Stick to politics Ann

Thank God for Ann Coulter, who has more good instincts, theological and otherise, in her skinny fingers than does Mark Shea.

Great article by Shea. And, uh, Dr. Craven, you can't possibly be serious.

I read Mark Shea's article. I wasn't terribly impressed. He seemed to be nitpicking.

While it's true that Ann Coulter isn't a Theologian, neither is Mark Shea. Shea can be right sometimes, but he's been wrong before, as well, and sometimes he's been really, really wrong.

Look, I'm generally disappointed with almost any discussion of Theology in the media. Invariably someone gets something wrong or says something that's a bit off.

What Ann said wasn't perfect, but it was much closer to being correct than much of what's said in the media.

Moreover, Ann Coulter isn't Catholic, so her understanding of Christianity isn't going to be spot on, is it?

If Mark Shea wants to silence everyone who mentions Theology, but gets something wrong, I'm all for that, but that might mean he has to stop talking as well.

It's fine to be critical of an error someone makes when they're speaking, especially if the goal of your criticism is to charitably correct that error and bring out the truth, but to suggest that nobody but the "experts" can talk about such things implies that you think you're not only an expert, but also some sort of arbiter of who may speak and who may not.

That comes across every bit as cringe worthy as anything Shea attributes to Ann Coulter.

Finally, I think it's more than a little unfair to take a few quickly spoken words Ann Coulter said while thinking on her feet during a televised interview while being grilled by someone who she has just realized took offense at her words when she had no intention of causing offense and is trying to articulate her understanding of the truth quickly due to constraints on time and make it out as though those words sum up her beliefs about Jews and Christians and are worthy of detailed analysis.

Television is a much more limiting medium than the printed page, which is a much better forum for Theology. Theology requires a lot of explanation, and there's no way someone can explain something as complicated as Ann was being asked to explain in a short time.

I might add that Ann didn't even set out to say everyone should be Christian. Donny Deutsch seized on something she said in response to one question of his during a longer interview that covered other subjects as well, and got her to admit that it would be better if everyone was a Christian, and Ann, went ahead and admitted that it is her belief that Christianity is the most perfect religion and that in a perfect world, everybody would be a Christian.

That's a very brave thing to say in our politically correct culture – a culture steeped in the dictatorship of relativism.

It's a shame that Ann is being criticized for saying what she said not only by moral relativists and proponents of religious indifferentism, but also by Christians who would rather she say nothing of her belief in God and Christianity than express it quickly and imperfectly.

Having listened to everything Ann said on the subject, I think it's clear that Ann was trying to say Christianity is the perfection of Judaism and that the New Testament perfects and completes what was in the Old Testament.

I too find very little wrong with what she said. If anything, the fault lies in her delivery and not in her theology.

It is because Judaism is not perfect that I am not a Jew. On the other hand, much can be said in praise of Judaism: that it is true, that it is divinely inspired, that the story of the Jews in the OT is our story as well. All of these things can be said BECAUSE of our Christianity, not in spite of it.

Do Muslims believe in the inspired nature of the OT? No, they accuse the Jews of changing it. They therefore do not believe it is true nor that it is the story of their salvation.

But in the end, the prophecies of the OT are left empty and unfilled in the Jewish worldview while they have been fulfilled a thousand-fold in the Christian cosmology.

We are all called to be witnesses but we are not all given the charism for explaining the faith. Conundrum! Could it be that the rabid, vapid anti-religious secularite mindset is making more of this than can seriously be alleged?

How many times have you had the conversation where someone "charitably" witnesses that they would be Christian but they met two Christians once and they ...

said something "offensive",

sneezed on the food at the buffet table,

wore the wrong clothes/listened to the wrong music/etc,

mowed their lawn too much/not often enough,

or attributed some quality to God that "my" God would not have

And so on. The list of lame excuses that stand for intelligent (or even well-researched) reasons not to be Christian goes on ad nauseam. So much as look at someone cross-eyed and all Christians are monsters.

Muslims on the other hand can massacre a school full of girls praying the rosary and still get the MSM's benefit of a doubt as the "religion of peace."

Ahmadinejad (sp) can not only say Judaism is a false religion but deny the holocaust and he gets a crown of laurels at Columbia. Ann Coulter can say what every Christian knows and she gets pilloried.

Sorry, but if you are going to get excised about someone saying the religion they practice is the best religion there is, then you are going to have serious problems down the road anytime anyone has an opinion regarding anything.

Well-researched or not.

Also, Mark criticizes Coulter's grasp of Christianity from a Catholic perspective but Coulter seems to me to be of a Once-Saved-Always-Saved variety of Evangelical.

In this sense, because the confusion of justification and sanctification, saying "Christians are perfected Jews" is actually quite correct.

In that it is consistent with her beliefs. As Catholics, we can recognize it as unbiblical and heretical, but can we say what she said was inconsistent with her flawed understanding of Christian theology.

If I can laugh at jokes by Jews like "you weren't chosen for a reason" (Knocked Up) then this TV show host can darn well get off his high horse.

On 9 July 2007 Fr. Richard John Neuhaus posted the following on 1st Things website: "The Roman Missal modified by Pope Paul VI in 1969, and put into effect in 1970, has this formulation: “Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant.” The following prayer is this: “Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption.”

"Of course some Jews may be offended at the suggestion that the fullness of redemption is found in Jesus Christ, but their problem is with Christianity as such… "

From this it seems that Ann Coulter isn't as far off as Mark Shea would make her.

"Christians are perfected Jews". Okay, maybe "perfected" is the wrong tense of the passive verb, "to be made perfect," but she's not far off. I think she deserves credit for moral courage to even touch on the subject in such a forum.

Another point that brought her up in my estimation was when she defended Dobson's decision to not vote for pro-abortion Republicans. I fully expected her to go into better-than-Hillary mode, but she didn't.

It is precisely this sort of thing which leads me to set aside Ann Coulter's thoughts on religion and Mark Shea's on politics.

-J.