CCLXXIII – Love Your Big Fat Stupid Neighbor

In order to properly love ones neighbor sometimes we have to call them names; names even we don’t relish calling them. The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name, and we certainly don’t help our friend lose weight by telling him he looks like the picture of health. Neither do we help our friend lose weight by calling him a fat sack of lard. The specific phrasing will vary but something to the effect of “You know Tobias, I’m worried about your health,” would be a great way to start the conversation given it was appropriate to do so.

I’ve written before with the intent of tackling how we approach this difficult topic, and I always stop short and focus on governing our own lives well. But I was finally able to understand how this works.

If we accept the proposition that the Church is True…
And we accept that a doctrine of the Church (which is True) is that there is no salvation outside the Church…
And if we accept that salvation (via the Church, which is true) is the best possible good for ourselves and our neighbors…
…Then we are obligated to help our neighbors into the Church.

We are obligated to live our faith as good examples of the Church for our neighbors.
We are obligated to renounce evil wherever it is found, even if it is in our neighbors.
We are obligated to help our neighbors see evil even if it can be found inside them.
We are obligated to spur our neighbors to amend their lives with varying degrees of force.

It is not pride to declare ourselves Catholic, despite being also fallible and fallen creatures. Even the poorest Catholic publican will go to heaven before the foremost heretical theologian (supposing the latter was meritorious through other means).

We have an obligation to see God in our neighbors, to see our neighbors for their souls, and to worry about their souls. All this is secondary to worrying about our own souls. We cannot give what we do not have.

I like to go back to the movie “A Man for All Seasons”. The future Saint, Thomas More, addresses his future son-in-law, who at the time is a Lutheran. He asks for More’s daughter’s hand in marriage:

“Not so long as you’re a heretic.”
“Now that is a word I do not like!”
“It’s not a likeable word, it’s not a likeable thing.”

St. Thomas More loved his future son-in-law enough to tell him the Truth and not to put any polish on it. He didn’t make it insulting nor did he soften the blow: To be protestant is to be a heretic. Just because it is a long standing and popular heresy doesn’t make it not a heresy. You can approach it this way: “You know Tobias, I am worried about your soul.”

So, love your neighbor, and if they are heretics don’t lie to them.

AMDG

CCXLVI – On Ecumenism

All good things come from God, and God loves all His creation, despite our brokenness, because He calls us to Him and wills our good. God willing our good means that He wills our highest good. Because all good things come from God, when God wills our good He wills that we return to Him.

This creates a conundrum when we talk about ecumenism. Ecumenism in popular parlance is the policy of benign neighborliness to other faiths. Christ in in all Christian sects–it cannot be denied; the love of Christ even from a protestant still makes me his brother. God is in all the world’s religions–it cannot be denied; we are called beyond ourselves to the transcendent, and there are fewer and fewer who acknowledge this.

That Christ can be found in some way in protestantism, or God in some way in other religions, does not excuse the fact that they do not worship God, as God properly so understood. The doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Church is still true.

And yet, further wrinkles to consider still: A spiritual reading I came across recently described how St. Michael the Archangel is patron of Gods chosen people, which B.C. meant the Hebrews and A.D. means Christians. This does not mean that St. Michael has abandoned modern day Jews, rather that he has a special care of them as they need his help more now. Likewise, in Muslim tradition it was the Angel Gabriel who gave their faith to Mohammed; for this reverence St. Gabriel surely watches over Islam and takes especial care for them. If loving care and watchfulness is good enough for the Angels, surely it is good enough for us, too.

And yet! Salvation is the most urgent work of our lives, and we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Even as Catholics we cannot rest easy, presuming for ourselves confidence in salvation. We must fret more and more, that we might be good examples for our brothers and sisters in the human condition; we must fret on their behalf the way St. Michael and St. Gabriel fret for the Jews and Muslims.

Let the question be, “how may a Catholic in good conscience relate to these other faiths?” The answer, then, is that we must surrender to God the hard work of salvation of these souls. For our part, we must do the hard work of governing our own lives, and the lives of those entrusted to our care. We must be good examples and custodians of those neighbors immediately around us. If we put ourselves at God’s disposal, He will work through us in the lives of those who most need to find Holy Mother Church. In the meantime, we must not violate the law of loving our neighbors, yet we must be uncompromising in our obedience to our doctrines and in our devotion to our Lord.

The arc of salvation history is long, even if life is short. God’s plan is bigger than all of us, so let’s just make sure we do our part well.

CCXIII – Follow Me, Continued

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Go, get thee down: thy people, which thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt, hath sinned. They have quickly strayed from the way which thou didst shew them: and they have made to themselves a molten calf, and have adored it, and sacrificing victims to it, have said: These are thy gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt.

And again the Lord said to Moses: See that this people is stiffnecked: Let me alone, that my wrath may be kindled against them, and that I may destroy them, and I will make of thee a great nation.

But Moses besought the Lord his God, saying: Why, O Lord, is thy indignation kindled against thy people, whom thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt, with great power, and with a mighty hand? Let not the Egyptians say, I beseech thee: He craftily brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains, and destroy them from the earth: let thy anger cease, and be appeased upon the wickedness of thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou sworest by thy own self, saying: I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven: and this whole land that I have spoken of, I will give to you seed, and you shall possess it for ever.

And the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken against his people. Exodus 32:7-14

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Another topic that comes up often is the idea of ecumenism. Ecumenism should be Evangelizing to protestants that they should become Catholics. Contemporaneous usage has used it more in the sense of “everyone believes in the same God just worships differently”. Here again I propose to make another logical refutation.

1. In my previous post, I established that things that are true are always true and should be acknowledged as such.
2. A requirement of following a religion is that we must believe that religions god is the greatest god.
   1. If you don’t believe your god is the greatest god then why do you follow him?
   2. If your god doesn’t require certain forms of worship, such that worshiping and not worshiping are equal, then most people will not worship.
   3. The god that requires certain forms of worship will add members over time, the god that doesn’t require worship will lose them
      1. if you’re going to worship you might as well worship a god that requires (and rewards) worship
      2. if you’re not going to worship anyway, you might as well not believe in a god.
3. If you believe your god is the greatest god, and you believe it is true, then you believe that your god is the true god.
   1. If your god is the true god then all other gods are false gods, by definition.
   2. If you believe your god is the true god and you don’t think other people should worship him, then you either don’t want people to be in the good favor of the one true god OR you don’t actually believe your god is the one true god.
4. If multiple people believe their god is the true god, only one can be right.
   1. Confidence in your faith does not create equivalence for other faiths. On religion, only one faith can be right, there is only one creator of the universe.
   2. It is important to devote energy and effort to determining who is right.
5. There is no God but the Christian God.
   1. For a detailed explanation on this point, see other, better apologists than I.
   2. The genuine pursuit of truth will inevitably lead you here.
6. There is no Church but the Catholic Church.
   1. Christ, the son of God, instituted one Church on Earth. That Church is the Catholic Church. Accept no substitute.
   2. RCIA begins every September, see your local parish for details.

LXXIX – The Only Ecumenical Council that Matters

Here is an excellent article by Fr. Z. Read it, close your browser for a moment and stew on it, then come back here.

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It’s Not About You

One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. You should be familiar with those words already.

• One – there is only one church.
• Holy – the church is Sacred.
• Apostolic – From greek apo (off, away) + stellein (to send), via Latin meaning messenger, from thence referring to the apostles and conceptually referring to apostolic succession via the laying of hands.

But it is the word Catholic I would like to muse on, here. Catholicism is unlike other religions in that it is named for a trait, not for a person or founder. Christian means “of Christ”, but after the protestants protested, it wasn’t so clear what kind of Christian you were. So we call ourselves Catholic, from the creed. Catholic is derived from Greek kata (about) + holos (whole) or katholikos (on the whole, in general), via Latin catholicus meaning Universal, General.

Looking out at the spiritual landscape right now, would you believe we are unified?

Here are the divisions that I see from my privileged perch here in the Diocese of Arlington and from my small view into the blogosphere.

• Charismatics
• Traditional-Latin-Mass goers
• “JP2 Catholics”
• The Susans Militant
• The Barnhardt Benedictines
• The Society of St. Pius X
• The V2 Invalidists
• African Traditionalism

And that’s just limiting myself to what is in my view. I am sure this list could grow tremendously if I were to make it exhaustive. Everyone can agree that the existence of these factions is not helping the Church. She is wounded! A Unity movement has a lot of potential.

Some Caution

This is not advocacy for a middle way. This is clearly defining our enemy, the enemy of all Catholics. I won’t define it here because that would just be my view. I think we all could name at least a few existential threats to the Church. We are all Catholic, so the enemy to one is enemy to us all. The whole point of this “Unite the Clans” concept is to tighten our ranks to fight–or at least, resist–this common enemy. We will need to work on our internal consistency, it’s true.

We need to approach each other with love and charity but also determination against our common enemy. This is where Fr. Z highlights two points:

• Clarify our Objectives
• Examine our Consciences

Both of these are Examens of different scale. Each group must examine what it’s defining mission is, and what battles are not worth fighting at the cost of wounding the Church? Then the individual examens: What is our role in the greater picture? Are we doing everything we can to stave off that common enemy to us all, the evil one? Are we growing in holiness, deepening our prayer? Are we asking God to guide our choices, or making choices based on “political” loyalty?

I’ve witnessed in other settings “calls for unity”. They become a ‘middle way’. The middle way is doomed to fail, every time, because it involves abandoning your core values in the name of compromise. Catholics can unify without abandoning any values, because Catholics have the Nicene Creed to rally behind. Everything else is bonus, when compared to the content of the Creed.

Our faith requires us to be transformed, and this movement has the potential to be transformative. That is to say, uncomfortable. But Christ shows us that our suffering can have meaning. JMSmith from Orthosphere commented eloquently on my post about formation, and so I will leave you with his thoughts:

It’s a tricky word, to be sure. I think we should recognize two very different meanings. There is the ordinary meaning to reshape, as when I form bread dough into a ball, and the Platonic meaning to impart an essence. I can form and reform a wad of play dough without any change to its essence. I can form a block of wood into a sculpture, and yet it remains wood. If I burn the wood, however, I effect a more fundamental transformation, and the wood with all its characteristic properties is no more.

Faith formation should obviously be of the second sort. It should not be just a haircut. As one of our hymns puts it, we acquire a “new heart.” And heart here means soul. The new heart we acquire is not just one replacement part in our system, but a new control that transforms every part in the system. If we liken [ourselves] to that block of wood, we are not being carved. We are being burned.

LXXIII – Political Ideology vs. Christian Doctrine

Titular clarification inspired by suggestions from JMSmith in the comments on my previous article.

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I previously wrote two articles about the distinctions to be drawn between political ideology, which necessarily must change depending on the political circumstances of a given time, and Christian Morality as codified in Doctrine, sometimes referred to as the Magisterium.

In the first, I assert that “Ideology is Jealous, Morality is Just”. That is to say: Ideology demands conformity. Ideology will change until a sufficient number have adopted it, and then Ideology will demand that you conform to it. Political ideology is defined by rivalry. Likewise I assert that Morality, as codified in the Magisterium, does not change and requires only that we conform to it, or more accurately, that we conform to God.

In the second, I expand on the idea that modern forces are trying to turn faith into a political ideology, thereby changing it so it would be acceptable to more people. I further state that doing so is wrong.

A Case Study in Ideologization of Religion

Please see this article, and read it in full: “Christian Group warns against rise of Christian Nationalism”.

Lets take this point by point.

• “Merging of American and Christian Identities poses a threat to US Democracy and religious communities.”

America was founded by Christians, this is a fact. Christian values inform the underlying structure of our government, as documented by the Constitution. This is also a fact. Christianity does not pose a threat to religious communities, except in wishing that they would convert to Christianity. There is no threat of bodily harm to these communities inso far as Christianity is concerned. This is a fact. Nationalism is a political ideology. Christianity is a religion. The commingling of the two concepts is dangerous only to Christianity, not to anyone else.

• “As Christians we are bound by Christ (…) whether we worship at a Church, Mosque, Synagogue, or Temple, America has no second class faiths.”

Both of these claims cannot be true. Christianity–specifically, Catholicism, from which all other schismatic sects are born, is true. This is not a political claim. Catholic worship involves celebrating the Sacraments, at a Church. It is to this we are bound by Christ. We can do whatever we want, politically, insofar as it does not interfere with our obligations to Christ. No other religion acknowledges this obligation, therefore no other religion is true.

The rest of the article is a political treatise barely worth analysis. This group is a political organization trying to use a religious banner to make a political point. The point they want to make is this: Whites should be denigrated, borders should be open, and the Orange Man is Bad.

Christianity makes none of those claims.

³⁶Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
³⁷ Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.
³⁸ This is the greatest and the first commandment.
³⁹ And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
⁴⁰ On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.

^{Matthew, 22:36-40}

¹⁷ Tell us therefore what dost thou think, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?
¹⁸ But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said: Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites?
¹⁹ Shew me the coin of the tribute. And they offered him a penny.
²⁰ And Jesus saith to them: Whose image and inscription is this?
²¹ They say to him: Caesar’s. Then he saith to them: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s.

^{Matthew, 22:17-21}

Any Christian who claims that a political obligation supersedes an obligation rooted in the Magisterium is wrong.

AMDG