Archives for 2011

It has been a presidential tradition to “pardon” a lucky turkey before Thanksgiving. The tradition may have started in some form as early as the Truman administration in 1947. Regardless of how or when it got started, in recent times it has become an expected presidential action.

Such as it is, the president has the opportunity to address the nation. Regardless of the current political scene, he or she has a chance to reflect on Thanksgiving – what it means to both the nation and to himself. It is a moment to remember the sacrifice that made America great and the continuing sacrifice that is selflessly given. It is a moment to remember their own bountiful blessings. Most importantly, it is a moment to humbly thank God.

Turkey pardons are not addresses to congress, the UN, or a live nationwide audience. They are far less formal and polished. What we get are comments from the heart of our leader, an unguarded window into their unmanaged self.

It is interesting therefore, to compare this year’s pardon with that of the immediately preceding president. Both are professed Christians. Kathy Schiffer did this on her Seasons of Grace blog:

The difference in these two pardons was a metaphor for the stark difference in their presidencies. One is self-absorbed, clownish, mocking of faith, jokes about “luck” but forgets to mention “thanks.” The other — well, see for yourself. I’m including the video, which makes me really yearn for bygone days.

ONE WAY TO GRANT A PRESIDENTIAL PARDON TO THANKSGIVING TURKEYS:

• Talk about the spared turkey as “lucky.” Note that your family, in a photo op, will deliver “unlucky” turkeys to a food bank.
• Make a mocking, “funny” Sign of the Cross over the pardoned bird – an obvious disregard for the importance of this sacred symbol for Catholics and people of faith.
• Disregard your daughters, standing beside you in bored complacency. Instead, focus your attention on the cameras.
• Use the opportunity to obliquely criticize the United States Congress. Say things like “Some of you know that recently I’ve been taking a series of executive actions that don’t require congressional approval. Well, here’s another one.”
• Use the opportunity to criticize the media. Say things like “They received the most important part of media training, which involves learning to gobble without saying anything.”
• Never mention God, or thanks, or grace, or the American people. Never mention anything noble. Keep the attention on yourself.

ANOTHER WAY TO GRANT A PRESIDENTIAL PARDON TO THANKSGIVING TURKEYS:

• Thank the men and women in uniform and talk about how proud you are of them.
• Thank the armies of compassion – volunteers who feed the hungry and shelter the poor, teachers and nurses and pastors and firefighters, and others who serve their neighbors and better their communities.
• Thank your wonderful and supportive family, and talk about the blessing they have been in your life.
• Thank your wife for her love.
• Thank your two daughters, “Thanksgiving blessings” some 27 years ago.
• Express your thanks that your mother is doing well.
• Express your thanks for a new son-in-law at the dinner table this year.
• Thank the American people for the tremendous privilege of serving as President.
• Wish all Americans a Happy Thanksgiving, and ask God to bless them.

Kathy’s piece is The Turkey Pardon: Metaphor for the Entire Obama Presidency. Thanks go to The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) for spotting it.

I am reminded that one day the humble and the self-righteous will both stand in judgment. Some may have been powerless and others may have been kings, but station in life will not be relevant.

Salesmen, particularly of more expensive goods or services, are taught to think about an elevator pitch. The concept goes something like this. Imagine you unexpectedly find yourself in an elevator with the key decision maker of an important prospect. You have been trying to get a meeting with him for months to no avail. What could you say to him to get him interested in what you have to offer, at least to look further, in a short period of time? How would you answer objections he may raise?

Along these same lines, what might you say about your Catholic faith if given a brief opportunity to present and defend it? I think it would largely depend on the background of the person you were speaking with. None-the-less, in general preparation there may be some points to consider for your arsenal.

H. W. Crocker III took a crack at this recently for Crisis Magazine. His list is composed of 10 points, in what he calls “countdown order.” Below is a shortened version of that list:

10.   Hope

Classical paganism, as we know, always ended in despair – a noble despair sometimes, but despair nevertheless. Eastern religions don’t offer much in the way of hope, as they are tied to doctrines of fate, cycles of history, and a nirvana of extinction. Reformation Protestantism is pretty despairing, too, with Calvin’s belief that it would have been better for most people if they had never been born, predestined as they are for damnation. Secularism and materialism are no better, as wealthy secular societies tend to have the highest rates of suicide.

But in the Catholic Church, there is hope. Salvation is open to every man willing to take it. And though Jesus warned His apostles that following His way meant enduring inevitable persecution and hatred, He also gave them this promise: The gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. Even outsiders recognize this. Who ever heard of a deathbed conversion to Methodism? Hope comes from the Real Thing.

9.   The Inquisition

The Inquisition? Yes, let’s not be shy. The Inquisition is every Catholic-basher’s favorite tool of abuse – though it is one that is very much not in the basher’s favor. There were several Inquisitions. The first in order of importance in Catholic history was the Inquisition against the Albigensians – a heresy that encouraged suicide, euthanasia, abortion, sodomy, fornication, and other modern ideas that were distasteful to the medieval mind. The struggle against the Albigensians erupted into war – and a war that could not be carefully trammeled within crusading boundaries. So Pope Gregory IX entrusted the final excision of the Albigensian heresy to the scalpel of the Inquisition rather than the sword of the Crusader.

8.   The Crusades

All right, I recognize that this is another problem area for some milquetoast Catholics, but let’s be blunt: Do we believe in reclaiming the world for Christ and His Church, or don’t we? Medieval knights took that responsibility seriously, wore the cross on their capes and tunics, and prayed and understood an incarnational faith that acted in the world. It was these knights’ defensive war – and the defensive war of the Church and its allies up through the 18th century, for a millennium of Western history – that repelled Islamic aggression and kept western Europe free. For that we should be ashamed? No: It is one of the glories that was Christendom that in the Middle Ages the pope could wave his field marshal’s baton and knights from as far away as Norway – not to mention England, France, and Germany – would come to serve. Men were Catholics first in those days.

Today, because of Islamic terror groups, the West is again strapping on its armor. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our predecessors who were compelled to do the same.

7.   The Swiss Guards and the French Foreign Legion

Though only one of these institutions is under the direct supervision of the Vatican, both qualify as Catholic institutions that should warm the very cockles of our hearts. Indeed, next time you meet a Protestant who asks you why you are a Catholic, try telling him this: I’m a Catholic because I believe in the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church as founded by Jesus and His disciples and as led through the power of the Holy Spirit by the pope in Rome who is himself guarded by the Swiss guards of the Vatican whose uniforms were designed, at least some believe, by Michelangelo. If your interlocutor doesn’t immediately seek instruction to convert, you know you’ve met a hard case.

6.   Art

Certainly the famous literary Catholics of the English-speaking world – John Henry Cardinal Newman, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Siegfried Sassoon (who converted later in life), and Thomas Merton – have all played an enormous part in my own conversion and continuing appreciation of the faith. Even Catholics of an unorthodox stripe (like Greene) have had a powerfully orthodox influence on me.

Writing, of course, is far from the only artistic testimony to the faith. Catholicism has always surrounded itself with beauty, regarding it as the splendor of truth. In the words of the German priest, professor, and theologian Karl Adam, “Art is native to Catholicism, since reverence for the body and for nature is native to it.” The Puritan influence is foreign to Catholicism – just as the idea that smashing altars, defacing Madonnas, and breaking stained glass as a religious act is foreign, and indeed heretical, to Catholics. The Catholic Church leaves such Talibanism to the Protestants and iconoclastic heresies. The Catholic Church, instead, offers a celebration of beauty; and beauty, in our world of pierced faces, body tattoos, gangsta rap, and concrete tower blocks, is something we could use much more of.

5.   Freedom

Yes, the good old reactionary, repressive Catholic Church has been the most ardent defender of freedom in the history of the world – though it almost never gets credit for it. We live in an age of determinist ideologies – with the fate of nations and individuals supposedly determined by race, economics, history, psychology, genetics, or even – insofar as Protestants have any common doctrinal beliefs – predestination. The Catholic Church stands alone in radical defense of man’s free will.

4.   The Saints

The Catholic is never alone. God is always near. The Catholic remembers Mary. He remembers her saying yes to the Incarnation. He remembers those who have gone before him: the vast parade of saints whose personalities and attributes are so various, so free, and yet so devoted to the singular path that leads to holiness and union with God.

3.   Unity

When we affirm the Nicene Creed, we affirm our belief in the “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.” The Creed does not say “many, reformed, anti-Catholic, Bible-based churches.” Nor does it say, “several nation-based, autocephalous, and selectively conciliar churches.” The Church is called to be one – one body of Christ, one bride of Christ.

2.   The Sacraments

The sacraments and the visible Church are another proof and nurturer of the faith. I am among the least mystical of men, but I will gladly stump up and affirm the efficacy of the sacraments, sincerely and prayerfully entered into. With Pascal I would affirm that one actually learns the Catholic faith by doing – which is why deracinated, prissy, critical philosophes standing outside will never “get it.” The faith of the Catholic is a great drama unfolding before God, and we are the players in it. There is the awesome reality of the Eucharist, God made flesh at every Mass, and our responsibility before Him and in receiving Him. There is the visible alter Christus of the priesthood. Even those sacraments that many Catholics find painful – such as penance – are powerful reminders of the reality of God and of the necessity of both our faith and our good works.

1.   Truth

Nothing else would matter about Catholicism if it weren’t true. But it is our firm belief as Catholics that it is true. And, indeed, I believe that the historical case for the Catholic Church is virtually irrefutable, as irrefutable as it was to Cardinal Newman. And there is something else. We know that the Church affirms that its members and servants are all subject to original sin. But while men might falter, the teaching of the Church does not. That has been our rock, tested through the tempests of centuries and undiminished through time.

Crocker is a convert from Anglicanism and author of Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church. His complete article What’s So Great About Catholicism? expounds on the above points.

BTW — Crisis Magazine is one of the best multi-author Catholic blogs out there. Check it out!

As a Protestant, even though I knew the history, I would not have given much thought about who were the Christians for the first 1,500 years before the “reformation.” The thought that they were Catholic would not be readily conceded. I wrote about this cognitive dissonance last year.

Our Lord founded only one Church. To differentiate that true Church from the long gone heresies that appeared by the end of the first century, it was called “Catholic” meaning “universal.” Of this there is ample historical evidence. That Church continues today much as it was then – in beliefs, worship and structure. The many Protestant communities which appeared over a millennia later differ significantly from the Church then, now and from each other.

Most Protestant communities feel a connection to the “early Church.” The start and end dates of that are a little murky. Many view favorably the period up to around 400AD when the Bible was canonized (they prefer not to recognize by who). At that time the Church had been known as Catholic for 300 years. Similarly, they feel a strong connection with the “early Church Fathers” of this period – all of whom would have identified themselves as Catholic. Finally, many recognize Saints…   guess how they identified themselves and who canonized them as saints!

Brantly Millegan is a young, Evangelical convert. Recently, he wrote an excellent essay on the early Church for his Young, Evangelical, and Catholic blog.

Tertullian, Against Praxeas, ch 2 (~A.D. 200):

“That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older heretics, much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday, will be apparent both from the lateness of date which marks all heresies, and also from the absolutely novel character of our new-fangled Praxeas. In this principle also we must henceforth find a presumption of equal force against all heresies whatsoever — that whatever is first is true, whereas that is spurious which is later in date.”

Below is a list of the year of the earliest (of which I am aware) extant extra-biblical witness of various Christian doctrines.

• (A.D. 33 – death and resurrection of Christ)
• A.D. 90 – the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice
• (A.D. 95 – death of the last apostle, John)
• A.D. 95 – apostolic succession
• A.D. 110 – real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist
• A.D. 110 – the necessity of bishops to the Church, and the necessity of submitting to bishops
• A.D. 150 – baptismal regeneration and the necessity of baptism for salvation
• A.D. 150 – basic structure of the Mass as Christian worship
• A.D. 155 – veneration of saints and their relics
• A.D. 160 – Mary as the New Eve
• A.D. 170 – use of the word ‘Trinity’
• A.D. 180 – primacy of the bishop of Rome
• A.D. 200 – ‘Trinity’, ‘Person’, ‘Substance’ formula
• A.D. 367 – today’s 27 book New Testament canon
• (A.D. 1500s – Protestant Reformation)

(Note: Those that are (underlined) are relevant events to help put the other dates in perspective. Those doctrines in bold are accepted by evangelicals and Catholics and are also listed for the purpose of helping to put the other dates in perspective. Those doctrines not bolded are accepted by Catholics and are rejected by most evangelicals as corruptions of the faith. All dates listed are of course approximate. The quotes showing the witness to these doctrines in those years are at the end of this post.)

I have ten comments:

1. Since it doesn’t appear as though any of the authors are proposing a new doctrine in any of the quotes, it can be assumed that all of these doctrines in the very least pre-date by some amount of time their first extant extra-biblical witness. It should be noted that in some cases, the authors were contemporaries of the apostles and most likely knew some of the apostles themselves, e.g. St Clement, who was the bishop of Rome at the end of the 1st century and is traditionally identified with the Clement referred to by Paul in Philippians 4.3. And in other cases, the authors knew disciples of the apostles, e.g. St Irenaeus was a disciple of St Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John.
2. All of the Catholic beliefs listed were maintained from the early Church onward. In other words, I’m not citing anomalies in the early Church and recommending that Catholics should revive them. Catholics have maintained these beliefs/practices since then without a break. Neither am I implying that these beliefs do not have a basis in Scripture. These quotes are merely the first extant extra-biblical witnesses of the doctrines.
3. Remember that evangelicals claim that all of those Catholic beliefs listed above were all invented and did not come from the apostles, even though the Christians immediately following the apostles, including some who knew the apostles personally, thought that those doctrines came from the apostles. In particular, regarding apostolic succession, St Clement – who, as stated above, was surely a contemporary of the apostles and may have also known them personally – explicitly states that apostolic succession was set up by the apostles.
4. Notice the large number of doctrines/practices that are rejected by most evangelicals as Catholic corruptions of the faith that are witnessed to prior to explicit development of the doctrine of the Trinity or even the first extant witness to the 27 book New Testament canon. In other words, if all of those beliefs which most evangelicals tend to view as sure markers of the obviously perverted corruption of the Catholic Church were already there, then the same Church that settled the New Testament canon and fought the Trinitarian and Christological fights of the early Church was already well immersed in corruption, superstition, and heresy.
5. Ironically, those issues that evangelicals claim to be obvious corruptions of the faith were accepted throughout the early Church with relatively little dissent*. And it was on issues like the New Testament canon and the doctrine of the Trinity – two issues on which evangelicals agree with the early Church – that had the most widespread disagreement and dissent. The confusion/dissent regarding these two issues was so widespread and entrenched that they were only settled for the whole Church when the bishops of the Church wielded their authority from apostolic succession – the same authority who’s existence evangelicals deny. In other words, those beliefs for which apostolic authority was not needed to be well established in the Church, evangelicals reject; whereas those beliefs for which apostolic authority was needed to establish them within the Church, evangelicals accept, even though evangelicals reject apostolic authority and succession.

The essay continues with the last 5 comments then examines each of the dates in detail. Well done, interesting, informative and worth the read! His complete piece (titled to poke fun at the Protestant claims of Catholic heresy) is at How Quickly Catholic Heresy Took Over the Church (Immediately).

Brantly writes specifically from an Evangelical perspective, but the points made apply well to Protestantism in general (at least as well as anything applies to Protestantism “in general”).