February 2006 Archives

Michael Medved has written a piece in USA Today discussing how disappointed the folks who brought us Brokeback Mountain are that the supposedly fanatical bloodthirsty Christian conservatives haven't reacted more violently to Hollywood's latest manifesto.

I had debated for some time writing a piece about Brokeback, the main hesitation being that I haven't seen the film, but have only been confronted with its advertising campaign, of which Medved makes mention. After reading Medved's piece, I am content to have said nothing, since it is apparently a sign of greater power and maturity on the part of orthodox and orthoprax Christians, that confronted with poisonous products like Brokeback, we can shrug it off rather than add to its publicity by voicing public outrage.

Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island, has written a great piece for the March 2006 issue of Touchstone Magazine: a Journal of Mere Christianity. It's bascially about the neutering of liturgical language, particularly in the singing hymns to the Lord. The article is appropriately titled, "No More Hims of Praise."

Reading the article I was several times reminded of a time when I opened up a worship hymnal at my church, and turning to the appropriate song, found that someone had crossed out the word "his" and replaced it with "God's." This frazzled me. It's a worship hymnal, not a seventh grade research paper. But this is the attitude that many today have taken to language which has been around for hundreds and even thousands of years, that if something bothers our modern egalitarian sensibilities, we may simply cross it out and substitute our own linguistic whims.

These recent controversies in the Catholic Church and in others have led me to recognize a fundamental hallmark of the type of Christian orthodoxy that CS Lewis and others like GK Chesterton endorsed. Basically, they take seriously the sexual symbolism used by the Church and by Christ before her. For example, the notion that God is Father and the Church is Mother, therefore in referring to God in the third person singular pronoun the proper terminology is "he," and in referring to the Church as such the proper terminology is not "it," but "she."

That sexual symbolism is fundamental to Catholic and to orthodox Christian teaching not just in systematics and creeds but in areas of morality and indeed liturgy. It is in ceasing to take that symbolism seriously that the decline begins from orthodoxy into apostasy and ultimately into the kind of anarchy that we're beginning to see in some non-Catholic corners of Christendom. And when I open a hymnal where that symbolism is downplayed or dismissed outright, it worries me.

I was asked by some students recently to examine the following Bible passage:

"Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her..." -- Ephesians 5:22ff

That last part is often forgotten by feminist challengers and misogynists alike. Feminists of the anti-religious bent would like to paint a picture of a woman-suppressing religion while misogynists like the idea of suppressive authority over a woman, in other words, an authority that is self-serving.

But to look at the above passage with either of these mentalities is to look at it from a perspective that is oblivious of all the principles that Paul himself had at the front of his mind when he wrote it. The society in which we live today is not Christian. Modern society tends today to be utilitarian, power-hungry, and basically self-seeking, and that's why so many people have a hard time with this passage.

Now I have to be honest here: I'm a man. And because I'm a man, I tend to see more of the above characteristics in men. I share much of the feminist critique of men, with the important distinction that my criticism is of men as they behave whereas as the feminist critique tends to be of men as what the feminists think men are. So yes, many men behave in very selfish, irresponsible, manipulative, unchivalrous, machoistic ways. Where I part company is in saying that men can and should behave better.

And it seems lately as though I have been confronted with many glaring examples of the shortcomings of my male peers. The London Telegraph reported on a recent study published in the United Kingdom showing that if current trends continue, then the majority of pregnancies there will be out of wedlock by the year 2012. This is essentially the view from a distance of a reality I experience every day at work, where I am constantly confronted with situations where women have been used and then left carrying an unborn child. Even on a personal level I am confronted with it when lady friends of mine voice their discontents to me about my fellow males. This happened to me recently, and my lady friend actually lamented that, particularly in the Catholic Church, "all the good guys go to seminary."

Now I'm not sure that that's true. I know at least a few good Catholic guys who aren't going to seminary. But it made me think. What separates a guy going to seminary from an illegitimate father? What separates a priest from a deadbeat dad? It kind of hit me last night as I was railing against my counterparts.

In a word, it's sacrifice--an understanding of it, and a willingness to shoulder it up. A recognition that life is not just about me. It's not about gaining notoriety and pleasure for oneself, but rather about laying down one's life for one's friends (John 15:13). It's pretty much impossible to spend any extended period of time in a seminary environment without recognizing that fact. The sacrificial dimension of it is obvious--men must grapple with the prospect of giving up the joys of married life and family for the sake of the whole Church. That discernment process alone can turn boys into men.

What Paul is trying to communicate to husbands and wives I think is that marriage is every bit as much about sacrifice as is a vocation to priesthood or consecrated life. Thus this verse which is so often received uncomfortably today in fact is a message that everyone needs to hear, especially guys. Modern society, particularly in the media, because it is utilitarian and pleasure-seeking, naturally amplifies those dimensions of sexual relationships that entail enjoyment and pleasure, while very much downplaying or even dismissing outright those dimensions which demand responsibility and sacrifice.

Paul blows all that to smithereens when he says "husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church." Essentially he is saying, "You, sir, will lay down your life for this woman."

Lord, give me just enough grace
to not mistake your stillness
for nonexistence, or dullness,
or staleness, or stagnancy,

Rather that I may rest still in you,
even when earthly comforts all have passed.
AMEN†

National Catholic Reporter Online's February 10 issue includes a story about the reaction of media and some Catholics to Benedict XVI's headline-grabbing encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

Perhaps the most intriguing reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, is the generally positive response of liberal Catholics who were the most apprehensive about the election to the papacy of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long known as the church’s doctrinal watchdog.

I have to wonder, what's intriguing about it? After reading the encyclical I wasn't surprised that certain Catholics and media would be quite pleased with what he didn't say. Ian Fisher at the New York Times raved (in an Op-Ed quite effectively rebutted by Carl Olson) that Benedict didn't mention abortion, homosexuality, contraception or divorce. The most intriguing part of this to me is how little sense of history or perspective the media seems to have.

Granted, Benedict didn't mention any of those issues. But neither did John Paul II for a good long while in his encyclicals. He used the word love or some variation over 300 times and wrote about 92000 words before mentioning one of those issues--abortion--and even then it wasn't even his own words but merely quoting from the Second Vatican Council. None of this means that John Paul II was not a strong advocate of traditional teachings, or that he shied away from controversy.

The story continues with praise from a laundry list of Church dissenters including former priest Paul Collins, Andrew Sullivan, and Hans Kung.

Collins interprets the encyclical as a sign that "This will be a modest and more traditional papacy. Just what Catholicism needs, really.” "This" of course is only "what Catholicism needs" because Benedict is orthodox and Collins is a dissenter.

Andrew Sullivan said the encyclical was "not as extreme or as repressive as Benedict’s well-earned reputation. It is a sign, one hopes, of a papacy that can change and grow and concentrate on the central truths, not peripheral obsessions." What Mr Sullivan calls "peripheral obsessions," John Paul II called "Gospel."

Swiss theologian Fr Hans Kung, with whom Benedict has a long history, said the Catholics should be happy that DCE is “not a manifesto of cultural pessimism or restrictive sexual morality.”

The article goes on to say that such reactions "have largely been paralleled in the global press," listing articles from French, German, and Austrian papers among others.

At this point, I'm rolling my eyes. None of this is intriguing to me. But then the article got good, when it said, "The chorus of praise was not, however, universal." Apparently Benedict didn't quite satisfy the wishes of the liberals in the Church. Even liberals who praised the encyclical did so with reservations.

Kung "said that the pope had failed to mention the charity the church should show toward loving couples who use contraception" among others.

If the Holy Father doesn't have to come out and say that the Church loves couples who use Natural Family Planning, then he shouldn't have to come out and say the Church loves couples who use contraception. For one thing, contraception is essentially condoned by default in a majority of parishes in the United States and the world because priests don't educate their parishioners about it or they educate wrongly. If anything, it's the NFP couples who need to be stood up for and supported in the modern Church, because they are a lot fewer and farther between.

Christian Weisner, spokesman for the liberal Catholic group “We Are Church,” said he hopes the Holy Father's emphasis on love will make him more open to opposing views. Quoth Weisner: "Loving your neighbors also means loving critical theologians. He also has to apply these ideas within the church itself.”

For one thing, it's not the "church itself." It's the Church herself. Secondly, Weisner here commits the fundamental mistake of dissenters in uniting persons with their ideologies. It is widely believed among such dissenters that disagreeing with someone, a dissenter at any rate, and going to some lengths to correct the person or discipline him if he will not be, is equivalent to dehumanizing the person as such. Therefore, to tell a dissenter that he is wrong is to be irredeemably uncharitable. It is this confusion which dissenters and secularists rely upon to in turn dehumanize the historical figure of Ratzinger (saying he was God's Rottweiler and the like).

But it just doesn't hold water. If a person holds an incorrect understanding of reality, then the nature and command of love is to correct the person (cf Galatians 6:1), not just to let him fester in error. It is people like Benedict, and John Paul II before him, who have a strong appreciation for God's love and who emphasize it, and who yet realize the importance of orthodoxy (right teaching) and orthopraxy (right living), that expose the dichotomy between God's love and God's laws for what it is: a lie from the devil.

Christian charity and moral conviction then turn out to be two sides of the same coin, the coin called holiness. God is the teacher in both, and he chose Benedict to lead the class. One wonders if the dissenters will ever really come to grips with that.

"For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith." --I John 5:3-4

I have always liked this passage because it speaks to a big misconception in Catholic and Christian thought today. And the misconception is essentially: that the commandments are a burden. I thought that was the whole point, some people might say. To keep his commandments is a chore, an act of repression. And we have to do it out of faith, or the secular world's favorite quasi-religious expression, "blind faith." In other words, we have to keep these commandments for no apparent reason whatsoever. You just have to do it. Don't question. Don't think. Just obey.

But not according to the beloved disciple. He says "The love of God is this, that we keep his commandments." Does this mean that God will only love us if we keep his commandments? No. God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way. It's because he loves us too much to let us stay that way that he gave us his commandments. The commandments are God's love letter to humanity, and when we break those commandments, it is not that God gets angry and ceases to love us. It is that we throw away the love letter.

Think about what led up to God calling Moses to the mountain and giving him the Ten Commandments. Creation. The Fall of Man. The Enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt. The great Exodus from slavery in Egypt. What has God just done here? He has freed the people from slavery. Will he now enslave them again with arbitrary rules and regulations? That would be illogical.

The more sensible way to look at this is that God freed them physically first, from without. Then he freed them spiritually, from within, by giving them the Commandments. God knows his people. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Which means he knows what will bring us freedom and happiness above and beyond what little superficial liberation and good-feeling we could scrounge up living our own way.

That is why the commandments are Good News. If God had not given us the commandments, and if he had not sent Jesus to live among us and give us the greatest commandment, none of us would be happy. His people would still be slaves. But he freely chose to actually come down out of heaven and tell us exactly what we need to do to be happy.

There is no freedom in the world greater than love. There is no more complete happiness than to love without fear. But it must be the love of Christ, the love that does not flinch and does not tire. To give without cost. To love one’s enemies. To be completely unhindered by selfish concerns and desires. These are all characteristics of the happiest people to walk the earth. Mother Theresa,