Nisi Dominus
“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”
My favourite musical setting for this is Monteverdi’s from his Marian Vespers of 1610. Not his only setting of the Nisi Dominus; & apparently yet another washed up recently; I have yet to hear it. The opening of this one is however so decisively otherworldly & paradisal that it will perhaps always remain in my head as the default setting for Psalm 126 (or 127 Jacobean). The gates suddenly open — the castle gate, the city gate — on the cornetts & sackbutts, the dulcian & shawm, “the krum-horns, doppions, sordumes of jolly miners” in Auden’s imagination of the scene, when he closes his Arcadian eyes to escape the heckling of an angry Utopian. Or as his “Horae Canonicae” begin:
Simultaneously, as soundlessly,
Spontaneously, suddenly
As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind
Gates of the body fly open
To its world beyond, the gates of the mind,
The horn gate & the ivory gate …
Unless the Lord; for returning to the Psalm: “it is vain for you to rise before light: rise ye after you have sitten, you that eat the bread of sorrow.”
Handel’s grand version is also unforgettable, made I think for Italian patrons. England missed out on the Baroque, except in music; but even in music, the English (sometimes I use this word in an old Scots way, to mean “the English-speaking peoples”) were by the 17th century too far departed from Catholicism, too insular, too moated by the Channel, to enter into the spirit of the Baroque. To this day, I myself with my Protestant heritage fight a certain tight-assed quality that prevents me from fully enjoying, first, the extravagance of the Baroque. Then second, within it, the frank humility it expresses: the falling on one’s knees before Almighty God. Conversely, less noticed, the simplicity of means quite often employed, to express an invisible grandeur.
For Baroque could move both upward & downward through the scales; could turn inside-out & outside-in. It was not designed to accommodate mediocrity, & shoddy craftsmanship. It was continuing & adapting essentially Mediaeval notions of space, as sculptural & three-dimensional, in an age when everything was going stiff again, & architecture was returning to the old pagan façade — a big flat billboard, with a surface of marble; an appliqué of showy wealth with stuffed rubble behind it. Baroque was not “progressive” like that: not arrogant & empty of chest & brain. Baroque was reactionary. It was carved, in the round, & to be seen from every angle. It had nothing to hide; it had only to deliver.
Rubens is not loved, O gorgeous Rubens is not loved, & cannot be loved even in the resplendency of his colour, until one comes to terms with the Baroque. And this cannot be done until one overcomes one’s inner wincing at the Council of Trent, & the Catholic revival after all the defeats of the Reformation. The Protestant, Bauhaus sensibility shrinks from the Baroque as it shrinks from the Cross, when it finds the bleeding Man on it. (“Stand back! It might drip on your shoes!”) Rubens more or less intends the affront he offers to every pinched sensibility & soul: he was, after all, besides a painter, a diplomat & agent in the Tridentine cause, a welcome face at Rome & Madrid. He is the embodiment of “the Spanish Netherlands,” & God I love him for it.
We wince still, even at his fleshy women, having accustomed ourselves “progressively” over centuries now to our Northern, anti-Catholic notion of what a woman should be: thin, flat, & staring, like a boy; not curved & dynamic & fulfilled. By today, we inherit the anorexic runway model of post-Protestant capitalism: the perfection of onanism & sterility. But Rubens loved woman as woman: not hard & professional; but soft, round, & unashamed of her sex. There was nothing, as it were, “unisexual” about him. And his skies open, as the heavens open in the star gate; & his light shines down as from the Sun God. He will not be pinched; he will not apologize. He will not participate in the wince of the smug & self-satisfied — when confronted by their God.
There is a fine book by John Bourke, Baroque Churches of Central Europe (1958), should gentle reader decide to take a walk through southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria. I think that might be the best way for the Northerner — so long cut off from the light — to begin absorbing the Baroque spirit; to become acclimatized, & able to cope. Germans, even Lutheran Germans, could capture it (at least, outside Prussia), by constant exposure to the Catholic fact, which would not go away. And of course Bach understands it so well, that his Mass settings fit naturally into a Catholic church. He even used, pointedly, the old Latin Catholic texts, in his later settings. And his cantatas grow more Catholic as he ages. His fuges, too, are Baroque architecture.
My maternal aunt, Mildred Holmes — a Calvinist choirmistress & organist in Cape Breton — first called my attention to this. Bach grows “broader & broader, & ever more daring, & ever more certain what he is about.” (She scandalized her congregation by playing gratis at Catholic weddings; & then scandalized them again with her explanation that as there was only one Christ, there can be only one Church for Christians.)
But it is the Monteverdi that threw open the gate, for me, on this Psalm which has long been misread in our Northern climes. We take it, as we take everything, for a kind of hell-fire warning: “Except the Lord build the house,” … the sulphur will rain down. But no, it does not rain down, it is in us. For we have taken everything with a grain of sulphur.
Read the rest of this intensely, unambiguously pro-life Psalm. It is Baroque, Rubenesque. And it is addressed, as the Douay translation makes clearer than the old KJV, to those who “eat their bread in sorrow.” Which would mean, us, for it describes us perfectly: our scowl in response to material wealth, our resentment of gifts, our childish cupidity & childless lascivity. Curiously enough, it tells us to have babies. “Blessed is the man who has filled his desire with them; he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies at the gate.” (At, for instance, the Gates of Vienna.)
This is joyous stuff. And yes, it is meant to affront the narrow, in their pokey little houses, in their mean cities, in which there is no room for God to reside. “Unless the Lord build the house”; “Unless the Lord keep the city”; unless we throw open our gates before the Risen Lord — we will live in the kind of environments in which we now live, in a world that is entirely man-made, & therefore very nasty.
One of Luther’s criticisms of the Catholics was that every time you turned around, they were having a feast day for something or other. Old Martin would have it that the calendar was polluted with references to saints and their patronages, which gave way to excessive merrymaking. Your country, your region, your city or town, your guild, you parish each had a patron saint or three, and their feasts were occasions of respite, reminders of a happier fate than what the daily grind could ever offer.
The Baroque was a rebuttal of the narrowness that turned Jolly Old England into the England of the Stiff Upper Lip. It also is an enigma readily passed over by a modern who is infatuated with his own neuroses. In music Vivaldi with his taste for joy is a personal favorite. In architecture something sturdy and Romanesque is also welcome.
Ah, the Romanesque. Had I lived in the 12th century, I’m sure I would have been fighting the fashionable advance of the Gothic.
Vivaldi was surrounded by orphan and destitute girls who played his music after being trained by him in one of the institutions for the poor. How could such a man ever be dreary or depressed? Think of all that female flutter day after day.
Yes, unfortunately many women today are indeed “hard and professional.” Just go to any courtroom and see the ladies dressed in black gowns like Puritan ministers with suitcases of legal documents trailing behind them on little black wheels. Then there are the grim women at the big box stores giggling about in their jogging jerseys and sweat pants. What would Rubens have made of them? Bury them all with apples and peaches perhaps.
As per yer British Isles, we must always celebrate the joyously defiant works of that great closet Roman Catholic William Shakespeare and that apostate Roman Catholic Edmund Spenser. Even the ravenous dog Richard III was made to spout beautiful poetry between the grisly slayings. (Only Shakespeare’s minor characters like Richard Ratcliffe appeared bleakly Calvinist — a sort of Stalinist secret police operative.) Milton and Cromwell never succeeded in smothering happiness completely, despite much dedication and hard work.
Take heart. In the end, may the fat lady always sing with great gusto.
Yes, sir! Allow me to add that the killjoy quality of Progressivism, with its myriads of rules, is representative; perhaps the inheritor of that spirit. Their poets cannot rhyme, their musicians cannot harmonize, their celebrations have no joy if someone is not blamed, derided, or accused. Their only righteousness is self righteousness. That is why their culture dies constantly — because it wants to cut off all ties to everything. In doing so they cut the branch they are sitting upon.
Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem frustra vigilavit qui custodit.
This “City Upon a Hill” is soon to be a ruin. Happy is our generation because we shall see the fall of Jericho. One more mighty shout and the walls will come crashing down on Obalaam and his unhappy crowd.
This Ash Wednesday falls on the day of Our Lady the Mystical Rose and it is one of the main days recommended by St. Louis de Montfort for dedication to her. A curious coincidence because in this year of 2013, Lent begins on February 13th and Resurrection Sunday will dawn on March 31. I want to think of it as a sign that this year we will see the end of the abominable tide.
Catino, they are a frantic yet joyless crowd. A man centered society requires control and control requires eternal vigilance because someone somewhere might be having fun. These walls of Jericho will come down not from a shout, but from the first spontaneous outbreak of genuine laughter. That will indicate that people have lost their fear of false guilt, had their fill of pomposity, become jaded by constant agitation, outgrown the fantasy of disembodied sex, seen one too many promises collapse, and become acquainted with one too many people behind the curtain diddling the taps and levers to make Oz speak.
Did the rebirth of your equipment produce all this joy? In any case, thank you for it.
What has never been adequately examined is Puritanism as a mass mental aberration. As soon as the iconoclasm starts rolling, the maiming, killing or less forms of wanton destruction will soon follow.
If the rooms are getting more bare and austere (Church naves, palace ballrooms, office board rooms) the less time there is to make a run for it.
Did somebody mention Richard III? Did somebody mention things washing up out of the grips of history? With that tenuous segue I launch into a rant perhaps interesting only to our host, and maybe not even to him. But why should he suffer alone?
I’m sure everyone has heard that they’ve found the body of Richard III in a car park in Leicester — although, I do suspect it wasn’t covered in asphalt until several years after his death. All the Canadian papers are waving their patriotic fists in the air, as it was a Canadian (only one generation out of England — a “nisei” as we say in Japan) who provided the final proof of the king’s identity.
The team that exhumed him is stating that there is no evidence that he had a withered arm (and they’re saying it rather sneeringly, as though such an opinion constitutes a substantive attack on Shakespeare’s reputation as an orthopedic surgeon).
However, it is quite obvious from the briefest glance at the left arm that while the bones are the same length as on the right, the usual pleasing ellipse between the radius and the ulna is lacking, and that the radius is quite distorted at the proximal end, indicating that the tendons of a contractured arm pulled on it in a disordered way for many years.
Is nobody right about anything any more?
I am disturbed by the easy way that “orthoarcheologists” and historians (largely hard and professional female types, I notice) grasp one, tenuous measurement and declare 500 years of history and tradition are null and void based on that information.
I will admit, I didn’t have much of an opinion about Richard III either way, but now, due to these revisionists, I’ve become convinced he was a nasty, physically twisted specimen.
Of course, I say this as a soft and unprofessional woman, by which I mean I am a bit fat and quite sweary, even in front of clients.
And, if we can positively identify Richard III using DNA, why can’t we do the same for the two children who were found buried under a staircase in the Tower of London? If scientists are able to collect DNA from their bones, now interred at Westminster Abbey, we could clear up forever whether or not they were Richard’s nephews.
Then we would be using hard science to figure these things out, instead of the whimsical guesses of a few historians who seem to be having more of a dig at Shakespeare than actually pursuing Truth. (I wonder if someone needs to explain to them that he wasn’t writing documentary scripts; … or if somebody needs to explain to me what an anachronism is.)
Oh my! Aren’t women difficult? This one has rudely gone right off on a tangent.
My apologies — really.
Other Joe, Viscount Dochart, Sean:
Quote: “a modern who is infatuated with his own neuroses.” There’s the rub! No pun intended.
From antiquity we have looked upward and forward. Christianity showed some of our ancestors a pattern that the noble pagan’s intuition could see faintly. Then for a while we managed to stay focused on Heaven: higher, deeper, further we went. Then a German (well …) Augustinian came up with that great idea: look at the Church no longer but to Scripture. That was followed by all kinds of similar hapless propositions.
We went from “this is my body, which is given up for you” to “this is my body to do what I want with it.” Who wants to look at galaxies when there is one’s own navel? Sad state of affairs indeed. But we have seen it coming for 500 years.
The orchestra is about to strike the final chord and the fat lady will whimper a closing note. Consider the promises of liberation that fill the history pages of the last five centuries.
Olympus begot a mouse.
Gaijingal:
Revisionism is a necessary tool for those who want to break with the past, any past. I believe one can always separate good from bad and retain the good. We cannot change the past but one can only truly learn from a true account of the past.
One of the distinct bad habits of Modernism is its desire to disengage, to cut off with everything, even with itself. The combat we fight is not between present and past, no. It is fought in the present between those who do not want to cut off their own roots against those who actually detest their own roots. Both groups see the present differently. Some in their arrogance pretend to be “a man of the times” and that necessarily includes the rejection of those who “live in the past” or hold on to “obsolete ideals.” Who gave them the right to discard people and ideas by the simple device of labeling them outdated like last week’s milk carton?
That is a devious sort of semantic violence and a very ugly trait of those who want to discard life, culture, laws, even economies. I believe that is the psychological consequence of rejecting the richness of life — bear with me, this is tough to condense. In my mind there is no doubt that Puritanism and Progressivism are one and the same, the only difference being the absence of God in the latter. Their way of living embraces a rejection of joy. Puritanism rejects the joy of sex, Progressivism rejects love in its original Greek sense of Eros because it is what makes sex truly joyful. What Rubens embraces Picasso deconstructs. After so many years of revolutions, revisionism, and joyless carnal exchanges signifying nothing, people are understandably angry and depressed. After enough anger and depression quite a few individuals are turning mean.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain.
The Shakespearean Richard seems to embody the ugliness of that discontent. Perhaps this appearance of his remains (under a parking lot, of all places!) is a little bit of a divine joke. A good Antichrist needs its anti-relics after all.
Saint Thomas More wrote somewhere that Richard III was responsible for the killing of the two princes in that “rude ragged nurse” the Tower of London. As per the overall bad rap that Richard III got from Shakespeare, we must remember that the great bard tended to kiss the royal behinds of the Tudors. (Shakespeare wasn’t stupid after all.) Henry VII defeated Richard III in bloody battle, so Henry VII would obviously be the good guy. This does not diminish Shakespeare’s great play in any way. Art is not about reporting, but about art. “From forth the kennel of thy womb has crept a hell hound that doth hunt us all to death” is poetry, not something from out of the mouth of a real royal person, Queen Margaret.
Shakespeare never portrayed himself as an historian. Same thing applies in modern times to someone like Hart Crane who wrote the great American poem The Bridge. Literary critics go after Crane because he messed up some of his factual information such as teepees were erected by plains Indians, not Algonquin Indians who built wigwams. Also, Crane’s dream of the great Atlantis is somehow not seen as developed from earlier sections of his poem. What is missed in all this twaddle is that Crane was always a poet first and foremost, and his poem is about himself, what arose in his own mind as an artist, not about a real America that ever was or ever could be. Dreams are dreams, and facts are facts, something totally lost on pedantic puritans.
If Richard III had only lived to inspire a play like that written by Shakespeare, then his life was not in vain.
Another wonderful essay on subjects of which I am decidedly not an expert, though now inspired to become one “down the line”! One line sticks out to me in particular — perhaps you have already written elsewhere specifically on this subject (rather than simply alluding to it), if not I would love to read your expanded thoughts on: “The Protestant, Bauhaus sensibility shrinks from the Baroque as it shrinks from the Cross, when it finds the bleeding Man on it. (‘Stand back! It might drip on your shoes!’)”
The Baroque part I believe is expounded upon clearly enough, it’s the shrinking from the cross that drew my attention. My previous education on the matter, biased as all such education may and must be, would hold the Catholic priest as the one interposing himself between the laity and the cross, where the protestant has the clearer view for not having any such barriers.
Catino, an interesting representation of the teachings of said German Augustinian — who “came up with that great idea: look at the Church no longer but to Scripture.” The idea, as originally expounded, was for the Church itself — and thus could be paraphrased as “navel gaze at yourself no longer, but look to God’s Word,” which seems less than objectionable through any lens I can find.
On the topic of Catholic navel gazing, I am reminded for some reason of a visit once made to the study of a Lutheran minister — a fine fellow, & my ally at the time in Cold War controversy against an anti-Christian foe. His books were almost equally in German & in English (plus a few in Swedish), & while he was distracted on the phone, I began glancing over the spines. I noticed that books pertaining to a certain Martin Luther outnumbered books pertaining to a certain Jesus of Nazareth by a ratio of around ten to one; & that, compounding this, the Bible commentaries & other works of scholarship were almost exclusively Lutheran, thus omitting almost everything outside that sectarian loop. In particular, I could not spot a single book by a Catholic author, except Saint Augustine. (Perhaps he kept other Fathers of the Church in a closet somewhere.) I was too polite to call all this to his attention.
On the question of Catholic priests interposing themselves between the Christian layman & the Cross, I must report that I have never seen this happen. In every case in memory, the layman was looking at the Cross directly, & was at no point molested by a priest. I suppose there might have been a priest in the way, of a Cross standing on the altar during Holy Mass. But I don’t at the moment remember this being an issue: for there are plenty of other Crosses to look at in a typical Catholic church, & the Host is itself held up by the priest at a signal moment during the Mass, so everyone may get a good view.
In the broader sense, I have noticed that the sermons are generally rather longer & more declarative & intrusive in Protestant churches, where the pulpit is usually more centrally & dramatically placed. So that when, for instance, Sola Scriptura is being proclaimed, there is an oddly ironical effect. Does the pastor not realize that if only Scripture has authority, his own preachments must be beside the point?
“Navel gaze at yourself no longer, but look to God’s Word,” sounds almost right if one is not paying attention.
First, God’s Word comes in several formats and the Bible’s seventy-three books are only one of them. Then there are all other kinds of ways St. Paul talks about nature revealing His attributes, the Psalms about the Heavens declaring His glory, etc. I hear Him often in Sacred Liturgy (even these days!) and also, like St. Augustine, in those meaningful coincidences that hit us from time to time like the distant “tolle, legge” of children playing moving the saint to pick up and read the Pauline letters.
The proposal of free interpretation of the Books is, in my humble opinion, an invitation to anarchy and more profoundly a rebellion against the paternity of God. I can’t respect His written word while disrespecting Him as Father. Since the Trinity is a family and the Church that He set up is ecclesia, that is a call for all to join that Family. … The idea of having to look at the sixty-six books to figure out the faith from scratch sounds a little bit like my father leaving me a letter by the crib while forgetting to feed me and give me shelter.
There is an “I, the interpreter” thing in all of this that I can’t quite square. Where am I going to go? He has words of eternal life. I can read them, I can hear them, I can feel them. The letter alone will never replace the embrace of the Cross. It is not sola gratia but gratia nostra because we don’t have to find it alone, He finds us first. In the words of the old hymn:
Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita …
Now, Otiosus:
“Does the pastor not realize that if only Scripture has authority, his own preachments must be beside the point?”
There lies the basic contradiction but it is not the only one, and not even the biggest.
Ah, I see I did not take the words “the Cross” literally enough — indeed, Protestant churches are quite unlikely to have as many literal crosses hung as decorations in the building as the Roman Catholic church down the road. And what crosses they do have are much more likely to be empty, to symbolize the current rather than the past state of our Saviour. Thank you for the clarification, and for another set of interesting observations to ponder! In the meantime, let me jot down a few thoughts for other ponderers.
The interposing of which I was speaking (and, I must admit, taught), was likewise not literal, but rather that the individual believer must come not to the Cross, but to the priest to obtain forgiveness, and then only after following certain prescribed actions. The particular error that seemed most condemnable to Luther was the buying of indulgences to obtain this forgiveness, but that was only one such instance where the priest or some other object not the Cross (or even better, the Saviour) becomes a little too central in the whole scheme of things.
Catino, “sola” refers not to “my”, but to “only” — and that grace is, 100%, His to give and not mine to find. I agree that He finds us, first (being a little partial to Calvinism, if I dare admit that on this forum). Protestantism goes wrong where and when it encourages an “I, the interpreter” approach — most “traditional” protestant churches do use doctrinal statements or confessions which are historically tested. The authority given them is derived from scripture, but, in a subtle point that is all to often missed, not inferior to it (it is the same authority and the same teaching, or it is no authority at all). Similarly with sermons, although I would appreciate a few minutes less of such from time to time. …
As far as navel-gazing, very interesting observation by Otiosus, and one in which I attempt not to fall. It is, however, a most human attribute (see any forum on the Internet), and one to which I would submit even Popes are not immune. Is a Protestant hesitation to put so much trust into a Pope (or representative of such) a lack of faith in God to make a worthy man the Pope? Or is a Roman Catholic trust in such a man or men simply naive? I know I misrepresent both sides of the argument to some degree by over-simplifying, but I don’t have the gift for words to put it more precisely in the time given.
Finally, on the heavens also declaring His glory — indeed, they do! Note how the proof you give for this is directly from scripture.
Is every coincidence a nudge from the Almighty? I would suggest that there are more sources of nudges in this world than that, and that He would be most displeased if you were to try to blindly attribute them thus. How then to judge between one nudge and the next? Sola scriptura … at least, that is one method.
It has always amazed me that anyone, especially someone who is of a gentle nature, could have anything positive to say about Martin Luther. Being tormented by scruples to the point of insanity, his writings are full of raging hatred directed not only at the Church which he detested, but anyone who might have disagreed with him. After this crazy monk had fomented rebellion amongst the German peasants with his “priesthood of all believers,” he supported their slaughter by the nobles. His tract “On the Jews and their lies” is one of the worst anti-Semitic rants that anyone could have the misfortune to come across.
The reason that Luther’s vile nature is so scrupulously ignored by his supporters is his rebellion against Catholicism. It seems that any historical figure who bashed the Catholic Church will have an easy ride amongst most non-Catholics.
The corpus that Catholics affix to their crucifixes is a reminder that Christ is the God of the Incarnation. The Word became flesh, and lived as one man among many. He was subject to His parents; kept the customs of His age; grew in wisdom and stature among men at a certain time and in a certain place. A crucifix illustrates that God is a real flesh and blood person and not an empty abstraction. Whatever explanation Protestants give for removing the corpus — and I’ve heard more than one — there is the real danger that for them God becomes less of an objective reality and more of an abstraction that the individual can only too easily re-fashion to suit his own preferences — e.g. the countless “Bible-believing” denominations who differ on what the Bible means but agree at least that they’re not Catholic.
The Catholic priest serves as intermediary between man and God; in that role the priest is an alter Christus, another Christ: sacramentally, Christ operates through the priest. Thus the priest does not impose himself; rather, he becomes the flesh and blood bridge that God uses to continue to operate among men. Does God need to do this? The better question is, as God created men, isn’t it fitting that He uses men to save men? Why should He be limited in the choice of instruments, when He made everything to begin with? Why restrict God, and say He cannot use even fallen, sinful creatures to attain His designs? Isn’t it loving to touch the leper pariah when healing him? Catholic Churches, with all their crucifixes and stained glass, their altars and incense, their bells and kneelers and votive candles, are reminders of how generous God is in providing tangible — as opposed to abstract — aids for His people to win and retain grace. One effect of the Protestant revolt was to impoverish people, to isolate and atomize them, to leave them alone and with few aids in a wicked world. And the one aid they’ve allowed themselves — the Bible — they’ve generally mishandled.
The normal Protestant response to this line of thought is that a believer has God, and therefore already has access to everything good to an infinite degree. Yet this proves too much: if taken at face value, then literally nothing is needed — not parents or family, not a church or a pastor, and not the Bible. Then the extra-Scriptural explanations begin to multiply, and the omissions and inconsistencies are passed over — for instance, even when sola is discussed, you have to ask which of the five solae is meant: solus Christus, Soli Deo gloria, sola fide, sola gratia, or sola scriptura.
There’s not a person alive today — not even among the Lutherans — who believes everything Luther believed. Meanwhile Catholics can demonstrate an uninterrupted continuity of belief and practice for 2,000 years, going back to Christ and the Apostles. This former Protestant found the integrity of the Catholic position to be unassailable, its official teachings coherent and sound, its well-reasoned answers to Protestant criticisms thorough, reasonable, and in full accord with the Scriptures properly understood.
Brother Sola Gratia,
Once upon a time I was not an atheist, or an agnostic. In reality I simply did not care and I was pretty happy to live my life without God. Now, since my early days I have read a lot, in this and that language. Almost half a century ago I realized that all Western Literature was peppered with biblical references and so I decided to read the Bible. I found it interesting although I was reading it, not as a believer, but as a lover of literature. I revisited the sacred pages over the years and became a proficient Bible reader. Still, not even a smidgeon of belief.
About twenty years ago I had an experience, something shocking and personal, nothing miraculous; just a hard knock. The knock was administered in such a way that a reasonable person could have thought it was a supernatural warning. Suffice to say I admitted that there was a spiritual side to life and I started searching from the utmost ignorance of the formerly indifferent. All I had was my reading of the Bible as literature and history. Some St. Jerome, some C.S. Lewis completed my scanty knowledge of things spiritual.
This could be a long story but I will jump ahead to the time when, for reasons too long to state here, I had the certainty that the Resurrection had occurred. Again, no miracle, no special revelation. I only realized that the historic forces that so easily explained say, the Roman Empire, were not sufficient to explain the rise of Christianity. I’ll leave it at that to save space.
Now a potential Christian with an agnostic past, pretty much like Jack Lewis, I started looking at the history or rather the story of Christianity. I went all the way to Abraham and traced the growth of that strange artifact we called the Church to the days of Christ and then to this day.
What I saw — let me steal the phrase from Borges — was an object entering the world, something that had a few different names along the way. Today we call it the Church. The arc that goes from Abraham to our days is a historical anomaly, a powerful yet hidden sign that God is entering a derelict world determined to fix it.
Faced with the existence of Protestantism I looked at it without any prejudice but rather favoring it because, lazy me, I found it was much easier to practice than the rigorous disciplines of Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. In reading Luther and Calvin (I did not need any more after that) I realized that Protestantism had some serious logical flaws. In time I found this classic, luminous paragraph that sums it up:
“For the confuting of heretics a rule of faith is needed, and what is more, a living one to decide in each case. The principle of 1521, to allow no authority on earth to prescribe the faith, is anarchical. [...] This the Reformers also saw and thus there was nothing left for them, if they were to retain a ‘Church,’ than to set up their own authority in the stead of the authority of Pope and Councils. On one vexatious point they were, however, at a loss: Against the later Luther it was always possible to appeal to the Luther of Worms. The starting-point and raison d’etre of the whole Reformation was the repudiation on principle of all human authority in matters of faith; after this, to find Luther installed as Pope, was scarcely pleasing. [...] The hole in Luther’s teaching still remains a hole in the principle of the Protestant Church today: There can be no earthly authority in matters of faith, and: Such an authority there must be; this is an antinomy which lies at its very root.” John Osborne, Luther page 485 (William Brendon & Sons, UK).
So, … on that faulty foundation the whole edifice stands and it is quite a waste of time to talk about the color of the steeple when we have a crack that can allow an eighteen-wheeler to drive through the foundation.
Now I see your arguments and I have seen them before, many many times. We can pollute this good site with arguments and counter arguments but I have no use for that and I owe my host the courtesy of not trashing his site with useless material that is not edifying at all. Besides you can find the same debate in many places such as Catholic Answers where there are reams of stuff written on the usual controversies.
If you can’t “see” the Church through Theology, try History. Christ did not fail to sustain His Church and Luther did not rescue it. Corruption is not an excuse for rebellion. If it was we could disregard Christ because of Judas, or discard Israel because of those wicked kings. Perhaps St. Matthew has the key to understand the point when he writes to a mainly Hebrew audience about Jesus’ genealogy:
“[...] Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar. [...] Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz became the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. [...] David became the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah. [...] Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.” (Matthew 1)
Matthew makes sure to let us know the rather scandalous lineage of Jesus: Tamar (who posed as a prostitute to get impregnated by her father-in-law Judah), Rahab (the prostitute of Jericho), Ruth (who offered herself in a rather scandalous way to Boaz), Solomon’s mother, who is listed as “the wife of Uriah” (the poor thing had inspired adultery and murder), and finally — oh scandal of scandals! — Joseph is introduced to us as “the husband of Mary,” pretty much like John Kennedy jokingly introduced himself once as “the guy that went to Paris with Jackie Kennedy.” But for the Jews that was no joke: husbands are not of the wife but the other way around.
Indulgences were sold? If that really happened, and it was done on purpose, I am sure a few are trying to swim about in Hell wearing a grindstone necktie. But when even Our Lord chose to come from a dubious background, so who are we to go out and try our hand at starting a better church, or thirty thousand churches for that matter?
Think about it.
Viscount, Sean, Catino, thank you for taking the time to respond! I also do not wish to pollute this message board with simply a Catholic versus Protestant discussion, yet I don’t think David is opposed to discussion of a respectful nature no matter which way it turns. (And I promise not to turn every thread this way!) Yes, there are other resources out there, but having read past comment threads and columns on this site, I was curious as to what the individual reasons (your reasons) were, here.
Indeed, I see on this site comments that come across with confidence and a clear understanding of right and wrong, and yet the humility to know that this understanding is not one’s own, and I judge that to be a thing not of this world. However, the Catholics with whom I have experience in this world, I have found to be the kind who attend mass no more than twice a year and understand nothing of the significance behind it, nor have the curiosity or the guidance to look deeper. As David has pointed out elsewhere, do not judge a church by the people … and yet, one must judge based on something.
An appeal to history or to size comes with the same weakness, as does an appeal against Luther’s nature. (Not all Popes were fatherly figures!) If the reformation comes with the blame for post-modernism, does it also come with the credit for holding the light for the western world for much of the last 300 years? You may have come to terms with your answers to these questions, so far, I have come up with different answers. Again, thank you for your patience, in so far as it has lasted, to stick with the discussion.
Even the Catholic’s “uninterrupted unity” has changed and varies widely, both from place to place and from time to time. One could argue that it has expanded and grown rather than changed, but still … change. The Catholic church today is not identical to the one against which Luther so passionately argued. The crack in the foundation of Protestantism seems less wide to me — I have never questioned the authority of or need for councils of wise men within the church. Again, those are pointed to by Scripture quite explicitly. Only the make-up of the councils and the trust in a single human father here on Earth seem questionable. Perhaps starting with an outside perspective put Brother Catino in good stead there … on the other hand, perhaps the Protestant teachings were not understood fully due to starting with an outside perspective.
There are many more individual points which I could make, let me make just a couple and see if I can stretch the indulgence of the High Doganate yet a little further:
“Corruption is not an excuse for rebellion.” God determined that I was born into a church, and one in which I see evidence of His work. Yet you would have me rebel against those teachings because it has been corrupted (in your version) for the last 500 odd years. Corruption is not an excuse for rebellion, but obedience may push one into it nevertheless.
“One effect of the Protestant revolt was to impoverish people, to isolate and atomize them, to leave them alone and with few aids in a wicked world.” I simply have not seen this within my own church community or federation, but I have come across many from other denominations (including Catholic) who (albeit likely through their own fault) did not have an obvious place to turn in a difficult situation. I must and will judge based on my own experience, of which this discussion is but a very small (but enlightening and appreciated!) part. …
Sola Gratia adduces a point I have elsewhere been at pains to flag, but perhaps not yet on this website. It is that he, & many million others, were actually born into the Protestant sheepfolds. And billions of others were born into non-Christian religious traditions, to which they might very well have adhered, displaying such virtues of loyalty & good faith as we might admire as Catholics. It would not be quite right to address them as schismatic “rebels from the Church,” for that could have been no part of their intention. They, personally, never separated from anything.
My own path was, like Catino’s perhaps, made smoother by the complete absence of religious instruction in my childhood. I could claim, for instance, my mama’s Scotch Gaelic Calvinist ancestry, but not really through any effort on the part of my mama, an Atheist who, to this day in her own antiquity (she is in her 93rd year), looks on all that as “the past.” The best she can do is assure me that all my Calvinist ancestors have been rotating in their graves since I became a Papist.
There were many rather impressive among them, & I cannot forget that my mama’s own sister — that Calvinist choirmistress & organist in New Waterford — was an example to me from childhood of what a Saint might be like. (Indeed, she left almost everyone with whom she came in contact with the impression she might be a Saint; & this despite her very mischievous, & I must add rather Calvinist, sense of humour.)
As Sola Gratia may have observed; as at least I have observed from both outside then inside the One Holy Catholic & Apostolic Church over these last few decades, the majority of Catholics are today in as “fine” a state as the majority of mainstream Protestants. A Catholic who attends church only at Christmas & Easter is by that very fact apostate: he has renounced the explicit instruction of his Church to attend Mass at least every Sunday, when physically possible. Therefore, not to be trusted when he offers to speak for the Church, to the degree he does not even intend to take Church teaching seriously, but makes it up for himself as he goes along.
With genuinely believing & practising Protestants, I think we might have something resembling a “dialogue.” As, too, with the people who strike us as sincere, from all other traditions, even what I might call Liberal-Progressive-Atheist-Darwinoid — until it becomes pointlessly circular & time for everyone to move on. There are many things for us to learn from the Protestant tradition, given it has been around so long, & has had to deal with so much human spiritual experience; & some of my best friends are Calvinoids, &c.
As an Anglikaaner, I was aware that Catlicks were despised for refusing to participate in oecumenical talkfests as “equals.” But how can we do otherwise, given the two-millennial claims of the Roman Church? What we can do, as our excellent Pope suggests, is avoid personal arrogance. For it is our Church that has been around all that time. We, ourselves, were born only yesterday.
There is one more thing to add. The (Catholic) Church after the Reformation was a little different from the Church before, because it was now missing many millions of souls who would have been raised Catholic under the old regime. These people could not help but take some of the silverware with them, quite apart from the scandal of disunity that led to bloody wars, & made Christianity itself look much less attractive.
It is hard for those who have gone to the trouble of understanding this history to forgive & forget, from any side. What happened, happened, & cannot be changed. In the fullness of time, we may nevertheless hope to recover that unity. As Catholics, we actually need to get those Protestants back. To say nothing of the silverware they walked off with.
(Perhaps I should explain that by “silverware” I mean, genuinely Catholic tendencies within the Mediaeval Church, that had been accommodated within her, & belonged within her, that under the pressure of events self-identified as “Protestant” & walked away.)
Even when a Protestant myself, imagining this problem, I could conceive no way to recover this unity, except in some kind of astral journey back to Rome. Think of the whole history — in recollection that the first Pope was Saint Peter — & how else could it be? Remember, too, that prior to that “Protestant” 16th century, there had been other “reformations” within the Church herself.
It is the same Church that, for instance, replied to Catharism & Waldensianism in the 13th century, with Franciscan & Dominican orders — each in effect founded in reflection of the very truths that were acknowledged within heretical & schismatic movements. In a sense, the Jesuit order was the response to Calvinism; & Trent itself addressed corruptions to which Lutherans had pointed. “Catholic” means “universal,” & there is a very long history of accommodation with whatever is found to be good, beautiful, & true.
Well put! The vision of a united church here on Earth must be enough to make any Christian rejoice! And, one suspects, make any foe weep … Like you, I can conceive no way to recover this unity (unlike you, a journey to Rome seems unlikely to do so to me), except the return of our Lord. I do hope and pray that such a lack of vision is merely human weakness on my part!
To consider: such a unity cannot be based on compromising a Truth. Of course, it may be based on learning that things that are held to be truths are in fact somewhat less than Truth. This is a slow process, and often slower for those with the ability to think independently. And when not a slow process, I’ve observed the one undergoing it slingshot right past the proper destination into a place where nothing is considered to be Truth any more. No party is or should be interested in accepting a heresy or settling for a compromise (in such an area). Fortunately, a thousand years are as a day … and the day of the aforementioned Return is coming!
Also, thank you for the acknowledgement that something is lost on both sides when a schism of such magnitude occurs. On the Protestant side, one of the challenges is truly accepting the fact that we share over 2000 years of history, and thus to focus on the last ~500 is foolishly (humanly?) short-sighted. Perhaps in claiming the same two millennia of history a sense of what was lost (rather than what was gained) can be found. A focus on who is or is not coming as equals betrays a sense of insecurity (on one side) and self-importance (on both sides!) that can only be destructive. “In humility, consider others better than yourselves.”
This story is not yet complete, and I look forward to the day where we can all look back and see the workings of an almighty God leading his sheep to pasture!
What is difficult when admitting today to being Catholic, is the association that word now has with the mainstream liberal/left. For an obvious example, here in Canada the country was ruined primarily by Catholic prime ministers, not Protestants or atheists. The Catholic laity today is rightly viewed as a slovenly bunch of ignorant hypocrites who can be counted on to assist in the general drift towards perdition.
All that said, there still exists what the poet called “the dearest freshness deep down things.” G.M. Hopkins was referring to nature in this particular instance quoted, but he might as well have been referring to God and His Church directly. Despite the mess we see around us in the Church and in society there will always be that salvific Light burning at the centre of everything. Generations will come and go, but the Church will always be there because Christ said it would be.
There is a lot of beauty in Protestantism despite the fact that it is built on old heresies. Emily Dickinson was born into Calvinism, but that did not diminish her art; it actually enhanced it immeasurably. Most of her life was spent rebelling against bleakness and aridity, but at the same time she could never wholly reject the good religious intentions of her Protestant ancestors. Similarly, the apostate Catholic Robert Lowell, could not have written poems like “After the Surprising Conversions,” “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” and, “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,” if he was not steeped in the Puritan mindset of his Lowell, Edwards, Chilton and Winslow forebears.
The old religious wars should never be forgotten, but the common enemy of humankind today is godlessness without any remaining religious dimension whatsoever. The dark is going to be very dark indeed from here on in.
In the meantime, Mr Gratia, I reflect that God is merciful, & that his demands upon our judgement are quite limited. (“For my yoke is easy & my burden is light.”) He does not expect of us more than we can do. He has, for instance, entirely relieved us of the burden of sending our co-religionists to Hell. We may well shoot, hang, drown, splay, bake, boil, fry, or merely sauté, our theological adversaries, from time to time. But He alone takes upon Himself the task of resolving who should go where in the Hereafter. I, for one, was deeply relieved to learn this, & on the unimpeachable authority of Christ Himself. For, once started into the task of despatching my neighbours to Hell, I wouldn’t know where to stop. It would take up all my time & leave none over for the gentler & more agreeable, leisurely pursuits.
> An appeal to history or to size comes with the same weakness, as does an appeal against Luther’s nature.
You’ll recall that Luther himself appealed to his own authority when he added the word “alone” to his translation of the epistle to the Ephesians, so that it read that “by grace alone.” By what authority, Luther was asked, did he introduce the novel term? “You can say that Dr. Martin Luther would have it so!” the reformer derisively fired back. Protestantism has always hinged on the personalities of those doing the interpreting of Scripture. It’s not a fault on the part of Luther’s critics to point out his technique was fatally flawed.
The appeal to a continuous and uninterrupted history, meanwhile, is telling, as is the absence of continuity in the alternatives. All Catholic dogmas have remained the same, unrevised, unreformed, for two thousand years. Transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity — all those and more have been part of the Catholic faith since the time of Christ and the Apostles.
> Not all Popes were fatherly figures!
No Pope did what Luther did and referenced his own personality to explain novelties that he enjoined as obligatory on his followers; thus, the comparison doesn’t hold.
> If the reformation comes with the blame for post-modernism, does it also come with the credit for holding the light for the western world for much of the last 300 years?
Rather, the Protestants exploited the foundation established by the Catholics, and in the process have squandered their birthright.
> Even the Catholic’s “uninterrupted unity” has changed and varies widely, both from place to place and from time to time.
Not in its dogmas, which is where the uninterrupted unity is to be found.
> The Catholic church today is not identical to the one against which Luther so passionately argued.
Its dogmas are identical, as is its character.
> God determined that I was born into a church, and one in which I see evidence of His work. Yet you would have me rebel against those teachings because it has been corrupted (in your version) for the last 500 odd years.
Rather, we would have you return to the fidelity of the full faith that your rebellious ancestors never should have quit — a rupture that God permitted but did not will. You are heir to a broken system; affection for mistaken forbears is no virtue when we must honor God rather than man.
> I simply have not seen this [impoverishment, isolation, atomization] within my own church community or federation …
This becomes clearer when put into contrast to what Catholics have.
Ah, Sean, and here we were all getting along so nicely! I should do what Luther would have done and consign you to a very warm place, but I believe I have been forbidden to do so by Otiosus (with all his connections very high up in the Doganate). Rather than respond point-by-point and spawn yet more points in an already pointed discussion, I’ll try to give a response to the spirit of the thing … human nature being what it is, we will see how well I succeed in being brief.
Not being fully familiar with all the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church (of which Google informs me there are 358), and being somewhat familiar with early church history, I must assume that these were not all set down or laid out in scripture, creed or confession at the outset. This of course does not mean that they did not exist, but my quick research shows that many were set down much later in history, for example at the council of Trent, which at the least gives an outsider some suspicion of potential “evolution”. I am fairly certain there has been room over the years for some variation, and that Satan has not been inactive during that period. Similar for the character of the church – a church of a few thousand persecuted Christians is different in character than a church of many millions, and a church in tribal Africa is different in character than one in down-town New York, etc – identical seems too strong a word, for me. The meaning of the word “catholic” as applied to the church is beautiful, and I whole-heartedly confess a catholic church, but putting it in the name does not make it obviously so, so I cannot confess a Catholic one.
The doctrine of the church I happen to attend was only set down on paper in the main four or five hundred years ago, but accords very well with and is based on Scripture (set down roughly 1900 years ago, and canonized over the next couple of hundred years), as well as various creeds that come from a much earlier time and are well accepted even in the Catholic church. Many or most protestant churches profess (and sincerely believe) that they are more similar in nature and doctrine to the early church than the Roman Catholic Church of either Luther’s time or our own. Unfortunately, there are many ways to read the historical record (and few ways to verify it absolutely).
As far as Luther’s appeal to his own authority … so what? I do not base my faith on either Luther’s translation or Luther’s authority, he was only a man, as totally depraved as the rest of us. I do believe that God used him, however He did not use him to bring about perfection. I must and do honor God’s will as much as I am able, and pray that He gives me more ability to do so every day, but I’m afraid I cannot take your word for what His will is, when He has given me His own Word.
Translations may not be perfect, but the Word is there for the study (and is open to all), and shines through regardless. The word “alone” is pivotal neither to the reformation nor to my faith, but is rather a beautiful expression of God’s sovereignty. Be assured that affection for my ancestors is the least of the reasons for my continued church membership. As for all potential benefits from the Reformation being due to it’s roots in Roman Catholicism … let us rather say that all good things come from God (not Rome, not man).
Finally, on impoverishment/isolation/atomization … I have seen these things, and have seen them in both Protestant and Catholic churches. As Otiosus put it so well above: “the majority of Catholics are today in as “fine” a state as the majority of mainstream Protestants.” While I do not have the information required to judge you and your church community, neither do you have that info for mine. It is not perfect, it is merely one of the better of which I am aware, and features many fine Christians working to make it better every day. The clear benefits of Catholicism in this respect remain obscure to me, and I suspect they do to the majority of those who are not in the Catholic church (just as the benefits of my protestantism remain obscure to you).
> which at the least gives an outsider some suspicion of potential “evolution”.
Oh no, not that word. Anyway, the dogmas were articulated by the Church as the need came up, often to refute heresy; this is not an evolution, but a manifestion of precision as new heretics tried to make the Christian creed conform with a novel notion of their own invention.
For instance, in the early days pagan converts retained some of their old ideas even after Baptism; there were also a handful of Judaizers who placed inappropriate obligations on Gentile Christians. The New Testament records the Church’s efforts to deal with these problems.
A later example was manifested in the east, when a Christian emperor allowed himself to be unduly influenced by his Muslim subjects and subsequently inflicted the iconoclastic heresy on the Church.
Later again a morbid character in Germany tried to demolish the Church and remake the faith after his own preferences through force of his personality. Modern Protestants are heirs to that mistaken approach. In any event, I certainly hope that you are not as depraved as Luther. But for the grace there I go too — and by God’s grace I haven’t gone there yet.
Meanwhile there’s been no change of any dogma in the Catholic Church in 2,000 years. As there doesn’t appear to be an appetite for going point by point, I’ll refrain until someone expresses an interest.
Not knowing which creeds you profess, I’ll hedge my bet and limit myself to my experiences with people who have made similar claims to yours. My experience has been that they retain much of the same language, but they apply different meanings. “What we believe is in agreement with historical Christianity as we define it” is another way to phrase it. I’ll posit that as a hypothesis until we get more data.
Otherwise, having once been a Protestant, I suspect your position is less obscure to me than you think.
As the prayers of the just are heard, Christ’s prayer for unity will be heard if it takes a couple of thousand years. I have been reading about what was announced in Garabandal –I am not for it or against it, I am just reading about it and I keep my conclusions to myself. Something is said about unity, and if they are correct, it should happen during the pontificate of the current Pope. I sure hope it will happen. Fear not little flock.
Garabandal, Medjugorje: no
Lourdes, La Salette, Fatima: yes
One of the things that always remains in my mind about Fatima is that the three children thought the Virgin Mary was referring to a woman when She said that “Russia will spread her errors.” This is what appearances of the Divine are like – the people involved simply witness what is before them. God does not rearrange the brains of the witnesses – what is is what is.
Our Lady is reported to have said “poor Canada” too at Fatima, but I am not aware of what the source for this alleged quote is. It would make sense, however, as Quebec was so very Catholic in 1917 and now has fallen into almost complete apostasy.
Sean: I would not dare to promote something disobediently. I just said I hope the announced unity would be welcome. After all Jesus prayed for it and He has pretty good chances of being heard by the Father. That’s all. I said nothing about Medjugore which I personally find rather creepy but then I have no authority to go around putting labels on things. “Examine all things, keep the good.”
Unity of course. Meanwhile Medjugorje (yes, creepy) and Garabandal have been given the thumbs down by competent authorities; we’re on safe ground doing the same.
Sean, I must admit I share to some degree Luther’s Germanic sense of humor, thus my use of the word “evolution” just to see what would happen (and thus Luther pointing to himself as his own authority in your earlier post, at least in my reading). I do not think he was as depraved as you think in your usage of the word depraved (you judge him by the worst of his writing, not the whole picture, in my opinion), but I assure you that I am as completely depraved in my own nature as he was (in my usage of the word, to indicate that what goodness there is in me comes not from myself, but only by the grace of God). His contemporary Catholics would have been well served by following Gamaliel’s advice to the Jewish authorities 1500 years earlier, after Luther had offered to stay quiet, if his opponents would do likewise … whether God or my ancestors would have been thus well-served is an area we probably currently disagree on.
Thank you for giving me a new term for “bug fix”, or perhaps even “bug” – “manifestation of precision” should work quite well! I believe that both of us can agree with the statement “What we believe is in agreement with historical Christianity as we define it”, but you believe that your definition of it is correct, where I believe that mine is. At this time, I do not foresee this changing, but learning is a life-long thing, and I plan to continue doing so!
Luther was a habitual liar given to drunkenness and gluttony (he ruined his health through his excesses) and a lusty wretch. He was brutal and harsh towards those who differed with him — not to shake them from their stupor, as he maintained, but because he could not stand to be contradicted. When the Muslims from the east attacked Christian Europe, Luther cheered because it was the Catholics they were attacking; the attacks also drew away attention from Luther’s own efforts to subvert the religious and social order. If you’re depraved in the same sense he was, then I say: thank you for the warning.
The Faith of Christ handed down without interruption for 2,000 years vs. the novelties of the Protestant reformers and their intellectual heirs: the two are not comparable. A Catholic who keeps his faith has an infallible aid for winning heaven; meanwhile a Protestant acting in good faith who wins heaven does so in spite of his creed, not because of it.
I see that Sean has fallen back on an old, tried & true principle of Catholic oecumenical diplomacy — one which has shown great success over the years, in winning allies to our side: Tell the Calvinist what we really think about Martin Luther. Tell the Lutheran what we really think about John Calvin.
Won’t someone pick on Huldrych Zwingli for a change?
When I was investigating Catholicism — not initially to accept it, but for educational purposes — the notion of total depravity (in the Protestant sense of Luther and Calvin, not in the Biblical sense) was a very real obstacle to comprehension.
In my case, I could not for the life of me grasp why Catholics bothered with saints. I wasn’t being obstinate, the notion simply made no sense. The catch was that I was thinking Catholics wanted the saints to somehow augment what Christ was doing when He answered prayers. What was slow to sink in was that by asking the saints to put in a good word, the Catholic wasn’t asking the saints to improve on what God was about; rather, petitions to saints were a way for terrestrial requests to be more favorably received by the Almighty.
One can see how the Protestant notion of total depravity interferes with comprehending this approach to prayer. If we are all totally depraved, as Luther claimed, then nobody’s prayer had any more chance of being heard than anyone else’s; the multiplication of requests mattered not one iota; the idea of a “worthy” prayer was a metaphysical impossibility; everything good was a gratuitous act of God after all, and suggesting God could see something good in us detracted from His glory. When I realized that this idea was not found in the Scriptures but was the consistent teaching and preaching of the Protestant reformers – that by Original Sin men were spiritually crippled but not utterly incapable of cooperating with grace – then I began to be able to grasp what the Catholics were about.
Luther (“Reason is the devil’s kindergarten!”) fired the big emotional shot that got the business started; Calvin (“God positively will some men to go to Hell”) worked out the reasonable implications and provided the intellectual underpinnings; Zwingli the rationalist was mostly a minor player, even in his own day. Though I will admit that “Melanchthon” and “Oecolampadius” are kind of fun to say.
It saddens me that one would think God is swayed by group opinion rather than by the merits of a request or better, His own plan (which includes love for His children). Why should the multiplication of requests matter, any more than the wisdom of the crowds? While God may demonstrably be moved by terrestrial requests (to point to Scripture, think Moses on the mountain), the notion that He’s swayed by an argument from authority (“saints” in the Catholic sense of the word) or an argument from numbers I don’t believe is supported by scripture, logic or experience. If “the Spirit himself intercedes for us”, what possible weight could a person (however good) add?
Total depravity is a catchy term and has thus caught on, but in modern English “pervasive” is actually a better word for a deeper study on the matter. Man was not merely “spiritually” crippled, but also morally, intellectually and emotionally crippled. I would suggest not that everything good is a gratuitous act of God, but that in so far as good still exists, it is by His grace (and in so far as evil, by His sufferance). If He sees something good in us, it can’t detract from His glory — His glory exists, it is not a relative thing (if not, shall I sin more, that grace may abound?). Does a solar light detract from that of the sun? I don’t pretend to fully understand election or free will — some things are best left to God (such as, for example, consigning one’s opponents to Hell) — but neither can I mistake my non-understanding as proof of non-existence; and support for both is most definitely found in scriptures. The best summary of the doctrine of election I have personally found is in the Canons of Dort. Understanding total depravity is unfortunately much easier to do (I confess, I occasionally watch the news).
Looking back through this thread … my, but we have wandered far. If only I did have something personal to throw at poor Zwingli, and see where such fruit would land; perhaps there is a Zwinglian hovering in the wings just awaiting such an opportunity! Perhaps I could join Sean in the attack! Alas, I believe that an attack on Calvin would have the same effect on me as an attack on Luther — I do not pretend other than that both were human, though blessed with some qualities (charisma? intelligence? timing?) not gifted to the masses. Perhaps because I did not come to their teachings through either man, but rather many layers removed. A discussion on total depravity (a.k.a. human nature) or prayer or saints … now that is more tempting bait.
SolaGratia posits a false dilemma: that if a group of Christians pray together for the same cause it is contrary to God’s own plan. He also seems to be unaware of the New Testament examples of combined efforts among Christians attaining something from God. But talk of group opinions badly misses the point, which is that some people’s prayers are more pleasing God than others. When we enlist the saints on behalf, we’re benching the water boy and putting the all-star starter back in the game.
I think that by describing the term “total depravity” as “a catchy term” that “has thus caught on,” SolaGratia means to suggest it is a faddish thing that he has moved beyond. Yet the term has been around for a pretty good length of time; what can be said is that it has been given different treatments by different people over the centuries.
Today’s Protestants are heirs to the thinking and approach popularized by Luther, Calvin, et al. It was novel in its day and does not have Christ as its source; has a pedigree of only a few centuries; can be supported only by selectively referencing the Scriptures, at times taken out of context or treated in a foreign manner. It would be a strange Protestant who says, “I believe this because Calvin said so,” but that is beside the point and nobody has suggested it. Catholics understand the Scriptures as Christ intended because His Church guides us. Protestants understand the Scriptures as Luther, Calvin, or any host of other lost souls proposed, though they aren’t given billing on the poster.
And yes, we’ve gone far afield, haven’t we?
On the contrary, I said nothing against communal prayer, only that enlisting the aid of long-departed though once saintly people is not something that I have seen in the New Testament (or the Old), and especially not addressing one’s concerns to such a person to have them redirected to the Almighty. The analogy of all star quarterback to waterboy again puts man in competition with God, where when a Christian prays, there is no such thing — “not my will, but thine be done.”
As for total depravity, I could one day write a book on it, but what I really meant is that any doctrine summarized in two words is of necessity over-simplified, and that in this case, the word “total” does not do it justice. In the modern mind, “total” can too easily mean “absolute,” and the doctrine, when over-simplified, can too easily become a license for all the evil of which man is capable. I believe that most doctrines (and even dogmas) have been given different treatments over the years, but there is an underlying truth here, and I have certainly not moved beyond it.
As far as Scriptures go, I attempt to understand Scripture in the light of Scripture, as with Luther, Calvin, and many other souls. I attempt not to take it out of context or ignore passages thereof. Being human, my attempts often fail. I do try to learn from other’s mistakes (and successes) along the way, but there is much study to do (more than I’m sure I will be able to complete in my lifetime). Fortunately, a full understanding is not required in this life!
I sometimes think God sent us Mohammad & his Koran as a warning against sola scriptura.
I read this in one of Calvin’s books long ago. I believe it’s in some commentary on Exodus. Commenting on the conduct of Balaam the “seer,” Calvin wisely says:
“It was a miracle, wrought to humble his proud heart, which had to be first subjected in the school of an ass before he was brought to attend to the voice of God speaking through the angel.”
That a soul on earth can pray for another but a soul in Heaven cannot comes across as an arbitrary distinction. We either can pray for one another or we can’t; the geography isn’t a factor.
In Scripture, consider the vision of St. John, who describes in the Apocalypse the combination of the prayers both of angels and saints who are in Heaven: “And another angel came, and stood before the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given to him much incense, that he should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar, which is before the throne of God. And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended up before God from the hand of the angel” (Revelation 8:3-4). The angels are ministering spirits, sent to minister to those who will inherit salvation; a saint in Heaven is akin to an angel in that regard.
You might also note that there is nothing in Scripture that contradicts or forbids the practice.
In the Old Testament the souls of the holy departed still rested in the Bosom of Abraham, so they weren’t in a position to render any aid (the Maccabees prayed on behalf of the departed souls so that they could be loosed from their sins, but that’s another topic).
In the time of the New Testament the number of faithful departed was still relatively small; it was in places like the Roman catacombs — where Mass was said atop the tombs of the martyrs — that the intercession of the saints in Heaven received common attention after miracles took place.
I’m surprised that you see in the water boy analogy something that competes with God; I confess to being baffled.
Rather than relying on human means to understand Scripture — which men attempt at peril of their own destruction, St. Peter warns — Catholics rely on the certain teaching of the visible Church established by Christ.
Sean, we all see those things by grace. Calvin’s conclusion after reading about Balaam’s experience is right. He just does not apply it to himself. Balaam the “seer” to whom God actually spoke, was unable to see the will of God behind the advance of the Israelites. The poor ass is trying to make him think and the the angel tries too. But he is too thick to see the danger in his own actions. Some Jewish traditions report that he died when the walls of Jericho fell upon him after he took refuge there. His demise was a consequence of his own actions.
It is by grace that we see. We have to pray for grace to be given to those who don’t see. The “seer” of Exodus was oblivious to the facts. Those who crucified Our Lord scrutinized the Scriptures day and night and yet they missed the Messiah. I once was blind and now I see. I hope and pray for those who do not see that God in His mercy will do something to bring the flock together. He will in His own time.
Grace builds on nature; it also does not replace, subvert, or minimalize nature. The natural faculty of reason can help prepare the way for grace to make an appearance. The real philosophers who know their business can make the case of the reasonableness of the Faith; amateur that I am, I’ve generally set my sights on the more modest goal of demonstrating that the Faith is not unreasonable. Accepting the Catholic Faith is certainly impossible without grace; having at least a rough idea of what the thing is, meanwhile, is possible through natural reason.
I agree, Sean. That’s my own experience. I still do not know what came first (probably grace) but I remember reading authors that were making a good case for Christ. What followed naturally was to study the history of Christianity.
That led to reading the early authors and documents. In doing so I observed the following anomaly: the followers of Christ had what we would call today very bad marketing: “come worship with us, we believe God came in the form of a Jew who was crucified way out there in a dusty, unimportant province of the empire but he raised from the dead, told us to believe in this, and then left for Heaven.” That was basically the proposition of early Christianity to the pagan world. Like Paul writes in Corinthians: “For I resolved to know nothing [...] except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
If one adds to that the persecution, torture and death that befell so many Christians at that time it is astounding that anyone followed them at all. Yet a mere 200 years after the whole Roman world is seeded with Christianity and 400 years later the Empire is Christian in spite of the martyrdom of nearly all the apostles and many of their followers.
To me, that made it obvious: for such a thing to have happened the Resurrection had to have happened. Those early Christians thought nothing of dying in the Roman circus. I read the authors that were contemporary to those events: Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons and I was surprised by the solidity of their arguments.
In them I could see and taste the future Christian world emerging. Those good men luminously exposed the simple brutality of the Roman world. The Romans killed and killed, the Christians preached and preached. In the end the Christian idea prevailed. The mighty Roman Empire became dust.
Today the forces of evil appear to have Christianity surrounded, yet it does not compare to what the early Christians were facing and how they beat the insurmountable odds of defeating the meanest, most powerful oppression machine the world had known until that time.
Although the situation for us is deadly serious, the Resurrection comes to the rescue one more time: the culture of death can only kill bodies. That culture in itself has lost its soul when it rejected the Christian heritage of the West. They are nothing but a ghost from the past, the revived beast that goes to its own destruction because it knows only one thing: to cause death and die.
The reasonable, logical structure of Catholic doctrine is enhanced by the unreasonable, contradictory arguments thrown against the Church by the many antichrists attacking her today. There is nothing new: self-righteous heresies, sophistic social theories, Gnostic spiritualism, etc. Those things did not work for twenty centuries; they are not going to work now. As usual the Church will be there after the dust settles. She will patiently rebuild the world and await the arrival of her Master.
If there is a way to be reasonable and human its the Christian way. Benedict XVI says faith “means knowing God as Love, thanks to His own love. The love of God opens our eyes and allows us to know all reality beyond the limited horizons of individualism and subjectivism which distort our awareness … [The Church] has always rejected the so-called principle of fideism, that is, the will to believe against reason.”
Yet in facing today’s onslaught of irrationality a fair amount of grace is needed to have the presence of mind to see the facts in the light of reason.
Catino, the difficulty lies in distinguishing the blind seers from the wise asses. And when oneself may be one or the other. Sean, thank you for a fuller picture of what the Catholic version of prayer/saints is. One thing that has struck me throughout this conversation is how both “sides” of the conversation present the other side. In my education, many Catholic doctrines were over-simplified and then easily dismissed by men who had accepted Protestant doctrines as true. In Roman Catholic counter-arguments, similar things “happen” (understandably — I cannot represent the full breadth of my belief in a few short paragraphs, so it’s easy to pick a few sentences and demolish them). Ironically, one of Luther’s points of emphasis was that human logic could not be used to explain divine reality (and from there, that only Scripture could be used for that).
My perceived “competition” with God — why would you need a star quarterback to intervene between you and your Father and ask him questions? It is indeed a protestant view, where every child of the Father is cherished and loved, and thus using favoritism (via a favored child) to one’s advantage through prayer is not required. …
In any case, I wish you all a blessed Lord’s Day. I fear I may not be able to keep responding during the next week, as real life interrupts my blogosphere bloviating — it was refreshing to correspond with a version of Catholicism of which I would never have been aware had I not gotten to wondering where one of my favorite (one of the only?) conservative Canadian columnists had gotten to.
Sola Gratia, allow me to recommend two books for careful reading. One is Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating, the other is Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words by Rod Bennett. Both books are straightforward and well written. A few years ago I had the good fortune to pick up Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel by Craig Koestler a very insightful Lutheran writer from St. Paul, Minnesota. I recommend it also.
The sports analogy is limited, but at risk of stretching it too far I would suggest not football but basketball as an example. Each of us gets to make a shot, to be sure; the star ballplayer has the best chance of the shot going in the hoop. This is the parallel with prayers being given a favorable response by God: He does not view all of our prayers in the same way; the prayers of some people are more likely to be well received. We don’t stop offering our own prayers, we just make the request more pleasing to God by relying on a more full Communion of Saints.
Catino is right, the posters of the early Christians would have said something like, “Join us and die on your own cross.” Everybody was already suffering — paganism begets despair and self-disgust, and there was plenty of both to go around. Ah, but if you embrace all of this below for love of a savior above, He will remember you when you arrive at the gate of His kingdom.
Sean, the thing about “seers” that do not see and talking asses such as myself goes more or less as follows. This is “cotton ear theology” if you will but it has served me well:
It is hard to miss the Church in History. European Constitution experts have managed to ignore it but even they see her, otherwise they would not be irritated by her. As I started reading serious history from about 200 b.C. onwards one can see the shadow of something enormous coming into the world. By 500 a.D. it becomes impossible to miss.
Easy, says our expert Jehovah’s Witness at the door: the original Church was corrupted and after the apostles died everyone committed apostasy. That is the argument of most non-catholic Christians anyway.
But for those with a keen historical eye there are some questions that jump at us right away. How come that the Churches of Armenia, Spain, Russia, Ethiopia, Syria all develop their liturgical rites without any essential contradiction entering their liturgies? Because they are different but they all have the same parts, the same mysteries, the same steps and pretty much the same rules. It is quite obvious they come from one sacred root.
Then we have to consider the martyrs. People willing to corrupt the faith don’t go and get themselves killed for something they did not take seriously in the first place. Either the martyrs were following the apostolic instructions or not. If they were not then they were the greatest collection of fools known to man. Who disobey and corrupts the sacred and ipso facto proceeds to have himself killed for a corrupted idea. Not me. I am not going to defend with my life a box filled with counterfeit dollars. I’ll let them take the fakes and go home and make more. Then there is the consistency of teaching. When the heretics come (and they did!) the structure of the Church, her theology and practice come to the forefront clear as the rising sun.
Almost all of the apostles were martyred. That to me speaks to the truth of the Resurrection. If the whole thing was a Jewish hoax to take over the world there was no need to get mauled by beasts.
Finally an older and very wise priest commenting on Balaam’s episode once said very seriously “It was not the last time that God was going to use an ass to declare the truth; He has continued that practice to this day.”
All Apostles but one died martyrs. The one survived his martyrdom — St. John came out alive after his enemies boiled him in oil — so he gets credit.