It's (blank)'s fault!

No... not Bush. It's the oldest (blank) in the book - the Church.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A popular U.S. Roman Catholic priest photographed frolicking with a woman on a Florida beach announced on Thursday he had joined the Episcopal Church to pursue the priesthood in a faith that allows married clergy.

"I've seen with my own eyes how many brothers of mine serve God as married men and with the blessing of having their own families," said Father Alberto Cutie, whose removal from his Miami Beach parish prompted public debate about the Catholic Church's celibacy requirement for priests.

Now, I want to start here: I feel for the guy. No joke. He wants to serve God, and he feels that his vocation is marriage. He and I have that much in common. One of the things that the seminary is meant to do is to bring a man's vocation into focus. Every year plenty of seminarians realize that their call is to raise families instead of parishes, and they leave, as they ought. Sometimes there's a miss and someone is ordained, as Fr. Cutie is, or they take a lifetime vow in a lay order, and they realize along the way that God's call is to marriage. And this is what brings me to the upsetting thing about all of this.

The thing is, that nobody wakes up one morning with a huge lump on his head and a collar on his neck. Fr. Cutie knew going in about the discipline required of Roman Catholic priests. If he didn't, there is one last reminder at the ordination ceremony:

You ought anxiously to consider again and again what sort of a burden this is which you are taking upon you of your own accord. Up to this you are free. You may still, if you choose, turn to the aims and desires of the world (licet vobis pro artitrio ad caecularia vota transire). But if you receive this order (of the subdiaconate) it will no longer be lawful to turn back from your purpose. You will be required to continue in the service of God, and with His assistance to observe chastity and to be bound for ever in the ministrations of the Altar, to serve who is to reign.

By stepping forward despite this warning, when invited to do so, and by co-operating in the rest of the ordination service, the candidate is understood to bind himself equivalently by a vow of chastity. He is henceforth unable to contract a valid marriage, and any serious transgression in the matter of this vow is not only a grievous sin in itself but incurs the additional guilt of sacrilege.

This is the standard. The Church gets a lot of flak for the standard, but it deals in free will, and a person understanding and freely choosing to bind oneself has the right to know what, exactly, that choice entails. It's hardly a big secret, in any case. And there is always the understanding on the Church's part of the people she shepherds and cares for. Had Fr. Cutie later realized that he had taken vows that God had not asked of him, he could go to his bishop and ask to be laicized, to be relieved of his vows and office in order to pursue his true vocation.

Well, that's not exactly the order he went in.

He was relieved of his duties at St. Francis de Sales parish in Miami Beach earlier this month after the entertainment magazine TVnotas published photos of him in swim trunks, snuggling and kissing a woman on the sands of a beach in Florida.

Cutie later said he had fallen in love with the woman and broken his vow of celibacy. He apologized for his behavior, but told the Univision Spanish-language television network, "I didn't stop being a man just because I put on a cassock. There are trousers under this cassock."

The apology is good - but the line about not being a man anymore? That's grade-A balderdash. Bravo Sierra, padre. The Church didn't ask him or any priest not to be a man anymore. The concept that a man is only equal to his sexual faculties is completely insulting.

At his news conference, Cutie described his move as "going into a new family" and said he would continue to proclaim God's word. "I will always love the Catholic Church and all its members who are committed in their faith and have
enriched my life in so many ways," he said.

So... why, then, would Fr. Cutie move to the Episcopalian church, when the Eastern rite Catholic churches permit married clergy? Of course, you'd have to married first, and as we have seen, this is not the case here; but again, there is the active ministry of the Church. There is the authority to grant dispensations at need. The saying, "Hard cases make bad law," is applicable here - the whole disicpline ought not to be overturned just for one wayward and willful man reneging on his vows, but it's possible to do something in the individual situation. That isn't possible once Fr. Cutie decides to bail.

The Spider is fond of saying that pastors are high-value targets of the evil one, and this is why. The more of them in high-profile spots that take public falls, the better his business is. It's part of the general strategy of those who oppose the Church to bring up its faults:

Some Catholics expressed sympathy for Cutie and said it was time to end the celibacy rule. Others said that, given the recent scandals involving U.S. priests sexually abusing young boys, and Irish priests raping, flogging and enslaving children in Catholic schools, they were relieved that Cutie had merely become involved with an adult woman.

Again, I'm forced to call complete BS. Who are these "some Catholics," and who are these "others?" No quote? I'm going to just come right out and say that every single one of these some and others are either theoretical, or people in the newsroom. No doubt, one could find examples of these. Fair enough. Why, then, were NO such examples found by either the two reporters or the two editors credited? They certainly found room to list up some of the more horrible sins and scandals of the recent past.

All of this could have been mitigated. I have no idea if Fr. Cutie ever did come forward to his bishop or to his confessor. It seems likely that he either didn't, or that nobody close to him was able to convince him that this was a bad idea; he went forward with this canoodling, and broke his vows. Then he held this little presser in order, not to apologize, but to justify himself by leaving the Church and putting the blame on them, instead of squarely on himself.

In the media of course he comes off like an honest fellow, caught in conflicting loyalties, and stuck with no other way out... and the media, which can't really be bothered to do even the online research I've done tonight, will gladly play this up as the acceptable storyline, with his own complicity. It's hard enough that the foes of the Church exclude any good she does or any virtue she teaches in favor of scandal and crime; worse that the good padre decided to join with those foes by blaming the Church for his own faults. It's the big danger in becoming well-known in general: it becomes more about the person and less about what they're known for. It can be politics, or music, or acting, or nearly anything else one can think of - the person stops doing their best work because they focus on themselves rather than the work. Fr. Cutie's attitude here is not that he ought to sacrifice to be a priest; in effect it's the reverse and the congregation has to sacrifice to have him - he has to be married and satisfy both his own needs and the needs of his family, first. And that's the congregation he wants to get - what of the one he's just betrayed? The priesthood is not all about him.

His words at this press conference would not be out of place coming from the mouth of any starlet going to rehab, or suspended athlete, or elected official caught cheating on their spouse. In this case, the wronged spouse is Christ Himself, which makes it doubly terrible.

Everything has a why

(part one is above)

Harry Truman once wrote that America likes to take political vacations: after vigorous presidents or great national challenges, the nation decides to take a break from the heavy lifting. So, after the Revolution and Washington and Jefferson, they treat themselves to Madison and Monroe. After the Civil War they treat themselves to Grant and Hayes. After Teddy Roosevelt they treat themselves to Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding. It’s fitting that Harding himself coined the word “normalcy.” That’s what the country is after.

Only one problem – normalcy, for the race of man, is not peace, security, and freedom. We are a fallen people. Normalcy is people exploiting each other, seeking dominion over each other, and an obsession with personal gain and status. Seek and ye shall find, and if you seek normalcy, well, you’ll get it.

Additionally, the 20th century saw the rise of socialism in practice, and America got their fair share: Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and the Great Society. Socialism is an excellent system for exploiting normalcy to the ends of a few powerful people: it’s amoral because the State supplants church, and it destroys personal responsibility because the State replaces all private organizations and personal choices. Along with material ownership, the State assumes ownership of a person’s human rights; if they can take what you earn, why not what you say and think? It is no accident that the evil power in “1984” was Ingsoc – English Socialism – nor that the book was written by an English Socialist, George Orwell. He was smart and honest enough to know what could happen.

In the last century (and especially the last fifty years), one of the main protections against tyranny of all kinds has eroded. Simply put, many have lost the faith. It’s more complicated that God simply dealing out punishments to those who’ve turned against Him – it’s a perfectly rational process, in fact. Faith is what warns us of the damaged nature of man, and provides the solution to it in the person of Jesus Christ. Lose it and it’s no surprise that people would thus lose the sense of sin, and the natural mistrust of anyone who promises Utopia on Earth. Lose the Son of Man, and you get the Son of Government.

Moreover, once the faith is emptied of meaning, one necessarily invests in whatever promises to fill the void. It can be a radicalized religion like Islam or a radicalized secular faith in all things Government; in the end both turn tyrannical, equally hostile to those who wish to live differently or believe otherwise. Statism is nothing more than Islamism without Allah.

QED. Replace virtue and personal responsibility with Statism, and it’s not really surprising that one would wind up with a Statist as one’s leader. It’s the natural result of looking to government to solve problems because the other societal means have atrophied. Instead of forming a neighborhood committee or joining the Kiwanis, we’ve grown to rely on government services. And as those services take root (both socially and economically) it becomes difficult to dismantle them. It’s hard, and people don’t like to do hard things, and especially after seven years of hard things. Many cities in America are already little cominterns with petty bureaucratic despots. People are used to it. Having a Panjandrum in Chief doesn’t seem so bad. He’ll do what one wants to see done to other people.

The difficulty, of course, is that this is never enough. Inevitably things are done to everyone else too. If we want the rich punished for their success, we hand over the tools to be punished ourselves for our own modest gains. If we fail to protect the most vulnerable, we place more and more heads on the chopping block. As the Left is fond of quoting, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… but their solution is usually to spread the injustice.

(Speaking of Leftist tropes, I look forward to four years of indulging in their highest form of patriotism. Truth be told, the blog may not survive. We run a small outfit but that doesn’t mean that some local who’s loyal to the One wouldn’t serve the Master by flagging it as inappropriate. And Blogger could, as is their right, decide to decline to host us, and force me to start paying for private hosting, or scrap it altogether. Spider and I will be lucky in that regard, in that it would cost little to lose our outlet here. But others won’t be so lucky, and that’s the point. It’s really not about a small blog in the backwater of the internet, but about an entire generation of the unborn who will find legal protection far more scarce, and millions who will be forced to live on less than they need, and people who will pay a real toll for speaking their mind and exercising their rights.)

A few nights ago, while I was muttering darkly about all of this, I was asked if it could really get that bad. Honestly, I don’t think so… but I don’t know. “It couldn’t happen in America” is really not a conclusive argument. It could. People all around the world die every day for their faith, and for their freedom. People are driven from their homes and made refugees by servants of cruel governments; less than 100 miles from the coast of Florida, they are sent to jail for opening libraries; they are fined and removed from their jobs for preaching the gospel just over the northern border. Rome fell. England is stupidly lying down to avoid falling – but of course that leaves them prone all the same, ready for the boot to step where it wills.

To stand against such things requires an equally-strong faith in freedom and virtue. Too many people have decided to go all Squishy Marshmallow about their faith in such things, because they somehow think that it makes us “just like them” to believe strongly. That we believe strongly in diametrically opposed things – that our faith cause us to love and fight for freedom rather than dominion – doesn’t seem to matter to some people. Either they prefer dominion (either exercising it or suffering it) or they don’t bother to really think much about it.

They do neither themselves nor anyone else any favors. Slouching won’t save them, and it won’t convince others to spare them. Why would anyone abandon something they believe in for the Kingdom of Nice? And especially those who adore cruelty and fear – how can they be saved from themselves and become decent people? They don’t have any respect for modern faith, because it has surrendered its principles, going along to get along. It is impossible to respect such a milquetoast pastiche of straw and tinsel. It inspires nobody and therefore transforms nobody. It is true that the cruel are only half-men, but so are many modern believers - only they got the soft half, and thus come in a poor second in any contest against the hard half. Real faith requires both halves to make us complete people. Real faith forgives from strength, loves from courage, and has both compassion and good judgment. The soft virtues, by necessity, lead us into dangerous situations that we can only stick out by practicing the hard virtues as well.

It is love that makes the strong protect the weak rather than lord over them. Love makes people marry, knowing that one will be left behind, either in lonely old age or far too soon. We love pets though they soil the carpet and scratch the furniture, and children though they break our hearts a hundred ways, and we love favorite foods and hockey teams and art and chess and race cars and beer and gardening. The one thing we have in our favor is that nobody can really love socialism in that way… because love is, of necessity, a two-way process, and socialism has no love to give. Even a mere hobby can be rewarding and repay one’s interest because it enriches the mind, body, and spirit, but doing evil coarsens and deadens one’s faculties.

Those who love can also be joyful under any circumstance. Our hope is elsewhere, and is always renewed. “In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) We will confound those with a low opinion of the simple faith of the commoner. That faith helped free Eastern Europe; it made the fight worthwhile. I do not plan to bitterly cling to anything. It does no good - neither to me, nor to anyone who begins to seek an alternative to “normalcy.” Cheerful defiance is the watchword now. If we must go down fighting, let it be that we fought for love and not merely for ourselves. No matter who runs the government, it can’t endure unless those in the larger society live in such a way as to renew the world. Put the heart right and the head will follow.

Believers for Barack

Believers in what, I'd like to know.

The Obama campaign is preparing rolling out a new line of “faith merchandise” – the latest move in an ambitious effort to win over religious voters.

“Check out the Believers for Barack, Pro-Family Pro-Obama, and Catholics for Obama buttons, bumper stickers and signs….” says Obama Deputy Director of Religious Affairs Paul Monteiro in an e-mail obtained by the Beliefnet Web site.

They even have stuff for the Fly and the Ladybug. Do you think Nancy Pelosi has a "Catholics for Obama" shirt?

I don't know how much of this is selling. Two weeks ago Obama was running pro-abort ads on country music radio. Last week I was told that my Savior was a mere community organizer like their savior. We Bible thumpers can be pretty slow, but I don't know how many of us are that slow. Here's more:

We'll soon be rolling out merchandise for other religious groups and denominations, but I wanted to get this out to you without delay,” he adds.

Other religious groups? You mean, like these people?

The Politics-Driven Church

The McCainchurian Candidate, the Obamessiah & Rick Warren are going to be on the Radio tonight (91.1 FM in Tampa) at Warren's church.

Warren will be talking to each of them, Obama first, then McCain. He will be asking them the exact same questions.

I don't care about the answers. I know enough about the candidates. I'm care about the questions and what they say about Rick Warren. Warren has said that he got help from a group of left wingers with the questions, so I expect Obama to bring a pillow.

Full disclosure. I don't like Rick Warren. This may come as a shock to some of you because he loves Jesus and he has a best seller out (I've read it), but I don't like him. Whenever he is pressed on the life issue his answers are slippery. I would have more respect for him if he manned up and admitted he was politically on the left.

Also, if his preaching is anything like his book, it is doctrinally weak. Maybe it's because I am spoiled, going to a solid evangelical church where the pastor preaches sound theology. On the right is a link to a fascinating blog called The Curt Jester. The Jester has several posts about local Catholic churches in which the priest will go off on tangents and not preach Catholic doctrine. I feel the same way about Rick Warren.

The media has christened Warren an evangelical leader. If he is an evangelical, I must be something else.

I remember four years ago the media were wetting themselves over the influence of evangelicals in the re-election of W. Separation of church and state. Turning into a theocracy. Michael Moore calling the South and West "Jesusland". Now that the Obamessiah has brought light into the world that doesn't seem to be such a big concern anymore. Hmmm.

Don't even get me started on Mike Huckabee.

Can a Catholic Church....

...be squishy?

This is not the first time this church as graced this blog.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright made a surprise appearance in Chicago Friday night. Wright, Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor appeared at Saint Sabina church to hear famed African American poet Maya Angelou speak, and only CBS 2 cameras were there.

Wright has been laying low ever since some of his controversial sermons surfaced, and his appearance Friday seemed to come as a surprise to the audience -- but they quickly showed their support.

Wright received a thunderous welcome. The audience had no idea the man at the center of a national political firestorm for the past three weeks was even coming to their church.

Revvum "Ridin' Dirty" Wright also gave the benediction.

I was at the Nightfly & the Ladybug's wedding, (if you weren't there you missed out.) being Sunday, the Eucharist was offered. As a non-Catholic it would have been against the teachings of the Fly's church and of my own to receive it. Heck, I can't even spell "transubstan-whatever".

Forget the irony that this non-Catholic probably agrees with B16 more than the pastor of this church does. The tragedy of squishy church isn't as much what they do but what they don't do. The Phillipian jailer asked Paul, "What must I do to be saved?" Today there are many folks out there asking that same question. And too many churches not giving an answer.

If Archbishop Rowan caved to Isamists..

...then this is an avalanche.

Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the "Christian Ramadan" in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.

The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation. "The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent," said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.

So is the Dutch Catholic Church going Bill Hybels seeker friendly? Marketing isn't the issue. Teach the truth, and people who want to hear the truth will come to you.

Why is Joel Osteen...

...all of a sudden ignorant of Mormonism?

More specifically, Osteen was asked about the Mormon faith, and whether a Mormon could be classified as "a true Christian."

"In my mind they are," Osteen said. "Mitt Romney has said that he believes in Christ as his Savior, and that's what I believe. I'm not the one to judge the little details of [Romney's religion], so I believe [Mormons are Christians] and Mitt Romney seems like a man of character and integrity to me and I don't think anything would stop me from voting for him if that's what I felt like."

When asked about specifics of the Mormon faith, such as the gold tablets allegedly found by Joseph Smith with the so-called "new revelation" from God, and the belief that humans can become gods, Osteen said he did not know enough about the religion's beliefs to comment.

"I certainly can't say that I agree with everything that I've heard about it," the Houston pastor responded. "But from what I've heard from Mitt, when he says that Christ is his Savior, to me that's a common bond."

This guy preaches to 47,000 people every Sunday, could he be that admittedly ignorant?

Or maybe his memory is bad because a Mormon publisher is selling his book!

Jesus: Where your treasure is, your heart is also.

Deep Throat: Follow the money.

A Squishy Catholic Church?

I thought only squishy churches gave up their pulpits to unbelievers.

A packed house welcomed Minister Louis Farrakhan to St. Sabina Catholic Church on Friday night with a standing ovation and cheers for his health.

The 74-year-old provocative Nation of Islam leader, who has endured a series of health setbacks, didn't speak from the Quran but from the Bible.

"Even though I am a Muslim -- I don't apologize for that -- I'm also a Christian," he told the crowd at 1210 W. 78th Pl. "Islam considers the Bible a sacred book."

"A good Muslim is a Christian, and a good Christian is a Muslim," he added later, stressing the common aspects of the faiths. "Whenever Christ's name is mentioned, I feel at home."

Farrakhan flashed a wide smile as he entered the sanctuary alongside his friend, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of the church.

A few months ago, Pfleger was at Farrakhan's bedside as he recovered from surgery. Farrakhan promised to speak at the church, as he has done many times before. (emphasis by the Spider)

"Tonight, we're celebrating a healed man," said Pfleger, who called Farrakhan "one of the most prophetic voices of our times."

Whose speaking next Sunday? Jim McGreevy? Mitt Romney? Joe Redner? Me? I have no problem with extending comfort to Calypso Louie, but what is this obsession with offering up the pulpit to unbelievers? Unbelievers who spout Pferdkaese?

On Sundays in my church, an evangelical guy is at the pulpit teaching evangelical doctrine. I would assume in a Catholic Church on Sunday a Catholic guy is at the pulpit teaching Catholic doctrine and not some nutjob from the Nation of Islam. What if some guy walks into that church the Sunday Calypso Louie is speaking and hears this "a good Christian is a good Muslim" crap? What conclusions would he draw?

Fly, Pope Benedict needs to crack down on this before the American Church goes Episcopalian. Or you guys will have openly gay bishops quicker than you can say Gene Robinson.

Correction: Calypso Louie was speaking on a Friday night, not Sunday - but still!

The Church of the Squishy Marshmallow turns 100

If readers are wondering what exactly a "Church of the Squishy Marshmallow " is, Joseph Loconte of the Wall Street Journal has it pegged.

It isn't the social activism that makes a church squishy. It's that the social gospel is not the Gospel:

Surely there is much in the tradition for which to be grateful. Yet even a brisk reading of Rauschenbusch's work suggests crippling weaknesses, at least from the standpoint of faith. We're told that the larger social message of Jesus' teaching--especially his concern for the poor--was sidelined by the cultural assumptions of his followers. The culprits: the doctrine of sin and the "crude and misleading" idea of a coming apocalypse. Generations of believers wrongly came to regard earthly life as a snare and turned inward for personal salvation. "Such a conception of present life and future destiny," Rauschenbusch wrote chidingly, "offered no motive for an ennobling transformation of the present life."

And:

It is hard to see, though, how Rauschenbusch's theology could be called Christian in any meaningful sense of the term. It required no repentance or atonement and carried no fear of judgment or bracing hope of eternal life. He famously denied the doctrine of Christ's Second Coming--with its promise of perfect justice and enduring mercy. The result was a flattened view of the human condition. "It is not possible honestly to confess that Jesus is the Christ of culture," Niehbur wrote in "Christ and Culture" (1951), "unless one can confess much more than this."

The Christian confession of faith, by itself, offers no guarantee that either individuals or societies will be transformed. But, for believers, not even the smallest steps forward can be taken without it.

This is why churches have U2-charest, where Bono music is played and the focus is on starvation in Africa. They have six days to work on the ills of the world, but on the seventh they profane the Lord's Supper ("Do this in remembrance of Darfur?') by ignoring Him. This is why the "Christian" Peacekeepers proudly proclaim that they do not proselytize: They wet themselves over Abu Graib, but don't give a rat's toenail that the place these folks without Christ are going will make Abu Graib look like Club Med.

Read this carefully before you reply. My beef with squishy churches is not the activism; it's that they've become the DNC with holidays and denied the Gospel.

I'll see your gay priest

....and raise you a Nigerian bishop.

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is confronting Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola head-on with a new demand that he not install Truro Church rector Martyn Minns as head of a parallel denomination this coming weekend. At the ceremony, scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Hylton Memorial Chapel in Woodbridge, Archbishop Akinola and four other Nigerian bishops will make Bishop Minns, 64, the head of the Fairfax-based Convocation of Anglicans in North America. He has headed CANA, in addition to pastoring the 2,300-member Truro, since he was consecrated as a bishop Aug. 20 in Abuja, Nigeria.

What's happening is that 11 Episcopal Churches in Virginia are breaking away from the American Church and joining an Anglican convocation headed by Bishop Akinola. These churches left the American Episcopal Church because of the abandonment of God's Word including acts of squishiness like ordaining gay bishops (and gay ex-governors as priests).

BTW, Bishop Akinola is no stranger to standing up for Biblical truth.

Estimated prophecy

From the comments to your front page. Teflon, three days ago:

The curious thing about the Episcopal church of our generation is not that it ordains gays, but that it ordains atheists. Why not just become a Unitarian and have done with it?

And, the un-curious here and now:

Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, who resigned and divorced his wife after announcing he was gay in 2004, now reportedly wants to become an Episcopal priest.

McGreevey, who was raised Roman Catholic, became an Episcopalian this past Sunday at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan, according to its vicar, the Reverend Kevin Bean.

Of course, he could just be going for his M.Div. without ordination. The major obstacle is not his orientation, as Tef noted; in fact, it's not even my primary question about it. The real issue lies in St. Paul's instructions to Timothy (1 Tim 3:4-9) on the qualifications for the office.

He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

It's not like James McGreevey is an obscure fellow, either. It's hard not to notice that he abandoned a second wife and family, failed in his elected office, resigned amid a cloud of scandal, wrote a book to profit off of the whole mess - and then entered the seminary pretty much the same day he entered the church. He's the anti-Timothy.

That sound you hear is St. Paul up in the yonder slapping his forehead V-8 style. He wrote this for a reason, and it wasn't to be a big meanie who condemns instead of forgives, either. The above passage is not just a leader giving orders, but a description of reality. He isn't just telling Timothy "do it my way," but describing for him what a good presbyter will be. Willfully ignoring the description is nothing more than deciding that you don't want good presbyters in your church. But if you want a healthy church that can actually minister to people who need it most, why wouldn't you seek out people who fit the description Paul gave Timothy?

I am far from saying that the guy ought to report to the outer darkness for wailing and gnashing of teeth; on the contrary, he and I are both in need of the Savior - and of a church willing to do the hard things on our behalf. Giving McGreevey a collar does neither his congregants nor he himself any good. (As one of the sheep of His flock, I really want a shepherd who can fight off wolves, and not a fellow sheep who'll get eaten alive. It does neither of us any good.)

(It is fair at this point to note that in my own church, we have occasionally had actual wolves in shepherd's clothing. This is, if nothing else, proof of the dangers of ignoring 1 Timothy 3.)

Meet the new false, same as the old false

John Spong, currently a High Potentate in the Church of the Squishy Marshmallow, was once the archbishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, as I recall... on occasion, he and then-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick (now a Cardinal in DC) would throw down about God (or the lack thereof) in the local press. It was always entertaining. And now, the fun continues.

Mr. Spong has a question to consider. If Jesus was really all about the nonjudgment, why was He always doing things that presupposed, not only a judgment, but one against us? Even saying "His love transcended judgment" starts with the concept of something that requires transcending. His words and acts made it painfully clear that this wasn't something we could do on our own. His big thing is forgiving sins, which seems rather pointless if there are no such things; doubly so if He knew all this while yelling at other people for their hypocrisy.

Spong also says that Jesus can't be the Christ, the Son of the living God, because it's fantastic and unlikely. People don't do miracles today like He did then, therefore He didn't do them either. This eventually becomes circular: there are no such thing as miracles, therefore Jesus didn't do miracles, therefore he wasn't God, therefore there is no such thing as miracles...

I think the truth is much more simple: He was the Christ. That is, by definition, undeniably fantastic and unlikely, an utterly unique event. In that case, it becomes the most likely thing in the world that He should do unlikely things. It's one of the things the apostles were always noticing in the Gospels: "What manner of man is this, that the wind and the waves obey him?" His actions were no less incredible to them in person than they are to us on testimony. In the end, their only possible conclusion was that this was the real thing - the only Real Thing there ever was, next to which their own lives and freedom were like straw in the fire.

Instead, Spong asks me to believe in a far more fantastic and unlikely Jesus than the one the Gospels called the Christ, the Son of the living God; one whose actions make no sense apart from His divinity and His mission. It's only in His miraculousness that He is of any help to us; if He isn't the God of Creation, his love wouldn't transcend jack squat.

Skeptics and scoffers were doing this sort of thing to His face, and have kept it up ever since then, so this "new" book is just as old as the Gospel. Spong's Jesus for the 21st century is the same one he was talking about forty years ago; and soon enough it will be the 22nd century, and He will want revising. All such revisions are as stale as the tomb He left behind on Easter.

U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" has sounder theology than Spong's watery skepticism. It explains why the rank-and-file ECUSA can't stand the beats, and are asking for the check in record numbers.

(via Molten Thought, whose presence on the sidebar, long overdue, is now secure)

The Bleat goes on

Lileks rules again.

I swear, when some people hear that civilization is over, a small voice deep in the dark cranny of their heart surely whispers: good.

As Chesterton wrote much longer ago, there's a healthy pessimism, and an unhealthy - the healthy pessimism serves to remind us that we can fall short of ideals, so that we will work harder to achieve them. An unhealthy pessimism, far from saying how things can go wrong, insists that we will inevitably fail, that the ideals weren't worth aspiring to in the first place. As Chesterton puts it, the dishonest pessimist says, "I'm sorry to say that we are ruined," but he's lying - he's actually not sorry at all.

I was thinking of both of those things, while also thinking of a different Chesterton book that I'm looking forward to re-reading over the next few weeks, The Everlasting Man. His premise there is simple: that the best way to understand something is either to be a part of it, or else to be so far away from it that you have perspective and objectivity. And in a sense, that runs together in my mind with his earlier observation of the optimist and the pessimist. They aren't parallels - together they form sort of a philosophical Punnett square.

Both the optimist and the pessimist (honest variety) have their home within a country or a church, and they both also have a place in the distance. The particpating of each type, we've already been introduced to: working together to improve and enjoy the thing they both love. The observational optimist (to use a clunky phrase) thinks the best of those distant folks, finds friends across all sorts of sectarian and cultural lines, and generally lives and lets live. The observational pessimist finds all sorts of analogues in the flaws and shortcomings of his own set and in others. But in finding the parallels, each one in his way begins to think that there may be something to that distant group that deserves some respect.

Now it gets a little trickier. You can tell by the date of the Bleat that this is something I've been thinking at for a while, and I'm not sure I've got it. I think that Lileks is observing pessimism gone to seed - but I also think that, once it does, the fruit of it is that a person within a group, the participants from before, starts to sound as if he really wants to leave it. Worse, he usually never gets so far out of it as to be able to regain the perspective of the pure observers. Chesterton describes it as a constant state of reaction. The dishonest pessimist, in the end, becomes a traitor to himself much more than a traitor to his previous affiliations. He is so concerned with refuting, confronting, and denouncing that he can truly be said to be controlled by his rejected points of view. Nothing seems worth saying unless it can somehow be twisted to include a dig at his former mates. Far from being free of them, he's trapped himself in their shadow.

So there's that, all of which seems perfectly rational and plain.

What seems equally plain to me is that optimism can also go to seed, and spoil a soul just as badly. I'm not talking about the "Pollyanna" phenomenon, as if good cheer and hope were themselves to blame. I'm talking about an optimism untempered by any discretion or sound judgment. People talk about shades of grey in morality; the dishonest optimist sees only shades of white. Every failing of the soul becomes excused instead of absolved, by labelling it an illness, or bad upbringing, or circumstances, or anything and everything other than the free will of the soul in question. It's a symptom of an intellect that has long since decided to let mere moods do all the thinking.

Another effect is that any concrete and observable difference becomes inadmissible to the dishonest optimist. All things are equal - meaning equally good. All ideas are equal - meaning equally valid. The only thing they have to reject is rejection itself. And of course in doing that no evil or outrage is rejectable. For all his tsking of others over their "intolerance" and "closed-minded behavior," he doesn't actually go on to say that he is really in the right and they are really in the wrong, but only that they aren't being constructive. "It's inappropriate at this time," implying that it would be quite appropriate later. And for all his talk about how equally good and valid all things are, he does an incredible amount of apologizing to people. In this broad-minded view, both imaginary and real grievances are equally deserving of his self-abasement; that he personally has nothing to do with it and couldn't remedy the problem in any way makes no odds. (And if he was at fault, and could fix it? Well, all the better for his ego that he's accidentally correct - but you'll notice that he usually just stops at the apology, and thus in the one area he can actually help, he does nothing of much value.)

This dishonest optimism is what makes one a "squishy marshmallow." It's not a Pollyanna attitude. Many dishonest optimists are in fact depressing individuals: perpetually sad over everything that's wrong with the world, but unable to see anything that's right; lacking the courage to choose any concrete response to either good or evil, and self-blinded to the differences between. They too get trapped in the twilight, too close to their former home to miss it and too far away to see it properly.

But for all that, they have one advantage over the dishonest pessimists. The pessimists are constantly waiting for something that really isn't going to happen: in fact, something that may never have happened in all of history. He's waiting not just for the fall of one particular civilization, which occurs regularly, but the end of civilization itself. And that is really a losing proposition. Humanity has been up against it far tougher than it is today - for centuries there were far fewer people around than now, and with far less natural knowledge. A plague would wipe out a quarter of an entire continent, in a world that could far less easily spare them; and everyone lived shorter lives. If there was famine or conquest, it wasn't simply a matter of going to Costco, or hopping the next plane to Canada (as they always seem to be promising to do).

And yet in all of that, in a tougher and nastier world, people were civilized. They cared about right conduct and working hard. They had a culture and laws and shared activities. They wondered about their gods and their world. Pretty much as soon as man had enough fellows to have a society, they organized. And sooner or later, independently of each other as far as I can tell, these enclaves of man began to tell, not only their histories, but their legends. They developed language, and instantly turned it into poetry. They wrote in pictures, but also drew them. They left behind pottery bowls and pottery statues.

One could say that of course civilized people do those things, but what of before? And one would probably be correct. There may have been a before. In that case, the whole idea of civilization is even more of a miracle. Mankind give birth to civilization at the first opportunity. Moreover, whenever a civilization does perish, the surivors, far from seeing it as proof of the folly of society, immediately go about giving birth to a new one to take its place.**

In fact, it reminds me of an argument a relative made to me once, that man wasn't any better than other animals, and in fact a darn sight worse. "If we lost everything today," he said, "had no guns, no bows and arrows, no civilization or progress whatsoever - what do you think would happen to mankind?" I thought for a second and said, "The same thing that happened the first time we had none of those things - we'd invent every last one of them." The animals had their shot at us when all of that was utterly unknown, and they utterly failed.

And really, if we were no better than they, why did we alone of all the animals have the idea that, the first thing we need is to be civilized? Because it was our only defense against being eaten? Possibly. But that leaves no reason to keep going after that. Why not stop at the level of a pride of lions, or a troop of baboons, or a herd of elephants? Why not gang up in a hive like insects? I think that it runs deeper than mere survival value. The fact is, it wasn't enough merely to survive. That alone isn't civilization. Mankind wanted more. It wanted to pass itself on, not only physically with children, but culturally. Man has a mind, and wanted to pass on the life of the mind in perpetuity - in culture and religion and law and custom. And when all of those things break down utterly under barbaric regimes such as Nazism, you find that, more than scraps of food or clothes, people cling most desperately to scraps of civilization. There are simply too many instances of sacrifice, tenderness, and creativity under duress to be freaks of individuality. It is an essential trait of man.

So, the dishonest pessimist, in the long run, is bitterly waiting for mankind to stop being human. There are certainly enough brutalities and faults to give them a sense of perverse hope, too. But it is those things that are the freaks. They are common, but they are unnatural. In the account of my faith, they are damage to the integrity and dignity of man, inflicted in the Fall, and thankfully repairable in anyone who wishes to remain in the family of man. Those who don't? The common term for them is psychopath - human ability, intellect, and will, utterly divorced from the thirst for civilization that makes someone human. The pessimist who says "good" to that - to a world completely occupied by brutal homunculi - is not only a liar, but a fool. And his punishment, as Chesterton foresaw, is to be forever in the company of the squishy marshmallows they so despise - one loves all the paths, and the other hates all the paths, so neither of them goes anywhere worth being.

** This is, in fact, a main point of The Everlasting Man; cooking up this post and deciding to read the book again started working hand-in-hand. But I haven't re-read it yet, and when I do, I fear I may find that I remembered it wrong. Well, that's what God invented the comments for.

The Holy Shamoley

Because, really, there's little else holy about it. From Teflon of Molten Thought*, a cautionary tale about -Ianity without Christ (and a much better title than the one you see here).

Every time I share a tale about something like this, I'm met with a warning "not to judge." In the sense that I am forbidden to say that I'm going to heaven and any of these folks aren't - absolutely. But in the sense that of the two of us, one may be getting more help - of course I can. In fact, I have to, in order to put myself in the position to get as much help as I can toward heaven, because Word has it that it's not easy to get there. Simple, yes; blessedly simple. It's simple to fly, too, as Douglas Adams reminds us: Throw yourself at the ground and miss. That doesn't make success any easier.

In this case, the trouble isn't really with any one thing. Praising God with contemporary song? Not bad in itself; even done badly (as it often is) it can be a help to some people. A down-to-earth pastor**? Good for him. Friendly milling about? My own Roman Catholic parish has the friendly milling down perfectly.

Now, add them all together, and one gets the impression that the whole affair lacks focus; that following Jesus involves nothing in the way of sacrifice or penitence or even basic solemnity. Not all solemn things are unhappy, you know. The key in Teflon's post is here: "The choir director was allowed to exalt God one more time with a hymn..."

Eureka. If you want to know what worship is about, that's it: we exalt the Lord our God. People don't like to do that, which is why churches in general have traditionally been solemn and serious places; to remind us visibly of the importance of being a congregation that belongs to Christ. Anyone will tell you that the lesson we hate most is usually the one we need to keep coming back to - in this case, every Sunday at least. We don't do this to make Him like us, but to express our gratitude that He already loved us, and died for us while we were yet His enemies.

It's certainly possible that a person at home in the First Reformed Comfy Couch for Believers is holier than I am. (To quote CS Lewis, for his sake I hope he is.) But it's possibly certain that this atmosphere is an obstacle to the faith, because it spits out the hard bits and leaves behind the mush. It's quite easy to come to think of Jesus as a buddy and thus as a helpful extra or a refined taste for well-rounded people, rather than as the Savior of the world. Or to put it another way - if you're really convinced that mankind is fallen and needs to be ransomed from evil, who would you trust to be capable of it: hand-holding, head-tilting Jesus, or table-flipping, storm-rebuking Jesus?

To go further, I don't think that the hand-holding Jesus makes much sense at all without the table-flipping. There's been no shortage of people willing to pat us on the head and say, "There, there, it's OK and so are you." There is a decided shortage of people willing to smack us on the rumpus and say, "It's not OK, but you can still do it if you're willing to get back up and keep going." Comforting only makes sense if one is first un-comfortable.

As the Man himself said, Test the spirits to know if they are true - and in this test we see that exclusive hand-holding is a loser. We do this stuff all the time to our kids nowadays. They can't play overly physical sports because someone may fall down go boom. They can't keep score because losing is disappointing and sad. They can't play pickup games and thus they never learn how to work out their own problems. They can't play cowboys and indians because it's culturally mean, nor cops and robbers because guns are wrong, whether or not it's the robber shooting children or the cops shooting the robbers to stop them.

Sure, kids did feel bad when they lost, and when the winners rubbed their noses in it. But the lesson came when strong role models told them not to do that if they won the next time, and taught them how to honestly deal with disappointment. And when they did win, it was sweeter because it was earned honestly, and not given to them in the spirit of "fairness." (In fact, in this sense "fairness" is dishonest, because it unfairly confers a reward on failure and slacking, making them equal to success and diligence.) The alternative is to never be able to cope with failure, making one whiny and miserable all one's life.

Losing is, in fact, a true life lesson - one learns that others are superior in all sorts of skills and contests, and one can (given healthy guidance) remember to be happy for what one actually is, instead of resenting what one is not, and indulging a grievance against the world for exceeding one's own capacity. Think of the mess if everything was like that - a Vonnegutian nightmare where the best medicine, symphonies, cuisine, engineering, athletics, etc. were no better than what any one average person could accomplish on their own. It would be a terrible world if nobody in it could sing or cook or paint better than I could. We want and need people to be vastly better than us in some areas, and it's better for all concerned if neither we nor they were made to feel guilty about it.

So what does this have to do with church? Simply put, what people are trying to do to all of us, they've first tried to do to Christ - He is infinitely better than every last one of us in the one thing that really matters - He is perfect, sinless, God-made-man. If we do not have ANY acknowledgement of this, then the news that He is also our friend loses all its impact. The Methodists that Teflon describes, in focusing exclusively on the friend part of things, lose the power of that revelation. God Incarnate cares and decided to use His might to free us from bondage; in fact, the only possible way that it could work is if He is in fact the Son of God as well as the Son of Man. Lose that grandeur, and you lose everything else. Fail to come to grips with our own failure, through sin, and one can scarcely grasp the Good News that even this can be remedied. Lent comes before Easter for a reason.

*I have GOT to get these guys onto the sidebar before too much longer.
** Pastor "Honky Cat." Heheheheheheh.