Oh, I Don't Know...Blasphemy, Heresy, Sacrilege, Excommunication, Perdition, Hate Crime ...

Today, take yourself aside and sit in silence. Be still, and meditate on the following news bit: two women were ordained as "Roman Catholic" priests in a St. Louis synagogue by an alleged Catholic female bishop; the women "priests" have been given permission to celebrate regular Masses in a local Unitarian Church.

Now, once you've absorbed this news item into the deepest recesses of your soul, ask yourself what words percolate up from the depths.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On Christian Living: Writing Only For The Faithful?

A few weeks ago I wondered aloud to anyone close enough to hear whether I was throwing my pearls beneath my own cloven feet. One of my concerns was that I had somehow forsaken the hope to which I had been called -- the "riches of [Christ's] glorious inheritance in the saints" -- in an effort to earn some other accolade. Specifically, I wondered whether I had been pulled off course by my many vanities, enamored of the idea that I needed to prove to the world that I, a serious and orthodox Christian, was nevertheless intelligent, properly worldly, and satisfactorily clever. Had I forsaken truth and the gospel of freedom merely to advertise that I wasn't a dimwit? Had I engaged in petty and popular polemics solely to impress? Were my many words simply cries for approval, approval from those outside the Christian Church? Did I publish here like a wild dog marks his territory, suggesting some sort of dominion, some sort of mastery to which the learned must show respect?

Even now, in these very words, I wonder: Why am I being so careful, so circumspect, as I type these words? Am I, even in confession's presumed transparency, still clouded by hopes that even in this well-expressed self-doubt, I will earn readers' applause? Is vanity still at work here? Am I still striving to impress those who stand decisively outside Christianity's creedal borders, those who have deemed Christians inferior and dumb?

Years ago I had a dear friend named Ben who would often wear, to the newspaper office where we both worked, a T-shirt listing the names of "Famous Unitarian-Universalists." It was an impressive set of names, though I could not refrain from always noting the shortness of that esteemed list. I also noted that had anyone decided to make a garment listing famous Catholics -- or, more broadly, famous orthodox Christians -- it would be much grander than a simple T-shirt. It would, in fact, be very much like a wedding gown, with a train as long as history.

But I had to admit to Ben that I was using fame differently, for most of the famous orthodox Christians of history are not really famous, at least not in the Henry David Thoreau/Albert Schweitzer-Unitarian-way some people are famous. Fame is not something Christians are called to attain, nor is the doing of good deeds cause for celebration. Good deeds are simply to be done. They are not something that is considered special. They are assumed.

However, it would be faulty to argue that there isn't a penchant for fame-grabbing and fame-naming in many Christian circles. Some of us recall how quickly the evangelical community proclaimed Bob Dylan's declaration of Christian faith in the early 1980's. Christians have their own list, though no Christian dare wear that list in public. Modesty and humility call us to self-restraint. But we literary-types who accept Christ know too well the names we can drop: T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, Fyodor Dostoevksy, Evelyn Waugh. Many of us aspire to be similarly listed.

Alas, have I given myself over to this idol, this idol of notoriety and fame? Have I meant to impress the world, without even thinking at all whether I am impressing the God I claim to adore? I have known my share of local notoriety as an award-winning news photographer and journalist; I have felt the pride in having people notice. But I wonder if in writing for a broader audience (here and elsewhere), and in taking on topics not usually within the scope of my interests, I am looking for the approval that sits in high places, the sort of places that serve as apparent gatekeepers of culture: The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and, sadly, Oprah.

Last week I almost reached the conclusion to forgo any writing that was not solely directed at a Christian audience. This not because I was suppressing my idolatry, but because I felt I was wasting my time writing to anyone else. How many folks, really, do we need commenting on Al Gore, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Sean Hannity and sundry other absurdities? Need I analyze George W. Bush's language when others are not only more qualified than I, they are more astute and even more passionate than I could ever be? Or IS this sort of stuff my passion?

But the theme of my many questions is the search for obedience. My musings need not solely circle around the idol of fame or approval, for there are many idols to which Christians give undue obeisance. There is, for certain, the idol of intelligence, of wits, to which I am particularly vulnerable; at its very worst, I fall servant to the idol that proves I am not as dumb (or mean) as those Christians over there. It is a nasty idol to serve. But how, really, do I obey God here? Simply by not tipping my head or genuflecting when my idols pass nearby? And is it at all beneficial to the Church, to the called faithful, that I spend anytime wrestling with matters where any victory will neither edify nor inform?

I wonder too much, perhaps. Yet I am reminded of the very lucid and simple exhortation given by St. Paul: Whatever you do, do it heartily unto the Lord.

Lord, how I try.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Jamie Glazov & Dinesh D'Souza On Islam, 9/11, And The Radical Left (Updated)

We all hear a lot about "dialogue" and "debate"; about talking together through difficult issues. Currently we are hearing this sort of rhetoric coming from the "new" US Congress; some of us Episcopalians in New Hampshire are STILL waiting for the great dialogue promised three years ago by our controversial bishop.

I must say that the sort of dialogue exemplified between Jamie Glazov and Dinesh D'Souza in their two-part conversation at FrontPageMag is reassuring and inspiring: here are two thinkers, conservative and academic, who disagree profoundly. And yet there is a gentlemanly quailty that prevails throughout; and there is no shortage of interesting parries and thrusts. Both men score points; and I give the win to Mr. Glazov. Part of that small victory, unfortunately, comes as a result of Mr. Glazov slipping into a monologue for which, it appears, Mr. D'Souza is absent. But that hardly matters, since Glazov is amazing on his own.

This really is an excellent series. Take time to read it if you are at all interested in Mr. D'Souza's thesis that it is American liberalism, the radical leftist sort, that led to 9/11 and America's current standoff with Islam. Mr. Glazov issues a very serious and compelling challenge; Mr. D'Souza makes a few worthy rebuffs. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is found here. From Abu Ghraib to sexual immorality, from Moses to Muhammed, this series offers key insights.

And make sure you take time to read Mr. David Forsmark's challenging review of Mr. D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11.

Peace.

BG

Andrew Sullivan And Conservatism: A Cry For Help

I am thinking of writing at length about writer, pundit, and blogger extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan. But before I do, I was wondering what Contratimes readers thought about the man. Perhaps some of you watched the C-Span interview with him last night on Q & A. If you did see it, what do you think? I came away with something approaching confusion. How is this man a conservative? How is it that he is even considered a spokesman for conservatism?

Part of me wonders, not so much that he is some sort of charlatan, but whether he subsists solely on stereotype: he is the elegant, reasonable, open, and so-very-humble conservative much in demand these days. He is not like the many blockheads out there -- Bible-thumping and finger-wagging -- who call down brimstone on all things untoward and lynch personal privacy on the town common. His is an erudite, thoughtful conservatism; fashionable in its unfettered secularism and yet blithely tolerant of most things religious, even, I dare say, Catholic. He is gay with circumspection and restraint, but he is not politically restrained by religious precept nor is he given to radicalism. He defends gay marriage with soft-spoken ease; and he supports abortion only in the first trimester of pregnancy. In short, he is perceived as balanced; his poise makes him popular.

And he claims to be a good Catholic. I have no doubt that he is, at least in the Holy See of his own mind. He supports abortion, homosexual marriage; he believes that the Bible is fallible, errant. And yet to believe in these things he must doubt other elementary Catholic teachings as well. He must deny papal infallibility, for instance, which should be no real problem, since it is hardly an essential Catholic tenet. I can understand his jettisoning such tangential stuff, and can applaud his accepting the really important matters, like being nice to one's neighbors. What I find most curious, however, is how often people like Mr. Sullivan seem to land on the truth that the Bible and the papacy are always fallible on matters of sexuality and sexual holiness and yet are never fallible when it comes to love. After all, if the Bible and the Church are fallible, then surely we must conclude that both could be wrong about being kind, tolerant, loving, and merciful. Perhaps, for instance, we are NOT supposed to care for the poor; nor are we to be kind to our neighbors. Such teachings are mere corruptions of Christian teaching, rooted in so much ancient bias. I have never met a person who can tell me why anyone should care for the poor for purely secular reasons; and yet I do find many folks, like Mr. Sullivan, suggesting that religion has no place in politics. Mr. Sullivan abhors fundamentalism, it is clear. Yet he is apparently blind to that fundamentalism to which he holds so tenaciously: he is ignorant to the fact that everyone holds certain truths as fundamentals. Some truths, of course, are not one whit fun and are rather mental. But there is something rather fundamentally flawed in those who believe they are able to transcend religion and exist in some sort of political neutral zone, where religion does not reside. Religious faith resides everywhere. There is no escaping this fact. Any position that denies this is futile and pretentious. A man who theorizes we can fully partition the atmosphere can only exist in a vacuum: he may be a fine writer at a fashionable journal but he will be smothered should he put his theory into practice. Politics can exist independent of religious precepts about as well as nature loves a vacuum.

Well, perhaps I have already written about Mr. Sullivan; one could hardly think this post is a mere preamble, though it could be criticized, I am sure, as something of a ramble. Whether rant, ramble or preamble, I would like to know what you think, especially those of you who have a better sense of Mr. Sullivan's broad contributions to political and theological discourse.

Peace and mirth,

Bill Gnade

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part IV

[Part I of this series begins here.]

I've never known a person not touched by evil, pain, suffering. But I have known many people who have never known joy.

The other day, while I was sitting in a park photographing cedar waxwings (not my photo), an old salt-of-the-earth New Englander asked me a question. He had recently seen a bird, a black bird with red patches on its wings. "I have never seen one before. Do you know what it was?" I cheerfully told him that it was one of my favorites, the red-winged blackbird (not my photo either). I told him all I knew of the bird, and the old man continued on his way. But it was clear that the man, who surely seemed to have his wits about him, had never seen what is utterly a common bird in New England. Since the beginning of this essay (this morning) I have had several visit my feeders just outside the window, and they are always busy flitting about wetlands everywhere. They are remarkably obvious birds, extremely chatty, very active. It is hard to imagine that there are people around who have not seen one of them.

But then again, there are all kinds of things that surprise us, not least of which is that there are people who have never even been loved. This may be too hard for us to entertain even in the most detached, academic way. We do not know how such a fact could ever be possible. But reality is often too much for us, especially when that reality so thoroughly contradicts our experience: There are people who have not been loved for one second of their lives. How could this happen?

Perhaps there is some solace, and a small answer, in the pronouncement that God loves those who are unloved, or even unlovable. But it is not a very convincing sort of solace; we are not convinced that this is enough to restore someone who has never been loved to any sense of self worth. After an encounter with a very sad man on a city street (I was working as a photojournalist at the time), and after a very brief argument with an editor at the newspaper where I worked, I wrote the following poem:

In human interest

I submit the photoshopped images to the news queue
a disfigured head, gigantesque in its distortion
twisted grin his normal straight

brow like the elephant man’s

I pull them up to show you and you
give a face that has sales written all over it

I remember meeting this news feature
before you either saw him as news or
even as a feature:

He was sitting on a bench, where else?
on Main Street near Railroad Ave.
his head twice the size of most
fairground balloons

I wondered whether he had ever been touched

What’s your name? I asked.

Johhhhhnnnyyyy! he replied, Ya gaht aaany mmmonnney?

I emptied my pockets, a few bucks and I handed it to him.
At that instant a cab pulled up to the curb, and Johnny
jumped in. I laughed, but knew I’d be back for more.

I say, I wonder if anyone ever loved him.

You say, you’re too philosophical to be a
journalist.

I say, thank you. Really.

You walk away muttering about your circulation.

***

It seems like a loveless world. Darwin tells us, when we really think about it, that it is all about competition: there is no equality in Darwin's mean streets, there is no rest or peace or promise of uninterrupted comfort anywhere on the face of the earth. We balk at this, or we kick at the portents of atheism in so much Darwin-inspired, dread-saturated, post-modern emptiness. We wonder how a people who demand so much meaning out of life, who expect justice and love and joy, could have evolved from a primordial ooze that is utterly without meaning. How does the desire for purpose evolve from purposelessness; how does the want for love evolve from lovelessness?

Life does not seem fair: the child born with no face (as shown recently on TV); the newborn boy discarded in a garbage pail, now pushed from orphanage to orphanage; those families crammed into railroad cars heading toward gas chambers. I ask how it is that, if we've evolved from nothing, we then don't blame nothing for evil, or how we even see anything as evil at all. Why, if the radical evolutionists are right, why do we even care about suffering, or why would we blame God, if, indeed, there is no God at all? How did we get here, when our starting point was the void? It's as if we fundamentally defy as creatures the very physics of the universe, where it is a law that you can't get more energy out of a thing than what's in it. How is it that humans can demand, inspire or expect more meaning and love than the meaningless, loveless universe from whence they came can ever offer?

***

Did God create death camps? Did God create cigarettes, guns, nuclear bombs, chainsaws, alcohol, crystal meth? Is God responsible for polluted rivers, polluted air? Did He make us fly jets across the Atlantic, scarring the atmosphere; did He make us fly planes into skycrapers, skyscrapers that He built on fill in Lower Manhattan?

If there is a proof for the existence of God I might think it resides here, that humans blame Him for the things they created. One might also find an argument for the existence of God in His apparent absence: if I were God I might hide from humanity too. But there really is nothing hidden about God, as He is evident in every wingbeat of the red-winged blackbird. Heidegger's haunting question might even help us see God even where Heidegger could not: How is that there is anything here at all? What keeps everything from slipping into the abyss of non-being?

For some of us, the question might get us to begging, begging for a miracle. We want intervention (and we want it NOW!) not realizing that the very squirrels and birds and grasses and winds are divine signs. God is at work. Jesus may have impressed His disciples by walking on water. But the miracle is not in the walking, it is in the water; that there is any water at all. Raising the dead is miraculous, no doubt, but not anymore miraculous than that there was any person who lived in the first place. Sadly, we are too dulled, or too fearful, to live in the miraculous. We comfort ourselves in the presence of natural laws, oblivious, mostly, that the predictability of nature is often illusory and, more importantly, that the very laws themselves are miraculous. Breathing is really more of a miracle than Christ's resurrection. In fact, I believe He rose from the dead to prove that very thing, granting us life eternal so that we might breathe forevermore. But we hardly notice the miraculous in the commonplace until the wind is knocked out of us, or when we sense our last inhale will indeed be our very last.

***

We can ask where God is in the midst of suffering, as long as we are asking where we are in the midst of it, too. As we have seen, God has taken the blame for creation, for suffering, for evil; and He has taken the blame for things He did not even create. There should be joy in this news; we should receive this news with dancing and laughter and merriment. But we have even grown used to joy, I am afraid, even when it comes so rarely; good news is old news, and even joy seems tired, boring, predictable. We are too worldly to laugh, to dance in the freedom of forgiveness, to drink deep draughts of holy, redeemed merriment. Holiness, joy, redemption, forgiveness -- these are greeted with a big yawn by the all-knowing sophisticates we think we are. We snicker at the idea of a banquet with a Holy Family, because we know families, and they are all broken and disappointing. Laugh for a while, we say, but before long you'll be at each others' throats, just like so many holidays with our own too-often unholy families. Heaven? bliss? No thanks. That's for those who need such assurances.

***

The Christian message is simple regarding suffering, and it is painful. God loves both the murderer and the murdered, and He knows what it is to be both. He cannot stop being all-knowing, all-present, and thus is always both victim and victimizer. To intervene in world affairs in terms familiar to us, action figures that we think we are, would be for God to have to choose sides. But God is, until time has run out, on all sides: He is a Yankees and Red Sox fan; He roots for Manchester United as fervently as He roots for Arsenal. In short, He cheers on people, not ideologies, except the Gospel itself. He did not root for Hitlerism, but surely He adored Hitler. He did not root for Arafat's hatred, but surely He loved Arafat. He did not love the blood on King David's hands, but surely He loved the hands that were David's. The red-winged blackbird killed by a goshawk in my yard recently, killed right before my eyes, was no less loved by God than the goshawk that carried the dead bird away. After all, had God stopped the hawk from smashing that helpless blackbird into the side of my house, right next to me, would He not have had to bring the whole cosmos to a halt?

The Gospel of Christ declares this: That God loves you more than He loves His own life, and even His own joy. Better to be with you in hell than in heaven without you. Better to crucify the Creator than to stop Creation. Better to bring God to a screeching halt than the hawk in its deadly flight. Better to bring God to the grave than Hitler to annihilation.

Strange, though, how few people point out that Hitler was indeed stopped. No one seems to thank God for that, do they? Perhaps God did intervene -- perfectly, the only way Omniscience can. He KNOWS what He is doing, right? Otherwise, He can't be God. And if He is not God, we are indeed pitiable, and lost.

"Come unto me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest." It is always a good thing to remember that the very first miracle that Jesus performed was to make more wine. Sounds exactly like the sort of message one would expect of a God who cares, who pays attention.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil, The New Yorker

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part III: To Hell With Jesus

[I post this essay with trepidation. It is a long entry in this series on good and evil. But it is a necessary one. That is not where my fear lies. I am afraid that I have gone too far. (Part I of this series begins here.)]

This series began with Pope Benedict XVI praying at Auschwitz. It won't end there, not because I am interested in following the Holy Father to another scene, but because the issue of good and evil has no earthly terminus. We will be asking questions until answers are finally given.

In the February 6, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, in an article called "Forgiveness", author Timothy W. Ryback discusses the Pope's difficult past –– of growing up in Nazi Germany and serving in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi military. But in Ryback's piece one reads the following about then-professor Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) teaching at the University of Tübingen as a young man:

In 1966, when Ratzinger arrived in Tübingen, the university was a center of theological dispute. Students disrupted lectures with cries of "Verflucht sei Jesus!" ("To hell with Jesus!"). Protestant faculty members endorsed flyers denouncing the crucifix as "an expression of sadomasochistic glorification of suffering."

We have already spoken of both human indifference and human culpability regarding suffering and evil. I have argued that humanity is remarkably silent about horrors, except when it comes to horrors and God, and then humanity is quite boisterous about God's alleged weakness, moral turpitude, indifference, or even His non-existence. If there is a God, God is to blame; He's the one who must give account, He is the one who must be judged. God is the source of horrors.

***

I cannot think of a more complex religious image: the Vicar of Christ, the Pope of the Holy Catholic Church, a former Hitler youth and soldier in the Nazi cult, standing at Auschwitz. It is a stillpoint; it is the crux of the matter. Can a sinner be a saint? Are redemption and sanctification possible? Does God love the indifferent and brutal as much as He loves the compassionate and merciful? Does God love the abuser as much as he loves the abused? Are Hitler and Elie Wiesel (a famous Holocaust survivor) loved equally by God?

There is something essentially Christian about Benedict XVI standing within the gates of death. There is something essentially Christian about the very idea of redemption: St. Paul, the outstanding Jew who was a murderer, is the quintessence of the Christian message: all are saved who would be saved. God, as St. Paul says, takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is a God of gracious irony, proving that grace, love and mercy always trump the rules. My own earthly father taught me this: he taught me that he loved me more than he loved his rules, his reputation, his honor. I was more important than a statute, a commandment. The sheep is more important than the sheepfold; a hole in the fence did not mean that the fence was broken but that a sheep was lost, and in jeopardy. God cares for the lost, He pursues them; and He finds them in order to make them whole. This is what my father taught me, and it is essentially Christ's message to the world.

And yet there is a whole world of people who believe that rules are God; that a lost sheep deserves his or her plight; that the fence should just be fixed to keep only the good sheep in, and the bad sheep out.

Perhaps I am rambling, but I ramble over brambles and thorns to get to one important point, a point that might indeed save one sheep from a disasterous decision, and that point is this: To hell with Jesus indeed!

***

I have said it before and I will say it again: The Christian gospel has it all exactly right. Christianity is separated from all other religions by having, not the valley climb to the summit, but the summit tumble down to the valley. There is no Moses climbing to receive a Word from God in the Gospel story; there is no Muhammad receiving the very words of a radically transcendent God whose message is all about making men better men. The message of Christianity is about a God tumbling to Hell in order to make God a better God. I border on blasphemy, I know, but hear me out.

***

Years ago I was painting a school gymnasium with a college friend when a horse fly, a large nasty bloodthirsty fly with stinging jaws, landed on my friend's leg. My friend was quick to snatch it, and, in the course of looking at it, my friend asked me if the pest was "one of the nasty biting flies". I told him that it was indeed, and that it was cousin to the smaller though no less nasty deer fly. To my horror, my friend pulled the wings off the fly and tossed it to the ground. "Suffer!" he shouted. I quickly walked over and crushed the wingless fly beneath my foot.

Odd that such a moment should have become a defining moment in my life. Earlier that year I had a young man in my dorm (I was an RA for three years) whose father, an atheist, threw out a stiff challenge to the idea of original sin or original culpability. "Why should God be upset with me if I cannot help but be a sinner? I did not ask to be born. How then am I accountable?" It is a great challenge, and I was stumped for months. But when I crushed the fly beneath my foot, I knew I had an answer. And that answer begins with the character of God. Was my friend, the wing-ripping, sardonic and merciless man before me, anything like the God of the universe? Did God delight in abusing that which itself was abusive; did God aim to punish a fly that was just being itself? Would a just God punish a being that had no choice but to be unpleasant?

The clarity with which I divined my way through the problem took the following course. I imagined that I, an outsider to the fly's world yet a being full of love for all flies, descended to the mere existence of a fly. I was, to a perfect match, a horsefly. And to the other flies I spoke:

I know that you do not know exactly what it is you do. But if I were to tell you that you were an awful, nasty creature, what would you say? If I told you that the things you bite, the things from which you draw your life, are injured viciously by you, and that they loathe you, would you care? Trust me when I say this: I am not blaming you. In fact, let me state that you were even made this way. I made you this way. But now I ask you this. What if I were to tell you that you could become something new, wonderful, lovely? What if I told you I could transform you, I could liberate you from this plight? Would you follow? Would you choose to be new, different, lovely, though still in essence who you were created to be? Would you choose to be more lovely than the butterflies if I promised you such wonder? Or would you reject me?

My question to you, dear reader, is this: If I really could transform the flies, if I really could deliver them from their plight and I showed them incontrovertibly that I could, who would be responsible if they refused? If the flies could be completely transformed and yet essentially remained their fully undifferentiated selves, and they refused so great a blessing, who is to blame if they chose to remain nasty biting bugs? Surely not their creator, even if He, indeed, had created them to bite. For now He was offering them a singular gift, a chance to participate in their creation; they were to be co-creators in their new lives. But, and here is a critical point, if they refused their new lives, they would be endorsing their viciousness as wonderful and desirable. In short, if they chose to be nasty and untransformed, they would become the sole creators of who and what they were.

For those who have an understanding of the problem of predestination and free will, we come to another crux, another crossroad. For here we see something amazing. Even if the creator of the flies made them to be vicious, should they refuse his offer, they have become their own creators, setting the creator free. The flies can no longer complain that they were made to be mean by someone else: they have freely made their decision, and they have continued in their evil ways. The flies have chosen, and their NO to the creator is the one thing that is truly their own: It is a wondrous act of free will.

However, should any fly choose to be transformed, should any fly choose to be a co-creator in his (or her) re-creation, that fly would make a startling pronouncement: I had nothing to do with it at all! For the fly, now more glorious than a butterfly, would announce that his choice was not of his making, as the wondrous world in which he lived was not his doing: "You see, I am indeed new, but I had nothing to do with either the option or the choosing. I did not present the choice to myself, it came to me; I did not create the idea of a butterfly, it came from above. My assent is hardly a choice. It is more that I have been chosen, for my creator came to me at a point in time with a wonderful bit of news; I did not come to HIM with the news, but He came to me." In other words, the transformed fly would say that his YES to the creator was not really his; he was predestined to be transformed. For he did not come up with the whole idea in the first place. And, as a result, both the creator and created were set free.

So in short, free will means saying NO; but it has nothing to do with saying YES.

Where does this fit in with the problem of evil? It fits right here: that Christ became a fly, was confronted by the vicious who could not be, on their own, otherwise; they submitted Him to capital punishment for making the cosmos in the first place; He died and descended to Hell, and returned as a transcendent butterfly with POWER. And then He said, "You've killed me. I've suffered. I've taken the blame for starting it all; I have taken your sins upon me and called them my own. And now the whole of sin is buried, hidden away, tossed into the abyss. I am the murderer, and the murdered; I am the rapist and the raped; I am the Nazi and the Jew. I have been all things in all ways in all times; you have punished me and I have succumbed. And now that you are no longer to blame, now what? Will you come to me now? For there is no one left to blame."

***

"Verflucht sei Jesus! To Hell with Jesus!" To Hell indeed. For it is the God that was believed to be vindictive and petty, mean and cold, that we discover in Christ is a different God: He is the God who SUFFERS, who succumbs to the death inherent in even the smallest sin. He would rather be in hell with us than in heaven without us. He has come, He has shown us that He is a different God. "Come unto me, and I will give you rest," He offers to Jew, Gentile, and Nazi alike. And yet, and yet …

There are those who refuse, who resist transformation, healing. And in so doing their NO to God becomes a YES to sorrow, sin, death, and suffering. They freely choose to be sole creators in their sorrow; and they resist the gentle Hand that reaches forward. God does not pull off wings; He does not say "Suffer!" We say it in every moment of resistance to transformation; and in keeping our pitiable sorrows we refuse to have our sins transformed to gems. We, those who protest against such grace, true protestants as we are, are the sadomasochists: it's not the God on the Cross who is sadist, masochist. It's the obdurate who view Him that way who are mired in sadomasochism.

Pope Benedict XVI, formerly a little boy in Nazi Germany who helped the Hitler cult perform even one heinous deed, is that perfect emblem of Christianity: The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting. Grace abounds in Christianity, from sea to sea, star to sun, earth to hearth, Heart to heart. There is no peace without forgiveness, the forgiveness of God toward man, and man toward God; and, most importantly, man to man, woman to woman, brother to sister and Palestinian to Jew. There will be no end to woe without forgiveness. Mark my words.

Forgiveness always requires that something dies, is buried. And then comes the freedom. It is the gospel, the glad tidings. Glad indeed!

Peace to you.

(Concluding thoughts tomorrow, which begin here.)

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved. (Dedicated to James Saunders.)

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil,
The New Yorker

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part II

In Part I of this series, I spoke of suffering, of evil and death; of the Holocaust. I discussed the problem of evil, that the existence of evil proves that God is weak, mean, or both; and that for many people the best conclusion drawn from the harsh realities of suffering is that there is no God at all.

I added my own thoughts on the problem of evil as classically defined, arguing that the problem ignores the obvious assumption in our definition of God, that God is omniscient. As an omniscient Being, God might know that the only way to eradicate evil and suffering from the cosmos is exactly the way we see events unfolding in our lives: omniscience IS at work in every tragedy and in every joy. In other words, God IS doing something, the very thing an all-wise God can only do; and it looks like Life. And it might very well be the case that God was not silent at all during the Holocaust. His voice may indeed have been quite strong. In fact, I have even heard it suggested that had Hitler not been distracted by the Jews in Germany, Poland, France; had Hitler instead ignored them and turned the German machinery of death, destruction and warfare on his enemies, he would have won World War II and far more than 6,000,000 Jews would have been killed. The suggestion posits a heroic idea, that the Jews were something of a glorious sacrifice that saved us all from Nazi tyranny: the Jews were freedom fighters even in their alleged weakness. It was the Jews who destroyed Hitler. Churchill and Roosevelt had nothing to do with it.

This is not an attempt on my part to palliate the evils of the Holocaust, nor am I trying to cheer up the surviving victims of Germany's death camps. I am making a point that God may have indeed been very much at work in profoundly effective and yet strange ways, which is what one would expect of an omniscient God. Omniscience, in fact, may behave in utterly bizarre and contradictory ways; and it may act in obscurity.

A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a spat with a local shop owner about suffering, God, justice. He followed me out to the sidewalk and, in the heat of debate said, "I've done more for the suffering of starving Africans than God ever has." I must say that I understand the sentiment behind this conceit, but I do not understand the conceit. God appears not to be doing anything most of the time; He does not seem to even care. But one of the real problems associated with evil is not that God doesn't care, it's that there is sweepingly broad empirical evidence that most humans don't care either.

About 15 years ago I received a phone call from an old friend grieving about the sad death of a young mother we both knew. My friend was angry at God, for God had let not only Penny (the dead woman) down, He let lots of others down, too. My friend wondered how God could choose not to heed the prayers of Penny and her son, or the prayers of countless people surrounding that tragedy. Even Penny believed that she would be healed! How could God not honor that? How could He be content with yet another motherless child?

After awhile I shared with my friend something that hit my conscience hard. I said that in all of the time that Penny was living, all 26 years of her life, not once had anyone called me to proclaim how glad they were that Penny existed. No one called to praise Penny's smile, her laughter, her sweet goodness. No one called me to praise God for His wonderful creation which was Penny in all her simple glory. No one called to complain that there was not MORE of Penny everywhere; and no one ever said that God was too kind to us all to have created such a wonderful woman in the first place. And yet, in spite of all this silence, people were now mad that God had taken Penny away. Before, there was no gladness around Penny, but after her death there was nothing but madness. No one praised God yesterday, and yet now people were poised to curse Him today.

My friend agreed, and I believe we were both changed during that phone call.

***

I am reminded of something G. K. Chesterton once said. He imagined a rather randy man complaining to God about women and matrimony. "Explain to me God why I can't be with all women?" the man might have asked. To which God replied, "If it comes to that, explain to me why you can be with even one woman?" Chesterton went further, suggesting that Adam and Eve, given the entire cosmos and yet prevented from having just one thing -- an apple -- might have asked God something similar: "Explain to us why we can keep everything we have if we don't have just one thing? Explain why we can't have the apple, too?" God's reply? "Well, if it comes to that, explain the apple."

I am reminded of all this because we often expect an explanation for something taken from us without ever asking ourselves how we were given the thing to begin with. A man may be mad at God when his son is killed in a car wreck; but was he ever grateful to God that he even had a son who would, eventually, die?

What has come to surprise me about many reactions to death and suffering is that people respond with such surprise. When a child dies of a brain tumor or a woman is raped and murdered, one would think that such a thing had never before happened, judging by many survivors' reactions, particularly their reactions toward God. God is to blame, it seems, even though few people take the responsibility for suffering themselves. Like the shopkeeper who thinks he does more to alleviate sorrow than even God, many forget that they are perhaps the reason there is suffering at all. For surely each of us who has had a child knew about rape, murder, disease, fire, pestilence, earthquake, pedophilia, and car crashes BEFORE we had children; surely there is NO ONE on this planet choosing to have children who did not know about these things. And yet, AND YET, knowing this, knowing that death occurs every day; knowing that there are murderers and rapists and wars and droughts and suicides and divorce and cannibals and cancers, and that we nonetheless still choose to have children; all of this should lead us to one question, and one question only: When it comes to suffering and evil, who among us is NOT to blame?

Please note: I am responsible for every bit of suffering my child experiences in life, every bit. Why? Because I knew beforehand that dreadful things MAY happen; I might even have known that they WILL happen, and yet I (not anyone else) CHOSE to bring a child into this world. I am the source of suffering. If there was at least ONE thing I knew before reproducing a child, it was the simple fact that that child will someday DIE.

Interestingly, as I may be responsible for my child's sorrow, I cannot say that I am responsible for my child's joys. And this for the simple reason that before having a child I had no certainty that joy would come his or her way; but I was indeed certain that death MUST come. Life does not guarantee joy, and there is no proof that it ever did, or ever could, or ever will. But every graveyard is proof that even if there is joy, joy, eventually, falls into the ground. With family planning the only guarantee one has is death.

But since sorrow is one of life's guarantees, we can be glad that joy, should it come, is one of life's infinitely wonderful privileges. After all, there is no joy if one is entitled to it; there is no bliss if bliss is one's guaranteed right. Joy can only come in the form of a surprise or it is not joy. Hence, we take a gamble with every breath and in every birth. We hope, we pray; we throw our chance into the hand of omniscience. Surely we cannot blame God when things go wrong, particularly when we don't "blame" Him when things go remarkably right. But when things do go right, surely we are out there thanking God for the privilege of simple existence.

Well, one can only hope.

More tomorrow. [Part III begins here.]

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part I

Perhaps this will not help at all.

Pope Benedict XVI stood at Auschwitz this past weekend. He entered death chambers. He knelt before the gates of death, and he prayed. And then there was a rainbow.

It is not that the several elements, the prayers and presence of a Pope and a rainbow, are causally connected. It is that we hope they are.

Auschwitz is that geographic point that exists like an oracular black hole. Oracles, as you know, were where pilgrims traveled to hear news from the divine, hopefully good news, though usually not. Auschwitz is like an oracle in reverse: there is nothing proclaimed there, only asked. But no answer comes in that crushing dark, the oppressive silence. Auschwitz is the place of questions, the abyss with no answers. We plead for God, and God hides behind veils of smoke, the smoke of burning bodies. Atop gas chambers, birds sing. God says nothing.

The problem of evil, at least in theology, is framed something like this: If God is all-powerful and all-good, He could or would stop evil. Since there is evil, God is either not all-powerful or all-good. Many philosophers have chosen to dismiss God as not all-powerful, needing God to be at least all-benevolent. Many have rejected the idea of God altogether in light of the facts of evil and suffering. And a few malcontents have chosen to see God as so much badness, a real sadist in the sky.

Those theologians and philosophers who believe that God must be both omnipotent and benevolent often defend Him by noting God's free choice to give humanity free will; as such, He permitted us to make a mess of things. And so we have. Of course, really shrewd thinkers note that if God did in fact design humanity and the cosmos this way He is still responsible for starting the whole thing in the first place. Free will arguments don't really absolve God of apparent culpability.

Pope Benedict XVI, like countless other people before him, stood at Auschwitz and asked, “Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" Of course, I recognize that the Holy Father is asking the question rhetorically; that he is revealing his humanity, his compassion, and his ability to identify with doubt, sorrow, pain. He is like the Psalmist, or like the prophets before him: How long, O, Lord, will you let our enemies prevail? Even the Christian Savior asked in His darkest hours, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Women huddled in a gas chamber asked the question with perfect lucidity.

If readers will permit, I would like to confront the problem of evil (theodicy) in a few posts here at Contratimes. And the first place I would like to start is with the problem itself. For it strikes me as self-evident that the classic problem, that God can't be either omnipotent or benevolent before the facts of evil, is thoroughly wrong-headed.

Not long ago I called a radio talk program to join in on a conversation about this very problem. The guest was a former professor of mine, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, and I asked if anyone had considered whether perhaps an omniscient God, one knowing everything in a state of all-wisdom, would KNOW that the only way to overcome evil in the world is to overcome evil exactly the way we see things working out every day. For all any one of us knows, an all-wise God would say to us, "You know, I am destroying evil, I am alleviating suffering; and this is the ONLY way for me to do so. This is omniscience intervening." In other words, omniscience would know exactly how to destroy the evil and suffering that besets all creatures, and that destruction might be what we are witnessing in every breath and in every sunset. There can be no other way. Should God just step in and stop, for instance, Hitler from killing Jews, then a far greater evil may follow. Oddly, the talk show host would have none of this: She wanted to blame God for being weak or malevolent. She could not buy the idea of omniscience. And I believe that she could not buy it because she had never thought of it before.

Peter Kreeft, as would be expected of a philosopher, ran with the question. He added that some have speculated that if Hitler had not committed suicide, for example, and that he was instead arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, we might find ourselves living under the dreaded Nazi flag today. For a person cannot tell how one thing ultimately influences another; one cannot tell what is materially the less evil path in the long run. One can only hope; one can only stand on principles when confronting injustice and evil. But one cannot know, unless one is God, whether one's actions will have an ill or healthy effect on the world. Kreeft's words were engaging, and correct.

Hopefully Dr. Kreeft won't mind if I put his words differently. If it were up to us, our battle with evil might be a bit like administering antibiotics: they appear to work as a victorious solution to infections, but in the long run, antibiotics may in fact have weakened humanity's innate abilities to self-immunize. The infections we beat short-term may have been overcome long-term by themselves had we just waited long enough for the human immune system to evolve. One simply does not know. Nor does doltish humanity know what God's sudden "dramatic" intervention might look like, or what effect it might have.

But the assumption in all theological discussions is that God does indeed know. God is either omniscient or He is not. If He is not, it is awfully hard to call Him God. And if He is omniscient, then one can only conclude that the very reality we are in is the best reality for overcoming sin, evil and suffering. To return to the antibiotic image for a second, it would be wrong for a sceptic to conclude that because there is a battle between cells in a person's body the antibiotics are not working, for the battle is proof that they are. If anyone concludes that an antibiotic that does not work "fast enough" (for whom?) or "well enough" is neither potent nor good, that person should be reminded that there are plenty of measures one can take to instantly and completely eradicate an infection. Killing the patient is one such measure. But good doctors are a bit like God. They are wise to the idea that killing the bad often takes time so as not to kill the good. God could perhaps instantly wipe the earth clean of all evil, but what would be left, and where is the wisdom in that?

And yet there is one more thing that complicates matters, and it is a hard pill to swallow: God is that antibody that loves everyone. In other words, God, who is love as well as justice, and who exists as the only all-wise being, loves the very persons many of us consider evil. This is alarming for many of us, but it is Christianity's truest, boldest and most controversial assertion: God loved the Jews in the gas chambers as much as he loved Hitler outside them; God loves the victimizer as much as any victim. It is almost too difficult to even write, let alone admit into one's reflections on these matters. But it must be true. God cannot HATE what we might hate; His wisdom must not be void of love or justice, nor can His love and justice be void of wisdom. God loved Hitler, and all other disgusting tyrants, as much as He loves any of us. And we know Christ the Shepherd leaves the beloved flock to find the one beloved stray, even if that stray is a rebel. That is the most difficult problem in the eradication of evil: How does God eradicate it without destroying everybody, and everything? How does God purge humanity of evil without destroying the entire body?

Only an omniscient Being has the knowledge, and power, to do that. Or there is no such Being at all.

More tomorrow, I hope. (Part II begins here.)

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Related post at WI Catholic can be read here.]

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil

The Emerging Informality: Christianity's Dire Need, Part IV

[My apologies if you've come here to read about George Bush's foibles or Howard Dean's much hoped-for return to Vermont's Green Mountains. I remain on my topic of informalism in the American Church. If you are late to the discussion and would like to join it, I suggest you read parts I, II, and III. Not that you have to.]

Things have gone dreadfully serious here, and profoundly spiritual. In hopes of bringing a light moment to my serious series on the plight of the American church, I must share a sentence I read last night. At the risk of sounding woefully pedantic (intellectually show-offish), I admit, with a smidgeon of shame, that I was reading "The History of Philosophy," the massive, amazing series by the brilliant historian Fr. Frederick Copleston, S.J.

In Vol. 6, Part 1, I fell on this laugher penned by the genius Copleston during his discussion of Denis Diderot:

Similarly, the fluid character of his thought makes it impossible to state simply and unequivocally that Diderot was or was not a materialist.

Well, I should think that, if I were Fr. Copleston, Mr. Diderot's character unequivocally proves to the satisfaction of any erudite mind that Diderot was something of a blatant liquidist. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

[Of course, this all is funny to exactly one person.]

***

I've been writing of informalism, or, more accurately, I've been writing about the need for informed formality in American churches. All of this it must be said is in response to a reputed trend to make American Christianity more relevant by making it less formal, more casual and familiar. I have argued that this trend is going in the wrong direction: we need more formality, not less.

May the following anecdotes, all true, serve to bolster my case. They are each real; they are not fictions for argument's sake.

First, I recall only a couple of years ago speaking with friends who attended a nearby popular evangelical church on Ash Wednesday. I was excited to hear about their experiences, surprised as I was to hear that such a church would even have an Ash Wednesday service. Plus, I knew how powerful my Ash Wednesday experiences had been, kneeling before the sacramental altar, with my own mortality smudged in the shape of a cross on my furrowed brow; the priest speaking of both autumn and spring, of death and resurrection. But to my great surprise I learned that the pastor of the evangelical church decided that, instead of emulating the rituals of millions of Christian parishes and parishioners around the world, he would hold a healing service. Instead of ashes, he would anoint with oil. This, he said, was what God "laid on his heart."

I can't speak for God: God can do amazing things. But it strikes me as odd that this pastor should feel led to do something no one else was doing, considering that what everyone else was doing was really quite powerful and wonderful. These "other churches" with their dirty little ashes also believe in anointing with oil, as symbol and sacrament of God's anointing Holy Spirit, and as the sacrament of unction in the healing of broken bodies and souls. But, alas, twisting and mixing symbols did not seem to matter to this pastor: what does any of it matter? Sadly, his actions remind me of those Protestant pastors I've heard speak around Eastertime of God's great mysteries, including that great mystery called the Immaculate Conception. Of course, the Immaculate Conception is not the virgin birth, which is what too many Protestants think. Rather, it is the distinctly Catholic teaching that God lifted original sin from the Virgin Mary at her conception in her mother's womb. And it also reminds me of the many days I spent Pentecost Sundays in an evangelical church and heard nothing about Pentecost, the very birthday of the Church.

Second, I listened recently to a song sung by a woman soloist backed by the praise band at an evangelical church I visited. The chorus included a line like this: "Jesus, Jesus, come and ravish us!" After the song ended, the soloist prayed aloud, saying, "Yes, Lord! We all ask you now to come and ravish each of us." Needless to say, my response to this prayer was to lean over to my friend, a fellow writer, and whisper, "I can assure you. I do not want Jesus to ravish me at all." You see, I am something of a wordsmith. I am not a walking dictionary, mind you, but I do take words seriously. And to ravish has long suggested "to rape." And if not rape, ravish is to at least overcome a woman's resistance sexually: she's putting up a fight, but she really, really wants it, if you get my meaning. In fact, the Latin root of the word, rapere, means to seize, to carry away (and not with emotion but with sexual intent). Yes, ravish has come to mean (at times) to overwhelm with emotions. But my sense is that most people, especially most men, do not pray or wish that Jesus the Christ ravishes them.

Now these two anecdotes are not signs of anything horrible. They just point to a casual tendency in Christian worship where meanings and definitions become fuzzy and elastic, where form is immaterial or even a hindrance. At least, the loss of form became a hindrance for me, a worshipper in the pews. This next anecdote, however, points to something really quite shocking.

At the wedding of my first cousin-once removed, the pastor, married to another one of my cousins, celebrated communion. This pastor, raised Catholic but now wholly anti-Catholic, stated these two things at the beginning of that once sacred meal:

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and he brake it, saying, "This is a symbol of my body, broken for you ... " He likewise took the cup and said, "This is a symbol of the new covenant in my blood..."

Anyone familiar with either Jesus' words as recorded in Holy Scripture, or with the Holy Eucharist or Mass, is no doubt aghast at the pastor's gross perversion of the words of Christ. Jesus did not say that either the bread or wine were symbols. He said that they were his body and blood. Of course, they may be nothing but symbols, but Jesus NEVER said that they were.

Needless to say, had the pastor offered me either bread or wine, I would have refused.

Let me talk now, about the meal or feast we call communion, eucharist, mass. To some it is indeed purely symbolic and commemorative, yielding nothing salvific or gracious. It is something to just do, to unite the fellowship of believers symbolically. For others, like me and my more Catholic brothers and sisters, Eucharist is more than symbol, it is sacramental: it gives something to us that we cannot receive any other way. It is a meal of grace; it is the meal of eternal life, by being the meal of a Savior's very real death.

Who is right in this matter, the "low" church folks who treat the meal as memorial; or us "high" church folks? Let me answer that question by quoting St. Paul in what might be the most important passage he ever penned (or dictated), and it is one of the most misused in all of Christendom:

When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! ... Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. (I Cor. 11: 20-32)

First, this passage is not a warning to non-Christians. It is not a warning, as so many pastors wrongly suggest, that non-believers must not partake of the Holy Communion for fear of damning themselves. That every word of the New Testament is solely written directly to believers should always give us pause before we issue warnings to non-believers from that sacred text. The casual church misuses Scripture, while the formal church (and this need not be a "high church") uses Scripture rightly (or so I hope).

Second, this amazing passage proves one thing: the Communion Meal is powerful, even to the point of killing or making sick those Christians who abuse it! What kind of symbol does that? What kind of mere memorial or empty ritual kills people who use it wrongly? What sort of symbol carries with it God's discipline and judgment? Furthermore, if the meal can kill or make ill if abused, does that not imply that the meal can give life and healing if prepared, served and received properly? It seems that it must!

All of this amounts to one thing: we need more informed formality in our churches and not less. We need to return to a deep understanding of Christian worship, liturgy and tradition. We need more people formally trained in dividing the "word of truth;" we need more people attentive to the details, trained in godliness with all wisdom. The Church is not to follow the zeitgeist, it is to confront it, even change it. Nay, the Church is to be the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, even the spirit of all ages.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Part V/Epilogue is here.]

The Emerging Informality: Christianity's Dire Need, Part III

[I am grateful for the comments that appear at the end of Part I of this series. Thank you for helping me understand things more clearly. I am also grateful for the comments posted over at Sunshine Church. My brothers and sisters in the Church of Christ have moved the discussion further in a very good way. Thank you all. And as a result of issues raised here, and due to some of the hard things I've already written, I feel I must continue the series on informed formalism and Christian worship. My apologies to my readers who prefer my more socio-political essays. But this topic is indeed socio-political, too, for the loss of formality portends problems for all cultures and institutions, I believe.]

I think most people would agree with the claim that American culture (particularly) is steeped in informalism. Clothing fashions indicate this, as does etiquette between the sexes: women casually ask men out on dates, and vice versa, with even sexual intercourse treated as a casual exchange. Children address police officers or church pastors by their first names; titles are dismissed in corporate life, even to the point where it is hard to know who is indeed in charge. Few people hold their hands over their hearts as the American flag is raised; few know the words to the nation's anthem. Even our president is casual, as are the media who report on him, revealing to us their mutual repartee, badinage or mockery. And perhaps no more casual place in America is the American church, with children free to move at any time during a service, or amplifiers cranked to drown out the din of so many people doing their own thing (the louder the amp, the louder the crowd). Pastors dress themselves "down," computers and projectors and paper communion cups have made their way into the sacrament of worship. Church is hardly a formal affair anymore, at least for many of us.

Malcolm Gladwell in his telling book, The Tipping Point, discusses that when a community pays attention to the little things, the details like broken glass on the sidewalks and in the storefronts; when a community fixes minor things, major things happen, like serious drops in the crime rate. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was in fact upbraided for his commitment to prosecuting the city's most petty crimes. The result? Crime rates in New York fell precipitiously. You see, it is a lie that the devil is in the details. God is in the details. In fact, He always has been. If the Gospel is about anything it is about the glorious news that God cares about the details, our details.

Plus, just ask any wife, or just ask your girlfriend (assuming, of course, that you are single) whether details matter. You'll learn pretty quickly that they matter immensely. Details matter in birthday gifts, details matter at anniversary dinners and first dates. Romance is vibrant with details, as is love. Nice homes, nice cars, nice clothes; when you purchase any thing, that purchase is often made all the more pleasurable and all the more fun because of the details. Bad romances and ailing marriages, bad purchases and lousy meals, are almost always due to some inattention to detail.

Yesterday it was reported that a 12-year-old boy, while on a field trip to a Detroit museum, intentionally stuck his chewed gum to a $1.5 million painting. It is tempting to think the youngster did this in artistic protest of hideous, over-priced art. But I suspect that it is more the destruction of formality, of formally valuing place and object, that assisted him in his crime. And his age group hardly gets the sort of direction from the adults that should guide them toward high standards: my wife, a middle-school librarian, weekly reports that the greatest offenders of propriety at school assemblies are the teachers. No one cares about the essential details of courtesy, or so it seems.

Let me point out two passages from Holy Scripture. The first is from Ecclesiastes, which was most likely penned by King Solomon, the son of King David, the chief psalmist:

"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Do not be quick with your mouth, 

do not be hasty in your heart 

to utter anything before God. 

God is in heaven 

and you are on earth, 

so let your words be few." (Eccl. 5:1-2)

These indeed are hard words. They are fraught with caution, suggestive of protocol and decorum. But do they remind you of anything? How about these words from St. Matthew's Gospel:

"But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." [emphasis added] (Matt. 6:6-7)

Those of us familiar with liturgy, or any formalized rituals, know that such formalities are designed in large part for economy, for efficiency. They are designed to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. One read through either Rite I or II in the Book of Common Prayer proves that the entire gospel message is proclaimed in a very short time, in elegant language and wonderful ceremony, with few words. Pastoral prayers from pulpit and lectern, from the crossing or altar, are done with the facility of language that gets to the point, removing the person praying from the center of attention.

But in many churches spontaneous and not pre-written worship and prayer is preferred, ostensibly proving authenticity and freshness. Of course, those of us who have endured listening to our pastors' or elders' long-winded "spontaneous" prayers have no doubt muttered in Christian charity, "Please, be done with it." And surely we've heard spontaneous prayers that are nothing more than re-arranged, automatic phrases. In fact, each of us can churn out such prayers at the drop of a hat, so familiar are we with these phrases. Written and spontaneous prayers can both become rote, reflexive and even dead.

Last December, in Touchstone: The Journal of Mere Christianity, I wrote about the all-too common practice of "asking" God in prayer without asking God anything at all. Surely we have all heard this: "Lord, we just ask that you be with Pastor Fred;" or, "Heavenly Father, we just ask that you guide us, fill us, heal us." My point in that essay was that such prayers are not questions, since there are no question marks in anyone's prayers. We say we ask but we don't actually ask! Our prayers are bereft of question marks, and we speak to God in ways we would not speak to our friends. Imagine speaking this way to your golf buddy: "Hey, I just ask you to hand me a five-iron."

You see, so many of us care so little about details that we forget the detail of prayer's punctuation. "Ask, and it shall be given you." And yet we don't ask at all, since we are so thoroughly informal we aren't even aware how vacuous our prayers have become.

These are realities. Nothing here is made up, mere fictions or straw men. Some would argue that the Gospel bids us to be free of these "worldly" formal constraints, insistent that Christ's news is that God is our "Daddy," our Father, our Abba (and that Christ is our brother). Of course, this is true, and yet rare is it that we hear that a father in Jesus' world was not informal, but the rabbi and priest of the house; involved in civic affairs at the city gate; a man gentle with children and yet worthy of their deepest respect. Toddlers of course could address their "Abba" in informal speech; but that is hardly the way fathers wanted their mature children to address them. Jesus tells us, in fact, to speak formally in prayer: "OUR (not just mine) Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." This is a formal address, taught us by our Savior. Moreover, we do not hear St. Paul declare to us that in the end of time "every knee shall bow, every tongue confess" that Jesus Christ is our brother, but our Lord, our King. We do not see a Father crowned; we do not see a brother lifted high, but the very King of the universe. This is the language and imagery we see in the Bible; Jesus is born of the Davidic line: He is royal, kingly, the very Prince of Peace.

Please realize that I am not here discussing personal, private relations with Christ. I am referring to the Bride of Christ, the corporate Church in corporate worship, that great gathering wherein self-centered worship ceases. I am talking about the gathering of the faithful, where the goal of worship is not about acquiring a blessing or feeling or some such edification. Corporate worship is where the self is to be subsumed by the centrality of God's place in the universe. It is not the obliteration of self, but its humility. Worship isn't some transaction wherein we indebt God to bless us; worship is a discipline of corporate life. Personal edification is available in all the other parts of church life: in cell groups, prayer meetings, home fellowships, Bible studies and everything else. The goal for us in corporate worship is unity, where the body corporate learns to act, speak, pray, kneel and sing as one.

I am ultimately talking about whether the current trend to become even MORE "informal" in order to be "relevant" is indeed a good thing. Moreover, I am talking about aesthetics, about beauty. If I am to serve a lovely meal, I do not serve filet mignon on a newspaper, nor do I set the table with plastic forks. Nor do I set my guests at lawn chairs in the midst of the dining room; I don't burn road flares for candles, or hang a flourescent shoplight from the dining room ceiling. And while my neighbor may daily wear overalls to work, I don't ask him to join me at the Ritz-Carlton for tea in those clothes because that is what he "understands." To do so is to insult his intelligence and his dignity.†

There is nothing harmful in aiming high in anything, particularly when that anything is the worship of God. But there seems to be this almost conceited idea that because Jesus called us brothers and sisters, we get to define what corporate worship means by comparisons we draw from our homes. If Jesus is indeed merely my brother, then He is like no brother I've ever known. And that, I can tell you, is a good thing.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Part IV begins here.]

†(For compelling books on Christian aesthetics, see Calvin Seerveld's Rainbows for a Fallen World, or D. Bruce Lockerbie's The Timeless Moment. The reviewer's comment at Amazon.com regarding Lockerbie's book is accurate, though far too brief.)

Some Americans just don't get it

This morning's New York Times once again reveals the ignorance, or, at best, the intentional neglect, of the facts of Catholicism by those who would write about that sacred faith.

In "Pope May Color Debate in U.S. Over 'Life' Issues Like Abortion", writer Robin Toner (one dare not call her a reporter), leads with this inscrutable remark:

"The election of an unstintingly conservative pope could inject a powerful new force into the intense conflicts in American politics over abortion and other social issues, which put many Catholic elected officials at odds with their church."

That the Holy Father is described as "unstintingly conservative" is like calling the New York Yankees "unswerving in being a baseball team". In other words, it's tautological. It's surprising that it wasn't reported that the papal conclave had elected a Holy Father that was "unstintingly male"; or that the College of Cardinals had foisted upon the waiting world a Pope who was "surprisingly Catholic."

Latent in the writer's commentary is a fundamentalist liberal (dare I say, American) notion that someday the Catholic Church could have a progressive Pope - a liberal Papa - who, in fact, could so transform the backward Church that maybe, in the not-too-distant future, the world could applaud the election of a female Pope (commonly known as a "Mope", I believe).

That the NYT writer implies that the Church could have elected a Pope other than an "unstinting conservative" reveals that far too many people view the Church's rôle as entirely human (lacking any divine inspiration or guidance); democratic and politically malleable, bending with the currents of modernity.

Moreover, that one of my belovéd family members should grieve that Pope Benedict XVI is in the "same vein" as John Paul II, indicates that even Catholics - American Catholics - fail to understand that ALL Popes are to be in the same vein. There is no "zeitgeist pope"; there is no Pope for today, another for tomorrow. Each Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the earthly stand-in for the Divine Savior of the world, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

That outsiders to the Faith particularly should chide the Church for being nothing other than itself - a bulwark against the whims of a capricious humanity - should remind us, not of the inflexibility of the Church, but of the instability of its critics.

(In other news, kudos to NYT columnist David Brooks for his astute commentary regarding Roe v. Wade. "Trenchant" comes to mind when considering his analysis.)

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Catholic Church, David Brooks, New York Times

The excoriation begins

Less than 24 hours after Benedict XVI's election to the Holy See, critics began to strip him of his skin. Whether it be the life-long Catholic who served me lunch yesterday, or members of my family, or Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Pope Benedict is not really God's man for the job. He's more likely the devil's.

Representative of this are comments by the likes of Boston's Mike Barnicle, who yesterday during his radio talk show chided the Church for lacking the "transparency" of an American election. This morning on Imus in the Morning, Tim Russert suggested that American Catholics wanted a Pope that would preach the "gospel as presented in the Sermon on the Mount", emphasizing the care of the poor and one's neighbors; and not a Pope like Benedict, who's caught up in divisive issues, "like abortion", and homosexuality. And Maureen Dowd (it's hard to believe she's won the Pulitzer Prize) implies this morning in her column that Benedict is little more than the Inquistion with new letterhead.

That Barnicle (and most Americans) miss the paradox of freedom is understandable, largely because Americans have come to view democracy in profoundly stupid terms. The paradox, of course, is that for freedom to thrive, there must be things that are not free; there must be darkness if we want transparency. For example, if the Oval Office in the White House was to be truly open to the people, one would discover quite quickly that America was no longer open to anyone. Similarly, if the Constitution were a transparent and elastic document, open to the revision of all truly free people who claim to have a voice in such matters, Americans would awake tomorrow morning to a world where the Constitution suddenly turned invisible. The paradox of freedom is just that: that something must be afixed - permanently - for freedom to exist at all.

If my meaning is yet not clear, think of it this way. The only reason we have an open society is because there are some things that are not open, like the Oval Office. The moment the Oval Office becomes transparently open to all is the very same moment the open society would close, close in tyranny, chaos or both.

That Barnicle believes the Catholic Church should be as transparent as an American election reveals that he understands neither the Church nor elections. For there is secrecy at the heart of every American election. Imagine if, in the interest of the pop idols "transparency" and "full disclosure", every citizen voted under public scrutiny. That Barnicle suggests this is clear, as is the result of such "clarity": voting as we know it and the freedom voter secrecy provides would cease.

Transparency at the level that needs to be obscure breeds death to freedom.

Russert's remarks are just plain foolish, suggesting that abortion is not related to caring for either the poor or one's neighbors. He would pit those who advocate a social gospel against those, such as Benedict, who advocate a total Gospel, one that deals with the social dimensions of the world in light of the personal, moral life of each individual; a gospel that rebukes the heresies that destroy those individuals' souls and the societies such individuals create.

But Russert's remarks also reveal that the Americans to which he refers would prefer a Pope that would do what "most Americans" want for him to do, which is to submit to democracy.

And Dowd, whose work reads less like a reasoned argument and more like verbal gas pains, is simply absurd. She bemoans the fact that the Church is a heirarchy and not a democracy like the New York Times (wait a minute, the NYT is not a democracy either. Well, perhaps I misrepresent her feelings about her employer, which, come to think of it, would not be a member of the free press if everyone, from the crankpot on the loading dock to Ms. Dowd herself - each equal in Dowd's small world - had control over that press. But I digress.)

That the Church is a heirarchy angers Americans - particularly Dowd - for no other reason than that Americans believe that "anyone can make it to the the top" (although there is no top in a democracy, is there? See how confused this all gets?). What Ms. Dowd really believes is that she, and her other infallible cohorts, should be allowed to elect and create a Pope who's in their own image. It's a sort of spiritual nepotism, where one elects and supports one's ideological clone.

Of course, if there is a God at all, agnostics and theists alike must submit that equality is a myth, and that heirarchy is at the very core of Being. But that sort of reasoning is just too Papal.

Here's a fun physics question for Messrs. Barnicle, Russert and Ms. Dowd. When a car freely travels down the highway, what part of it is not free to move at all all? The answer strikes directly at the heart of the role of the Papacy.

If there is nothing fixed in human life, nothing moves in human life.

Pope Benedict XVI, particularly his office, is precisely that still point where the rubber meets the road. Without that traction, one is not free to move, skidding helter-skelter or just spinning in the same tired rut.

Watch over the coming weeks whether it is the "Papists" or the press who convene the Inquisition.

Contratimes

©2005/Bill Gnade - All Rights Reserved.

Waiting for smoke

Deep in the heart of Christendom, in the core of the Christian legacy, an old adage will once again prove true: Where there is smoke, there is fire. Soon, in fact, there will be smoke drifting over St. Peter's Square and the Sistine Chapel. The fire of the new Bishop of Rome will be kindled.

It's amazing how fascinated the media are with this conclave, held above a false floor in Michelangelo's gallery; and with the group of religious gathered therein so wholly intent on maintaining tradition that counter-espionage measures have been taken to thwart that very techno-crazy media gathered outside. Have not the last days of Pope John Paul II and this present conclave all seemed so important to the media that it would be crazy not to suggest that the newsgatherers have proven the divine importance of the Vicar of Christ? Has any vacancy and succession of any office been more analyzed; more scrutinized to the very edges of sanity? Why this fascination?

Perhaps it's because the Catholic Church has for centuries stood in the way of human excess. Oh, sure, there are those who scoff at the Church's calls for sacrifice and humility when it is adorned with gold and encrusted with gems. But only the reckless speak thus, forgetting, or ignoring, the curious fact that even in the manger, the stable of the only royal birth, there was gold, frankincense and myrhh. Jesus was and is a king, and his kingdom will have no end. Truly it's OK to manifest the glory of God with the sacraments of art and craft; of precious metals and hallowed frescoes. What else to do with such things than to point heavenward?

But the Church's longstanding resistance to "progress", that ever elusive, seemingly capricious idol; and its criticism of "traditions" that debase and oppress others; give the Church's detractors much to decry. For Rome, particularly in the last papal term, has held firm ground against the spirit of the age, whether it be the inhuman optimism of utopian socialists; or the idolatry of unfettered capitalists; or the licentiousness of the sexually maniacal West. The Church has indeed fought against the idolatries of conservatives and liberals, of heartless moralists and snickering anarchists; and it has fought well. For this reason the world watches and waits; for this reason the media obsess and wonder, and in some cases, even worry.

Doesn't it strike you as strange how many papal "experts" have crawled out from under every rock and paten on the planet? Never before have there been so many experts. Even many non-Catholics seem infallibly articulate on what John Paul II's successor must do, and what he must be like as man and pastor. In fact, every one of these voices sounds, well, infallibly papal. The question thus comes to mind: with this many experts walking the streets, who needs a pope at all (a very liberal wish, no doubt)?

That liberals pray for a liberal, conservatives for a conservative, combined with the grotesgue democratization of everything in America (where everyone is equally expert); all make a fascinating and irresistable story.

But let's skip the punditry (its own sort of idol), and let's have faith (at least those who have it) that God will use men (yes, men) to bring to Christendom another bold and bright flame that burns the skin when held too close, and yet warms the soul when held close enough.

And may the Vatican religious choose another leader who can help guide us home when we have wandered far into those cold and lonely places where our idols love to dwell.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.