7. TRUE or FALSE: God is madly, crazily, unconditionally in love with you

[Uncensored, from our correspondent in a city somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard which knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir, Private Eye]:

Priests, nuns, and youth group leaders will fall over backwards making sure you believe this.

And yet, in its unqualified form ("But who can qualify the Love of God?!..."), it is the elephant in the room. Weigel talks of friendship with Jesus, von Balthasar of an empty Hell, the Pope of God's never tiring of forgiveness. It all sounds orthodox, and yet... Without some other notes, this message is hard to substantiate by responsible exegesis.

If you change emphases, if you change phrases, are you changing meaning? I think everyone deep down must know that the answer is yes. And the old meanings were based on thorough-going exegesis of Scripture. Catholics do not base all their beliefs on the Bible, but without a solid Biblical basis Catholic beliefs quickly morph into something else.

Evangelicals are falling prey to the same error, when the refer to people as "Beautiful messes," bypassing any significant seriousness about sin. After the black plague ravished Europe, Puritan Ralph Venning wrote a book on sin entitled The Plague of Plagues. I think this phrases would fall on deaf ears today.

Under the comments about the Campion Missal at Roratae Caeli, here is this brief, but destroying item. You read it and you understand why there is little if any discussion in Catholic catechesics about holiness, sin, judgement. These things belong to a what for too many is in essence an obsolete world, and are are dismissible as Adam & Eve, biblical historicity, and any meaningful Christian exclusivity:

Athelstane said...

The comments by the Universa Laus president deprecating the presumed obsolescence of ancient prayers of the Roman Rite are dismaying, but an instance of rare candor by progressive theolgians. Most seem reluctant to admit outright that it is often the original prayers themselves, not just the translations, they don't care for.

But occasionally, the mask does slip. Bryan Cones of US Catholic, shocked to actually read the Latin originals of many of the propers in the new MR3 translation, said the same thing when it first came out:

"To me it seems not only that we shouldn’t be using these translations, we shouldn’t be using most of these prayers at all anymore. They simply reflect an approach to God--a distant, imperial God to whom we must beg for mercy--and an understanding of the church--sinful, unworthy, unredeemed--that I think we have left behind." {I think he is far too correct. -- G.N.}

Would that there were more such honesty by some of our leading lights. We might actually be able to have a real debate about the theology of our liturgy, and much, much else besides. Deep down, their argument isn't with Vox Clara or the CDW or famous priest bloggers; it's with the theology of the Church expressed in its liturgy for nearly all of its history.

[Hat tip to JM}