Catholicism: What You See Is What You Get

News stories like this one always make me wonder: why would you want your child to go to a school that so vehemently opposes your lifestyle? Just from a logical standpoint, these homosexual parents cannot honestly want that child to grow up to be a Catholic, one of the last demographic bastions for radical social conservatism. Abortion is wrong; birth control is wrong; premarital sex is wrong; and, as a side note, homosexuality is wrong. What goes through a homosexaul parent's mind enrolling their child in a Catholic school and then being shocked when it generates controversy?

A Century of Love in a Day, Pt. 2

7. Whatever a man loves he inevitably clings to, and I order not to lose it he rejects everything that keeps him from it. So he who loves God cultivates pure prayer, driving out every passion that keeps him from it.

10. …prefect love presupposes that you love all men equally.

29. …the Divinity is divided but without division and is united but with distinctions. Because of this both the division and the union are paradoxical…

36. In everything that we do God searches out our purpose to see whether we do it for Him or for some other motive.

42. When a trial comes upon you unexpectedly, do not blame the person through whom it came but try to discover the reason why it came, and then you will find a way of dealing with it. For whether through this person or through someone else you had in any case to drink the wormwood of God’s judgment.

43. As long as you have bad habits do not reject hardship, so that through it you may be humbled and eject your pride.

49. …To be spontaneously disposed to do good to those who hate you belongs to perfect spiritual love alone.

54. A monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, psalmody, and prayer cleaves to God.

63. Let no one deceive you…with the notion that you can be saved wile a slave to sensual pleasure and self-esteem.

66. No sinner can escape future judgment without experiencing in this life either voluntary hardships or afflictions he has not chosen.

68. Just as the intellect of a hungry man imagines bread and that of a thirsty man water, so the intellect of a glutton imagines a profusion of foods, that of a sensualist the forms of women, that of a vain man worldly honour, that of an avaricious man financial gain, that of a rancorous man revenge on whoever has offended him, that of an envious man how to harm the object of his envy, and so on with all the other passions. For an intellect agitated by passions is beset by impassioned conceptual images whether the body is awake or asleep.

75. Some of the things given to us by God for our use are in the soul, others are in the body and others related to the body. In the soul are its powers; in the body are the sense organs and other members; relating to the body are food, money, possessions and so on. Our good or bad use of these things given us by God, or of what is contingent upon them, reveals whether we are virtuous or evil.

83. In its natural state, the human intelligence is subject to the divine intelligence and itself rules over the non-intelligent element in us. Let this order be maintained in all things, and there will be no evil among creatures nor anything which draws us towards evil.

To Arms! To Arms!

Source

A Malaysian magazine has apologized for upsetting Christians after it published an article researched by two Muslims who pretended to be Roman Catholics and took Holy Communion in a church.

The apology aims to ease tensions with religious minorities who feel that overzealous government authorities and clerics are trying too hard to champion the interests of Islam and ignoring the rights of non-Muslims.

The Al Islam monthly magazine, which focuses on issues affecting Malaysian Muslims, acknowledged in a statement on its publisher's Web site last week that the article had "unintentionally hurt the feelings of Christians, especially Catholics."

The article, published in May last year, was meant to investigate rumors that Muslim teenagers were being converted in churches. The article said its two reporters had found no evidence supporting those claims.

The apology came after Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, who heads the Catholic Church in peninsular Malaysia, criticized government authorities earlier this week for not prosecuting the two magazine researchers. Pakiam, however, said that church leaders would be satisfied if the magazine issued a formal apology.

The men had spat out the Eucharist and took a photograph of a partially bitten one. Communion is a sacrament for baptized Catholics in good-standing. The church teaches that the Eucharist is transformed into the body of Christ by the priest during Mass.

Does everybody remember the Jyllands-Posten incident where a dozen cartoons incited commercial boycotts, death threats, and calls to the UN for sanctions? I'd like to believe that the gross disparity both in the nature of the crime and in the intensity of the response are a product of the ethos of love that undergirds Christianity.

A Contrast in Attitudes

I was reading Petru Dumitriu's To the Unknown God some time ago, and in it he painted a vivid picture of life in communist Romania. The economic conditions there were such that dismissal from one's job was essentially a death sentence. Dumitriu comments on the loss of several people close to him from suicide and even admits to having toyed with the idea himself. Stories like that provide a stark contrast in attitudes when compared to what seems to be the American attitude in the face of difficult economic times. Though things in America right now are by no means comparable to the destitution of Soviet Romania, I do not think it is a mere coincidence that in this time of financial decline that there is an increase in unemployment related violence. I have in mind the two very publicized cases of Amy Bishop and Nathaniel Brown, two university employees who did not handle even the prospect of potential unemployment well. Unlike their historical Romanian counterpart, Bishop and Brown did not fall into a state of depressed resignation leading to their own suicides. Instead, imbued with a since of indignant entitlement they lashed out at those "responsible" for their troubles. It's shocking the way the modern Western mind works. "My livelihood is more important than your life." How demented must we be as a people to allow a thought like that to creep into our minds?

A Chalcedonian Revelation

I am presently reading through John Meyendorff's Byzantine theology, and the section on Christology has opened my eyes to a fine christological distinction with radical implications for every field of theological inquiry. Let me see if I can explain it adequately. I have always held to the opinion, though not consciously, that the hypostatic union affirmed by Chalcedon (i.e. Christ has two natures [ousia] united in one person [hypostasis]) was in a unique hypostasis. That is to say that the divine nature united itself to a human nature and formed together a unique person in the individual Jesus, who was thereby the Christ. If I had been forced to choose whether the hypostasis was primarily that of the humanity or the divinity of Jesus, I probably would have chosen the former.

That view, apparently, is contrary to the teaching of the Orthodox Church. The Byzantine theologians understood Chalcedon to affirm that the single hypostasis of the Christ was the same as the hypostasis of the pre-existent Logos. That is to say, when one talks about the Trinity as one essence in three persons, that second person (i.e. the Son) is identical with the person of the Christ with his two essences. Meyendorff says that this emphasis on the divinity of Jesus has drawn criticism from the West. The Orthodox have been accused of being "crypto-Monophysites" because they subordinate the human essence and will under the divine by affirming the divinity of Christ's hypostasis. Reading the criticisms, I admit that I agreed. There is little there to allow us to empathize with Jesus the person, to delve into his human mind, and to speculate about the psychology of his behavior.

But, true to form, Meyendorff set me straight. He defends the Orthodox position on the grounds of Orthodox anthropology, which has (without explicit attribution to the Byzantine tradition) found great acceptance in the world today. The focal point of Orthodox anthropology is that man is only true to his humanity, the creational purpose of the person is only truly fulfilled when he is in submission to God. Who could argue with that? If we accept this premise (and if we do not, there are larger problems to address), then the subordination of the humanity of Jesus to the divinity of Jesus is actually an implicit glorification of his humanity. The humanity of Christ, following always the lead of the divine will, is in fact more human than our own humanity which has subordinated itself to that which it was created to rule (an insight to expand for another time). Rather than the East becoming crypto-Monophysites, the West has tended toward idolatrous worship of humanity. Can there really be any formula of union between man and God where the former is not submissive to the latter? Is man greater than God, equal to him?

A Century of Love in a Day

The following are from Maximus the Confessor's Four Hundred Texts on Love. The work is organized into four "centuries," that is collections of one hundred related texts, which correspond in some sense (even if only in their fourfold nature) to the four Gospels. These selections are from the first century on love. The numbers to the left of each quote are "verse" citations. I have only included about a fourth of the texts from the century. Though I would have liked to include more, I'm already afraid that I'm dancing on the edge of copyright infringement.*

1. Love is a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things. We cannot attain lasting possession of such love while we are still attached to anything worldly.

2. Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.

4. The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.

11. All the virtues co-operate with the intellect to produce this intense longing for God, pure prayer above all. For by soaring towards God through this prayer the intellect rises above the realm of created beings.

12. When the intellect is ravished through love by divine knowledge and stands outside the realm of created beings, it becomes aware of God’s infinity. It is then, according to Isaiah, that a sense of amazement makes it conscious of its own lowliness and in sincerity it repeats the words of the prophet: “How abject I am, for I am pierced to the heart; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Isa 6:5)

13. The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself…

17. Blessed is he who can love all men equally.

19. Blessed is the intellect that transcends all sensible objects and ceaselessly delights in divine beauty.

22. He who forsakes all worldly desires sets himself above all worldly distress.

24. He who gives alms in imitation of God does not discriminate between the wicked and the virtuous, the just and the unjust, when providing for men’s bodily needs. He gives equally to all according to their need…

31. Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul.

41. He who loves God neither distresses nor is distressed with anyone on account of transitory things…

43. If a man desires something, he makes every effort to attain it. But of all things which are good and desirable the divine is incomparably best and the most desirable. How assiduous, then, we should be in order to attain what is of its very nature good and desirable.

50. When the intellect associates with evil and sordid thoughts it loses its intimate communion with God.

60. Silence the man who utters slander in your hear. Otherwise you sin twice over: first, you accustom yourself to this deadly passion and, second you fail to prevent him from gossiping against his neighbor.

63. We carry about with us impassioned images of the things we have experienced. If we can overcome these images we shall be indifferent to the things which they represent. For fighting against the thoughts of things is much harder than fighting against the things themselves, just as to sin in the mind is easier than to sin through outward action.

69. …If you are offended by anything, whether intended or unintended, you do not know the way of peace, which through love brings the lovers of divine knowledge to the knowledge of God.

70-71. You have not yet acquired perfect love if your regard for people is still swayed by their characters – for example, if, for some particular reason, you love one person and hate another, or if for the same reason you sometimes love and sometimes hate the same person. Perfect love does not split up the single human nature, common to all, according to the diverse characteristics of individuals; but, fixing attention always on this single nature, it loves all men equally. It loves the good as friends and the bad as enemies, helping them, exercising forbearance, patiently accepting whatever they do, not taking the evil into account at all but even suffering on their behalf if the opportunity offers, so that, if possible, they too become friends. If it cannot achieve this, it does not change its own attitude; it continues to show the fruits of love to all men alike. It was on account of this that our Lord and God Jesus Christ, showing His love for us, suffered for the whole of mankind and gave to all men an equal hope of resurrection…

72. If you are not indifferent to both fame and dishonour, riches and poverty, pleasures and distress, you have not yet acquired perfect love. For perfect love is indifferent not only to these but even to this fleeting life and to death.

90. Just as the physical eye is attracted to the beauty of things visible, so the purified intellect is attracted to the knowledge of things invisible…

95. When the sun rises and casts its light on the world, it reveals both itself and the things it illumines…

[And your apophatic moment for the day:]

100. When the intellect is established in God, it at first ardently longs to discover the principles of His essence. But God’s inmost nature does not admit such investigation, which is indeed beyond the capacity of everything created…and the very fact of knowing nothing is knowledge surpassing the intellect.

As a concluding not, I would like to point out the rich irony which is played out in this text. Maximus begins (and I have in mind here 4 in particular, but also 1) by saying that the pursuit of the knowledge of God is the most holy and righteous aim of man. Yet, he concludes with the familiar and definitive statement that knowledge of God must ultimately conclude that man exists in almost total ignorance of God. In view of my recent musings on paradox as the foundation of Christian belief, it seems particularly fitting to me that Maximus (and I with him) should affirm that the greatest task of the Christian is the quest to know a God that we affirm is unknowable.

*Consequently, let me cite my source here to somewhat alleviate my conscience. Maximus the Confessor. "Four Hundred Texts on Love." In The Philokalia. Translated and edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. New York: Faber and Faber, 1981.

The Wisdom of John Locke

With one exception, these quotes are from John Locke's "The Reasonableness of Christianity."

“...they may be supposed to have had in the mouths of the speakers, who used them according to the language of that time and country wherein they lived; without such learned, artificial, and forced senses of them, as are sought out, and put upon them in most of the systems of divinity, according to the notions that each one has been bred up in.”

“…it seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant eternal life in misery.”

“I allow to the makers of systems and their followers, to invent and use what distinctions they please, and to call things by what names they think fit. But I cannot allow to them, or to any man, an authority to make a religion for me, or to alter that which God hath revealed.”

“Though the works of nature, in every part of them, sufficiently evidence a Deity; yet the world made so little use of their reason that they saw him not, where, even by the impressions of himself, he was easy to be found.”

“The law is the eternal, immutable standard of right. And a part of that law is, that a man should forgive, not only his children, but his enemies, upon their repentance, asking pardon, and amendment. And therefore he could not doubt that the author of this law, and God of patience and consolation, who is rich in mercy, would forgive his frail offspring, if they acknowledge their faults, disapproved the iniquity of their transgressions, begged his pardon, and resolved in earnest for the future to conform their actions to this rule, which they owned to be just and right.”

“Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any proposition, not thus made out by the deductions of reason, but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God in some extraordinary way of communication. This way of discovering truths to men we call revelation.”

“It should seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that ‘tis too hard a task for unassisted reason, to establish morality, in all its parts, upon its true foundations, with a clear and convincing light.”

“We must not cull out, as best suits our system, here and there a period or a verse, as if they were all distinct and independent aphorisms; and make these the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, and necessary to salvation, unless God has made them so. There be many truths in the Bible, which a good Christian may be wholly ignorant of, and so not believe, which, perhaps, some lay great stress on, and call fundamental articles, because they are distinguishing points of their communion.”

“[God] promised a deliverer, whom in his good time he sent; and then declared to all mankind, that whoever would believe him to be the Saviour promised, and take him now raised from the dead, and constituted the Lord and Judge of all men, to be their King and Ruler, should be saved. This is a plain intelligible proposition; and the all-merciful God seems herein to have consulted the poor of this world, and the bulk of mankind: these are articles that the laboring and illiterate man may comprehend. This is a religion suited to vulgar capacities, and the state of mankind in this world, destined to labour and travail. The writers and wranglers in religion fill it with niceties, and dress it up with notions, which they make necessary and fundamental parts of it; as if there were no way into the Church, but through the Academy or Lycaeum. The greatest part of mankind have not leisure for learning and logic, and superfine distinctions of the schools. Where the hand is used to plough and the spade, the head is seldom elevated to sublime notions, or exercised in mysterious reasonings ‘Tis well if men of that rank (to say nothing of the other sex) can comprehend plain propositions, and a short reasonings about things familiar to their minds, and nearly allied to their daily experience.”

“Go beyond this, and you amaze the greatest part of mankind; and may as well talk Arabic to a poor day labourer, as the notions and language that the books and disputes of religion are filled with, and as soon will be understood.”

“I have talked with some of their teachers, who confess themselves not to understand the difference in debate between them; and yet the points they stand on, are reckoned of so great weight, so material, so fundamental in religion, that they divide communion, and separate upon them.”

“And if the poor had the gospel preached to them, it was, without doubt, such a gospel as the poor could understand, plain and intelligible.”