[212] Qu. A Catholic young lady is employed by a concert bureau. Most of the engagements are for music halls or theatres [sic], but the bureau has accepted some engagements for Chautauqua [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua] work during the coming summer. The young lady is booked for parts in a quartette, who are to sing at camp meetings. The program on some occasions is so arranged that the quartette will sing during the services. This lady is the only support of an invalid father and brothers and sisters. To give up her present work would mean hardships and privation. The young woman does not want to displease God. I would not like to advise anything that would entail suffering unless I am positively sure that such must be done. Kindly give your solution of the case.
Resp. Theologians are unanimously of the opinion that active, formal participation by Catholics in Protestant services is forbidden. On this point there is no room for discussion. Furthermore, it is positively forbidden to play the organ in a Protestant church during heretical services, even when that is the Catholic organist's means of obtaining a livelihood. For this statement we have the authority of an instruction of the S. Congregation of the Propaganda, dated 8 July, 1889 (Collectanea, n. 1854). It should, however, be noted that in the [213] decree the clause "dum ibi falsum cultum exercent" is restrictive. It would be allowed, of course, for a Catholic to practice on the organ in a Protestant church when no services are being held. Similarly, it may be urged with prudence and discretion, in particular cases, that some gatherings of non-Catholics for the sake of what they call moral culture, even when these take place regularly on Sundays, are not engaged in false religious worship in opposition to the Catholic Church. Indeed, the most severe condemnations of such gatherings is that they are not religious at all. This applies, we think, to many of the Chautauqua organizations. It applies particularly in the case propounded, when, as is evident, the young woman has no desire to do anything displeasing to God. Prudence and discretion require that Catholics be discouraged from associating themselves with any activity that may throw doubt on their loyalty to the true Church. They require also that in particular instances persons whose good faith and Catholic loyalty are beyond question should not be forbidden to carry out such a contract as is mentioned in this case.
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Source: "Communicatio in Sacris," American Ecclesiastical Review 54 (February 1916): 212–213.
Showing posts with label Protestantism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protestantism. Show all posts
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Repost: Catholic Singers in Protestant Churches
[524] Qu. Now that the Review is urging forward the correct interpretation of the Pope's motu proprio on Chant and the music reform, our city pastors are threatening to get the bishops into trouble by referring the indignant lady soloists hitherto in possession of the lofty organ domain, to the episcopal parlors for adjudication of their grievances. It is needless to say that explanations are out of the question, but soothings are not, and a bishop who knows his business will not fan the flame of female resentment.
But there is a serious aspect to this question. Some of our singers who have been doing their duty, and have justly earned a salary, even as the priest himself does in the exercise of the sacred functions, are being deprived of a living by being dismissed from the Catholic choir. Some of these could readily find the needed material compensation and more in accepting positions as singers in non-Catholic, that is, Protestant or Jewish churches. In a few cases no other way of earning a decent livelihood would seem to be open to such women, who for the rest are good and believing Catholics. Is there any interpretation of the prohibition of communicatio in sacris which gives these really worthy women a chance for their living? It seems to me that Protestant religious service is in large measure nothing more than a sacred concert, and no theologian would object to our Catholic lovers of music attending sacred concerts in which Protestants take a leading part, since we live in constant intercourse with such; and Catholic charity owes them undoubtedly a certain amount of respect for holding their views on religious matters in good faith, though perhaps not in a very serious way. Are we not too severe in these matters? I felt as if it were so when not long ago a lady said to me, "Priests don't realize our position; they need not look for a living, and so it is easy for them to make laws."
Resp. The Review has had occasion to express an opinion on the above subject before the present supposed urgency arose by which ladies who have been singing professionally in Catholic choirs are thrown out of positions. The question is not whether we make hard laws, but whether the laws which God made may be explained away by our circumstances and needs. Necessity dispenses from the law, but not every inconvenience or hardship implies a necessity, and no inconvenience or hardship could sanction [525] an act of disobedience implying sin. The priests in France who are deprived of their salary and in some cases of a decent support or living might do many things unbecoming their sacred calling, but they could not lawfully go into Protestant or Jewish houses of worship and take part in the same under plea of earning a living.
For the rest, we have only to repeat here what we said in a previous number of the Review upon this subject.[1]
Whilst as Catholics we are not forbidden honorably to assist Protestants, Jews or Pagans when they stand in need of our service, nor to earn our daily bread by serving them in honest employment—the positive divine law forbids all conscious and direct participation in heretical worship. This is done by playing the organ or singing in the religious service of those who deny the revealed truth of Christ as manifested through its only legitimate channel, the Catholic Church. In case of most sects the very term "Protestant," accepted by them as their religious party-name, is an unconscious admission of their denial of the Catholic teaching as emanating from God. Individual Protestants may not realize this fact; they may be, as we say, "in good faith;" [sic] nevertheless they have attached themselves to a wrong or defective system of interpreting the truth in which God commands us to worship Him. Catholics who are supposed to know and realize the fact that they are in possession of the true faith, cannot consent under any pretext to participate in such false worship without denying implicitly the faith which they are pledged to maintain uncorrupted at the risk of their lives.
What is said here of Protestants is true of Jews and of all other sects separated from the one true Church which, like an open book, is accessible to all who will approach and examine her teaching without malice or prejudice.
What the Catholic believes on this subject to-day is precisely the same as that which the early Christians believed when they shed their blood as martyrs rather than worship in the pagan faith; or which the Jews believed before the coming of Christ, as is witnessed by Eleazar and the Maccabees, who preferred to suffer torture and death sooner than participate in a religious worship [526] which they knew to be false, although there may have been men who belonged to it in good faith.
If there could be any doubt as to the duty of Catholics in this respect, it would be dispelled by the following declaration of the sacred tribunal which acts as the ordinary legitimate interpreter of Catholic disciplinary law. (Cf. Collectan., n. 1854.)
Nor is every gathering of non-Catholics for purposes of moral culture, on Sundays, a religious worship in the sense that it excludes or opposes the Catholic teaching of Christ's church.
This [sic] it may be useful for confessors to remember, not because Catholics are in any way to be encouraged to associate themselves with any movement which will cast a doubt upon their thorough and sincere fidelity to the one true Church of Christ, but because circumstances may bring a Catholic unwittingly into associations which look like a denial of faith without being such in reality. In these cases prudence and discretion will counsel and lead a person out of the danger, where blind and mechanical zeal would forthwith condemn absolution under morally unchangeable conditions.
---
Footnotes:
1. Vol. XV, 1896, pp. 428–430.
---
Source: "Catholic Singers in Protestant Churches," American Ecclesiastical Review 33 (November 1905): 524–526.
But there is a serious aspect to this question. Some of our singers who have been doing their duty, and have justly earned a salary, even as the priest himself does in the exercise of the sacred functions, are being deprived of a living by being dismissed from the Catholic choir. Some of these could readily find the needed material compensation and more in accepting positions as singers in non-Catholic, that is, Protestant or Jewish churches. In a few cases no other way of earning a decent livelihood would seem to be open to such women, who for the rest are good and believing Catholics. Is there any interpretation of the prohibition of communicatio in sacris which gives these really worthy women a chance for their living? It seems to me that Protestant religious service is in large measure nothing more than a sacred concert, and no theologian would object to our Catholic lovers of music attending sacred concerts in which Protestants take a leading part, since we live in constant intercourse with such; and Catholic charity owes them undoubtedly a certain amount of respect for holding their views on religious matters in good faith, though perhaps not in a very serious way. Are we not too severe in these matters? I felt as if it were so when not long ago a lady said to me, "Priests don't realize our position; they need not look for a living, and so it is easy for them to make laws."
Resp. The Review has had occasion to express an opinion on the above subject before the present supposed urgency arose by which ladies who have been singing professionally in Catholic choirs are thrown out of positions. The question is not whether we make hard laws, but whether the laws which God made may be explained away by our circumstances and needs. Necessity dispenses from the law, but not every inconvenience or hardship implies a necessity, and no inconvenience or hardship could sanction [525] an act of disobedience implying sin. The priests in France who are deprived of their salary and in some cases of a decent support or living might do many things unbecoming their sacred calling, but they could not lawfully go into Protestant or Jewish houses of worship and take part in the same under plea of earning a living.
For the rest, we have only to repeat here what we said in a previous number of the Review upon this subject.[1]
Whilst as Catholics we are not forbidden honorably to assist Protestants, Jews or Pagans when they stand in need of our service, nor to earn our daily bread by serving them in honest employment—the positive divine law forbids all conscious and direct participation in heretical worship. This is done by playing the organ or singing in the religious service of those who deny the revealed truth of Christ as manifested through its only legitimate channel, the Catholic Church. In case of most sects the very term "Protestant," accepted by them as their religious party-name, is an unconscious admission of their denial of the Catholic teaching as emanating from God. Individual Protestants may not realize this fact; they may be, as we say, "in good faith;" [sic] nevertheless they have attached themselves to a wrong or defective system of interpreting the truth in which God commands us to worship Him. Catholics who are supposed to know and realize the fact that they are in possession of the true faith, cannot consent under any pretext to participate in such false worship without denying implicitly the faith which they are pledged to maintain uncorrupted at the risk of their lives.
What is said here of Protestants is true of Jews and of all other sects separated from the one true Church which, like an open book, is accessible to all who will approach and examine her teaching without malice or prejudice.
What the Catholic believes on this subject to-day is precisely the same as that which the early Christians believed when they shed their blood as martyrs rather than worship in the pagan faith; or which the Jews believed before the coming of Christ, as is witnessed by Eleazar and the Maccabees, who preferred to suffer torture and death sooner than participate in a religious worship [526] which they knew to be false, although there may have been men who belonged to it in good faith.
If there could be any doubt as to the duty of Catholics in this respect, it would be dispelled by the following declaration of the sacred tribunal which acts as the ordinary legitimate interpreter of Catholic disciplinary law. (Cf. Collectan., n. 1854.)
Ex Litt. S. C. de Prop. Fide 8 Jul. 1889, (ad Archiep. Marianopolit.)It must not be forgotten, however, that playing or singing in churches or houses which are used for Protestant worship is not quite the same as playing or singing at Protestant worship. [N.B. This is the part of the reason that early American Catholics could share the same church building with Protestants, having Mass at one time, and the Protestant service at a different time.]
"Quidam . . . istius archi-dioecensis petierat facultatem pulsandi in diebus festis organa in templis protestantium ad victum sibi procurandum. S. Congregatio super precibus, uti supra, hoc edidit decretum Fer IV. die 19 elapsi Junii:
Illicitum esse in templis haereticorum, cum ibi falsum cultum exercent, organum pulsare. . . . Quod decretum SS. D. N. Leo XIII eadem die ratum ha buit et confirmavit."
Nor is every gathering of non-Catholics for purposes of moral culture, on Sundays, a religious worship in the sense that it excludes or opposes the Catholic teaching of Christ's church.
This [sic] it may be useful for confessors to remember, not because Catholics are in any way to be encouraged to associate themselves with any movement which will cast a doubt upon their thorough and sincere fidelity to the one true Church of Christ, but because circumstances may bring a Catholic unwittingly into associations which look like a denial of faith without being such in reality. In these cases prudence and discretion will counsel and lead a person out of the danger, where blind and mechanical zeal would forthwith condemn absolution under morally unchangeable conditions.
---
Footnotes:
1. Vol. XV, 1896, pp. 428–430.
---
Source: "Catholic Singers in Protestant Churches," American Ecclesiastical Review 33 (November 1905): 524–526.
Repost: Catholic Organists and Singers in Protestant Churches
[428] Qu. Dear Rev. Sir: In a Conference lately held we disagreed as to the licity [sic], under any circumstances, of a Catholic acting as organist for any Protestant service. We agreed to submit the question to the Ecclesiastical Review.
Can a Catholic, in conscience, act as a salaried organist or as singer in a Jewish synagogue or Protestant church, i. e., as such during what they call their divine service?
It was declared that no Priest, Bishop or Pope could grant said permission under any circumstances.
Resp. Whilst as Catholics we are not forbidden honorably to assist Protestants, Jews or Pagans when they stand in need of our service, nor to earn our daily bread by serving them in honest employment—the positive divine law forbids all conscious and direct participation in heretical worship. This is done by playing the organ or singing in the religious service of those who deny the revealed truth of Christ as manifested through its only legitimate channel, the Catholic Church. In case of most sects the very term "Protestant," accepted by them as their religious party-name, is an unconscious admission of their denial of the Catholic teaching as emanating from God. Individual Protestants may not realize this fact; they may be, as we say, "in good faith;" [sic] nevertheless they have attached themselves to a wrong or defective system of interpreting the truth in which God commands us to worship Him. Catholics who are supposed to know and realize the fact that they are in possession of the true faith, cannot consent under any pretext to participate in such false worship without denying implicitly the faith which [429] they are pledged to maintain uncorrupted at the risk of their lives.
What is said here of Protestants is true of Jews and of all other sects separated from the one true Church which, like an open book, is accessible to all who will approach and examine her teaching without malice or prejudice.
What the Catholic believes on this subject to-day is precisely the same as that which the early Christians believed when they shed their blood as martyrs rather than worship in the pagan faith; or which the Jews believed before the coming of Christ, as is witnessed by Eleazar and the Maccabees, who preferred to suffer torture and death sooner than participate in a religious worship which they knew to be false, although there may have been men who belonged to it in good faith.
If there could be any doubt as to the duty of Catholics in this respect, it would be dispelled by the following declaration of the sacred tribunal which acts as the ordinary legitimate interpreter of Catholic disciplinary law. (Cf. Collectan., n. 1854.)
Nor is every gathering of non-Catholics for purposes of moral culture, on Sundays, a religious worship in the sense that it excludes or opposes the Catholic teaching of Christ's church.
This [sic] it may be useful for confessors to remember, not because Catholics are in any way to be encouraged to associate [430] themselves with any movement which will cast a doubt upon their thorough and sincere fidelity to the one true Church of Christ, but because circumstances may bring a Catholic unwittingly into associations which look like a denial of faith without being such in reality. In these cases prudence and discretion will counsel and lead a person out of the danger, where blind and mechanical zeal would forthwith condemn absolution under morally unchangeable conditions.
We discussed a case of this kind, not long ago, in the Review.
---
Source: "Catholic Organists and Singers in Protestant Churches," American Ecclesiastical Review 15 (October 1896): 428–430.
Can a Catholic, in conscience, act as a salaried organist or as singer in a Jewish synagogue or Protestant church, i. e., as such during what they call their divine service?
It was declared that no Priest, Bishop or Pope could grant said permission under any circumstances.
Resp. Whilst as Catholics we are not forbidden honorably to assist Protestants, Jews or Pagans when they stand in need of our service, nor to earn our daily bread by serving them in honest employment—the positive divine law forbids all conscious and direct participation in heretical worship. This is done by playing the organ or singing in the religious service of those who deny the revealed truth of Christ as manifested through its only legitimate channel, the Catholic Church. In case of most sects the very term "Protestant," accepted by them as their religious party-name, is an unconscious admission of their denial of the Catholic teaching as emanating from God. Individual Protestants may not realize this fact; they may be, as we say, "in good faith;" [sic] nevertheless they have attached themselves to a wrong or defective system of interpreting the truth in which God commands us to worship Him. Catholics who are supposed to know and realize the fact that they are in possession of the true faith, cannot consent under any pretext to participate in such false worship without denying implicitly the faith which [429] they are pledged to maintain uncorrupted at the risk of their lives.
What is said here of Protestants is true of Jews and of all other sects separated from the one true Church which, like an open book, is accessible to all who will approach and examine her teaching without malice or prejudice.
What the Catholic believes on this subject to-day is precisely the same as that which the early Christians believed when they shed their blood as martyrs rather than worship in the pagan faith; or which the Jews believed before the coming of Christ, as is witnessed by Eleazar and the Maccabees, who preferred to suffer torture and death sooner than participate in a religious worship which they knew to be false, although there may have been men who belonged to it in good faith.
If there could be any doubt as to the duty of Catholics in this respect, it would be dispelled by the following declaration of the sacred tribunal which acts as the ordinary legitimate interpreter of Catholic disciplinary law. (Cf. Collectan., n. 1854.)
Ex Litt. S. C. de Prop. Fide 8 Jul. 1889, (ad Archiep. Marianopolit.)It must not be forgotten, however, that playing or singing in churches or houses which are used for Protestant worship is not quite the same as playing or singing at Protestant worship. [N.B. This is the part of the reason that early American Catholics could share the same church building with Protestants, having Mass at one time, and the Protestant service at a different time.]
"Quidam . . . istius archi-dioecensis petierat facultatem pulsandi in diebus festis organa in templis protestantium ad victum sibi procurandum. S. Congregatio super precibus, uti supra, hoc edidit decretum Fer IV. die 19 elapsi Junii:
Illicitum esse in templis haereticorum, cum ibi falsum cultum exercent, organum pulsare. . . . Quod decretum SS. D. N. Leo XIII eadem die ratum ha buit et confirmavit."
Nor is every gathering of non-Catholics for purposes of moral culture, on Sundays, a religious worship in the sense that it excludes or opposes the Catholic teaching of Christ's church.
This [sic] it may be useful for confessors to remember, not because Catholics are in any way to be encouraged to associate [430] themselves with any movement which will cast a doubt upon their thorough and sincere fidelity to the one true Church of Christ, but because circumstances may bring a Catholic unwittingly into associations which look like a denial of faith without being such in reality. In these cases prudence and discretion will counsel and lead a person out of the danger, where blind and mechanical zeal would forthwith condemn absolution under morally unchangeable conditions.
We discussed a case of this kind, not long ago, in the Review.
---
Source: "Catholic Organists and Singers in Protestant Churches," American Ecclesiastical Review 15 (October 1896): 428–430.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Early-Modern Catholicism's Adaptations in the 16th Century
What were the changes that constituted the transition from late-medieval to early-modern European history? I would identify five: the emergence of the modern state; demographic and economic expansion along with social dislocation; the European reach across the seas to Asia and America; the intellectual and cultural tendencies of the Renaissance and the dissemination of information brought about by the invention of the printing press, and, of course, the Protestant Reformation. Two general features of Catholicism's response were the attempt to provide the faithful, especially in the growing cities, with a more relevant form of Christianity and then to establish order within the Church and beyond after the upheavals of the early part of the century. Often the two were difficult to reconcile. They also characterized developments within the Protestant confessions. This should not surprise us if we conceive of the major confessions or churches that emerged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation as competing responses to the challenges presented by a changing world. [...]
Paul III reinstituted the Roman Inquisition in 1542. Although its effective jurisdiction did not reach beyond Italy, as the Holy Office it gradually came to set the standard for orthodoxy for the universal Church. The Council of Trent avoided taking a position on the delicate issue of the relationship between pope and bishops, and on its last day in its request to the pope to confirm its decrees it acknowledged his authority. Subsequently, Pius IV in the bull Benedictus Deus confirmed the council's decrees while at the same time assuring the pope the right to interpret the council and to establish a congregation for this task. Gregory XIII enhanced the role of papal nuncios. Sixtus V restructured papal government into fifteen congregations--six for the Papal States and nine for the universal Church--and he also further developed the requirement for bishops to make regular ad limina visits to Rome. [...]
After the Reformation the papacy deferred, or was compelled to defer even more, to the secular power. When the saintly archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo, became embroiled with Philip II of Spain over ecclesiastical rights, Gregory XIII inclined to the side of the king. Later in the Concordat of Munich of 1583 the same pope conceded to Duke William V of Bavaria rights to tax church property, to appoint to many ecclesiastical positions, and to oversee the administration of extensive church property. [...]
Meanwhile, starting in the early-sixteenth century, Catholic thinkers drew upon the intellectual arsenal of Scholasticism to propose a philosophy of the emerging state. The Dominican Francisco Vittoria and the Jesuits Francisco Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine, building on the basis of St. Thomas Aquinas, laid down the foundation for an international society of sovereign states that included the territories across the seas that had newly been brought into the European orbit. Their thought was to have a decided impact on developments in the evolution of international law.
The long sixteenth century generally witnessed demographic growth, and economic expansion usually followed. Growth was most prominent in the cities where both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation first took root; the population of Antwerp, for example, jumped from 40,000 in 1500 to 100,000 in the 1560s. Europe grew in the direction of a capitalist and of a world economy. Catholic mercantilist writers such as Giovanni Botero (1589) and Adam Contzen (1620) emphasized the importance of the production of wealth for a healthy state. Yet growth did not benefit everyone, and the numbers of the poor escalated in the cities. Starting with the growth of a commercial economy in the Italian city-states of the thirteenth century, some theologians had begun to take a more benign view of usury, which it will be recalled meant any interest on a loan not just excessive interest as it does today. [...]
Confraternities have been called "the primary organized expression of Catholic lay religious life from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries." As they continued to grow in number and in membership in the sixteenth century, they expanded their works of charity, partly in response to the increasing number of poor and unfortunate. Often they cooperated with municipal authorities; sometimes they competed with them as both sought to meet new challenges. In Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century, perhaps due to the wars there, confraternities manifested a growing activist spirit as they reached out to the sick and orphaned. It has been estimated that in the cities of Italy, between one-third and one-fourth of all males by 1600 attached themselves to a confraternity at some point in their lives. Of a population of 19,000 in the city of Perugia in 1600, roughly 2000 belonged to a confraternity. The Jesuit Marian congregations, which originated in Rome in 1563 and spread through much of Catholic Europe, often required their members to assist the poor, the sick, and those in prison. [...]
In the widespread belief that the Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, "Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," applied only to the apostolic generation, Protestants did not mount serious missionary efforts across the seas until the late-eighteenth century.
The arrival of a group of Franciscans in the Antilles in 1500 inaugurated the first proper missionary effort in the Americas. Santo Domingo and Concepción de la Vega on Hispaniola and San Juan in Puerto Rico were established as the first dioceses in the Americas, in 1508 and 1511 respectively. After the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes, twelve Franciscans arrived in Mexico, their number suggesting the twelve apostles, and they initiated the systematic evangelization of the conquered. The Dominicans followed in 1528 and the Augustinians three years later. Complaints arose about the treatment of the Indians by Spanish colonists, and frequently missionaries served as advocates for the former. In 1537 Pope Paul III published the bull Sublimis Deus condemning the view that the Indians were to be treated as dumb brutes for the service of the Spaniards and asserting that they were truly human beings and competent of receiving the Catholic faith. They were not to be deprived of either liberty or property even though they were not Christians. Whether Indians should be ordained to the ministry became a controversial issue, and after some experimentation, the first provincial council of Mexico City in 1555 prohibited their ordination as well as that of blacks and mestizos, a fateful decision for the Church in the Americas. To what extent did the Indians truly assimilate Christianity? This question remains debatable to the present day. One reason for the prohibition of ordination was doubt about the depth of Indians' conversion. Yet Indians sometimes demonstrated heroism in their new faith, and it is hard to believe that they were any less Christian than many people in remote areas of Europe. [...]
The Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano, who arrived in Goa in 1574 as the representative of the Jesuit superior general, forcefully advocated accommodation to the Asian cultures, and he exercised a profound influence on the Jesuit missions over the next thirty-two years. [...]
The papal Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith came into existence in 1622, with the goal of oversight of the Church's far-flung missionary activity. It was a product of a new Roman universalism. Yet it never functioned significantly in either the Spanish or Portuguese colonies due to the opposition of the monarchs. The congregation did, however, among other things, push for better preparation of missionaries, work to lessen the rivalries among religious orders, and advocate for the creation of native clergy. The Church's missionary activity in the early-modern period testified to its vitality. A global Church was aborning. Yet despite creative initiatives, it remained overwhelmingly European in character. [...]
Lay elites in the cities sought a form of Christianity that spoke more directly to them; both the Reformation and Catholic reform grew out of the cities. This changing religious mentality can be associated with the cultural and intellectual movement that we call the Renaissance, the fourth change that ushered in early-modern times. Originating in Italy in the fourteenth century, it did not reach over the Alps in a significant fashion until about 1490. Jacob Burckhardt summarized the spirit of the Renaissance in the well-known phrase "the discovery of man and the world," words still valid today if we do not understand them in the pagan sense of Burckhardt or as a totally new development, and if we expand their meaning. "Discovery of man" pointed to a new individualism, to a new self-consciousness and recognition of the unique human personality and to its potential for achievement. The portrait, for example, and the self-portrait became popular forms of artistic expression, bringing out the individuality of the person portrayed. "Discovery of the world" expressed an appreciation of nature, to be sure, but also of the many varieties of the secular or lay world--of the man of politics, for example, or of the merchant. Catholics also incorporated many features of humanism, the principal cultural current of the Renaissance, into education, and they learned to exploit the prototypical invention of the Renaissance, the printing press. To the Renaissance also belongs the start of the Scientific Revolution with the publication of Copernicus's On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543. Notoriously, the outcome of the Galileo Affair represented a major failure for the Church.
Corresponding to Renaissance individualism there developed, starting with the Devotio Moderna in the late-fourteenth century and the Franciscan and Carthusian traditions, new, systematic forms of mental prayer and meditation for the individual. Here the Ejercitatorio de la vida espiritual of the Benedictine abbot of Montserrat, Garcia Cisneros, can stand for many works; it seems to have exercised an influence on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which aimed as a principal goal at the discovery of God's will for the individual. Eventually, through the Spiritual Exercises and through spiritual writers such as Lorenzo Scupoli and St. Francis de Sales, this form of private prayer spread to the lay elite. As another expression of this individualism came the more regular use of the sacrament of confession. By the early-seventeenth century the devout were approaching it once a month or at least four times a year, and it was administered in the privacy of the confessional, a boxlike structure introduced by Archbishop Borromeo in Milan. The confessional facilitated a private conversation between priest and penitent and encouraged the use of the sacrament for individual spiritual direction and the application of moral norms to individual cases--that is, casuistry. In addition, coming into use at this time was the general confession, apparently stemming also from Garcia Cisneros. In this form of confession the penitent looked back over his or her whole life to determine his or her sinful patterns and tendencies, and once again confessed sins that had already been forgiven. This practice aimed to evoke a deeper contrition, and for our purposes, to arrive at a more profound, individual self-knowledge. Loyola incorporated the general confession into the Spiritual Exercises and required it from all new entrants into the Society of Jesus. Eventually, through the Jesuits' Marian congregations and through their preaching, the practice spread widely throughout the Catholic world. In both the regular and the general confession the examination of conscience promoted the individual's knowledge of his or her own self. De Sales in his widely circulated Introduction to the Devout Life first published in 1609 also recommended the general confession.
Machiavelli boldly asserted in the Prince in 1513 that the serious Christian could not succeed in politics--that is, create and, above all, maintain a powerful state. The fictional Raphael Hythloday in Thomas More's Utopia vigorously defended the same position when he contended that were he to take a position as a royal councillor, he would either compromise himself or be pushed to the margins by the other council members. But mainstream Catholic thought during this period, influenced by the fundamentally optimistic theology of Aquinas, rejected this view vigorously and reaffirmed the position of pre-Machiavellian Renaissance humanism, which maintained that the active life, and especially the political life, represented a noble Christian vocation. Most Christians could not accept practical exclusion from political life. Eventually an extensive anti-Machiavellian literature began to come off the press that aimed to show, in detail and in practice, that the Christian man of politics, whether ruler or councillor, could indeed achieve political success. Indeed, following Cicero in his De Officiis, they generally argued optimistically that the moral and religious man of politics would usually win out over the devious and vicious one. Botero's Ragione di stato (1589) argued this case most convincingly, showing, for example, that the prince who fostered economic development advanced both his own interest and that of his people, and had no need of recourse to the underhanded methods deemed necessary by Machiavelli. The good and the useful went hand in hand. But the anti-Machiavellians often had to resort to a sophisticated casuistry so as to remain consistent in their treatment of delicate issues such as the use of deceit in diplomatic affairs. The Jesuit theater as it later developed also illustrated the Christian value of the civic life.
Many other books aimed to illustrate more generally how one could lead a full Christian life in the world. Catholics learned quickly to put Gutenberg's invention to good use, although at first the Protestants outdid them. The Introduction to the Devout Life by the saintly bishop of Geneva, Francis de Sales, probably exercised the most influence, and it has endured as a Christian classic to the present day. De Sales addressed the Introduction to a fictional "Philothea"--that is, a soul loving or in love with God, male or female, or as he put it, to those aspiring to devotion. He remarked, "For my part, I would have devout people, whether men or women, always the best dressed in a group but the least pompous and affected." By his death in 1622, more than forty editions of the Introduction had appeared, and it had been translated into the major European languages. Other authors wrote in the same vein if not so elegantly. The Jesuit Joannes Busaeus's De statibus hominis, which appeared at Mainz in 1613, treated the life of the soldier, the physician, and the peasant among others, and another Jesuit, Nicholas Caussin, in his widely circulated La cour sainte, first published at Paris in 1624, pointed out how even in the ambience of the court one could attain to holiness. [...]
Above all, the new orders and congregations turned to education, especially at the elementary and secondary levels. This followed from the widespread conviction that preaching, no matter how effective, was not adequate to the formation of Christians. Systematic religious education was necessary, and this meant schools. Thus the Church shared the Renaissance confidence in education. [...]
These [Jesuit] schools took over and propagated many features of Renaissance humanism, in particular a focus on the ancient classics of Greece but especially Rome and attention to the development of students articulate in writing and in speech. The ancient classics, according to the Jesuits, contributed to the students' growth in virtue and in devotion to the public good. Latin schools of other religious orders often adopted the same system. Here we see a prominent example of adaptation to contemporary culture. [...]
The Protestant Reformation ushered in the most profound change and challenge to the Catholic Church in the long sixteenth century. Itself a response at least in part to the longing for a more relevant form of Christianity, it intensified and gave new urgency to movements of reform already at work within the Catholic Church, and it induced a spirit of defensiveness. It generated effects often associated with confessionalism and confessionalization in a narrower sense, such as the clear elaboration of doctrine as formulated by the Council of Trent, and it elicited a militance that contributed substantially to the religious wars of the early-modern period. [...]
In the Decree on Justification [the Council of Trent] rejected Protestant positions when it asserted the role of free will in the process of salvation while avoiding forms of Pelagianism. In doing so, it also aligned itself with a vigorous current of Renaissance humanism that extolled man's freedom. The council's emphasis on works both stimulated and confirmed the new activism.
Many reform measures were taken by the council, with a view to strengthening the position of the bishop within his diocese and to eliminating abuses in Catholic practices. The council prescribed regular diocesan and metropolitan synods to inculcate its teaching and to oversee its measures of reform as well as regular visitation of parishes by bishops. The pastoral role of both bishops and pastors was accentuated; they were not chiefly benefice-holders but shepherds who resided with their flocks and preached to them regularly. [...] The council virtually ignored two developments of early-modern Catholicism: the rise of the new orders and congregations and the vast missionary enterprise across the seas.
After the close of the council, there appeared the Catechism of the Council of Trent that was intended to incorporate Tridentine theology principally for the benefit of parish priests, and accompanying it came other catechisms for various groups, pastors, students, and children, such as those of St. Peter Canisius, all in response to the recognized need for catechetical instruction. Further normative texts were issued by Rome in the following decades: the new breviary for priests in 1568, the missal of Pius V two years later, a revised version of canon law in 1582, and finally the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate edition of the Scriptures in 1592. These joined the catechisms to give the Tridentine Church a broadly drawn normative basis for its instruction, worship, legal practice, and Scripture study. [1]
The Reformation generated among Catholics a spirit of militance that is expressed in the term Counter-Reformation and that helped incite the religious wars of the period: War of the League of Schmalkeld, the French Religious Wars, the War of Dutch Independence, the Spanish Armada, and the Thirty Years War. [...]
Let me close with the words of the French historian Marc Lienhard: "The practice of history, which implies an opening to the long range [of history], permits the historian at the same time to maintain a certain distance from the crises of today and a certain confidence in the future of the Christian faith." [2]
2. Marc Leinhard, "Du chantier historique à l'engagement aujourd'hui," in L'historien et la foi, ed. Jean Delumeau (Paris, 1996), p. 184.
---
Source: Robert Bireley, "Early-Modern Catholicism as a Response to the Changing World of the Long Sixteenth Century," Catholic Historical Review 95, no. 2 (April 2009): 218-239.
Paul III reinstituted the Roman Inquisition in 1542. Although its effective jurisdiction did not reach beyond Italy, as the Holy Office it gradually came to set the standard for orthodoxy for the universal Church. The Council of Trent avoided taking a position on the delicate issue of the relationship between pope and bishops, and on its last day in its request to the pope to confirm its decrees it acknowledged his authority. Subsequently, Pius IV in the bull Benedictus Deus confirmed the council's decrees while at the same time assuring the pope the right to interpret the council and to establish a congregation for this task. Gregory XIII enhanced the role of papal nuncios. Sixtus V restructured papal government into fifteen congregations--six for the Papal States and nine for the universal Church--and he also further developed the requirement for bishops to make regular ad limina visits to Rome. [...]
After the Reformation the papacy deferred, or was compelled to defer even more, to the secular power. When the saintly archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo, became embroiled with Philip II of Spain over ecclesiastical rights, Gregory XIII inclined to the side of the king. Later in the Concordat of Munich of 1583 the same pope conceded to Duke William V of Bavaria rights to tax church property, to appoint to many ecclesiastical positions, and to oversee the administration of extensive church property. [...]
Meanwhile, starting in the early-sixteenth century, Catholic thinkers drew upon the intellectual arsenal of Scholasticism to propose a philosophy of the emerging state. The Dominican Francisco Vittoria and the Jesuits Francisco Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine, building on the basis of St. Thomas Aquinas, laid down the foundation for an international society of sovereign states that included the territories across the seas that had newly been brought into the European orbit. Their thought was to have a decided impact on developments in the evolution of international law.
The long sixteenth century generally witnessed demographic growth, and economic expansion usually followed. Growth was most prominent in the cities where both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation first took root; the population of Antwerp, for example, jumped from 40,000 in 1500 to 100,000 in the 1560s. Europe grew in the direction of a capitalist and of a world economy. Catholic mercantilist writers such as Giovanni Botero (1589) and Adam Contzen (1620) emphasized the importance of the production of wealth for a healthy state. Yet growth did not benefit everyone, and the numbers of the poor escalated in the cities. Starting with the growth of a commercial economy in the Italian city-states of the thirteenth century, some theologians had begun to take a more benign view of usury, which it will be recalled meant any interest on a loan not just excessive interest as it does today. [...]
Confraternities have been called "the primary organized expression of Catholic lay religious life from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries." As they continued to grow in number and in membership in the sixteenth century, they expanded their works of charity, partly in response to the increasing number of poor and unfortunate. Often they cooperated with municipal authorities; sometimes they competed with them as both sought to meet new challenges. In Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century, perhaps due to the wars there, confraternities manifested a growing activist spirit as they reached out to the sick and orphaned. It has been estimated that in the cities of Italy, between one-third and one-fourth of all males by 1600 attached themselves to a confraternity at some point in their lives. Of a population of 19,000 in the city of Perugia in 1600, roughly 2000 belonged to a confraternity. The Jesuit Marian congregations, which originated in Rome in 1563 and spread through much of Catholic Europe, often required their members to assist the poor, the sick, and those in prison. [...]
In the widespread belief that the Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, "Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," applied only to the apostolic generation, Protestants did not mount serious missionary efforts across the seas until the late-eighteenth century.
The arrival of a group of Franciscans in the Antilles in 1500 inaugurated the first proper missionary effort in the Americas. Santo Domingo and Concepción de la Vega on Hispaniola and San Juan in Puerto Rico were established as the first dioceses in the Americas, in 1508 and 1511 respectively. After the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes, twelve Franciscans arrived in Mexico, their number suggesting the twelve apostles, and they initiated the systematic evangelization of the conquered. The Dominicans followed in 1528 and the Augustinians three years later. Complaints arose about the treatment of the Indians by Spanish colonists, and frequently missionaries served as advocates for the former. In 1537 Pope Paul III published the bull Sublimis Deus condemning the view that the Indians were to be treated as dumb brutes for the service of the Spaniards and asserting that they were truly human beings and competent of receiving the Catholic faith. They were not to be deprived of either liberty or property even though they were not Christians. Whether Indians should be ordained to the ministry became a controversial issue, and after some experimentation, the first provincial council of Mexico City in 1555 prohibited their ordination as well as that of blacks and mestizos, a fateful decision for the Church in the Americas. To what extent did the Indians truly assimilate Christianity? This question remains debatable to the present day. One reason for the prohibition of ordination was doubt about the depth of Indians' conversion. Yet Indians sometimes demonstrated heroism in their new faith, and it is hard to believe that they were any less Christian than many people in remote areas of Europe. [...]
The Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano, who arrived in Goa in 1574 as the representative of the Jesuit superior general, forcefully advocated accommodation to the Asian cultures, and he exercised a profound influence on the Jesuit missions over the next thirty-two years. [...]
The papal Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith came into existence in 1622, with the goal of oversight of the Church's far-flung missionary activity. It was a product of a new Roman universalism. Yet it never functioned significantly in either the Spanish or Portuguese colonies due to the opposition of the monarchs. The congregation did, however, among other things, push for better preparation of missionaries, work to lessen the rivalries among religious orders, and advocate for the creation of native clergy. The Church's missionary activity in the early-modern period testified to its vitality. A global Church was aborning. Yet despite creative initiatives, it remained overwhelmingly European in character. [...]
Lay elites in the cities sought a form of Christianity that spoke more directly to them; both the Reformation and Catholic reform grew out of the cities. This changing religious mentality can be associated with the cultural and intellectual movement that we call the Renaissance, the fourth change that ushered in early-modern times. Originating in Italy in the fourteenth century, it did not reach over the Alps in a significant fashion until about 1490. Jacob Burckhardt summarized the spirit of the Renaissance in the well-known phrase "the discovery of man and the world," words still valid today if we do not understand them in the pagan sense of Burckhardt or as a totally new development, and if we expand their meaning. "Discovery of man" pointed to a new individualism, to a new self-consciousness and recognition of the unique human personality and to its potential for achievement. The portrait, for example, and the self-portrait became popular forms of artistic expression, bringing out the individuality of the person portrayed. "Discovery of the world" expressed an appreciation of nature, to be sure, but also of the many varieties of the secular or lay world--of the man of politics, for example, or of the merchant. Catholics also incorporated many features of humanism, the principal cultural current of the Renaissance, into education, and they learned to exploit the prototypical invention of the Renaissance, the printing press. To the Renaissance also belongs the start of the Scientific Revolution with the publication of Copernicus's On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543. Notoriously, the outcome of the Galileo Affair represented a major failure for the Church.
Corresponding to Renaissance individualism there developed, starting with the Devotio Moderna in the late-fourteenth century and the Franciscan and Carthusian traditions, new, systematic forms of mental prayer and meditation for the individual. Here the Ejercitatorio de la vida espiritual of the Benedictine abbot of Montserrat, Garcia Cisneros, can stand for many works; it seems to have exercised an influence on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which aimed as a principal goal at the discovery of God's will for the individual. Eventually, through the Spiritual Exercises and through spiritual writers such as Lorenzo Scupoli and St. Francis de Sales, this form of private prayer spread to the lay elite. As another expression of this individualism came the more regular use of the sacrament of confession. By the early-seventeenth century the devout were approaching it once a month or at least four times a year, and it was administered in the privacy of the confessional, a boxlike structure introduced by Archbishop Borromeo in Milan. The confessional facilitated a private conversation between priest and penitent and encouraged the use of the sacrament for individual spiritual direction and the application of moral norms to individual cases--that is, casuistry. In addition, coming into use at this time was the general confession, apparently stemming also from Garcia Cisneros. In this form of confession the penitent looked back over his or her whole life to determine his or her sinful patterns and tendencies, and once again confessed sins that had already been forgiven. This practice aimed to evoke a deeper contrition, and for our purposes, to arrive at a more profound, individual self-knowledge. Loyola incorporated the general confession into the Spiritual Exercises and required it from all new entrants into the Society of Jesus. Eventually, through the Jesuits' Marian congregations and through their preaching, the practice spread widely throughout the Catholic world. In both the regular and the general confession the examination of conscience promoted the individual's knowledge of his or her own self. De Sales in his widely circulated Introduction to the Devout Life first published in 1609 also recommended the general confession.
Machiavelli boldly asserted in the Prince in 1513 that the serious Christian could not succeed in politics--that is, create and, above all, maintain a powerful state. The fictional Raphael Hythloday in Thomas More's Utopia vigorously defended the same position when he contended that were he to take a position as a royal councillor, he would either compromise himself or be pushed to the margins by the other council members. But mainstream Catholic thought during this period, influenced by the fundamentally optimistic theology of Aquinas, rejected this view vigorously and reaffirmed the position of pre-Machiavellian Renaissance humanism, which maintained that the active life, and especially the political life, represented a noble Christian vocation. Most Christians could not accept practical exclusion from political life. Eventually an extensive anti-Machiavellian literature began to come off the press that aimed to show, in detail and in practice, that the Christian man of politics, whether ruler or councillor, could indeed achieve political success. Indeed, following Cicero in his De Officiis, they generally argued optimistically that the moral and religious man of politics would usually win out over the devious and vicious one. Botero's Ragione di stato (1589) argued this case most convincingly, showing, for example, that the prince who fostered economic development advanced both his own interest and that of his people, and had no need of recourse to the underhanded methods deemed necessary by Machiavelli. The good and the useful went hand in hand. But the anti-Machiavellians often had to resort to a sophisticated casuistry so as to remain consistent in their treatment of delicate issues such as the use of deceit in diplomatic affairs. The Jesuit theater as it later developed also illustrated the Christian value of the civic life.
Many other books aimed to illustrate more generally how one could lead a full Christian life in the world. Catholics learned quickly to put Gutenberg's invention to good use, although at first the Protestants outdid them. The Introduction to the Devout Life by the saintly bishop of Geneva, Francis de Sales, probably exercised the most influence, and it has endured as a Christian classic to the present day. De Sales addressed the Introduction to a fictional "Philothea"--that is, a soul loving or in love with God, male or female, or as he put it, to those aspiring to devotion. He remarked, "For my part, I would have devout people, whether men or women, always the best dressed in a group but the least pompous and affected." By his death in 1622, more than forty editions of the Introduction had appeared, and it had been translated into the major European languages. Other authors wrote in the same vein if not so elegantly. The Jesuit Joannes Busaeus's De statibus hominis, which appeared at Mainz in 1613, treated the life of the soldier, the physician, and the peasant among others, and another Jesuit, Nicholas Caussin, in his widely circulated La cour sainte, first published at Paris in 1624, pointed out how even in the ambience of the court one could attain to holiness. [...]
Above all, the new orders and congregations turned to education, especially at the elementary and secondary levels. This followed from the widespread conviction that preaching, no matter how effective, was not adequate to the formation of Christians. Systematic religious education was necessary, and this meant schools. Thus the Church shared the Renaissance confidence in education. [...]
These [Jesuit] schools took over and propagated many features of Renaissance humanism, in particular a focus on the ancient classics of Greece but especially Rome and attention to the development of students articulate in writing and in speech. The ancient classics, according to the Jesuits, contributed to the students' growth in virtue and in devotion to the public good. Latin schools of other religious orders often adopted the same system. Here we see a prominent example of adaptation to contemporary culture. [...]
The Protestant Reformation ushered in the most profound change and challenge to the Catholic Church in the long sixteenth century. Itself a response at least in part to the longing for a more relevant form of Christianity, it intensified and gave new urgency to movements of reform already at work within the Catholic Church, and it induced a spirit of defensiveness. It generated effects often associated with confessionalism and confessionalization in a narrower sense, such as the clear elaboration of doctrine as formulated by the Council of Trent, and it elicited a militance that contributed substantially to the religious wars of the early-modern period. [...]
In the Decree on Justification [the Council of Trent] rejected Protestant positions when it asserted the role of free will in the process of salvation while avoiding forms of Pelagianism. In doing so, it also aligned itself with a vigorous current of Renaissance humanism that extolled man's freedom. The council's emphasis on works both stimulated and confirmed the new activism.
Many reform measures were taken by the council, with a view to strengthening the position of the bishop within his diocese and to eliminating abuses in Catholic practices. The council prescribed regular diocesan and metropolitan synods to inculcate its teaching and to oversee its measures of reform as well as regular visitation of parishes by bishops. The pastoral role of both bishops and pastors was accentuated; they were not chiefly benefice-holders but shepherds who resided with their flocks and preached to them regularly. [...] The council virtually ignored two developments of early-modern Catholicism: the rise of the new orders and congregations and the vast missionary enterprise across the seas.
After the close of the council, there appeared the Catechism of the Council of Trent that was intended to incorporate Tridentine theology principally for the benefit of parish priests, and accompanying it came other catechisms for various groups, pastors, students, and children, such as those of St. Peter Canisius, all in response to the recognized need for catechetical instruction. Further normative texts were issued by Rome in the following decades: the new breviary for priests in 1568, the missal of Pius V two years later, a revised version of canon law in 1582, and finally the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate edition of the Scriptures in 1592. These joined the catechisms to give the Tridentine Church a broadly drawn normative basis for its instruction, worship, legal practice, and Scripture study. [1]
The Reformation generated among Catholics a spirit of militance that is expressed in the term Counter-Reformation and that helped incite the religious wars of the period: War of the League of Schmalkeld, the French Religious Wars, the War of Dutch Independence, the Spanish Armada, and the Thirty Years War. [...]
Let me close with the words of the French historian Marc Lienhard: "The practice of history, which implies an opening to the long range [of history], permits the historian at the same time to maintain a certain distance from the crises of today and a certain confidence in the future of the Christian faith." [2]
---
Footnotes:
1. [...] As Simon Ditchfield has pointed out, we must not exaggerate the centralizing effect of the liturgical changes. Many local customs were allowed to continue. See Ditchfield, "Innovation and Its Limits: The Case of Italy ca. 1512-ca. 1572," in La Reforme en France et en Italie: contacts, comparaisons et contrastes, ed. Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon, [Collection de L'École Française de Rome, 384], (Rome, 2007), pp. 157-59, and his Liturgy, Sanctity, and History in Tridentine Italy (Cambridge, UK, 1995).2. Marc Leinhard, "Du chantier historique à l'engagement aujourd'hui," in L'historien et la foi, ed. Jean Delumeau (Paris, 1996), p. 184.
---
Source: Robert Bireley, "Early-Modern Catholicism as a Response to the Changing World of the Long Sixteenth Century," Catholic Historical Review 95, no. 2 (April 2009): 218-239.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Repost: "Frank the Hippie Pope" video
This video is sadly funny but expresses a disturbing truth. Even Lutherans can see what's going on.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Distinction: Points of View vs. Worldview
There is a difference between specific points of view on various matters and a worldview that frames those points of view. Specific points of view are formed by premises and conclusions about some matter and use a discourse provided by the worldview behind them. The worldview itself is the narrative that makes all points of view for an individual coherent, or at least attempts to do so. Clearly, many individuals hold within their own worldviews conflicting points of view, of which conflict they may not be cognizant; and this for several possible reasons: 1) ignorance; 2) lack of self reflection; 3) lack of understanding the implications of other points of view or a worldview (related to ignorance); 4) a psychological factor that presses them to accept the conflict, such as guilt, resentment, or desire, etc.
Therefore, when a person, for example, says that they are Christian, or spiritual, or an atheist, or a supporter of something, and when two people attempt to discuss an issue, although they may happen to use similar words in their conversation, these words may be nuanced by radically different worldviews and narratives and hence carry different meanings. These different meanings, however, may contain enough similarity between the two people that their differences go unnoticed. This phenomenon is most clearly seen when people "talk past each other" in a debate. The reason is not simply that a word must be defined, but the context of the word must also be defined. When both the words used and the context in which those words are placed have been defined and displayed clearly, a conversation may begin.
The process of listening to another involves differing degrees of self-reflection, in which the discourse of another person is compared with one's own in order to spot differences and similarities and hence make progress in conversation. Listening requires the realization that there must be a synchronizing of some kind in order to advance in the conversation.
Sometimes for this synchronizing to occur, either or both of the participants must undergo a process of growth—in knowledge, in reflexivity, in maturity, etc.
Thus many younger Christians who don't understand what Protestantism is in contrast with Catholicism because they don't even know the basic history of their own religion, such Christians will never understand the stresses that Catholicism places on certain aspects of Catholic faith, such as justification, salvation, the Sacraments, the Pope, apostolic succession, the communion of Saints, etc.
Therefore, when a person, for example, says that they are Christian, or spiritual, or an atheist, or a supporter of something, and when two people attempt to discuss an issue, although they may happen to use similar words in their conversation, these words may be nuanced by radically different worldviews and narratives and hence carry different meanings. These different meanings, however, may contain enough similarity between the two people that their differences go unnoticed. This phenomenon is most clearly seen when people "talk past each other" in a debate. The reason is not simply that a word must be defined, but the context of the word must also be defined. When both the words used and the context in which those words are placed have been defined and displayed clearly, a conversation may begin.
The process of listening to another involves differing degrees of self-reflection, in which the discourse of another person is compared with one's own in order to spot differences and similarities and hence make progress in conversation. Listening requires the realization that there must be a synchronizing of some kind in order to advance in the conversation.
Sometimes for this synchronizing to occur, either or both of the participants must undergo a process of growth—in knowledge, in reflexivity, in maturity, etc.
Thus many younger Christians who don't understand what Protestantism is in contrast with Catholicism because they don't even know the basic history of their own religion, such Christians will never understand the stresses that Catholicism places on certain aspects of Catholic faith, such as justification, salvation, the Sacraments, the Pope, apostolic succession, the communion of Saints, etc.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Joe Heschmeyer on Mary's Sinlessness during the Presentation
Great, concise apologetic article on how the purification of Mary at the Presentation does not disprove her sinlessness as Protestants attempt to show but rather demonstrates even more strikingly how she participated uniquely in the redemption wrought by Christ.
Shameless Popery: The Feast of the Presentation: a Smoking Gun for Mary's Sinlessness
Shameless Popery: The Feast of the Presentation: a Smoking Gun for Mary's Sinlessness
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Americans, Biblical Literacy, and the Magisterium
I enjoy reading the Big Think articles because they post generally popular, quasi-intellectual topics in a way that reflects how most people, especially seculars, basically look at these same issues. It allows me to stay up-to-date on some of these issues and the perspectives that have been developing. It also is a catalyst for self-reflection and meditation. Finally, it is a source of frustration, probably not only for me, but even for seculars who may see that the issues may be radically oversimplified for the sake of brevity.
Anyway, a recent article was on Americans and the Bible. Apparently, 80% of Americans believe the Bible is either the inerrant, literal Word of God or at least inspired by God, but less than 50% of Protestants or Catholics (Catholics actually scored higher) could pass a very simple Biblical literacy quiz. You can read the full article with links to the quiz here: http://bigthink.com/big-think-tv/the-bible-paradox
One professor that the article interviews, Joel Baden at Yale Divinity School of all places, notes the contradictory, jumbled elements of the Bible and that to invoke the Bible for cultural authority is therefore not so straight an issue as Americans would like it to be, say, for creationism, monogamy, or heterosexual marriage. The article and Baden therefore, somehow, conclude:
I can see how that makes sense if one assumes either: 1) there really is no supernatural origin for the Bible and therefore what we do—"dialogue"—is the most important element in our collective, cultural relation to the Bible; and/or 2) a Protestant approach to adjudicating Biblical interpretations.
But there's a third possibility, the Catholic one. Perhaps the Bible isn't meant to be read as some call it "literalistically," that is, that we take every story or verse to be literally true precisely as we happen to interpret that story/verse in the moment. Such a reading leaves no room for analogies (or at least only a little), for differences of genre, or for spiritual interpretations of the text.
The Catholic solution is the need for a Magisterium to help guide us in the proper reading of the text. Perhaps the Biblical text wasn't meant to be read merely by individuals in isolation from one another. Perhaps the text arose within a structured, even hierarchical, community of religious believers. Perhaps the text arose simultaneously with an oral tradition as well as rituals and an authoritative context that made sense of all three elements. Perhaps sola Scriptura and "dialogue" are not as important as submission to the authority that God personally established in order to protect and hand on His self-revelation. Just saying.
Anyway, a recent article was on Americans and the Bible. Apparently, 80% of Americans believe the Bible is either the inerrant, literal Word of God or at least inspired by God, but less than 50% of Protestants or Catholics (Catholics actually scored higher) could pass a very simple Biblical literacy quiz. You can read the full article with links to the quiz here: http://bigthink.com/big-think-tv/the-bible-paradox
One professor that the article interviews, Joel Baden at Yale Divinity School of all places, notes the contradictory, jumbled elements of the Bible and that to invoke the Bible for cultural authority is therefore not so straight an issue as Americans would like it to be, say, for creationism, monogamy, or heterosexual marriage. The article and Baden therefore, somehow, conclude:
And so if we are to continue to invest as much authority in the Bible as we do, Baden says, we - as serious readers of the text - cannot pretend that the Bible is a single, clear statement of belief. Rather, "it is a jumble of beliefs," Baden says, "a combination of voices...embedded in the text right from the word 'Go.'"
So of what use is the Bible? This book is both the ultimate source of authority and completely indecisive. But that does not mean we should throw it away, Baden says. "This text that our culture holds most sacred is a living reminder that human interaction is founded on dialogue and not monologue - the inclusion of differences, not their exclusion.Source: Big Think Editors, "The Bible Paradox," Big Think, October 20, 2013, accessed October 24, 2013, http://bigthink.com/big-think-tv/the-bible-paradox
I can see how that makes sense if one assumes either: 1) there really is no supernatural origin for the Bible and therefore what we do—"dialogue"—is the most important element in our collective, cultural relation to the Bible; and/or 2) a Protestant approach to adjudicating Biblical interpretations.
But there's a third possibility, the Catholic one. Perhaps the Bible isn't meant to be read as some call it "literalistically," that is, that we take every story or verse to be literally true precisely as we happen to interpret that story/verse in the moment. Such a reading leaves no room for analogies (or at least only a little), for differences of genre, or for spiritual interpretations of the text.
The Catholic solution is the need for a Magisterium to help guide us in the proper reading of the text. Perhaps the Biblical text wasn't meant to be read merely by individuals in isolation from one another. Perhaps the text arose within a structured, even hierarchical, community of religious believers. Perhaps the text arose simultaneously with an oral tradition as well as rituals and an authoritative context that made sense of all three elements. Perhaps sola Scriptura and "dialogue" are not as important as submission to the authority that God personally established in order to protect and hand on His self-revelation. Just saying.
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