Melinda Henneberger has left, or tried to leave, Mother Church. She slammed the door in an article in USA Today where she now hangs out, somewhat. She used to be in Commonweal and has been in The New York Times and briefly had a blog, so I have been familiar, off and on, with her work. I respect it, if not being at the fan level. So it hurts when she says she is outta here.
She didn't say where she is going. That is one thing. Every time I think of taking my bat and ball and going home I realize there is no home out there.
I don't think it takes a heck of a lot of courage to walk away from the Church these days. In fact, it may be too easy. It also doesn't help. It doesn't help those of us who found Jesus in the Church and are afraid we will lose him if we get too far away. It doesn't help those who, feeling what Henneberger feels, feel like walking, too. It doesn't help those who need an anchor. I doubt that it helps Jesus, either.
But I know why she feels as she does.
Many years ago there was a bishop I admired very much, especially for standing up to the Ku Klux Klan. I had reason to ask about something in his diocese, and when I called the chancery office in the morning, I got nowhere. I called him at his home (not a "palace") in mid-afternoon. And he was drunk as a skunk. He told me to go to Hell.
Well, that shook me up at the time. But ""at the time" was a long time ago, and nothing that has happened since caused me to put my faith in our shepherds. Yes, there are good ones. Archbishop Hallinan of Atlanta, on his death bed, told Art Winter of The National Catholic Reporter that he could name 12. He even started to name them, but then he decided he had better not. I could name at least 12 time-servers and another 12 candidates for the lead in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying today, and I have been away from it a long time. I could also name some good ones. Maybe 12.
When I hear Jesus talking to the Pharisees in the Gospels, the first people I think of are our alleged leaders.
But, in another life, I used to cover the cops. There are cops who hop in their cars every night hoping to get a chance to kill a person of color. But I have sat in police cars with officers who were in tears because, due to local politics, a program that they built up to work with kids and keep them out of crime was being taken away.
I am not overly impressed by any organization, but I have found people doing good work in all kinds of organizations. They are rarely (but sometimes) at the top of the organization.
I don't expect anything from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (except maybe the Mass readings and a fervorino in the morning). I don't even expect a whole lot more from Pope Francis; he may have given us all he has to give and now has to suffer for the sins of the Vigano family. If I am going to establish a relationship with the Creator of us all, I am going to have to do it mostly by myself. I stopped being surprised about that a long time ago.
She's confusing the Church with the hierarchy, though it's hard not to. I
ReplyDeleteI often confuse the Church with my parish, where the priests are old and sickly, and the sticklers run everything.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteMaybe you'll find some solace in these two quotes from Dorothy Day:
1.
On her decision to become a Catholic:
"I was just as much against capitalism and imperialism as ever, and here I was going over to the opposition, because of course the Church was lined up with property, with the wealthy, with the state, with capitalism, with all the forms of reaction. This is what I had been taught to think and this is what I still think to a great extent … I loved the Church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me. Romano Guardini said that the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from His Cross, and one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the Church."
2.
In a letter to Gordon Zahn in 1968:
“I never expected much of the bishops. In all history, popes and bishops and abbots seem to have been blind and power-loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints that keep appearing all through history who keep things going. What I do expect is the bread of life and down through the ages there is that continuity.”
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/National-CW-E-mail-List/mX0Y7hFsV9Q
Gene, On point 1, D.D. might find some hope in the official teaching of the Church on social justice since her time. My impression is that a lot of it hasn't seeped down to the parish, where the homilist is careful to point out that there are many ways in which the rich can be poor, so they don't have to give away any comfort (but can leave their money to comfort the Church). In her day, I doubt any American bishops would have suggested "canonical penalties" were in order for implementing the original (and returning) Trump/Sessions immigration policies, as Bishop Weisenburger of Tucson did. She and people she inspired played a role in nudging the official teaching closer to the Gospels. As for what she wrote to Zahn: yeah, exactly.
DeleteThanks for those quotes, Gene. I believe Servant of God Dorothy was right. Especially the part about the Church being the cross on which Christ was crucified. Maybe being in a state of "permanent dissatisfaction" is a feature, not a bug.
DeleteBishops are just church politicians. While I always hope for the best when I vote, most of the time I am voting for the least of two evils. If we elected bishops, I don’t think it would be any different.
ReplyDeleteWe should not regard priests and bishops as sacred beings any more than we are. They are not pastors; we are not a sheep. They are not fathers; we are in need of brothers and sisters not paternalism.
Back in the eighties I asked myself where I got my faith, hope and love. First of all from my parents, then family members, and a whole variety of good lay people. They are the people with whom I am in communion. I have not felt the need for a lot of canonized saints in my life.
Saintly priests and religious have not been much a part of my life. This must be a bad time for those whose faith rests far too much on priests and religious.
Priestly and religious have not been an important part of my intellectual religious formation. I got that mainly from books and lay professors. As early as high school I experienced knowing things that most priests do not know about liturgy, scripture, etc. The theologian Gregory Baum was once asked what he thought about bishops who criticized him. “I know the tradition better than they do.” That has been my experience with most priests for most of my life.
Finally since about the eighth grade I have prayed the Divine Office, realized what an important part of the liturgy it is, and that I don’t need priests to celebrate liturgy. I worship in several parishes including the local Orthodox parish (mainly for the Divine Office).
Christian organization takes upon itself cultural forms. It began in households, and then took upon itself various political forms. Today economically churches are non-profit business corporations. Since parishes and dioceses don’t allow me much say in how they operate, I support specific projects, Saint Vincent de Paul, food bank, etc. and give only token amounts to the general parish fund that is taxed by the bishop.
I don't blame anyone, including Henneberger, for electing to leave. I hope her story becomes an occasion of penitential reflection on the part of church leaders.
ReplyDeleteThe matter of publicizing the decision to leave in one of the world's leading dailies is a separate matter from the decision to leave. I'd like to think that, if I decided to leave, I'd do it without public announcements. But I don't walk in her shoes; it may be that she believes she owes her readers an explanation for her decision.
You make an interesting point, Jim. There is something unsettled when a public Catholic becomes an ex-Catholic. I don't know how I'd handle that, although I have been non-public long enough, it would probably be as you would. Oddly, her problem doesn't seem to be with doctrine; it's with dishonesty, and certainly civil society doesn't seem to care much about that. Or a lot of politicians and bankers would be behind bars.
DeleteShe is a public Catholic and she is leaving for public reasons while she still holds a public position.
DeleteHer problems seems to be with the bishops alone. They don't seem to be with God.
When Benedictine was Pope and Lennon was our bishop, I ceased to pray for them, rather I prayed for a new Pope and a new Bishop.
In the tradition of the liturgy I no longer viewed them as faithful bishops. I really question the faith of many if not most of our bishops and think many or most should resign. I don't have to continue to respect them as bishops. I do pray for new American bishops, although I now pray for Francis and our new Bishop. My relationship is with God not bishops.
I do continue to pray for all of them, including the ones who may need to experience a change of heart. But most of all I pray for the ones who are trying to do a good job, often while experiencing undeserved pre-judging.
DeleteJack, I think you're wise to pray. I assume all of us pray in some form or fashion; if I may, I'd suggest that we pray for our bishops including Francis.
DeleteAs Jean mentioned, it's hard to separate our perception of the hierarchy from our perception of the church as a whole. And that's not a fault on our part; having bishops is intrinsic to the church. Probably there are many reasons; among them is that the bishop is (or should be) a sign of unity: I don't belong only to my local congregation but to a particular church (i.e. a diocese), and the diocese in turn is in communion with other dioceses, including Rome headed by its bishop.
That doesn't mean that having *this particular* bishop need be intrinsic to the church.
Jack, I agree with you that democracy doesn't guarantee a better brand of bishop. Even short of popular election, though, there are steps that could be taken to hold bishops accountable. And they are taken, once in a great while; we discussed, within the last month or so, the bishop of Memphis being removed by the Holy See.
If it's possible once in a great while, it could be possible more frequently. Rigorous and consistent standards, with a regular regimen of peer and supervisory review - these are commonplace already in other large organizations (the military, corporations), and I don't know of a reason the same couldn't happen in the church.
I heard one of the babblers on sports radio this morning note that as many as seven NFL head coaches could lose their jobs at the end of the season. That works out to somewhere between 20%-25% of the total. Shunting the lowest-performing, highest-liability quartile or quintile of performers to the sidelines isn't that uncommon in other walks of life. Perhaps it could be applied to the church - hopefully in a way that doesn't brand all of them as losers and foreclose any possibility of productive ministry on their part in the future. Ah well, we can all brainstorm different possibilities.
When Jack Welch was president of General Electric back in the '80s, he fired the worst-performing 10 percent of executives and employees every year, earning the name Neutron Jack. GE performed extraordinarily well, although much of that was by "business genius, which John Kenneth Galbraith defined as "greed in a rising market." Been a lot of CEOs since then, and once-supreme GE makes the news these days mostly for dumping bad investments.
DeleteGetting out can be difficult. Staying out is very easy. Even after 70+ years of being "in."
DeleteHere's another one about someone who's leaving:
ReplyDeletehttps://theweek.com/articles/792775/unbearable-ugliness-catholic-church
My take on Damon Linker is that he was another neo-con-vert who got his politics too well mixed into his religion. And when he became disillusioned with that brand of politics the religion was bound to go sour too. Sorry, I don't agree woth him that Catholicism is unbearably uglyugly, even with its problems.
DeleteShould have been just one "ugly" above, sometimes my Kindle types weird things.
DeleteApropos to what Katherine posted about Linker: https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/data-show-catholics-increasingly-split-political-leanings?utm_source=NOV_21_BOURBON_CATHOLICVOTE&utm_campaign=cc&utm_medium=email
DeleteI understand why people leave. Our parish has never been plagued with scandal, but often I feel I am colluding with indifference, exclusivity, staleness, and intolerance just by agreeing to sit the pew.
ReplyDeleteLinker, in Gene's refer above, says this: "When I converted to the Catholic Church 18 years ago, I did so in large part because I was deeply moved by the act of self-sacrifice that the church places at its heart. God sacrifices his beloved son, and his son freely accepts that sacrifice, out of self-giving love for humanity. Out of that breathtakingly beautiful gesture, the church built a new civilization founded on a message of forgiveness of sins, of care for the poor, of beatitude, of salvation and eternal life for all."
As a fellow convert, I deeply identify with what Linker writes. The Church is an idea. In some hearts, maybe least of all the hierarchs, that idea is still alive. Some have taken that idea out the door with them. I hope that they will keep it alive in other denominations that will be better for their presence.
ReplyDeleteCheck out Mark Silk's response to Ross Douthat's column in the N.Y.Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/opinion/crisis-of-faith-roman-catholics.html
https://religionnews.com/2018/11/19/whats-wrong-with-american-catholicism/
Gene, thanks. It appears that Silk and Douthat are citing duelling sources of data (Pew and Gallup respectively). I haven't had time to look at the data.
DeleteI think Silk errs in trying to fit Douthat into the conventional template of the disgruntled conservative who believes that Vatican II was a bad idea and the solution is to 'reform the reform'. Personally, I don't think Douthat fits any of the conventional church 'party' profiles - he's a genuinely independent thinker.
Silk is on more solid ground, in my opinion, in looking at some of the markers and milestones of Catholic church decline in the context of the decline of virtually all other mainstream denominations and religions. The broader culture is becoming more secular and less attracted to organized religion. Silk surely is also right in noting that the clerical abuse scandals and the priest shortage have exacerbated the decline.
As for Douthat's diagnosis of what happened or didn't happen in Baltimore last week: I am not sure he's got it precisely right, either. Not everything can be explained via the framework of right-vs-left or American-bishops-vs-Rome.
Sometimes, things are as straightforward as they seem. Unless or until I see a better and more evidence-supported explanation, I'll just believe what I saw: Rome asked the American bishops to defer the problem-solving until the meeting this February to try to look at the issue across the universal church. That explanation doesn't exclude the suggestion that the American proposals being considered last week were lacking in some ways and raised some Roman concerns.
Jim and Tom - Why should she leave quietly? She has been one the public faces of Catholicism, because of her career. Not someone most would recognize, but someone who has been covering the Catholic "story" for a long time.
ReplyDeleteIt seems she is very much like George Will and Max Boot and others who were lifelong members of the GOP and have walked away from it (as were my husband and I). They are trying to send a message to the GOP, even though they don't think it will be heard, that the GOP will not give up its sins, so they will not be back. Will says the GOP must be allowed to die so that a new party can be born. Their very public leaving might encourage others who stay because they have always been GOP, their whole family is GOP and their friends are GOP and it's hard, to leave, to stop supporting the GOP and tell them why no check. I know it's hard - we do not see several family members and friends who are Trump people. They consider us to be traitors who have been seduced by the libtards. I consider them to be, well..I won't write it. I'll just think it. ;)
When I left the GOP nobody would notice or care, even if I managed to write an article that would be published. My leaving does not send a message to anybody, but made me feel that I was being honest about what I really believe.
Just as I am the only one here who has ever had a CP practice, I am the only one here who is no longer a practicing Catholic.
When I finally left the RC church, it was because I did not feel that I was being honest to myself, to my beliefs, my values, if I stayed Catholic. It took many years, because I did love the community, and the good the Catholic people do in the world in spite of the "leadership". But others do good in the world too. My reasons for leaving went beyond the corruption of the hierarchy. Not just the sexual abuse scandal, although that provided the final push. For me, it was a matter of teachings. I simply did not believe many of them –infallibility, transubstantiation, the teaching that the RC church is the only "true" church (the only one that with the "fullness of truth"), the teachings on women, marriage, sexuality, the "ontological superiority" of the ordained, etc. I came to believe that the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic church are rooted in some of these teachings. In continuing to stay in the RC pew, while the church remains intransigent on changing teachings that have harmed millions of people in addition to the thousands of children who were molested, I was ignoring the RC formed conscience that kept telling me that I was enabling those who facilitate evil - which the RC church taught me is a sin. Since I have no voice in the church, I cannot "work" for change. I hate what Trump is doing to America, but at least I CAN work for change. Not in the RCC. Since I can't work for change in the church (prayer is not enough) AND I don’t believe many teachings, it was time to leave.
Change would come REALLY fast if all the Catholics in the pews just stopped writing checks, but few Catholics are willing to do that. Do they fear going to hell if they don't "contribute to the support of the church"? I contribute to those who do God's work - mostly humanitarian agencies, and a couple of domestic non-profits.
Ms Hennenberger is being true to her conscience except she may not (yet) link the sins of the hierarchical church with the teachings of the church. She hung on for years, hoping and praying for true reform and has given up. So she wrote about. Maybe some people will see it, if not bishops. But others – good people like those here who remain in the church - will be moved to speak out like the deacon in Buffalo, or Jennifer Hasselberger, and many others who finally could not stay silent in the face of the protection racket going on in the RCC.
She did what she had to do in conscience. There IS "church" outside RC walls. There are more than a billion followers of Christ who are not RC.
Neither Jim nor Tom said she should NOT leave publicly, just stated what they would do.
DeleteGenerally, though, I found Henneberger's piece thoughtful and appropriate. She is a journalist who has written about religious matters, sometimes as a "professional Catholic," so it made sense to me that she would make a public break. It's important to understanding her essays in contest.
For the record, I am not a practicing Catholic in that I have not received for years. I practice "Catholic spirituality" (novenas, rosaries, candles, mass attendance, etc.), though that sounds odious and New Age, I realize.
I have wide experience of other denominations, and I don't want to go elsewhere.
I have never had a CP practice, and I don't know what that is.
I didn't say she should leave quietly. I said I thought I probably would leave quietly now, if I were leaving. But I don't know what I would have done when I was writing a column that sometimes showed up in odd places like Oklahoma City and Norfolk, Va., besides here, and often touched on religion -- albeit not as consistently and obnoxiously as Young Ross.
DeleteI mean, does anybody care? You and your husband didn't need to write about it in the WaPo when you walked from the GOP. I do have to say that people, like Michael Gerson, who walked out that same door are both entertaining and doing a lot of good for the cause of honest conservatism (remember that?) from where they are now. But few of us are called to explain our personal decisions to a national audience.
Anne, I have never believed a lot of the crap you say drove you from the church, and I am sure all the little old men and ladies who rub the crucifix for "good luck" or whatever have never heard the words and don't care, and they are more justified in the eyes of God than I (and you) are.
I consider you to be a practicing Catholic Jean even if you don't! ;)
ReplyDeleteSeries of articles at Commonweal about why people stay or go or come and stay. I'm less intellectual and learned than Daniel Callahan, and I'm not an atheist, but his article did touch on some experiences that were familiar to me.
Tom - "justified" in the eyes of God? You're sounding like the couple of evangelicals we know. Although that's not as good as "I was convicted by the Holy Spirit to...."
ReplyDeleteA lot of Catholics tell me they don't believe what the church teaches. I don't understand really why so many who don't believe so much of what the church teaches stay in the church. But, I will admit it took me a very long time to finally have my conscience bug me to the point where I felt I was being a total hypocrite by staying just because I liked some of the people in the community. I grew up in the RCC, and the rituals like First Communion and Advent wreathes etc were part of me - the RCC was "family". It's hard to leave family, but sometimes it's what we have to do in order to be honest with ourselves. The RCC is not the only christian community out there.
Anne, "More holy" in the eyes of God? Just sayin' you don't have to have heard of your ontological superiority of the ordained to love God and neighbor as Jesus commanded. And if you've heard of it, you don't have to believe in it.
DeleteAnd things like infallibility make perfect sense when "properly understood" as my old Jesuit teachers (and Michael Novak, of all people) like to qualify things. I do not think the Church can mislead you on the basics of faith. I do think -- as I tried to make clear above -- that it's almost an accident when the leaders of the Church DO NOT scandalize you with their alleged works and pomps.
About the RCC not being the only Christian community out there, that is true. And there is a lot that we can learn from those other communities. And they from us. All of us are the church universal.
DeleteHowever...All of my in-laws, and half of my blood relatives are evangelicals of one stripe or another. Over my lifetime I have observed that those communities are no more immune from scandals, etc. than we are. This is not "whataboutism". It's just life. Gene's quote above from Dorothy Day quoting Romano Guardini, "...the Church is the cross on which Christ was crucified...and one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the church" is certainly true. But one has to pick a spot. Or not. And "not" is still a spot by default.
Tom, I agree completely that one doesn't need to be ordained to be holy or to love God. One does not have to be Catholic to love God. Or even christian, although concepts of God obviously include quite a range in the world's great religions. Those who remain faithful to God, however they understand God, and to their own religious and spiritual beliefs are loving God.
ReplyDeleteI differ though, on your opinion that the church does not ever "mislead" on the basics of faith, but I suppose that depends on how you define "the basics" of faith. I think the church very often midleads in its teachings. The church is so dead wrong at times on the teachings that some produce great harm instead of good.
So I don't agree that the problem with accepting "infallibility" is lack of "proper understanding". I too had Catholic undergrad with 6 required semesters of religion/theology and another 6 required semesters of philosophy. No matter how they spin it (including Jesuits or even Michael Novak), infallibility is something only God possesses. And human beings - whether a single human such as a pope or a collective group of human beings called the magisterium - cannot be infallible. To claim infallibility is almost unbelievably arrogant.
Discussing the contortions Aquinas had to go through with his theory of transubstantiation would require more time and space than I have here.
But, I would assume that neither the RC doctrines of infallibility or transubstantiation are "basics" of the faith, even if the RCC claims that ALL Catholics MUST give internal assent to these doctrines.
So how do you define "basics of the faith"?
The "doctrine" of papal infallibility is a 19th Century conclusion about longstanding beliefs of the Church. Barely was it approved before it was limited in scope to, basically, the pope going over to St. John Lateran, sitting on his wooden chair, and saying, "I am saying this infallibly." So that has happened once (the Assumption of Mary) or maybe twice (the Immaculate Conception), and whole, fat books have been written about what both of those "doctrines" mean and don't mean. When you are dead certain about what it is the pope said infallibly and what his infallibility means, maybe we can discuss it. But if you meet the conditions I just cited you will have the advantage over me.
DeleteTransubstantiation is a whole different ballgame. It depends on what "substance"meant to Aquinas. "Substance" did not mean, to him, the word we today use in the sentence, "What is this sticky substance under my seat? Oh, it's somebody's gum. Ugh." I sort of liked "Transignification" when some Dutch (of course) theologians proposed it, because it didn't require a deep knowledge of Medieval Scholasticism to understand. But "signification" itself has undergone changes in sense since it was proposed. I stick to "real presence," which I do believe, or to use the word "really" a lot.
One of the basic doctrines of the Church is that you shouldn't try to put God in a box because it doesn't work. Q.E.D.
The way I look at transubstantiation is, God created the universe from nothing (whether by the Big Bang or whatever means). He became an infant and lived as a mortal human being for 33 years. If he wants bread and wine to "become" himself in order to intimately share his life with believers, that doesn't seem an impossible thing.
DeleteAnne: About writing those checks ….. remember the 11th commandment: Thou shalt not fund Fiends and Fools.
ReplyDeleteTom: “I stick to "real presence," which I do believe
ReplyDeleteEpiscopalian at heart!
God is present everywhere. We can feel this presence IF we open ourselves to awareness of it, such as during Centering Prayer or during communion, as some of you do.
Catholic teaching is quite specific - bread becomes the body of Christ – the flesh of Christ.
Flesh - the soft substance consisting of muscle and fat that is found between the skin and bones of an animal or a human.
The wine becomes blood - real human blood.
Sometimes Jesus taught in parables. Sometimes he used metaphor. It seems to me that the words of the Last Supper were metaphor.
I prefer the Anglican understanding of "real presence” simply because they don't attempt to explain it. They call it a mystery and leave it at that.
Church history shows that the official church has erred many times. When I have raised this with some Catholics, their defense is that “well, it wasn’t infallible teaching”. That didn’t make a lot of difference though to the "heretics" of the era, who were punished in various nasty ways.
In my self-study of Catholic teachings that trouble me the most, I came to believe that the church erred in choosing Anselm’s theology of atonement, instead of Duns Scotus’ incarnational understanding
Whereas Aquinas viewed the Incarnation as God's remedy for a fallen planet, …for Duns Scotus, the Word becoming flesh as described in the prologue to John's Gospel must surely represent the Creator's primary design, not some kind of afterthought or Plan B.
Similarly, I think it erred in adopting Aquinas’ theory of transubstantiation instead of Augustine’s understanding of eucharist.
There is a brief summary of Augustine’s views on a protestant blog , quoting from Garry Wills’ book, Why Priests? (I’m guessing Jim P and Tom B are not fans).
“Indeed, Eucharist ("Thanksgiving") in its later sense, of sharing bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ, is never used in the New Testament, not even in the Letter to Hebrews, which alone calls Jesus a priest. Even when the term "Eucharist" came in, as with the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, it was still, as in Paul, simply a celebration of the people's oneness at the "one altar." That meaning for the "body of Christ" would persist as late as the fourth and fifth centuries, in Augustine's denial of the real presence of Jesus in the elements of the meal.
I mentioned earlier that Augustine did not believe in what is called "the real presence" of Jesus in the Eucharist and quoted several places where he said that. Here is his most explicit claim that what is changed in the Mass is not the bread given out but the believers receiving it:
"What you see passes away, but what is invisibly symbolized does not pass away. It perdures. The visible is received, eaten, and digested. But can the body of Christ be digested? Can the church of Christ be digested? Can Christ's limbs be digested? Of course not. [[Augustine, Sermon 227]]
If you want to know what is the body of Christ, hear what the Apostle [Paul] tells believers: "You are Christ's body, and his limbs" [1 Cor 12.27]. If, then, you are Christ's body and his limbs, it is your symbol that lies on the Lord's altar--what you receive is a symbol of yourselves. When you say "Amen," and you must be the body of Christ to make that "Amen" take effect. And why are you bread? Hear again the Apostle, speaking of this very symbol: "We are one bread, one body, many as we are" [1 Cor 10.17].[[Augustine, Sermon 272]]
Believers recognize the body of Christ when they take care to be the body of Christ. They should be the body of Christ if they want to draw life from the spirit of Christ. No life comes to the body of Christ but from the spirit of Christ.[[Augustine, In Joannem Tractatus 26.13]]
Anne, There are two ways a response could go. I could point out how closely what you call the "Anglican understanding" (I wonder where they got it?) tracks with contemporary Roman academic thought. Or I could be real perverse and bring up bleeding Hosts.
DeleteI will do the latter.
That Communion Hosts have been seen to bleed is not new; there have been stories through the centuries, some attested by responsible people, some photographed or otherwise documented, some subject to scientific investigation. (The latter is like calling poets to evaluate the findings of the latest lunar lander. But let that ride.) The one getting much attention lately is a 1996 case in which no less than Cardinal Bergoglio, who later became famous was involved:
http://www.loamagazine.org/nr/the_main_topic/eucharistic_miracle_in_buenos.html
Do such phenomena prove anything? For some people, they do. I daresay there are people whose faith is so intensely bound up in the Shroud of Turin that they would be crushed if the 12th century painter could be put on the witness stand (as an IRS attorney I know was once able to put a 16th Century Italian painter, very much alive but not 400 years old, nor Italian, on the stand in a tax case). On the other hand, bleeding Hosts don't move me one way or another, and that probably applies to most Catholics. Doubters can cite illusion, hysteria or fakery, and they can be trusted to be just as devout in their belief that the Hosts don't bleed as the true-believers are that they do.
If you think about it, it has to be as much a matter of faith that God would not turn bread and wine into flesh and blood as it is a matter of faith that he did.
The discussion of bleeding Hosts will not, I know, satisfy you that the Eucharist is really, really Jesus' body and blood. But, as God told (metaphorically) Job, His ways are not man's ways. You gotta give God that.
If Jesus was talking metaphorically at the Last Supper then when he talked about it earlier, in what we now call the Bread of Life discourse (John 6; 22-58) and many disciples threw up their hands and went home (verse 66), why didn't he say, "Hey, come back. It's only a figure of speech. I didn't mean to scandalize the church ladies"?
Tom, you believe it, I don't. Really it's no more complicated than what you wrote about the bleeding hosts. Some believe it, some don't.
ReplyDeleteI have way too many issues with scripture to always believe that the words attributed to Jesus by unknown authors who did not witness his ministry and wrote decades after his death are necessarily what Jesus actually said, word for word.
Tom: I could point out how closely what you call the "Anglican understanding" (I wonder where they got it?) tracks with contemporary Roman academic thought.
Actually, Anglicans and other protestants have often been ahead of the Catholic church in "development of doctrine". After a few decades, or centuries, the RCC then plays catch up and, as is often noted, says "As the Church has always taught..."
But, I believe that God is present everywhere and always. The "real presence" is not limited to the eucharist, and Jesus does not live locked away in a small round host in a tabernacle.
I have not read that current official RCC teaching "tracks" with the Anglican understanding. I have not read that the RCC has changed its teaching that the mass is a re-enactment of the blood sacrifice of Jesus and that the bread and wine are "real presence" only, and not the literal body and blood of Jesus under the appearance of bread and wine. Perhaps some current thinkers and academic theologians in the RCC challenge the official teaching, but that doesn't matter much if Rome doesn't change it. At least Francis doesn't silence them all, as his two most recent predecessors were so apt to do.
In the meantime, I think Augustine was a lot closer to the true meaning of the eucharist than was Aquinas.
But these different understandings are why you are still Catholic and I am not.
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DeleteWell, that is a Protestant view of Rome. I doubt many church-going Italian Catholics would know what in the world you are talking about.
DeleteBut, as you say, I believe it, and you don't. Although, if you throw out the New Testament (unknown ink-stained wretches), I don't know where you get all your certainties about Jesus.
Maybe Augustine, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus are all right. I believe that God is both transcendent and immanent, that he is present in all creation, and in all people, and in an intimate and particular way in the Eucharist. As you say, we can't put him in a box.
DeleteTom: Although, if you throw out the New Testament (unknown ink-stained wretches), I don't know where you get all your certainties about Jesus.
ReplyDeleteTom, I don't have any certainties about Jesus. I have few certainties about any christian beliefs. I often wish that I did. It was very comforting to have a lot of certainties, about Jesus and everything else I had been taught and once believed with few doubts. That changed very gradually.
Like Daniel Callahan, sometime in middle age those certainties slowly became uncertainties.
When it comes to saying the creed during the liturgy, I say "I believe in God....maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen". After that I don't say anything.
Also I haven't "thrown out the NT" Nor the Hebrew Scriptures.
Basically, I now have a more Marcus Borg-ian understanding of them, than a traditional Catholic understanding of scripture.
"I have way too many issues with scripture to always believe that the words attributed to Jesus by unknown authors who did not witness his ministry and wrote decades after his death are necessarily what Jesus actually said, word for word."
DeleteWell, that dismissal of scripture -- which you expressed before -- sure sounds to me like either a) Jefferson going after the NT with a knife to cut out the parts -- mostly miracles -- he coudn't believe, or b) Trump shouting "fake news." If it is something else, you have to express it better. If you are simply saying the authors followed contemporary standards and not the 1960 Associated Press Style Book, you are coming late to the party.
Tom, I do not assume that you interpret ALL scripture literally simply because you take selected passages of the NT literally. Since you are RC, I do not believe that you believe in either biblical literalism or biblical inerrancy. But, perhaps you do. If so, that is your way of understanding scripture. It is not mine.
DeleteThe sarcasm about Trump and "fake news" or implying that maybe I would prefer scripture according to NT Style is unwarranted.
I interpret much of both the Hebrew scriptures and the NT metaphorically rather than literally.
Understanding some of scripture metaphorically does not nullify the essential truth of the scriptures. Very often those who are 100% biblical literalists miss the essential truth completely, because they don't understand the use of metaphor in the bible and hang on to literal words instead of the deeper meaning of a passage.
You seem to have skipped over part of my earlier response. I said that I tend to take a somewhat Marcus Borg-ian approach to understanding scriptures. When I first read his book about how he understands the bible, I had one of those "aha!" moments. I'm quite sure you would be a bit scandalized by Borg's approach, and I am not judging you for that. We are all different.
Each of us has to find our own way in the spiritual journey. You continue on the path that I was once on. However, starting about 20 years ago, my current path branched off in a somewhat different direction than the path that I had been on for 50 years and this path is part of my personal journey towards God.
You have one path. I have a different path.
My evangelical friends have yet another way of understanding the bible and journeying towards God, and my Orthodox friend has her own path. My Jewish friends are also journeying towards God, on their special path. I believe that all who seek God, regardless of the name they use for God, are on the same journey.
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time : Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally by Marcus Borg
Commonweal has a good series right now on why people leave the church, join the church, and stay in the church. Daniel Callahan is among those featured. He left, his wife stayed.
ReplyDelete