I saw a reference to a great post by Fr. Philip…it’s a list of points about the Church.  Among my favorites:

3). The doctrine and dogma of the Catholic Church are not consumer products that the Church’s employees sell to those who want them; Catholic doctrine and dogma express the unchanging truth of the faith.

6). Leaving the Catholic Church because a priest was mean to you, or because sister whacked you with a ruler, or because the church secretary looked at you funny is as stupid as giving up on the truths of math because you hate your high school algebra teacher.

9). The Catholic Church owes no one a revision of her doctrine or dogma. She didn’t change to save most of Europe from becoming Protestant, why would you imagine that she would change just to get you in one of her parishes?

You better go read the whole list!

It seems to be a rather new phenomenon that the Democrat party is trying to attract morally straight-thinking folks who recognize the radical abortion-on-demand stance as diametrically opposed to their point of view.  How are the Dems doing it?  They are consistently claiming that they want to make abortion as safe as possible and as rare as possible.  Their solution of course is as much contaception as possible (as we all know, contraception has led to abortion as Pope Paul VI predicted it would) which is fallacious. But it seems they are cautious about how loudly they talk of reducing the number of abortions.  For example, this from Obama’s website:

“Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it’s never been more important to protect a woman’s right to choose…With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a women’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe v. Wade. The next president may be asked to nominate that Supreme Court justice. That is what is at stake in this election.”

“When South Dakota passed a law banning all abortions in a direct effort to have Roe overruled, I was the only candidate for President to raise money to help the citizens of South Dakota repeal that law. When anti-choice protesters blocked the opening of an Illinois Planned Parenthood clinic in a community where affordable health care is in short supply, I was the only candidate for President who spoke out against it. And I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president.”

I saw a really good editorial comment all about this on the new RealCatholicTV.com, from a guy named Michael Voris.  He starts out with the thesis that all Democrats have ever done about abortion is lied.  They claimed that abortion must be legal due to all the hundreds of thousands of back-alley abortions taking place; since then, the man who made up the fake statistic they always cited has confessed to making it up.  They’ve said that it’s just “tissue.”  Biology has proven otherwise.  They’ve said “it’s just potential human life, and doesn’t have rights until the state says it does.”  So now to top it off, they say they want to reduce the number of abortions.  The best argument that proves this is just another lie is one of basic logic.  If there’s nothing wrong with abortion, if the “right to choose” is a basic human right, then why would a Democrat suggest that there’s any good reason to reduce the number of abortions?  It makes no sense – why try to dissuade me from exercising this most basic of human rights?

It’s worth watching this video…Mr. Voris has a substantial level of bravado and may be a shade over the top, but it’s simply to illustrate his points and the absurdity of the claims.  Check it out.

Check out the video here! -Note – you need to log in to view the video…use the username RCBC and the password RCBC2008.

Several bishops have released individual statements correcting Nancy Pelosi’s misinterpretations (that’s their word for it, I prefer the word “lies” or “misstatements”) of Catholic teaching on abortion.  The USCCB released an official statement, and now they have moved forward to create a whole new document, referred to as a fact sheet (as American Papist says, these are facts, not opinions.)  In the preamble to the document, Pelosi’s statements are specifically referenced as the reason for the document.  From the USCCB website:

To help end confusion caused by recent misrepresentations of Catholic Church teaching on abortion, the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities has issued a two-page fact sheet called “Respect for Unborn Human Life: The Church’s Constant Teaching.”

Public debate on the topic was prompted by misleading remarks by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, August 24 in an interview on Meet the Press.  On August 26, Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William Lori, chairman of their Committee on Doctrine, issued a statement to correct her remarks.

That link will take you to the document.  They’ve also put out a brochure called “The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church.”

They aren’t stopping there on correcting and clarifying misinterpretations of Church teaching, as evidence by this statement:

Many communities within the United States are now engaged in a new conversation on the meaning of the word “marriage”, questioning whether it should describe a union only between a man and a woman. As leaders of our respective faiths, we, as Orthodox Rabbis, communal leaders and representatives of the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States, wish to affirm our shared commitment to the ordinance of God, the Almighty One, who created man and woman in the divine image (Gen. 1:26-27), so that they might share as male and female, as helpmates and equals (Gen. 2:21-24), in the procreation of children (Gen. 1:28) and the building up of society.

We now confront a demand that same sex unions be classified as marriage. Advocates of this position argue that to do otherwise is to engage in a form of discrimination against homosexuals.   We recognize that all persons share equally in the dignity of human nature and are entitled to have that human dignity protected, but this does not justify the creation of a new definition for a term whose traditional meaning is of critical importance to the furtherance of a fundamental societal interest.

God’s design for the continuance of human life, as seen in the natural order, as well as in the Bible  (Gen. 1-3), clearly revolves around the union of male and female, first as husband and wife, and then as parents. A unique goal of marriage, which is reproduction and the raising of families, exists apart from that of same sex unions, which cannot equally participate in this essential function. While others may claim the right to establish private relationships between persons of the same gender that simulate marriage, the legal classification of such relationships as marriage dilutes the special standing of marriage between a man and a woman. Since the future of every society depends upon its ability to reproduce itself according to this natural order and to have its young people reared in a stable environment, it is the duty of the state to protect the traditional place of marriage and the family for the good of society.

While others have the freedom to disagree with us, we hope that even those outside of our common religious traditions will recognize that we speak from the truth of human nature itself which is consistent with both reason and the moral life.  We also call upon our local faith communities to consider carefully the long held traditions of Jews and Christians on the nature of marriage as built upon the commitment of a man and a woman desirous of establishing a family for contributing to the common good of humanity.

Here we have a statement which can only be described as quintessentially Judeo-Christian, and it doesn’t beat around the proverbial bush at all.  Great stuff.  No doubt the formerly “closed cafeteria” will be in a tizzy about this.

Attended Mass at St. Joseph’s of Nashville (Tennessee, USA) yesterday morning, and was interested in a letter Father Joseph read to the community at the end of Mass, straight from the Bishop.

An “ecumenical catholic church” has started in the Nashville area (apparently a few of them have) and the Bishop put out this letter to clarify for the faithful that they cannot receive valid sacraments at these churches.

Here’s an article from The Tennesseean about it.

And here’s the piece de resistance from the Bishop’s letter (just scroll down past the first story):

These groups are misleading people into thinking that they are Catholic and that they offer valid sacraments. Neither claim is true. They could call themselves a cantaloupe but the claim would not make them such.

Methinks the Bishop’s lunch included cantaloupe the day he wrote this letter.

This must be my week for apologetics.  A classmate of mine from high school who’s now a minister in a protestant church asked me:

Please explain to this Protestant preacher the idea of Abstinence (name?) – as in not eating meat on Friday. It seems like a great tradition and one that I would like to know more about. Thanks in advance for the info!

The most encouraging thing about the email?  “it seems like a great tradition.”  I am floored by the fact that this guy came to me framing his question in the positive rather than the negative and if you’ve read the very first post in this blog, you understand a bit about why based on the spiritual climate of my high school.

I just spent 2 hours on this response…when I got done I pasted into Word and realized its length.  Never let it be said I was brief when I could have been detailed.  As with all my apologetics, they are written for the outsider…that’s how you have to do it – explain everything, repeatedly give proofs for your claims, especially give proofs whenever you claim that the Church does not teach works-based salvation.  Many times in typing this I made a statement and then had to go back and explain it because in my Catholic framework, the statement I made needed no further explanation, whereas in the Protestant framework it would make no sense at all, or even worse, be misconstrued.

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One of my favorite things is apologetics…I appreciate your tone…all too often I am responding to someone openly hostile. A word of warning though…one Catholic teaching making sense to you can result in another one making sense to you…and another…and well, look at me. I say that with tongue in cheek of course. For me the first teaching I looked deeply into is the one on artificial contraception, and it grew from there.

Now, analyzing a particular Catholic teaching can be difficult because of the integrated nature of Catholic teaching; often, in order for something to make sense, there’s background sitting there that you have to have a basic idea of in order for it to make sense. I will try to work such things in where I can without getting tangential, which is quite easy to do. For example, when I’ll be referencing Catholic teaching, and specifically the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC); the Catechism is essentially the 600 page book on Catholic teaching – it lists in a general level of detail all the teachings of the Church which are based both on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Tradition as referred to here is the teaching authority of the Church, beginning with Jesus, passed to Peter and the apostles, to their students, and so on forward through the centuries to this day; Tradition is how we ended up with the Canon, which was of course not assembled as we know it until a couple hundred years after Christ – were it not for Tradition, that is the teaching authority of the Catholic Church guided by the Holy Spirit, we’d have no idea which books should be in the New Testament, because Scripture itself doesn’t tell us which books belong in the Canon. Coming from a Protestant background, I was raised as you were, with a sola scriptura background, so I totally understand you likely disagree with this framework. I can go into detail on this topic further, but I wanted to give you a sort of heads-up that the Catholic Church considers both Scripture and Tradition with any teaching, and I will reference both here (and try to show the place where the two meet as much as possible.)

You know I am a computer nerd by trade and an educator by training; I am not a theologian by any means. Thus I have a batch of apologetics websites run by people who are theologians which I regularly refer to in order to make sure I am on track in what I say.

So to the question of abstinence from meat on Fridays. What I am going to do first here is shoot from the hip and give you my basic lay explanation of the teaching without any references – this is just me talking, explaining in my own words what it’s all about; I will get into some references to the Scriptures and the CCC next, as well as early Church fathers if I can find some. To start with, it grows out of the concept of fasting which of course is not unique to any of the world’s religions. All the faiths and even the pseudo-faith belief systems seem to believe that there are times when not eating (or for that matter, fasting from anything one might enjoy) is beneficial to the spirit. Catholicism especially refers to this as self-mortification – placing yourself in a position of suffering for a greater good or greater spiritual growth opportunity. Catholics are specifically obligated to fast on two days (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the two ends of the season of Lent; and fasting here is defined as one full meal on the day, with one or two smaller meals to maintain strength which together would not equal another full meal) and to abstain from meat every Friday. Back when the second Vatican council (aka Vatican II) happened, the Cardinals adjusted the teaching on meatless Fridays a bit; during Lent, the Catholic is obligated to abstain from meat each Friday, but during the rest of the year, the Catholic is called to abstain from something – meat or some other something they enjoy doing, or to perform act of charity over and above what they normally do, all in an attitude of penitence…I will come back to the penitence thing in a minute. So you’ll hear folks say, “Ever since Vatican II we only have to abstain from meat Fridays during Lent.” As you can tell, not exactly true. In the Catholic faith, every Friday is a penitential day, thus we are obligated to abstain from meat OR something else in an attitude of penitence. And as you no doubt know from your own learning, the whole point of fasting from anything is that whenever you feel that yearning for whatever it is you’re fasting from, that’s your reminder to focus on whatever it is you’re fasting for, to pray for strength and to remember that need that is causing you to fast in the first place.

So why are Fridays penitential days in the Catholic faith? You can probably guess this one – because the greatest day of penitence in Christendom is Good Friday – the day when because we were altogether insufficiently able to make reparation for our sins, God in the flesh chose to take them on himself and pay the price for them. Thus on Fridays we are called to remember Christ’s suffering for us, which in and of itself makes us penitent people, truly sorry for our sins and committed to trying to be more Christlike. And that leads to the next point: suffering. In the Catholic faith we have a concept of redemptive suffering; that is, that we should pray and seek for help from the Spirit to unite our relatively small sufferings (that is, big to us but small in comparison with the sufferings He endured) with the sufferings of Christ. How do we do that? Hardest thing in the world – by not complaining and grumbling through our sufferings but instead offering them up to God and asking Him to use our sufferings to make us more like Christ (something like “consider it pure joy…” whenever we are hit with suffering.) Now of course none of us ARE Christ so our offering of our sufferings won’t be perfect and we’ll fall into the pattern of complaining, etc…but nonetheless we are to make an effort to unite our sufferings with those of Christ. Self-mortification through abstaining or fasting is likely to generate a very small suffering – a hunger pang, or a really strong desire to order the steak when you’re out with friends on Friday night, but going with the fish instead; this is the same reason we traditionally give something up during the Lent season – so that we will feel that desire for whatever that thing is that we gave up, and take that deprivation as an opportunity to grow in Christlikeness (is that a word?) The Catholic Church encourages elective fasting whenever one feels led to, but believes self-mortification is important enough to growth in one’s relationship with Christ to obligate her members to do it on specific occasions. A Catholic who intentionally does not follow such obligations is in a state of sin; not because the Church is legalistic, but because the Church wants her members to have the spiritual growth opportunity that comes from self-mortification.

What this does NOT mean: The Catholic Church does NOT believe that by self-mortification a man can merit salvation, that he can obtain forgiveness for his sins by his own works. I want to make sure this is crystal clear. We’re talking here about sanctification by the working of the Holy Spirit through our willingness to unite ourselves to Christ and His sufferings, not justification which you and I both know is only available because of Christ’s suffering. CCC 1430 says: Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, “sackcloth and ashes,” fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion [my note: and that conversion is not by our own power but by the work of the Spirit in us]. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.

Now after a long treatise on suffering and remembering Christ’s crucifixion, I should point out that the Church also spends a great deal of time on celebration and joy at Christ’s Resurrection; consider that Lent, the penitential season is 40 days, but that Easter, the celebratory season is 50 days (from the vigil of Easter late on Holy Saturday through Pentecost), and that outside these seasons, while we remember Good Friday every Friday, we also celebrate Easter every Sunday. To everything there is a season.

So now that we are past the basic lay-explanation of it, let’s get into a little more on the backgrounds for this practice. I’ll start with the Catechism, which is organized by paragraph numbers. You can access an online version here: http://www.kofc.org/publications/cis/catechism/index.cfm – in the search area you can input a paragraph number and it’ll take you straight to the text of that paragraph. I will cite a few paragraphs here, and give you excerpts, but by all means check out the full texts of them. You can also search by topic using the search area – so you could type in “fasting” for example and get even more than I am about to specifically talk about here.

CCC 1434 says: The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one’s neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one’s neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity “which covers a multitude of sins.” – the footnote to this part in quotation marks is 1 Peter 4:8.

CCC 2015: The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. (see 2 Tim 4 – he talks about being poured out like a libation – self-sacrifice – mortification) Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:

He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows. (this is a quote from St. Gregory.)

See – the idea here is that through suffering in a Christlike way we are made more like him – we are blessed as discussed in the beatitudes.

CCC 793 Christ unites us with his Passover: all his members must strive to resemble him, “until Christ be formed” [Gal 4:19] in them. “For this reason we . . . are taken up into the mysteries of his life, . . . associated with his sufferings as the body with its head, suffering with him, that with him we may be glorified.” [Phil 3:21 and Rom 8:17]

Phil 3:21 says who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Rome 8:16-17 says: The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

You can see the Scriptural case for being united to God and Christ through suffering.

CCC1521 specifically relates to the administration of the Sacrament of the Sick (popularly called the last rites) but it makes a powerful statement about suffering: Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus.

Don’t take the word “participation” there to mean that the suffering person is participating in ’saving’ anyone at all, but rather than whole idea of uniting oneself to Christ (again not of one’s own power, but only by the grace of God and the work of the Spirit) through suffering. What I like here is that through redemptive suffering we turn original sin on its ear – we take something negative resulting from the fall of man and make it a positive spiritual growth opportunity by following Christ’s example in suffering.

You can see that in a lot of cases the CCC includes Scriptural footnotes, pointing back to the Scripture from which the teaching is at least in part drawn, as well as in some cases writings of the Saints. The link I provided you includes all the footnotes that my hardcopy Catechism includes, all clickable for your convenience. What I have presented here I found by searching for “fasting” and “suffering.” To be sure, there’s more there than what I have cited.

Why meat? There’s nothing doctrinal about the specific practice of not eating meat on Friday (though there is plenty doctrinal about redemptive suffering as I have shown.) Abstaining from meat on Friday is classified as a discipline, rather than a doctrine. A doctrine would have to make some sort of definitive statement like “meat is evil” – and obviously we can’t do that because the Bible tells us there is no longer clean and unclean; the discipline rather reflects that we are refraining from something good, not something evil. It’s meat because traditionally, when the discipline came to be, fish was quite common and cheap, meat was a delicacy and quite expensive. Thus, the discipline came about to say, “let’s avoid this thing that is enjoyable but a bit extravagant and instead have a modest but healthy meal to commemorate what Christ did for us on Good Friday.” Were it our present day and age that this discipline was coming about, can you imagine what we’d abstain from? Seeing as, at least on our side of the globe, fresh, safe produce is readily available, I could see the discipline calling us to refrain from both the flesh of animals and of fish. But, that is where tradition (note, that’s little “t” tradition) comes in – the traditional discipline stands because of its meaning, not because fish is still way cheaper than meat. Or put another way, the Catholic family who eats at Red Lobster on a Friday during Lent is totally missing the point of the discipline, because they just spent 3 times what they would have if they had baked a chicken at home. Hard to be penitential when you are loosening the belt a notch from eating too many shrimp.

Now in this explanation I have left out Scriptural backing for fasting because I know you already know about that as you have theological training; but as you can see, the discipline of abstinence grows out of the same instructions we get from Christ and the Apostles to fast and do penance. Hopefully here I have shed some light on where it came from and why – and most importantly, what benefit there is to doing it.

The “other Catholic” at my place of work mentioned today that another of our coworkers had voiced a loud objection of the use of a crucifix as opposed to a simple empty cross.  I figured it had been a while since I had pulled together some apologetics resources on a particular topic, so, here goes.

First, the objection itself is simple.  Fundamentalists (remember, these are the people who think that if there’s an image of anything within the walls of the church building then we must be worshipping the image, which creates a logical problem if they have an empty cross displayed anywhere) say that Catholics are stuck on Good Friday while they’ve moved on to Easter.  That is, Catholics think Jesus is still on the cross, whereas Protestants don’t.

Karl Keating points out the fallacy to this contention.  And empty cross is not the symbol of anything, because every person who the Romans ever crucified was eventually taken down from the cross.  And empty cross means the ghastly business is done and the executioner is awaiting his next victim.  Keating suggests that a better symbol if the claim of “we’ve moved on to Easter” is to hold true would be a depiction of an empty tomb.  Have you ever seen a depiction of an empty tomb attached to a steeple or displayed within the walls of a church all year round?  Another point – the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice (which the Catechism tells us was a one time thing, thus it’s an unbloody re-presentation) therefore the crucifix is a logical image of that event.

Apologist John Martignoni has a brief piece on this topic in his 2-minute apologetics repertoire, and I will just quote it directly here:

check out 1st Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 23. Paul says, “…but we preach Christ crucified…” Why does Paul preach Christ crucified? Doesn’t he know Jesus has been raised from the dead? Of course he does! But, he knows that it is through the power of the crucified Christ on the cross that the bonds of sin and death are broken. As Paul says in verse 24, Christ crucified is the “power of God”.

1 Cor 2:2, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Again, didn’t Paul know that Jesus had risen from the dead? Of course, he did.

Paul preaches Christ crucified because an empty cross has no power. The cross that bears the beaten, battered, and bloodied body of Jesus Christ, however, that cross is the “power of God”. This is why, we “keep Jesus on the cross,” because we, too, preach Christ crucified. The Crucifix reminds us not only of God’s power, but also His love for us – giving His only begotten Son up for suffering and death.

Also, here in this life we do not share so much in the glory of the Resurrection, as we do in the suffering of Jesus on the cross; after all, we must take up our cross daily if we are to follow Jesus, as it says in Lk 9:23.

And, we must die with Christ in order to live with Him as Romans 6:8 tells us. Where did Christ die? On the cross. The Crucifix serves to remind us of these things.

I happen to really like Martignoni’s style.  He’s a little stinging and sarcastic.  It comes across as almost a bit “mean” in his writing, but if you hear him speak, his delivery style makes it so conversational and disarming.  And besides, you have to be careful not to take yourself too seriously when set upon by uninformed anti-Catholics…the humor he uses helps you maintain sanity.  The piece-de-resistance:

One other passage to keep in mind is Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Did you catch that? Jesus was publicly portrayed, before their “eyes”, as being crucified. Sounds kind of like they may have been looking at a Crucifix, doesn’t it?

Phil Thompson is in the Orthodox Church, a Church which is united with Rome in her understanding of the Eucharist as well as Sacred Tradition.  He makes several good points.  He explains that the cross isn’t a symbol of the resurrection, because there are already icons of the ressurection in the Orthodox Church.  This applies to the Catholic church as well (at least the ones that haven’t been turned into stark, ugly bunkers by the likes of Vosko.)  At my local parish, the stained glass depicts Christ the King, for example (as well as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Good Shepherd.)  Christ couldn’t be king if we still thought he was stuck on the cross.  Another point made by Mr. Thompson is that we worship Christ, not the cross.  An empty cross is like an empty flagpole.  People don’t salute the flagpole, they salute the flag.  Kind of like Keating’s point about how an empty cross doesn’t tell a specific story, and Martignoni’s point about how an empty cross has no power (straight from the Bible!)

Mary Beth Kramski of Catholic Answers echoes several of the aforementioned points, but she also mentions that Protestant films graphically display the crucifixion.  She also says,

If the suffering and work of Calvary are, as some Protestants claim, past history, leaving nothing for us to do, then maybe using only a plain cross might make sense—maybe. But when we know that Jesus is inviting each of us to join him at Calvary, the value of the crucifix in helping us respond to him becomes obvious. This call to suffer with Christ is an invitation to transforming love. Through the experience of the cross, we touch the inner heart of God. The saints tell us that’s where joy and power reside.

Although not explicitly stated as a tenet of faith, in many Protestant denominations the work and suffering of the crucifixion are seen as being fixed in the past. Now is the time to reap the fruits—-salvation, healing, deliverance. The suffering is over; the work is done. (The “health and wealth” teachers take this idea to the extreme. No suffering for us—just the perks.)

And a “zinger” of sorts with which one can wow any non-liturgical Protestant:

The Catholic Church celebrates Easter for 50 days—not including each Sunday of the year, which are seen as “little” Easters. The Mass never fails to proclaim the resurrection of Christ. And the Church’s daily prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours, is filled with Scripture and prayers rejoicing in the resurrection.

I count at least 100 celebrations of Easter in the liturgical calendar…versus Protestantism’s celebration of Easter once a year.  As the kids on the ‘net say, Catholic Church FTW!

Seriously though, the whole point is that this is a pretty easy objection to debunk…a little bit of Scripture to show that there’s no power in an empty cross, and a logical look at the Catholic Church’s record when it comes to celebrating Easter.

Nonetheless, if you are hungry for more, you can’t miss with Steve Ray’s treatment of the issue…he looks at the history of crucifixes and crosses, and sets everything in proper order (and no, I didn’t drag myself through all 14 pages.)

The Minnesota professor who obtained and desecrated a consecrated Communion host got interviewed by Jeff Gardner for the National Catholic Register (if memory serves me, that’s the “good” NCR as opposed to the other NCR which is the “bad” one.) Here’s an excerpt:

That xxxxx has the equivalent of a junior high school education in religion is glaring. He understands little about the history and function of the Catholic Church and even less about the place of the Eucharist in the lives of Catholics. When I told him that many have laid their lives on the line to protect the Blessed Sacrament, he recoiled in disbelief, saying, “Really? People really do that!?”

This is one of the interesting revelations from the interview.  He walked away from religion at 14 and it becomes clear he’s never taken any time to study it; in the Lutheran denomination, his heritage, there is certainly a history surrounding the Eucharist, even though that denomination’s understanding of the Eucharist is incomplete.  Yet he doesn’t know this.  He’s a scientist, but without studying something he has discounted it entirely (and don’t start on me…there are things I refect out of hand without studying them, but I never claimed to be a scientist.)

“Religion,” he continued, “has been selling everybody a bill of goods for so many years; it’s about time somebody spoke up and said that it’s a load of nonsense.”

I decided to call his bluff. “Has Christianity contributed anything to humanity?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “there is this general property of religion — it’s great at building community. Religion has been a good thing for many individuals; it has brought them together and given them comfort. But over all, religion … holds back humanity.”

What, I asked, about the Church’s role in founding the first Western hospitals, universities, banks and even many breakthroughs in science? He interrupted me, irate and incredulous:

“No, people made those contributions to Western Civilization.”

That the Church was involved in the very foundations of our Western culture is, according to Myers, irrelevant.

“That’s like saying,” he continued, “that because for so many years people got smallpox, smallpox is to be credited for all the virtue men have done.”

As I talked with Myers I was struck by an irony: For a scientist whose job it is to observe cause and effect, he has a poor understanding of the cause, Catholicism, and its effects on world culture. He does not see Christianity as an elevating force in the world, but rather as a strange superstition — akin to banging a pot to scare away the moon.

The Curt Jester has an excellent rebutt to this portion of the interview:

It really makes me sorry for him that his hatred of Christianity has destroyed any vestige of objectivity.  Say for example somebody asked me.

“Do you think science has contributed to humanity?  What about science’s role in developing medicine, technology, and helping us to come to a greater understanding of the universe?”

“No, people made those contributions to Western Civilization.”

I would deserve a good slap to my head for such an answer.

Perhaps the answer here is that there is not any true objectivity, although “science” has claimed the sole ownership of objectivity.

One of my co-workers emailed me today, asking essentially why the Catholic Church was in such an uproar over the guy stealing the Eucharist from a Catholic Center Mass at University of Central Florida.  He cited this article.  The Curt Jester covered it a few days ago, and had a substantially longer article, a good bit more detailed than the one my co-worker saw.  (read both articles before continuing to read this post.)
Well, I had to give my co-worker an explanation of what the big deal was…remember, he’s a protestant.  There’s not a short explanation that will suffice to explain the gravity of what Mr. Cook did.  So on goes my apologetics hat…and here we go:

Cook is (or maybe was) Catholic, and he took a non-Catholic friend to Mass with him on the UCF campus.  The friend wanted to see what a Communion host looks like, so Cook received Communion in the hand (as is traditionally accepted in the USA) but instead of immediately consuming, he took it back to his seat.  One of the Eucharistic Ministers (lay people who assist in distributing Communion when it would be impractical for the priest to distribute to every single person himself) noticed he hadn’t consumed it, and confronted him on it.  The Catechism as well as the General Instructions for the Roman Missal (aka the liturgical norms) state that the Eucharist is to be consumed immediately upon receipt.  So, when she confronted him, he refused to consume it, rather got away from her; rather than do what he claims he originally intended and consume it upon reaching his seat after showing it to his friend, he instead put it in a plastic bag and held it “hostage” in his dorm for a week.  On top of that, he mounted a campaign in the student government of UCF to try and have the Catholic Center on campus’s funding taken away, and filed an abuse claim against the Catholic Center on campus.  Other officials within the student government of the school called the Catholic Center and apologized for the guy’s actions.

Now, in terms of whether it’s a “hate crime,” essentially Cook committed a crime against himself and against God according to the Catholic way of thinking.  Since we believe that the Holy Spirit changes the substance of bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ,  the vessels we use to contain and store the Eucharist are made of precious metals in order to show proper respect to the Real Presence of Christ.  When there are excess consecrated hosts, we store them in the tabernacle, which is in a prominent place in the church, and is typically very ornate, made of precious metal (typically gold), and there’s a red candle placed nearby so anyone passing through will know Christ is present there reserved in the tabernacle, and is invited to kneel and pray before the Eucharist.  It is permissible for Eucharistic ministers to take communion from the church to shut-ins or hospitalized parishioners, but they carry it in a container, again, made of precious metals, and have very specific instructions on its handling.

Presumably, as a college student, Cook has received substantial catechesis through the years on the sacredness and importance of the Eucharist.  This would have started when he was a very small boy, continued with his first confession and first communion when he was 8 years old or thereabouts, and then his Confirmation around age 16.  That he has chosen to remain faithful following Confirmation now that he’s at college away from mom and dad “forcing” him to go to church implies that he has some knowledge and understanding of the importance of the Eucharist, because, as has been repeatedly said in Church teaching, the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life.

In Catholic philosophy, there are 2 types of sin – venial sin and mortal sin.  Venial sins cloud up our relationship with God, but they are not capable of totally cutting us off from Grace in the way that mortal sins are; essentially, mortal sins create a block between us an God which remains until we repent (and the way we do that is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, at which time the priest acting in persona Christi assures us of our absolution – read that carefully, the priest doesn’t forgive sins, he simply quotes Jesus and assures us of forgiveness, but that’s a topic for another time altogether.)  Three conditions must be met for something to constitute mortal sin: 1) it must be a grave matter, 2) the person must know it’s a grave matter, and 3) it must be committed of the person’s own free will.  If any  one of these conditions is not met then while still sin, it may not be considered mortal.  A good example of this is when hostages are forced to renounce their faith at the point of a gun; yes, it’s grave, they know it’s grave, but they aren’t doing it of their own free will – thus it is not a mortal sin.

So let’s apply the conditions to what Cook did.  Deliberately disrespecting the Eucharist by not either consuming it or properly reserving it is definitely a grave matter; by virtue of being an adult Catholic, Cook presumably knows this; and he admits he did it of his own free will.  Of course I can’t read his soul to tell whether he was fully cognizant of the gravity of what he was doing, I’m just guessing.  But to me it looks like if he disrespected (dare I say blasphemed against) the Eucharist, and is unrepentant, he has essentially excommunicated himself – that is, he has removed him self from communion with God and with the Church.  It would not be a stretch to say that he is messing with his eternal destiny…I will not make a statement specifically one way or another, but I will say he is treading in dangerous territory.

The good news for him, is that God and the Church seek reconciliation with him.  If he wishes to be reconciled to the Church all he has to do is repent through making a good confession (and if he’s a Catholic, he knows this and presumably subscribes to this belief)– one in which he examines his conscience and states by his words and actions that he is contrite about what he did.  The confessional is in parallel with the parable of the prodigal son – the father runs out to greet him, saying that this song who was lost is found, who was dead is alive again.  God welcomes the penitent back into His house, and at that point, since God’s forgiven him, so should the rest of the community.  I think what’s bugging the people who are reacting uncharitably to this guy is that even though he claims Catholicism as his faith, he is unrepentant about what he did and is in fact making it as big of a deal as he can.  That said, it’s absolutely inappropriate for him to receive death threats (if God wants to take him out, He doesn’t need any help); charitable reminders about the gravity of what he has done are not problematic (Biblical explanation of Church Discipline, etc.) but uncharity towards him is a big problem.  I would hope that the pastors in the area are telling their parishioners what is and is not appropriate for this situation.  And I hope some priests have been in touch  with him, inviting him back to get things straightened out.

The Eucharistic Minister did the right thing in confronting Cook at Mass.  The Church has a big problem all around the world with wiccans and other occult groups trying to obtain consecrated hosts for their rituals, and really the only way to do it is to receive Communion and then hide the host rather than consuming it.  I haven’t heard much detail but I know some of these groups believe that in fact the Eucharist is what Catholics believe it is, and they believe that by using a consecrated host in their rituals they can increase the power of evil (or satan or whatever) over good.

Situations like this do point out a reason why some folks are strongly in favor of eliminating the practice of receiving Communion in the hand (which is almost unique to the USA) and revert to receiving only on the tongue – that is the priest places the host on your tongue and you consume it – you don’t really have the option of not consuming it because it’s already in your mouth.

My co-worker responded: ” I see why there’s such an uproar.  They didn’t mention the malicious other actions this guy took.  No wonder the church is upset about this and takes these actions very seriously.  Thanks for enlightening me on this situation.”

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Also, in another email that I sent to Chris about the continuation of this conversation I said this:

ya and he also said that hes a sola scriptura guy. so i said

ok, who did paul write his letters too? early churches right? so then how were they already established?

o well they had the scripture passed on to them through oral tradition.

right… but what about the pauline epistles? how could they have been passed on if they werent yet written.

o well they had already established based on the other books.

right then i guess we don’t need Pauls letters?

no they corrected the early churches, they were led astray.

so then i guess by that logic the church didn’t officially start until Paul “corrected” it right?

wel no… umm…

and we have some of that circular reasoning. of course he claims calvinism too.

Tim Nadolski

Courtesy of my brother-in-law, Tim, who is living in a dorm among many fundamentalists, we have an interesting adventure in apologetics.  Tim was talking to someone about the “once-saved-always-saved” concept.

First, he asked the guy about the parable of the Prodigal Son. If you’ll remember, at the end of the parable, the father says, my son who was dead is alive again.  Now, logically, in order for someone to be alive “again” means that they were at one time alive, then they were dead, and then they came back to life.  You can’t be alive again without having also been alive before and then gone through a period of not being alive.  Now, most people agree that the father in this parable is parallel to God, and that there are two types of Christ-followers, those who are steady and consistent in faith throughout their lives, and those who aren’t but in the end return to God’s good graces.  Wouldn’t this parable then be telling us that it is possible to be in God’s good graces, but then to turn our backs and walk away, and then, most importantly, to come back to him?

Then, Tim went on to ask the person about when Jesus talked about vines and branches, and how Scripture tells us that branches that don’t produce fruit will be cut off and burned in the fire.  Now, most folks agree that Christ is the vine, and Christians are the branches (in fact, I think Jesus actually says “I am the vine, you are the branches.”)  Logically, the branches are joined to the vine in order to survive.  However, it’s our responsibility as Christians to bear fruit (that is to witness to God’s grace) or we will be sheared off and burned up.  Now, if we are branches that are attached to the vine, the Body of Christ, then that means we are in Him and He is in us.  In other words, we’re in good shape.  We’re heaven-bound, we’re living members of his body.  But then, if we don’t bear fruit, we can be sheared off.  Separated from the vine.  If we as branches are separated from the vine, we’re dead.  And then there’s that whole “burned in fire” thing that sounds a little like hell, or at least like purgatory.  That would imply that we can be joined to the vine and then we by virtue of not bearing fruit can be separated from the vine.  Again, if we can be separated, then that would mean we are fallen away from God’s grace.

So there you go – two very cogent arguments against “once-saved-always-saved.”  The fundy that Tim was talking to simply responded that neither of these stories is actually about salvation, because in neither case was the person saved before falling away (even though they were “alive” and attached to the vine.)  So, Tim asked why these two cases are mentioned in the Bible.  The person responded that they tell us how to come to Christ.  Even using a literalistic interpretation that is subscribed to by fundamentalists, these two stories clearly tell us how not to be separated from Christ – not how to come to Him.

Amazing how easy it is to believe once-saved-always-saved when you just ignore what the Bible says.