Martin Mosebach on being named 'Martin' for Martin Luther by his Lutheran father and for St. Martin of Tours by his Catholic mother

For the record, I was first introduced to Martin Mosebach, whose writings I've come to admire very much, by reading his book, The Heresy of Formlessness, published by Ignatius Press in 2006. I just read the present account of how he came to be named "Martin" in a book commemorating the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther and his 'Reformation.' To their credit, the Lutheran editors of the massive tome included this contribution by a Catholic author, Mosebach, who had some things to say by way of criticism of Luther's career and work, and yet in a way that was not unappreciative of the impact Luther left on the world. Hence, I was glad to find online the present piece by Martin Mosebach, "On Luther, in Trepidation" at a website called Salubriousity, which should probably be spelled "Salubriosity" (without the 'u'), posted December 10, 2017. Here's the opening paragraph:

My Christian name was chosen for me in the spirit of ecumenical compromise. My mother, who was not a fervent Catholic, but who could never have imagined abandoning the Catholic Church, voted for Martin, after Saint Martin of Tours, who was especially venerated in her native city of Cologne, above all in the splendid Romanesque Great Saint Martin Church (Gross Sankt Martin) -- with the accent on the second syllable of Martin! My Protestant father was contemplating paying homage to Martin Luther, but my mother ensured that I was baptised in the hospital immediately upon my arrival, despite the fact that (or because) my father was not there -- she clearly preferred not to risk becoming embroiled in any denominational debates. According to family legend I screamed dreadfully throughout the proceedings. 'No wonder, if he's called Martin,' remarked my father, who only met me once I was already a baptised Catholic. But it was the Roman legionnaire born in Pannonia, the hermit monk in Italy, the bishop in Roman Gaul and the visitor to the imperial court in Trier who would colour my life, not the German Doctor Martinus. It was through the figure of St Martin of Tours, one of the founding fathers of the Western world, that the universal Roman church of the first millennium won my heart. As I steadily increased my knowledge of church history, one thing above all -- puzzled me about the other Martin, the great reformer: how could one profess Christianity without Rome and Constantinople, without the liturgy and the music of the first thousand years, without the monastic traditions from Egypt, without St Benedict, St Francis or St Dominic, without Romanesque basilicas and the Gothic cathedrals of France? How could one call oneself a Christian without the legacy of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Athens? Wasn't that an ahistorical Christianity, dreamt up in the provinces in order to keep a tight rein on any links to the opulence of the past and the no less opulent present-day cultures of lands beyond Germany? In Luther's day the Popes were integrating new continents into the Church, even as he was setting about cutting off a large part of Germany from the main currents of civilisation. Read more >>

"Entschuldigen Sie While I Barf"

Frank J. Sheed, "Entschuldigen Sie While I Barf" (October 32, 2018):

In Rome, Pope Francis is in the news again for his implicit endorsements of Universalism. Nothing new here, really, but it is a depressing reminder of what I will call The German Captivity of the Church. And I am not talking about Luther. For decades now modernist theology has captivated the theologians and leaders of both mainline Protestantism and, apparently, Catholicism. You see the same pattern in Evangelicalism, too, where the theology of Karl Barth has been the pet affection of those raised in but chaffing under the Old Time Religion. Somehow it also brings to mind then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s eulogizing of Hans von Balthasar as “the most cultured man in Europe.”

Years ago I picked up Richard Brookheiser’s rather reactionary -- and also rather right -- book called The Way of the WASP. It was there for the first time I read the suggestion that Karl Barth actually had a mistress. When I investigated, I read reams of internet defense that explained the relationship was a professional one, of something to that strange-sounding effect. OK, fine. Much like belleletrist Hans von Balthasar and his box-faced muse Adrienne Von Spear, I thought. Or Karl Rahner with his semi-to-sexual mistress. Or whatever... These avant garde theologians, always equivocal, often neutered, and apparently incapable of getting along by themselves... OR so I thought. It turns out the first, gut instinct was correct. 2 + 2 = 4. And while it’s sometimes “Both/And,” a la the new fashion in the Vatican, it’s much more often “Either/Or” or “Heaven or Hell.” Read for yourself...

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Bibles

From one of my readers, worth reading:

VERY interesting ...

A Jew in the court of King James...

"...more than any other English translation of Scripture, the KJV is driven by an 'idea of majesty' whose 'qualities are those of grace, stateliness, scale, [and] power.'"

Also, Leland Ryken's "What Makes the King James Version Great?" (Reformation 21, January 2011) ...

"Schuyler Canterbury KJV" (Lectio, January 10, 2017).

Meanwhile there is also this ... Alex Blechle, "A Millennial's thoughts on Bible Translation" (Catholic Bibles, September 12, 2017).

The comments are interesting.

[Hat tip to JM]

Wow!! Whole verses missing from a popular Protestant translation of the New Testament!!

I just heard this today from a Catholic program and didn't believe it; so I had to look up these allegedly missing verses and see for myself. The following verses are missing from the New International Version, a popular Protestant translation; and if you don't have a copy at hand, you can check online by going to Bible Gateway and selecting "New International Version" ("NIV" for short) and looking up the following verses. It may help to have another version that includes these verses open in another screen to check them side by side. Often you can see that the omission is explicitly tendentious. There things they don't want the reader to see. Here you go:

• Matthew 17:20
• Matthew 18:11
• John 5:4
• Acts 8:27
• Acts 15:34
• Acts 24:7
• Romans 16:24

Check them out. They're not there!!!

Several years ago I pointed out something else about this same translation of the Bible that I actually learned from a very honest Protestant theology professor of mine at Westminster Theological Seminary. He had written an article in The Reformed Journal (no longer extant) about the disingenuous work of the translators. I wrote about it in "Retrieving a lost Catholic vocabulary" (Musings, June 11, 2014):

On my journey to the Catholic Faith, which began in 1987 before being received in the Church in 1993, those who sought to dissuade me constantly pitted the "living Word of God" (the Bible) over against the "vain traditions of man" (Col. 2:8) allegedly represented by Catholicism. So entrenched was this animus against Catholic tradition, that one of my Protestant theology professors, James Payton, Jr. to his credit pointed out that the evangelical New International Version (NIV) of the Bible explicitly attempts to "de-Catholicize" those passages where Paul commends the Church's traditions (1 Cor 11:2, 1 Thes 2:15; 3:6) by translating the Greek word for "traditions" as "teachings," while translating the remaining ten references which are all negative as "traditions" (as in vain and empty "traditions of man").

You hear about these sorts of things, but half the time you don't really believe them until you go and check for yourself. This is awful, and I commend James Payton, Jr., for his integrity and honesty on this point.

[Hat tip to "The One True Faith Revisited: Where Did The Bible Come From?" The Download, August 11, 2017 for the reference to missing Bible verses in the NIV.]

Secularizing the Meaning of the Sacred: A Telling Evangelical Assessment of Vatican II

Joseph F. Martin, "What He Saw at the Revolution" (Imprimatur, June 26, 2016):

You are forewarned: this is a theological post.

​I am reading this small book... a disturbing one for people of an evangelical mindset, and all-too unavoidably on target for those of us with comfortable ideas about Catholicism being the rock who now wonder exactly what's up with Pope Francis etc. Dave Wells wrote Revolution in Rome in 1972, and before Benedict XVIs supposed attempted retrenchment, before the conservative trophy moments of John Paul II and his Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also not long after Anthony Wilhelm's consequential doorstop of a book Christ Among Us (1967).

I remember seeing that brick in households of my Catholic friends well as in my Protestant youth pastor's office, of course, along with Hans King's On Being a Christian (those mainstream Protestants, did they have repressed Catholic-envy complexes back then or what?). Wilhelm looked to my naive eyes like the Catholic counterpoint to The Way, Reach Out, or The Living Bible. And I am sure it sold a zillion more copies than Wells' book, that went unnoticed and then out of print. too bad. Wilhelm is thicker -- mammoth, by comparison. But Wells manages far more cumulative clarity -- and, I'll add, as a Protestant also ironically ends up landing himself far more closely to something that sounds like what was known as genuine Catholic tradition prior to 1961 than the new wave of catechetical writers of which Wilhelm was precursor. By now, of course, we are perpetually reminded of the convenient if semi-oxymoronic coverall of 'Living Tradition,' so everything can simply be dismissed to the haze.​​

Revolution in Rome is both diagnostic and prescient as an overview of what happened at Vatican II, and how the theology inspired by conciliar winds enabled a revolution. The newness of Vatican II involved both medium and content. And it sparked a cycle that 50+ years later remains with us. In his preface to Wells' book John Stott wrote words that could deftly be applied to the reign of Pope Francis in our here and now:

Wells shows himself very sensitive to the acutely painful personal dilemma in which many contemporary Catholics find themselves. The Roman monolith, which for centuries  has appeared inviolable, has at last cracked open. Conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and radicals, are engaged in a fierce power struggle. Because the Council endorsed opinions  which oppose, contradict and exclude each other. The whole church is in unprecedented disarray.

Interestingly, A brand new (2015) book offers confirmation of just what Wells intuited decades ago. Msgr. Brunero Gherardini's book, Vatican Council II: A Debate That Has Not Taken Place, explains:

The rupture, before bearing upon specific matters, bore upon the fundamental inspiration. Certain ostracism had been decreed, ...not towards one or another of the revealed truths proposed as such by the Church [but towards] a certain way of presenting these truths. It thus attacked a theological method, that of scholasticism, that is no longer tolerated. With a particular energy against Thomism, considered by many as outdated and now very far from the sensibility and problems of modern man. One did not realize, nor did not want to believe, that rejecting St. Thomas Aquinas and his method would entail a doctrinal collapse. The ostracism had begun by making itself subtle, penetrating and all-encompassing.
It threw no one out the door, or any theological theory, and still less certain dogmas. [In fact, w]what it evinced was the mentality that in its [own] time [it was] defin[ing] and promulgat[ing] these dogmas.

[But it was] a true rupture because it was strongly wished for, as a necessary condition, as the only way that would allow an answer to hopes and questions that had up till then—since the Enlightenment, that is—remained unanswered. I ask myself if truly all the conciliar Fathers realized that they were objectively in the process of tearing themselves away from this multi-century mentality that until then had expressed the fundamental motivation of life, of prayer, of the teaching and government of the Church.

[Because i]n all, they proposed again the modernist mentality, that against which St. Pius X had taken up a very clear position, expressing his intention of "instaurare omnia in Christo," "restoring all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10). It was thus clearly a manifestation of gegen-Geist.

Today while jogging I had this thought, sparked by my reading and a recent family wedding... The Popes seem scandalized by the drift of the Church, but why? I am assured they are pastors, and not Ivory Tower academics, and so like to think they would be able to engage in some proactive foresight. Yet they seem to me like conflicted parents, ones who tolerate their child living with a boyfriend or girlfriend, possibly even do a bit of encouraging of them to be quietly avant garde, but are later then disappointed when the subsequent grandchildren opt out of getting married in any church ("Nature feels closer to God!"). They operate under what seems like a disconnect. Contra the impression given by Life Magazine spreads of a jolly Pope John waving to peasants, or National Geographic articles on the benevolent Pope Francis hugging teens, Catholic faith can survive only so manny cosmetic touchups for such social media moments before it begins to lose some of its defining edges. The Popes for decades now have been attempting a truce if not synthesis with the impossible-to-stem tides of Modernism, and their overtures continue to produce fundamentally  problematic results. Xavier Rynne's Letters from Vatican City do not stand as a testimony to nothing.

​ In an annotated bibliography Wells observes that in Joseph Ratzinger's commentary on the Council, the great Cardinal seems not quite "candid. One has the impression Ratzinger cannot quite bring himself to say what is really on his mind." Fifty plus years and a steady stream of Raztingerian books later -- some of the latter certainly inspiring -- that impression remains, as does a suspicion that the Council Fathers, even the moderate ones, sort of wanted it both ways. 

"... not despising the day of small things"

Sammy Rhodes, "Meet the New American Dream" (reformation21, January 2016): "Meet the New American Dream, Same as the Old American Dream: Thoughts after seeing Joy":

Movies are more than entertainment, date night venues, or after (during) work escapes. At their best, they are something closer to lay theology or therapy even. A place to take in entire worldviews, sifting their varied messages through one's own grid, taking the parts worth saving, and leaving parts unwanted behind.

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[Hat tip to JM]

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

Dueling Catholic Videos that leave some Protestants perplexed

D.G. Hart, "Dueling Videos" (Old Life, May 9, 2016). One is a USCCB video on religious liberty that cause Michael Sean Winters and Anthony Annett to cringe. The other is Pope Francis' most recent prayer video, which provokes an acrid response from Michael Matt. Thought-provoking.

[Hat tip to JM]

Amoris Laetitia: Evelyn Waugh would have to re-write Brideshead

Considering the perpetual motion spin machine that Catholic media has now become, Guy Noir imagines an open letter to Fr. Barron beginning like this:

Dear Fr. Barron:

Inquiring Protestants want to know ...


"Evelyn Waugh Would Have to Re-Write Brideshead" (Old Life, April 13, 2016):

Phil Lawler wonders about the pastoral implications of Pope Francis’ pastoral advice in Amoris Laetitia....

... Now notice what happens to priests in these parishes when they meet a couple that has been re-married ... Now imagine the real life (fictional couple) of Rex Mottram and Julia Marchmain ...

... Evelyn Waugh knew that the Church of England had changed (even when dogma hadn’t). Do Roman Catholic apologists think Waugh wouldn’t notice this?

Excuse me while I Barth

Our underground correspondent from an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, stepped out of the mist and fog to tell me this a few week ago:

Barth is a huge inspiration for von Balthasar.

Over at this blog there is a piece on Barth ["What Should Evangelicals Make of Karl Barth?" (The Gospel Coalition, February 22, 2016)].

And then this comment [from a Dutch theology student, edited for grammar] ... It sounds a note Mark Bromley, Joseph Fessio, and others would do well to ponder as they spend their sweat pressing HvB on the world and simultaneously wringing their hands over Francis...

In general I’m baffled that so many evangelicals accept Barth and his theology more and more and so uncritically ... I’m from the Netherlands, so I can’t really speak for the U.S., but in the Netherlands it is certainly the case. But I’ve seen what Barthianism does to your church. His theology was in the sixties and seventies very influential in Dutch churches. More than it ever has been ... in the US. Those (local) churches that embraced Barthianism have almost totally disasppeared.

Was Barth a brilliant and intelligent thinker/theologian? Sure. Has he said good things? Of course. We have to interact with his theology.

But please beware, I’ve seen many theology students fly to Barth in reaction to modern theology. Ironically, they became mostly liberal, especially when it comes to ethics. Just because of Barth's vision on revelation and Scripture. At first sight Barth is orthodox, but the consequences of his theology are really big. I can know this, because I’m a theology student myself at a largely liberal theological demoninational university (but there are also orthodox students like me, because in my denomination there is a rather large number of orthodox-reformed churches). Particular in my denomination, which is the largest in the Netherlands, Barth's influence was enormous.

It’s a shame that the works of the Dutch theologian W. Aalders never have been translated into English. He was one of the most influential critics of Barth in the Netherlands. He has a depth in his critique and thinking that is often missed in orthodox responses/critics of Barth. He would show you the real problem with Barth's theology. Surely [Aalders is] one of the most brilliant theologians I know.

"A Presbyterian, his wife, and an Archbishop walk into a bar ..."

The Archbishop was Charles Cardinal Chaput! Seriously!

Carl Trueman, "A Presbyterian, his wife, and an Archbishop walk into a bar ..." (Postcards From Palookaville, December 15, 2015):

In one of those surreal twists of fate that sounds like the start of a corny joke ('A presbyterian minister, his wife and an Archbishop walk into a bar....), the present Mrs Trueman and I recently found ourselves having dinner in a Philly pub with Charles Chaput, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia.  Separated by a fair amount of theology, we are yet very much united by concerns over religious freedom and the chaos that is contemporary sexual identity politics.

At one point in the meal, I thanked the Archbishop for the difficult stands he has taken on a host of matters in Philadelphia, especially those on LGBTQ issues.  He paused, looked me in the eye and then commented 'You know, Carl, it is never difficult to do the right thing.  It can be very tiring. But it is never difficult.'

I thought of that comment when I read Todd's post of yesterday and wondered why there is such chaos and indifference in so much of Christian higher education.  It is never difficult to do the right thing.  Only tiring.  That's all.

[Hat tip to JM]

New Vatican document on Judaism provokes controversy

Under the signatures of Cardinal Kurt Koch, Rev. Brial Farrell, and Rev. Norbert Hofmann, SDB, respectively the President, Vice-President and Secretary of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, the new document has been just released on December 10, 2015), entitled: "The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable" (Rom 11:29) - A Reflection on the Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of "Nostra Aetate" (NO.4)

The New York Times immediately ran a headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews" (December 10, 2015), reporting: "Catholics should not try to convert Jews, but should work together with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a far-reaching document meant to solidify its increasingly positive relations with Jews. John L. Allen Jr. posted an article on Crux the same day, entitled: "Vatican document on Jews proves that revolution is the new routine." Catholic News Service, like most other mainstream Catholic outlets, tiptoed around the issues without shedding much light (See New Vatican document reflects on relations between Catholics, Jews") -- um, yawn .... Not much help.

If you want to see what things look like in the klieg lights, turn from the "Everything is Awesome" cheerleaders to the "Everything is Damned to Hell" doomsayers, and you just might get a clear fix: According to John Vennari, "Blind Guides: Conciliar Vatican Announces 'No Mission' to Convert Jews" (Catholic Family News, December 12, 2015), the document claims:

• The New Covenant does not supersede the Old Covenant;[2]
• The Catholic Church, in principle, should have no mission to convert Jews;[3]
• The Word of God is present to todays Jews by means of the Torah (and equates this to the Word of God being present to Christians through Jesus Christ);[4]
• Modern Jews are in an acceptable position before God regarding salvation;[5]
• “The term covenant, therefore, means a relationship with God that takes effect in different ways for Jews and Christians”;[6]
• “It does not follow that Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and the Son of God.”[7]

... and that's just the beginning of his long, long article.

No less interesting is conservative Protestant Peter Helland, on his talk show "Israel," interviewing E. Michael Jones on the recent document:


Why do I think here of the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"??? Seems to me that pretty soon those most guilty of being Messias-deniers may not be the Jews, but certain spokesmen for the contemporary Catholic Church.

When Rome gives Catholicism a bad name and apologists sound like odious windbags of optimism

One of our readers (call him Mr. Z.) must have been in a bad mood. Or something. He sent me an email referencing an article entitled "Why we'd all be Catholic if we really thought about it" (CWR, November 23, 2015). The article isn't bad, really. The writer is honest about how badly his piece is apt to be misunderstood. He says, for instance:

In the modern world, where we shouldn’t presume to tell others what’s true and false, good and bad, or right and wrong, saying we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it is sure to provoke scorn and ire. What about happy and generous Buddhists, Muslims, Lutherans, atheists? Didn't this sort of close-minded thinking go by the board a hundred years ago?

So perhaps it was just Mr. Z's indigestion. Or something. But at the same time, I think his rant is something that bears repeating here. Call it Food for thought in times like ours for odious windbags of optimism. He writes:

I am Catholic, but this piece rubbed me the wrong way. Given our current season, when the Church's claims so often seem like paper ones at best, I have to actively remind myself why I chose to convert. "We'd all be Catholic if we really thought about it..." Um, OK, but that zinger can easily boomerang as a rephrased "We'd all be Catholic if we insisted on thinking and thinking about it..." Against many presently hard-to-miss arguments to the contrary. The fact we seem to have the better case than jaded Nihilists (!) Moslem suicide bombers (!!) is hardly a consolation prize. Other versions of Christianity may have weaker historical claims, for instance, but few seekers are historians: most live in the present, where there are strong arguments against entering The Church currently being given strength by Rome's zany sounds.

And a line like "While Catholics reverence Scripture, they don’t believe the Bible is the sole source of Divine wisdom, or believe that everything in the Bible should be taken literally" simply dumbfounds, since I have met few if any souls who actually do. In fact, this is a canard the gay church movement would typically bring out.

I would not be a Catholic if I didn't believe the Church's claims. And yet, post-conversion zeal, I have gradually realized that yes, one can be a consistent and rational Protestant or Jew. We don't have the only argument game in town. In fact, I think it takes the grace of God to actually see the truth in some of the more detailed arguments for The Church, especially in the face of the drastic facelifts it has undergone in the past century. "What else is there?" seems not so much triumphalist as rather dourly reductionist. I'd join an easier-to-hang with church if the truth didn't compel me to stay. And if I hadn't unfortunately "thought about it." Only half tongue in cheek I say, "What else is there?" should be paired with "Come on in! The water stinks!" But yes, at least it's wet.

If any of you run into Mr. Z, be sure to invite him to a good Theology on Tap session, or to the Argument of the Month Club, or SOME place where being a Catholic doesn't make you feel like a moron or hypocrite for wanting to be Catholic but having some serious concerns about the state of the Church these days.

Being a Catholic. Making it hard. I remain, yours Pertinaciously, Papist.

Diplomacy with Lutherans

My friend John Bell, responding to a unanimous acclamation by an ebullient gaggle Lutheran college students that Martin Luther was the white knight in shining armor who brought the light of the Gospel into the gloomy world of benighted papists, once let loose a flurry of animated exchanges (I'm being diplomatic), by floating the proposal that, for all we know, Luther could be "playing checkers with Hitler in Hell."

I, on the other hand, the soul of diplomacy that I am, suggest the more "ecumenical" approach of announcing to your Lutheran friends that you'll be praying and sacrificing over the next few days with the intention of garnering an indulgence for poor Martin, generously assuming that he's at least among the poor souls in Purgatory (which, of course, requires the audacious assumption that St. Teresa of Avila isn't quite right about Luther, but that's a detail we shall overlook for the moment in the cause of diplomacy).

On that note, there's this lovely little Deformation Reformation Day reflection ("Reformation Day. Ecumenism. Lutherans. Hell.") from the irrepressible Amateur Brain Surgeon (October 31, 2015); or this no-less lovely reflection by the equally irrepressible John Vennari, "Catholics and Lutherans Prepare to Commemorate 2017" (CFN, November 4, 2013), with an eye to the ecumenical extravaganza planned for the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Revolt, traditionally marked from the date Luther supposedly nailed up his Ninety-Five Theses on the church door in Wittenberg in 1517.

Then of course, there's the world famous Catholic-Lutheran Beer Brawl (courtesy of Patrick Madrid).

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]

How the plain man (or woman) sees it

Andrée Seu Peterson, "Fast-tracking annulments" (World, September 9, 2015):

Having absolved women for terminating unwanted pregnancies, Pope Francis yesterday announced the widening of absolution for couples terminating unwanted marriages. The instrument of this convenience, called an “annulment,” is the most bizarre invention since the Middle Ages practice of selling of indulgences. Annulment means, in a word, that the marriage never happened.

Why get a divorce when you can get an annulment? Why live with the shame of a failed union when for $800 you can buy a clean scorecard showing a union that never existed? Tuesday’s motu proprio papal initiative (much like an Obama executive order) waves all but small administrative fees while streamlining and expediting the burdensome procedure that previously required two tribunals to cosign.

All this reminds me of a movie I saw long ago about gypsies. In one scene, an attractive gypsy woman undergoes her annual rite to become a virgin de nouveau. She has been promiscuous all year but the ceremony purifies her, and afterward her relatives exclaim in joy, “Maria is a virgin again! Life is good!”

Before the pope announced his new annulment rules yesterday, a significant percentage of people who would begin the process didn’t follow through with it. This is partly because of the onerous expense and partly because of the lengthy questionnaire requiring one to find fault with one’s spouse in order to prove the marriage was flawed from the start. But, of course, all this folderol will be remedied by Tuesday’s papal decree. Especially the reduction of the questionnaire is all to the good, I’d say. After all, the act of rehashing your spouse’s faults on paper sounds to me like adding the sin of slander to the sin of splitting. 

Now, granted, this article is by a Protestant and full of a multitude of misunderstandings.  But honestly ask yourself: is it any wonder?  Has anything said and done by our church leaders in recent years helped to made it easier, for example, for those of us who are converts to explain all this to our evangelical brethren?  

[Hat tip to JM]

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."

From an Evangelical magazine: "Benedictine monks believe Gregorian chants can help make people's lives better"

They misspelled "Gregorian" in their title, but it's a good piece:

The Benedictine monks of Norcia believe that Gregorian chants will make people's lives better, especially since music can help heal the soul.

Father Cassian Folsom, prior of Norcia's Benedictine monastery, told the Catholic News Agency that these monks spend their lives in prayer and labour, then chant the psalms and produce other crafts in order to support themselves.

"The monks spend hours every day chanting the Mass and the Divine Office. It's part of the air we breathe. There's a lot of pollution in our world, and so the pure oxygen of Gregorian chant is like a breath of fresh air," he said.

Just this week, they released their first major label album called "BENEDICTA: Marian Chant from Norcia" through De Montfront Music, together with Decca Classics and Universal Music Classics. It has 33 tracks, most of which are liturgical chants which have become the monks' signature sound for over 1,000 years.

"The chant is beautiful, and our souls need beauty in order to grow and thrive. The chant is the Church's love song to her Lord; it expresses the love-longing of the monk's heart," Folsom explained. "I'm convinced that this beautiful chant will give spiritual nourishment to those who listen to it." ADVERTISEMENT

Since its release, fans have been raving about the album, with people giving it a five out of five stars rating at Amazon.

"The singing is very good and the material very old and deeply ingrained in the Catholic faith," wrote a customer named John J. Puccio.

A fan wrote that the Benedictine Monks of Norcia have come out with "the most beautiful chant ever recorded," adding that they have an "absolutely mesmerizing body of music."

"'Benedicta' has now become the soundtrack to my life! There are pieces here I have never heard and are just heartwrenchingly beautiful. This music is so good!" the fan further wrote.

Purchase here: BENEDICTA: Marian Chant from Norcia (Amazon)

Rome as others see her: Called to Communion? to be Catholic? to Denial?

It's always helpful, in my opinion, to get a second opinion; in this case, to get a sympathetic outsider's take on Rome's performance. It goes without saying, of course, that any outsider (even a sympathetic one) is going to lack a faithful insider's commitment and the perspective that offers. Yet even an outsider can help us to see what message we're communicating and how it's being perceived and received.

In "Which Call?" (Old Life, April 29, 2015), D. G. Hart comments on a conference on polarization in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States hosted by The University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society. (See the plenary session round table here.)

Hart notes that while the folks at Notre Dame recognize diversity in the Church, conservative Catholics tend to see unity as the "real" condition of their communion, ignoring the large groups of problem children within the Church.

From here, Hart compares and contrasts the "Called to Communion" paradigm of such Catholics with an older liberal "Called to be Catholic" proposal revisited recently by Commonweal here. He closes by bringing up a third possibility after remarking as follows on the Commmonweal discussion:

Not much there about motives of credibility, papal audacity, Thomas Aquinas, or John Henry Newman.

So which is it? Is it Called to Communion or Called to be Catholic? You can only chalk up such questions to Protestant perversity for so long before you finally admit a problem. Or you change your theme to Called to Denial.

The problem isn't Sacred Tradition, as such, but the lack of clarity about the professed relation of contemporary Catholicism to that Tradition. As one reader recently wrote:

"Rome: please share.... just what IS the authentic faith? Helping people? Seeing the goodness of all, and simply basking in God's redemptive action as an accomplished fact? Or declaring sin, salvation, and the peril of the present moment?

"Because based on the words I read online, I have no idea where Church leaders' hearts are. And I know I am not alone. How about some real, man-to-man and man-to-woman frankness, as opposed to common man posing? Just what is it that you believe? From Rome, I would argue the message right now is anyone's guess. 'God has spoken.' OK, can we hear what he had to say, clearly and reliably and without coy set reporter spin?"

[Hat tip to JM]

D. G. Hart and Ross Douthat: Should the tail of Papal biography wag the dog of Church policy?

D. G. Hart, "Should Biography Be So Important?" (Old Life, April 22, 2015):

Ross Douthat’s article on Pope Francis reflects the smarts, insights, and courage that characterizes almost everything the columnist writes. His conclusion about a potential disruption of the church by the current pope is again refreshing, especially coming from a conservative, since most converts and apologists hum merrily the tune of “nothing changes, we have the magisterium.” Douthat recognizes that this ecclesiology makes it almost impossible for conservatives to stop a progressive-led disruption:

In the age of Francis, this progressive faith seems to rest on two assumptions. The first is that the changes conservatives are resisting are, in fact, necessary for missionary work in the post-sexual-revolution age, and that once they’re accomplished, the subsequent renewal will justify the means. The second is that because conservative Catholics are so invested in papal authority, a revolution from above can carry all before it: the conservatives’ very theology makes it impossible for them to effectively resist a liberalizing pope, and anyway they have no other place to go.

But the first assumption now has a certain amount of evidence against it, given how many of the Protestant churches that have already liberalized on sexual issues—again, often dividing in the process—are presently aging toward a comfortable extinction. (As is, of course, the Catholic Church in Germany, ground zero for Walter Kasper’s vision of reform.)

Contemporary progressive Catholicism has been stamped by the experience of the Second Vatican Council, when what was then a vital American Catholicism could be invoked as evidence that the Church should make its peace with liberalism as it was understood in 1960. But liberalism in 2015 means something rather different, and attempts to accommodate Christianity to its tenets have rarely produced the expected flourishing and growth. Instead, liberal Christianity’s recent victories have very often been associated with the decline or dissolution of its institutional expressions.

Which leaves the second assumption for liberals to fall back on—a kind of progressive ultramontanism, which assumes that papal power can remake the Church without dividing it, and that when Rome speaks, even disappointed conservatives will ultimately concede that the case is closed.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]