By Brian Singer-Towns and others, 474 pages, $18.95, St. Anthony's Messenger Books.
The authors attempt the near-impossible, and offer an introduction to the Catholic Church in one short book. With informative side-bar boxes giving details of important personages, or of various Catholic practices, the book succeeds in showing the depth of the faith.
The Introduction section reminds readers of the essential connection between faith and reason, as well as between the Bible and tradition, as proclaimed by the magisterium. From this Introduction onwards, the authors clarify a lot of Catholic vocabulary, including infallibility, revelation, stewardship, and salvation history.
Whereas the Catholic Church can appear to be an imposing edifice of hierarchy, ritual, and philosophy, this book shows a simple way of living the Catholic faith. Its recipe for reading the Bible is "The PRIMA Process: Pray, Read, Imagine, Meditate, Apply."
The book spends several chapters explaining the meaning of the Creed to faithful living. It keeps to the simple, straightforward approach with an easy-to-understand discussion on the Trinity, including the idea, "God is not solitary," and therefore, "We are made for community" since we are made in God's image.
The truth of the incarnation is revolutionary, even if we forget that sometimes: "When Jesus Christ took on human nature, he was able to reveal his Father to us in the way that only a child can speak about a parent." These words also point to the mysterious nature of redemption and the trinity, since we can't ever fully understand the full nature of Jesus and therefore of his Father.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Bad Christians, Good Muslims
By Brian Welter
Social justice Christians, like the kind I studied with and under in the United Church of Canada, are utilitarian in their approach to God. They use God for their political adventurism and in telling their sentimental, often anti-male, feminist stories. Only the most obnoxious of human beings would do this to God.
In contrast, an article at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7127223.ece discusses a Sufi order's intimacy with each other and with God. The members chant the Koranic names of God throughout the evening, addressing each other as Brother.
"The chanting ended. I was given fruit juice, dates and baklava, and introduced to several members of the group, who extended the eastern courtesy of touching their hearts as they shook my hand. I may have been feeling light-headed, but the room seemed to be charged with celebration and a strong sense of brotherhood - as if we were a sports team that had just won an important fixture.
When it came time to leave, one of my brothers called out: “Have a good evening!”
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning."
Raised a Catholic, I spent over 3 years in the United Church, studying theology and engaged in ministry, and never once felt a sense of brotherhood. The femini-nazis psychologically assaulted men, with the silent approbation of the hippy male professors. This reflects the fact that the failure of modern Christianity is an internal failure, as Pope Benedict alludes to in saying that the Church has brought the evils of pedophilia on itself. Don't blame the media, in other words.
Ironically, the liberal denominations, like the United Church of Canada, are the ones suffering the worst loss of adherents and voice in society, desperate though they are to conform to the values of the mainstream. The lack of brotherhood (or sisterhood, despite all the feminist propaganda) is total. Rejection of the creeds, community, and masculine leadership has led to the downfall of Christianity.
Evangelical Christians, and Protestants in general, practice gimmickry more than anything. Protestant spirituality = gimmickry and fadishness. Protestants are always coming up with new, improved religion, whether it's the Emerging Church, the Deep Church, Neo-Monasticism, or some dramatic announcement by a famous pastor. I simply can't keep up with the factory of theological trends. The evangelicals are as gimmicky and trendy as the social justice Christians.
The Islamic brotherhood and sense of stability contrasts sharply with this. The true "menace" of Islam is that it is drawing people away from secularism and these goofy churches because of its integrity and community, its sense of service to others, and its allowance for patriarchy and masculinity. These last two are in sharp contrast with my experience with liberal Protestantism, where men are treated like H1N1.
Christianity, with such writers as Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and the screeching feminist chorus, has become a therapeutic religion. Christians no longer categorize good and evil in absolute theological terms, as they should, but in terms of feelings. Don't call bad bad, just find the underlying causes, especially the social causes. Find someone, or something, to blame. No one, especially non straight white males, is responsible for their actions anymore. Just tell your story, get a little emotional, and boldly declare that you are getting on with the new version of you.
Islam, because of its reverence for the Koran, would never humiliate or lower itself to therapeutic religion. Bad is bad and good is good. The hierarchy, the patriarchy, remain. They remain because they are good. For Christianity to escape its downfall, it must embrace patriarchy and masculinity. It must refashion a Christian knighthood. Forget all the hippy theologians, and just get on with it, without the gimmickry, and without trying to please women. You'll never please them so forget about them. Perhaps the best church would be an all-male church!
Christians could learn a lot from Muslims. First, separate the men from the women during church services and for everything concerning religion. Don't just have a "men's group" and a "ladies group." Make it a practice to separate the men from the women at Church. That would reduce a lot of the feminization at church. When people complain about "churchiness," what they're really complaining about is feminization of church life.
Put men back in firm control of every aspect of church life.
Religion should make men more masculine and women more feminine. Christianity has failed to do this, turning women into coarse she-men, and the few men who still bother going to church into sissies or clod-footed Mr. Beans too shy and inept to order a coffee at Starbucks. Christianity has made men useless.
Islam is the answer if Christianity is not willing to remasculate men. Christians should be ashamed of their treatment of men. They deserve the secular, anti-Christian society in which they live. They helped build it, after all. Think about abortion: 50% of Canada's population is supposedly Catholic, and the other half is largely Protestant. So why is abortion even a consideration, an issue. Christians from 2000 years ago have staunchly opposed abortion. If Canada were ever 50% Muslim, would there be abortion?
Promote the Fatherhood of God. Remind people that God is not a utilitarian thing to use for their projects. Nor is God to be used for people's personal development. God is not the psychoanalyst. People should go to the psychoanalyst for therapy. God is about the things of God. People should remember how the ancient Israelites feared God. While the original Hebrew meaning might not be the same as how we take the word "fear," there was at that time no doubt a deeper awe, reverence, and respect for God than Christians and secularists have now.
Muslim men chanting the name of God all evening is a pure way to relate to God, because nothing is being asked. God is not being used. Men are together, building brotherhood, and therefore community (which can only be built through brotherhood - hence the dire need nowadays for patriarchy, masculinity, and fatherhood).
Islam now is superior to Christianity because male-bashing is not allowed. Christian male-bashing is often subtle, as when a Christian magazine hypes up the adventures and successes of women while the same publication is silent about men, especially white straight men. This is a very common practice in the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church, etc. If you want to lose male church members, and eventually die out as a denomination, do it the United Church way: Dramatically highlight the greatness of women, repeatedly, and remain silent about men and their achievements. Then deny that you are biased.
Men deserve more, and if we must join Islam to find it, then let's do it. This is such a sad thing to happen to Christian tradition.
Social justice Christians, like the kind I studied with and under in the United Church of Canada, are utilitarian in their approach to God. They use God for their political adventurism and in telling their sentimental, often anti-male, feminist stories. Only the most obnoxious of human beings would do this to God.
In contrast, an article at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7127223.ece discusses a Sufi order's intimacy with each other and with God. The members chant the Koranic names of God throughout the evening, addressing each other as Brother.
"The chanting ended. I was given fruit juice, dates and baklava, and introduced to several members of the group, who extended the eastern courtesy of touching their hearts as they shook my hand. I may have been feeling light-headed, but the room seemed to be charged with celebration and a strong sense of brotherhood - as if we were a sports team that had just won an important fixture.
When it came time to leave, one of my brothers called out: “Have a good evening!”
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning."
Raised a Catholic, I spent over 3 years in the United Church, studying theology and engaged in ministry, and never once felt a sense of brotherhood. The femini-nazis psychologically assaulted men, with the silent approbation of the hippy male professors. This reflects the fact that the failure of modern Christianity is an internal failure, as Pope Benedict alludes to in saying that the Church has brought the evils of pedophilia on itself. Don't blame the media, in other words.
Ironically, the liberal denominations, like the United Church of Canada, are the ones suffering the worst loss of adherents and voice in society, desperate though they are to conform to the values of the mainstream. The lack of brotherhood (or sisterhood, despite all the feminist propaganda) is total. Rejection of the creeds, community, and masculine leadership has led to the downfall of Christianity.
Evangelical Christians, and Protestants in general, practice gimmickry more than anything. Protestant spirituality = gimmickry and fadishness. Protestants are always coming up with new, improved religion, whether it's the Emerging Church, the Deep Church, Neo-Monasticism, or some dramatic announcement by a famous pastor. I simply can't keep up with the factory of theological trends. The evangelicals are as gimmicky and trendy as the social justice Christians.
The Islamic brotherhood and sense of stability contrasts sharply with this. The true "menace" of Islam is that it is drawing people away from secularism and these goofy churches because of its integrity and community, its sense of service to others, and its allowance for patriarchy and masculinity. These last two are in sharp contrast with my experience with liberal Protestantism, where men are treated like H1N1.
Christianity, with such writers as Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and the screeching feminist chorus, has become a therapeutic religion. Christians no longer categorize good and evil in absolute theological terms, as they should, but in terms of feelings. Don't call bad bad, just find the underlying causes, especially the social causes. Find someone, or something, to blame. No one, especially non straight white males, is responsible for their actions anymore. Just tell your story, get a little emotional, and boldly declare that you are getting on with the new version of you.
Islam, because of its reverence for the Koran, would never humiliate or lower itself to therapeutic religion. Bad is bad and good is good. The hierarchy, the patriarchy, remain. They remain because they are good. For Christianity to escape its downfall, it must embrace patriarchy and masculinity. It must refashion a Christian knighthood. Forget all the hippy theologians, and just get on with it, without the gimmickry, and without trying to please women. You'll never please them so forget about them. Perhaps the best church would be an all-male church!
Christians could learn a lot from Muslims. First, separate the men from the women during church services and for everything concerning religion. Don't just have a "men's group" and a "ladies group." Make it a practice to separate the men from the women at Church. That would reduce a lot of the feminization at church. When people complain about "churchiness," what they're really complaining about is feminization of church life.
Put men back in firm control of every aspect of church life.
Religion should make men more masculine and women more feminine. Christianity has failed to do this, turning women into coarse she-men, and the few men who still bother going to church into sissies or clod-footed Mr. Beans too shy and inept to order a coffee at Starbucks. Christianity has made men useless.
Islam is the answer if Christianity is not willing to remasculate men. Christians should be ashamed of their treatment of men. They deserve the secular, anti-Christian society in which they live. They helped build it, after all. Think about abortion: 50% of Canada's population is supposedly Catholic, and the other half is largely Protestant. So why is abortion even a consideration, an issue. Christians from 2000 years ago have staunchly opposed abortion. If Canada were ever 50% Muslim, would there be abortion?
Promote the Fatherhood of God. Remind people that God is not a utilitarian thing to use for their projects. Nor is God to be used for people's personal development. God is not the psychoanalyst. People should go to the psychoanalyst for therapy. God is about the things of God. People should remember how the ancient Israelites feared God. While the original Hebrew meaning might not be the same as how we take the word "fear," there was at that time no doubt a deeper awe, reverence, and respect for God than Christians and secularists have now.
Muslim men chanting the name of God all evening is a pure way to relate to God, because nothing is being asked. God is not being used. Men are together, building brotherhood, and therefore community (which can only be built through brotherhood - hence the dire need nowadays for patriarchy, masculinity, and fatherhood).
Islam now is superior to Christianity because male-bashing is not allowed. Christian male-bashing is often subtle, as when a Christian magazine hypes up the adventures and successes of women while the same publication is silent about men, especially white straight men. This is a very common practice in the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church, etc. If you want to lose male church members, and eventually die out as a denomination, do it the United Church way: Dramatically highlight the greatness of women, repeatedly, and remain silent about men and their achievements. Then deny that you are biased.
Men deserve more, and if we must join Islam to find it, then let's do it. This is such a sad thing to happen to Christian tradition.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Catholics and Slavery: A Compromising History
By John Perry, 204 pages, Novalis.
"Like a mutating virus that continues to threaten the health of the human community, the slave trade has taken on new forms. The reality of life as a slave, or as the offspring of a slave, continues to be cruel."
The author's above words form the core around which he weaves the inconsistent Catholic reaction to slavery. This reaction has been complicated by the Greek New Testament, which doesn't seem to explicitly condemn slavery outright, probably the author muses, because the early Church and therefore the New Testament writers expected the world to end imminently. They didn't fight a social justice fight because the return of Christ would right everything in the cruel, unjust world.
Yet while Saint Paul and other early Christians failed to question the institution and existence of slavery, they did demand from Christian slave owners that they respect their slaves and "ease the actual conditions of slaves and to establish the relationship between slave and owner on the basis of charity and acceptance of legitimate authority and the human condition as it existed at that time."
The idea that slavery is always objectively evil came to the Church only slowly. Aristotle, on whom the Church depended for much of its philosophical thinking from Aquinas onwards, and biblical writings such as Genesis 9 muddled the issue for centuries.
Catholic thinkers focused more on the charitable treatment of slaves rather than on the outright abolition of its various forms, including medieval serfdom, when aristocrats didn't own the serf as a person, but owned the serf's labor.
Perry examines a few cases of slavery so as to show the ruinous human side of it. The sugar cane estates of the Dominican Republic, he claims, use Haitian slave labor. Even when Haitians have been working in brutal conditions for several generations, they are usually not eligible for citizenship or other forms of legal recognition.
Catholic religious orders and establishments attempt to minister to old Haitian sugar cane workers in need of health and dental care, old age pensions, and housing. It also helps some of these workers get legal recognition from the Dominican authorities. With the need so dire, these charities represent only a drop in the ocean.
Because Perry's definition of slavery is so expansive, he risks sounding like he has an anti-Catholic agenda. Though he highlights the efforts of certain religious who opposed the grievous treatment of slaves in South America, he also accuses the Church itself of practicing a kind of slavery, including modern slavery, through its various orders.
It turns to sensationalist cases for this, including the case of women from India being sent to Europe to train to be nuns by unscrupulous church officials who pocket big margins from their recruitment and training fees. A deeper examination of contemporary and historical sexual slavery and human trafficking (which are both covered) could have replaced this sensationalism.
"Like a mutating virus that continues to threaten the health of the human community, the slave trade has taken on new forms. The reality of life as a slave, or as the offspring of a slave, continues to be cruel."
The author's above words form the core around which he weaves the inconsistent Catholic reaction to slavery. This reaction has been complicated by the Greek New Testament, which doesn't seem to explicitly condemn slavery outright, probably the author muses, because the early Church and therefore the New Testament writers expected the world to end imminently. They didn't fight a social justice fight because the return of Christ would right everything in the cruel, unjust world.
Yet while Saint Paul and other early Christians failed to question the institution and existence of slavery, they did demand from Christian slave owners that they respect their slaves and "ease the actual conditions of slaves and to establish the relationship between slave and owner on the basis of charity and acceptance of legitimate authority and the human condition as it existed at that time."
The idea that slavery is always objectively evil came to the Church only slowly. Aristotle, on whom the Church depended for much of its philosophical thinking from Aquinas onwards, and biblical writings such as Genesis 9 muddled the issue for centuries.
Catholic thinkers focused more on the charitable treatment of slaves rather than on the outright abolition of its various forms, including medieval serfdom, when aristocrats didn't own the serf as a person, but owned the serf's labor.
Perry examines a few cases of slavery so as to show the ruinous human side of it. The sugar cane estates of the Dominican Republic, he claims, use Haitian slave labor. Even when Haitians have been working in brutal conditions for several generations, they are usually not eligible for citizenship or other forms of legal recognition.
Catholic religious orders and establishments attempt to minister to old Haitian sugar cane workers in need of health and dental care, old age pensions, and housing. It also helps some of these workers get legal recognition from the Dominican authorities. With the need so dire, these charities represent only a drop in the ocean.
Because Perry's definition of slavery is so expansive, he risks sounding like he has an anti-Catholic agenda. Though he highlights the efforts of certain religious who opposed the grievous treatment of slaves in South America, he also accuses the Church itself of practicing a kind of slavery, including modern slavery, through its various orders.
It turns to sensationalist cases for this, including the case of women from India being sent to Europe to train to be nuns by unscrupulous church officials who pocket big margins from their recruitment and training fees. A deeper examination of contemporary and historical sexual slavery and human trafficking (which are both covered) could have replaced this sensationalism.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing
By Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, 165 pages, Intervarsity Press.
An African Catholic theologian and an American Protestant pastor team up to reflect on reconciliation in the world using Christian principles. They reject the use of "experts" solving problems, preferring something deeper than the latest technique of peace-making.
In fact, this book is a loud "No!" to the technique-mentality, which claims that specially-trained people can swoop into a troubled situation and somehow clean up the mess for the local people. Katongole and Rice claim that true reconciliation starts with the locals, and keep such trained people at a distance. The problem with experts is that they don't know the local human and geographical terrain, and don't necessarily need to change their hearts.
When dealing with the massacre in Rwanda, killings in Durham, South Carolina, or racial tension everywhere, changed hearts rather than new policies or training workshops are needed. This is the long, slow process whereby local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mothers cook together to feed children in Palestine, or where Hutus and Tutsis work as one to rebuild schools and churches, drinking banana beer out of the same cup in the sweltering heat. This is where members of multiracial churches in the American south work together on everyday church life.
Reconciling All Things rejects heroism, the big play that will magically resolve all tensions and heal all hurts. Loud revolution is not possible, and often, in fact, leads to more violence. When humans try to take peace-making into their own hands, violence and disaster happen, Rice and Katongole remind us again and again.
True Christian peacemakers realize that they don't own a map of reconciliation. They don't know where their work is leading. They are like Noah, building an ark even though it's not raining; or like Abraham, who left his country for an unknown land; or like Moses, who left his comfortable life to challenge the pharaoh on behalf of the Israelite slaves. These men heard a call – one that confused and disoriented them – but they followed nevertheless. Rice and Katongole call us to have the same faith as we embark on a long journey with no visible end.
The authors note that we embark on such a journey because of our restlessness for the way that things are: "even in a deeply divided world, even in the most deeply divided relationship, the way things are is not the way things have to be," they write, adding that God is central to this: "An emphasis on right relationship with God is crucial to a Christian vision of reconciliation."
The authors mince no words in rejecting the Christian peacemakers who, becoming ever more zealous, get so wrapped up in opposing and resisting things that they forget about God. They become bitter, angry, and burnt out. In contrast, Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier have offered the world laughter, smiles, and celebration because they always returned to their spiritual foundation, which they built on a strong theological foundation.
If we can rely on God, we can face the terrible injustices of the world rather than trying to bring about superficial reconciliation that is impatient with pain and suffering.
An African Catholic theologian and an American Protestant pastor team up to reflect on reconciliation in the world using Christian principles. They reject the use of "experts" solving problems, preferring something deeper than the latest technique of peace-making.
In fact, this book is a loud "No!" to the technique-mentality, which claims that specially-trained people can swoop into a troubled situation and somehow clean up the mess for the local people. Katongole and Rice claim that true reconciliation starts with the locals, and keep such trained people at a distance. The problem with experts is that they don't know the local human and geographical terrain, and don't necessarily need to change their hearts.
When dealing with the massacre in Rwanda, killings in Durham, South Carolina, or racial tension everywhere, changed hearts rather than new policies or training workshops are needed. This is the long, slow process whereby local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mothers cook together to feed children in Palestine, or where Hutus and Tutsis work as one to rebuild schools and churches, drinking banana beer out of the same cup in the sweltering heat. This is where members of multiracial churches in the American south work together on everyday church life.
Reconciling All Things rejects heroism, the big play that will magically resolve all tensions and heal all hurts. Loud revolution is not possible, and often, in fact, leads to more violence. When humans try to take peace-making into their own hands, violence and disaster happen, Rice and Katongole remind us again and again.
True Christian peacemakers realize that they don't own a map of reconciliation. They don't know where their work is leading. They are like Noah, building an ark even though it's not raining; or like Abraham, who left his country for an unknown land; or like Moses, who left his comfortable life to challenge the pharaoh on behalf of the Israelite slaves. These men heard a call – one that confused and disoriented them – but they followed nevertheless. Rice and Katongole call us to have the same faith as we embark on a long journey with no visible end.
The authors note that we embark on such a journey because of our restlessness for the way that things are: "even in a deeply divided world, even in the most deeply divided relationship, the way things are is not the way things have to be," they write, adding that God is central to this: "An emphasis on right relationship with God is crucial to a Christian vision of reconciliation."
The authors mince no words in rejecting the Christian peacemakers who, becoming ever more zealous, get so wrapped up in opposing and resisting things that they forget about God. They become bitter, angry, and burnt out. In contrast, Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier have offered the world laughter, smiles, and celebration because they always returned to their spiritual foundation, which they built on a strong theological foundation.
If we can rely on God, we can face the terrible injustices of the world rather than trying to bring about superficial reconciliation that is impatient with pain and suffering.
Friday, May 14, 2010
A Priest Forever: Nine Signs of Renewal and Hope
By Alfred McBride, 117 pages, SAMPBooks.
McBride's simple, straightforward book aims to show the beauty of the Eucharist, Reconciliation, celibacy, Marian devotion, and chaste human sexuality that form the bedrock of the Catholic priesthood.
The humble power of the priesthood comes from the work of Christ. A priest has a special relationship with the Lord, as reflected in the Last Supper, which Jesus spent with his first priests. McBride notes, Jesus "called them his friends, he shared his divine life with them and shared with them the first truths of revelation of the new covenant."
A priest's identity and calling come from this close relationship with Jesus. Rather than deprivation, celibacy is about love: loving Jesus above all with an "undivided heart," which the priest also offers his parishioners.
The important chapter on chastity helps remove the usual misunderstandings that Catholics and non-Catholics often have regarding this calling. Celibacy, McBride notes from the Catholic Catechism, "means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being."
This leads to an important discussion on the contrast this presents with the secular, sex-saturated world. McBride notes how interesting it is that our permissive culture seems to have a real problem with priestly celibacy. Interesting because in a North American population in the hundreds of millions, the celibacy of not even 70,000 celibate priests seems constantly to pose a problem for the public.
Hence the prophetic role of the priest: His celibacy and undivided, chaste living serves as a reminder that the Church offers an alternative to the pornographic culture.
Perhaps a greater development of the need for virility and manliness in the priesthood – even a whole new chapter to deal with this! - would have capped off an excellent discussion.
McBride does show the manly, heroic intervention of St. Maximillian Kolbe, who gave his life at Auschwitz so that another, a husband and father, could live. Throughout the book, McBride reminds the reader of the unmistakable identity that Kolbe had of himself, an identity that came purely from his priesthood. When the Nazi guard asked who he was, St. Maximillian answered "I am a Catholic priest," rather than responding with his nationality or name.
Priests live heroically, McBride observes, when they know exactly who they are, and then live out this identity. This issue is so important because of what he calls the "assault on priestly identity from 1965 to the present." Again, McBride sees these difficulties as a call to manliness, and reminds the reader of the harsh travails of St. Paul, including imprisonment and torture.
At this point, McBride again counters the nonsense from mainstream culture, in this case its pop-psychology, therapeutic way of seeing religion and spirituality. "A priest is more than an enabler and facilitator." "Enabler" and "facilitator" were catchwords of liberal Catholic and Protestant seminaries for decades, often used in opposition to the cultic notion of the priesthood.
Throughout A Priest Forever McBride emphasizes this cultic meaning, putting the Eucharist at the center of the priest's existence: "No priest without the Eucharist, no Eucharist without the priest."
McBride's simple, straightforward book aims to show the beauty of the Eucharist, Reconciliation, celibacy, Marian devotion, and chaste human sexuality that form the bedrock of the Catholic priesthood.
The humble power of the priesthood comes from the work of Christ. A priest has a special relationship with the Lord, as reflected in the Last Supper, which Jesus spent with his first priests. McBride notes, Jesus "called them his friends, he shared his divine life with them and shared with them the first truths of revelation of the new covenant."
A priest's identity and calling come from this close relationship with Jesus. Rather than deprivation, celibacy is about love: loving Jesus above all with an "undivided heart," which the priest also offers his parishioners.
The important chapter on chastity helps remove the usual misunderstandings that Catholics and non-Catholics often have regarding this calling. Celibacy, McBride notes from the Catholic Catechism, "means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being."
This leads to an important discussion on the contrast this presents with the secular, sex-saturated world. McBride notes how interesting it is that our permissive culture seems to have a real problem with priestly celibacy. Interesting because in a North American population in the hundreds of millions, the celibacy of not even 70,000 celibate priests seems constantly to pose a problem for the public.
Hence the prophetic role of the priest: His celibacy and undivided, chaste living serves as a reminder that the Church offers an alternative to the pornographic culture.
Perhaps a greater development of the need for virility and manliness in the priesthood – even a whole new chapter to deal with this! - would have capped off an excellent discussion.
McBride does show the manly, heroic intervention of St. Maximillian Kolbe, who gave his life at Auschwitz so that another, a husband and father, could live. Throughout the book, McBride reminds the reader of the unmistakable identity that Kolbe had of himself, an identity that came purely from his priesthood. When the Nazi guard asked who he was, St. Maximillian answered "I am a Catholic priest," rather than responding with his nationality or name.
Priests live heroically, McBride observes, when they know exactly who they are, and then live out this identity. This issue is so important because of what he calls the "assault on priestly identity from 1965 to the present." Again, McBride sees these difficulties as a call to manliness, and reminds the reader of the harsh travails of St. Paul, including imprisonment and torture.
At this point, McBride again counters the nonsense from mainstream culture, in this case its pop-psychology, therapeutic way of seeing religion and spirituality. "A priest is more than an enabler and facilitator." "Enabler" and "facilitator" were catchwords of liberal Catholic and Protestant seminaries for decades, often used in opposition to the cultic notion of the priesthood.
Throughout A Priest Forever McBride emphasizes this cultic meaning, putting the Eucharist at the center of the priest's existence: "No priest without the Eucharist, no Eucharist without the priest."
I Am Hutterite
By Mary-Ann Kirby, 246 pages, Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Mary-Ann Kirby does an exceptional job detailing the civilizational clash between her communal early upbringing on a Western Canadian Hutterite colony. Her father, feuding with the leaders, took his large family to go it alone. Kirby's years of communal closeness were over, and she became a misfit in the "English world," though she enjoyed the solid support of her siblings.
The Hutterites, an Anabaptist sect with roots in Austria in the Reformation, had been persecuted in Germany, then in Russia. They came to North America in the nineteenth-century. Living as a tight-knit community, they practice adult baptism and once-yearly communion. Those practices got them into trouble with the Christian mainstream in Europe as much as their strict male-female segregation gets them deeply rejected by mainstream society today.
Kirby weaves fact with fictional story-telling, liberally creating her own dialogues. She's a good story-teller and brings her childhood, and the various characters of the colony, back to life. Rather than sweeping the troublesome events and divisions under the rug, she shows how the various Hutterite communities were anything but perfect. Refreshingly, though, she writes with respect rather than bitterness, thankful for the solid spiritual and moral center that the Hutterites and her deeply religious and devoted parents gave her.
I Am Hutterite critiques modern English-speaking society more than it does Hutterites, contrasting the love and warmth of Hutterite society with the cold indifference of mainstream Canadian society.
Mary-Ann Kirby does an exceptional job detailing the civilizational clash between her communal early upbringing on a Western Canadian Hutterite colony. Her father, feuding with the leaders, took his large family to go it alone. Kirby's years of communal closeness were over, and she became a misfit in the "English world," though she enjoyed the solid support of her siblings.
The Hutterites, an Anabaptist sect with roots in Austria in the Reformation, had been persecuted in Germany, then in Russia. They came to North America in the nineteenth-century. Living as a tight-knit community, they practice adult baptism and once-yearly communion. Those practices got them into trouble with the Christian mainstream in Europe as much as their strict male-female segregation gets them deeply rejected by mainstream society today.
Kirby weaves fact with fictional story-telling, liberally creating her own dialogues. She's a good story-teller and brings her childhood, and the various characters of the colony, back to life. Rather than sweeping the troublesome events and divisions under the rug, she shows how the various Hutterite communities were anything but perfect. Refreshingly, though, she writes with respect rather than bitterness, thankful for the solid spiritual and moral center that the Hutterites and her deeply religious and devoted parents gave her.
I Am Hutterite critiques modern English-speaking society more than it does Hutterites, contrasting the love and warmth of Hutterite society with the cold indifference of mainstream Canadian society.
Friday, May 7, 2010
A Life in Letters: Thomas Merton
Edited by William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen, 402 pages, Harper One.
Both traditionalists and renewalists love Merton so this thick book offers something to everyone. It reflects in depth the peacenik Merton who wrote against the Vietnam war, seeing it through a spiritual rather than geopolitical lens. This war, as well as the arms race, was for Merton really about deeper issues related to what he saw as the ugliness of modern, industrial living.
Merton the traditionalist opposed the commodification and commercialization of life. His letters reflect his love of deep, real relationships with people. He saw technology and industrialization as dehumanizing forces. His conception of Catholic freedom opposes the liberty of capitalism and consumerism:
"Our souls cannot be free if we believe only in money and power and comfort and having a good time. I do not think that our present line of action is doing anything to keep us free."
These prophetic words were written when these economic and political changes were happening, and not from decades later after the fact. Though a convert to Catholicism, Merton was able to be so prophetic because of he was so deeply immersed in the Catholic worldview:
"I do not aim at the heights, I aim at the depths. Not at what is exalted and spectacular but what is humble and unenviable and unattractive and blank. I aspire to become a nonentity and to be forgotten."
Merton's openness to the world came through a Catholic view of diversity rather than the current, post-modern one. He loved the variety of paths to God that the monastic life offered religious. Because of this high esteem for monastic and contemplative living, he had high standards for the religious orders. Echoing other mid-twentieth-century Catholics, he saw them and the Church as a whole, as having become too institutionalized.
Being so immersed in the roots of Catholicism, he took obedience to mean more than simply an institutional obedience that makes each religious a cog in an institutional wheel. Repeatedly, Merton called for the spirit of things to overshadow the institutionalization of things. Heavy institutionalization killed the spirit of individual monks, he noted: "[O]ur problem is not to be solved so much by rules as by men who are alive with the Spirit of the Risen Saviour and are not afraid to seek new paths guided by the light of perennial tradition and the wisdom of Mother Church."
Merton was keenly aware of his place as a monk in American society. He strongly believed in the value of his vocation for his fellow, secular Americans; the monastic vocation went against the capitalist-technological utilitarianism of modern living. The usefulness of a man of prayer was precisely the fact that he didn't fit into the paradigm of what was useful.
Since society was off the right tracks, a contemplative calling could bear prophetic witness. This view tied together Merton's social concerns with his contemplative life. He was qualified to speak out against war, nuclear build-up, prejudice, and industrialization only because he was a monk rooted in a way of living that was quite different from the rest of us.
Both traditionalists and renewalists love Merton so this thick book offers something to everyone. It reflects in depth the peacenik Merton who wrote against the Vietnam war, seeing it through a spiritual rather than geopolitical lens. This war, as well as the arms race, was for Merton really about deeper issues related to what he saw as the ugliness of modern, industrial living.
Merton the traditionalist opposed the commodification and commercialization of life. His letters reflect his love of deep, real relationships with people. He saw technology and industrialization as dehumanizing forces. His conception of Catholic freedom opposes the liberty of capitalism and consumerism:
"Our souls cannot be free if we believe only in money and power and comfort and having a good time. I do not think that our present line of action is doing anything to keep us free."
These prophetic words were written when these economic and political changes were happening, and not from decades later after the fact. Though a convert to Catholicism, Merton was able to be so prophetic because of he was so deeply immersed in the Catholic worldview:
"I do not aim at the heights, I aim at the depths. Not at what is exalted and spectacular but what is humble and unenviable and unattractive and blank. I aspire to become a nonentity and to be forgotten."
Merton's openness to the world came through a Catholic view of diversity rather than the current, post-modern one. He loved the variety of paths to God that the monastic life offered religious. Because of this high esteem for monastic and contemplative living, he had high standards for the religious orders. Echoing other mid-twentieth-century Catholics, he saw them and the Church as a whole, as having become too institutionalized.
Being so immersed in the roots of Catholicism, he took obedience to mean more than simply an institutional obedience that makes each religious a cog in an institutional wheel. Repeatedly, Merton called for the spirit of things to overshadow the institutionalization of things. Heavy institutionalization killed the spirit of individual monks, he noted: "[O]ur problem is not to be solved so much by rules as by men who are alive with the Spirit of the Risen Saviour and are not afraid to seek new paths guided by the light of perennial tradition and the wisdom of Mother Church."
Merton was keenly aware of his place as a monk in American society. He strongly believed in the value of his vocation for his fellow, secular Americans; the monastic vocation went against the capitalist-technological utilitarianism of modern living. The usefulness of a man of prayer was precisely the fact that he didn't fit into the paradigm of what was useful.
Since society was off the right tracks, a contemplative calling could bear prophetic witness. This view tied together Merton's social concerns with his contemplative life. He was qualified to speak out against war, nuclear build-up, prejudice, and industrialization only because he was a monk rooted in a way of living that was quite different from the rest of us.
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