A Krehbiel classic: the Bible and the Catholic apologist

A tune-up for Catholic apologetics

By  Greg Krehbiel (Crowhill Weblog, July 1, 2004)

Back in 1992 I had a near miss with the Catholic Church. I almost converted. For the next seven years or so I couldn't shake the habit of falling into online discussions, arguments, dialog and, let's face it, fights, with other Christians. This nasty habit is usually called apologetics.

My almost-Catholic-yet-vigorously-and-reluctantly-Protestant status was like a bull's eye painted on my email address.  Apologists of every stripe tried to do their best and some to bring me into the church and some to pull me away from the precipice. I learned what it's like to be apologetic prey. Generally speaking, I didn't mind. I like a good fight. But the experience has given me a taste of the ugly side of apologetics. From almost eight years of struggling to be an almost Catholic, I developed a unique perspective on both the Protestant and Catholic versions of this nasty business.

But before I share my reflections on apologetics, let me clarify one thing. I am a Catholic and I believe everything the Catholic Church teaches. That doesn't mean I accept every garden-variety argument used to support those teachings, and I hope you can keep that distinction in mind as I criticize some common apologetic arguments.

One more thing. Yes, I know the Protestants make their mistakes too. When I was a Protestant, I picked on them. But let's get the log out of our eye before we take the splinter out of our brother's.

The Church is Infallible and So Am I

The Church is the community of those people who have been called out of the world and filled with the Holy Spirit. It is the Body of Christ in the world, and certain things are true of the church because of its participation in the life of Christ. For example, it cannot fail, and it will come to know all truth. (Jn 16:13) One manifestation of this is the infallibility of the church's Magisterium in certain cases.

Of course the doctrine of infallibility is a big subject of dispute between Catholics and Protestants. But there's another side to it, which could be illustrated by a fight on the playground.

"Well my daddy's an engineer, and he says ...," by which Junior wants you to hear "I know what an engineer knows, and I say …."

The Church's decrees on doctrine and morals are infallible, but how do you know you understand and apply them properly? Furthermore, sometimes the church holds to a doctrine without necessarily endorsing how we should prove or demonstrate it. Even if you understand the church's position, the argument you use to convince others may be faulty. There is such a thing as a bad argument to support the right conclusion.

The Catholic apologist has to guard against believing that his methods are right because his conclusions are right. A more healthy approach would say, "This is the Catholic faith as I understand it, and this is why I find that position reasonable. But please go to the church's official documents and check it out for yourself."

BAD HABIT: Assuming that you are right because the church is right.

REMEDY: Listen to your critics. Yes, even to non-Catholics. You may not know as much as you think you know.

Proper Conclusions Don't Fix Bad Arguments

A well-written, humble, inspiring book

I just finished reading this book with our daughter. J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, it's not. But it has every bit the adventure of my mother's stories about her life as a missionary in China, to which she travelled alone by freighter to Hong Kong, making her way inland to Chendgu, Sichuan, where she served as a medical mission nurse until my father arrived, they were married, they tried to stay after the Maoist revolution and after I came crashing into their lives. Perhaps this disposed me empathetically to the story about Sr. Theophane in Selfless.


From the publisher:

Selfless is the story of Sister Theophane, a passionate, driven nun dedicated to serving the poor around the world.

Discover the inspiring story of how a precocious young girl from upstate New York became a servant and apostle to the poor in the jungle missions of Papua New Guinea, and, eventually, a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II.

Selfless: The Story of Sr. Theophane's Missionary Life in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea was written in 1946 by a fellow sister of the Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters [Sr. Immolata Reida, SSpS], but it is just now being published for the first time.

Long held in anonymity, Sr. Theophane's amazing life of service and apostolic zeal is now finally being revealed to the world. Her story is a breathtaking tale that will inspire a new generation of Catholics to heed the call of service to Christ and others.

Our daughter was touched by Theophane's love of animals from when she was a child, through her horse-riding adventures in the mountain passes of Papua New Guinea. I was touched by her quiet heroism, her unflagging selfless zeal, and her untimely death as a casualty of the Pacific War (WWII). The ending is particularly moving, if you follow the threat of hear life throughout the whole narrative.

Pray for a renewal of the missionary spirit among Catholic women religious. Lord knows we need it.

Inspiring! -- a "scandalous miracle" of grace!

Andre Gingerich Stoner, "Scandalous Miracle" (Mennonite World Review, September 28, 2015):

It was a miracle. Jun Yamada [pictured right], suffering from an aggressive leukemia, was on his death bed. He lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest. The doctors told the family he was unlikely to live more than half a day. They began to make funeral plans.

Then, to everyone’s amazement, including the team of doctors, Jun’s marrow started producing normal blood cells again. There was no medical explanation. Over time, Jun made a full recovery. The family and friends were awestruck. Yet this healing was too scandalous to talk about for decades.
 
Jun was a Japanese Mennonite and a student at a Catholic university. His father was a Mennonite pastor. When Jun became ill, many Japanese Mennonites prayed for him. One of Jun’s professors, Catholic priest Alfonso Fausone, also prayed for Jun and mobilized members of his order to pray. They petitioned Joseph Freinademetz, one of the founders of their order who had lived 100 years earlier, to intercede on Jun’s behalf. Freinademetz is often quoted as saying, “The language that all people understand is love.”

From the hospital bed, one could see the light in the monastery tower that was lit each night as priests and students prayed.

For three months, the priests provided a place for the Yamada family to stay, since their home was 500 miles south. There was profound respect and affection between the Catholics and Mennonites who cared for and loved Jun. During the crisis, the Yamada family participated in eucharist at the seminary. When death seemed certain, Jun’s father asked Fausone if he would officiate at the funeral. All this was unheard of in 1987.

The father called Jun’s brother, Nozomu, then a student at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elk­hart, Ind., asking him to return home. Nozomu left the U.S. preparing to attend a funeral, but he found his brother still alive, although in extremely critical condition.

The father said, “Hope has arrived.” (Nozomu means hope in Japanese.) In those critical hours Fausone asked if he could offer the sacrament of anointing of the sick. The family welcomed this gift.

The next day, the doctors came with startling news that Jun was producing normal cells again. Six months later, Jun was discharged from the hospital. His doctors and other patients began to refer to him as a miracle man. Today, Jun is a professor of early church art.

The fervent prayers and the shared love of Catholic and Mennonite brothers and sisters that surrounded Jun were central to these events. Yet it was precisely this ecumenical boundary-crossing that made this healing too scandalous to talk about openly for decades.

Years later, first in the Catholic community, this miracle began to be told. The intervention of Freinademetz was credited with a role in Jun’s healing. In 2003 Freinademetz was named a saint. Jun traveled to Rome to meet the Pope and participate in the ceremony.

In August, about 90 people gathered at AMBS for an annual Mennonite-Catholic Bridgefolk gathering to hear the story of Jun’s healing and to celebrate the marvelous thing God had done through the shared love and intercession of Catholics and Mennonites. Some participants reflected that after years of quiet, going to Elkhart in 2015 was for Mennonites perhaps akin to going to Rome in 2003 for Catholics.

As I listened, I pondered the amazing healing God can bring when people who love Jesus and love each other work and pray together, despite profound differences.

Andre Gingerich Stoner is director of interchurch relations and director of holistic witness for Mennonite Church USA.

Related: Nozomu Yamada, "THE HEALING OF JUN YAMADA Mennonites and Catholics in Friendship Leading to the Canonization of St Josef Freinademetz, SVD" (Bridgefolk.net, October 27, 2012).

[Hat tip to Darvin Yoder]

A "Fighting Irish" Archbishop

New York's first Archbishop, John Hughes, was apparently not one for the "softer, gentler" approach when his churches and a convent were burned down by anti-Catholics in the 19th century. He did not, like Mr. Obama, call his constituency to a "thoughtful introspection and self-examination" to consider whether they may have offended their attackers or harbored any latent hostilities that might have provoked their anger. He did not, like Cardinal Kasper, call for a more "merciful" and "pastoral" approach toward sinners. No. The response of this native Irish fighter was to punch back and defend his flock. His response was to threaten the burning of protestant churches if one more Catholic church burned.

Let's be clear, writes Adfero, in "Catholic Archbishop threatens violent uprising against enemies" (RC, July 14, 2015), "we are not suggesting violence against those who persecute us today. What we are saying emphatically is that we need more than the weak-kneed responses of those of Wuerl, Cupich or the Great Silence of Pope Francis on the attack on true marriage in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere."

Adfero also suggests: "click here to listen to a wonderful sermon on His Excellency John Hughes."

Beautiful! Splendor in the ordinary

Fr. Richard G. Cipolla, "Extraordinary and Ordinary: The Expected and the Unexpected" (RC, June 17, 2014):

The unexpected is often not the norm in the practice of the Catholic faith. One of the great strengths and evidence of the truth of the Catholic faith is its "ordinariness". The Catholic faith lives and sustains its people in everyday life in "ordinary" ways: by prayers, often memorized, by assisting at Mass, by doing one's best to obey the precepts of the Church and living a life that is "ordinarily" Catholic. But the extraordinary is also an important part of the Catholic faith and the experience of that faith. The lives of the Saints in their details are obvious examples of the extraordinary that breaks through the ordinary of the practice of Catholic life.

But there are times when the extraordinary breaks through even for those of us who are not saints, at times that we do not expect this, and almost in spite of ourselves and our preoccupations. Last Saturday, as I entered the sacristy to celebrate the Traditional Mass, I assumed that we would be using the Missa Brevior, the shorter form of the Mass for Ember Saturday in the Octave of Pentecost. I assumed this because we were not ordaining priests on this day, which was the traditional day for ordinations, nor was this a "conventual Mass" in the strict sense. I was informed that we were using the "ordinary" from of this Mass with its several Old Testament readings, its several collects, its several Alleluias. My first instinct--and this shows how deep the corruption of the meaning of the Liturgy truly is even among those who profess to love the Tradition--was to question whether this was good "pastorally" for our people assembled for this Mass. There was no question that I personally preferred the "ordinary" form of this Mass, as long as it was. But I did not trust that the people could "take this", the number of readings, the Alleuias, the length of the Mass. But I agreed that we would offer this Sung Mass in the "ordinary" form of the "extraordinary form" , despite having only one server (very faithful) for this Mass.

Two things happened. ... Read more >>

Worth reading. Inspiring.

Neighboring Fowler and Westphalia, Michigan, have each produced 22 priests, defying the trend of a shrinking Roman Catholic clergy.


Two Sacred Heart Major Seminary grads, identical Koenigsknecht twins Todd (left) and Gary (right) took a moment to celebrate during their ordination on Saturday in East Lansing, Mich. Credit Sean Proctor for The New York Times
Christina Capecchi, "In Two Michigan Villages, a Higher Calling Is Often Heard" (New York Times, June 16, 2014). Read why.

[Hat tip to Ralph Martin]

Deuterocanonicals, anyone?

The underground correspondent we keep on retainer in a dark Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, recently wired me the following:

This is a pretty helpful introduction to a chunk of Scripture that seems to me largely ignored by Catholics. Relatedly, I continue to be struck by how none of the roving Catholic apologists seem interested in really discussing the Apocrypha, in terms of how it is inspired but also possibly in parts a genre of a different sort. Yet here is one woman who is making a good start on the whole thing right about now, as I just discovered.

He was referring, of course, "Introduction to the Deuterocanon or Apocrypha" (Catholic Cravings, November 18, 2013), authored by Laura, apparently a Catholic revert after spending time in a Protestant neck of the woods -- certainly a happy alternative to Tim Stafford's remark about these books in his otherwise informative piece a decade back, "Violent Night, Holy Night" (Christianity Today, December 9, 2002): "I happily affirm the Reformers' decision to leave these books of the Apocrypha out of the canon of the Holy Scripture. These writings don't rise to the level of divine inspiration."

[Hat tip to JM]

Did Noah's ark carry rodents too? (In praise of Catholics who don't deride fundamentalist inerrantism)

Catholics (or anyone else) who mock fundamentalists for their "inerrant" view of Scripture, as it is all-too-fashionable to do in self-congratulatory academic venues, are not only inveterate snobs, who want nothing more than to glom the chortling adulation of their peers, but ignorant fools. Too often they forget that the wisdom of religious insight comes, not from the contemporary trends of in scientific epistemology, but as Matthew the Evangelist says, "out of the mouths of babes" (Mt. 21:16) and their simple trust in the word of their parents and their Savior, Jesus. Even on technical epistemological grounds, their views of such mockers are often simply stupid. As the Angelic Doctor never tires of telling his readers, there are multiple senses of Scripture, and the fact that one sense is spiritual does not mean that the literal sense cannot be true.

Peter J. Leithart, at least, gets this, as he makes amply evident in the balance of his article on "Inerrancy" (First Things, October 15, 2013). Thank you, Mr. Leithart, for targeting the silliness of David Bentley Hart's "fun" at the expense of fundamentalists, whom, Hart thinks, provide "soft and inviting targets."

[Hat tip to JM]

Best commencement speech ever

Class of 2013

Graduation Speech Given by Mr. Christopher Check at St. Michael’s Preparatory School, May 29, 2013:

The confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey each day draw down from heaven countless graces as they unite their voices in song in the Divine Office with the voices of the heavenly host. And let me underscore here--men of the class of 2013--host means “army.”

It is the army before which your Archangel patron unsheathes his broadsword and leads these eager confreres into battle against the organized forces of evil. Now—men of the class of 2013—it is common in our age—to regard evil as some vaguely defined failure on the part of men to organize properly human society, but—once we apply the right social systems and the right technologies, we will at last eradicate all forms of human suffering. This fool’s errand in the perfectibility of human society often goes by the name of progress and its chief proponents throughout history include such figures as guillotine enthusiast Robespierre, communist Karl Marx, eugenicist Margaret Sanger, and mass murderers, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung.

And following in the footsteps of these monsters, knowingly or not, is virtually every commencement speaker at virtually every commencement exercise. I’ll give you their speeches in one sentence: This venerable institution has made you brilliant and wonderful, now go out beyond its walls and make the world a better place.

Very well. Here’s my question: How is it then that countless graduating classes have been sent forth by countless commencement speakers to go forth and make the world a better place, and yet it is patently obvious that we are well into what Christopher Dawson seventy years ago called the “disintegration of Western Civilization.”

... Gentlemen, there is only one meaningful way to change the world and that is to restore the binding force that Christianity once exercised on the world. You can be part of this effort only if you first transform your heart in Christ. You cannot help save the world if you do not see first every day to your own salvation. Our Lord is explicit on this point: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”

You have had the best Catholic formation available in America. I don’t need to tell you about the Sacraments, personal devotions, and norms of piety. But let me underscore something you have heard about everyday here. The interior life. You must attend every day to your interior life: spiritual reading, the reading of Scripture, especially the life of Christ, prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It is impossible for you to do good work if you first do not put your own soul in order. Nemo dat quod no habet. You cannot share love of God if you do not have it, and it is in the interior life that you will cultivate love of God. The venerable French Abbot Dom Chautrard in the book that would become Pope Saint Pius X’s beside book, The Soul of the Apostolate, makes clear that unless apostolic work is suffused with Love of God it will bear no fruit....

There's much more. This is a very substantial commencement address, far too substantial for any university -- especially a secular one. Only a solidly Catholic high school like St. Michael's Preparatory School could possibly have garnered such a meaty oration as this. Congratulations to all of them! Read more >>

[Hat tip to A. Sistrom]

Day of infamy, day of grace

During my high school years at a mission boarding school in Tokyo, one of my dorm mates was the son of Jacob DeShazer (1912-2008) (pictured right), one of the intrepid Doolittle airmen in the daring carrier-launched bombing raid on Japan four months after Pearl Harbor. Like many of the sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers, DeShazer's ran out of fuel after dropping its payload in Japan and the crew had to bail out over the enemy-occupied coast of China.

Captured by the Japanese, DeShazer was sent to Tokyo with the survivors of another Doolittle crew, and was held in a series of P.O.W. camps both in Japan and China for 40 months -- 34 of them in solitary confinement. He was severely beaten and malnourished. Three of the crew were executed by a firing squad. Another died of slow starvation. DeShazer's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Japanese emperor. Along with the surviving Doolittle POW's, DeShazer was liberated by American paratroopers in China in 1945.

But the story doesn't end there. As the result of a religious conversion during his internment as a prisoner of war, DeShazer resolved to become a missionary after the war and returned to Japan in 1948. Two years later, an American missionary was passing out evangelistic tracts outside a commuter train station in Tokyo, and among those who picked up a tract written by DeShazer (entitled "I Was a Prisoner of War in Japan") was former Captain Mitsuo Fuchida (pictured left), the Japanese airman who led the carrier-launched attack on Pearl Harbor several years earlier on December 7, 1941. Fuchida converted to Christ as a result of reading DeShazer's story and eventually met DeShazer.

Thus Jacob DeShazer, the Doolittle raider who bombed Japan, met Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the two became good friends and even cooperated in common mission ventures in Japan.


Fuchida and DeShazer together in Japan
In 1959, DeShazer moved to Nagoya to establish a Christian church in the city he had bombed. Fuchida became a Christian evangelist, traveling across Japan and Asia telling his story: "I would give anything to retract my actions of twenty-nine years ago at Pearl Harbor, but it is impossible," he wrote. "Instead, I now work at striking the death-blow to the basic hatred which infests the human heart and causes such tragedies. And that hatred cannot be uprooted without assistance from Jesus Christ."

Some years later, Fuchida came to visit the Hokkaido International School in Sapporo, Japan, where I was enrolled as a junior high student. He was accompanied by an American (whose name I cannot remember) who was promoting the film, Tora! Tora! Tora! Fuchida spoke to the assembled students, telling his story, along with the American, who told us about the soon-to-be-released film, Tora! Tora! Tora! -- still the best Pearl Harbor film, in my opinion. A memento I still have in my possession from that event is the framed autograph of Captain Mitsuo Fichida, signed on a piece of notebook paper.

Some might wish to discard or even destroy such a relic from someone who was not only involved in that day of infamy, but led the assault that left over 2000 Americans dead in Honolulu, Hawaii. I keep it as a memento of God's grace which He pours out in the most unexpected ways in the seemingly most unlikely hearts.

Related

• Tora! Tora! Tora! (DVD)
  
  
• "Gen. Jimmy Doolittle Talks About the 1942 Doolittle Raids over Tokyo" (YouTube)
  
  
• Doolittle's Granddaughter relates remarkable details about her Grandfather's raid over Tokyo (YouTube) [Highly recommended]
  
  
• Jacob DeShazer's own story in his own words (Internet article)
  
• Cap. Mitsuo Fuchida, "From Pearl Harbor to Calvary" (Internet article)
  
  
• Elesha Coffman, "Beyond Pearl Harbor: How God caught up with the man who led Japan's surprise attack" (Christianity Today, August 8, 2008)
  
  
• Richard Goldstein, "Jacob DeShazer, Bombardier on Doolittle Raid, Dies at 95" (New York Times, March 23, 2008)
  
  
• Ted W. Larson, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

Now THAT'S a wedding celebration!

Did you like Fiddler on the Roof? This Latino family rehearsed "L'chaim!" for a month in secret to surprise the bride... Enjoy!



[Hat tip to S.F.]

Ever feel like life's got you down ... ?

Meet Nick Vujicic.

Feel better now?

Now, here's his secret.

Cheers.