Per Christum

Catholics are often asked why they pray to saints.  The generic answer, which is adequate enough, is:  “Well, you ask your earthly friends and people you consider ‘strong Christians’ to pray for you.  We Catholics ask saints in heaven to pray for us because they are close to God.  Also, we’re not praying to “the dead,” because the saints in heaven aren’t dead.   They’re more alive than you and I.”

Okay.  That’s true.  But I believe that something Pope Benedict said, in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, really helps to expand this idea in a way that gives it more weight.  It certainly helped me a lot.  It just makes good plain sense.  He says:

The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them.

This statement comes near the end of a document where the Pope really gives us a practical explanation of what love really means, and how we are to exercise this virtue.  In a nutshell, it goes back to Jesus’ commandment that we are to love God and love our neighbor.  Christianity 101.  Simple, yes…but hardly easy.  So, it would follow, that when we read about holy people, the most striking thing about their lives is precisely the love they showed (or show) other people, right?  That, in short, is how we know they’re holy.  We can literally SEE their love for God.  We admire these people…Saint Francis, Mother Theresa, Corrie Ten Boom, etc….  All Christians who didn’t just talk the talk, but they walked the walk.

So far, so good.  Nothing controversial there.

Well, then a question comes up.  At some point, those Christians die and go to heaven.  Then what happens?   What do those faithful saints exactly “DO” in heaven?

Looking back to my pre-Catholic days, I guess if I was pressed to describe what was going on in heaven, I would present a picture of a sea of people worshipping God.  And by that, I would mean that they were just sort of staring at and bowing before him.  I never really stopped to consider any horizontal relationships.  And that’s not surprising.  This was the way I worshipped God in my non-denominational church.  I would close my eyes and do the “me and Jesus” thing.  You might be sitting next to me, but you were individually doing your own version of “me and Jesus.”  I guess in heaven, I would have said, it was just more intense, while still individualistic, because you could literally see Jesus “face to face.” 

In re-examining this belief, I find that it’s inconsistent.  Does someone who spent their life loving God by serving others just die and forget about everyone else and just stare at Jesus, leaving the rest of us in the dust?

No!  What sense does that make?  Their righteousness is perfect in heaven…the righteousness that they cultivated exactly by serving and loving others on earth.  NOW they serve and love others even MORE.  They’d have to.  They can’t help themselves.  To love God is to love others.  The mission hasn’t changed, because love doesn’t change.  Love reaches out…eternally.  The saints in heaven continue to love God and love others.  They pray.  They intercede.  It is what MADE them saints in the first place. 

Further, if we Christians believe we are the family of God, these people are LITERALLY our loving brothers and sisters.  They are not going to be content to rest until all members of their family make it to heaven.  They are a “cloud of witnesses” cheering us on, as Hebrews 12 tells us.   Jesus’ death and resurrection brought “victory o’er the grave.”  Heaven and earth are joined together ( most poignantly and literally in the sacrifice of the mass).   We are one big family.  Our older, wiser and holier brothers and sisters can help us out a lot.  And they do! 

You may be familiar with the television and radio ministry of evangelist Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron (aka “Mike Sever” from Growing Pains) called Way of the Master [warning: here there be loud audio , busy flash and dubious theology.] I usually refer to it as “Way of the Ambush” because it’s built around walking up to unsuspecting folks on the street and letting them know how sinful they are and, if they haven’t followed the “Roman’s Road”/Sinner’s Prayer version of conversion, that they are on their way to Hell.

Because there are a lot of Catholics (practicing and non) on this planet, they are often targets for this treatment…all the better if they are poorly catechized or lapsed.

One feature they have on their radio show is “Fish with Trish” where a lady named Trish Ramos goes around with a cellphone finding non-Christians or people who “think they’re good” who will agree to talk on the air with Ray, Kirk and/or radio host Todd Friel to find out how wrong and lost they are.

This time, I think Trish reeled in a fish that wouldn’t fit in their live-well: Fr. Jim McGhee.

Fr. Jim McGhee is a convert to the Catholic faith AND a Catholic priest at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Forth Worth, Texas. He was raised as a Methodist and was a Methodist minister for about seven years before becaming Episcopalian and serving as a priest in that communion for about 20 years. He entered full-communion with the Catholic Church in 1992. He’s also married (which amazed Trish and caused her to wonder out loud if it was “some sort of liberal thing.”)

Well, Fr. Jim can quote scripture as well as they can and he knows their language. He presents the Catholic faith in way that I think they could understand, even if it wasn’t in a way that they liked. Here’s an excerpt:

Comfort: But, if I’m a Roman Catholic, I’ve been sprinkled as a baby, I’m adult and I’m Catholic by name but I haven’t repented and my faith is not in Jesus am I going to heaven?

McGhee: No.

Comfort: So I’m going to Hell?

McGhee: Because you have to cooperate with the grace of God in knowing the faith, living in hope according to your will and learning how to love the good by presence of the Holy Spirit. There has to be a sanctification, a growing up in the Faith.

Download an mp3 of the Program here
(Fr. Jim’s segment starts at 37 mins and 56 seconds into the mp3*)

Anyway, I think Fr. Jim did a great job of presenting the Catholic faith and traditional, sacramental Christianity in a winsome way to a hostile audience that espouses a more novel version of the Christian faith. He really contrasts the nuances of the Apostolic Faith with the “fits on business card” presentation that seems to be par for the course at Way of the Master.

Trish also posted photos and her account of the encounter on her blog as well this video:

*Note: There are some other Catholic-related jewels earlier in the episode: a recording from a 60 Minutes interview with a Catholic former-hitman talking about confession and an incredibly shallow and ham-fisted review of the statement by Avery Cardinal Dulles about the universal scope of the plan of salvation that gets brought up in Fr. Jim’s segement. That’s why Todd Friel says “it’s not beat up on Catholics hour.” There’s also a clip from a sermon by Reformed Baptist pastor John Piper about making sure Christ is first in your life that I thought was well stated.

Ok, I grant that a number of non-Catholics go out of the way to call the holiday “Resurrection Sunday“  a few seem to have gravitated towards calling it “Pascha” like Eastern Christians do…  Some of them dislike the term “Easter” wrongly thinking it connotes paganism. (Taylor Marshall has the 411 on that with today’s entry Why is the festival of Christ’s Resurrection called Easter? - it is about as “pagan” to use the term “Easter” as it is “Thursday” or “January” or “Sunday“[!] for that matter!)

Read the rest of this entry »

From Whats wrong with the world?

Annotated bibliography of historical apologetics online is a fun page to look at. Largely Protestant, but very much worth the time and effort of a Catholic to look at some of these historic arguments that were generally geared towards post-Christian diests. Mrs. McGrew writes:

I’m pleased to announce that an annotated bibliography of apologetics works from the late 17th through the 19th centuries is now available here. It contains links to the works in question, available in the public domain.

It is entirely the work of my husband, Tim McGrew, in one of his areas of specialization. He has been working on it for some time before being satisfied that it’s ready to be made public. But he is very interested in making these works more widely available. The men who answered the Deists in their own time get far too little credit nowadays and deserve to be more widely known and read than they are.

Pastors, youth leaders, and professors who work with Christian young people could do far worse than to familiarize themselves with some of the apologetic work that was done in the past. Those who have an interest in apologetics should acquaint themselves with the pre-20th-century material so as not to reinvent the wheel.

Feel free to pass this link on to others who might find it useful.

Well OK, I will! There ya go.

“Soon I will be engaging in religious debates with my girlfriends pastor and I am looking for advice. He is an Evangelical Lutheran pastor. We are doing this so she would see a Catholic priest with me and talk about converting. So I am just looking for advice on what to talk about with the pastor.”

This is the post of a participant at Catholic Answers Forums. This is my advice:

“Ask if he will send you an email with the itinerary of his choosing so that you can prepare.Be polite, do not be rude or triumphal. If you don’t know an answer say “I will have to research that, let me write that down.” Don’t BS - that will only get you in trouble.

Thank him for his time when you arrive. Thank him again when you leave. Keep it cool.

Polite. Polite. Polite. Are the three rules to follow.”

Gentle readers, what do you think? What is your advice? Our Lutheran (yea, you LutherPunk!) and Methodist-Calvinist readership are certainly invited to weigh in.

From the venerable blog 3d Blog from the Sun the following has been offered:

Imprimatur for New Media
Catholic New Media?

The also very worthy blog Musings of a Pertinacius Papist has reprinted with permission Tom Bethell’s well crafted article “The New Technology is for Amatures” which appeared originally in the New Oxford Review.

The questions asked in all of the above largely have to do with what the role of new media is for Catholics, and how this transition is taking place.

Of course this interests me. To turn an old joke “Once I couldn’t spell ‘blogger’, now I are one!”

I found myself transitioning to a preference for new media on the basis that there is a certain economy and “checks and balances” system to the blogosphere.

An oft repeated warning of the ability of “Joe Blogger” to disseminate knowingly or unknowingly information of questionable veracity or outright untruth seems to ring hollow when it is examined how things “really work”.

To be sure, there is nothing to present the self-styled Patriarch of Akron, Ohio from creating a blog that espouses flat-earth-geo-centrism. In fact that sort of thing is out there. In fact it is also the case that no one pays much attention to it and when it DOES pop up on the radar, it will also appear in the cross-hairs of about 1000 other bloggers who will not suffer the indignity of being lied to or deceived. Articles presented on Per Christum have been picked up and discussed elsewhere by those who agree and disagree. We have done the same.

I have also found that when I do read print media, I don’t like to be far from the web! Given the linear limitations of the print media versus the exponential possibilities of new media, if I want more info on a subject matter, I can click on a hyperlink and explore it, rather than counting on “getting all I need to know” based on the judgment of the author, the editor, and space limitations.

You also run into the issue of certain news considered “too niche market” to receive column inches.

For example, days ago a bishop and 3 dozen clergy originally from the Assyrian Church of the East - which has been out of communion with the Apostolic See for 16 centuries - have made their intention clear - they seek full communion with the Catholic Church and to be united to the Chaldean Catholic counterpart.

It has been through the blogosphere, including the bishop’s own webpage http://www.marbawai.com - that much of this has been disseminated. Much to my chagrin, when googling for official news outlets to find news about this matter, it is only on the second page of returned “hits” at google does a news story appear that does NOT come from www.marbawai.com - lo and behold, it is our entry Assyrians Elect To Enter Into Full Commnunion w/ Catholic Church.

The utter failure of the mainstream media to pick this story up within almost two weeks of the vote has left me utterly befuddled. That being said, I am proud that between Per Christum & Serge’s entries over at A Conservative Blog for Peace (A conservative blog for peace) have a good deal of info thanks to the comboxes and the research we have done and had done for us. (Interestingly, in the comboxes, many representatives of this movement themselves have shown up to make their case.)

Maybe I wear my Eastern Christian bias on my sleeve butI have little faith or trust in most print media sources to get the matter right, anyway! 10 years ago, the respectable Catholic World Report in an article on Eastern Catholic churches mentioned “Spanish Eastern Catholics” apparently misunderstanding the Greek Catholics of “Galicia” to be from “Galiza” in Spain rather than the region “Галичина/Galicja” in central Europe divided between Ukraine and Poland. Would that it were the case Greek Catholics were from “Galiza” they would have avoided Soviet persecution, and have good flan recipes!

Understand those were the reliable, professional, well edited, fact checking print media types! But we don’t expect every print outlet to have experts from every field on the payroll and writing for them. On occasion, head correspondants of major media outlets even treat us to such fanciful and outlandish reports as the much bally-hooed (and very wrong) Churches back plan to unite under Pope.

Sometimes the “amatures” have to step up.

Blog on, Catholic bloggers!

Humanae Vitae and John 14:26
by John F. Kippley

and then

The sad, painful, and all too undiscussed truths of these offenses are simple - our way of life in America is growing increasingly dependent upon China, her goods, her services… And this holds sway over there.

Keep them in your prayers.

The following was sent to me by a friend. Read this article.

Thoughts?

Our venerable brethren over at Youth Reform tipped me off to this post great over at Dawn Patrol: Around the world with Planned Parenthood. Surf by and check it out.

This topic always reminds me of the P.J. O’Rourke’s humorus tome All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty his chapter on over population Just Enough of Me, Way Too Much of You is as true as it is funny.

The secularist obsession with “stemming the brown tide” seems to not be so much invited as foisted. Good reason for it, it makes good money!

Planned Parenthood in this nation recieves heavy tax-dollar subsidy AND turns a profit ($60M last year - not bad for a subsidized non-profit group! That is where I went wrong in my own business - I didn’t set up a non-profit!).

For all the tax money they get, they aren’t doing for free. I suppose if they are selling harvested fetal tissue, and industrious abortuary can make money on both ends. Cheap abortions are at least $350 most places… The younger you can get the patient for the first one, the more likely she will come back for 3-5 more by age 25… ($1750 for 5 abortions at the cheapest rate… Not bad for 25-60 minutes worth of work [total] for all 5!No one can say blood money is not abundant!)

Some allude to lower teen pregnancy rates where there is more birth control available. I would like to see the demographic studies of who is getting the abortions (how many teens?) and which teens are getting “less pregnant” when we pass out more condoms (or better still) chemically alter their bodies… Maybe if we subsidized contraception, abortion and still more sex education we could ease our way down to Swedish abortion levels (25%). (Not sure what age to begin, 11 is the average age of first internet exposure to porn, which is a $13B a year industry in the US, with 70% of 18-24 year old males consuming regularly… source)

When talk of more birth control and condoms come up, for some quirky reason I always have a mental image of Eva Perón on the balcony of the Casa Rosada gleefully tossing prohalactics to “her people.” I am not sure why, the image just works for me.

Catholics who speak up get accused of talking about sex too much. There seems to be, however, plenty to talk about. By the numbers of abortions and the money spent on porn, that seems a bit unfair to single us out. Then again there is a difference between doing and talking, isn’t there?

I hope I am not alone in recognizing this poorly recycled version of “white man’s burden.” It is a genteel way of saying “Those people are animals who can’t raise ‘productive’ children” A good dog owner spays & neuters! If the “dirty unwashed masses” could understand Planned Parenthood’s argument (they are probably too ignorant) I am sure they would be grateful. What a good massa’!

It is far easier (and sexier still!) to promote sterility over democracy, freedom and governmental transparency.

Blessed are the barren? Very prophetic.