Catholic apocalypticism

The mainstream Catholic Church shies away from eschatological speculation, but–perhaps because of this–the fringes are full of it. Bits and pieces from different supposed “apparitions” of Mary and other saints are woven together to create a scenario including Three Days of Darkness, a Warning, a Chastisement, followed not by the return of Christ in glory, but by a period of peace and a “Eucharistic Reign of Christ.” You can find stuff like this in the writings of Bud Macfarlane, Fr. Stephano Gobbi, Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi, and Michael H. Brown. Take a look at this from Brown, and then consider an evangelical’s reaction to such teachings (scroll down about half way to the subheading, “Second Coming or Manifestation?”

Purgatory

Dr. Philip Blosser posts an entry attributed to one “Ralph Roiter-Doister” on the subject of purgatory, commenting upon a bizarre book by Fr. F. X. Schouppe, SJ, Purgatory Explained By the Lives and Legends of the Saints. I say “bizarre,” because it is filled with silly little legends like the one of St. Gregory the Great hearing a “poor soul” cry out from a block of ice upon which he was resting his feet on a hot summer day. These are nothing but religious “ghost stories,” the telling of which Schouppe piously defends.

And then Schouppe gets into trying to calculate the time of purgatory:

According to the common opinion of the doctors, the expiatory pains are of long duration. “There is no doubt, ” says Bellarmine (De Gemitu, lib. 2, c. 9), “that the pains of Purgatory are not limited to ten and twenty years, and that they last in some cases entire centuries. But allowing it to be true that their duration did not exceed ten or twenty years, can we account it as nothing to have to endure for ten or twenty years the most excruciating sufferings without the least alleviation? . . . . Shall we then find any difficulty in embracing labor and penance to free ourselves from the sufferings of Purgatory? Shall we fear to practice the most painful exercises: vigils, fasts, almsgiving, long prayers, and especially contrition, accompanied with sighs and tears? …

Let us take a moderate estimate, and suppose that you commit about ten faults a day; at the end of 365 days you will have the sum of 3,650 faults. Let us . . . facilitate the calculation [by reducing the number to] 3,000 per year. At the end of ten years this will amount to 30,000, and at the end of twenty years to 60,000.

Let us continue our hypothesis: You die after these twenty years of virtuous life, and appear before God with a debt of 30,000 faults [presumably having worked off the other half], which you must discharge in Purgatory. How much time will you need to accomplish this expiation? Suppose, on the average, each fault requires one hour of Purgatory. This measure is very moderate, if we judge by the revelations of the saints; but at any rate this will give you a Purgatory of 30,000 hours. . . . Thus, a good Christian who watches over himself, who applies himself to penance and good works, finds himself liable to three years, three months, and fifteen days of Purgatory.

“Roiter-Doister” concludes:

Fr. Shouppe has no problem with clarity, and no need for relativistic accomodation of various “readings” of purgatorial metaphors. He is just a simpleminded priest of the old school, using the mind God gave him to illuminate His truth in the clearest way possible.

For my own part, I’m going to say simply that I can’t see how Schouppe’s theology can be considered Christian. There seems to be no place for grace, mercy, forgiveness, the blood of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of the cross … in short, the Gospel! You shall do your own expiation by suffering away in flames of torment for years greater than your life upon earth.

I prefer those theologians who do, in fact, see purgatory as a metaphor, and one that can only be understood Christologically. For example, consider this author:

… Purgatory is understood in a properly Christian way when it is grasped christologically, in terms of the Lord himself as the judging fire which transforms us and conforms us to his own glorified body ….

… [T]he purification involved does not happen through some thing, but through the transforming power of the Lord himself, whose burning flame cuts free our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it into a new mold to make it fit for the living organism of his body[.]…

…A person’s entry into the realm of manifest reality is an entry into his definitive destiny and thus an immersion in eschatological fire. The transforming “moment” of this encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of “short” or “long” duration on the basis of temporal measurments derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The “temporal measure” of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. …

The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has now become clear. Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where one is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God, and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints. Simply to look at people with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of such a process. It does not replace grace by works, but allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as grace. What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried under a great deal of wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out from behind the latticework of an egoism we are powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is the recipient of the divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy.

Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Translated by Michael Waldstein; translation edited by Aidan Nichols, OP. Dogmatic Theology, volume 9. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988. Pp. 229 ff. Translation of Eschatologie–Tod und ewiges Leben. Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet Verlag, 1977.

Contempt for Jews

Take a look at the discussion over at Defenders of the Catholic Faith over the question of whether Christians should ever 1) celebrate a Seder or 2) attend one. And note the positions taken by the “Moderators” and “Head Administrator.”

Would someone kindly let Steve Ray know what’s being done on his board?

Sungenis Summary

Mark Shea gives the lowdown. For my (five year old) contribution to the discussion, see  here.

More Mahony

Diogenes looks at the LA Archdiocesan explanation of contradictions.

Spirituality

When I was a student at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary and taking courses in the history of Christian spirituality at Catholic schools in the DC area, one of my professors, Tom Ridenhour, asked with disdain, “Spiri-CHALL-ty? Wot the HAIL is that?”

At times I’ve had an easy answer–it’s simply reflection on practical Christianity, how we live our relationship with God and others.

But then I’m reminded of all the practices and disciplines and teachings in the world that are grouped under that heading, and that are practiced and defended by many diverse people–and that this was what lay underneath Tom’s question.

Consider this article in “California Catholic Daily” about former Jesuit Don Riso, a founder of the Enneagram Institute. He sees “spirituality,” in contrast to “religion,” as something that is “nondenominational,” that crosses even boundaries between Christianity and other world religions. These disciplines, he argues, are about self-discovery.

That reminded me of an article by Thomas Long in Theology Today (1992): “Myers-Briggs and Other Modern Astrologies,” in which heasked of the popularity of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,

Why is it that so many in the Christian church, with its long and rich history of understanding persons in the most profound way possible–as living souls and as creatures made in the image of God–should fall into the trap of allowing for a moment those theologically enduring and wondrously mysterious understandings to be displaced by something as superficial as a grid of sixteen suspiciously artificial personality types woven out of a questionable and all-too-fashionable theory of human temperament?

He answered,

Uncertain of who we are, we are all too ready to have an outside expert tell us. In this regard, the MBTI is well-matched to our age. A few minutes spent answering a set of relatively simple questions and there you are, your personality unfolded and displayed in seemingly intimate and intricate detail. … Add to this Isabel Myers’ tendency to describe each personality type in unfailingly optimistic terms and the possibilities for self-flattery abound.

…In short, the MBTI profiles read like horoscopes from Camelot. Taken too seriously, they can be perilously close to fortune cookies for the human potential movement. In contrast, running through the Christian theological tradition is a view of humanity that is far more complex, at once far more sober about human failings, far more truly hopeful about the human prospect, and far more infused with mystery, featuring a landscape of exhilarating peaks of communion with the holy and also valleys of tragic denial of our humanity. The gospel does not, of course, contain a psychology of human development. Such knowledge must be sought elsewhere, and welcomed when it is found. But any psychological portrait of the human condition must be placed into critical interaction with what we do know about human life from the gospel. Placed alongside the robust doctrines of human sinfulness and of divine grace and human blessing, the view of personality operating in the MBTI seems to spend much of the time floating lazily in the shallow end of the pool.

Compare this with Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s article, “Tell Me Who I Am, O Enneagram (1991).” Pacwa underscores the occult origins of the Enneagram; Long’s short article doesn’t get into the background of the MBTI, though he notes it is a popularization of C. G. Jung’s views, which also had occult roots (see the works of Richard Noll, one of which I reviewed here).

And this brings me back to the question of the occultic dabblings of Hans Urs von Balthasar, specifically, his apparent enthusiasm for the tarot. He has been passionately defended on other blogs by folks who claim the tarot can be used safely by Christians as a tool for self-discovery–the very purpose behind use of other “spirituality resources” with occult origins such as the MBTI and the Enneagram. “I’m not trying to discern the future,” the occult apologist declares, “I just want to know myself.”

Then study the Word of God and examine yourself before its mirror.

The ease with which these occultic methods are excused and defended frightens me. I used to laugh at those who loved to quote Pope Paul VI’s warning that the “smoke of Satan” had entered the house of God. I laughed when folks like Malachi Martin talked of Satanic ceremonies in high places. I laughed at attempts to connect the sexual abuse crisis with such spiritual darkness.

But when conservatives defend a “conservative” who endorsed an occult tool for “self awareness”–this stops me dead in my tracks and makes me wonder what we have come to–and where we are heading.

We have the Word of God–why turn from that to the words of men … or worse?

I’ve ordered a copy of Meditations on the Tarot to read von Balthasar’s essay, of which a portion is on-line. He describes this work thus:

A thinking, praying Christian of unmistakable purity reveals to us the symbols of Christian Hermeticism in its various levels of mysticism, gnosis and magic, taking in also the Cabbala and certain elements of astrology and alchemy. These symbols are summarised in the twenty-two so-called “Major Arcana” of the Tarot cards. By way of the Major Arcana the author seeks to lead meditatively into the deeper, all-embracing wisdom of the Catholic Mystery.

I think that should make any Christian tremble.