HISPANIC CATHOLICISM HOLDS STEADY IN U.S.: Interesting Christianity Today article on this topic. A larger share of second and third generation Hispanics report a Protestant affiliation, but continued immigration has kept the overall percent of Hispanics who are Catholic fairly steady at 70 percent.
BLOGGING: A thoughtful article on blogging by Chris Mooney (click here for his blog), the founder of The American Prospect blog Tapped. He compares blogging with traditional journalism and highlights the similarities and the differences:
Finally, there's the simple fact that while bloggers can be highly substantive and demonstrate considerable expertise -- some of the best are career journalists or professors -- they're very rarely thorough. Bloggers tend to specialize in putting a deft touch on pre-existing information rather than in generating completely new findings; there's no such thing as a blogging investigative report or feature story.
I think Mooney is right here, but not all bloggers are trying to be journalists. Some of us model ourselves more on journals of ideas: Commonweal, First Things, Dissent, Commentary. We're less interested in being on top of the story of the day and more interested in offering political, philosophical (or in my case, theological) reflection on what is going on in the world around us. There is certainly an immediacy to blogging and it tends to favor the quick sentence over the lengthy paragraph. But I don't think the medium is adverse to the latter.
As a colleague from the Reuters news agency pointed out at a press conference, none of us really expected to live to see a Vatican document with section headings such as “The Magical Mystery Tour” and textual references to the musical “Hair.” The authors of this document obviously take popular culture seriously (even if the references are a bit dated), and although they are critical of “New Age” spirituality, they nevertheless refrain from hurling anathema or issuing prohibitions.
I suspect by the time I'm ready for Medicare, the Vatican will get around to assessing the spiritual ramifications of the New Wave music of the early 1980s...
The contrast of these two Catholic church buildings highlights how us liberal Catholic get it wrong. We liberals get hung up on logos; cool, clean and rational. What gets lost with this drive toward the scientific and rational is the stories that shape the faith. Faith is not passed down through the generations using scientific formulas. Faith belongs to the realm of the mythical, the narrative, the story.
Food for thought. Perhaps one of our more conservative bloggers will weigh in with something equally self-critical at some point.
BY ANY OTHER NAME: Senators Hatch (R-UT) and Feinstein (D-CA) have introduced a bill that, while banning human cloning to produce children, would allow cloning for research purposes. The bill would require the destruction of cloned embryos before they reached the age of two weeks. If you are interested in some of the writing I've done on this issue, click here, here, and here. If you wish to contact your members of Congress, click here for the Senate and here for the House.
EVOLUTION OR...?John Allen has a piece in the National Catholic Reporter where he interviews Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Martino was, for 16 years, the Vatican observer at the United Nations. During the interview, he suggests that the Catholic doctrine on "just war" is undergoing an evolution similar to similar to that on capital punishment, "from grudging acceptance to a quasi-abolitionist stance," to use Allen's words. Here's a quote:
I would draw a parallel with the death penalty. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, there is an admission that the death penalty could be needed in extreme cases. But Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae said that society has all the means now to render a criminal harmless who before might have been sent to the gallows. This could well apply to the case of war. Modern society has to have, and I think it has, the means to avoid war.
I think to call this an "evolution" in just war doctrine would be something of an understatement, but I need to do a little more thinking on this.
TRUTH AND THE NEW AGE:Amy Welborn (on her website not her blog) has posted a very sharp analysis of the recent Vatican statement on the New Age movement. She defends the document against those who think the statement should have taken a tougher line:
No matter what some might lead you to think, the Vatican’s recent document on “New Age movements” is no sell-out. The tone may be a world away from Pio Nono’s mid-century tirade, but, lest we be tempted to be see this as regress, let’s reflect for a moment on the Gospels.
For if we do that, we make the most curious observation: Jesus did not convert people by yelling at them. He did not draw people closer to God’s love by condemning them. He saved his harshest language for the leaders of his own religious tradition, those guilty of contributing to the alienation of those whom God calls to Him.
The apostles followed Jesus’ lead in this regard. Moving through the ancient near east and beyond, sharing the Good News, they proceeded with vigor, yet care. They shaped the Good News to the capacity of the hearer, at all times, so that all might understand, in their own language, the mercy of God and the promises of the messiah. Remember Paul in Athens? He “debated,” but if his speech at the Areopagus is any hint of what these debates were like, it doesn’t seem as if they were composed of thundering condemnations. He burrowed into his listeners’ assumptions and presented them with the flaws in their beliefs, and then carefully turned them to the truth.
Amy does believe, however, that the document could have done a better job highlighting the specific ways in which the Christian kerygma responds to the spiritual hungers that the New Age movement purports to address:
Pastoral ministers need to be encouraged to understand, but they also need to be encouraged to challenge the truth-claims of the New Age movement. Not to yell and scream and condemn, but to simply ask adherents to explain the basis of what they believe. Why do you believe that god lives inside you in this balmy New Age kind of way? Who told you? Why do you believe them? What’s the evidence?
And upon listening, we say, okay – now, can I tell you about Jesus? Just for a minute, and just because I care about you and I care about the truth. Let me tell you what Jesus says about God’s love and mercy and your place in his universe and his embrace, and let me tell you why it’s true. Let me tell you about that death and that rising and what happened to those apostles afterwards and what they did. Let me tell you why they believed it was true – they saw it with their own eyes and they staked their lives on it.
And what does Deepak Chopra have to say about that?
REACTIONS: Lots of interesting reactions to Powell's speech. Bill Saletan at Slate has an interesting "scorecard" that looks at where the various members of the U.N. Security Council are after hearing Powell's presentation. Fred Kaplan thinks that Powell produced the "smoking gun." TNR's Larry Kaplan argues that, smoking gun or no, nothing is likely to convince the French. While conceding the power of Powell's presentation, the New York Times cautions that the United States cannot afford to act alone. The Washington Post calls Powell's evidence "irrefutable" and expresses strong skepticism about the French proposal to dramatically increase the number of inspectors:
Twelve years of experience have demonstrated that it is impossible to strip an unwilling totalitarian government of its weapons by such means. As Mr. Powell asked, how could inspections ever determine which 18 of Iraq's tens of thousands of trucks carry mobile biological weapons labs? By choosing such a course, the Security Council would send Saddam Hussein the message that it remains the ineffectual body that shrank from enforcing 16 previous resolutions. By proposing it, France and those who support it are setting the stage for another momentous development they claim to oppose: the transfer of responsibility for countering the most serious threats to international security from multilateral institutions to the world's sole superpower.
Not everyone is so convinced. In The American Prospect, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay argue that while Powell proved that war with Iraq would be justified, the question of whether it would be wise remains to be addressed. The San Francisco Chronicle believes there are still "compelling reasons for restraint at this moment." The Boston Globe believes the case against Saddam is compelling, but the case for war may not be.
The sentence of judgment says these men came to Japan from the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I certainly did teach the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason I die. I believe that I am telling only the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you to become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain.
HOWL:Gex-X Revert has a hilarious rewrite of the Alan Ginsburg poem "Howl" from a Catholic perspective. I'm not sure I can concur with all the sentiments expressed, but it's a fabulous piece of literary appropriation. Full disclosure: I hold a degree in English Literature and did a paper on Ginsburg in college. But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...
YOU MAKE THE CALL: Click here for the text of Colin Powell's statement at the United Nations today. Click here for a copy of his presentation materials (Flash Player required).
REBUILDING COVENANT HOUSE: This month's Saint Anthony Messenger has the inspiring story of Sister Mary Rose McGeady, D.C, the woman who essentially saved Covenant House, a New York-based program for runaway children (and one of my father's favorite charities). The agency was devastated in the late 1980s by accusations of sexual abuse and financial improprieties levelled against its founder, Fr. Bruce Ritter. Ritter denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with criminal activity, but the allegations led to his 1990 resignation as its director. Under Sister Mary Rose's leadership, the agency has rebounded and expanded, and now serves children in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
ANGLICANS: Interesting piece in the National Catholic Register this week about "Anglican-use liturgy," a special adaption of the Roman Rite designed to accomodate Episcopalians who become Catholic and want to keep certain liturgical and cultural traditions.
I'm afraid I find it wanting, too. The principal difficulty I have with the statements by Stafford and other senior Vatican officials is that they continue to evade what I think is one of the central issues: can the United Nations ever use military force to enforce its resolutions in the absence of an imminent armed conflict? If you are serious (as the Vatican seems to be) about having the U.N. (rather than, say, the United States) serve as the guarantor of global order, I don't see how the answer can be "no." To argue that the Just War tradition says otherwise is to suggest that the Just War tradition opposes the use of force by a police officer in apprehending a suspect. I blogged on this issue a few weeks ago (click here if you are interested).
NOT OVER YET: The National Catholic Reporter speculates about what lies in store for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The Archdiocese is bracing for a flood of sexual abuse lawsuits in response to a recent change in state law that lifted the statute of limitations on such suits. The story is almost entirely based on quotations from the plaintiff's attorneys; the Archdiocese declined comment. This creates, shall we say, something of an imbalance in the article. Still worth reading though.
Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men.
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.
DISCIPLESHIP AS CRAFT:"Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community" is an essay by Stanley Hauerwas that I found a while back and enjoyed so much that I re-read it every few months. It is vintage Hauerwas. Every few sentences he says something that makes you respond, "he can't really mean that!" For example, he offeres a rather contrarian appraisal of the movie The Dead Poets Society and its celebration of independent thinking:
This movie seems to be a wonderful testimony to the independence of spirit that democracies putatively want to encourage. Yet I can think of no more conformist message in liberal societies than the idea that students should learn to think for themselves. What must be said is that most students in our society do not have minds well enough trained to think. A central pedagogical task is to tell students that their problem is that they do not have minds worth making up. That is why training is so important, because training involves the formation of the self through submission to authority that will provide people with the virtues necessary to make reasoned judgment.
The church's situation is not unlike the problems of what it means to be a teacher in a society shaped by an ethos that produces movies like The Dead Poets Society. Determined by past presuppositions about the importance of commitment for the living of the Christian life, we have underwritten a voluntaristic conception of the Christian faith, which presupposes that one can become a Christian without training. The difficulty is that once such a position has been established, any alternative cannot help appearing as an authoritarian imposition.
The central theme of Hauerwas' essay is the idea of "discipleship as craft." Although he doesn't say so in the essay, Hauerwas' father was a bricklayer and he likens Christian discipleship to the process of learning a craft, with all that necessarily entails:
All of this indicates that to lay brick you must be initiated into the craft of bricklaying by a master craftsman. It is interesting in this respect to contrast this notion with modern democratic presuppositions. For as I noted above, the accounts of morality sponsored by democracy want to deny the necessity of a master. It is assumed that we each in and of ourselves have all we need to be moral. No master is necessary for us to become moral, for being moral is a condition that does not require initiation or training. That is why I often suggest that the most determinative moral formation most people have in our society is when they learn to play baseball, basketball, quilt, cook or learn to lay bricks. For such sports and crafts remain morally antidemocratic insofar as they require acknowledgment of authority based on a history of accomplishment.
While Hauerwas is generally considered a Protestant theologian, he has an ability to transcend denominational boundaries. With his emphasis on the primacy of the ecclesial community and the importance of initiation into that community, Hauerwas is expressing themes that have deep Catholic roots.
But what does all this have to do with the church? First it reminds us that Christianity is not beliefs about God plus behavior. We are Christians not because of what we believe, but because we have been called to be disciples of Jesus. To become a disciple is not a matter of a new or changed self-understanding, but rather to become part of a different community with a different set of practices.
Okay, enough excerpts. Go and read the whole thing.
IT TOOK THEM 12 YEARS TO SPOT THIS? Interesting story about how a student at Wheaton College, an evangelical college, spotted a rather serious theological error (they had the Son begotten of the Holy Spirit instead of the Father) in the institution's Statement of Faith. All faculty and staff have to sign the document every year. The statement has now been revised. It just goes to prove the old saw that nobody reads organization mission statements...
EUROPE:Tom Friedman has some harsh words for some of our European allies today. He argues that while there are intellectually respectable arguments against war in Iraq, the Europeans are by and large not making them. Instead, their positions seem rooted in an aversion to the exercise of American power, and that aversion, in turn, has its roots in the widening "power gap" between the United States and Europe. Friedman concludes:
I can live with this difference. But Europe's cynicism and insecurity, masquerading as moral superiority, is insufferable. Each year at the Davos economic forum protesters are allowed to march through the north end of town, where last year they broke shop windows. So this year, on demonstration day, all the shopkeepers on that end of town closed. But when I walked by their shops in the morning, I noticed that three of them had put up signs in their windows that said, "U.S.A. No War in Iraq."
I wondered to myself: Why did the shopkeepers at the lingerie store suddenly decide to express their antiwar sentiments? Well, the demonstrators came and left without getting near these shops. And guess what? As soon as they were gone, the antiwar signs disappeared. They had been put up simply as window insurance — to placate the demonstrators so they wouldn't throw stones at them.
RICE FOR PEACE: Well this is interesting. An anti-war organization is asking individuals to send small bags of rice to President Bush to convince him not to attack Iraq. This protest is apparently modeled on a similar effort in the 1950s that convinced President Eisenhower not to attack China. I would say that since Iraq is a Middle Eastern country, perhaps bags of chick peas (the key ingredient in hummus) would be more appropriate...
VOTF COMES TO CALIFORNIA: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Voice of the Faithful is organizing here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Archdiocese has stated that it has no intention of limiting where the organization meets, a contrast to the constant struggles over that issue that have marred relations between VOTF and the Boston Archdiocese. This being the Bay Area, VOTF has already set up a web site, which you can look at by clicking here.
TIME FOR A NAP: Amy Welborn is shutting down In Between Naps. You can read her farewell message here. I am saddened by her decision, but I don't think any of us who blog can fail to understand her very real concerns about the time it takes.
Amy linked to Sursum Corda very soon after its inception in March of 2002, and she also helped me with some of the technical problems I encountered in those early days. Amy became, I suspect without really intending to, the center of this somewhat bizzare Catholic cyberspace community that some call "St. Blog's." I have a difficult time imagining this corner of the Internet without her presence.
Amy's passion for Jesus Christ and His Church led her to become a vocal critic of the evasion and deceit that characterized some of the episcopal responses to the clerical sexual abuse scandal. In this, she fulfilled one of the highest callings of the journalist: to comfort the affilicted, and to afflict the comfortable. She leaves now for other pastures, and perhaps some other targets that have gotten a little big for their britches. I wish her happy hunting.
Well we get there, and despite our best efforts at rousting guys out of bed, we have a grand total of four men at the service. Our policy is to give 110 percent whether we have one guy or twenty, so we launched into the opening hymn.
One of the men was a guy in his early 20s with a blond crew cut who looked like he could be a linebacker for the Raiders. About halfway through my reflection, I see a single tear roll down his cheek, then another, and another.
I grabbed him at the sign of peace and asked him quietly “You okay?” He just nodded. We continued with the rest of the service.
After the service, he was walking toward the door and I walked over, just intending to give him a quick hug and an encouraging word. All of a sudden we’ve got our arms wrapped around each other and he’s sobbing into my shoulder. We just stood there holding each other, I don’t know for how long.
I asked him if he wanted to talk. “No,” he replied, “I’m just carrying some hard things in my heart right now.” I asked him his name and he said it was Dan. I told Dan that I’d be praying for him and whatever he was going through, Jesus would be with him.
But I don’t think anything I said, either during the service or after it, meant as much to that young man as that embrace. He needed to be touched.
Sometimes words, and even the Word, can’t get the job done. That’s one of the reasons that the Eucharist is so important. The Eucharist is about bodies, it’s about touch, it’s about Jesus reaching out to embrace us.
I don’t know what hard things Dan was carrying in his heart today. But I’d ask you to pray for him. Please pray too for Brent, Dan, Douglas, Doug, and Doug’s brother Mike who has colon cancer. Pray for all the incarcerated, their families and friends, and also for all the victims of crime.
