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John Hagee expresses "deep regret" for comments "hurtful" to Catholics

John Hagee has sent a letter (dated May 12, 2008) to Bill Donohue (whose name I continually misspell as "Donahue"; my apologies), which expresses his "deep regret for comments that Catholics may have found hurtful":

In my zeal to oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its ugly forms, I have often emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews. In the process, I may have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti- Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church. It most certainly does not. Likewise, I have not sufficiently expressed my deep appreciation for the efforts of Catholics who opposed the persecution of the Jewish people. It is important to note that there were thousands of righteous Catholics - both clergy and laymen -- who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust. According to many scholars, including historian Martin Gilbert and Rabbi David Dalin (author of The Myth of Hitler's Pope), Pope Pius XII personally intervened to save Jews.

In addition, I better understand that reference to the Roman Catholic Church as the "apostate church" and the "great whore" described in the Book of Revelation is a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary.

I hope you recognize that I have repeatedly stated that my interpretation of Revelation leads me to conclude that the "apostate church" and the "great whore" appear only during the seven years of tribulation after all true believers - Catholic and Protestant - have been taken up to heaven. Therefore, neither of these phrases can be synonymous with the Catholic Church.   

The entire letter can be read in PDF format. See this FOX News story.

Donohue responded:

“The tone of Hagee’s letter is sincere. He wants reconciliation and he has achieved it. Indeed, the Catholic League welcomes his apology. What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns. But he has done just that. Now Catholics, along with Jews, can work with Pastor Hagee in making interfaith relations stronger than ever. Whatever problems we had before are now history. This case is closed.”

While growing up in a "non-denominational" fundamentalist environment in the 1970s and '80s, I knew very well by the time I was eight or years years old that the Catholic Church was "apostate" and was either part of or was the "great whore of Babylon" described in the Book of Revelation. This was an integral part of the "Rapture" theology that informed nearly every aspect of my thinking about Jesus, the Bible, and the world. Anyone familiar with books such as Dave Hunt's A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1994), is familiar with this rhetoric, which has been around for centuries, dating back to at least the Reformation era, and which has been readily embraced by dispensationalist writers since the inception of that belief system in the 1830s.

An obvious example can be found in the popular non-fiction work of Dr. Tim LaHaye, creator and co-author of the Left Behind series. In Revelation Unveiled (Zondervan, 1999), a revised version of Revelation Illustrated and Made Simple (Zondervan, 1973, 1975), his commentary on The Apocalypse, LaHaye made his case for the belief that "Babylon the Great" of Revelation 17 is a system of false belief clearly identified with the Catholic Church. Drawing on Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons and Loraine Boettner's Roman Catholicism, LaHaye (who was baptized as an infant in the Catholic Church) condemns the "mystery Babylonian religion" of the Catholic Church, (go here and here for details) and then writes:

After reading the above quotations, you may be inclined to think me anti-Catholic, but that isn’t exactly true; I am anti-false religion. ... In some respects the religion of Rome is more dangerous than no religion because she substitutes religion for truth. Human beings would be better off with their God-given desire for truth unfulfilled that they might seek after Him. Romes false religion too often gives a false security that keep people from seeking salvation freely by faith. Rome is also dangerous because some of her doctrines are pseudo-Christian. For example, she believes properly about the personal deity of Christ but errs in adding Babylonian mysticism in many forms and salvation by works. (p 267)

There is another variation of this approach that is, however subtly, somewhat different from this approach. This variation—which may or may not (depending on the particular "prophecy expert") condemn Catholic Church as she now exists—focuses more on figuring out the Catholic Church's role in the future, when the "prophetic clock" is restarted by the Rapture. This is hinted at, for example, in a booklet titled The Coming World Church, published in 1963 (and again in 1978) by Back to the Bible, a fundamentalist organization, James DeForest Murch describes the "Coming Great Church" and renounces the ecumenical movement as apostate and inspired by Satan. He writes:

Evangelicals who are prophetically inclined are now warning us that we are witnessing the creation of an organization which is pictured in the Bible, not as the Bride of Christ, but as the adulterous woman bearing on her forehead the name, "Mystery Babylon." They see the ecumenical movement as a stage on the road which can eventually lead to the creation of an ecclesiastical body which has all the admixture of truth and error found in the Church of Rome, universal in scope, and eventually heading up the Romish abomination itself. (p 22)

In the late 1990s I had a couple of conversations with the pastor of the largest Baptist church in the state of Oregon. He had given a sermon on the "church of Thyatira", which is described in Revelation 2:18-29, and is often interpreted by fundamentalists as a description of the Catholic Church. The pastor used many of LaHaye and Company's standard anti-Catholic talking points, but his real interest was in trying to ascertain the role played by the Catholic Church during the seven years of Tribulation he believed (as most dispensationalists do) will come between the "Rapture" and the Second Coming. When I spoke to the pastor on the phone about his anti-Catholic rhetoric, he was both very polite and very unapologetic. His position, in essence, was that while he believed some Catholics are "saved," he was convinced that the unique size and influence of the Catholic Church strongly suggested that it would be, after the Rapture, the key institution of an apostate One World Religion. You simply cannot underestimate how obsessed such folks are with figuring out all of the details of their "end times" system!

That pastor's interest in the future is, from what I can tell and what his quote above suggests, similar to Hagee's stance. Which is, again, why I recently emphasized that while the issue of Hagee's offensive remarks is important, it needs to be understood in the light of his seriously flawed theological beliefs. And, just so I'm not misunderstood or misrepresented, I'm not dismissing or making light of Hagee's offensive remarks; on the contrary, I'm saying that as bothersome as they are, they aren't nearly as troubling as his entire theological system, which is shot through with notions and presuppositions that are not in keeping with basic Christian doctrines, especially his belief that Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jews, his belief in a "Rapture" event separate from the Second Coming, and his belief that Christians will not endure the final tribulation.

• For much more about all of those topics, see my book, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? (Ignatius, 2003).
• Pastor John Hagee: "Thank you, Pope Benedict" (April 29, 2008)
• Eschatological Fact and Fiction: Catholicism and Dispensationalism Compared | Carl E. Olson
• The Jews and the Second Coming | Roy H. Schoeman
• The End Times: The Secret Hidden From the Universe | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Protestants, patristics, and the art of biblical interpretation

Jason Byassee is an assistant editor at the Christian Century whose wife is a Methodist minister. In a review essay titled, "Reading with the Saints: The art of biblical interpretation," he writes:

Ever since Martin Luther pulled the Bible and the traditions of the church apart by playing the former off against the latter, we have had problems. The Reformed tradition described the Scriptures as clear, "perspicuous," intelligible to any reader. They meant, of course, to stand in contrast to a Roman Catholic suggestion that only ordained, Latin-reading, Mass-mumbling priests could read God's word. But if Scripture were so perspicuous, why did Calvin have to write the multivolume Institutes and a library of commentaries to tell us what it meant? And why have subsequent generations of Protestants, each insisting they were following the Bible, shattered like so many pieces of smashed glass into a bewildering variety of denominations? It's not obvious that the result is a more biblically literate population among Protestants. The Bible sits atop bestseller lists but often gathers dust on believers' shelves.

And, a bit later:

Those in Reformation-based churches have often recoiled at allegory as one of the means by which the plain sense of Scripture is distorted. This is rooted in our revolt against our Catholic forebears: let them have allegory, and pretty soon they'll find the Queen of Heaven in Revelation, or prayers to the saints in 1 Maccabees. Williams ably shows that the heartbeat of allegory for the ancient church was Christological. Allegory was a means to further the church's passionate love affair with Christ through discerning his presence on every page of Israel's Scripture. Like any interpretive practice, allegorical reading can go wrong and stand in need of reining in, sure enough. But without it, something dear to the heart of Protestants is lost: the chance to see Jesus anew, now refracted through the words not only of the New Testament, but of the Old as well. And there are so many more words in the Old! This is no individual venture, as Williams makes clear; it is an intensely ecclesial, communal one, to a point that our love for privacy is scandalized: St. Egeria writes in the 4th century that before baptism the bishop asks the neighbors of those seeking baptism whether they are indeed as good and decent as they claim!

An interesting read, to say the least.

For more on the senses of Scripture and allegorical interpretations, see the following Ignatius Insight articles:

• Approaching the Sacred Scriptures | Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch
• Origen and Allegory | Henri de Lubac  | Introduction to History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen
• Singing the Song of Songs | Blaise Armnijon, S.J. | The Introduction to The Cantata of Love

An emerging source of frustration

Terry Mattingly of Get Religion has a post titled, "Define 'emerging,' give three examples," which looks at how the "emerging church" movement continues to avoid definition and vital questions:

Whatever the term means, it is supposed to be linked to a kind of post-evangelical embrace of the nuances of postmodern reality, in an attempt to fuse ancient mysteries with contemporary questions without the certainties of orthodoxy or something like that.

The key figure — in part since his church is so close to the D.C. Beltway — is the Rev. Brian McLaren, an author who has a stunning ability to write thousands and thousands of words without betraying anything specific about where he stands on centuries of Christian faith and doctrine and how they apply to modern issues. That’s where — for a premodern, Orthodox Christian guy like me — the frustrations begin. The last thing journalists need to be doing right now is tossing around another loaded, yet almost totally undefined, term. I mean, imagine trying to write an “emerging church” entry for the Associated Press Stylebook.

Mattingly refers to a recent interview in The Washington Post with McLaren, which contains the following:

Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, 'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.

That, then, is a taste of the "stunning ability" referred to by Mattingly. My basic impression of the "emerging church" movement is this: it is a reactionary movement within a reactionary movement (evangelicalism) that was formed within a reactionary movement (20th century conservative Protestantism) that was a subset of a reactionary movement ("classical" Protestantism). It will continue to frustrate many, even while it splinters, resplinters, divides, morphs, shifts, and otherwise emerges, submerges, re-emerges, and partially converges in numerous forms, all of which will lead to, uh, something. Mattingly, meanwhile, would like someone to ask McLaren three basic questions:

(1) Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

Answers to said questions will emerge. Someday. Maybe. In the meantime, here is a sample of what McLaren has to offer:

"I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'?.... I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy." –– Brian McLaren, quoted in "The Emergent Mystique", Christianity Today, November 2004

"Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope's, whoever's) is orthodox, meaning true, and here's my honest answer: a little, but not yet. Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text, and culture I'd have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong, and even more spreads before us unseen and unimagined. But at least our eyes are open! To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall." –– Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), p. 293.

Hmmm...well...I think I'll have to go with Chesterton on this one:

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

•  Chesterton and the "Paradoxy" of Orthodoxy

"Introduction to Christianity": Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

"Introduction to Christianity": Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | Preface to the Second Edition (2004) of Introduction To Christianity              

Since this work was first published, more than thirty years have passed, in which world history has moved along at a brisk pace. In retrospect, two years seem to be particularly important milestones in the final decades of the millennium that has just come to an end: 1968 and 1989. The year 1968 marked the rebellion of a new generation, which not only considered post-war reconstruction in Europe as inadequate, full of injustice, full of selfishness and greed, but also viewed the entire course of history since the triumph of Christianity as a mistake and a failure. These young people wanted to improve things at last, to bring about freedom, equality, and justice, and they were convinced that they had found the way to this better world in the mainstream of Marxist thought. The year 1989 brought the surprising collapse of the socialist regimes in Europe, which left behind a sorry legacy of ruined land and ruined souls. Anyone who expected that   the hour had come again for the Christian message was disappointed. Although the number of believing Christians throughout the world is not small, Christianity failed at that historical moment to make itself heard as an epoch making alternative. Basically, the Marxist doctrine of salvation (in several differently orchestrated variations, of course) had taken a stand as the sole ethically motivated guide to the future that was at the same time consistent with a scientific worldview. Therefore, even after the shock of 1989, it did not simply abdicate. We need only to recall how little was said about the horrors of the Communist gulag, how isolated Solzhenitsyn's voice remained: no one speaks about any of that. A sort of shame forbids it; even Pol Pot's murderous regime is mentioned only occasionally in passing. But there were still disappointment and a deep-seated perplexity. People no longer trust grand moral promises, and after all, that is what Marxism had understood itself to be. It was about justice for all, about peace, about doing away with unfair master-servant relationships, and so on. Marxism believed that it had to dispense with ethical principles for the time being and that it was allowed to use terror as a beneficial means to these noble ends. Once the resulting human devastation became visible, even for a moment, the former ideologues preferred to retreat to a pragmatic position or else declared quite openly their contempt for ethics. We can observe a tragic example of this in Colombia, where a campaign was started, under the Marxist banner at first, to liberate the small farmers who had been downtrodden by the wealthy financiers. Today, instead, a rebel republic has developed, beyond governmental control, which quite openly depends on drug trafficking and no longer seeks any moral justification for this, especially since it thereby satisfies a demand in wealthy nations and at the same time gives bread to people who would otherwise not be able to expect much of anything from the world economy. In such a perplexing situation, shouldn't Christianity try very seriously to rediscover its voice, so as to "introduce" the new millennium to its message, and to make it comprehensible as a general guide for the future?

Read the entire preface...

Why some Evangelicals are attracted to "that strange thing called liturgy"

From Christianity Today, an article by Mark Galli, senior managing editor of that magazine, on why some Evangelicals are discovering the importance and need for liturgy:

Yet many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of those evangelicals, I'd like to explain what the attraction is for me, and perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance. "The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world," writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to "make Christianity understandable to this mythical 'modern' man on the street," we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they've come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

<snip>

Before he became Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, "The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills."

How exactly does God render himself tangible in the liturgy? Certainly in the Eucharist itself, in which he makes himself known in the breaking of the bread: "When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him" (Luke 24:30–31, ESV).

Then there is the reading and preaching of the Word, the revelation of God to his people. It is not just a dramatic reading of an ancient and beautiful text, followed by an inspirational talk. It is God speaking afresh to his people through the preached and spoken Word. As Jesus told the disciples before he sent them out to preach, and as he essentially tells every preacher: "The one who hears you, hears me."

Less obviously, God makes himself known through the words and drama of the liturgy. The words of the liturgy, as a quick glance shows, are Scripture-saturated, and thus carry the same revelatory power as the formal reading of the biblical lessons.

Read the entire piece.

Pastor John Hagee: "Thank you, Pope Benedict"

Perhaps you've already seen this column in The Washington Times, written by John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and author of several "end times" books based in premillennial dispensationalism. Hagee has been accused of being anti-Catholic, but he takes pains to counter those accusations:

During his recent visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI not only conducted mass and met with the Catholic faithful, but he made a series of public statements about the role that our Judeo-Christian faith can play during these challenging times. As an evangelical Protestant I happen to disagree with Pope Benedict on many issues of Christian doctrine and ritual. But when it comes to his moral vision for America and the world I have one thing to say in response to the Pope's visit: Amen. <snip>

My reaction to Pope Benedict"s visit may surprise some who have come to accept certain caricatures of my views of the Catholic Church. But as I have noted from the start, my critics have ignored the real point and strong emphasis of my words. I have indeed been quite zealous about condemning the past anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church. But I have been equally zealous in condemning Protestant anti-Semitism. Furthermore, as I noted in my 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown," I have long viewed Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI as partners in this "righteous work" of overcoming our shared legacy of Christian anti-Semitism.

For decades I have taught that we Christians need to recognize that our roots are Jewish. As Christians we can only understand ourselves if we understand the Judaism from which we sprang. Pope Benedict made this very important point when he visited the Park East Synagogue in New York and shared that: "I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this." With visits and words such as these, Pope Benedict is continuing the important work of recognizing our enormous Christian debt of gratitude to the Jewish people.

Fair enough. I have no interest in questioning Hagee's sincerity, and his ecumenical attitude here is a pleasant surprise; after all, it's not something you'll likely find in the writings of, say, Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsey. But a couple of things should be kept in mind:

• Hagee's beliefs, which flow from what might be called a "traditional" form of premillennial dispensationalism (as opposed to "progressive dispensationalism"), lead to the conclusion that the Jewish people have no need of the New Covenant because they already have a sufficient and equally valid covenant. Which means, strangely enough, that Hagee has more in common with Abraham Foxman than he does with many or most Evangelicals when it comes to the issue of evangelization and Jews. But Hagee's position is rooted in a rather logical take on John Nelson Darby's teachings, which were based on a heavenly-earthly dualism that insisted on a radical distinction between Christians (the heavenly people, according to Darby) and the Jews (who he called the earthly people of God). (See this June 2003 ZENIT interview for more.)

• Hagee has stated that Jesus was not the Messiah. This is apparently one of the key positions he defends in his recent book, In Defense of Israel. I've not read that book, but I suspect that his argument is simply a continuation of the first point: namely, (according to Hagee) since Christians and Jews have radically different covenants with God, it is wrong to say that Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews—that is, until they accept Him as such after the Rapture, the Tribulation, and the Second Coming. Other dispensationalists have adopted similar views. For example, Charles Ryrie, author of the very influential work, Dispensationalism Today (first ed., 1965), wrote this in his 1986 book, Basic Theology:

“Gabriel announced to Mary that her Baby would have the throne of David and reign over the house of Jacob (Luke 1:32-33). Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus’ Davidic kingship was offered to Israel (Matt. 2:2; 27:11; John 12:13), but He was rejected. . . . Because the King was rejected, the messianic, Davidic kingdom was (from a human viewpoint) postponed. Though He never ceases to be King and, of course, is King today as always, Christ is never designated as King of the Church . . . Though Christ is a King today, He does not rule as King. This awaits His second coming. Then the Davidic kingdom will be realized (Matt. 25:31; Rev 19:15; 20)” [Basic Theology, 259].

Ryrie's position is both confusing and untenable, but it is made necessary by the presuppositions of the dispensationalist system, at least in its older forms.

• Finally, the dispensationalist system is not only contrary to many key Catholic doctrines, it has often understood the Catholic Church as either being a system of antiChrist, or at least being the sort of global institution/religion that will facilitate the rule of antiChrist and a false, "one world religion." This perspective is not understood by those who hold it—as I once did—as being "anti-Catholic," but as simply being realistic about "Bible prophecy" and the world we live in. For Hagee and like-minded folks, salvation is about having a "personal relationship with Christ," which they believe has little or nothing to do with being a visible member of this or that church.

There is another, closely related radical dichotomy at work here, which is that between the spiritual and the material realms—itself based on the heavenly-earthly distinction noted above (I examine this at length and in detail in my book, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"?). For the typical dispensationalist (and most fundamentalists), the "Church" consists of all those who are spiritually united in saving faith in Jesus Christ (here's a good example of what I'm referring to). The church you attend is a secondary issue. And so there exists the notion that one can be perfectly saved and yet belong to an imperfect, local church. Thus, from this perspective, a Catholic can be "saved," (by the skin of his teeth!) even if the Catholic Church is not just flawed, but even apostate and blasphemous.

Hagree is absolutely right to denounce anti-Semitism. But there are some serious problems with his theological ideas, especially how he understands the relationship between the Old and the New Covenants, the person of Jesus Christ, and the nature of the Church. For me, frankly, the key issue is not if John Hagee is anti-Catholic. Rather, it's whether or not some of his core beliefs are actually Christian, even in the most general, "mere Christianity" sense of the word.

• Eschatological Fact and Fiction: Catholicism and Dispensationalism Compared | Carl E. Olson
• The Jews and the Second Coming | Roy H. Schoeman
• The End Times: The Secret Hidden From the Universe | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Ehrman and Wright debate suffering and evil

Bart Ehrman, former Evangelical and current agnostic Scripture scholar, and N.T. Wright, Anglican bishop and non-agnostic Scripture scholar, debate suffering and evil over on the Beliefnet blog. Dr. Scott Carson, a Catholic philosopher who runs the "An Examined Life" blog, offers some commentary. 

"...the unity of the Church flows from the perfect oneness of the Trinitarian God."

From Benedict's address to an ecumenical gathering today in New York City:

Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called "prophetic actions" that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition. Communities consequently give up the attempt to act as a unified body, choosing instead to function according to the idea of "local options". Somewhere in this process the need for diachronic koinonia - communion with the Church in every age - is lost, just at the time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel (cf. Rom 1:18-23).

Faced with these difficulties, we must first recall that the unity of the Church flows from the perfect oneness of the Trinitarian God. In John's Gospel, we are told that Jesus prayed to his Father that his disciples might be one, "just as you are in me and I am in you" (Jn 17:21). This passage reflects the unwavering conviction of the early Christian community that its unity was both caused by, and is reflective of, the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This, in turn, suggests that the internal cohesion of believers was based on the sound integrity of their doctrinal confession (cf. 1 Tim 1:3-11). Throughout the New Testament, we find that the Apostles were repeatedly called to give an account for their faith to both Gentiles (cf. Acts 17:16-34) and Jews (cf. Acts 4:5-22; 5:27-42). The core of their argument was always the historical fact of Jesus's bodily resurrection from the tomb (Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30). The ultimate effectiveness of their preaching did not depend on "lofty words" or "human wisdom" (1 Cor 2:13), but rather on the work of the Spirit (Eph 3:5) who confirmed the authoritative witness of the Apostles (cf. 1 Cor 15:1-11). The nucleus of Paul's preaching and that of the early Church was none other than Jesus Christ, and "him crucified" (1 Cor 2:2). But this proclamation had to be guaranteed by the purity of normative doctrine expressed in creedal formulae - symbola - which articulated the essence of the Christian faith and constituted the foundation for the unity of the baptized (cf. 1 Cor 15:3-5; Gal 1:6-9; Unitatis Redintegratio, 2).

My dear friends, the power of the kerygma has lost none of its internal dynamism. Yet we must ask ourselves whether its full force has not been attenuated by a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine similar to that found in secular ideologies, which, in alleging that science alone is "objective", relegate religion entirely to the subjective sphere of individual feeling. Scientific discoveries, and their application through human ingenuity, undoubtedly offer new possibilities for the betterment of humankind. This does not mean, however, that the "knowable" is limited to the empirically verifiable, nor religion restricted to the shifting realm of "personal experience".

For Christians to accept this faulty line of reasoning would lead to the notion that there is little need to emphasize objective truth in the presentation of the Christian faith, for one need but follow his or her own conscience and choose a community that best suits his or her individual tastes. The result is seen in the continual proliferation of communities which often eschew institutional structures and minimize the importance of doctrinal content for Christian living.

Read the entire text.

• "Ratzinger on ecumenism: a reading list" (Nov. 30, 2006)
• Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Available from Ignatius Press in May 2008.

I really like listening to jazz. But a Baptist "jazz Mass"?

This is, I think, a bit strange:

Wynton Marsalis will be turning the House That Jazz Built at the Time Warner Center into the House of the Lord when he premieres his first jazz Mass, which blends the gospel and jazz traditions in a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York State's oldest African-American congregation.

The 100-plus Abyssinian Baptist Church Bicentennial Choir will lift their voices in song as they make their way through the Rose Theater in the traditional Processional to join forces with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to perform Marsalis' "Abyssinian 200: A Celebration," a 19-part piece based on the liturgy found in many African-American Baptist churches.

I've been in several Baptist churches in my time (admittedly, none of them black Baptist churches), and I've never heard about a Baptist liturgy and Mass. Worship, yes. Services, yes. Mass, no. On the contrary, as this article in the New Georgia Encyclopedia explains, such notions are quite foreign to black Baptist communities:

Baptists, like the state's numerous white Baptists, are thoroughgoing Protestants. The sermon is the centerpiece of the worship service, and the minister's central task is to preach the Word, or Gospel message of Jesus Christ, which calls for a distinctly individual, inward response. In keeping with this requirement, Baptist churches receive an individual member only when that person has made a commitment of faith in his or her own right. The ritual of baptism, whether in a church font or in a body of water, is the critical outward marker of the new believer's entry into membership in the church. Also, in keeping with the inward focus, Baptist churches are typically unadorned, and the worship service has none of the liturgy found in Catholic or Episcopal churches.

The composition of "jazz Masses" is not common, but a couple of such compositions do come to mind: Mary Lou's Mass, composed by the brilliant pianist Mary Lou Williams (who converted to Catholicism in 1957 at the age of 47), and To Hope, composed by legendary pianist Dave Brubeck (who became Catholic in 1980). Although I have several albums by both Brubeck and Williams, I've never heard those pieces; I have around 2500 jazz CDs, but I don't like the idea of hearing jazz at Mass, just as I cringe when I hear Palestrina music in car commercials. (However, if push came to shove, I'd far prefer a "jazz Mass" to a "folk Mass." I've experienced the latter, and it was painful.)

While jazz draws from a wide range of sources, and has traditionally been rooted in the blues and gospel music, there are only a few jazz artists, as far as I know, who have explicitly referred to or used sacred choral music in making non-liturgical music. One of the more interesting—and best-selling—of those efforts was Jan Garbarek's 1994 album, Officium, in which the Norwegian saxophonist (one of my favorite horn players) improvised haunting lines over medieval chant sung by the Hilliard Ensemble; a sequel, Mnemosyne, came out in 1999. Anyhow, back to Wynton Marsalis and his new composition:

Before composing the music, Marsalis spent hours talking with Butts about the significance of each part of the prayer service. He further drew upon his diverse influences: his music professor father's lessons about traditional spirituals, hymns and gospel music; his own experience as a classical trumpeter playing the religious works of Bach, Handel and Palestrina; and his encyclopedic knowledge of all styles of jazz dating back to its roots in his native New Orleans.

Marsalis also highlighted the common links between jazz and the African-American religious rite by including call-and-response patterns and leaving room for improvisation.

I am curious about the music, especially since Marsalis is a fine player and composer (however, I tend to prefer the work of his brother, Branford, whose work has a less affected, didactic quality and more emotional immediacy). And I am quite curious as to why he calls his composition a "jazz Mass." Is it simply to give it a more dignified, traditional name (as opposed to "jazz church meeting music")? Is it meant to emphasize the meeting of jazz and classical that apparently takes place in the composition? Are there any theological beliefs being purposefully emphasized? Is Marsalis himself a Catholic? If I had to guess at the answers to those four questions, I would say, in order: Yes, yes, no, and no. If you know or think otherwise, leave a comment.

Buddhist Dreams and Spiritualist Schemes

Buddhist Dreams and Spiritualist Schemes | An Ignatius Insight Interview with Dr. John B. Buescher | Carl E. Olson | April 1, 2008

John B. Buescher received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, concentrating on the history of religions, especially Buddhism and Christianity, and studying Asian languages. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and later a Program Officer in the Division of Education Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 1991 until 2007 he was the head of the Voice of America's Tibetan Broadcast Service, directing the programming of four hours of daily shortwave radio news and feature broadcasts to Tibet and South Asia.

In addition to Echoes from an Empty Sky: the Origins of the Buddhist Doctrine of the Two Truths (Snow Lion Publications, 2005), Buescher has written a number of important books and articles on the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalists and Spiritualists, notably The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism in the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience (Skinner House Books, 2004) and The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). His most recent work is a monograph, Aquarian Evangelist: The Age of Aquarius as It Dawned in the Mind of Levi Dowling (Theosophical History, 2008). He is a parishioner of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Annandale, Virginia.

Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, recently interviewed Buescher about his journey from Catholicism to Buddhism and back to the Catholic Church, and what cautionary lessons can be learned from studying nineteenth-century spiritualists.

Read the entire interview...