Punditry

OXFORD, England – The German Bishops’ conference has called for “urgent further clarification” on the “highly binding” Church teachings that over 140 theologians have called into question.

More than 140 Catholic theologians from universities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland called for the Church to take serious steps to address the problems of the priest shortage by allowing married and women priests and allowing laypeople to help select Bishops and pastors, among other changes.

Journalist Peter Seewald, whose in-depth interview with Pope Benedict XVI became the book Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times, dismissed the public protest by German-speaking theologians as “a rebellion in the nursing home.”

Seewald told the Kath.net news agency that the highly-publicised statement of dissent – signed by one-third of the theology professors at Catholic universities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – should not be interpreted as a popular uprising against Church teaching.

Rather, he said, it is a protest by the same people who have caused a crisis in Catholic teaching.
The dissident theologians, Seewald charged, are seeking to remodel the Church in their own image, adapting Catholic teachings to popular standards.

Their approach, he said, is to measure Church doctrines by the standards of popular opinion, putting themselves in the role of “chief priests of the Zeitgeist.”

In his remarks on the theologians’ public statement, Seewald referred to St Paul’s words (2 Tim 4:3): “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachings to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” [Source]

One story has been hitting the various news outlets throughout the world concerning the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app called Confession: A Roman Catholic app.  The coverage like almost everything concerning the Church is largely hit and miss with the weight going to miss.  The implication that the app replaces confession has made it into many stories. Terminology such as “Blessed” by the Church or the factually incorrect

Father Z had a good critique of the good and bad of the app itself and the author of the app responded saying that he would be making changes to the app as a result.

The interesting questions is why should an app used as an aid for an examination of conscience to make a good confession get so much attention?  After all this is hardly the first app to do so.  Travis Boudreaux had wrote a similar app called  Mea Culpa in Aug of 2010.  What is mostly getting played up is “Catholic Church approves ….” as the enticement to get you to read the story.  Zenit had reported:

A new Confession application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is encouraging sacramental life through technology. Bishop Kevin Rhodes gave the first known imprimatur for this type of resource.

Patrick Leinen, developer and cofounder of Little iApps, the company that released the application, told ZENIT that “in order to respond to Benedict XVI’s message from last year’s World Communications Day address, our goal with this project was to offer a digital application that is truly ‘new media at the service of the Word.'”

Though really I would think what the bishop did was give an imprimatur to the text used within the app which is really no different from any other imprimatur. Unless the Vatican issued a guide to mobile application development that I don’t know about – this is really the extent of it. Though the positive thing is that the press gave enough attention to the app that at least at one time was one of the top 100 paid apps. No doubt many had downloaded it as a curiosity, but maybe some consciences can be jogged to life.

Really this comes into the fascination of Church and technology. We see many stories of this time that are a reflection of the Church vs. Science mythos. Like clockwork every year we get the Vatican Observatory story portraying the shock of the Church being involved in astronomy “despite” Galileo. No doubt when Vatican Radio started in 1931 there were similar news stories and we have them repeated with each new piece of technology. After the telephone was invented some asked if confessions could be validly heard over it and of course the same question was asked with the advent of the internet – even though the sacramental theology hadn’t changed. The same thing happens when the Pope or someone else in the hierarchy mention social networking. Again the media always acts surprised as if it is odd that the Church could use anything modern as if she were Amish or something. At times though it must be admitted that the Vatican itself is not always the quickest to adapt to new technologies such as the Pontifical Council for Promotion of the New Evangelisation involved with studying modern means of communication does not have an internet connection.

The Church vs. Technology mythos is not the only false dichotomy that draws people attention. For example habited nuns/sisters doing anything besides praying seems to draw people’s attention. Religious women on skates, nuns bowling, etc, etc. To a lesser extent the same applies to monks/friars doing the same.

Also interesting is how people feel they are free to mock confession at almost every level. No worries about offending Catholics who do something so Medieval as actually going to confession. Of course we remember those same commentators mocking Ramadan and the various Ramadan apps – oh wait. As your basic geek who listens to some technology shows I heard comments on the confession app like “They should have Game Center support for achievements for those committing the most sins.”, “In app purchases for indulgences”, “Now all it needs is a random sin selector: shake the phone to instantly get a wicked suggestion.”, etc. Not being thin-skinned some of the comments can be kind of funny in a lame way, but there is often a meanness behind them and an animus towards Catholics in particular.

The late Fr. William Most was a well known theologian and scripture scholar who never fell in with any fads and was a counter-ballance to so many more well know theologians and scripture scholars of the era. His book “Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture” is an example of this. We so often hear about so-called errors in scripture and especially lists of these “errors” from atheists who are often literal fundamentalists when it comes to scripture. This calling out of errors though is not confined to atheists and such charges have been made from those in the Church including her clergy. Even worse, often no attempt is made to reconcile these passages and when done within the Church is often a denial of what Vatican II’s Dei Verbum says. Fr. Most notes:

Precisely at the time when new techniques enable us to do what seemed impossible before, so many scholars are not only not solving the problems but even saying that problems are insoluble whose answers have been known for a long time!

This book goes through the topics of inspiration and authorship, the cannon, senses of scripture, and the genre of scripture. He takes us through some cases of supposed errors and show how they can be reconciled using these tools and understandings. He also addresses modern techniques such as historical-critical method, source criticism, form and redaction criticism, etc. Fr. Most is totally inline with what Pope Benedict has written about these tools in that they can and should be used within their limits and under the guiding light of the magisterium.

In regard to the methods themselves, some think that only highly trained specialists can understand them. These people are too easily awed. Anyone can grasp at least the basics of these methods, and more too. These methods are not mysterious or formidable. They are our friends.

These methods when used without the analogy of faith quickly become deformed into a type of skepticism that produced the Jesus Seminar where miracles are ridiculous and the hard sayings were added later. Fr. Most gives examples when these tools have been used incorrectly and especially in the case of scripture scholar Fr. Raymond Brown.

This book provides a good introduction to scripture study and how to be able to read difficult passages using the methods as old as the Fathers of the Church or of the modern era and would be a good companion with Mark Shea’s Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did.

All of Father Most’s writings are available for free online at The Most Theological Collection at Catholic Culture. This includes both his books and his articles.

For those with an eBook reader I took the text online and created an eBook version of “Free from all Error.”

epub
mobi (Kindle, etc)

Acts of the Apostasy has a fine fisk of the article “Debunking The Myth Of Hell” by Carol Meyer from the National Catholic Reporter.

Here are my own thoughts.

I’m writing about hell because it is an unthinkable, horrible, destructive concept that can’t possibly be true.

I will defer from making a snarky comment like “You will know when you get there”, because I can think of nothing worse to say than to wish hell on anybody.

As per the Catechism:

1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”617 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

It is also rather amazing to read what people will say in the NCReporter. Canon 751 says “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same.” The teaching on hell is certainly something that must be believed with divine and catholic faith. And what can be more obstinate than an NCReporter article? At the least Carol Meyer is a material heretic.

Like almost all of the faith to deny one aspect is to undermine other aspects of the faith. For example to deny hell is to deny free will. If there is no hell than somebody who chooses to purposely separate themselves from God is forced to live with God in eternity. That no matter what they do in deliberate opposition to God really does not matter. All paths lead to the same place. Somebody with free will could choose to separate themselves from God.

To deny hell you also have to believe that Jesus was willing to lie to scare people. That he warned against the danger of hell repeatedly even though there was no possibility of anybody going to a place that doesn’t exist. The gates of hell will never prevail against the Church because there is no hell. Though the progressive will cast doubt on what Jesus said in scripture anyway. It is convenient to strip everything Jesus said you don’t agree with out. Of course if you can’t trust the Gospels in major aspects, you really have no reason to trust them at all. When Jesus said “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life” he really meant that the way to salvation was an infinite lane superhighway that everybody finds.

I don’t care if scripture mentions hell or Jesus talked about it, if saints had visions of it, or if it’s a time-honored Catholic teaching.

That’s using faith and reason – not. Because you don’t understand something, just deny Scripture, Apostolic Tradition, and the Magisterium. Heck with that faith seeking understanding. She than goes on to say there is no proof of hell. She sounds just like an atheist denying the existence of Heaven and demanding scientific proofs of a non-material reality.

Of course after she says she doesn’t care if” Jesus talked about it” she then quotes Jesus in his multiple uses of “Be not afraid.” So I guess these multiple statements from Jesus kind of wipe each other out. The real question is why does she consider Jesus saying “Be not afraid” as denying the reality of hell? Those who are following Christ and living a life of holiness indeed should not be afraid. To follow Christ is to have total faith in Christ and his promises. The true disciple has no fear of hell. Those who have committed mortal sin by meeting the three requirements of mortal sin should be afraid, but most of all they should repent and live a life of holiness.

I think belief in a God who sends people to hell, no matter how cloaked in theological sweetness, creates cruel people.

Yes all the saints who believed in hell were such cruel people. When mary showed the shepherd children hell at Fatima those three children became very cruel people. In fact those children must have been the most cruel ever beatifified. Blessed Francisco & Blessed Jacinta Marto, not to mention Sister Lucia. People like Stalin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, who also did not believe in hell were not cruel at all.

Plus to say that “God sends people to hell” is just theologically inept. God wills that all be saved and he gives everyone the grace to be saved. But through are free will we can reject God and his grace and through are will choose to go to hell and eternal separation from God.

Besides it is an odd argument to say that belief in hell will make you more cruel. Anybody who really believes in the possibility of hell for their actions will have at least some impetus not to commit some serious sin. To believe that you wind up in Heaven no matter what you do is a license to sin. In the “Brothers Karmazov” we have the statement “In a world without God “everything is permitted.” In a world without hell, everything has no consequences. Why follow God and grow in holiness? You wind up in Heaven no matter what you do and even if there is time as we think of time in Purgatory – no problems – whether you are one of God’s friends of an enemy no “Go to Jail” but straight to the beatific vision.

To deny hell also leads to denying the existence of fallen angels. By her arguments God would not eject any Angel just because through there free will they rejected Him. So there is no demonic agency so we also get to reject Jesus exorcising demons and to simply reject the idea of exorcism in the first place. Being a progressive is fun since you get to deny so much of scripture that what you have left should be easy to memorize.

She ends the article with the statement “God is Love.” So to reverse her question “Can a loving God force someone to Heaven who doesn’t want to be with him?”

Now I don’t know the population of hell other than that it has some population, but I certainly believe that through my freely chosen actions I could end up there. My concern is not to increase the population of hell by one.

I was listening to Catholic Answers with guest Sharon Lee Giganti and her monthly slot for discussing the New Age. She was an actress with an active professional career who got involved in the New Age and left acting to promote the New Age.

In this episode she was discussing the group “Contemplative Outreach” which is the main organization promoting centering prayer and the works of Fr. Thomas Keating and others. Fr. Keating was the first president of Contemplative Outreach.

One of the book they recommend throughout the site is “Psalms for Praying: An Invitation for Wholeness” by Nan C. Merrill who died last year. This book is a translation of the Psalms meant to be less Patriarchal (authors statement) that flattens them and removes references to sin, judgment, laws, precepts, commandments, etc. As a result the translated Psalms read like more like a reference to an inner-light than they do of any Christian understanding of God. Half of the profits for the book go to her site “Friends of Silence” a website that publishes a New Age Newsletter full or references to the Divine Light within filled with quotes referencing this “light” which falls into line with the pantheism of New Agers.

The author was involved with the infamous “A Course in Miracles” by Helen Schucman that denies suffering and quotes from a channeled spirit. Fr. Benedict Groeshel who went to school with Helen Schucman and gave her eulogy had said that this channeled spirit was possibly a true diabolic manifestation. Nan C. Merrill also had Luciferian views. This group venerates an unfallen Lucifer as a light bringer. She also quotes other Luciferians and Theosophists on this site.

The passages of the book Sharon Lee Giganti read from show a translation of the Psalms that anybody with a working BS detector informed by the faith would cause to sound alarm bells. Often when you bring up the topic of Centering Prayer you set off a tempest from people who support it and considering how prevalent this is in retreat centers that is no surprise. A lot of good people certainly want to get closer to God and so are attracted to this form of prayer which promises to help them achieve that. Yet when you read what the leaders of this movement teach and the fact that they recommend a book dripping with New Age tendencies, you get an idea how close Centering Prayer is bringing them to God.

When you read some of the quotes of Fr. Keating you find something beyond Theosis or Deification such as St. Athanasius’ statement “The Son of God became man, that we might become god” into something more pantheistic where union with God means that we are God and there is no separation between us and God. Becoming “partakers of God’s nature” as St. Peter wrote is not the same as being part of God’s nature. Sharon provides references to many of Fr. Keating’s quotes that are hard to square with orthodox teaching. Add to that he is involved with an institute that promotes religious plurality and syncretism.

It rather sad how infected so many parishes are with Centering Prayer. Instead of forms of contemplative prayer advocated by the saints or proven practices like Lecto Divina people are taught a technique more akin to Transcendental Mediation than looking at God and contemplating and adoring his attributes. A form of prayer not advocated by any Blessed or Saint and which is promoted by people with less than an orthodox view of the faith is hardly a prayer at all. Centering Prayer can easily become self-centered prayer that confuses yourself with God. I remember another episode on Catholic Answers where they were discussing Centering Prayer and a large group of people called in explaining how after they got involved with Centering Prayer had quite negative effects. This article on This Rock Magazine “The Danger of Centering Prayer” explains why this is so.

You can find Sharon Lee Giganti’s site here.

Kyle Heimann who is half of the music group Popple has released a new micro book called Choosing the Right Urinal – A Man’s guide to life.

This is simply the best best book on the spiritual life that uses the urinal for parallelism. Okay, maybe the only book that compares the urinal and aspects related to urinal to make points on the spiritual life. Actually, it is a enjoyable and worthwhile read that is very funny while making some serious points.

Kyle has it available for free on his site in PDF format along with a study guide for a group. You can also order copies of this book.

For those not familiar with Popple, they are rather hard to describe – maybe John Michael Talbot meets Wierd Al Yancovic. Here is one of my favorite songs of theirs.

“And I want to suggest that there has been an evolution in China over the last 30 years since the first normalization of relations between the United States and China,” Obama said. “And my expectation is that 30 years from now we will have seen further evolution and further change.”

Now I can understand diplomatic language and all, but this idea totally fails the reality test. If anything the human rights record of China is worsening. Religious freedom is not progressing for the better. The recent act by China to ordain a bishop without Vatican approval and then force him as head of the conference there as basically their man wholly paid for was a turn for the worse. As for actual reproductive freedom a favorite word of the progressives, China still forcibly restricts family size – no evolution there. No evolution in the Great Firewall of China other than more restrictions. Nobel peace prize winner still in prison – check. Torture and imprisonment of political prisoners – no positive change there either. Freedom of the Press – well the Press is still free to print whatever the government allows them to.

The president said he mentioned some of these human rights abuses to Chinese President Hu Jintao and also said.

“History shows that societies are more harmonious, nations are more successful, and the world is more just, when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being.”

Nice rhetoric, but giving a State Dinner to a leader of a country that imprisons and torture human rights advocates and tramples basic human freedom is not the way to go. Obama’s China policy of the carrot and the carrot provides no reason at all for the Chinese government to change their policies. Dialog is certainly important, it just doesn’t need official State Dinners and it certainly doesn’t need lies like saying things are improving.

I had reviewed the new book by Abby Johnson yesterday and at the end I had a couple questions about her spiritual journey and how she now regarded contraception since they were unanswered in the book.

Turns out the Ignatius Press edition has extra material the edition of the book I bought did and includes a forward by Fr. Frank Pavone.   I was very glad to learn the following:

Johnson and her husband have grown in their faith during the past year, and are now preparing to enter the Catholic Church in the near future. She said that one of the final obstacles, in the course of her Catholic conversion, had been the Church’s teaching on the immorality of all artificial methods of birth control.

Planned Parenthood’s mentality toward contraception, as she explained, stuck with her for a period of time even after she rejected abortion. Even as she became interested in the Catholic Church, she clung to the notion that artificial birth control was an advance for women and society. But she kept an open mind, studying Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and other sources of Church teaching.

Abby Johnson’s final decision to reject contraception, like her change of mind on abortion, occurred suddenly, and because of something she saw.

This time, however, the sight that changed her mind was not a child’s death within the clinic walls, but quite the opposite. An experience in a Catholic church, she said, finally made her understand the fullness of the Church’s teaching on sexuality.

This time, the vision of a child was not shocking, but profoundly life-affirming.

“One day, we were sitting in Mass … I was sitting behind this woman, who I don’t know, and this little infant.” Gazing at that child, she finally understood the Church’s insistence on marriages remaining open to new life.

“It was just clear to me, like a switch had gone off, that we had to stop contracepting.” [Source]

Welcome home Doug and Abby Johnson!

The version of the book I downloaded from Amazon was from SaltRiver a which is part of Tynedale House Publishers a Protestant publishing firm. Too bad they did not include her change of heart about contraception since the book left the topic hanging. Again too bad Ignatius Press did not have an eBook version on day one.

As with pretty much all people I was saddened to hear of the reports of the mass murder in Arizona, just as I am when I hear of any such occurrence. It is quite natural for people to wonder at motives when an apparent political assassination is also involved, but experience has shown me this to be common but misplaced.

Too bad we often look for motives instead of praying for the victims and their family and loved ones. John Kroll, Gabe ZImmerman, Christina Taylor,
Dorwin Stoddard, Phyllis Scheck, and Dorthy Murray were all murdered by this one individual along with others seriously injured including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. To no credit to myself, I at least had the grace to remember to pray when I first saw this story, but still wondered about motive afterwards. Though I also realized motives in these cases are difficult to analyze. Though it does not take a prophet to realize that such acts are of seriously disturbed persons, as was true in this case.

I was also saddened to see the Wellstonian treatment of this story soon after it was reported. I refer to the funeral of the tragic death of Paul Wellstone that was hijacked and turned into a political event attacking Republicans. Using tragedies to promote political agendas is about as classless as you can get. I guess I was not surprised to find the the supposed causation was Sarah Palin. Naively I thought this stupidity would go away once more was known about the killer. Now I am no Palin fanboy in that there are some things I admire about her and some things I don’t, but the irony of blaming a political climate of hate on Sarah Palin using hateful rhetoric seems to be lost on the accusers.

The accusations say more about the accusers than anything. I think it was in Orthodoxy when G.K. Chesterton wrote, and I paraphrase, that an insane person is not somebody who had lost there reason, but someone who only had there reason left. As with most of Chesterton’s paradoxes this is another one that makes more sense as you think about it and reading about Jared Loughner’s rants on literacy and grammar among other things – further shows Chesterton’s insight.

Now if you want to show causation in what you call a political climate of hate it seems to me that using a disturbed individual as proof does nothing of the kind. To show such evidence you would want to point to common people committing acts of violence in response to political rhetoric. History is full of such acts. I would add another definition to Einstein’s’ definition of insanity in that using a seriously disturbed individual for proof of causation is also insanity.

For example Unibomber Theodore Kazinski and Discovery Channel gunman James Lee were both heavily influenced by Vice President Al Gore’s books in response to the “act now” rhetoric he used. But the real causation was that both of these men were disturbed and that while Gore should be accurate in his environmental consequences, he is in no real way responsible for the actions of these two men. The mystery of evil is indeed a mystery and thinking you can analyze the psyche of the deranged and draw a connection of points between cause and action is the daydream of the materialist.

I also don’t care about lists of hateful words and actions Democrats have said or done or that they had also used bull-eyes and targets to represent congressional districts to defeat. There words and actions also have a lack of causation when it comes violence in the political sphere. While there is some related violence, the case can’t really be made for direct political rhetoric causation.

There is some question as to how the Culture of Death affects violence and the cheapening of life. Certainly the abortion attitude has depersonalized the child in the womb as a thing that can be destroyed at will. Abortion, euthanizes, ESCR, ect; further cheapens human life and nihilistic killers in a Culture of Death is an expected outcome. Though again direct causation between this attitude and individual acts is not easily proven.

One of the things that annoys me the most about the charges is that once more information was know and the murderer turned out to be a left-wing disturbed individual unhappy with his Congresswoman not being Democrat enough for him – the charges remained the same. As more information comes in it is the part of our human reason to revise our projections – if we fail to do so we are not using reason. Instead we are wearing political lenses that cause myopia.