the pope and liberation theology in the "newspaper of record"

**Updated**
[See also MM's pertinent take here. And WB, perhaps I have answered or echoed your trenchant anaylsis in the comments. Thanks both.]

This article was the lead headline in the print edition of the New York Times today. In light of Pope Benedict's upcoming trip to Brazil, it considers the state of liberation theology in Latin America today (still going fairly strong, apparently). The article discusses Benedict's crackdown on LT's heretical tendencies when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The problem with LT combines elements of Marxist theory and Christian belief to suggest that Jesus was a sort of Che Guevara of the first millennium. The NYT suggests that the pope's attitudes towards LT have "softened," but this is I think a their misreading. What the pope may have acknowledged is that, in so far as LT tends the needs of the poor and downtrodden, it does what correspond to Christ's commandments: to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. That does not, however, translate into Christianity finding its fullest expression in the Marxist state.

Benedict took up the issues of LT, Marxism, and modern thought in general in his Introduction to Christianity (see the updated preface and introduction), which I have at last taken off my bookshelf and been reading. His point is to recall the uniqueness of the Christian worldview and its central faith in Christ Jesus. When it is admixed with foreign ideologies, its salvific power is seriously undermined. The NYT, like all organs of modern thought, does not see it this way. It persists in believing that there are a plurality of equally legitimate beliefs in the world, and this extends to religion. We should not speak of theology, but theologies, not orthodoxy but orthodoxies. This of course is just an updated, less vigorous, and therefore less satisfying form of Marxism. This of course is nonsense from the inside of the Christian worldview. If the way is not narrow that leads to eternal life, it is not the Way.

Benedict laments in the Intro. that Christianity missed a key opportunity in the last century to engage the world by virgorously countering the corrosive philosophies of Marxist materialism. In 1968 and again in 1989, when the world groaned under the yoke of oppression, the Church failed to make its voice heard, to proclaim the Gospel in the face of social, economic, and cultural dissolution. The instruction given by the CDF in 1984 speaks of the "impatience" of those eager for social justice (a much maligned term in the church these days) who have turned to Marxism in order to pressure society into effecting the Kingdom of Heaven. The problem is those ground-of-being assumptions that Marxism makes about the world differ wildly from those of Christianity. Marxism rests its claims on science, assuming that "science" somehow embodies an objective view of the world and of man and that if human relations can be goverened objectively, then they can be harmonized. The failure of Marxism to achieve such a goal rightly points out the failure of a scientific-materialist world view, that matter cannot provide an objective view of matter. It is the recognition that science has been coming to itself going on a century now. But does this mean we should give up on objectivity? The pluralism latent in the NYT article suggests that we ought to, but as I love to make a point of, such an attitude itself appeals implicitly to an objective order: the objectivity of no-objectivity. But this is mere incoherence. Christianity, on the other hand, recognizes that true objectivity can only be found outside of this world, the world must be considered as an object, and that perspective can only come from the Divine.

It is increasinlgy clear to me, as it was to Benedict forty years ago (the Intro was first published in 1969), that Christianity today has a golden opportunity. From an intellectual standpoint, it's never been easier to justify our faith to the world. As global politics continually show, people desperately want coherence, order, objectivity, and hope, all of which can be found in the Church, and which can only be found in the unique expression of that faith which is the unadulterated belief entrusted to the apostles by Christ. Christianity has not survived or flourished because it rests on universal myths which are reluctantly giving way to the objectivity of science, but because it in itself offers for the first time an objective perspective on the world that resonates with our experience of the world.* When we forget that, we get caught on the same slippery slope that courses straight into the abyss of nihilism.

________
*This by the way is the perspective offered by René Girard in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, but there is not room to expound on that here.

monk news

Here's an interesting little article in the NYT Sunday Magazine on the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a Franciscan reform order in based in New York. They play rock music and picket abortion clinics.

Postulant Andy, a 26-year-old from Chicago, is typical of today’s postulants. “I was looking at religious orders across the Midwest,” he said. “But I didn’t really fit any of them. You could see a big problem in religious life; it was very evident. A lot of orders didn’t have a prayer life; they didn’t go to Mass daily; they were very loose, not taking their poverty seriously.”

no more limbo about limbo

Read the whole thing from Reuters.

The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went. In a long-awaited document, the Church's International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation."

The 41-page document was published on Friday by Origins, the documentary service of the U.S.-based Catholic News Service, which is part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Pope Benedict, himself a top theologian who before his election in 2005 expressed doubts about limbo, authorized the publication of the document, called "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised."

The verdict that limbo could now rest in peace had been expected for years. The document was seen as most likely the final word since limbo was never part of Church doctrine, even though it was taught to Catholics well into the 20th century.

"The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation," it said.

"There are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible (to baptize them)."

The Church teaches that baptism removes original sin which stains all souls since the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.

albany bishop jumps to rome, renounces orders

This is breaking news and though this is my diocese, I don't have many details yet. The Albany Priests' and Deacons' Update e-newsletter announced that Bishop Daniel Herzog, the newly retired Albany diocesan, has become Roman Catholic, and as this requires a renunciation of his orders and his ministry as a bishop, he has done his. He will be a layman in the pew.

This follows hard on the heels of former Albany suffragan David Bena's transfer to the province of Nigeria. I don't know what effect these moves, together, will have on the diocese and the clergy.

More details will follow as they become available.

subsequent -

Here's more info from the Living Church.

Here's the ENS write-up, with comments from PB Jefferts Schori. Herzog is only the third Episcopal bishop to make the jump to Rome.

Here's the letter from the current Albany diocesan, Bishop Love.

subsequent -

This from the local rag, the Albany Times-Union.

alexei khomiakov on anglicanism and private judgment: and some thoughts-out-loud: what is catholicity? or: quo enim recedam?

Many bishops and divines of your communion are and have been quite orthodox. But what of it? Their opinion is only an individual opinion, it is not the Faith of the Community. Ussher is almost a complete Calvinist; but yet he, no less than those bishops who give expression to Orthodox convictions, belongs to the Anglican Church. We may, and do, sympathise with the individuals; we cannot and dare not sympathise with a community which interpolates the Symbol and doubts her right to that interpolation, or which gives communion to those who declare the Bread and Wine of the High Sacrifice to be mere bread and wine, as well as to those who declare it to be the Body and Blood of Christ. This for an example — and I could find hundreds more — but I go further. Suppose an impossibility — suppose all the Anglicans be quite orthodox; suppose their Creed and Faith quite concordant with ours; the mode and process by which that creed is or has been attained is a Protestant one; a simple logical act of the understanding, by which the tradition and writings of the Fathers have been distilled to something very near Truth. If we admit this, all is lost, and Rationalism is the supreme judge of every question. Protestantism, most reverend sir, is the admission of an unknown [quantity] to be sought by reason; and that unknown [quantity] changes the whole equation to an unknown quantity, even though every other datum be as clear and as positive as possible. Do not, I pray, nourish the hope of finding Christian truth without stepping out of the former Protestant circle. It is an illogical hope; it is a remnant of that pride which thought itself able and wished to judge and decide by itself without the Spiritual Communion of heavenly grace and Christian love. Were you to find all the truth, you would have found nothing; for we alone can give you that without which all would be vain — the assurance of truth.

From Mind in the Heart, via Restorative Theology, via Pontifications.

Okay. I take his point, in a sense. However: were I (or anyone else) to convert to a non-Protestant (in the way Khomiakov seems to be using that term) church, would not "rationalism" still be sitting in judgment over catholic doctrine? Would not the "mode and process by which" this convert attained a catholic creed yet be "a protestant one; a simple logical act of the understanding, by which the tradition and writings of the Fathers have been distilled..."? Would not Rationalism, or better perhaps would not rationality, or the reason, yet be "the supreme judge of every question" in such a case? In other words, is it not in fact the case that converts convert because the doctrine of the ecclesial entity to which they are converting makes sense to them? Concomitantly, then, is not their reason the arbiter of (Scripture and) Holy Tradition? Khomiakov finds in Anglicanism "a remnant of that pride which thought itself able and wished to judge and decide by itself without the Spiritual Communion of heavenly grace and Christian love." But here, precisely, is the paradox: does not the act and possibility of conversion, which surely Khomiakov admits, entail the very possibility of that which he here denies: namely that an individual outside the Spiritual Communion of heavenly grace and Christian love (which is the Church) may "judge and decide" rightly, by an inscrutable process of intellection and affection, that catholic doctrine is true and therefore ought to be assented to? And once he has converted, does not the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Christian, by the quotidian renewal of his resolve to remain within the Roman or Orthodox communion, just continually ratify the sovereignty of his reason as the arbiter of truth?

This question is related to that paradox raised by Augustine in the narration of his own conversion, a paradox which my intuition tells me has its roots in Platonism and also has to do with prevenient grace: how can you call God to help you when his help is necessary for you even to call out? Augustine also puts it another way, in terms of exteriority and interiority: how can you seek something (or Someone) that is already and has always been inside of you? Quo enim recedam extra caelum et terram, ut inde in me veniat Deus meus, qui dixit, caelum et terram ego impleo? Loosely: Where might I withdraw beyond heaven and earth that my God might come into me, when my God has said "I fill heaven and earth"?

In the excerpt from Khomiakov we see an assumption regarding the differentiation of Protestantism from Catholicism. And I here mean both of these terms in the kind of way that they are often used, for example, at Pontifications: such that "Protestantism" includes Anglicanism (but not Orthodoxy), and "Catholicism" includes Orthodoxy (but not Anglicanism). The basis of differentiating between Protestantism and Catholicism is by an examination and judgment of what Khomiakov here calls the "faith of the Community." This assumption is also manifest in such dicta as one sometimes hears: e.g. that Anglicans believe they are catholic because they have valid orders, whereas (Roman) catholics believe they have valid orders because they are catholic. When cited by Roman Catholics, the former belief is implicitly false and the latter implicitly true. But with regard to a determination of catholicity it is obviously question begging. What is it for an individual or a community to be catholic?

And by the way, the Vincentian Canon is a non-starter. If to be catholic, as St. Vincent says, is "to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all," the question instantly arises: by all of whom? Roman Catholics? Christians? If it is Roman Catholics, then the Orthodox are ruled out as "catholic" insofar as they do not as a body believe, for example, the universal ordinary jurisdiction nor the situated infallibility of the bishop of Rome, nor the Immaculate Conception of our Lady. And if we mean "...by all Christians..." then probably Southern Baptists and Nestorians are ruled in.

In the end I think the status of an individual Christian as truly "catholic" is indeed in some sense a function of the submission of their volition, a bending the knee of the heart, to the Church. And yet the submission must come about as (at least in large part) recommended by the intellect. I've never heard of anyone going over to Rome (or the East) because it didn't make sense to do so. Thus I don't think the excerpt above from Khomiakov is helpful. Anglican Christians can just as much hold their beliefs because those beliefs come to them recommended by the One Church as can Roman Catholic or Orthodox Christians. And it is just as necessary for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians rationally to differentiate the visible body to which they owe their submission -- to differentiate the One Church from other "ecclesial communities" -- as it is for Anglicans. Perhaps (perhaps) its true that more RC and Orthodox Christians go through this process per capita as a matter of positive fact than Anglicans. But even that is not obvious, and I tend to doubt it. We can see in this why disunity is a scandal. Were the unity of the Church visible, then catholically bending the knee of the heart would be considerably simpler, and that Christianity is a matter of obedience (as opposed to a lifestyle choice or a self-identity) would I imagine be more robustly manifest to the world, for the sake of whom the grace of unity is bestowed (John 17.21).

Why am I an Anglican? Because I am doing my best to obey the Lord's summons to his service. Because I want, more than anything, to be a slave for the sake of the Name. Lord knows it would in a very real sense be much easier for me to be Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Obeying the call I discerned to the Anglican priesthood has been, hands down, the most costly and painful thing I've ever done. I knew that it would be, and I was brought to my knees in tears in the face of this knowledge at Evensong before my ordination. When I asked the Lord why I should be an Anglican priest, I clearly discerned the answer: "because the essence of priesthood is sacrifice, and here you will be closest to the sacrifice of my Son." In my heart I accepted this, and it has been born out in my priestly vocation. I know that the Christian priesthood cannot be merely an exercise in private devotion, and I have faith that mine is not, though its hard for me to see the fruits of my ministry in the Body. But I believe that God actualizes his particular plans even though the actualization may be invisible or counterintuitive (1 Cor. 2.9).

Catholicity may be born out in the lives of individuals in complicated and inscrutible ways, but it is at least an act of obedience. And while I appreciate the good intentions of former Anglicans who perpetually exhort those whom they have left behind to climb into the Barque of Peter (or Andrew), they must also recognize that the Holy Spirit may answer Anglican prayers for conversion of heart in ways, or on timeframes, that they might not have expected. Michael Liccione, at Pontifications, has written:

One cannot cease to be Protestant by thinking like a Protestant. The way out of that box is to use all means available, chiefly prayer and ascesis but also study and meditation, to decide which principle of authority one shall submit to. Only the reformation of will made possible by such means will enable one to receive the gift of faith in its fullness.

I couldn't agree more. But what must be acknowledged is that many Anglicans have sought to submit, have sought to "believe one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church," and what's more have sought to "believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ," through prayer, ascesis, study and meditation, and who yet find themselves in the Anglican Communion -- not because they appreciate the free-thinking or free-willing it seems to afford, nor because it seems a pleasant and easy-going, non-papal brand of catholic Christianity, but rather out of obedience. What is difficult to bear is the implication (not necessarily Liccione's) that if catholic-minded Anglicans were really sincere or really obedient, they would go immediately to Rome. Once more I can assure you: I am doing the best I can, and I am still an Anglican.

thank you; it's good to be here

Fr. WB has kindly invited me to become a contributor to his blog. The bar has already been set high by the current roll of writers and readers, but I will endeavour to do my best. One could hardly ask for more.

Since by training and inclination I am an art historian, and by conviction and grace a Roman Catholic, I suspect that many of my posts will center around the nexus of those issues (in other words, cultural rather than theological issues; and much sympathy for my Anglican brethren and sistren).

Look for more of me in the future, but for tonight, I have little energy left for a more extensive post.

Vatican and China quarrel over who shall appoint bishops for the mainland

Apparently, there's been trouble over this before.

Read it all.

What I find interesting is this:

The Vatican asserts that it must control the selection of bishops, although it has allowed governments and dioceses to suggest possible candidates.

Although the mainland church does not take instructions from the Vatican, the Vatican has never declared a schism between itself and the churches in China. The Vatican has taken the position that the differences are political, and not differences of religious belief.

Does anyone else hear echoes of the English Reformation? The situation in China is by no means a new one: European monarchs struggled with Rome for the power of appointment for centuries. (in the purest catholicism, of course, the church appoints its own bishops). That was one of the major differences between Rome and the English monarchs, too. If the Vatican can be so tolerant in the case of mainland Chinese Christians, why can't it rescind any schism between it and the CofE? Our position is as it always has been, that the bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in the English church. Surely Henry's headship of the Church was a 'political' difference, not a matter of religious belief. It wasn't too much different from the 'ancient privileges' that the French monarchs traditionally exercised over episcopal appointments. Granted, much of the English reformation and its Roman backlash was driven by money: Henry didn't want his money going out of the country, and Rome didn't want its fountain cut off in the middle of building St. Pete's. But surely that can be seen as merely political and not a matter of faith.

Does anyone know what status Rome gives to Christians in communist nations? particularly the old Soviet Union? What about Cuba and other communist Latin American states that discourage religion?

congratulations to father al

Father Al Kimel, formerly Father Al Kimel, just (re)became Father Al Kimel. I.e. he was made a Roman Catholic priest on the 3rd of December. Hoozah, Fr Al. I'm sure I speak for all the Whitehallians (to use Fr Thorpus's neologism) when I say I wish you all the very best, and I bid your prayers for your former coreligionists.

Read all about it (mainly look at the pictures).