MysteriumFidei's Xanga

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:03:48 GMT

Omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub cælo

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’.

Dave Hodges

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:07:00 GMT

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.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:34:15 GMT

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.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:48:38 GMT

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.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:19:09 GMT

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?

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:58:12 GMT

Preface

After a long and somewhat fruitful Lenten season (and now more than half-way into Paschaltide), I feel that I am now able to return to some serious writing here. Some of you have expressed interest that I continue writing, whilst I have – on many occasions – considered closing down this place. I think that in the long run, I will keep it going, though I cannot say how often I will post something. In the post below, I am mostly speaking to Catholics, since they, of all Christians, oftentimes give me the hardest time about certain issues. But I also have some Protestants in mind who may, because of the perspectives of these Catholics, be confused about what is required of a Catholic.

Omnia ergo quæcumque dixerint vobis servate et facite secundum opera vero eorum nolite facere dicunt enim et non faciunt

Part of being a Catholic is communion with the Bishop of Rome. Part of being a Catholic is believing that he is infallible when he addresses the whole Church on matters of faith and morals. Part of being a Catholic, or at least being a good Catholic, is rendering obedience to the Pope and to the bishops of your diocese. And part of being Catholic is respecting the offices of those ecclesiastical officials of the hierarchy, even if we do not have much respect for those people holding them.

These concepts have long been part of the Catholic understanding of the Church. In the fourth century – in a time probably not unlike our current situation – there were those who saw the rampant impiety on the part of the members of the Catholic Church. They wanted a purer Church – a Church that followed through in real life what they believed on paper. In short, they wanted a Church without sinners. These people were called Donatists, and they believed that a priest’s Sacraments were only as good as his personal piety.

Now I have no doubt that the Donatists were mostly very pious people. I have no doubt that their intentions for the Church were very noble. But by confusing the offices with the officers, they made a grave error and left the Church because of their obstinacy in refusing to recognise this error. The fatal error of the Donatists was that the true author of the Sacraments is not the priest or the bishop, but Christ Himself. The priest is only the intermediate vessel of God’s grace. Sacraments are valid based on the office of the priest which, being established by Christ, is holy and sacred. Those holding the office have the power and authority to confect Sacraments in the name of Christ regardless of whether or not they are pious men.

In no way am I justifying the impiety of certain priests or bishops. But if my child were to receive a baptism from a sodomite priest, it would be a valid baptism. If my children were to be confirmed by a simoniac bishop, it would still be a valid confirmation. And if I received viaticum and final absolution from a liberal priest who believed in women’s ordination and abortion, it would be valid, assuming that his orders were valid.

Many have noted recently that I am highly critical of many members of the hierarchy of the Holy Roman Church. Indeed I am and I am not ashamed of it. Some wonder how I can truly consider myself to be a Catholic and still be so critical of my local ordinary bishop, the priests in my diocese, the American cardinals, and the Pope himself. The short answer to all of this is that nothing in Catholic teaching demands that Catholics approve of the actions of the hierarchy in order to be good Catholics.

You might expect that those who pester me the most about this are Protestants, but actually it is Catholics. I hear very frequently that I am guilty of misinterpreting the actions of the Pope, or not extending charity to the bishops, or misjudging their intentions. And these might all be true. I do not think they are, but I am certainly willing to grant that they might be. I am certainly not above making these errors. But Catholics – of all people – ought to know better. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the phrase “more Catholic than the Pope” directed toward people who would dare to criticise anything the Pope ever did.

One prime example is how three of the last four Popes have had amazing penchants for praying with people of false religions in pagan temples, praying with anti-Christs in synagogues, celebrating pagan ceremonies, and engaging in idolatrous acts of animal worship with priestesses. All of these things are forbidden, immoral, and scandalous. And they ought be even more severely condemned if of all people the Pope is the one doing them. The Second Vatican Council did not suddenly authorise people to go into places of worship belonging to false religions. And just because the Pope did it does not make it right.

It is at this point that I hear somebody throw out the aforementioned phrase, accusing me of thinking that I am more Catholic than the Pope, or that I am misunderstanding his œcumenical gestures.

What possessed people to start unquestioningly accepting everything the Pope does as moral? I am not familiar with any part of Catholic tradition that includes this bizarre precept. How is it that so many people have forgotten about all the examples in the Sacred Scriptures and in history of saints rebuking Popes (to the face, even) and being recognised later on by the Church as great saints and warriors for Christ? Did not St. Paul rebuke the very first Pope because of his sin? Are we not thankful to St. Irenæus for respectfully telling Pope St. Victor to refrain from excommunicating the eastern sees? Is not St. Catherine of Sienna venerated for her unwavering stand against a Pope who refused to leave Avignon?

I shudder to think of what Catholics who practically worship the current Pope would have been like at the time surrounding the Protestant Reformation. As soon as news hit the press that Alexander VI had multiple illegitimate children with several women, these people would be the first to celebrate the “œcumenical gestures” that he was giving to these women. Perhaps they would look down on people who chose to be faithful to their wives, or priests who kept their vows of celibacy and would have accused them of being “more Catholic than the Pope.” Who knows?

If it is a mortal sin for Catholics to pray with people of false religions, then it is a sin for a Pope to do it. Indeed, it is even a greater sin for a Pope to do it because of the office he holds. And if I refrain from praying with people of false religions, then that does, in a sense, make me more Catholic than the Pope. If the Pope sits by idly whilst entire dioceses are bankrupted and entire parishes are being closed because of lawsuits against the sodomites in the priesthood, and there is a priest who is fighting for justice to be brought to these predators, then that priest is more Catholic than the Pope. If the General Instruction for the Roman Missal forbids liturgical dancing in all forms as inappropriate for the sanctity of the Mass, and a priest refuses to allow such abominations in his sanctuary, then he is being more Catholic than the Pope. If a bishop refuses to give communion to scoundrels like Rudy Giuliani and John Kerry because of their immoral marital lives and their public support of infanticide, then that bishop is being more Catholic than the Pope.

And is that such a bad thing?

At Assisi, John Paul II of blessed memory committed grave acts of idolatry, worshipped false gods, and profaned holy places by allowing members of false religions to worship there. I care not who you are or what your intentions are. That is immoral, illicit, and contrary to everything in Catholic teaching. John Paul II was guilty of grave sins when he allowed this to happen. This does not make me un-Catholic to make these observations, nor does it mean that John Paul II was not Pope. He certainly was; he just happened to be a very scandalous Pope. This does not mean that I do not recognise the very real authority the Pope has. I do not deny the infallibility of the Church or the Pope by making these observations. I am very quick to point out the most famous infallible decree that Pope John Paul II gave, that women cannot be priests, which was given in response to the recent decision of the Anglican sect to lay their unholy hands on the heads of short-haired women and call them priests. I am thankful for the dogmatic decree that John Paul II gave us. But make no mistake – that man was guilty of grave sins and merely to look them over as if they were unimportant or inconsequential is a grave error and is a disservice to the Church at large. He led many people astray with his actions and to this day we have seen the evil done by those bishops wanting to practise this false œcumenism by engaging in the rituals of pagan religions.

Pope Benedict as well is guilty of such things. Even since becoming Pope, twice he has been to pray with anti-Christs in synagogues in order to placate them and submit himself to their unholy wishes. They did not like the fact that the Church prayed for their conversion, so they demanded that he change the prayer in the Mass on Black Friday. It does not take a theologian to recognise that something is gravely wrong here. Since when does the Church make its policies based on the whims of anti-Christs? I realise that Pope Benedict’s altered prayer is still Catholic in its basic substance, but the very idea of consulting anti-Christs for changes to the Mass is absurd. And it does not make me un-Catholic to make this observation, nor does it mean that I do not respect the authority of the Pope.

But none of these scandalous actions should be entirely surprising to Catholics. Pope Marcellinus sacrificed to false gods in the fourth century. [The only difference between that incident and the more recent abominations is that Marcellinus was required to do a long penance for his sins. Recent Popes have been praised by Catholics and non-Catholics alike for their sacrileges.] We have seen generations of corrupt Popes, centuries of simoniac bishops, and two thousand years worth of unchaste priests. And yet, in every generation there have been those who went against the common grain in the hierarchy and did what was right. They kept their vows of chastity, they refused to exploit the poor, and they did not withhold rebuke from anybody who needed it, the Holy Father included. These people became known as saints.

And yes, many of them probably were more Catholic than the Pope.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:11:19 GMT

Agnes Anastasia Hodges

Our new daughter was born at 0045 hours EDT (0445 hours Zulu).

Mass: 4 300 grammes
Length: 56 centimetres

Agnes: Chaste, after the third century virgin-martyr St. Agnes
Anastasia: Resurrection, after this most festal time of year, Paschaltide

We rejoice in the birth of our daughter in this season of the Resurrection. May she, like her namesake of old, be an example of purity to others amidst evil.

O Almighty God, we give thee humble thanks for that thou hast been graciously pleased to preserve, through the great pain and peril of child-birth, this woman, thy servant, who desireth now to offer her praises and thanksgivings unto thee. Grant, we beseech thee, most merciful Father, that she, through thy help, may faithfully live according to thy will in this life, and also may be partaker of everlasting glory in the life to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:31:04 GMT

Domine, doce nos orare

Throughout all the journeys in my life that ultimately led me to the Holy Roman Church, there is one journey amongst them all that still continues well after my conversion. This journey traces a long and winding road, starting with my earliest memories as a child and continuing all the way until this very moment. Many of my travels to the Church had very clear starting and ending points, like my reading of the Apostolick Fathers, my one-year stint in an Anglican Communion, and my struggles with the Marian dogmas. Those journeys have ended.

But there is one journey that remains a constant in my life. It is, without exaggeration, the very centre of my being; it is a scope through which I can view myself at any point in my life. In a way, it is a thermometre that measures my very vital signs. It is my prayer life.

My earliest memories of prayer began when I was not even four years old. I was horribly afraid of the dark, and night lights only made things worse for me. The half-way illumination of the old acoustic ceiling in my house made all kinds of ghastly things appear to me. The fear of creatures in the closet or people underneath my bed frightened me constantly. I would always run to my parents’ room and beg of them to pray for me.

My father always prayed for my brothers and me every night. Once in bed with teeth brushed, he would lean over me, embrace my shoulder and touch his cheek to mine, and ask God’s blessing on me. He did this to each of us individually. I can still remember the distinct feeling of his whiskers against my face and the smell of his cologne. But there were some nights where he was not home due to other business or out-of-town trips. And on those nights, Mother put us to bed with somewhat less routine than Father.

On many a night such as this, I would summon my mother back to my room for her to explain to me that everything would be just fine. She would tell me of how God’s angels would come to watch over me and protect me. Then she would pray for my guardian angel to come and comfort me. And it always worked. Within minutes, my fear would subside, and I would be fast asleep – safely tucked away in the arms of my guardian angel.

Incidents like these and the ubiquitous prayers before meals were all I knew of prayer for some years. When I got older I began to participate in family prayer time and in prayer at the small Christian school which I attended. I prayed with childlike faith and was always amazed at the way God seemed to work through prayer. Though my own private prayer life was not cultivated until I was a teenager, I was always comfortable with the idea of prayer.

With my teenage years came secondary school, increased academic burdens, and all the physical and hormonal upheavals that plague young men. My prayer life began to take on a life all its own, no longer limited to blessings of meals and prayers of healing for sick members of my extended family. My awareness of my own sinfulness led me to a prayer life that was mostly confessional in nature, and prayers that pleaded for God’s grace in impossible scenarios. Suffice to say, my prayer life was basically prayer out of necessity and not prayer out of love.

With some maturity and some instruction from my systematic theology teacher, I began to develop a more balanced prayer life. I tried to spend as much time in prayers of thanksgiving and adoration as much as I did in confession of sin and in asking for help. As I did this, I recall my life being blessed immensely. I felt centred. I felt whole. I felt completed and full of life. Then, at the end of my final year in secondary school, I went through a typical teenage romance that, after six weeks, left me heartbroken and lonesome. My prayer life then underwent a bizarre metamorphosis and became an avenue for self-pity and self-loathing. My entire body shut down and I retreated into an alienated world of solitude. Not long after, I ceased praying altogether. I lost weight, I lost contact with the rest of the world, and I lost the joy of my Christian life.

I know not whether it was merely the lapsing of time or the swift arrival of my first year of college that awakened me, but whatever it was in God’s Providence, it brought me out of the tiny and insignificant world of self and back into the vast and boundless real world – a world where I could pray once again.

The many distractions of college life proved too much for my weak will, however, and within a matter of months I was back to my prayers out of necessity. Please, dear God, let me pass this test. Please, I promise never to skip class again, but let me get out of this assignment. Please, O God, do not let the professor catch me on this one. I was, for the most part, an absolute failure when it came to my college studies and I hated myself for it. Having a father who taught at the same college I attended meant having a father who was intimately involved in my academic life. I know that my failures disappointed him beyond belief, and one day he told me how to pray about school.

I would like to say that I implemented his prayers and everything turned around and I got straight A’s the rest of my college tenure, but that did not happen. But I did find myself walking from class to class, silently praying about my academic ventures. For once in a long time, prayer became proactive instead of reactive, and I did begin to take my studies more seriously. I pulled up my grades substantially and was removed from the academic probation list and placed back on the good standing list.

Around the same time, I began taking quite an interest in mind-altering chemicals. The deeper I went into that lifestyle, the more my prayer life continued to wane. Still, I was able to keep my grades above par for the remainder of my college years. Unlike many of my peers, I still ended up being graduated in four years, even in the face of my rapidly developing dangerous drug habit.

My life was mostly a roller-coaster of events for the next several years, with prayer being mostly an afterthought. As I slowly grew up and began to leave behind my more destructive habits, prayer suddenly found its way back into my life. By the time my prayer life was active again, I began reading the Bible more systematically, and even began praying more systematically. I began keeping track of the people for whom I prayed the most often, and kept a record of prayer requests on a piece of paper. My friends and I began to hold each other accountable in our temptations to drug use, drunkenness, and other vices. We began praying together, with and for each other. We grew in maturity and piety and wisdom. I became more regular in my job performance and began getting along better with my family. For once in a long time, that wholeness came back to me. I felt alive again.

This has always stood out to me throughout my whole life; prayer seems to highlight my life at every pass. Whenever I became comfortable, I left my prayer life to stagnate. But as soon as I was in trouble, I knew I had to pray. I knew that my life had gotten especially bad at one point when I realised that I had not prayed on my own in a very long time. I said my prayers before meals and the prayers at church, but I myself had not prayed on my own in longer than I could remember.

As I was driving down a rural route in north Georgia one day, I saw a Baptist church that had a sign out front. But it did not have any clever one-liners or jokes about why you should visit there. It only said one word: Pray. It occurred to me how much that sign bothered me. Why was it there? Why could I not pray? When I got home and got on my knees, my life began to change for the better. Since then, I have seen many of these up-and-down cycles. As I get older, the dips don’t go as low as they used to, but they are still there. And no matter where I am or what I am doing, my devotion to prayer is and has always been the cause and effect of my growth as a Christian.

Somebody recently asked me how being Catholic has helped my devotional life. And that is not something about which I do a lot of talking. But it is true that perhaps nothing has changed so drastically in my life as my devotional life. Why have I not written about this before? Maybe because apologetics is so much more exciting. But even the most deft and diligent of apologists will be forced to admit that prayer is the most effective weapon a Catholic has for the conversion of sinners. As one great saint once said, “I would rather have ten nuns praying than an hundred priests preaching.” Conversion of heart is, after all, the work of the Holy Ghost.

So to take a break from my usual apologetics, allow me to answer the question recently posed to me. Below I will try to outline some of the many facets of Catholic prayer and mention a few of the more significant impacts of the Catholic faith on my prayer life.

For Catholics, prayer is corporate. When we pray the Our Father, even alone, do we not begin by saying Our Father? When we pray, we are joined with all the saints in prayer. When we pray, we become united with the whole Church and with Christ Himself. Whether we go to assist at Mass, pray a novena, pray the Rosary, pray for the faithful departed, whatever we do, we do not do it alone. Praying inside of an old Catholic Church is a constant reminder of the host of angels and saints who are protecting us and praying with us at all times.

For Catholics, spoken prayer is formal. Talking to the Almighty is a pretty big deal, and if you have any intent on speaking to Him in public, it is a good idea to think about what you are going to say ahead of time. Catholics use prayer cards and missals and devotional books and many other things to make spoken prayer more fulfilling and proper. Since praying off the cuff is not always the easiest for me to do, prayer cards are of infinite value to me. When the soul is greatly distressed, reading my prayers is very comforting. Not having to think about the words I am using is very relieving as is knowing that I can pray without distraction. Knowing that the words have already been well chosen by a saint is a great comfort as well.

For most people learning how to pray requires learning from the masters, and prayer cards and devotional books are precisely the way to do that. I teach my own children how to pray the same way. A friend confessed to me recently that he found prayer in public to be difficult and awkward and that he preferred not to do it at all. The problem was that he would be asked to pray by somebody else and to turn down the request appeared impious. I told him that if ever he finds himself in such a situation again, that he should pray the Our Father. Nobody would ever claim that it was a bad prayer or that one who prayed it did a poor job.

For Catholics, mental prayer is equally important. Mental prayer is something that is very unique in that it does not seem to be prayer in the proper sense of the word. Whilst holy cards and prayer books aid us in our spoken prayers, meditations guide us in our mental prayers. This is not to say that mental prayer is not structured. It certainly can be, depending on the method used, but it does not have to be. Mental prayer is the practise of filling one’s mind with things pertaining to God’s goodness, His graces, His attributes, or even His wrath and then giving Him the appropriate acts of contrition, humility, love, devotion, and hope. In this sense, mental prayer is very informal; it is the overflowing of the affections of one’s soul to God.

Mental prayer and meditation are primarily Catholic devotions. I have never seen mental prayer advocated by any Protestant minister or even discussed in Protestant circles. Catholic meditation should not be confused with transcendental meditation. It is precisely the opposite of the meditation of the Eastern religions in that its purpose is to fill the mind rather than to empty it. If the mind is full of godly things, it recoils at those things that are evil. But if the mind is emptied, it – like any vacuum – readily accepts anything put in its reach.

For Catholics, life is prayer. From the time you rise till the time you rest, every action is done as an offering to God. Every piece of suffering, labour, or work is offered up to God in union with Christ’s passion to share in His sufferings. A strong prayer life involves reparation for the sins of others, taking every bit of pain and discomfort with joy, knowing that our sufferings and penances can lighten the burdens of others. When prayer is seen in this light, it becomes natural and our attitude changes drastically toward the various little inconveniences that are thrown in our path.

For Catholics, prayer is life. Trying to live without prayer is like trying to live without breath. When we pray, we become what God intended for us to be. Like I have learnt in my own life, when I pray, I am truly made alive. In the Aristotelian understanding of being, a man is truly a man only when he prays. For Catholics, prayer is not just how we talk to God when we need something; a prayer is there for everything we do. Getting ready to drive? Pray the motorist’s prayer. Just finish driving? Pray the prayer of thanksgiving for a safe arrival. Getting ready to eat? Pray the blessing before meals. Just finish eating? Pray the thanksgiving after meals. Going to bed? Waking up? Have insomnia? Whatever the case is, the Catholic Church has provided a prayer for you. Learning the many prayers for all these instances makes prayer as natural as breathing itself. There comes a point when prayer becomes the natural response to just about anything.

I do not pretend that Catholics have a monopoly on prayer. Certainly they do not. I have been praying my whole life, and I believe that God was watching over me and answering my prayers the whole time. And after many prayers to lead me to the truth, I believe He answered them in leading me to the Church He founded centuries ago. And I fully anticipate to continue this journey of prayer until my life’s end and beyond (no, my Protestant readers, I do not intend to give up the practise of prayer solely because I may pass on to the next life).

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:25:43 GMT

Ut observetis eos qui dissensiones et offendicula præter doctrinam quam vos didicistis faciunt et declinate ab illis

I have steered away from doing any sort of polemical posts in the recent past. Frankly, I am tired of the same old worn-out arguments and the same old worn-out responses. But there is something I would like to address here on my dying website regarding the exclusive claims of the Catholic Church which seem to offend so many people.

In many recent discussions I have had, both in person and over the internet, there seems to be a recurring theme amongst many Protestants regarding the claims of the Catholic Church. Many Protestants I know would call themselves Catholics. They believe in the saving powers of Baptism and the Eucharist, they love Mary the Mother of God, they reverence icons, and they invoke the departed saints in prayer. But they remain, for whatever reason, members of Protestant churches. Sometimes they are high-church Anglicans, sometimes Presbyterians, and other times various flavours of independent Reformed. They believe that it is truly enough to believe all the right doctrines of the historic Church to call oneself Catholic. Some would not even require that much, and merely wish to be called Catholic simply because they think that whilst the title may not currently be applied to them by most outsiders, that it nevertheless ought to apply to them. I hear these kinds of remarks all the time:

“I am catholic, but I’m not Roman Catholic.”

My response to this is usually, “Oh, you are a Ruthenian Catholic? Byzantine Catholic? Maronite? Meklite?” To which I usually get a puzzled face and some explanation about how “catholic” means “universal” and since they consider themselves part of the universal Church, somehow they must be Catholic as well. It does not ever seem to matter that there are certain things that Catholics have always believed or done – they seem to expect the title regardless.

This is also a common one:

“The Roman Catholic Church cannot be catholic because it is merely the church of Rome. True catholicity is about unity in diversity.”

The term catholicity, when used by most Protestants, is one of my biggest pet peeves. It gets thrown around like some kind of power-word that is supposed to invoke all the right feelings in Protestants about the grand unity of the multi-denominational Brahman. But that particular annoyance aside, this remains one of the more annoying claims. The term Roman Catholic Church is a rather recent affectation of the more proper term Catholic Church. When used properly, the Roman simply refers to the one thing that has united Catholics for two millennia: communion with the Bishop of Rome. But communion with the Bishop of Rome does not mean part of the church of Rome. The diocese of Rome includes only the faithful within a small geographic area of the world. Those in communion with the Bishop of Rome include some 2,582 other dioceses, none of which are the particular church of Rome.

In short, the argument is that Roman Catholics are not Catholic because communion with the Bishop of Rome is required for membership in the Roman Catholic Church. This is like saying that Americans are not really Americans since their President is in Washington, D.C.

But the “unity in diversity” is a little strange to me. Since when are Catholics not a diverse group? Within Catholicism, there are some twenty-three different liturgical rites, thousands of religious orders, and even more lay apostolates, including hospitals, charities, and other various parish ministries. What more could one expect in terms of diversity?

Maybe they mean diversity in belief. In that case, I am sad to say that Catholics are just as diverse as Protestants. But in the sense of what Catholics ought to believe, there is certainly not the diversity of belief that is permitted to exist in Protestant communities. But this is where I begin to get confused. What is the point in wanting to call yourself Catholic when Catholics have historically been known by a certain beliefs and practises? Why bother wanting to associate yourself with a certain set of beliefs when you are at odds with that very set of beliefs?

It is as if people have this idea that the Catholic Church somehow hijacked the name Catholic from all the Bible-believing Christians because we all know deep down that the real Catholics are the Protestants.

Many of them argue against the Catholic Church saying that the one problem they have with the Catholic Church is that it exclusively claims to be the Church. To them, this is arrogant, uncompassionate, and does not promote the unity of the Church. It is then that I hear this whopper:

“You are still a Protestant. Your conversion to the Roman Catholic Church was the most Protestant thing you have ever done. You did not change your religion, just your denomination.”

This one never ceases to amaze me. I first heard it over at reformed(anythingbut)catholicism.com about a year ago. I thought it was strange then and I still found it strange as of a few days ago. I still hear it from friends and online acquaintances. Then, it dawned on me: to a Protestant, the words “Catholic” and “Protestant” mean something drastically different from what they mean to a Catholic. If I were to venture a guess as to how those words are defined by Protestants, here is what they would be:

Catholic: 1. n., (from the Greek katholos, universal) a person who holds to a system of beliefs where all of the possible theological positions in the world are accepted as potentially correct, with the exception of the belief that there is an exclusive set of teachings belonging to One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Ex.: “A true catholic accepts the universality and merit of all Christian religions, and is not a schismatic by claiming exclusivity in one Church.” 2. adj. that which does not claim to be exclusive, but rather admits to being only one amongst many equally valid possibilities.

Protestant: 1. n., a person who makes rational decisions based on a particular set of presuppositions that he holds, and who holds his convictions seriously and unwaveringly; anyone capable of forming an opinion and truly believing it. Ex.: “When George became a Roman Catholic, he used arguments based on the Bible and rational thought and believed strongly the dogmas of the Catholic Church, thus proving himself to be a Protestant to the very core.”

If we accept these definitions, we begin to understand why Protestants make the statements they do about Catholic converts. With these definitions, the following things become “Protestant”:

Seriously believing the claims of one’s religion
Use of any form of reason to justify or explain one’s conversion
A belief that the Bible is infallible

And then, all of the following things become “Catholic”:

Believing that all Christian religions have some truth and some error
Refusal to make any dogmatic statements
Calling anyone who believes in the visible unity of One, Holy Catholic, and Apostolic Church a schismatic

Now it all makes sense why I hear these claims from Protestants; they truly believe that they are truly Catholic and I am still a Protestant.

But I want to shift gears briefly and talk specifically regarding those who believe in all of the historic Catholic doctrines, like the priesthood, the episcopacy, the Sacraments, the Marian dogmas, &c. but still think that it is acceptable to be in a Protestant community.

First of all where does this kind of ecclesiology exist in the Fathers? What is Catholic about refusing to be a part of the visible Catholic Church in communion with the Bishop of Rome? Where in the medieval councils and saints, where many of the Marian and Sacramental dogmas were defined or expounded, do we find this kind of ecclesiology that says that schism is not really an important issue any more?

The very idea of the Catholic Church existing without visible communion amongst the bishops is entirely foreign to the entire history of the Church. What good does it do to accept the Immaculate Conception of the Theotokos, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the necessity of the Episcopate if you are then going to reject the Church’s teachings on the necessity of communion with the Catholic Church? The high-church Anglicans have the Branch Theory to account for their aberrant ecclesiology, claiming that they hold to the historic Catholic faith and that that makes them a valid branch of the Church. But this very concept itself is an innovation of the Reformation. It is rejected by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox church, and the Coptic church. The only folks ever to believe in such a notion were the Anglicans, and that makes them at odds with the historic Catholic faith that they claim to be preserving.

What is the common thread amongst all these groups thus far mentioned? They all like to pick and choose the portions of the Apostolick Deposit they accept. Some accept none of it but the Divinity of Christ. Some accept all of it but the requirement for visible unity. Either way, the Catholic faith is an all-or-nothing religion. You cannot claim to be Catholic and only accept part of what that Catholic Church teaches. That simply is not Catholicism. It is an invention, a fabrication, an illusion. So then, along similar veins, I hear this objection:

“The only bad thing about the Catholic Church is its exclusive claim regarding the Church. They are just one part of the whole Catholic Church. We Protestants do not claim exclusivity and neither should they.”

I liken this problem to the objection that the various strands of liberals apply to Christianity. I hear conversations like this all the time:

Agnostic, Hindoo, or PCUSA/ECUSA clergypersonette: “The problem that I have with mainstream Christianity is that it claims exclusivity. It actually is just one road of many to attain to the afterlife. Jesus was just a great prophet whose teachings should be revered but he himself should not be worshipped.”

Christian: “If Christianity is in any wise true, it is the only way, and if it is merely one way among many, then it is no way at all. Jesus could not have been merely a good man and said what He said. He must have been the Son of God. If He was not who He claimed to be, then He was either a liar or a lunatic.”

Here is a parallel conversation:

Member of the Western Branch of American Reformed Presbo-Lutheranism: “The problem that I have with Catholicism is that it claims exclusivity. It actually is just one denomination of many to attain to eternal life in Heaven. The Church is just another human institution whose teachings should be respected but the Church herself should not be considered infallible.”

Catholic: “If the Catholic faith is in any wise true, it is the only way, and if it is merely one way among many, then it is no way at all. The Church cannot be merely a human institution and claim what She claims. She must be the Mystical Bride of Christ or a bunch of liars and thieves on a demonic mission.”

So allow me now to tie all of this back together with the title of the post. What does St. Paul demand in his epistle to the Romans?

Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who make dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them. – Romans XVI:xvii

When the Catholic Church actually follows through with this command, She is attacked by Protestants as schismatic and arrogant. The Catholic Church proclaims a dogma and says that the faithful are to believe it or be anathema, and the Protestant recoils in horror. But then the Protestant claims that the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are “not Christian” because they do not believe in the dogma of the Trinity. Why this inconsistency?

When the Protestants began teaching aberrant doctrines at the outset of the Reformation, how exactly should have the Catholic Church responded to them? The Protestants were, by their own admission in many cases, teaching things that were never believed before in the history of the Church. They were teaching things that were contrary to the doctrines which had been passed down in the Church. The Scriptures say that such men are to marked and avoided. But such behaviour is considered schismatic by the Protestants.

St. Paul commanded this very “all-or-nothing” approach to the Catholic faith that is condemned by the Protestants. If one were to split from the Church, he is to be rejected. If one teaches contrary to the Church, he is to be avoided. You are either for it or you are against it. This is where the Œcumenical Councils have fulfilled this task: to establish right doctrine and reject false doctrine. They draw the lines in the sand – are you in or are you out?

Either the Catholic Church is who She claims to be, or the Catholic Church is the grandest and most fraudulent lie ever conceived in the history of the world.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:33:13 GMT

Preface

Even since my conversion to the Roman Catholic Church almost two years ago, I still spend some time at websites maintained by Protestant laymen and clergy. I do this for multiple reasons. First of all, I find many of the websites edifying and thought provoking like that of Steven Wedgeworth, whose thoughts on biblical parallels are usually fascinating even if I do disagree with them. Secondly, I find some of them to be relevant in to-day culture and find them helpful in understanding the times, like Rev. Doug Wilson website. I find what he has to say about these issues challenging and insightful, even when I disagree. Finally, I visit some of these websites because I engage in minor apologetics there. And this goes for the websites in both categories above. In most cases, I am the token Romanist who contributes. Joshua Gibbs, a reader of Rev. Wilson website addressed an open letter to me after having read an exchange I had on his website. The original exchange can be read here and the open letter can be read here.

Epistula Aperta ad Iosue Gibbo Sumus

Dear Joshua,

In the short time that I have spent reading The Cedar Room it has quickly become one of my favourite websites to visit. Your sense of humour and delightful wit are a breath of fresh air in a medium that is dominated by mediocrity. On the internet, poor grammar and vitriolic content get a free pass since English teachers and editors have no reign therein. To see somebody who takes the art of writing with any level of seriousness is encouraging; so to read your website is a blast. Since our first few exchanges on your website, I have found you to be nothing short of a gentleman and a scholar.

Your letter was the kindest and most thoughtful letter I have ever received from anybody who disagreed with me. It was the sanest response I have ever received from a Protestant. And the content not only resonated within me, but confirmed some of my own more recent leanings.

Your main point, if I may presume to summarise it, is that the Catholic Church is made of people, not merely dogmas. And as such, if my only presentation of the faith is one of dogma and not one that is personal and real, it is somehow lacking. And with this I cannot agree more strongly. Indeed, many have pondered over the implications of discussing a flesh-and-blood religion like Christianity in the context of a disembodied and artificial world like the world wide web. I remember a Protestant pastor wisely quipped that too many theological discussions were taking place over the internet instead of over a beer. When theological discussions are moved away from the people making the points, people lose sight of the fact that on the other end of the Ethernet cable is a living, breathing, human being.

And this is why I have considered on numerous occasions to give up recreational use of the internet altogether. I have sometimes considered that I have no real purpose here beyond my own egotistical ventures. I have seen the internet bring about good consequences and bad ones alike, and lately I wonder if the good outweighs the bad. Then again, maybe the bad consequences are just part of life and the good is to be sought after in spite of them.

One of the best things I ever did was to take the opportunity to meet some of the people that I had met through the internet. I spent an evening out in Manhattan with Dan Sack, Steven Wedgeworth and a few others ?eating fish, talking theology, drinking beer, and discussing our various perspectives on the Church. Neither did they become Catholic as a result nor did I become Protestant, but the time spent was real. Interacting with them since then is very different. I am no longer putting abstractions in text boxes; I am talking to my friends. And as much as I disagree with them, I am disagreeing with real people and not merely ideas. I hope that I will see them in Heaven one day, if for no other reason than to have an eternity to try to beat Dan at arm wrestling.

About three years ago, I met Rev. Wilson in person. It was in Florida at the Family Advance for Trinity Presbyterian Church. And I do not mean that I saw him, shook his hand, and got him to autograph my first edition copy of Future Men. He and Nancy graciously came to our villa at the resort, sat on the porch with me and Sarah and talked with us for several hours. Why is this important? Because when I talk with Rev. Wilson, he is not a disembodied spirit to me. He is as real to me as my own family. Perhaps this is still why I, even as a Romanist, esteem him as highly as I do. As a fellow man, his convictions are admirable; as a fellow husband and father, his wisdom is invaluable; as a fellow citizen, his patriotism is respectable. Of all the Protestant clergy that I know, he clearly has his act together. So when I post on his website to disagree, I am doing so with a great deal of respect. If this was not evident in the recent thread, it was not intentional.

And perhaps this is why I was so taken aback by his behaviour on the thread in question. He is generally a fair debater and plays by the rules. When his opponents do not, he graciously (and rightly) points out their failure to do so. But to see him break his own rules over and over again was not merely annoying, it was disappointing; I had expected more of him. There was, in a very real way, an attempt by me to remove the debate from anything personal and to focus on his lack of conformity to the accepted rules of debate. True, I do not argue with him just to argue as you noted. But this was the first time I had ever seen him so glaringly discard the rules of engagement.*

But why get involved in this discussion in the first place? The original post included rhetorical questions which I intended to address since they demonstrated a faulty understanding of the Catholic faith. I hoped only to clear up the confusion. I had not hoped to portray the Catholic faith as nothing but a list of dogmas to accept. Nevertheless, dogma does play a very important part in Catholicism over and against Protestantism, which is anti-dogmatic by its nature. So whilst you are correct that actions are demanded of us, we are also required to accept the Church doctrinal teachings.

But your point is very powerful. One of the ways I was first introduced to the ancient faith was through the lives of the Saints. Reading about the healing gift of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the mystic devotion of St. John of the Cross, the piety and love for God of St. Therese de Lisieux, the heroism of St. Alban, and the ever-bleeding wounds of St. Padre Pio meant far more to me than any of the theological treatises of St. Thomas de Aquin. To see the lives of the Saints is to see the face of Christ reflected. And to see Christ indwelt in His Church is more powerful than any dogmatic statement from a pope or council. What is revelation but an encounter with the God-Man Himself?

If the Catholic Church is presented merely as a set of doctrines, and not as the Mystical Body of Christ, what is the appeal to somebody who already loves Christ but is confused about the nature of His Body? This brings me to the analogy of the father whose children do not recognise him. This is such a splendid analogy on so many levels because it shows the true nature of the ecclesiastical dilemmas of Protestantism. The Protestants are our eparated brethren?according to the Second Vatican Council. Brethren by baptism, separated because they have rejected the Family, their Papa, their Mother, and the common table. How does one go about helping such children recognise their parents?

Birth certificates and genealogies are no doubt helpful in some cases. But to the most stubborn, they are only of limited value since they can always be dismissed. How does a father try to convince his wayward children? How does a brother try to persuade his kin? The most overwhelmingly Catholic answer is simple: prayer. Apologetics are good and can help, but conversion of the heart is only possible through the Holy Ghost. And the Holy Ghost listens to the desires of His Church. And the Church will only desire the conversion of the Protestants when they take pity on them and are moved with compassion.

As for me, I felt a great relief when I found that my fathers in the faith were the popes, bishops, and priests of days long ago. Going back to your main thesis, when I found that they were my true ancestors, it made it easy to accept what they had to say. I was not simply reasoning through the theology; I was listening to the voice of the Church speak throughout the ages. And when I saw myself as the outsider, I knew where I needed to go. Yes, some of my older brothers that had left the family some time back and had convinced me that my parents were frauds and that I had to wander the world alone with my Bible. Imagine my delight when I found that I was not an orphan at all. But rather when I was yet a great way off, my Father saw me and was moved with compassion.

Once again, thank you for your letter. I hope to be able to meet you one day and share a beer or two as well.

Pax Christi tecum,

Dave Hodges

* Rev. Doug Wilson accuses me of being a semi-Pelagian. This is fine if he thinks so provided he is able to demonstrate this using the ecclesiastical documents wherein the errors of semi-Pelagianism were defined and condemned. If he cannot state the Catholic position in a way in which an orthodox Catholic would agree, then he is not qualified to debate the issue. This is the standard which he uses when debating his opponents. When his opponents call him a heretick, he always asks them to provide substantial evidence and documentation in order to demonstrate in what way he has violated the Confession. And when they fail to do so, he calls them on the carpet. When he called me a semi-Pelagian, I asked for documentation. I got none, yet his accusation persisted and persisted in spite of his failure to do so. He did all the things that his opponents do that he hates. He made up definitions that were not found in the Council of Orange and then condemned those teachings as if they were what the Council condemned. He hailed Augustine as a champion of orthodoxy to suit his purposes but then ignored the bulk of Augustine teachings that by his own definition would have made Augustine a semi-Pelagian. He even made a nice little number chart to prove that I was semi-Pelagian mathematically (but when taken literally, seemed to contradict his prior assertions). And then finally, when nothing else worked, he decided to quote an observation of Harold O. J. Brown as his last great proof of his claims. Surely I do not need to point out the absurdity in all this.