Currently American Beauty By Grateful Dead Truckin' see related

When the change of seasons came at the end of summer, it hit me rather hard. Harder than it ever has in recent memory. And whilst this is probably due to a number of reasons, the one I can think of as having the most to do with it is air conditioning.

You see, last winter, my previous car – a 1999 Honda Civic – was destroyed in a car accident that was not my fault. But the accident itself was so curiously crafted by fate that had any officer seen the results thereof (a smashed hood on my car and a scraped bumper on hers) he would immediately have assigned fault to me.

So the woman who had charged across three lanes of traffic at a forty-five degree angle saw that she had perhaps done something wrong and agreed to let me pay her the small sum of money to cover the minor repairs on her bumper in lieu of waiting for a policeman to arrive. Incidentally, as fate would also have it, she worked across the street from me, and so gave me a ride to my office and I had the car towed to my mechanic.

My mechanic is one of those guys who almost always can make something work for very little money. His invoice totals are always lower than his estimates, and he is known as one of the few completely honest mechanics in town. He runs a tight ship; his reputation is pristine. My throat dropped into my stomach when I heard him hesitate and then calmly tell me in his deep, southern voice, “David, it’s ugly.”

These are not the kind of words that Billy normally said. And if he did, things were bad. So I sold him the car for $450 for salvage and went to buy a new car of my own. And since I was not going to be getting an insurance cheque for this, the new car would have to come completely out of our savings. Not wanting to spend any more than I absolutely had to, I jumped on Craig’s List and sought out the lowest of the low-cost, early-model cars.

Finally, I stumbled upon a perfect beauty: the quintessential model for A‑B transportation. Nothing could outdo this car in sheer simplicity. The ride was a 1987 Honda CRX, owned and tweaked for an entire year by a Kampuchean mechanic-to-be who was a good bit younger than the car itself. It had no radio, no rear wiper, no back seats, and most importantly, no air conditioning.

None of that bothered me though because this car drove. And man, did it drive. The kid who owned it had turned this little machine into a low-flying hot-rod, and as far as I could tell, this car was a dream come true. So inasmuch as it was the beginning of a new era, it was just as much the end of the old.

No more radio.

No more CDs in the car.

No more smooth rides with cruise control.

And no more A/C.

Throughout the rest of the winter and springtime, this posed no problem, but when summer came upon us, my tune changed a little. I did not mind the lack of music. I used the time driving to think or to pray. The switch back to a 5-speed was a welcome change as well: you know, feeling more connected to the road and all. The lack of air conditioning had me squirming for a bit, though.

But it did not take long before my body was acclimated to the new weather patterns. I rode everywhere with my windows down, and the sunroof open. I buzzed all my hair off, and left work with my gym clothes already on so that I would not dirty my office clothes. And after a while, I started to enjoy the summertime.

No matter how early I left in the morning, the air was always humid and warm. Even leaving the house at six with the sun still down, still the air was still warm when I would leave. I got used to this, and planned for it. Indeed, it had become a part of my internal programming.

And then it happened. It was not just sooner than I expected, it was also more dramatic.

I gathered my lunch, my gym bag, stepped over to the door, blessed myself with holy water, and opened the door and stepped into the black morning. And I shivered. After four months of warm mornings with short-sleeved shirts, I did not ever give a thought that maybe summer might come to an end. But it did. It ended, and it ended fast.

Being of strong European stock, I actually enjoy cooler weather more than I enjoy warmer weather. But I was not upset by the cool air on my face; I was shocked into the realisation that the summer was over, and the change of season, whilst being more than welcome in terms of temperature, brought me face-to-face with my own mortality.

I am now thirty years of age, which means that if I am fortunate, in ten years my life will be more than half-way over.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

Ten years ago, I was driving around Atlanta with my friends watching movies, studying all through the wee hours of the morning at Waffle House, going to shows, trying to make it through advanced math, and most importantly, trying to figure out the best ways to purchase and store up large quantities of cigarettes and alcohol. I blink my eyes and suddenly I am married with five children, eight years engineering experience, and I am a Catholic. Does anybody care to tell me what happened? I am afraid that when I blink again, my children will all be married, I will be trying to get my pension payments, and I will still be stubbornly avoiding the doctor.

A new season is here. The old one has ended. So too my season here with this blog is ended. Xanga was kind of a cool place, for a little while. I have made many friends here. I love all the people with whom I interact here. I am thankful to God for the wonderful relationships I now have thanks to this little site. I think specifically of all my Catholic friends who have come here and have helped me defend the faith, my Protestant brothers with whom I have shared so many good discussions, and even those Orthodox people that continue to confound me.

For a while, Xanga was it. You had Paleocrat and Konfederado (Mr_Orthodox! ha, those were the days!), Kriegerwulff and Daveyh8, Br. Dominic and Ebrulf, Servitus, mister_jargon and on_bleeker_street,  vanwedgeworth, dasack, katieluther, tskerritt, anselm_the_presbyterian, and others. There was a time when this place was magical. I am tempted to quote Hunter Thompson, but I will not. Wait, yes I will.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere.

There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right–that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense–we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high, and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the highwater mark--that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back. – Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Xanga truly was a magical place and as much as it pains me to say it, the magic is gone.

Xanga has spent so much time trying to make itself like a ghastly hybrid of Facebook, Myspace, and Blogspot, and frankly I just want a place to write. So I have found a new place for myself at davehodges.wordpress.com. Things will not be any different there; I still intend to write sporadically if I write at all. And I hope to stay in touch with many of you in the mean time. But the endless internet discussions are over. And I cannot stay here any longer. It just is not the same here any more, and I think the exodus that many of you have taken already is both the cause and effect of this loss of magic.

For all of those that left positive feedback and encouraged me to keep writing even when I thought it was a lost cause, I thank you. For all of those who left negative feedback and encouraged me to keep writing even when it was a lost cause, I thank you. And for all of you seekers who wanted nothing more than an explanation of what I believe, thank you for the interest. To all who are reading this now, you are mortal. You will die one day. And what matters after you are dead is not how much money you made, what kind of house you lived in, nor who liked you the most. What will matter is the state of your soul, and how you spent the years that God gave you. Ask yourself frequently, “Is what I am doing now helping me along my pathway to salvation, or hindering me?” Times and seasons come and go, and your life is but a vapour of air, it is gone as soon as it starts. I hope this thought stays with you as I leave here, and I hope that it goes with me wherever I go.

For those of you who knew me when this blog started, you know what I mean when I say, “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

Stay the course, keep the faith, and last but not least, Happy Truckin’.

Currently Reading How the Reformation Happened By Hilaire Belloc see related

preface

In many of my various discussions regarding the Roman Catholic Church, I end up arguing points with folks from all backgrounds, including everybody from the not-so-distant “Orthodox” to fundamentalist Baptist and everybody in between. Few of these people still hold to the original doctrines espoused by the so-called Reformers, but some do, and talking with them is always interesting. In one of my recent discussions, I came across a nice fellow who believed (along with the rest of the RPCNA) that the Pope is Antichrist, and more specifically, the man of sin represented in St. Paul’s second epistle to the Christians in Thessalonica. He posed a challenge for me, to wit: that I prove from Holy Writ alone that the Pope – or, the succession of Popes – is not the “man of sin” spoken of therein. This alone, he explained, was his reason for rejecting the Catholic Church. The following post is based on my response to his challenge.

Hic est antichristus qui negat Patrem et Filium

It must be said from the outset that I cannot prove to anybody that the Pope, or that all the collective bishops of Rome are not the singular “man of sin” mentioned in the Scriptures. The reason for this is the same reason that nobody can prove to me that he is (or they are), based on the Scriptures alone. One can offer his private opinion and I can offer mine, but at the end of the day, each man retains the prerogative of whom or what he will believe in terms of an interpretative scheme and why. Since I have no control over that, whether or not I have proven anything, always resides with the listener and with him alone. I might reverse the challenge and make my opponent “prove” that the Church that Jesus established was actually the many thousands of Protestant sects which would appear many hundreds of years later; at the end of the day, I would be the sole judge of whether or not he had proven this satisfactorily.

Secondly, proving that a singular Pope (the text does say “man” and not “men”) is the man of sin is not enough to disprove the claims of the Catholic Church since the Pope’s being Antichrist is certainly within the realm possibility. But more to the point, proving that the Pope is Antichrist is not enough, in itself, to demonstrate the claims of Protestantism. There are so many heretical sects (ones that even all mainstream Protestants would consider heretical) that are also in stark opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. The claim that the Pope is Antichrist could be accepted by Coptic Christians, Eastern Orthodox, Mohammedans, Mormons, Children of God, Swedenborgians, as well as many rural fringe charismatic sects.

Thirdly, there is a constant refrain that I hear regarding a great singular apostasy which is prophesied by St. Paul, and this apostasy is always accepted – prima facie – to be the corruption of the Roman Church. Yet history records hundreds of apostasies, all of which most Christians would also consider apostasies, to wit: Marcionism, Nestorianism, chiliasm, Donatism, Montanism, Eutychianism, &c. Demonstrating that an apostasy in fact took place does not prove de facto that “the apostasy” was that of the Roman Catholic Church. And the truth is that neither does it prove that Protestantism is the true religion. One must keep in mind that there are hundreds of current Restorationist Christian sects, all of which claim the exact same thing: that a great apostasy occurred within the Church, from which apostasy the Church would not recover for many centuries.

Saying that the Catholic Church began the apostasy is not enough to make the greater case – it must also be demonstrated that whatever sect you happen to hold is the true one. And there are thousands upon thousands of sects, all claiming to be the true restoration of the Church – the same Church which was destroyed or corrupted in the Roman Church. Let me name a few of them: Iglesia Ni Cristo, the Boston Church of Christ, the Church of God of Prophecy, the House of Yahweh, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, the Campellites and the Millerites, and Luz del Mundo. All of these sects make the exact same claims as the Reformed Protestant, yet possess completely different doctrinal standards. In the grand scheme of things, what is one more sect amongst so many? For me even to give weight to one particular brand of Restorationist Christianity, I then would have to evaluate every single sect that was ever born of men. Why? Because if the Church fell once, she can fall again, and the brand of Christianity that one accepts now may well undergo its very own apostasy down the road, requiring yet another Reformation, where everything previously thought to be true is shown actually to be false – based on the Bible alone, of course, or which ever books were decided still belong therein.

Specifically, what makes the claim of the Lutherans valid, but not that of the Mohammedans, Mormons, or Millerites? If one can entertain that the entire Church fell and nobody saw it happen, then I can maintain that any other particular sect did fell as well and then we would have to investigate the claims of every single Joe Schmoe who came along with yet a new reading of the Scriptures. And why would we have to do this? Precisely because we would believe in a Church that is capable of teaching error. There would be no pillar or bulwark of the truth – just we, alone in the desert with our Bibles, yet without anybody to tell us how to read them. This is, ultimately, the scenario being presented to me. All Protestants will vehemently deny it, but there really is no way out of this. If a Reformation can come along and undo everything before it – or even ninety per cent – then another Reformation can come along and undo everything that the first one did.

And now, given all the aforementioned caveats, I will attempt to deal with the text at hand. The claim is that St. Paul said that this Man of Sin would sit in the temple of God (i.e. the church). Yet just because the Pope sits in the Church does not automatically make him the culprit here. All Protestants – indeed, all men of Christian persuasion – can be said to “sit in the temple of God” as well.

Next, it is said that “he would claim to be God on earth.” Yet many, many men have made this foolish claim. And not many of these men who have made this claim have been Catholics, let alone the Pope. There is no such teaching of the Catholic Church that the Pope is God on earth. The teaching is that he is the Vicar of Christ, which is hardly the same thing. He in a very real sense fills the same office as the Old Testament prophet who would speak to kings and say, “Thus saith the Lord.” The prophet was not claiming to be God on earth, but he did indeed act as God’s mouthpiece on earth. God uses mouthpieces all the time. Sometimes they are asses, and sometimes they are angels. But they are all God’s mouthpieces without taking away from His ultimate Deity.

Finally, it is claimed that this man of sin – the Pope, as the theory goes – “leads the apostasy, a falling away from the truth within the church.” But there were numerous accounts of these kinds of things, as I said above – why single out the Catholic Church, especially when Protestants by and large accept many of the dogmas that were taught by the Popes and the Catholic Church – even after this apostasy supposedly took place?

The Scriptures tell us specifically what the teaching of Antichrist would be, and no Pope has ever taught what the Scripture says that Antichrist would teach, to wit: that Jesus is not the Christ, denying the Father and the Son (cf. I John II:xxii). If a culprit is to be found for this teaching, there are many people who did this in the early days of the Church, and I have already named a few of them.

The main problem with this theory is that when I ask when it is that the Bishop of Rome became Antichrist, nobody ever has a specific answer, yet St. Paul says that all this rumpus would happen after a specific revolt followed by a singular revelation of a singular man. Very well then, what was this specific revolt? In what year did it occur? Who was the singular man, and whose identity was revealed of which the holy text speaks? I ask this because these things cannot be identified, I find nothing about the argument even remotely compelling.

Now the first great revolt that happened after St. Paul wrote his letter to the church in Thessalonica was the Jewish-Roman war, a great revolt, after which Nero took power (a. d. 66). He ruthlessly persecuted Christians, had the temple destroyed, and most certainly did see himself as a deity on earth. His megalomania was even observed by the heathen of his day.

And yet even after all of this, there is nothing in the text to indicate that an office, or a succession of popes is the singular “man of sin”. If one wishes to tell me which Pope it was, or which it will be, then by all means let it be known.

However, identifying which Pope it was will only present a whole new set of problems for the argument.

Should one decide that the Pope in A.D. 66 (St. Peter) was Antichrist, then that would not look too appealing, especially since he wrote some of the books of the Bible. If you pick his successor, St. Linus, that does not bode well either, because St. Paul speaks well of St. Linus in his epistle to the Romans.

Suppose it be St. Xystus – and he did reign around the time of the revolt of Bar-Kochba – but actually he did not do anything particularly man-of-sin-like. All we know that he did was to codify certain parts of the Mass. For instance, he did say that all the people have to recite the Sanctus together after the Preface. But that is hardly the behaviour for which we are looking in order to identify Antichrist. Then there is Pope St. Victor (A.D. 180), but he stood up for the deity of Christ Himself, and actually excommunicated a priest for denying it. By St. John’s own criterion, he fails to make the status of Antichrist.

One might go all the way to Pope St. Sylvester (as many often do, supposing that his name was actually Constantine), but Sylvester does not come after a large revolt. In fact, he and Constantine were around when the Edict of Milan was passed, when Christianity was legalised. After that, there is not a great deal to happen revolt-wise for a great season.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention that nearly all Protestants (and especially the Reformed type) accept the Œcumenical Councils at least up through the fifth century as being binding for doctrinal orthodoxy. All this brings us pretty late in the game for this great apostasy to have started.

And yet, in the mean while, hundreds of real, bona fide, historically-recorded apostasies had already occurred, but I am to ignore those. No, not just ignore them, but I am to side with the Catholic Church and accept her rulings at those junctures against those heretics. The Church slowly moves along, condemns Arius and Mani and Donatus – all well and good – but then at some point everything changes. Some huge cataclysmic event happens (but nobody notices) and suddenly the Pope is Antichrist, the Catholic Church is full of errors, and all of this happens to occur whilst evading recorded history and without sparking schism. Or even discussion. It just happened. And then all the events that led up to it and resulted from it were just washed down the Memory Hole.

I am forever curious as to where all the Bible-believing Christians were when this change took place. Did they all just hop right along down the path of perdition behind the great Whore of Babylon?

None of it adds up. Even so, I am willing to hear the various theories on this. I just cannot see how this can make any sense when analysed with any depth whatsoever.

But at the end of the day, the most obvious thing that sticks out is that the Scriptures say “man of sin” and not “men of sin”. The desire to turn the word “man” into the word “men” has a specific name I learnt in my Protestant high school systematic theology class: eisegesis.

Currently Reading Analysis of Aircraft Structures (Cambridge Aerospace Series) By Bruce K. Donaldson see related

Rescindentes verbum Dei per traditionem vestram

The Paleocrat, my good friend, brother in Christ, and godfather of my youngest daughter, has been doing a series of posts on a highly revered twentieth century Protestant apologist, Cornelius van Til. You can find those posts on his website. For my many years as a Protestant, I always greatly respected Cornelius van Til and found him to have discovered some of the greatest defences of Christianity. Indeed, I still argue for the Christian faith based on the general principles that he formulated.

But one aspect of van Til’s apologetic to which I was never exposed was his specific set of arguments for Protestantism, over and against the Catholic Church. I did not know anything about these at all until my aforementioned acquaintance began doing a series on his discussions of the Catholic faith. It was then that my opinion of him dropped considerably. Not only was van Til’s scholarship incredibly poor, but what became apparent to me so clearly was his absolute inability to articulate the teachings of the Catholic faith in any intelligible way. It was as if he heard what Catholics believed from B. B. Warfield, who learnt about Catholicism from C. H. Spurgeon, who learnt about the Roman Church from Ellen G. White, &c.

I was somewhat disappointed. I used to think of van Til as a confused, but honest Christian apologist. Now, I hardly can consider him anything other than yet another example of Protestantism’s endless supply of ignorant revolutionaries. And amidst all his blunders about Catholicism, comes this massive whopper of a statement that the Catholic Church “knows of no absolute authority such as Protestantism has in its doctrine of Scripture.”

What?

It is so incredibly laughable that a Protestant like van Til could be so ignorant as to utter such nonsense. Has he never heard of the infallibility of the Church? The immutability of Catholic dogma? The universal jurisdiction of the Pope? The necessity of accepting the Church’s dogmatic definitions under the pain of mortal sin and the loss of eternal salvation? Has he seriously never encountered the authoritative statements coming from the Magisterium of the Holy Roman Church?

But suppose that maybe he was only trying to make a rhetorical statement. Maybe he is making a deeper statement about the unchangeable nature of Scripture and its unbending rule in contradistinction to his understanding of Catholic dogma which appears to him to be capricious and based on the whims of men – subject to all forms of change depending on all manner of circumstances. Indeed, maybe that is his point. But if we were to press this issue, what would we find?

Well, for one, we would see that giving Scripture alone this much authority does nothing to establish any sort of objective system of morality or dogma. As if this even needed to be stated, one man’s heresy is another man’s dogma, and they could both be looking at the exact same texts when coming to their conclusions.

In the beginning of any apologetic discussion, the more hard core Reformed Protestants will always try strongly to impress their opponent regarding the absolute authority of the Scriptures and how expansive and demanding it is. But at the end of a long discussion when the problems with this model are pressed, he usually ends up making the ridiculous claim that “the Church” is actually comprised of so many thousands of Protestant sects, and that none of them actually have the full truth regarding the teachings of Holy Writ. Indeed, when one accepts that none of these thousands of sects that all supposedly comprise the Church agree on what the Scriptures principally teach, he must then admit that one need not even interpret the Scriptures correctly for salvation.

Some great authority indeed! “The Scriptures are the only infallible rule!” the revolutionary shouts.

But at the end of the day, nobody cares about this infallible rule, because it does not matter what anybody thinks the Scriptures teach. Take the doctrine of Holy Baptism, which the Bible says is a basic, rudimentary doctrine of the Christian faith (cf. Hebrews VI:ii). Do you believe that you should baptise babies? Think they should wait until they are adults? Should you use the Trinitarian formula? Use only the name of the Lord Jesus? Should baptism be done by immersion or by sprinkling? Does baptism regenerate? Should you confess your sins committed before baptism? Is baptism necessary for salvation? Who can baptise validly, a minister only or a layman as well? What is the function of baptism in the life and salvation of a soul?

The kicker to this is that the answer to any of these questions could be whatever you want them to be and a Protestant will say, “No big deal.” So the Scriptures are the only infallible rule, but it does not matter what you think they actually say or mean. The only thing that matters is if you believe that the Scriptures are the only authority. This is tantamount to Parliament saying that every man may do whatever he wants as long as he believes his actions have been warranted by British law.

*              *                *

               defendant i stands before the bench between the officers of the court.

judge: Sir, you have been accused of robbing a pub at gunpoint. The law condemns such actions with severe penalties.

defendant i: I did no such thing. And I care not what penalties the law may have. I’m innocent of all such accusations. Besides, the law is just a human construct anyway.

judge: The court will hear the testimonies of th– What have you said about the law?

defendant i: I only was making a statement in passing, your Worship. I am innocent of the charges that have been brought against me.

judge: Your questioning of the law shall not go unpunished. At this point, I no longer care about the paltry robbery charges. If you were guilty, you would have to pay a stiff fine, but a denial of the absolute authority of the law is a capital offence.

defendant i: But I’ve committed no crime!

judge: Your rejection of the law as the only absolute authority is your crime. Off with his head!

               defendant i is escorted out by the officers of the court. defendant ii approaches the bench.

judge: Sir, you freely admitted to a constable that you murdered a man in cold blood.

defendant ii: Yes, your Worship, I did. But I believe that the law allows me to do so with immunity.

judge: Ah, yes. Well, you’ve a point, sire; I previously thought, based on your actions, that you rejected the law altogether. It seems that you do in fact affirm the authority of the law after all. You are free to go, good man.

defendant ii: God save the Queen.

*              *                *

It has always been somewhat of a stumper for me. The Protestant will say that he is not a Catholic and believes the Catholic Church to be a false Church because she teaches error, but then will go on tolerating the most absurd errors in the world from every Protestant sect not his own (and sometimes from his own as well) on the grounds that doctrines do not matter anyway, provided that they believe the Bible is the sole authority. Some authority indeed. The Word of God is nullified by their traditions.

Currently Reading The Mass of the Early Christians By Mike Aquilina see related

Nolite dare sanctum canibus neque mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos

I have not had much opportunity lately to write, nor have I had occasion to do so since we have mined out so many apologetic topics here. In fact, the myriads of equestrian corpses with post mortum blunt trauma wounds are stacked so high that it is likely to drive away all but the most determined apologist, Catholic or Protestant.

But recently, I have seen something come up more than once which really drives me to ire and is something I have decided to address. The broader topic is the Catholic practise of closed communion, something that has been practised in the Church since the earliest days. And in spite of the many objections often made by Protestants, the fact is that all but the tiniest minority of Protestants practise it. Protestants will not hesitate to bar Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mohammedans, &c. from their table. True, most Protestants would allow fellow Protestants to commune with them, but they all (with the exception of the extremely liberal Episcopalians) draw the line somewhere.

Nevertheless, these same Protestants, when confronted with the Catholic practise of closed communion, object vehemently, insisting that all Christians should be allowed to take the Sacred Host at a Catholic Mass. What is their reasoning? Most of them insist that we are all part of the same religion and therefore should all share the same Sacraments. Following this line of reasoning, all baptised peoples should be equally admitted at everybody’s version of the Eucharist, be they Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Catholic, Orthodox, &c.

But from the earliest days of the Church, there were many people who possessed valid baptisms who were denied the Catholic Sacraments for their unreconciled public sins or their association with hereticks or schismatics. The ancient teaching of One, Holy, Catholick, and Apostolick Church is foundational to understanding this. Not everybody who is baptised is automatically in the Church regardless of what he believes or does. And despite what the Protestant and Catholic false œcumenists say, the Catholic religion and the Protestant religion are not the same religion. As if this needed demonstration, here are a list of things that the few Protestants I have in mind most assuredly reject in the teachings of the Catholic Church:

• We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. [Unam Sanctam]
• We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful. [Fulgens Corona]
• We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable. [Pastor Æternus]
• There is one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation. In which there is the same priest and sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors. [Fourth Lateran Council]
• By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. [Constitution Munificentissimus Deus]
• An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints. [Catechism of the Catholic Church]

Now these doctrines are not mere side issues. These doctrines are central to salvation, dogma, truth, and the person of Christ. These are issues over which Catholics and Protestants disagree substantially and cannot be brushed aside as irrelevant or unimportant. One question immediately comes to mind. Why in the world would a Protestant who denies such things vociferously even want to have Sacraments from a religion who believed and taught all of these things, and taught that they must be believed for salvation?

One such Protestant, Jon Amos, writes:

I tend to think as charitably as possible of [Catholics]…to the extent that I try to forget that there are actually Catholics out there, like you, who zealously cling to the worst and most dangerous-to-body-and-soul of Catholic errors.

Of course, part of being a Catholic is believing what the Catholic Church teaches. If I wanted to be a Protestant, I would not have gone through the trouble of being reconciled to the Church. According to Mr. Amos, however, the only truly faithful Catholics are those who reject the Church’s teachings. For more on this, read his comment here.

Mr. Amos continues:

That said, my position is – and has been for some time – that Holy Communion is what it is, regardless of what Catholics say it is or believe it to be. And it’s for this reason that I receive without hesitation whenever I go to a Catholic Mass (rare as that may be). I know it’s against the rules, but the rules are against Jesus’s rules, so screw them. I also know that there are probably folks there (including even maybe the priest) who, like you, are wilfully committing idolatry, but that doesn’t make the Mass idolatry, just as an idolater performing Holy Baptism doesn't make the Baptism idolatry.

It is hardly even believable. This man obviously has little respect for the Catholic faith, less respect for Catholics who actually take their faith seriously, and finally, no respect for the laws of the Church. Now I ask you, why would any such soul who had so much scorn for the Catholic Church want anything to do with the Catholic Mass? Let us suppose that Jon Amos is correct and that the Catholic Church teaches bad and dangerous “body-and-soul” heresies, and that Catholics are idolaters as he believes. Where does Jesus ever say that you should involve yourself in the rituals of idolatrous hereticks?

He does not believe what the Catholic Church teaches, neither about herself, nor about the Sacraments, nor about salvation, nor about anything. Yet he insists that the Catholic Mass is “Jesus’ meal” and that both he and every other soul on the planet are entitled to eat it. Why does he even think it is the same religion as his? On a side note, I wonder why he just does not become Catholic if the “faithful” Catholics reject the Church’s teachings? Of course, I know why – he does not believe the teachings of the Church and obviously acknowledges the folly of joining a religion with which you do not agree. So why he continues to insist that the Catholic Church is the same religion as his is beyond me. By his own words, they are not even close.

If my church is celebrating the meal that Jesus instituted for His whole church and you can’t receive with us, our divisions are being deepened, not healed. Our Lord has given us this wonderful sacrament - a meal that is (among many other things) powerfully, mysteriously unifying, but, no, we know better than Him. What a shame. If it's Jesus’ meal for all of His people, and if we recognize one another as brethren, we must be able to commune together.

This is what continues to baffle me. The Catholics do not think that you are part of His people, and historically Protestants have denied that Catholics are part of His people. There is one tiny minority here, a veritable church-of-one that has asserted his own authority in all these matters, declaring that what he believes and only what he believes are “Jesus’ rules” and that all others are guilty of dividing the Church.

What the Catholics think of the Sacrament is extremely different from what he thinks it is, yet he continues to insist that they are really the same. And amidst all this inane double-talk is the absurd claim that everything he is espousing is really Jesus’ teaching.

Yet Mr. Amos insists, against every rational cue:

…if the priest won’t serve me, I’ll go get in another line, mumbling to myself, “Bullshit. This is not your table, man. This is Jesus’ table.”

One thing here is for sure: it is not your table either, Mr. Amos. The priest who denies you the Sacred Host is merely being faithful to his bishops and to his Church. By your theft of the Host, you are not being faithful to anyone or anything other than your own precepts, which have no place in the history of the Church and no place in Catholic theology.

I do not expect you to become Catholic, or to change your position on the Church, or anything else. But if the Catholic Church does not allow you to receive her Sacraments because you are not Catholic, the absolute very least you could do is show some decency and some respect for the Church. Your ecclesial community probably does not allow its own share of things in its liturgy. I would never dream of showing up to disrupt your worship in any way, or do things contrary to what your sect allows. I may not agree with anything which your sect does, but interfering with another person’s religion is just rude.

Stealing the hosts may make you a progressive in your own mind, but it does nothing to further Church unity. If you want unity in the Church, pray for unity and encourage your bishops to seek dialogue with the Catholic Church. Please do not profane Catholic Sacraments as a means to unity. There are legitimate means to promote unity amongst Christians. This is not one of them.

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Preface

I originally hesitated to write this post because the subject of the post is so sensitive and the one to whom I am responding in this post is a man I love and cherish very much, my father-in-law, Rev. Steve Schlissel from New York. If he does decide to read this, he should know that this post is written by somebody who not only loves him dearly, but admires him and looks up to him for many of his character traits. So whilst nothing is intended to be given or taken personally, it is inevitable that some may see it this way. Nevertheless, I write this with a spirit of charity and not hostility. I do disagree with him vehemently, but that should say nothing of my opinion of him personally.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventri tui, Jesus

In a recent post on his blog, Rev. Schlissel writes at length about the Roman Catholic “idolatry” of Mary. He asserts that if Mary were to be included in the Godhead – a “Quadrinity” he calls it – that nothing in all of Roman Catholic faith or practise would change. Either he is grossly ignorant of the actual practise of the Church, or this is simply inflated rhetoric. I cannot imagine him to be so ignorant of Catholic worship on this matter, so I will assume that it is just rhetoric. And as a rhetorical device, it conveys that he thinks that we honour Mary too much, and that is understandable from his perspective, but for those who actually are ignorant of Catholic practise, there are some things they ought to know.

The Mass, which is the highest form of worship for Catholic Christians, has only one object: the Holy Trinity. In the Novus Ordo Missæ, Mary is mentioned only twice: in the Confiteor (along with a list of other saints and apostles) and in the Nicene Creed. Surely nobody could object to those things. Even in the Traditional Latin Mass, Mary is mentioned only six times, once in the Nicene Creed, and all other five times she is listed with groups of other saints. She is absent from the Roman Canon, absent from any invocation of the Holy Trinity, and absent from the Eucharistic liturgy altogether.

So to say that nothing would change if she were part of the “Quadrinity” is utter nonsense. It would change so much of the Catholic practise that I cannot even imagine where to start. Even the Rosary would have to change since no longer would we be asking for Mary’s intercessions, but rather praying the “Our Mother”.

His claim is that Catholics worship Mary, and in a sense this is absolutely correct. There is a sense in which it is not correct, but that does not take away from the fact that there is a sense in which it is. The word worship means simply to render to that which is worthy. King David was worshipped by one of his subjects in this passage from the Bible:

And going out he worshipped the king, bowing with his face to the earth, and said: Wherefore is my lord the king come to his servant? And David said to him: To buy the thrashing floor of thee, and build an altar to the Lord, that the plague, which rageth among the people, may cease. (II Kings XXIV:xxi)

Are we to understand that this man idolised David or merely that he rendered the honour which was due to him? Clearly the latter is the case. The virtuous woman is to be praised (Proverbs XXXI:xxx), and what woman on earth possessed as much virtue as the Mother of God? Is it not fitting then, to worship her the same way that Gabriel did when he saw her and called her blessed amongst women?

Something here ought to be said about the Protestant’s understanding of worship. A Protestant accuses a Catholic of idolatry because we honour Mary in the same way that they honour God. Why is this? It is because for the Protestant, his highest form of worship involves sitting on his posterior for two hours whilst a man takes centre stage, and talks about his views of the Bible for seventy-five minutes, followed by a song or two and maybe the passing of a collection plate. And that is it. The Protestant will have no problem telling you that he has no altar, no sacrifice, no incense, no nothing. Just a long time of listening to a man in a business suit talk about his opinions. And that is their highest form of worship.

Since we might honour Mary with things slightly more glorious and substantially less boring than that, we are accused of idolatry. But the Mass, the highest form of Catholic worship, is reserved for God alone, and for nobody else. And it is a sacrifice on an altar to the Most High God – if anyone dared to do this for Mary, he would be rightly accused of idolatry. But has any Catholic ever done this? Ever? Not to my knowledge. Based on the anecdote provided, I see no idolatry, only devotion and love.

Take a moment and look at a common way of honouring men in our culture. Suppose a man serves for fifty years as a distinguished professor at a prestigious academic institution, and upon his retirement, his fellows throw a grand ball in his honour. One might imagine a time of socialisation in the main hall, followed by the singing of the Alma Mater, a few short speeches by his closest colleagues, a long keynote address, a time for a collection to his charitable foundation, and ending with a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. And all of this would be entirely appropriate for a man of great accomplishments. And it differs little – if it indeed differs at all – from the Protestant concept of worship.

So Rev. Schlissel has been to a May Crowning. What sacrifice was given to Mary? None at all. Was she blessed and praised for her virtue? I should hope so, as that would be a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Yet, notice the flurry of criticism even when she is honoured as the Bible says that she should be honoured. From whence does this irrational hatred of our Mother come?

So whilst he is shaking his head wondering where we Romanists get off honouring the Blessed Mother, we shake our own heads at the myriad displays of ahistorical belief and practise within the Protestant sects.

Finally, regarding the Salve Regina, one of his commentators said that the prayer was Christocentric. To which he replied, “However, the veracity of your own claim about the Christocentric nature of the Salve Regina is doubted. In support, I will simply include the English translation in which Christ is incidental and at best an indirect object.”

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,

our life, our sweetness and our hope.

To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;

to thee do we send up our sighs,

mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,

thine eyes of mercy toward us;

and after this our exile,

show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

V: Pray for us O holy Mother of God,

R: that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Actually, the indirect object of the central petition of the Salve Regina is the faithful, whilst the direct object is Christ: “[Mary, subject] Show unto us [the faithful, indirect object] the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus [direct object].” The prayer is highly Christocentric. The entire purpose for Marian devotion is summed up beautifully in this wonderful hymn: we follow Mary so that we may be led to Christ, just as St. Paul said to the church in Corinth: “Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.” He followed Christ, and he hoped that others would follow Him to reach the same goal. Is it such a stretch to see that our Blessed Mother, like all mothers, functions to lead her children to Jesus?