Laws permitting same-sex “marriage” are fundamentally an attack on religious liberty. Those advancing them seek to put those religious institutions disagreeing with them out of business. This was clear in Boston and San Francisco, where Catholics were forced out of the adoption business. It’s happening again in Washington, DC. The animus against Christian teaching is clear:
In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.
“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.
Though I elected to keep this blog, posting has dropped drastically due to my very busy schedule. But it is Veterans’ Day, and this year finds me back in uniform after a 15 year break in service. I’m a chaplain in the Texas Army National Guard, serving with 1-149th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion at Ellington Field. I’ve had two drills with them now, and am getting to know the soldiers and to hear the stories of their deployments to Bosnia and Iraq. It’s a different Guard than I served in last time around–these are experienced warriors who know the pain of separation and the gritty reality of combat.
We went to San Antonio on Friday for a three day weekend of weapons qualification (for everyone but me). We were all in a somber mood in the wake of the murders at Fort Hood the previous day. Soldiers know the risks they assume when they put on the uniform–but this wasn’t one. We expect to face bullets on foreign soil, not at home; we expect to face that danger before an enemy, not a fellow soldier. We expect those to crack those who are young, immature, inexperienced, under stress–not a major. Not someone trained to heal. Not someone trained to help us. And so our emotions are many: grief, anger, confusion, and fear.
But I do not fear the Muslims who serve. This guy does not represent them. His reference to Islam and the Koran were excuses, not reasons; manipulated facts, not motivations. I am afraid, in fact, for Muslims, who may be scapegoated, feared, accused, suspected, despite a personal history of commitment and valor. The wrong response to this tragedy would be to single out members of a particular religion–the right response is to take seriously the words and actions of soldiers who, for whatever reason, are on the edge.
Tomorrow, I’m going to a dinner sponsored by Military Ministry (a branch of Campus Crusade) focusing on how churches can reach out to and heal veterans suffering from PTSD; on Friday, I’m going to a training they are offering at Encourager Church on the Katy Freeway in Houston (it will be repeated on Saturday at Lakewood–for details, see http://ptsdusa.org). I don’t think this guy suffered from PTSD–he hadn’t ever been deployed; he had just finished his psychiatric residency. He did have the experience of soaking in a lot of pain, and that can have its own impact; he was confused, it appears, about the conflict he perceived between his faith and his duty as an officer. He was afraid, it appears. More will come out in the trial to come. I’m glad he lived to be able to tell. But the tragedy is that this healer left only more pain in his wake. Pain that we, the living, have to heal. Pain that many veterans endure in silence.
After 21 years as a Jesuit, Fr. James Martin, SJ, is finally taking his final vows. He talks about the process here. It’s a bizarre formation process–and he’s getting to take his vows earlier than some: they didn’t let Fr. Joe Fessio do it until he’d been a member 41 years!
Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie is complaining (again) about translations of the liturgy. He’s a champion of the English translation of the mass that has been used in the US since 1970, which was based on the “dynamic equivalence” theory (and has been shown to have many problems). The Vatican has been pushing for a more literal translation–and he’s not at all happy with the result. The article is in NCR, a liberal Catholic publication, and the comments are mainly in support of him. But over at Commonweal, another liberal Catholic publication, Gregory Wolfe finds Trautman paternalistic.
I just got back from the 180˚ Symposium at Andrews University, sponsored by the Center for Youth Evangelism. Kudos to Ron Whitehead, Japhet De Oliveira, Steve Case, Ron Pickell, and all others involved. Our topic: public campus ministry. I presented a paper on Ellen G. White and the Secular Campus.
Adventists have a spotty record when it comes to ministry on public and private (”non-Adventist”) college and university campuses. We have good examples at places like Berkeley and Knoxville, active student organizations at schools like Texas A&M, and promising new ventures like that led by Sebastien Braxton in Boston. We have some training resources, like The Word on Campus (available from Advent Source) and a Campus Spiritual Life Certificate Program at the seminary that can provide quality training (but it is under-advertised and so few have taken advantage of it).
But we have little money. Our NAD coordinator is a full time pastor and works on a meager stipend and travel budget.The same is true at the conference and local level. Because of this, you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of full-time Adventist chaplains. There are only a couple who have bothered to seek endorsement from Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries (and none of us can name those people). There is little stability in ministry, and so little wisdom gained from years of experience (again, we’re talking fingers on one hand when we speak of the number of campus ministers with 10 years or more of experience).
And yet there are 19,000,000 students at these colleges and universities in North America–the combined population of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix. 70% of Adventist students are at non-Adventist colleges.
We were reminded in an NAD report last year by Monte Sahlin that Adventism is “graying.” The median age is high, and not just because Adventists are living longer than the general population, but because we are losing young adults in their 20s, and have a dearth of members in the 20-45 age bracket.
How much wisdom and experience and giftedness have we lost through this attrition? How much tithe money has the church lost because today’s young doctors, lawyers, business entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, and video game programmers did not find the church there for them during college and grad school?
We spend millions of dollars on evangelism, throwing much of it away on mass mailings to tens of thousands of people that will result in one or two baptisms. Why not spend this money to evangelize college and university campuses that are full of seekers–and our own young people?
The harvest is ripe–where are the workers? Where is the passion? Where are the resources?
Recently, the Vatican announced that it would provide for a “personal ordinariate” for Anglicans entering the Catholic Church.
Is there anything new here? Not really. It simply provides a canonical structure for what was already allowed under the 1980 Pastoral Provision. Groups of Anglicans/Episcopalians who become Catholic can have parishes that use a modified Anglican liturgy; Anglican/Episcopalian priests who are married can receive a dispensation from celibacy and be ordained as Catholic priests after appropriate formation. There are currently seven such parishes in the United States, including Our Lady of Walsingham here in Houston. Each one is currently under the authority of the local ordinary (bishop of the diocese in which they serve). This will allow for them to have a common ordinary (priest or bishop).
Contrary to US News, this does not make it “easier” for Anglicans to convert. It isn’t hard for any baptized Christian to convert. All you have to do is profess the Creed and say, “‘I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.”
And there’s the catch. Anglican’s can’t just be against gay marriage or gay bishops and priests (plenty of those in the Catholic church) or ordination of women. They have to accept the whole package. They have to become Roman Catholics–though they will be able to have a Catholic priest as pastor who knows Anglican traditions and can celebrate a Catholicized version of the Anglican liturgy.
A zealous Orthodox apologist describes “Why (he thinks) Orthodoxy is the true faith.” Along the way he makes some insightful criticisms of the eroticized and narcissistic spirituality of certain popular saints. I think he’s on to something. Lee Podles also discussed such things in his book, The Church Impotent.
Lee Podles has been commenting on the case of Bishop Raymond Lahey of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, who was found with kiddie porn on his computer. He wonders why none of the official Catholic commentators express any anger at Lahey’s actions–following a consistent pattern of official Catholic response to sexual abuse.
Americans United ceased to be a religious liberty organization years ago and became just another leftwing agitator. That’s readily apparent in their article, “Whose Conscience Counts?” The issue is the “rights” (their scare quotes) of pharmacists who oppose abortion, and who want to follow “conscience” (their scare quotes again). The article is a flat out attack on the religious liberty of individuals, and on the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which is designed to protect that liberty.
The odd and questionable custom of the United States having an ambassador to a church continues. Miguel Diaz has been formally welcomed by Pope Benedict XVI. And let’s not play games and imagine that we send an ambassador to the Vatican because it is a “country.” We send an ambassador not to a square mile with a population of 900 people, but to a church with a billion members–of which this ambassador is always one. Benedict knows this. That’s why his address to Diaz is about what “the Church”–especially “the Church in the United States”–must do and say. He underscored the moral vision the [Catholic] Church must uphold and teach–acting then as a teacher to a docile student.
The same teacher/student relationship is apparent each year at Red Masses around the country, which honor the legal profession and give bishops the opportunity to instruct lawyers and judges in the Catholic Church’s moral teaching. No Red Mass has a higher profile than the one in Washington, DC, which traditionally attracts many of the members of the Supreme Court. CNN notes that some have a problem with it. Ruth Bader Ginsberg says, “”I went one year, and I will never go again, because this sermon was outrageously anti-abortion.” She was shocked, shocked!–that they were teaching Catholic doctrine.
So, during a lull in my busy day, I popped into Wal-Mart and read the last few chapters of Dan Brown’s latest book. Freemasonry is front and center in this tale, but the message is the same as in his previous books: don’t believe or trust the Bible; instead, believe those esoteric philosophies that reject the literal message of the Bible in favor of a contrary, “spiritual,” interpretation. The bottom line is, “You shall be as gods.”
It’s not too early to be thinking about Christmas. You know the decorations will soon be in the stores. Are you disappointed with the commercialism and the crush of the crowds and the stress and the co$t? Then check out Advent Conspiracy.
The story of Christ’s birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.
So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.
And when it’s all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?
What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?
There’s a DVD available with four short videos that can be discussion starters, and there’s a book with discussion guide, too.
Encourage a different attitude in your young adult ministry, campus, or church. Join the conspiracy.
Dan Brown’s latest book is soon to be published. This is said to be about the freemasons.
He’ll sell lots of books because he knows how to tell a compelling story (no matter how illogical it may be–any novel is bound to be a “page turner” when its chapters are only two pages long!). And he’ll entice the gullible by his gnostic claims (yeah, they’re “fiction,” he says with a wink, but also claims a factual basis for much of his bunk). His nose will continue to grow as he tells whoppers like, “The Christians got holy communion from the Aztecs,” or, “The Church took the name ‘Satan’ from Islam because it was a dirty language,” or “That’s really Mary next to Jesus in the Last Supper!” And he will laugh all the way to the bank.
Fr. Richard McBrien is one of the best known Catholic scholars. And he’s often getting himself publicity by articles taking issue with Catholic teaching. Take this, for example: Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration.
After clearing the air about an article that was in the Boston Globe (a good job), he then throws out some gratuitous swipes at the theology and practice of his church:
Notwithstanding Pope Benedict XVI’s personal endorsement of eucharistic adoration and the sporadic restoration of the practice in the archdiocese of Boston and elsewhere, it is difficult to speak favorably about the devotion today.
Now that most Catholics are literate and even well-educated, the Mass is in the language of the people (i.e, the vernacular), and its rituals are relatively easy to understand and follow, there is little or no need for extraneous eucharistic devotions. The Mass itself provides all that a Catholic needs sacramentally and spiritually.
Eucharistic adoration, perpetual or not, is a doctrinal, theological, and spiritual step backward, not forward.
Eucharistic adoration is inseparable from Catholic Eucharistic theology. The Catholic church believes that the substance of the bread and wine of the Eucharist are, when consecrated by the priest in the mass, transformed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, and that this presence perdures beyond the celebration of the mass. If you believe that, you will engage in Eucharistic adoration.
I think the reality here is that McBrien doesn’t really believe Catholic teaching. And yet he is a priest in good standing with a very public platform as a professor of Catholic theology.
Funny thing–some Catholics say the reason you have heresy in liberal Protestant churches like the ELCA is because there is no magisterium. Well, Catholicism has a magisterium, but it still can’t keep its own house in order.
We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” signed by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation. I’ll have to write my own reflection on that.
… the ELCA has succumbed to the same ailment as liberal Protestantism. What is that? Modern Protestantism is an amalgamation of historic Christianity and the principles of the Enlightenment, its rationalism, subjectivism, and anthropocentrism. The underlying assumption is the neo-gnostic belief in the inner-dwelling of God, such that everyone is endowed with the inner light that only needs to be uncovered. The light of truth does not shine through the Scriptures and the Christian tradition as much as through scientific reason and individual experience. This is what happened in Minneapolis: appeals to reason and experience trumped Scripture and tradition, punctuated with pious injunctions of Lutheran slogans and clichés. The majority won. And they said it was the work of the Spirit, forgetting that the Holy Spirit had already spoken volumes through the millennia of Scriptural interpretation, the councils of the church, and its creeds and confessions.
It is not meet, right, and salutary that this assembly vote on God’s commandments as understood by the one, holy, catholic church throughout 2000 years. The Word of God should not be put to vote. The great orthodox churches of the world do not even consider the changes we have in mind.
Voting on these matters is doubly problematic because we have no compelling biblical or confessional grounds, nor anything approaching a consensus, to make these momentous changes. Thischurch should not vote on the binding teaching of thechurch. If it does, this church may soon find itself outside of thechurch.
The ELCA is now in crisis. On the most obvious level, the decisions to permit same-sex blessings and to permit ordinations of persons in such same-sex relations will lead many individuals and congregations to contemplate leaving the ELCA. Historically, fewer congregations leave than one expects, but some will leave and others will find ways to disengage from ELCA structures (e.g., by withholding contributions to synods and the national church).
Beyond those organizational results, the teaching and practices adopted represent a crisis. For some, myself included, these are more than just mistakes, policies and ideas with which we disagree. They are false teaching, teaching that directly contradicts the clear command of Scripture and the authoritative tradition of the church. The ELCA is now not just a pilgrim church, an imperfect church on the way, but an erring church, a church which has, in an important part of its life, lost its way.
For many, these two items are the crisis. But I think the crisis extends further. A third aspect of the present crisis is the way tendencies present in Lutheranism since the early 20th century are now coming to a head. One reason false teaching has captured the ELCA is that various views (a crude and static understanding of simul justus et peccator, a confusion between paradox and ambiguity, bad understandings of biblical authority) have come to be accepted as authentically Lutheran, even as defining Lutheranism. Recent developments are not simply the outcome of ‘liberalism,’ but also of what we have come to think of as ‘Lutheranism.’ (What I worry about at 2 AM when I cannot sleep is that what we have come to think of as ’Lutheran’ actually is Lutheran, in which case the Reformation was just wrong.) We will not come out of our present predicament without careful and extended thinking about basic questions of Lutheran theology.
Finally, a fourth aspect of the crisis are the propositions the ELCA has come to affirm in the course of adopting the recent proposals, e.g., that opposing ‘bound consciences’ can stymie consistent church teaching or that no disagreement on ethics can divide the church (unless one side of the ethical disagreement is inconsistent with the doctrine of justification). These are bad ideas that will come back to haunt us.
Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe has come out in criticism of some of his fellow bishops–and said many others who are silent also disagree with them, but don’t want to be seen in open conflict. The issue: pro-abortion politicians. A vocal minority criticized Notre Dame’s invitation to Obama.
“Last month,” said Sheehan, “the pope made the president of France an honorary canon of St. John Lateran’s — and he [President Nicolas Sarkozy] is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, married invalidly to an actress, and the pope did that. It doesn’t seem that [the Vatican] had quite as big a concern about this matter of Obama and Notre Dame as some of us.”
You’ve heard the news. Ted Kennedy has died. Friends of mine are pouring out eulogies on Facebook and blogs.
I found the man revolting … a spoiled rich kid who got what he wanted; a sleazy politician who had no scruples; a mover and shaker of the extreme left who sought to bring down the moral pillars of this nation.
Now he sleeps, awaiting the judgment. I pray that Mary Jo Kopechne, and the untold millions of abortion victims, will find justice on that day.
The actions in Minneapolis would be inconceivable but for the fact that the denomination has for decades allowed increasing theological pluralism to mark its membership and its leadership. But plainly, this pluralism allows for radically different theologies to reside within one denomination and for fundamentally divergent understandings of Scripture and biblical authority to coexist. All parties now recognize that this coexistence will be very hard to maintain. …
… What makes the Lutheran action distinctive and especially troubling is the effort to claim that a church can remain united even as it is strained by such divergent understandings of human sexuality and biblical morality. In anticipation of the meeting in Minneapolis, some Lutherans were already claiming that the issue of homosexuality simply is not a matter of fundamental importance. …
The claim that these two contradictory understandings of the Bible’s teachings on human sexuality can coexist and be recognized as being equally faithful to the Scriptures is nonsense. Those pressing for the normalization of homosexuality must put the Scriptures through hoop after hoop of theological acrobatics. The claim that a church can both condemn and bless homosexual relationships with equal faithfulness falls false on its face. Worst of all, it sows a disastrously deadly confusion about the nature of sin — a confusion that subverts the Gospel and brings eternal consequences. Should homosexuals repent of their sin, or come to the church for the blessing of their homosexual unions? There can be no multiple-choice answer to that question. The actions in Minneapolis will reverberate far into the future. Woe unto those who cloak such decisions with the disguise of faithfulness.
