Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

But I thought "women's ordination" would solve those problems...

From The Telegraph, a piece about a study claiming that women in England are abandoning Christianity in large numbers:

The study comes amid ongoing controversy over the role of women in all   Christian denominations. Last month its governing body voted to allow women   to become bishops for the first time, having admitted them to the priesthood   in 1994, but traditionalist bishops have warned that hundreds of clergy and   parishes will leave if the move goes ahead as planned.

The report's author, Dr Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of   Derby, said: "In short, women are abandoning the church.

"Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by   Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the   traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.

"Women's ordination, as priests and now bishops, has dominated debate and   headlines – but while looking at women in the pulpit we have taken our eyes   off the pews, where a shift with more consequences for the church's survival   is underway."

Her research, published in a new book called Women and Religion in the West,   cites an English Church Census which found more than a million women   worshippers have left churches since 1989.

Over the past decade, it claims, women have been leaving churches at twice the   rate of men.

Wouldn't you know it, some are saying this proves that more women need to become clergy in the Church of England:

Christina Rees, chairman of the pro-women bishop campaign group Watch, said   the report highlighted the damaging effect that traditionalist attitudes   within the Church of England are having on women.

She added that the introduction of female bishops will lead to a renewed   interest in the church among young people and women in particular, despite   the opposition to the historic step from Anglo-Catholics and conservative   evangelicals who believe scripture and tradition teach that bishops must be   male.

Ms Rees told The Daily Telegraph: "What this research reveals is that a   lot of people are put off by traditional stances and attitudes. We still   have a long way to go before women, particularly young women, feel as   included in the church as men do.

"I'm absolutely convinced that when we have women as bishops that it will   send out a very clear message that women are as valued as much as men."

Let's see: membership and attendance in the CofE has been plummeting for many years now, concurrent with the feverish jettisoning of nearly everything that might be considered traditional and orthodox. The same sort of correlation can be seen in Protestant groups and in various Catholic circles. The essential problem with trying to be "relevant" or "accessible" by tossing out dogma and doctrine, not to mention practice and devotion, was described pithily a few decades ago by the wonderful Anglo-Catholic author Dorothy Sayers:

Christ, in his divine innocence, said to the woman of Samaria, ‘Ye worship ye know not what’––being apparently under the impression that it might be desirable, on the whole, to know what one was worshiping. He thus showed himself sadly out of touch with the twentieth-century mind, for the cry today is: ‘Away with the tendentious complexities of dogma––let us have the simple spirit of worship; just worship, no matter of what!’ The only drawback to this demand for a generalized and undirected worship is the practical difficulty of arousing any sort of enthusiasm for the worship of nothing in particular (From Creed or Chaos?).

I think it is misleading to say that Wicca is popular because it portrays female empowerment while Christianity is unpopular because it allegedly denegrates and devalues women. Rather, Wicca and neo-pagan movements are popular because they espouse rebellion wrapped in spirituality, which is really the age-old way of denying God. Atheism may have a niche market, but most people want some form of "spirituality", even if they also wish to deny traditional Christian beliefs. When Christians fail to live, express, demonstrate, and articulate the truth and beauty of Christianity, they provide a default excuse for those who wish to pursue "egalitarian values".

Oregon bishop warns against ignoring the activity of Satan

From the August 22nd column of Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, for The Sentinel:

The devil is insanely jealous of us. He is jealous because God, bypassing the angelic spirits, chose to link His Divine nature with our human nature in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The singular purpose of Satan then, with a fervor which is fed by jealousy, is to sabotage as many of the individual relationships with God as possible. We are assured that those who maintain a strong relationship with the Lord in prayer and sacraments are extremely unlikely to fall prey to possession but we are all victims of ongoing temptation. It is this role of tempter which C.S. Lewis explores in The Screwtape Letters. A sensitivity in the spiritual life needs to include an awareness of the tactics of the devil and a firm resolve to avoid and resist the wickedness and snares of the devil. This is precisely the purpose of the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. In that prayer, we acknowledge that we are involved in a battle with the forces of evil, “Saint Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle” and we ask his specific intervention, “be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.” We then go one step further invoking God’s own direct assistance, “May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,” and then back to Saint Michael and all the angels, “and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits.” Then at the end of the prayer we take note of the reason why we have sought the intercession of the great Saint Michael in the first place. This is because those evil spirits are the ones “who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” These souls whom Satan and his evil minions prowl about the world seeking to destroy are not anonymous other souls but rather our own souls and those of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

It is certainly important that we not become excessively consumed or obsessed by the presence and activity of the evil one but it is also most important that we not be oblivious to his presence or activity, for it is real. All one needs to do is look at the state of moral confusion which reigns in our present society. The killing of the sick or elderly because they want it is being promoted as some kind of right or good but this can be so only in the topsy-turvy world of Screwtape and Wormwood. When taking the life of an innocent pre-born child is seen as right and a right and when the preservation of precisely that right becomes the object of a political campaign, I suspect the letter from Screwtape to the demon master of that campaign would be filled with praise. When a whole society begins to question whether marriage really requires one man and one woman, faithfully committed to each other in an exclusive and child-centered relationship, Satan must be very pleased indeed. Screwtape’s letters to the untiring tempters who pulled off that coup would have to be filled with devilish pride. For that kind of confusion and moral inversion to have made this kind of progress in our society, it was and is necessary for Satan to have been very active and at the same time to remain very hidden. When he is so subtly hidden, there is no limit to the wickedness and snares of the devil.

Read the entire column.

• Satan and the Saint | Carl E. Olson
• The Power of Satan | Fr. Gabriele Amorth
• On Spiritual Warfare | From  The Snakebite Letters | Peter Kreeft
• The Brighter Side of Hell | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

The Wrights of the Right

From "The Messiah Channel," an article by Russell D. Moore in the July/August 2008 issue of Touchstone magazine:

There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barrabas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah.

Preachers will always be tempted to bypass the problem behind the problems: captivity to sin, bondage to the accusations of the demonic powers, the sentence of death. That’s why so many of our Christian superstars smile at crowds of thousands, reassuring them that they don’t like to talk about sin. That’s why other Christian celebrities are seen to be courageous for fighting their culture wars, while they carefully leave out the sins most likely to be endemic to the people paying the bills in their congregations.

Where there is no gospel, something else will fill the void: therapy, consumerism, racial or class resentment, utopian politics, crazy conspiracy theories of the left, crazy conspiracy theories of the right; anything will do. The prophet Isaiah warned us of such conspiracies replacing the Word of God centuries ago (Is. 8:12–20). As long as the Serpent’s voice is heard, “You shall not surely die,” the powers are comfortable.

Jeremiah Wright’s pronouncements are tragic. But they are tragic not just because of what he said, but where he said it. He was standing in the place of Jesus, but channeling Che Guevara. Change the channel and you will find a smiling, non-threatening, pro-America preacher, also standing in the place of Jesus, but he’s channeling Ayn Rand or M. Scott Peck or Peter Drucker.

Read the entire essay.

Cleaning house with a keyboard and a mouse

I'm heading off tomorrow for a couple of days of camping in the semi-wilds of central Oregon. Here are some links that I've been meaning to remark upon on in way or another, but have not been able to for reasons both mundane and cosmic in nature:

• Lorraine Murray reviews a new book about Padre Pio.

• Michael Novak reflects on atheism and evil.

• Archbishop Chaput has a new book coming out soon, Render Unto Ceasar (Doubleday)

• What are your five favorite books by Inklings and friends? Christopher W. Mitchell lists his choices.

• Entertainment Weekly lists its top 100 "New Classics." The Da Vinci Code is #96. Meanwhile, Radiohead's "In Rainbows" is #10 in the list of the 100 best albums between 1983 and 2008. Nothing against Radiohead, one of my favorite bands, but what exactly is a classic? Shouldn't it have to exist for more than a year to qualify?

• Obama, Shaman. Obama, The Child.

• Scott Hahn and Ben Wiker talk about Dawkins and atheism.

• Speaking of atheism, Evangelical philosopher Douglas Groothuis reviews four recent books about that very topic.

• A professor emeritus of religious studies at Emmanuel College gets silly in a brief letter-to-the-editor in The Boston Globe.

• Roy Schoeman's Honey From The Rock receives a nice review.

• A new book by neo-Darwinist Julian Barnes does not recieve a nice review.

• James Beverly points out that Eckhart Tolle is simply spouting the same old anti-Christian, New Age nonsense. It is a Tolle House recipe: mix vapid spirituality with self-help lingo, stir in neo-Buddhist nonsense, add a dash of Christian bashing, and serve it up on Oprah with a smile.

• Slate describes Brideshead Revisited as "vomitous stupidity." Sounds negative.

• More atheism: Play the atheism game. For free.

• Vladimír Godár's Mater (ECM): The most beautiful music I've heard in some time.

• Chris Cornell produced by Timbaland: Most surreal collaboration I've heard in some time.

• If you missed them here are some new and upcoming books available from Ignatius Press.

Swimming against the pro-contraception stream

John L. Allen, Jr., has penned an interesting op-ed piece, "The Pope vs. the Pill," for The New York Times. He writes:

Forty years ago last week, Pope Paul VI provoked the greatest uproar against a papal edict in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church when he reiterated the church’s ban on artificial birth control by issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” At the time, commentators predicted that not only would the teaching collapse under its own weight, but it might well bring the “monarchical papacy” down with it.

Those forecasts badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.

Indeed. But as Allen points out a few paragraphs later, it's not that the Church merely resists change; rather, it's that the Church continues to develop a deeper understanding of her beliefs, as evidenced (as he mentions) by John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Allen concludes by stating:

The encyclical’s surprising resilience is a reminder that forecasting the Catholic future in moments of crisis is always a dangerous enterprise — a point with relevance to a more recent Catholic predicament. Many critics believe that the church has not yet responded adequately to the recent sex-abuse scandals, leading to predictions that the church will “have to” become more accountable, more participatory and more democratic.

While those steps may appear inevitable today, it seemed unthinkable to many observers 40 years ago that “Humanae Vitae” would still be in vigor well into the 21st century.

Catholicism can and does change, but trying to guess how and when is almost always a fool’s errand.

Benedict XVI, in less than four years, has already shown some of the ways that vital issues can be addressed. At the heart of his approach is fidelity to the Gospel and the Church's teachings, a willingness to dialogue in a way that is charitable and elicits serious reflection and response, and an emphasis on worship and liturgy as a vital component in revitalizing a culture of life, love, and hope.

Allen's column and comments reminded me of a chapter, "The Five Deaths of the Faith," found in G.K. Chesterton's great book, The Everlasting Man:

In short, the whole world being divided about whether the stream was going slower or faster, became conscious of something vague but vast that was going against the stream. Both in fact and figure there is something deeply disturbing about this, and that for an essential reason. A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. A dead dog can be lifted on the leaping water with all the swiftness of a leaping hound; but only a live dog can swim backwards. A paper boat can ride the rising deluge with all the airy arrogance of a fairy ship; but if the fairy ship sails upstream it is really rowed by the fairies. And among the things that merely went with the tide of apparent progress and enlargement, there was many a demagogue or sophist whose wild gestures were in truth as lifeless as the movement of a dead dog's limbs wavering in the eddying water; and many a philosophy uncommonly like a paper boat, of the sort that it is not difficult to knock into a cocked hat. But even the truly living and even life-giving things that went with that stream did not thereby prove that they were living or life-giving. It was this other force that was unquestionably and unaccountably alive; the mysterious and unmeasured energy that was thrusting back the river. That was felt to be like the movement of some great monster; and it was none the less clearly a living monster because most people thought it a prehistoric monster. It was none the less an unnatural, an incongruous, and to some a comic upheaval; as if the Great Sea Serpent had suddenly risen out of the Round Pond-unless we consider the Sea Serpent as more likely to live in the Serpentine. This flippant element in the fantasy must not be missed, for it was one of the clearest testimonies to the unexpected nature of the reversal. That age did really feel that a preposterous quality in prehistoric animals belonged also to historic rituals; that mitres and tiaras were like the horns or crests of antediluvian creatures; and that appealing to a Primitive Church was like dressing up as a Primitive Man.

The world is still puzzled by that movement; but most of all because it still moves. I have said something elsewhere of the rather random sort of reproaches that are still directed against it and its much greater consequences; it is enough to say here that the more such critics reproach it the less they explain it. In a sense it is my concern here, if not to explain it, at least to suggest the direction of the explanation; but above all, it is my concern to point out one particular thing about it. And that is that it had all happened before; and even many times before.

To sum up, in so far as it is true that recent centuries have seen an attenuation of Christian doctrine, recent centuries have only seen what the most remote centuries have seen. And even the modern example has only ended as the medieval and pre-medieval examples ended. It is already clear, and grows clearer every day, that it is not going to end in the disappearance of the diminished creed; but rather in the return of those parts of it that had really disappeared. It is going to end as the Arian compromise ended, as the attempts at a compromise with Nominalism and even with Albigensianism ended. But the point to seize in the modern case, as in all the other cases, is that what returns is not in that sense a simplified theology; not according to that view a purified theology; it is simply theology. It is that enthusiasm for theological studies that marked the most doctrinal ages; it is the divine science.

The Church's teaching about sexuality, marriage, reproduction, and life goes against the stream; it is a living thing swimming against the deadly current of the culture of death. When that teaching is lived faithfully, taught well, defended with clarity and charity, and articulated with precision and love, it changes lives and transforms hearts. Pope Paul VI has been proven prophetic in his denunciation of contraceptives and the contraceptive mentality; unfortunately, as Allen notes, far too many Catholics have gone with the flow, contracepting themselves to the point of death—spiritual, emotional, and theological (see, for example, this op-ed by a former priest). As Chesterton (himself prophetic) noted and as John Paul II demonsrated, true theology—which is not dry discourse, but life-giving contemplation of and communion with the mystery of the Triune God—is an essential part of the answer.

"The Vindication of Humanae Vitae"...

...by Mary Eberstadt,  a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a great article in the August/September issue of First Things and is available online. I'll get you started:

That Humanae Vitae and related Catholic teachings about sexual morality are laughingstocks in all the best places is not exactly news. Even in the benighted precincts of believers, where information from the outside world is known to travel exceedingly slowly, everybody grasps that this is one doctrine the world loves to hate. During Benedict XVI’s April visit to the United States, hardly a story in the secular press failed to mention the teachings of Humanae Vitae, usually alongside adjectives like “divisive” and “controversial” and “outdated.” In fact, if there’s anything on earth that unites the Church’s adversaries—all of them except for the Muslims, anyway—the teaching against contraception is probably it.

To many people, both today and when the encyclical was promulgated on July 25, 1968, the notion simply defies understanding. Consenting adults, told not to use birth control? Preposterous. Third World parents deprived access to contraception and abortion? Positively criminal. A ban on condoms when there’s a risk of contracting AIDS? Beneath contempt.

“The execration of the world,” in philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe’s phrase, was what Paul VI incurred with that document—to which the years since 1968 have added plenty of just plain ridicule. Hasn’t everyone heard Monty Python’s send-up song “Every Sperm Is Sacred”? Or heard the jokes? “You no play-a the game, you no make-a the rules.” And “What do you call the rhythm method? Vatican roulette.” And “What do you call a woman who uses the rhythm method? Mommy.”

Read the entire article.

Thanks to Marcel LeJeune for the link. Read his commentary and thoughts over on the Aggie Catholics blog.

Marriage and the Family in "Casti Connubii" and "Humanae Vitae"

Marriage and the Family in Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae | By Reverend Michael Hull, S.T.D.

Only a univocal obedience to the natural law ensures the right ordering and prosperity of the human family and society in general

The affirmation of marriage and the family has long been a concern of the Church. Having steadfastly defended the indissolubility of the marriage bond through the centuries, whether imperiled from flawed secular or religious beliefs, the Church continued her defense of marriage and the family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Reading the signs of their times, Pope Pius XI in Casti connubii (December 31, 1930) and Pope Paul VI in Humanae vitae (July 25, 1968) both address the sanctity of marriage and the family, with special emphasis on the principal threat against them in modern times: artificial birth control.

In modern times, society’s gradual acceptance of artificial birth control, which strikes at the heart of marriage and the family, may be illustrated by a look to the Anglican Communion. In 1908, the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops spoke of artificial birth control as "demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare" (Resolution 41; cf. nos. 42 and 43). In 1930, Lambeth allowed for the use of artificial birth control, with such use guided by "Christian principles" (Resolution 15; cf. nos. 13 and 17), but Lambeth recognized that contraceptives were likely to cause increased fornication, so it recommended that sales thereof be restricted (Resolution 18).

Read the entire essay...

Repeat mindlessly: "It's only a novel. It's only a novel."

Which doesn't adequately explain why people are still spending good money to fly to Paris to pursue the ever elusive, ever beguiling "secrets" of The Da Vinci Code. From The Boston Herald, more proof that cockroaches have nothing on the Coded Craziness when it comes to living long and dying hard:

They arrive at the Louvre with dog-eared copies of “The Da Vinci Code,” favorite passages highlighted with yellow ink.

“They all want to know which parts of the book are true,” said Massachusetts native Ellen McBreen, who has taken thousands of da Vinci decoders on private tours of the world-famous art museum.

It includes stops at the “Mona Lisa” and the inverted pyramid, both of which figure prominently in the book.

McBreen said her clients range in age and background, but they share a common fascination with the idea that history is fluid.

“The idea that history isn’t set in stone is really exciting to people,” said McBreen, 37, a Harvard-trained art historian.

Especially people like McBreen, a post-modern sophist who is making money off of people who have allowed their brains to turn into mush. Have any of these people heard of the following: books, libraries, critical thinking, logic, encyclopedias, (gulp) the internet? Do you really need to travel to Paris to be told, "Uh, actually, Dan Brown got nearly everything wrong. If you would have read The Da Vinci Hoax, you could have saved yourself some dough."

For more, see this article I wrote in March 2005:

Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II Was Right

Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death:  Why John Paul II Was Right | Dr. Raymond Dennehy | Ignatius Insight    

"To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom." -- John Paul II, The Gospel of Life

Pope John Paul II's encyclical The Gospel of Life is the locus classicus for the claim that a culture of death is enshrouding the modern world. His identification and critique of what he calls the "culture of death" directly challenge liberal democracy, particularly on its separation of freedom from truth. This essay will focus on that challenge. The first part offers an analytic introduction to the term "culture of death," the second part unfolds the late pope's argument, and the third part advances a defense of it. ...

• Download and read the entire 33-page essay in PDF format.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Telos. It has been made available by the kind permission of Telos and the author.

C'mon, buddy—make up your mind

I see that a new Amazon.com review of The Da Vinci Hoax has been posted:

        0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:       

        Nothing but 300 Pages of Garbage, March 30, 2008

By	Movie Buff  - See all my reviews

This book is nothing but 300 pages of two angry Christians ranting about how upset they are Dan Brown wrote a book about Jesus. Anyone who shows interest in Brown's opinion or agrees with him is portrayed as fool hearty and idiotic and those that agree with them are level headed respectable people. The Da Vinci Code is not meant to ruin Christianity and was not a way for Dan Brown to fight the Christian faith but you would never get that impression by reading this piece of lethargic whining. I could probably write a book on the problems with THIS book!

Not to be nit-picky at all, but the "reviewer" seems to be of two minds. First he claims that Sandra Miesel and I are "two angry Christians ranting..." According to the dictionary (not that I needed to look it up, but just for the sake of objectivity), ranting is commonly defined thusly:

v.   intr. To speak or write in an angry or violent manner; rave.
v.   tr. To utter or express with violence or extravagance: a dictator who ranted his vitriol onto a captive audience.
n. Violent or extravagant speech or writing.

Whereas "lethargic" is defined in a way that leads observant people to conclude it means something close to the opposite of ranting:

leth-ar-gic
–adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or affected with lethargy; drowsy; sluggish.
2. producing lethargy.
—Synonyms 1. lazy, indolent, torpid.

leth·ar·gy    
–noun, plural -gies.
1.    the quality or state of being drowsy and dull, listless and unenergetic, or indifferent and lazy; apathetic or sluggish inactivity.
2.    Pathology. an abnormal state or disorder characterized by overpowering drowsiness or sleep.

Which means, if "Movie Buff" is correct, that Sandra and I have a curious—perhaps supernatural?—ability to express ourselves in a violent and extravagant manner while also whining in a drowsy, listless, and apathetic fashion. Really, now, should people who don't know the meaning of basic words be writing book reviews? Or am I just behind the times?