church has many “prodigal sons” who have left home seeking an easier life. The Catholics Come Home campaign is calling these people to hear Jesus’ invitation once again, to turn, to repent and to come home to the embrace of our Loving Father. Beware of false prophets who would suggest that there is a way into the Kingdom which bypasses this difficult and demanding call to repentance.

Kate at Australia Incognita (aka Terra) has taken issue – and quite rightly, thinketh I – with a number of recent articles on Cathnews.

Sr Joan Chittister’s piece and Terra’s reply.

Fr Ron Rolheiser’s piece and Terra’s reply.

And then today we get this from Fr Gerald Arbuckle and Terra’s reply.

One wonders what is going on in the Cathnews editorial room. Have they decided, in these last days of the Summer hols, upon a project of continually baiting the conservative Catholic blogosphere in Australia to divert them from other more productive pursuits towards the goal of the Reform of the Reform? Is this some kind of revenge for “censoring” Fr Hodgen’s article?

I am busy preparing for my Seminar on Romans 5-8 at the moment. The three commentaries that I rely on most (they give the broadest possible variety of points of view) are Ben Witherinton III’s, Brendan Byrne’s and of course Tom Wright’s. I am also reading Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God – very good for anyone trying to get their head around the “historical Jesus” quest(s).

Also on Wright, for anyone interested in either his own work or critiques of it, are the recordings from this Seminar held at Wheaton College last year. Excellent stuff there.

And then (and this is the main point of this blog) there is an article which is not available online in the Lutheran Quarterly (some of you read this, I know) by Dr Erik Heen, NT professor at Philadelphia Lutheran Seminary in Pennsylvania “A Lutheran Response to the New Perspective on Paul” (LQ vol XXIV no. 3). It doesn’t focus on Wright (it includes Stendahl, Sanders and Dunn) but does take issue with a statement in Wright’s book Justification.

Heen writes:

Perhaps the most misunderstood term in Lutheran theology within the NPP is “Law”. Representative is Wright’s characterisation of “the Lutheran scheme whereby the law is a bad thing abolished by Christ.”

The body of the article is therefore a defence of the Lutheran “Law/Gospel” paradigm – in particular in Luther’s own writings – over against the New Perspective’s reading of St Paul’s use of this term. In particular, Heen is at pains to show that Lutheran theology speaks of various “uses” of “the law”, not all of them negative.

While it is a good defence of this peculiarly Lutheran doctrine, the article unfortunately fails to be very useful for anyone actually seeking a Lutheran critique of the NPP, and specifically of Tom Wright’s understanding of how the term “ho nomos” (ie. “the Law”) functions in Paul’s writings.

In his Romans commentary, Wright takes issue with a number of other commentators in insisting that when St Paul speaks of “THE Law”, he is always speaking of the Jewish Torah. This itself can be understood in a number of ways – as it was in fact in Paul’s own day. It can mean the Sinaitic covenant, the “Law of Moses”, the Pentateuch, the laws of Halakah, and even sometimes by extension the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures. Sometimes this means that we end up with a very stretched meaning of “Torah”, but Wright’s point is that Paul is intending this “stretching”. Wright expressly rejects the idea that it can mean “more general principles or statutes or forces or authorities” (as Michael Winger writes in “By What Law?”, quoted by Heen).

A good example is in Romans 3:27-28. Here is the RSV translation:

27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On the principle of works? No, but on the principle of faith. 28 For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.

The word “nomos” (“law”) appears three times in these verses in the Greek text; the RSV translates it twice as “principle” and once as “law”. But what Paul seems to be doing is contrasting a “Torah of works” with a “Torah of faith” – which may very well be related to the “Torah of the Spirit” (Rom 8:2) and “the new life of the Spirit (Rom 7:6).

Another case is at the end of Romans 7, precisely where Paul has been working hard to defend the goodness and holiness of “the Law/Torah”:

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.

Here the RSV translates “law” in each case for “nomos”, but in v21 the Greek is quite clearly “THE Law” (“ho nomos”), not “a law”. Paul is still talking about “the Torah”, even when he speaks of “another Law” – he is still talking about “the Torah”, but the Torah acting in a paradoxically different way from which it ought to function, ie. emphasising sin rather than eradicating it (as in Rom 7:5,10-11).

In any case, Dr Heen has not appreciated the fact that Wright, whenever he reads Paul’s using the word “Law”, believes that Paul is speaking about “the Torah” . So when Wright says that Lutheran theology thinks of “the Law” as a “bad thing abolished by Christ”, he means this is the way in which Lutherans think of “the Torah”.

Dr Heen, however, understands the phrase “the Law” in Paul in a more Lutheran sense. When Lutheran theology speaks of “the Law”, it is speaking of the existential effect or aspect of God’s Word as it addresses me. When I hear God’s Word commanding or forbidding me to do this or that, I am hearing “the Law”. (Conversely, when I hear God’s Word as a promise of grace and mercy, I am hearing “the Gospel”). It would be wrong therefore to speak of “the Law” (or “the Gospel” for that matter) in authentic Lutheran theology as a “principle” (although it has certainly been mistaken for such at times), but it certainly isn’t the same thing as “the Torah”. Thus in his article, Heen quotes approvingly from David Lose who wrote:

[One recognises] the law…not simply from what it says (content) but from what it does (function).

Therefore, Heen concludes,

The law, in other words, is not a “bad” thing but the active, lively Word of God that drives one to Christ.

This is good Lutheranism, but it is not what Wright understands St Paul to mean by “the Law”, and it isn’t what he meant when he wrote that Lutheranism sees the law “as a bad thing abolished by Christ.”

Sometimes – although Heen rightly objects to an approach to “the Law” of Israel which makes an artificial distinction between the moral and ceremonial aspects – “the Law” can mean for Lutherans “the 10 Commandments”. Thus, seen in theological terms of the existential address of God’s commanding and demanding Word, or even in simpler catechetical terms of the 10 Commandments, Lutheran theology does still see a positive use for “the Law”. Heen writes:

One might observe that this first use of the law is similar in some respects to Torah (“law” in Jewish discourse) understood as God’s gift to Israel. That is, the usus politicus outlines human responsibilities archetypically represented by the two tables of the Ten Commandments. …The Ten Commandments, in fact, are central to the Lutheran catechetical tradition…

But again Wright – for all his admittedly limited understanding of Lutheran theology (and Catholic for that matter) is nevertheless right to say that most Lutherans would generally believe that “the Torah” itself (the Sinaitic Code rather than “the Law” in Lutheran terms) is a “bad thing abolished by Christ”.

The problem here, as in many “dialogues”, is that we are using different words for different things. Just to take an instance that regularly reoccurs on this blog: Purgatory. If you forget the name and just talk about what the doctrine is really about, you tend to find more agreement than you might previously have thought. Likewise, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with what Heen has written about the “use of the law” in Lutheran terms. Much the same could be said in terms of Catholic theology. The thing that Lutheran theologians, and Catholic ones for that matter, need to wrestle with is not the question of whether or not Wright has properly understood either Lutheran or Catholic theology as such, but whether he has properly understood Pauline theology. If he has, then we all have some rethinking to do.

I know that we cannot declare a debate of this nature “closed” (I won’t close the comments on this post), but I do what to make a final statement (for now) on the “virgo in partu” doctrine, ie. the dogma that (as the Second Vatican Council – the highest authority teaching this doctrine – put it) “the birth of Our Lord…did not diminish His mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.”

We have had two rather lengthy discussions on this matter (here and here), and I have learned a very great deal from the conversation. Joshua asked at one point in the discussion, “David, are you going to treat us to all your favourite conundrums of dogma?” The answer is “yes, very probably”. That’s really what this blog is for. You are all participants in (what some philosophers call) my “extended mind”. That ought to be a scarey thought…

One of my main concerns about the “virgo in partu” doctrine was that it was making a theological claim about an historical event. I could understand the theology – especially within an honour/shame culture such as existed in ancient Palestine and the Greco-Roman world – but I had difficulty with the claim in so far as it could (at least theoretically if not in fact) be known historically. In my original post about the doctrine I stated like this:

The question about whether or not Mary experienced pain or the breaking of her hymen in giving birth to Jesus seems to me to be a conclusion primarily based on theological ideas (and, in respect to the hymen question, cultural ideas). I guess that, if Mary experienced no pain in giving birth to Jesus, this is something that could have been known by the early Christian community, but it boggles the mind how anyone could have known for certain one way or another whether her hymen was ruptured.

I simply had difficulty imagining such “knowledge” being passed to the Apostle and down to the Church as part of the deposit of faith about the “historical Mary”. But as Shakespeare had his character say: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” History has a way of throwing up things that we could never imagine. And so I am very grateful to Chris Jones, who eventually directed us to this story from the legendary account of the Proto-Evangelium of St James:

[Mary] said to her [the midwife]: ‘Salome, Salome, I have a strange sight to relate to you: a virgin hath brought forth—a thing which her nature admits not of.’ Then said Salome: ‘As the Lord my God lives, unless I thrust in my finger, and search the parts, I will not believe that a virgin has brought forth.’ And the midwife went in, and said to Mary: ‘Show thyself; for no small controversy has arisen about thee.’ And Salome put in her finger, and cried out, and said: ‘Woe is me for mine iniquity and mine unbelief, because I have tempted the living God; and, behold, my hand is dropping off as if burned with fire.’ (Protevangelion vv 19-20)

Now, of course, as Chris himself pointed out,

this is not “documentary evidence” of our Lady’s virginity in partu; but it is certainly evidence of the exactly how “virgin birth” was understood by those who lived in the time and culture in which our Lord was born. And it reflects what the Church’s oral tradition was, and what issues that tradition was concerned with, at a time a century or less from the Resurrection.

Chris is quite right. Like the reference to sacrifice for the sins of the departed in Maccabees (also regarded by some Christians as a non-canonical work), it is enough to show a belief and an attitude that existed in the early stage of the Tradition. It shows that the early Christians not only knew the doctrine “virgo in partu”, but were aware of the kind of claim that they were making, ie. a claim about a real historical person and a real historical event. Interestingly, the story seems to be provided in the Proto-Evangelium precisely because “no small controversy” had arisen about Mary’s status as a “virgin”. Now of course, it is quite possible that the author of the Proto-Evangelium invented this story – the Church in no way requires us to accept this document as infallible scripture or factual history. That’s not my concern right now. The fact is that it demonstrates how Mary’s “in partu” virginity could have been known and that the idea meant then what it has always meant in the teaching of the Church since.

For me, for now, that is sufficient.

UPDATE: But not, it seems for you guys…

Two objections have arisen in the Combox so far, and I wish to deal with these up front.

1) The second, and least serious, is the question about the “importance” of the “virgo in partu” doctrine. Stephen K raised the question, and Tony is pressing it. My first reaction is to say “No, it isn’t important in the hierarchy of Truths” – it isn’t the “article on which the Church stands or falls”, as the Lutherans would say. But then I pause for a bit and think: who am I to say how important it is? Chesterton once used the example of a man who comes across a closed gate with the sign on it which says “please close the gate”. If I can’t see any stock in the paddock, can I judge that the gate can be left open? There may be ramifications of this doctrine that I am not currently aware of, but which may become crucial one day.

2) The more serious charge is expressed by Marcel, Joshua, Louise, and Terra: viz. my audacity and disrespect for Our Lady in discussing “a subject so delicate and so sacred” in the first place, which I should have simply have allowed to remain “shroud[ed]” in “mystery”.

This I take very seriously. I think that while it shows an admirable respect for and devotion to Our Lady, as theological method it verges upon gnosticism, if not doceticism. It is precisely the nature of our faith that it makes certain claims which are indeed “mysterious”, but precisely so because they are said to be “real”. The best example is that of the Sacrament of the Altar. The Sacrament is shrouded in mystery, but that hasn’t stopped our theologians trying to work out and explain how it could be “real”. Lutherans say we have gone to far in using Aristotelian terms like “transubstantiation”, but we use such terms because we are convinced of the reality of the mystery, and hence believe that it must be able to be approached in terms of some kind of philosophy of reality.

The same goes for the doctrine, for eg., of the Assumption. Yes, a great mystery, but one which is grounded in the belief that Mary really was assumed body and soul into heaven. No one says “This is a great mystery, don’t enquire too much about whether it was historical or not.”

But when it comes to the “virgo in partu” doctrine, just because of the subject matter, we are supposed to step back and say “Yes, that’s true, but don’t investigate too closely.” Sorry, I’m not buying that. If it is true, it is real, and if it is real, it can and should be discussed as a way of furthering our understanding of the faith which we confess.

Sorry guys, I got so tired of the “virgo in partu” debate, that I have been seeking out just about any diversion that will get my mind onto lighter subjects.

HT to Ironic Catholic for this one:

Vatican City: The Vatican Office of Evangelization, inspired by the worldwide phenomenon that is WikiLeaks, has created a website intended to penetrate the deep secrets of Catholic Christianity. Angled to the “wandering spiritual seeker,” it is called WikiSeeks.

“Young Fr. Eamon over there was telling me about the WikiLeaks popularity, spilling out all this secret material all over the web, and I thought–hey, the faith is public and always has been, but no one seems to know that. You know, The DaVinci Code and all that crap. So why don’t we set up a website ‘revealing’ all our secrets? A few defenses of the faith? Mysteries explained?” enthused Cardinal Giovanni Bianci. “We’re releasing one doctrinal defense a day through twitter. If Francis de Sales spread the good word through trifolds, well, we can try newfangled media as well!”

Fr. Eamon Donahue blushed, and added, “We’re calling it the Newer Evangelization around the office.”

Cardinal Bianci argued there was a hearty debate about whether to publish the site in Latin or a variety of common languages, but it was decided in the interest of transparency and retweets they would begin with English, with mirror sites in Mandarin and Spanish.

An added benefit, noted Fr. Eamon, is that the office can detect interest in and response to the doctrinal defenses through the retweets. “We’re especially pleased that the resurrection of our Lord received 2,459 retweets. But we’re commissioned to the ends of the earth, so we think that number is just the beginning. We daily beg the Holy Spirit to move the sinsick souls of Twitter to retweet WikiSeeks.”

One typical follower on Twitter, Born2Search, posted this response to a recent tweet on predestination on his Twitter wall: “I’M SOO GREATFUL 2 U COO PRIESTS 4 CLEARING ^ TH PATH-MY SOUL REJOYCES-AMEN & ROCK ON #WIKISEEKS!

Fr. Eamon admits there has been an unexpected downside. “Apparently the Sikhs wanted to create a site by that name, and while they can–the words are differently spelled–they think the two sites will create too much confusion. The Office for Interreligious Dialogue is kind of in a holy huff at us.”

Julian Assauge could not be reached for comment.

–I.C.

…as the Beatles might have sung.

I wasn’t there (not born for another 5 years), but, boy oh boy, reading this speech sure sends a shiver up your spine. HT Rocco Palmo.

Oh, this is shameful. The first rule of dialogue – any kind of dialogue, but certainly of interreligious dialogue – is that when the going gets tough the dialogue gets going. You don’t – not EVER – walk away from the table. If there is a disagreement, a debate, a bone of contention, you sit down and talk about it. That fits any interpersonal relationship, again, certainly interreligious dialogue. After the recent killings of Coptic Christians in Egypt, Pope Benedict’s call for respect for all citizens and their religious freedom was a frank exchange in the dialoge. For the University of al-Azhar to walk away from the table in reaction shows a complete lack of commitment to dialogue through thick and thin. It is not only a shame. It is shameful.

I’ve been watching the situation in the Tunisia very closely. Today there is this from Reuters “Faith World” blog. Read it and give some thought to the situation. Secularism is not only opposed to Christianity, it is opposed to all religion (there are parallels to Turkey’s past in this story). What is going to be the future of Tunisia? The often quoted idea in the media is that “All Arab leaders are watching Tunisia in fear; all Arab citizens are watching Tunisia in hope”. I too am watching Tunisia in hope, and prayer. But what will emerge?

King Kong.

I have just watched with my kids the 2005 remake of King Kong by Peter Jackson.

Apart from the fact that one can easily seem the fingerprints of the maker of Lord of the Rings in this film (not least in its length – almost 3 hours), it is a terrific film in every way – great film making.

But it has to be said that Jackson has paid incredible tribute to the makers of the original 1933 film, right down to reproducing the story almost scene by scene.

This is classic film making in every sense of the word. If anything, the remake brings out the greatness of 6the original. I highly recommend it.