An Apologia Against The Apologies

The story varies—some ascribe it to the pontificate of Pius IX other to Pius X and a few to Leo XIII, but allegedly a delegation of British Anglicans were admitted to a papal audience and when they asked for the Holy Father’s blessing, the Pope uttered the following prayer which is used for the blessing of the incense at solemn Mass: “ab illo benedicaris in cuius honore cremaberis” (May you be blessed by him in whose honor you shall be burned).  Now those were the days when we knew how to treat heretics.  What happened?  How did we slide down the ladder from our exclusive perch in the heavenly heights of safeguarding the purity of the faith into the ecumenical boondoggle of inclusivity and relativism? 

I suspect the Pandora’s Box of decay and error was opened when Pope John XXIII addressed the world’s cabal of heretics and schismatics (AKA Protestants and Orthodox) as “separated brethren.”  Talk about putting lipstick on a pig, they’re nothing but rebels, murderers, and thieves.   They stole our cathedrals and ancient churches across Europe and the Near East, they cruelly martyred those who stuck to the old faith, they defaced sacred images and scattered the relic of the saints in the dirt of their streets.  Their leaders broke their vows of celibacy and let countless souls to the fires of hell and this Pope calls them “separated brethren?”  Enemies, not brothers, and it was they who chose separation.  And then that pernicious council of Vatican II speaks of “restoring unity.”  The only way back is unconditional surrender.  Truth does not compromise.  Error has no rights! 

But if that weren’t bad enough, the next Pope—even worse than John—Paul VI on December 16 (imagine, in Advent, barely a week before Christmas) 1975 fell on his knees and kissed the foot of the schismatic prelate Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon.  What was he thinking?  The Pope bows to no one save God alone.  He is the Vicar of Christ.  Would Christ bow to some schismatic bishop?  The same Pope had ten years earlier lifted the excommunication of the Greek claimant to the Patriarchate of Constantinople imposed over nine centuries before.  How do you undo almost a thousand years of excommunication?  Do the gates of hell open and let the prisoners out?  By what authority can a pope undo the divine judgment?  Divine Mercy only goes so far—once you are dead you have no more claim to it.  It’s too late to change your mind and say, like the Church Lady on the old Saturday Night Life, to God, “never mind.” Once God puts you in the devil’s frying pan you’re there to stay.  But what is even worse, this liberal Pope let the Greek claimant to the Patriarchal throne absolve him of the excommunication.  As if a schismatic had the authority to life an excommunication, much less impose one on a Pope.  I tell you, things were going to hell fast and have been ever since.  But it only get’s worse as time passes. 

It was John Paul II who really compromised the integrity of the papacy however.  He began by apologizing for Galileo.  Honestly, he should just have ignored that old canard—I mean over and done with centuries ago.  What is the point of bringing it up all over again.  And besides, maybe Galileo was right about the earth revolving around the sun, but he was defiant in the face of Church’s authority and refused to back down.  That alone should have been grounds for imprisonment by the Inquisition.  And it wasn’t that he was tortured or burned at the stake.  But that was only the beginning.  John Paul then went on to apologize for the Church’s involvement in the African salve trade.  Really?!?!?!  Like the Pope was selling slaves in Saint Peter’s square.  OK, so there were a few bad apples in the Catholic barrel—the Pope can’t apologize for every Catholic who has ever made a bad choice.  But then he went on to apologize for burning Protestant heretics at the stake and for the Religious Wars of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  I am sorry but we had an obligation to stop the spread of those pernicious heresies that were causing millions of souls to be lost.  I only think we should have gone at it harder.  In 1995 he apologized to women for the way the Church has treated them through the centuries.  What drugs was he on?  The Church has always been the protector of women.  And it just got worse and worse.  John Paul apologized for the Crusades, for the treatment of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance, for the behavior of European missionaries in China in the 19^th century, for the removal of Australian aboriginal children from their families to Church-run institutions in the late 19^th- and early 20^th centuries, for the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, and for the contempt shown towards the primitive “cultures” of the various savage peoples among whom the Church sent missionaries from the 16^th through the 20^th centuries.  I find this last one particularly hard to understand as we introduced these tribes to music and art and literature; we taught them to read and to write.  We gave them medicines and made scientific technology available to them.   We have been their salvation in the material as well as the spiritual realms.

And now Francis thinks we owe gay people an apology.  Will this madness never stop?  What is to be gained by apologizing when we weren’t wrong to begin with?  No, the Church should never admit to be wrong.  We have the Truth and we should uphold it in the face of all these modern heresies that are corrupting our world.  Truth admits for no compromise.   All that this apology stuff does is to open the door to dialogue and reconciliation.  And surely God doesn’t want that, does he?  Stand firm in the Truth and when you pray for your non-Catholic friends and relatives, remember the old prayer ab illo benedicaris in cuius honore cremaberis.

Never Too Old to Learn Some Lessons

It was the flowers that initially 

hooked me

I have to admit that I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  The last attention I had paid to the man he was still “Gaseous Cassius” and, not having an interest in boxing, when he converted to Islam I turned my back on all the braggadocio and invested my brain cells other where.  You couldn’t escape him entirely of course, not if you read the newspapers or watched Walter Cronkite, but he was only a name from those part of the headlines that came from worlds which I, for the most part, did not inhabit.  He was enough older than me that during the years he made his mark I still had grades and college admissions to preoccupy me.  And I was slow in coming to my more liberal views—Viet Nam in particular was not a quick conversion for me but a long agonizing interior search for a moral compass that transcended the glib and easy slogans being yelled by crowds outside my college dorm.  And more important yet, my life already was the Church.  It was the heady years immediately after Vatican II, and I was taken up with the Liturgy and Ecumenics and outreach to the poor.  So who gave a second thought to a come-lately Muslim of questionable sharia orthodoxy from Louisville Kentucky?  And that is pretty much where I had left it.  So what was the fuss about?

I had no intention of watching the memorial service but sometimes circumstances conspire to the unplanned.  I had been in hospital for a few days with an infection in my lower intestinal tract and was being discharged.  I was waiting for my ride home.  The television was on.  And to be honest I was captivated by the gorgeous arrangements of hydrangea, tulips, orchids, roses and fern.  I have always had a “thing” for flowers and was struck by the incredible garden that surrounded the speakers. 

The first of the speakers I heard was the Reverend Kevin Cosby, pastor of Saint Stephen’s Baptist Church in Louisville and President of Simmons College.  It was the best of African-American preaching—solid, biblical, and yet pulling on the heart-strings for personal conversion.  And, unlike other Christian speakers, he honored the commission to bring Jesus into the conversation, the Jesus of Matthew 25 who shuffles with the lame and the tired through the hardships of Louisville’s (or Chicago’s, or Los Angeles’ or Nairobi’s West End.  Every city has a West End and like the mythical “liturgical east” it isn’t limited to one point of the compass.)

The second speaker to snap me to attention was Rabbi Michael Lerner.  I wasn’t impressed by his mourning prayer—just a little too post-orthodox for me—but the talk was powerful and, like Reverend Cosby’s—was a call for the personal commitment and conversion of the listener.

I didn’t get to hear all the speakers.  My ride came and there was a stop at the drugstore to drop off prescriptions, but as soon as I was back in my suite of rooms, my television was snapped on. 

I loved Billy Crystal’s talk.  I expected more from President Clinton but he didn’t do badly. He was warm and personal towards Mrs. Ali and the family and I suppose a more low-key approach was fitting for the end of the service to usher us back to the everyday world and the promise of a tomorrow in which I –and  I hope others—would have a different perspective on our mission in the world.  I was somewhat embarrassed by the blandness of Monsignor Kriegel. I am not sure what to make of the Buddhist chant; it seemed incongruous.  The Quranic verses were certainly appropriate to the occasion.  And the flowers were magnificent. 

The entire event confirmed in me my conviction and commitment to the Second Vatican Council’s declaration found in Nostra Aetate  

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.

Secondly I learned that I need to pay more attention to those whom I often dismiss as being culturally, socially and historically marginal because I disagree with their foundational religious, intellectual, or cultural principles.  It is not my role to grade others—public figures or private individuals—for importance but rather to see the results they produce in their lives that effect change on either the global or the individual levels. 

Thirdly, I need to see that Islam—like the other religions, great and small of our world—produces people of wide vision, great tolerance, peace builders and reconcilers and not fall into the trap that only Christian trees bear good fruit.  While I have always defended those who faith follows different doctrines than mine, I do have a strong streak of Christian chauvinism that Friday’s service proved needs rethinking.  And I need to acknowledge that there are those for whom religious faith of any sort is not central to, or even part of, their lives but whose contribution to the betterment of our world far surpasses my own. 

And finally I think—I hope—that I have learned that the future requires people of any and all religious beliefs to work together in mutual respect with all people of good will in taking responsibility for making our world better. 

Pope Francis and Ecumenical Dialogue

Luther posting the 95
Theses on the Castle
Church Door 

Pope Francis continues to drive the Krazies to the brink of schism.  The current outrage is his apology for the atrocities committed by Catholics against Protestants during the Reformation and his decision to attend a public commemoration of the Reformation at the Lutheran Cathedral in Lund, Sweden, this autumn marking the beginning of the 5^th centennial of the Reformation. 

It is curious that the commemoration marking the beginning of the year long anticipation of Luther’s 1517 posting of the 95 Theses on Wittenberg Castle Church is being held in Sweden and not in Germany.  Presumably the conclusion of the centennial will be held next year in Wittenberg and it is easier for the Pope to go to an event held by the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden rather than the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in Germany as the Swedish Church has always maintained much more of its Catholic heritage than the other Lutheran Churches. 

Lund has been a diocese since 1060—originally suffrage to Hamburg—and a Metropolitan Archdiocese from 1104 until the Reformation.  During the Middle Ages it held the primacy of Scandinavia.  During the Reformation the Scandinavian Churches temporarily abolished the distinctions of Archbishop, reducing Lund to a diocese again.  It currently is a diocese suffragen to Uppsala.  The last Catholic Archbishop of Torben Bille who, before he could be consecrated, was arrested and imprisoned by Christian III of Denmark. 

This gets a little complicated here as there are several interlocking historical circles.  Lund at the time of Torben Bille was actually under Danish rule.  Christian’s father, Frederick I, had introduced Lutheranism into Denmark.  Christian’s accession to the throne was initially blocked by the Catholic bishops and nobles who were resisting the Reformation, but after the Count’s War King Christian prevailed in his efforts to make the Church of Denmark Lutheran.  As Lund was in his realm, he was not anxious for a Catholic bishop there and so replaced Bille with Frans Vormordsen.  It was over a century later, in 1658, that Lund was ceded to Sweden. 

As for the Church of Sweden being Lutheran, that is a parallel but separate story.  Sweden, Denmark, and Norway had been united under one crown by Margaret I of Denmark in the 1397 Union of Kalmar.  With the gradual rise of distinct national identities among the Scandinavian peoples in the fifteenth century this Union became more and more fragile.  In the early sixteenth century the Swedes established their independence under the leadership of Gustav Vasa, a truly great monarch.  The problem was that the Archbishop of Uppsala and primate of Sweden, Gustav Trolle, was still loyal to Christian II of Denmark.  The Danish parliament, the Riksdag, petitioned the pope to replace him with Johannes Magnus, a prelate  more to his own liking.  There were four other empty dioceses and Gustav proposed candidates to the pope for these dioceses as well.  The pope rejected Magnus and three of Gustav’s four candidates.  The King installed Magnus without the authorizing papal bull.  The irony is that Magnus turned out to be a loyal Catholic and Gustav was frustrated in his attempts to introduce Lutheranism to Sweden.  He finally sent Magnus to Russia on a diplomatic errand.  Meanwhile, Magnus’ brother went to Rome and explained to the Holy See the situation in Sweden and why Trolle could not be reinstated.  The Holy See ended up having Magnus consecrated as Archbishop of Uppsala but as Gustav Vasa was determined to introduce Lutheranism to his kingdom, the point was moot and Magnus was unable to return to his see and spent the remainder of his life in Rome. 

Why did Gustav Vasa want Sweden to be Lutheran?  Basically it was the same story as the motivation behind Henry VIII.  Both monarchs—as well as several other European Kings and princes—believed that the Church in their realms should be subject to the Crown and not to a foreign prince—the Pope.  This was the time of the rise of nation states and the various kings and princes saw the political power of the Church and were determine to harness it for their own purposes.  In countries such as France, and even more so Spain, where the papacy pretty much gave control over the Church to the Crown there was no problem.  But in Denmark and Sweden and England and Scotland and a variety of German principalities and dukedoms, the practicalities of politics trumped Christian faith.  Of course today too God often get’s the word and self-interest gets the deed. 

Today there is a strong backlash against ecumenism among the right-wing Catholics.  They ignore both the complexities of history and our contemporary world and want no dialogue—much less apologies—with those who differ from their own opinions and views.  They are quite like the wing-nuts that have taken over conservative politics in the United States: it is all or nothing, no dialogue and no compromise.  I will steer away from the political realm—though it interlocks with a certain distorted Christianity—but in the realm of Christianity we cannot afford not to sit down and dialogue with anyone who is willing to enter into sincere and honest dialogue.  The healing of the divisions in Christianity is of paramount importance in a world that on the one flank is confronted by jihadist Islam and on the flank by the rampant secularism of our post-modern world.   Jesus’ final request for us was ut unum sint: that all may be one.  This is not an option: it is a commandment.  We are a long way from being able to fulfill that mandate but it begins with dialogue. 

Pride and Prejudice

In my last post I mentioned that Pope Francis had received an ecumenical delegation from Finland that included bishops, priests, and the faithful from the Lutheran Church of Finland.  Reading the krazies’ blogs I see that after their meeting with the Holy Father the delegation went to Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica where they were all—including the Lutherans in the group—given Holy Communion.  To be fair to the Protestants in the party they had apparently approached the Lord’s Table seeking only a blessing but the concelebrating priests, with full knowledge that they are not Catholics, gave them the Eucharist.  Needless to say, the krazies are running in circles screaming about “sacrilegious communions.”  Talk about an over-reaction.  These people are totally mad.

Part of the problem—at least in the krazies’ minds (and I can see their point) is that Pope Francis himself hemmed and hawed when recently asked by a Lutheran woman if she could receive Holy Communion when attending Mass with her Catholic husband.  The Pope didn’t say that she could but he really didn’t clearly say that she couldn’t.  In fact he did what most priests do: he explained why she shouldn’t but left the question ultimately to her own decision.  The krazies didn’t like that.  They want selective obedience to be their sole prerogative—it’s how they maintain the illusion that everyone else is eating in the cafeteria.   

Of course Pope John Paul II had given Holy Communion to Tony Blair while he was still an Anglican when he attended the Pope’s Mass with his Catholic wife and children.  And at Pope John Paul’s funeral, then Cardinal Ratzinger gave Holy Communion to Brother Roger, the Protestant prior and founder of the ecumenical monastery of Taizé.  Moreover, several months later when Brother Roger was murdered by a krazy person, Pope Benedict sent Cardinal Kasper to celebrate a Mass of Christian Burial for Brother Roger and with the instructions that all—including Protestants—were to be given communion.  In fact, according to Canon Law, the local ordinary can—under certain circumstances—grant permission for a baptized non-Catholic Christian to receive Holy Communion in the Catholic Church.  Needless to say the Pope can also grant this permission, even outside his own diocese.  I happen to have a Protestant sister-in-law who has the permission of her local bishop to receive Holy Communion when she attends Mass with my brother (which she does weekly). 

There is nothing “sacrilegious” about a Protestant receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic Church.  It may be (and it may not be according to circumstances) illicit but it is not sacrilegious.  A person in grave (aka “mortal”) sin who receives the Eucharist makes a “sacrilegious communion” but not a non-Catholic acting in good faith.  In fact, reading Matthew 9:10-13, I would think that the Communions of these “Communion Police” who want to keep others from the Lord’s Table might very well be the sacrilegious communions. 

The fact of the matter is that each weekend at thousands of Catholic parishes across the world, non-Catholics receive Holy Communion.  In some places announcements are made that “only Catholics in the State of Grace…” but they are for the most part ignored.  (On the other hand, I remember attending Sunday Mass at Notre Dame in Paris some years back and the canon presiding at the Mass made the announcement that “all baptized Christians are welcome to receive Holy Communion.”  That certainly was beyond the canon law even in the liberal Paris of then Cardinal Archbishop Lustiger.) 

So in the end Pope Francis acted no differently than most priests.  And the priest(s) in the Basilica who gave Holy Communion to the Lutheran pilgrims should have respected their willingness to follow the canons but their communions were hardly sacrilegious.  And perhaps we need to pay attention to the fact that despite the rules and regulations, thousands of Christians are sharing together in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood across the lines that divide us. Indeed, perhaps the Unity of the Eucharistic Body of Christ will restore the unity of the ecclesial Body.