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Amanda Shaw, junior fellow at First Things magazine, defends "Bella" against critics who say the movie is "sappy" and "saccharine," and argues that far from being a "fairy tale", it is a story about real life and authentic love.
...with John J. Miller of National Review Online and talks about The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand, which he co-authored with Patricia Clark Doerner. Listen to the interview.
• Read the Introduction to The Judge
• Visit The Judge website
From the Vatican news service:
VATICAN CITY, OCT 31, 2007 (VIS) - During his general audience, held this morning in a rainy St. Peter's Square in the presence of 30,000 faithful, Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to the figure of St. Maximus of Turin.
Maximus became bishop of that Italian city in the year 398 just as it was being threatened by various barbarian tribes which had entered Italy through the eastern passes and pushed as far as the western Alps. Turin was protected by a military garrison and served as a safe haven for people fleeing rural areas.
Faced with such a situation the activities of Maximus, author of around 90 sermons, "bear witness to his commitment to react to the degradation and break-up" of civil society, said the Pope. The bishop censured the faithful when they sought to turn another's disadvantage to their own benefit, thus highlighting "the profound relationship between a person's duties as a Christian and as a citizen." And Maximus was concerned "not only with people's traditional love for their hometown" but also proclaimed "the specific duty of paying taxes."
A historical and literary analysis of the figure of St. Maximus, said the Pope, "demonstrates his growing awareness of the political responsibility of the ecclesiastical authorities at a time in which they were, in effect, substituting civil authority."
"It is clear that today's historical, cultural and social context is completely different," the Holy Father went on, "but in any case, ... the duties of believers towards their city and their homeland remain the same. The link between the obligations of the 'honest citizen' and those of the 'good Christian' has not changed in the least."
In this context, Pope Benedict then went on to refer to the Vatican Council II Pastoral Constitution "Gaudium et spes" which had the aim "of illuminating one of the most important aspects of the unity of Christian life: coherence between faith and life, between Gospel and culture."
Vatican Council II, he concluded, "exhorts Christians, as citizens of two cities, to strive to discharge their earthly duties conscientiously and in response to the Gospel spirit. They are mistaken who, knowing that we have here no abiding city but seek one which is to come, think that they may therefore shirk their earthly responsibilities. For they are forgetting that by the faith itself they are more obliged than ever to measure up to these duties, each according to his proper vocation."
Pope Benedict XVI and the New Ecclesial Movements | Bishop Stanislaw Rylko,
President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity | The Introduction to
New Outpourings of the Spirit by Joseph Ratzinger
(Pope Benedict XVI)
Pope Benedict XVI has been following for many years,
with the passion of a theologian and a pastor, the phenomenon of the
movements and new communities that
sprang up in the Church after the Second
Vatican Council. His very first
contacts with these ecclesial entities
go back to the mid-1960s, when he was still a professor
in Tubingen. [1] Then, with the passage of time, these
relations became deeper and more intense and were transformed into a
true friendship. In 1998, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he reminisced as
follows: "For me personally it
was a marvelous event when at the beginning of the
seventies I first came into close contact with movements
like the Neocatechumens, Comunione e Liberazione,
and the Focolarini and thus experienced the enthusiasm
and verve with which they lived out their faith and felt bound to share
with others, from out of the joy of their
faith, what had been vouchsafed to them." [2] These were
the postconciliar years, difficult years for the Church,
but these new entities unexpectedly appeared to the eyes
of the theologian and pastor as a providential gift. As he
later wrote, "Suddenly here was something nobody had
planned on. The Holy Spirit had, so to say, spoken up
for himself again. In young people especially, the faith
was surging up in its entirety, with no ifs and buts, with
no excuses or way out, experienced as a favor and as a
precious life-giving gift." [3]
Alongside the Servant of God John Paul II, as Prefect
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger
was an authoritative interpreter of the
latter's magisterial teaching on the ecclesial movements
and the new communities and became for them a sure
point of reference.
Continue reading...
...to the Catholic Church, courtesy of two pieces by Roseanne Therese Sullivan, who runs the "Catholic Pundit Wannabe" blog:
• Roy Schoeman and the Return of the Jews: An article about both Salvation Is From the Jews and Honey From the Rock.
• Roy Schoeman Interview - The Complete Version: The full text of an in-depth interview that was published in a shorter form by National Catholic Register.
Related Ignatius Insight interviews and excerpts:
• "Jews Demand Signs" | An Interview with Roy Schoeman, editor of
Honey From the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ | Carl E. Olson
• Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ | Preface to Honey From the Rock | Roy Schoeman
• Judaism Fulfilled | An Interview with Roy H. Schoeman
• The Jews and the Second Coming | Roy H. Schoeman | An except from Salvation Is From the Jews
• Eugenio Zolli's Path to Rome | Stephen Sparrow
This low, according to the Indo-Asian News Service:
Spears photo shoot will anger church
Tuesday, October 30, 2007: (London) :
Troubled pop superstar Britney Spears is sure to anger the Catholic church with her controversial 'confession' photo-shoot for her new album Blackout.
She appears in a very short skirt and reveals her fishnet stocking-clad legs as she sits in the confessional box while a handsome priests listens to her confession, mirror.co.uk reported. In another picture, she sits on his lap in the cubicle.
Spears is working on her comeback after having suffered numerous career and personal setbacks.
And I say: "Yaaaaaawwwwwwwwwn." Boring. Stupid. Whatever. Next.
Sure, this is insulting and rude. But the suggestive headline is, I think, even worse: The Britney Machine and the Celebrity Obsessed Hack Media think that Catholics are cerebral-challenged prudes who can be manipulated with this sort of digital dung. Just as telling is the calculated belief that such soft porn will titillate millions of mindless consumerists, ages, what?—ten to fifteen?—and build up confidence in the Britney Brand. This is how bad Ms. Spears has become: she almost makes "Madonna" look like a mature adult. Now that takes some manipulation.
MTV News reports on the reaction from the Catholic League:
"This girl is crashing," League President Bill Donohue told New York's Daily News. "She's not even allowed to bring up her own kids because she's not responsible enough. Now we see she can't even entertain."
Kiera McCaffrey, the League's director of communications, told MTV News on Tuesday (October 30, the album's release date) that the group considers the photos a "cheap publicity stunt that is a way to get people to talk about Britney Spears' album without talking about her music, which is what they should be focusing on. All we see is how troubled this girl is now, especially with her family, losing her kids, with her career on a downward slide. And now she's put out this album and this is her tactic to promote it? She should be focusing on singing and dancing and trying to be an entertainer without mocking a Catholic sacrament."
The Britney Brand apparently holds to Ambrose Bierce's definition of entertainment: "Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection." But what about being bored to death...?
And cranky. And more than a little incoherent. From his October 26th column (ht: The Cafeteria Is Closed):
The pope's recent authorization of the Tridentine Latin Mass, without the need to seek the local bishop's permission, has stirred some measure of debate within the Roman Catholic Church, especially in letters-to-the-editor and on blogs written by individuals who seem not to have day-jobs.
Ooooh. That was light'ning in a bottle, Jethro! Zing! Bang! Boom! Fortunately for me, part of my day job is to write for this blog. But, honestly, if your day job includes writing columns for Catholic newspapers, shouldn't you make some sort of effort to make them readable? If I had thrown down that opening sentence on a sixth-grade English exam, Mrs. Hermiston would have smacked me silly. And rightly so.
The overwhelming majority of Catholics, however, are apparently unaware of, or have already forgotten, the July 7 papal letter, entitled Summorum Pontificum (Latin, "Of supreme pontiffs").
Make up your mind: either people should be busy working their day jobs like mindless drones, or they should be paying attention to papal documents and blogging about them every single day. Which is it?
Indeed, those who attend Mass regularly would never prefer Mass in a language other than their own.
Never! None of them! And that, folks, is from the Chair of Richard, which means it can be placed right next to that glorious work of catechetical brilliance, Catholicism, nominated for several doctrinal errors by the USCCB. Well, every Sunday, my family and I attend Divine Liturgy at a Ukrainian Catholic parish, and some 20 to 30% of the liturgy is in Old Church Slavonic, a language that is not "my own." Do I "prefer" Church Slavonic? I don't think of in that way, I suppose; my preference is for reverence, a palpable sense of the sacred, decent music, a lack of experimentation, a good homily, a valid Eucharist. Is that so much to ask?
Those who do claim to prefer the Latin Mass, whether Tridentine or Novus Ordo (that is, in keeping with the reforms of Pope Paul VI), constitute a tiny minority of the Roman Catholic Church, which is not to say that they have no right to speak their minds about the matter or to take advantage of the concessions which the Vatican has offered them.
Please tell me he doesn't actually get paid to write these sort of sentences. Doing so makes it very difficult to decide if I should be more offended by the sloppy, inept writing style or the empty, condescending blathering. Here, then, is a glimpse into the world of Fr. McBrien:
1. No good Catholic prefers Mass said in a language not his own.
2. Some claim to prefer the Latin Mass.
3. But since Latin is not their language, they are only claiming to prefer the Latin Mass.
Thus, we can conclude that these folks are liars or that Fr. McBrien doesn't know what he's talking about. Tough choice.
But if such Catholics are under the ages of 45 or 50, they have little or no hands-on experience of the pre-Vatican II Mass. It is a mystery how one can be nostalgic for something one had never experienced.
Right, just like the "nostalgia" a bride and groom have for one another before they are married. Sure, they've never enjoyed the marital embrace, but for some strange reason they look forward to it, and for whatever reason anticipate its goodness. Nostalgic morons!
The point is that the use of "nostalgic" here is simply an empty (and bumbling) polemical device. But it also exposes the fraudulent nature of Fr. McBrien's "argument," which began with the bald assertion that no one, especially anyone under "45 or 50" would prefer the Latin Mass, but since many younger people do, they must be "nostalgic." But since you can't be nostalgic for what you don't know, they must be idiots. No, it's worse than that: they aren't "liturgical scholars":
In the past three months, liturgical scholars have published articles which carefully pick apart the reasoning behind the papal document that authorizes the use of the Tridentine Latin Mass.
[Similar, I presume, to how McBrien's Catholicism attempted to "pick apart" the reasoning behind certain core Christological and ecclesiological doctrines of the Church.]
(The document is technically known as a motu proprio, in that it is produced by the pope "on his own initiative.") Each critical analysis usually provokes a flurry of indignant reactions from a handful of Latin-Mass advocates.
Those Latin-loving, nostalgic ingrates! Just because the Pope has taken the step of allowing folks the right to the extraordinary form of the Roman rite doesn't free them from their obligation to cower before the liturgical scholars (of McBrien's choice, of course). How dare they question these expert denouncements of the papal motu proprio!
Again, while no one should question their freedom of speech, not one of them, to my knowledge, has presented a credible justification for their preference. A few substitute ridicule for reasoning.
"No one should question their freedom of speech..." What is this, fourth-grade debate class? Forget freedom of speech, how about freedom from yapping silliness? And, to your knowledge? Don't even get me started. Oops, that sure sounded like ridicule, didn't it? But, once again, I'm free from criticism since I'm not a Latin guy—remember, I attend a Byzantine Catholic Church. Yes, yes, I know. No real Catholic would prefer an Eastern Catholic parish when he could go to a Western rite parish. Let's just say that, having been raised in an anti-Catholic fundamentalist Bible chapel in western Montana, attending Divine Liturgy is all about nostalgia for me.
• Richard "Clueless About Converts" McBrien (July 26, 2007)
From a professor at a university in the eastern United States, this question:
As a Protestant historian writing about a Catholic subject—in a nutshell, how Ivan Illich sabotaged the American Catholic missionary movement to Latin America in the 1960s—I’m unclear on who might provide a different Catholic perspective from what I’m getting. The primary and secondary sources I’ve looked at so far tend to accept, rather uncritically, it seems to me, the shift of Catholic missions toward social justice, development, and presence during the 1960s and 1970s and at the same time to be puzzled by the rapid decline in Catholic missions to the region, despite the calls of two popes for massive aid. Do you know of anyone—scholars, missionaries, bishops—who challenged the primacy of social justice, development, and presence and emphasized evangelization and conversion?
Hmmm...good question. On a global scale, one could point to Pope Paul VI's 1975 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, which I think is an excellent reflection on the necessity and place of evangelization, with a very strong emphasis, of course, on conversion. I don't know if this passage was written with an eye toward liberation theology, but it could have been:
9. As the kernel and center of His Good News, Christ proclaims salvation, this great gift of God which is liberation from everything that oppresses man but which is above all liberation from sin and the Evil One, in the joy of knowing God and being known by Him, of seeing Him, and of being given over to Him. All of this is begun during the life of Christ and definitively accomplished by His death and resurrection. But it must be patiently carried on during the course of history, in order to be realized fully on the day of the final coming of Christ, whose date is known to no one except the Father.
10. This kingdom and this salvation, which are the key words of Jesus Christ's evangelization, are available to every human being as grace and mercy, and yet at the same time each individual must gain them by force - they belong to the violent, says the Lord, through toil and suffering, through a life lived according to the Gospel, through abnegation and the cross, through the spirit of the beatitudes. But above all each individual gains them through a total interior renewal which the Gospel calls metanoia; it is a radical conversion, a profound change of mind and heart. (pars 9-10)
As for specific examples of scholars, missionaries, and bishops in Latin America emphasizing evangelization and conversion in the 1960s and 1970s, none readily come to mind, mostly because, frankly, I'm rather clueless about Latin America. (As well as rugby, yodeling, and flying helicopters, but those are topics for another post.)
Anyone?
We Are All Called To Be Evangelizers | Russell Shaw | Introduction to
Good News, Bad News: Evangelization, Conversion and the
Crisis of Faith, by Fr. C. John McCloskey, III, and Russell Shaw
"Good news and bad news", said the agent at the airline check-in
counter in Munich.
I cringed.
"The good news", she went on, "is that the flight to Dulles is
on time. The bad news is that it's a full flight. I put you in a middle
seat."
A short time later, fearing the worst--a 350-pound woman on one side of me, a
man with a hacking cough on the other--I boarded the plane. Traveling by way of
Munich, I was heading back to the United States after two weeks in Rome spent
lecturing at a university and attending a meeting at the Vatican.
The 350-pound woman and the coughing man apparently missed the plane. What I
got instead were a quiet young chap in his late twenties on my left and, on my
right, a blonde young woman, twenty at most, in tee shirt and jeans. Breathing
a sigh of relief, I settled in for the nine-hour flight.
Continue reading...
From a lengthy Touchstone symposium, "Evangelicalism Today," these comments by six Evangelical scholars/theologians:
What would you say to an Evangelical tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox?
Moore: There are some Evangelicals who genuinely become convinced that the truth claims of Rome or Antioch are persuasive. If that’s the case, one should indeed become Catholic or Orthodox rather than attempting to convince Shiloh Baptist Church to use icons or King James Bible Church of the benefits of venerating Mary.
Most Evangelicals I’ve encountered who are tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox, however, are going to make quite poor Catholic or Orthodox churchmen. I type that with fear, knowing many exceptions to this—including some colleagues on our editorial board.
Most young Evangelicals I’ve known who are tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox quite frankly aren’t heading in that direction because they’ve been convinced by Cardinal Newman’s critique of sola Scriptura or because they’ve found papal authority in the patristic writings. Instead, many of them become Catholic or Orthodox because they are tired of dealing with sinful, hypocritical, arrogant, mindless, loveless Evangelicals.
Just as some Catholics moving in this direction assume that every Evangelical church is sparkling with the warm piety of those who have personal relationships with Jesus (only to find otherwise), some Evangelicals tempted to leave seem to think all Catholics are Walker Percy or Richard John Neuhaus or that all Orthodox are Maximos the Confessor.
Many are then really disappointed to find what any Catholic or Orthodox person could have told them—that they will be dealing with some sinful, hypocritical, arrogant, mindless, loveless Catholics or Orthodox. Anyone on a search for Mount Zion will be continually disappointed unless he finds it in the New Jerusalem.
Burk: I would counsel him not to be deceived by the marketing and pragmatism of popular Evangelicalism. The current rot within Evangelical subculture does not accurately reflect the richness of its theological heritage. Fundamentally, the Evangelical faith is rooted in the solas of the Reformation, which are themselves rooted in the confessions of the ecumenical creeds, which are themselves rooted in the inscripturated apostolic witness to Christ.
Timothy George has written that he would have counseled Francis Beckwith to press more deeply into this tradition before crossing over to Rome. And I agree with George, who writes that Beckwith “might have found deeper resources and a sturdier faith than that on offer in much of pop Evangelical culture today. He would certainly have found there a way of thinking and a pattern of Christian life much more resonant with the apostolic witness and the orthodox faith he so clearly loves.”
Franke: First, I have great admiration for both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox traditions. They are vital parts of the Body of Christ, worthy of honor and respect as co-laborers with Evangelical Protestants in the ministry of the gospel.
Having said this, significant differences exist between us concerning the nature of authority and grace. Both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions maintain that the authority and grace of God are mediated through the agency of the historical and institutional church. For Evangelicals, the genuine significance of the church in the economy of God does not in any way imply that the church has been fully entrusted with authority or given control over the dispensation of grace in the world. These belong to God and God alone.
Hence, in spite of the genuine problems of Evangelicalism, particularly in the area of ecclesiology, I would encourage someone who was tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox to remain Evangelical while working to establish more faithful and fruitful forms of ecclesiology. However, I have little doubt that the conversion traffic will continue to move in every direction and trust that God is at work even in this.
Hart: Look before you leap. I certainly appreciate the frustration that many Evangelicals have with the movement’s informality and lack of substance.
Rome and Constantinople offer more in the way of liturgy, ecclesiology, and even moral guidance. But as heirs of the Protestant Reformation, Evangelicals contemplating the other Christian traditions need to think carefully about how they are right with God and the nature of the redeeming work of Christ. The Protestant Reformers answered such questions in decidedly different ways from Catholicism and Orthodoxy. So to switch Christianities may be more of a change than frustrated Evangelicals are prepared to accept.
Horton: I recognize the attractions. Raised in conservative Evangelicalism myself, I was introduced to a wider and deeper heritage through Reformed churches. As its name suggests, the Evangelical movement of the sixteenth century was an attempt to reform the church, not to start a new one. Unlike much of Evangelicalism today, these confessing Evangelicals had a high view of the creeds and confessions as subordinate authorities as summaries of God’s Word, of the sacraments as means of grace alongside the Word, and of an ordered worship, catechesis, and discipline as aimed at driving the gospel deeper into our hearts.
Starved for mystery, transcendence, maturity, order, theological richness, liturgy, and history, many young Evangelicals are discovering Reformation Christianity. Yet for some, it is only a rest stop on the way to Rome or Orthodoxy.
Here’s how I would counsel such a person: Start with the gospel. The gospel creates and sustains the church, not the other way around. If the Evangelicalism familiar to you has been a constant stream of imperatives—moral exhortation, whether in rigid and legalistic or warm and friendly versions—the antidote is not to follow different rules for attaining justification, but a constant, life-long, unremitting immersion in the good news that Jesus Christ’s obedient life, death, and resurrection are sufficient even to save miserable Christians.
That is what the Reformation was all about, and it is why we need another one, even in Protestantism as much as in any other tradition. If our salvation depends on anything done by us or even within us by the Spirit, then our situation is hopeless.
Despite their own differences, Rome and Orthodoxy are at one in telling us in their official doctrinal statements that this message is wrong—not just in emphasis, but in the doctrine itself. According to Roman Catholic teaching, it is a serious error—heresy, in fact—to believe that we are accepted by God in Jesus Christ apart from any virtuous activity on our part and while we remain in ourselves actually sinful. Our meritorious activity must play some part in our final justification, according to both Rome and Orthodoxy.
One might hear more of God’s grace in the Mass or in John of Damascus’ The Orthodox Faith than in a month of Sundays in many Protestant churches today, even some of our own churches that are confessionally bound to teach otherwise. But in Rome’s official teaching, not to mention in its popular piety, the doctrine that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—apart from any inherent righteousness—remains “anathema.”
As the Vatican made clear, the Joint Declaration between the Lutheran World Federation and Rome regarding justification in no way rescinds or qualifies Trent. Only because the LWF partners no longer believe what Trent condemned could the ban be lifted.
There are many insights that we can—indeed, should—learn from the wisdom of these traditions and from ecumenical conversations. Distance breeds suspicion, while personal interaction often not only dispels caricatures but also provides opportunities for genuine spiritual fellowship even where our visible communions remain divided. We should not misrepresent each other’s views or engage in grandstanding polemics, but hope for a genuine reformation of all professing churches that will restore visible unity.
In fact, Reformed and Lutheran churches consider the church fathers and, in Calvin’s expression, even “the better doctors” of the medieval church a common inheritance. Our older systems freely draw on these sources. Continuing the tradition of the apostles communicated normatively through the biblical canon, proclaiming the gospel and administering the sacraments as means of grace, appealing to everything that is conformable to Scripture in every time and place, Reformation Christianity is catholic and Evangelical.
Jeffrey: Count carefully the cost. What you may well gain in Eucharistic worship and in prayer life, and even in some cases in biblical orthodoxy, carries with it a burden. Part of this burden is an institutional infamy for clerical abuse tragically comparable to, if not greater than, our own. And there is schism de facto in American Catholicism; the authority of Scripture and the rule of faith are more hotly contested by a substantial percentage of the Roman clergy than among even liberal mainline Protestants.
But there is another element: A number of Protestants whom I have known who converted to the Catholic Church were positively drawn by a profounder sense of holiness in worship and by the sacraments, yet sometime after arrival found themselves deeply nostalgic for a deeper, richer preaching of the Word. Though such faithful teaching from Scripture is increasingly hard to find anywhere, if it is something your spirit needs, you will find it even less frequently in Catholic churches despite the weakening of expository biblical teaching among Evangelicals.
But in the last analysis, I would simply counsel prayer and discernment to assure as far as possible the spiritual authenticity of one’s personal prompting to move. If the Lord is in it, there will be an unmistakable confirmation of his leading; if this is not transparently evident, a deeper and more thoroughgoing process of discernment should be undertaken.
I have seen much evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit in conversions to the Catholic Church; I have also seen less convincing instances in which people appear to have “swum the Tiber” primarily for aesthetic or imagined “intellectual” reasons. The first motive is as appropriately to be honored as the second to be (however lovingly) lamented.
Thoughts?
