Evangelical Catholicism--The Church's Great Potential IV

An evangelical Catholic is a Catholic who organizes his or her life on the principles of the Gospel.  Evangelical comes from the Greek Εὐαγγέλιον (Evangelion), meaning “Good News” and precisely “The Good News of a Victory.” The Gospel is the Good News of God’s Victory in Jesus Christ over the powers of sin and death. 

Unfortunately we Catholics tend to think of “the Gospel” as a text that is read to us at Mass from the gospels (note the plural) of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  We see these gospels as “containing” the Gospel, but in fact the Gospel cannot be “contained.”  There is, St Paul assures us, no chaining the Word of the Lord (2 Timothy 2:9).  The Gospel is a dynamic force, not a static “thing” that in some way has some finite boundaries.  Perhaps an image we can use to understand the relationship between the Gospel text and the Gospel is the ostensorium or monstance which  is used to hold the consecrated Host for Eucharistic adoration.  The monstrance can be said to contain the Host, but it certain does not contain Christ.  It does not even contain the Eucharistic Christ.  Christ cannot be contained.  The gospels might be said to “hold” the Gospel, but not to contain it for the Gospel, like the Eucharist, is the Presence of the Living Christ.  As that Presence is mediated through the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, so too is that Presence mediated through the sacred text but the text can no more be said to exhaust the Gospel than the Eucharist can be said to exhaust the Real Presence of Christ.     
Now, bear with me, as I am going someplace important.  It is just taking me some time to get there.  Foundations are built slowly and carefully. 
In our Catholic Tradition (note the capital “T”) as opposed to the understanding held by most of our Protestant brothers and sisters, the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) hold a unique priority over the other books of the Bible.  All scripture is inspired of God (2 Timothy 3:16), but the Gospels hold the Teachings of Jesus, the Word Incarnate.  Just as among the Jews of Jesus’ day—and the more Orthodox today—the Books of Moses (the Torah) take a priority over the other scriptural texts (Psalms, the Prophets, the historical books, etc.), so too for us Catholics, the Books of the New Moses, Jesus, take priority over the rest of the bible. 
Now, finally, to the point: At the very heart of the Gospel is Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven.  It is the centerpiece of Jesus’ Gospel, of his preaching.  Everything else draws around this central theme of the Kingdom. 
Unfortunately we Christians have grossly distorted the meaning of the Kingdom in our popular imagination.  Whereas Mark (the first gospel written) and Luke have Jesus speak of the Kingdom of God, Matthew modifies this to “The Kingdom of Heaven.”  Why?
Even today Orthodox Jews in their various publications and printings will write “G-d” for God, not wishing to weaken respect for the Deity by using the word.  And of course Jews, even the most reformed, will never, ever, print or speak the Divine Name (Y H W H).  It is all a matter of reverence.  Whereas Mark and Luke were writing primarily for gentile audiences, Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience and rather speak of the “Kingdom of God,” he employed the euphemism “The Kingdom of Heaven.” 
Why I think this has caused a certain misfortune is that it has in the popular imagination transferred Jesus’ message of the Kingdom to some after-life paradise when Jesus was, in fact, speaking of a here and now kingdom.   Jesus taught us to Pray:

Our Father

Who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done on earth
As it is in heaven.
Etc.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth…. 
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of people who, on this earth, place themselves at making real the Will of God. 
Yes, yes, I know the objection: my kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).  And that is precisely the point.  In John’s Gospel there are those who belong to “this world,” and those who live in obedience to God while in this life, not the next.  “The Kingdom of God is already in your midst.” (Luke 17:21) 
All this leads to the point that for an evangelical Catholic, the organizing focus of her or his life is making that Kingdom a reality in the here and now. 
Jesus makes it clear what that Kingdom is about.  The entire Gospel is the message of the Kingdom.  In the Kingdom the meek will blessed and inherit the earth; those who grieve will be comforted, those who seek holiness will have their fill.  In the Kingdom of God we will leave our gifts at the altar, go and be reconciled to any from whom we are estranged, and only then return and offer our gifts.  In the kingdom we will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, minister to the sick and imprisoned.  In the Kingdom we will pray saying: “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner,” rather than pointing out how right we are and how wrong everybody else is.  In the kingdom we will ask that the beam in our eye be removed so we can humbly help our brother remove the speck of dust in his.  In the kingdom we will pray to our Father in secret rather than make a show of our piety in public.  In the kingdom we will all wash feet—and wash the feet of all, not just the men.  In the kingdom we will be peacemakers and those who are not yet in the kingdom will be drawn to it because they will see that we are the children of God. 
If Christians only took Jesus seriously, what a different world this would be.  Evangelical Catholicism—a Catholicism rooted in the Word of God and expressing itself through a full sacramental life—is the only hope for this sin-sick and war-torn world.  But it is up to you and me to make it a reality by taking our faith seriously enough to be evangelical Catholics.       

Evangelical Catholicism--The Church's Great Potential I

John Paul II, his concept

of Solidarity could yet

make him great

I wrote yesterday about George Weigel’s book Evangelical Catholicism and said that while I disagree with how he unfolds his basic premise—some real set-backs when it comes to how he envisions Liturgy, Academia, Religious Life, Priestly Vocations, the role of the laity—in an “Evangelical Catholicism,” I am energized by his basic premise. 
Let me insert another quote from his book. 

The Leonine Revival that reached its fulfillment in John Paul II and Benedict XVI , heirs and authentic interpreters of the Second Vatican Council, is inviting the Catholic Church to Galilee, and then beyond Galilee.  The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life.  Every Catholic has received this invitation in Baptism, the invitation to accept the Great Commission, to act as evangelists and to measure the truth of Catholic life by the way in which Catholics give expression to the human decency and solidarity that flows from friendship with Christ the Lord. 

I am less positive about Popes John Paul and Benedict as the heirs and authentic interpreters of the Second Vatican Council.  Legitimate interpreters—absolutely, it is in their power to interpret the Council as they choose—but “authentic?”  I think not.  There was a new, and to the minds of many of us, somewhat suspect hermeneutic given the Council after 1980 or so, a hermeneutic that Pope Francis, thanks be to God, seems to be undoing.    More about that, perhaps, down the line.  And I should explain Weigel’s remarks about a “Leonine Revival.” Weigel claims—and quite rightly I think—that the papacy took a new direction towards the modern world under Leo XIII.  I think Leo is a greatly overlooked Pope, every bit in his day as revolutionary as John XXIII or Pope Francis in their respective periods.  I will try to do some entries on Leo to illustrate this point, but today, and in the next few entries, I want to look more deeply at this quote and its implications for what Weigel calls “Deep Reform in the 21^st century Church.”  Let’s look at this idea. 

The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life.

We are called to meet the Risen Christ in the Scriptures, the Sacraments and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of our Catholic life.  I think this speaks right to the heart of the renewal of Catholicism for the 21^st century.  My issue with Weigel is how he unpacks the implications of this brave statement.    

One of the areas that I think Weigel neglects in his book is the Catholic commitment to Social Justice.  There are reasons for this.  Social Justice was a major theme in the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI.  Weigel’s hero—and for whom he was the quasi-official biographer—John Paul II, shifted the meaning of social justice in his magisterial documents.  He didn’t do away with it by any means, but he did subordinate it to his own political agenda. 
John Paul II had a mission and it is a mission for which he will be remembered in history and that mission was to bring down Marxism as a political force holding a significant portion of the world in economic and dictatorial thralldom.  The collapse of Communism is undoubtedly the greatest (of several remarkable) accomplishment of his reign.  But it came at a price.  John Paul could not do it alone and he needed the support of the “Western Democracies”—most notably Britain and, even more, the United States to do it.  To forge this alliance John Paul became quite selective in his support of various movements for justice around the world.  In particular, he insisted that the Church not come into conflict with American foreign policy in Latin America.  From a political perspective this was not an unwise choice.  The Soviet Union and its satellite states presented a far greater and more immediate threat to human freedom than the second rate dictatorships in Argentina, Salvador, Brazil and other western countries.  First knock out the big guy, and then turn your energy on the banana dictators.  Unfortunately, however, it politicized the Church’s commitment to Human Rights in such a way as to leave the local Churches of Latin America out on a limb and provide the ambience in which Archbishop Romero, the four American Churchwomen, the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador and tens of thousands of lesser known victims were martyred.  It also gave a very strong opinion to American Catholics that the abuses of human rights in Latin America were a moral evil with which we, as a Church, could live. 
Of course it is still a treasonable offense in most quarters of American Society to question the integrity of the Reagan Presidency.  Let’s be honest, the policies—moral or immoral—worked for us and the American Ethic is not is something objectively right or wrong, but “does it work for me.”  And, for the greater part, the same people who have all but canonized Ronald Reagan have also idealized John Paul II.  This is not to say that John Paul was not a great Pope—he was—but, as is often the case with great people, there was a shadow side to him, and to his papacy, as well.   And part of that shadow side is that despite the rhetoric of Solicitudo Re Socialis and Laborem Exercens,  there was a definite shuffling of Social Justice to the bottom of the magisterial deck.  More recently many American voices from buffoons like Glen Beck to various pseudo-evangelicals have condemned “Social Justice” as a “codeword for Communism.” Some of the Katholic Krazies have been quick to climb on this bandwagon as well.  John Paul, and to some extent Pope Benedict, bear the responsibility for this de-prioritization of Social Justice in the Catholic world. 
Pope Francis has revived Social Justice as a fundamental building block of contemporary Catholicism and he has met with a lot of criticism for this from circles both inside the Church and from without.  But an Evangelical Catholicism, rooted, as Weigel insists in the scriptures, draws from both the Hebrew Prophets and the Christian Gospels the conviction that the Kingdom of God requires a reordering of the social and economic structures of contemporary society in such a way as to faithfully assure that each of God’s children has that share of this world’s goods that God wills for him or her.   This does not mean that each person is to have an equal amount.  Nor does it mean that one’s personal goods are to be taken from him or her to provide for another.  But it does mean that Christians, and Evangelical Catholics in particular, need to commit themselves to work for a reform of the social and economic structures that permit some to have obscene excess while others lack basic necessities.  Such gross inequality is contrary to God’s will and thus to the Kingdom of God.
Ironically for the way in which he compromised the Church’s commitment to this sort of distributive justice, John Paul provided the basic plan for it in his concept of “Solidarity.”  John Paul was clear in his critique of both Marxism and Free Market Capitalism that we must develop a culture in which we understand that we have a mutual accountability with every other person on this planet.  I am my brother’s keeper.  His needs must be my concern and my needs must be his.  Such needs are not limited to the economic or social but reach into the areas of spiritual welfare as well.  Such inter-dependency is not limited by borders or race or religion but extends to the entire human family.  In fact, if we every open our ears to listen to the word of Christ, John Paul’s greatest historical contribution may end up not being the fall of Marxism but the rise of a new mentality of Solidarity from which we can create this Utopian  dream of a world in which each of God’s children has the share of this world’s resources that our heavenly Father desires for her or for him.  Ooops, I forgot about Original sin.  Sorry, won’t work.  Jesus wasted an otherwise perfectly good Friday afternoon hanging on the Cross.    

We All Have Our Agenda: The Age of Kings Has Passed

The dignity of the Liturgy is

found in its simplicity

I have mentioned in a few entries that we are seeing the development of two distinct Catholic Churches here in our society.  (I don’t think it is a universal problem but it certainly is taking place in the United States and I suspect to a somewhat lesser extent in Great Britain, and to a lesser extent yet in Ireland, Canada, and Australia.  It also seems to manifest itself in France and perhaps in Germany.)  My last posting about how we see the Church in relationship to monarchism touches on this as the conflict between the “Vatican II Catholic Church” and the “pre-Vatican II Catholic Church” seems to revolve around the issue of monarchy, or at least a monarchial view of the world. 

I was struck several years ago by the doyenne of the Katholic Krazies, an author by the name of Solange “Nellie” Hertz, writing about how the American Republic is fundamentally incompatible with our Catholic faith because of its roots in freemasonry and the incongruity of republicanism with authentic Catholicism which is essentially monarchist.  Anyone who has ever known Mrs. Hertz knows that she is a whack-job of the first degree, a person who lives in a parallel universe where the reality coordinates are stuck in the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.  But her conviction that republican government is fundamentally flawed has won its disciples. A few years ago Michael Voris on his “Church Militant TV” (then “Real Catholic TV) advocated the idea that we need to replace our constitution with a Catholic monarchy in which what suffrage there would be would be limited to practicing Catholics.  

Now Voris is crazy, though not as crazy as Hertz, but there are others who pick up their cry.  One of the Katholic Krazy blogs, Eponymous Flower   (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com) declares itself:  “This is a polemical Catholic Royalist blog.”  When I first came across Eponymous Flower I thought that it was perhaps British or Australian, but over the time I have perused it is is clearly an American blog.  Why is an American a royalist?   I mean I can see it if you are British, or even Australian or Canadian.  But why would an American be “royalist?”  I thought all the Tories moved to Nova Scotia in 1784. 

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I am a sucker for Royal weddings and funerals.  I love watching the Horse Guards go prancing down the Mall, the carriages rolling along, the trumpets, the resonant tones of the Archbishop of Canterbury intoning Cranmer’s sonorous phrases. (Glad I checked that word—originally I had “somnolent phrases.”)  And nobody does band music like the Brits—solemn, stately; not the county fair sound of John Philip Sousa.  But I realize that at the end of the day, it is all a charade.  That old lady with the sparkly thing on her head has to waddle into the bathroom and sit herself down to do her business like the rest of us.  God bless her, I hope she as an easier time of it than most people her age—or mine—in the mornings.  But the Queen-thing isn’t real.  It never really was real, but the dear old thing can’t send a dinner invitation out without consulting with her Prime Minister.  It is all an illusion—the robes, the crown, “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the Queen;” the power lies elsewhere.  It had its day but there is nothing left to it but the theatre.  And the faith in God that Jesus has entrusted to us is real, is more real than anything in existence.  And while good liturgy has elements of theatre, it has to be real and can’t be pretend. 

When I see Bishop Dewane or Bishop Olmstead or Bishop Slattery getting all gussied up in their antique finery or see the “canons” of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest hosting some prelate engulfed in fur and dragging nine yards of red silk behind him, I can’t help but think that unintentionally a mockery is being made of the most sacred thing in the world.  The ultimate Reality is being reduced to farce, to grown men involved in some archaic ceremony that has lost its roots in an irrecoverable culture that once gave it its meaning.  It exists now for itself, without reference to the Mystery of which it once spoke.  What is left is artificial: a suspension of the world in which we live in favor of the imaginary world of some idealized past when kings sat on thrones and their subjects scraped and bowed without raising their eyes to look their Master in his face.  That world is an escape from the complexities of the world in which we live: a world of ambiguities and struggles; a world where roles are changing; a world where people are suffering and dying from the effects of war and famine and disease; but also a world where there is hope for a very different social order where God’s children will be able to reach the dreams and destinies that their heavenly Father has hoped for them.  This is the world where God is truly King: where Christians consecrate themselves to make certain that to the fullness of their abilities aided by Grace that each of God’s children can have the share of this world’s goods that our Father in heaven wants them to have.  And we need a liturgy that celebrates that promise—the true Kingdom—rather than parody the ceremonials of some earthly court.  It was fine in its day, but that day is over. 

Such a liturgy manifests the diversity of gifts within the entire Body of Christ.  It is not centered on the priest but the priest stands in the place of Christ at the heart of the community.  Such a liturgy invites people to a “full, active, and conscious” participation in the liturgy because they are called to a full, active, and conscious participation in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God—again, that Kingdom in which each of God’s children will be given the fulfillment that his or her Heavenly Father has created them for. 

  I’m sorry, but the old rite is the glorification of the priest.  O sure, apart from the sermon, he doesn’t get to do the insufferable monologue that some priests do at various points of the Mass but in the old rite the whole ritual is designed to focus on him as he whispers “the magic words” that only he can say and for which we depend on him to be our mediator and intercessor.  He and he alone represents Christ, stripping the other members of the Body of their baptismal identity.   He has his little tri-cornered hat with a pom-pom and his lace petticoat beneath the gorgeously brocaded gown and the spotlight never leaves him.  Give me the naked Christ.  Let me see Christ in the least of his sisters and brothers.  Let me see him in the lonely, in the frightened, in the helpless and the hopeless.  And let me see a priest who recognizes Christ not in the splendidly robed caricature of a man but in the least of the brothers and sisters. 

I must say that I am spoiled as over the years I have generally been able to attend the conventual Mass of a monastic community where I have seen the Novus Ordo done in a magnificent simplicity. The church is severely plain with no distraction but great beauty in the arrangement of space and light with a great sense of proportion.  The vesture is simple and masculine.  The music, for the most part contemporary and in English or Spanish, is deeply throated and rich.  There is no sense of fuss or hurry and while every rubric is followed, it is done so with an economy and a sense of grace.  The liturgy is an experience that is both deeply contemplative and communal.  And I am well aware that few parishes achieve this type of liturgical prayer—but it is within their reach.  And it avoids the buffoonery of baroque revival in a world that has moved beyond royal courts of a vanished monarchial Europe. 

Cardinal Dulles wrote that the first thousand years of the papacy were a time of evangelization; the second were a time of power; the third millennium will be a time of service.  I think what he wrote pertains not to the papacy alone but to the entire Church.  I think we are reawakening to the mission which Christ has entrusted to his Church.  The triumphalism of monarchy does not speak to that mission, and we need a liturgy that does.  We need to be a servant Church and we need a liturgy that reflects our mission to be servants, not masters.  That is the Church I believe is the Church of Jesus Christ.  

Atheist Popes and Closet Believers

Have you heard of the dyslexic
pope who believes in Dog?

Bill Maher says that he thinks Pope Francis is an atheist but from his description of atheist, I suspect that Bill Maher is no more an atheist than the pope.  This raises an intriguing question—not whether either the Pope or the comedian is an atheist, but what do people mean by “atheist.”   I have always held to a pretty strict definition of the term.  An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity—God or any god.  But Mr. Maher points to the Holy Father’s recent statement about salvation for those outside the Church—and even for those who profess to be non-believers.  Maher’s quote, as best as I can retrieve it, is “‘Pope Frank’ said the Lord has redeemed all of us, not just Catholics, even the atheists. And I was like, I’m going to book my flight to heaven right now. “  The question is does Mr. Maher not believe in a Supreme Being or does he not believe in organized religion?  Not believing in organized religion is not sufficient grounds for declaring oneself an atheist.   Many of us are Christians, even Catholics, in spite of the organizational dimension of “the Church,” not because of it.  Note, I say the organizational dimension of the Church, not “the Church.”  I love belonging to a community of people centered around the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That energizes me and give me some vision for life.  That community to which I belong—and which I find has the most energizing power—happens  to be Catholic.  On the other hand, I am not particularly enamored of belonging to this overly pompous institution fascinated far more by human traditions than by the Evangelical Tradition which draws me and which has been handed down from Christ through his apostles.  Speaking as a historian and not in a theological context, there is a world of difference between “the Church of Jesus Christ” and the institutional bureaucracy that is today’s “face” of Catholicism.  Such things as the College of Cardinals, the Code of Canon Law, the Tridentine Rite, communion on the tongue, galeros and miters, the Knights of Columbus, monsignors, communion rails, canon 915, Bishop Frank Dwayne, male-only altar servers, religious habits,  and birettas are not part of the Jesus-patrimony.  That is not to say that some of them aren’t good things, or even that I don’t like some of those things—but it is not what our faith is about.  Reconciliation, forgiveness of sins, inclusiveness, dignity of each individual, the Kingdom of God, justice, community, service, mercy, almsgiving, change of heart, and prayer are “what we have received from the Lord and handed on to you….”  Many of these things in the patrimony from Christ are somewhat ambiguous and call for our response without giving us concrete norms and that is difficult for people who find great comfort in rules, regulations, and canon laws but the Gospel is the Gospel. 
Frankly, and again as a historian not a theologian, I find that I am called not to believe in the Church (whether as an institution or as a community) but to believe in the Gospel and I see the Church as the community with the mission of spreading that Gospel.  The Church is not worthy my faith.  As a human institution (even if it has foundations in a “divine origin”—i.e. it was founded by Jesus) the Church has proved itself over and over again as unworthy of our faith.  But we as Church have a glorious mission of animating our human family with the message of God’s Kingdom, “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Now that is something I can believe in.  Apparently so does ‘Pope Frank.’  And seemingly so also may Mr. Maher, though he certainly doesn’t see the Catholic Church as an agent in transforming the world and he probably doesn’t see  how these dreams of a “better world” find their greatest potential in the teachings of Jesus.  And without putting words into the papal mouth, I think that what the Holy Father was trying to say is that all who embrace God’s Kingdom will find a place welcome for them in it.  No, Pope Francis is no more an atheist than Mr. Maher is a Christian, but I am not sure he is the atheist he wants to be either.