Church Shopping

The last post condemning church shopping seems to have put the cat among the pigeons. Let me clarify my comments. By comparing traddy church shopping and trendy church shopping I am not suggesting that traddy worship is just as entertainment oriented as trendy worship. If I had to say that one was 'better' than the other, then obviously traddy worship comes out on top.

I am not comparing the two types of worship. I'm commenting on the "I know best" attitude of the church shopper. What I'm criticizing is the self righteous know it all attitude that so often prevails, and this attitude is prevelent on both sides. I hear people tell me how they have left a traditional parish in order to attend the local AmChurch parish because it has a good youth work and "We really don't like all that gloomy music Father has brought in." So much for the misconception amongst the traddies that "If the faithful only get a taste of real reverence and beauty in worship they will all flock to the traditional styles of church." No they won't. 85% of American Catholics actually want banal hymns, carpeted churches, guitars, hip hop sermons and feel good liturgies. Likewise, we all know of folks who emigrate to a particular parish for the traddy worship that makes them feel good.

What I'm criticizing is not traddy worship, but the mentality that we seem to have sucked up from the culture that the reason for this type of worship or that type of worship is that it is what will draw the crowds, and the accompanying action in our tootling off to whatever parish we want to go to because we like that liturgy better or that priest better.

I say this as one who likes trad worship. I think it is the best. I think it is the most honoring and I have good reasons for the argument, however, I have learned more through sticking with a parish with a sloppy liturgy and awful music. I have learned through the difficulty some lessons in stability, some lessons in ecclesial obedience, some lessons in perseverence, some lessons in where to find the lessons.

What I'm trying to say is that maybe, just maybe God is wanting to do something far greater and more profound in your life than just allowing you to choose what you think is best for yourself spiritually. In fact I'd say that that is the one area of my life where I most certainly do not know what is best for me spiritually. Therefore, to submit oneself to one's parish, one's priest, one's diocese, one's church...geesh, there's so much there to be learned and gained and so much spiritual advancement to be made that you lose when you march off in a huff to a parish you think you like better.

That being said. Sometimes you just got to go, but when you do you'd better agonize and pray over the decision, and when you find that new parish. You'd better stay put and learn stability. I know it will sound like heresy to some folks, but there is more to the spiritual life than fine liturgy. It's called humility. Humility is very very hard.

Humility is endless.

Christianity and Frog Boiling

Time and again in dealing with non-Catholics they will smile and say, "You know it really doesn't matter what denomination you are. All that really matters is how much you love Jesus!" If I don't have the time to engage in a discussion on the matter I will usually smile back and say something like non committal like, "What a comforting thought!" or "That's certainly what many people think!"

Riding up through the hills of uppper South Carolina you can't help but notice the huge number of churches. Every mile or so there's another one: Pebble Creek Baptist, Maranatha Church, Heritage Church, New Spring, Rocky Rill Baptist, Beaver Run Baptist, Calvary Baptist, Assembly of God, Church of God, Disciples of Christ, Christian Disciples...the names and numbers are bewildering and ever multiplying.

It's the Protestant principle run riot. The irony is that while the non-Catholics say, "It doesn't really matter what church you belong to" they seem to think it pretty important to keep breaking up with one church to go and start another one. If it doesn't matter what church you go to why not go to the one on the nearest corner?  The second problem with this commonly held view is that it only takes a short jump from "It doesn't matter what church you go to" to "Well it doesn't really matter if you go to church at all."

Indeed, in a conversation with some good non Catholic folks not long ago they said, "Our teenaged daughter tells us that she doesn't want to go to church and doesn't need to go to church because she already has a relationship with Jesus in her heart." They didn't have an answer for her, and of course cannot have an answer because according to the Protestant theology they follow there is no such thing as ecclesiology and their daughter is right.

The only thing that remains, therefore, for non Catholic Christians is to make church attractive to people. If they don't have to go to church, then they should want to go to church and the only way to make people want to go to church is to offer something they want. So we find that the non-Catholic Churches are extremely competitive. They offer a vast range of services and pastoral care and 'outreach opportunities'. Now, there's not problem with that necessarily excepet that what results is the commercialization of Christianity.

The temptation is there to water down the gospel, keep people happy and neve challenge them. The worship becomes more and more entertainment oriented. Sentimentality sweeps over. The people want a 'feel good' experience and the pastors do everything they can to provide that lest the consumers get tired of what's on offer and shop around for something they like better.

So Christianity adapts to the culture. We live in America the big consumer culture reigns so we make religion another product. Of course this is the illness affecting American Catholicism as well. Catholics church shop as much as anyone else does. They travel for the Latin Mass or they travel for the hip hop Mass. It's the same principle. They swap parishes because Fr Folkmass does a groovy form of liturgy which 'really appeals to the kids' or they emigrate to Mgr. Maniple because his solemn high pontifical Missa Magnificant is 'what our family really needs.'

The final tragedy about church shopping is that eventually everyone involved succumbs to what is called 'theological drift' or 'theological death by Chinese water torture' or 'how to boil a living frog Christianity.' You know the old story that you put a frog in a pot of cold water and he swims happily, you increase the temperature slowly and he boils to death never realizing that it's getting hot in there. Same thing with the commercialization of Christianity.

Bit by bit the gospel is watered down. Entertainment prevails. Wishy washy feel good sermons predominate. No one does anything to offend the customer, everybody is kept comfortable, and consequently the religion itself is transformed. The radical cutting edge of the faith is dulled and the faithful keep on trotting along to what has become something other than real Christianity--all the time still believing that it is the real thing. But it's not. It's just as fake as the rest of plastic America. What should be Christianity has become a bland blend of sentimentality, spirituality and 'community spirit.' Christ the Tiger has had his teeth pulled and Aslan has been tamed.

And the devil is real happy.

Anglican Vicar to Convert

Fr Giles Pinnock has announced his intention to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. He blogs here, and you can read more about it on Jeffrey Steel's blog here.

No GK Here

Kevin O'Brien of Theater of the Word...

Hate Your Mother

In today's gospel Jesus says that unless we hate our mother and father and brothers and sisters we cannot be his disciple. I realize that some teenagers would probably say, "No sweat". However, most of us pause and ask what this could possibly mean.

It simply means, as St Benedict puts it, that we must 'prefer nothing to the love of Christ.' Now the wishy washy crowd who wish to water down the gospel would say that this saying is a case of Jesus using hyperbole. You mustn't really really hate your mother and father and brother and sister. Instead you must be willing to give them up if God calls you to do so. That's mustard. As far as I'm concerned he said it and he means it.

What this means therefore is that we must not only be prepared to give up mother and father and brothers and sisters for the sake of the kingdom, but that we really must do so. Either we do so willingly and become priests and monks and nuns and brothers and sisters or we will do so at some point in our life through one way or another. We must learn that life is a casting off. When we cling to things and people we lose them. When we let them go we achieve freedom. Must we 'hate' those people and things? I think so, inasmuch as we must hate the fact that our love for these lesser loves may hold us back from total commitment and love for Christ. In other words we don't hate them for who they are, but we hate the fact that our love for them is a burden and a barrier.

So we do come to hate our mother and father and sister and brother and all our possessions. This is not because we do not love them, but because we have learned to love something and someone greater. Furthermore, his command that we hate all these things and give them all up is a kind of severe mercy. He knows that we can't take them with us forever anyway, and that sooner or later we will have to let them go.

The letting go of all that is nearest and dearest to us hurts. It hurts much. However, the process must be gone through. Maybe it will hit us with a terrible illness in the family, maybe unemployment, old age, falling out with children, the death of a loved one, insanity, terminal decline or a nasty divorce. However it happens we come to learn that all that is best and most loved in our lives must go. This severe mercy is so that we can learn to depend totally and only on Christ the Lord.

Finally there's this: we have to let go all things because one day, in the end, we will have to let it go whether we like to or not. Even the person who has been blessed with good things, with a loving family and passes his life with little or not tragedy--even he will have to yield all things for one day he will die. One day he will have to pass the portal and cross the river with nothing but his naked soul. Then he will have to cast off all things and launch himself into the dark and tumultuous sea of death clinging to Christ alone.

Christ the life preserver. Christ the flotsam and jetsam. Christ the Savior. Christ the Lord. The sooner you cast away all and cling only to him, the happier, the safer and the more saved you will be.

Abbess of Andalusia

'Flannery O'Connor's Spiritual Journey' is the sub title of this excellent book by Lorraine V Murray. Murray is married to artist Jeff Murray who contributes to Joseph Pearce's StAR Magazine--St Austin Review. I met Lorraine and Jeff at Joseph's house for dinner a year or so ago, and we were discussing this book, so it is a joy to see it in print. St Benedict Press have done a great job on the design and layout of the book. St Benedict Press is a new publishing house just up the road in Charlotte NC. The whole production is a happy fruit of what might be called the New Southern Catholicism. Lorraine is a convert who lives in Georgia, St Benedict Press is part of the dynamic Catholic life in and around Charlotte which includes Belmont Abbey College, St Matthew's Parish, the Catholic Company, Camps Kahdalea and Chosatonga--and all this just up the road from Greenville where Steve Wood lives and runs his Family Life Ministries, where Joseph Pearce lives nine months of the year, artist and illustrator Chris Pelicano lives here, mosaicist and iconographer Ruth Ballard lives here, and it is also the home of St Joseph's Catholic School. Georgia and the Carolinas are a a good place to be Catholic. Y'all come!

Anyway, this post was meant to be a book review, not a plug for Catholic Carolinas. Lorraine has taken a radical step for a literary biography and charted Flannery O'Connor's life from the perspective of her spiritual pilgrimage rather than a simple chronological plan. What emerges is a life that is truly monastic in it's discipline. O'Connor goes out into the wide world from her Georgia farm to study at college and live in New York, then when she falls ill with lupus she retires back to the farm to live with her mother. There she writes every day for two hours. She occupies a simply furnished room (you can visit the farm as it was when she lived there in Milledgeville) Her stories and novels are produced in a painstaking manner--written and re-written and revised and edited and re-written again.

Murray shows how, at the same time, O'Connor takes time to write to friends about the faith. It comes as no surprise that O'Connor understands her Catholic faith thoroughly and steers her friends through choppy waters with a sure wisdom and confident advice. Through her letters and comments we discover a strong willed, intelligent, witty and eccentric woman. She likes birds, especially peacocks and she never flinches from her vision of God's grace channeled through the grotesque and alarming characters of the deep South. O'Connor doesn't mind poking fun at pompous priests, sentimental Catholic devotions, shallow hypocrisy and silly respectability. At the same time she exhibits a deep faith and genuine affection and respect for the nuns from the nearby convent and the monks at nearby Conyers. Lorraine Murray has given us a portrait of the artist which is realistic, solid, objective. We have an honest discussion of her private life without going into sordid speculations and faux Freudian wisdom. Like all good biographers, Murray does not impose her own views and personality. She quietly paints a portrait which reveals the artist, then she herself steps back.

Lorraine is also the author of 'Confessions of an Ex-Feminist'. That she should produce a biography of one of America's most important modern female authors is perfect. Without preaching a sermon about it, Lorraine shows Flannery to be a sort of answer to the strident, insecure and angry feminist who is trying so hard to accomplish something and usually only succeeds in stomping around in a huff. Flannery gets on with the job. She works quietly and confidently. She cuts down foolishness with her mixture of wit and intelligence. She understands faith, human nature and most of all herself. Like most accomplished women, she doesn't really have time for feminism and doesn't need it. In doing this, she shows us the true strengths of women--not by being somebody else, but by being most fully herself.

Lorraine Murray has produced an important book on O'Connor. I would have wished, perhaps for more discussion of her spirituality through the actual writings. Where Murray does bring in the characters and story lines her insights are brilliant. Perhaps that is what we'll get in Volume II.

Upcoming Travels

I'll be in Sacramento CA from Sept 17-20 to be keynote speaker at the Hyatt Regency for the Women of Grace Conference with Johnette Benkovic. Information here.

Sept 24-25 I'll be leading a parish mission in Stowe, Vermont for Fr Benedict Kiely.

Y'all come!

Fr Rutler on Liturgy

Fr Rutler records much common sense about the liturgy here. I'm with him. I'm glad there are such creatures as liturgists and I value their expertise and knowledge, but for my money it all goes much deeper than the style and words of liturgy.

The deep down stuff is what we actually believe the liturgy is for, and that goes back to what we believe the church is for, and that goes back to what we believe about Jesus Christ's work on earth and that goes back to what we believe about God. Like the Methodist who said when he learned that the ashes for Ash Wednesday are from the burnt palm crosses from the year before, "Gee, all this Catholic stuff is connected!"

If we make the liturgy all about us gathering together to have fellowship and then go out to change the world then we have not only changed the liturgy, we have changed the gospel. The core of the gospel is not some sort of protest movement or lobby for political change. The core of the gospel is about the reconciliation between God and his alienated children. Its about the forgiveness of sin. It's the old, old story of mankind cut off from God restored through the salvific death of his Son the God Incarnate. The Mass celebrates and re-animates that once for all sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and it is through this transaction that our hearts open first in repentance and then in faith and love to receive the life of Christ.

The real reason so many modern liturgists turned the whole thing into a sort of hippy like protest movement is that very quietly, and usually without even being aware of it, they stopped believing the old, old story. The Virgin Birth became in their minds a charming Christmas tradition. The incarnation became a metaphor and the atoning work of Christ on the cross was dismissed as a barbaric, archaic and inaccessible part of the Christian tradition. The possibility of miracles was forgotten and the reality of sin ignored.

When all that was dropped what was left? Not much more than a milksop religion of smiling at one another and doing good works followed by sadly self righteous and earnest people who were blind to where their apostasy had taken them, and sincerely believed that they had created a new Christianity when all they had done was resurrect a bundle of old heresies.

Well, bless them. Their felt banners are frayed, their polyester vestments are faded, and all they have left are the rainbow banners of homosexual activism and the bland bleating of tired feminists whose rage, like their lava lamps, has almost burned out.

Newman and the Conversion of England

What does the beatification of John Henry Newman have to do with the conversion of England today?

Yesterday afternoon I was a guest on Steve Wood's radio show. It's pretty easy to do since Steve is living here in Greenville, and his Family Life Center is right there on Wade Hampton Blvd. He asked me to talk about Newman a bit in the run up to Newman's beatification in England later this month.

I'm not a Newman scholar by any stretch, but he has had a great influence on me and on so many other converts from Anglicanism. What interests me about Newman's beatification, however, is not so much his theological writings and his tender and beautiful life, but the inter action of the whole church within the greater providence of God.

See, when we beatify or canonize a saint it is not the ecclesiastical equivalent of giving them a star on Hollywood's Hall of Fame. What is happening is that the church on earth is recognizing and co operating with the church in heaven. Something supernatural is taking place. When the Church on earth holds hands with the church in heaven the goodness of heaven affects the events on earth. The beatification or canonization of a saint magnifies and exalts their life and work. It helps their work to make a spiritual quantum leap forward. All that they were and all that they are becomes, through this action, more real and alive and vital here on earth.

This happens in practical ways--so that when someone is beatified or canonized their life and writings become more well known and therefore affect more people. More books are written about them and their life. They get publicity and so their wonderful life affects more and more people. That's the way it should be. But there is more to it than that.

I'm convinced that there is a supernatural activity of grace associated with the beatification or canonization of a person as well. So that their prayers in heaven are stronger and more active here on earth. St Therese understood this when she said that she would spend her time in heaven doing good on earth. Wow! Can this be true? It must be. If this is so, then all the saints in heaven are busy doing good on earth.

The ramifications of this are stupendous. We must pray and believe therefore, that John Henry Newman's beatification and eventual canonization will help to magnify and complete and amplify the work that he lived to do here. He is a kind of patron saint already of converts from Anglicanism, but there's more: his journey from a sincere, Evangelical Calvinism through Anglicanism to Catholicism and eventually to Catholic ordination was a pioneering journey and he charted the path for so many who were to come after.

Those who came after were not only converts from Anglicanism, but many, like myself, started in the same place as Newman--not from Anglo Catholicism, but from Protestant Evangelicalism. We made the journey and followed in his footsteps. I believe that his beatification will enable many more to make that same journey.

Now here's where the mystery of providence comes in: Newman will be beatified by a Pope who is just about as like John Henry Newman as possible. Both are gentle souls. Both had deep and private friendships and loyalties to family. Both are intense and brilliant theologians. Both have reputations for being controversialists, while both are essentially non combative, sensitive theologians. Both are regarded by the liberals as conservatives and by the conservatives as liberals. So this Newman-like Pope comes to England to beatify the great convert Cardinal.

A year earlier he established the Anglican Ordinariate--a way for Anglicans to retain the riches of their patrimony while coming into full communion with the Holy See. The way is opened up for great things to happen and for many conversions to the Catholic Faith. We simply need to be faithful and make sacrifices and pray for the spirit of obedience and courage and good humor to be with all those who are considering the move.

Finally, the other thing I love about the Catholic faith is that we take the long view. We don't regard 19th century Newman as a dead duck and an irrelevance. No. The truths he taught so brilliantly are just as true today. They are timeless. Likewise, he is not dead. He is alive in Christ. The work he began did not end with his death. His writings and his witness go on. It may be that they will only really reach their ripeness and fulfillment over the next 100 years. God's story does not end in any one epoch or any one decade. It goes on, and little seeds of goodness, truth and beauty planted today may only flower centuries later.

If this is the case, then there is a marvelous hope for all of us as well. Any small seeds of goodness, truth and beauty that we plant here by our prayers, our good works, our faith and our reliance on grace will one day most definitely flower into an eternal dimension. It's just that we cannot see exactly how or where.

And that is where faith and hope come in.

Mr Angry

OK, so there have been no posts this week. Give me a break willya? Lemme tell you what its like around here ok? Like have you ever had to start a new job and y'know you got to get your desk set up and put your pencils in a straight line and get your systems set up? Well around here I'm doing that twice. School starts up see, and then the parish job kicks in at the same time. I'm supposed to be superman or what? So keep your cool ok? And you want me to blog two or three times a day as well do you? What are you some kind of blog junkie? Get a life willya? OK here's what's happening. See. I've also got lots of ideas other than the blog cooking around in my little noggin you know? So I'm doing these here radio spots on the local radio because I'm teaching something I call Catholic Basics and then in the middle of all this I got to take 100 eighth grade kids up to the mountains for an overnight and I'm dealing with homesick kiddies and telling them campfire stories to scare the socks off them and the next day back to being Chaplain and parish priest and oh yeah don't forget the wife and kiddies, two dogs a cat and then I'm supposed to be starting up my own weekly radio show but my pal Steve Wood gets me on his show first of all and then there's people to visit who are bereaved and sick and want to talk about their problems. I'm telling you one thing. I sleep good at night so get off my case already and I'll do the blog posts when I get around to it ok?

St Gregory the Great

This is really one of the exciting things about being a Catholic: 2000 years of saints. St Gregory the Great was born into a patrician family. With wealth, connections, brains and breeding on his side he soon rose up in the ranks of 6th century  Roman society.

He gave it all up for the monastery. Then after ordination he was called back to serve as Pope. He used his contacts, his wealth, his privileged upbringing, his education --all of his gifts and his own wealth and the wealth of the papacy to assist the poor, send out missionaries (especially to England) rebuild society, make peace treaties with the barbarians, write books (including the biography of St Benedict) and much more.

Truly a great soul, to be a Catholic is to read the lives of the saints and not just to be inspired, but to feel that somehow their same energy, their love for Christ, their industry and passion and supernatural graces are still alive and available in the world today. The lives of the saints are important to us because it is through them that the Scriptures and the Catechism of the Church are interpreted.

Do you want to understand the gospel more? Read the lives of the saints. Do you want to understand how to pray more? Pray with the saints. Do you want to understand the relationship between charity and the love of Christ? Go with the saints. Do you want to understand Catholic theology? Meditate on the lives of the saints. Each saint incarnates the gospel in a new way. Each one lives out the Catholic faith in a fresh idiom. Each one make the faith come alive in a totally unique and powerful way.