August 2006 Archives

There’s an interesting scene in the Return of the King. It’s during the victory party after Helm’s Deep. Aragorn and Gandalf are in a corner of the room, with merriment and celebration going on all around them.

Aragorn: No news of Frodo?
Gandalf: No word. Nothing.
Aragorn: We have time. Every day Frodo moves closer to Mordor.
Gandalf: Do we know that?
Aragorn: What does your heart tell you?
Gandalf: That Frodo is alive. Yes. Yes, he's alive.

Over the past six or seven days, I’ve gotten several e-mails that have a common theme. Each has some variation of…

“I feel drawn to the Catholic Church, but…"?
“I’d convert, but I can’t get my head around…"?
“I would dive in, but I have a knot in my gut when I consider the doctrine of…"?

Conversion is, in a very real way, an intellectual process. Eventually, you have to get your head around the teachings of the Church to accept them with real depth. However, it’s a mistake to make it an exclusively intellectual process.

A guy I know is going through a very public discernment process. He is trying to decide whether or not his family will convert to Orthodoxy (if you know of whom I am referring, please don’t say...let us give him what peace we’re able). He has a blog and has posted on the subject several times. On each of those occasions, he’s gotten lots of comments and even more e-mails. I have refrained from commenting directly as this is a very personal decision, but I did send along one piece of advice via e-mail:

How can you possibly hear the whispers of the Spirit when everyone around you is shouting advice at the top of their lungs?

The same basic idea applies to everyone. It is important to get your head around the teachings of the Church, but it is equally important to consult your heart as well. Sit quietly in prayer, and listen for the whispers of the Spirit. If you don’t hear them, don’t panic. They’ll turn up at another time, probably when you least expect it. Or maybe you’ll just be guided to your proper place. But if you go through a conversion as a primarily intellectual process, then it’s likely to turn into a sterile, dry and incomplete thing.

What do you do if confronted with a teaching that you cannot accept - when you are asking Gandalf’s question, “Do we know that"? Stop for a moment, take a break, and in answer turn to Aragorn’s question: “What does your heart tell you"? Seek the answer in stillness, quiet and humility, and eventually you will find your way.

I want to explore a comment left by RL in the original Papal Infallibility post. Here’s the quote:

”There are at least good arguments that St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the opinion (as it was then) of the Immaculate Conception. In what sense can one claim that the Immaculate Conception was a doctrine of the Church from the beginning if St. Thomas could deny or express doubts about it in the 13th century?

“This gets me to my big intellectual problem with papal infallibility: It seems to require a lot of post-hoc rationalization.”

I think the best way to explore this is to look at the history of the Immaculate Conception as an idea. That may get at the infallibility question and touch on the Immaculate Conception as well.

Just curious, but is anyone going into RCIA this year? If so, anybody in the Dallas area?

If you don't want this advertized, feel free to e-mail me. The address is on the right sidebar.

I’ve gone over all the questions asked since I started this blog, and have compiled a list of potential topics. This also includes a few topics that I’ve gotten from comments on other blogs and by e-mail. I can’t swear that I’m going to do all these, but it’s a place to start. Now, if anyone has any other topics that they’re interested in, please let me know and I’ll add them to my master list (kept on my trusty memory stick).

This also isn’t a final list, but rather a starting point.

It’s also not in the order that I’ll likely write them. Unfortunately, you’ll have to suffer through my whims in what's written when. Digging into these is time consuming, and committing to that much time requires interest on my part. If, on one particular day, I’m not all that keen on writing about the Assumption, then I’m not going to force it.

So, here's the list...

I’m at work as I write this. Though I don’t know exactly what time I’ll post this message, it is just now 6:15 in the morning. I’ve already been here for 15 or 20 minutes. Why so early?

I’m an office manager for a Fortune 500 heavy industrial company. We have global operations and our people are spread across the entire planet. In the event of a terrorist attack or some other big international incident, my job is to get our people home to their families. I am, therefore, tied to the transportation sector of the economy – especially civil aviation.

When the London arrests took place a couple of weeks ago, we were quick to react. But it’s the aftermath of these arrests that got interesting for me. As with every big company these days, we have our security experts and they have their ears to the ground all the time. They began to hear rumblings of a coming terrorist attack even before the London arrests. Then on August 9, Bernard Lewis wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about August 22nd and it’s meaning to the leader of Iran. It just so happens that our security experts also pinpointed August 22nd as the date of the potential terrorist attack. (There has been a great deal more to this than what you've seen on TV or on the web.)

As time went on, we kept up with the news about this date. Last week Iran announced major military exercises to begin on the 19th. Then North Korea began what looked like work on a nuclear test. Things got confusing when the London investigations pointed to the 16th as the actual date of the attack. There were a great many things that pointed to the London attacks coming on the 22nd (again, things you won’t see on TV), and we had no way of knowing what the London investigators had as proof of the different date.

After September 11, my job was to get 173 people home from 12 different countries. I was not alone, but there was plenty of work to go around. Most were here in the US, but many were overseas. It took two weeks to get the last ones back. After that, we made contingency plans for major disasters - both natural and man made. We used them after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and after the July 7 bombings in London last year. By last Friday, we were dusting off our procedure books. Yesterday afternoon we began implementing what was in them. We've never done this in advance of an incident before.

At one point on Friday, I looked at my boss and said, “Can you believe we’re even talking about this?” She agreed that it was surreal. It’s almost like being back at September 10, 2001, but knowing the attacks were coming the next day. What do you do to prepare yourself? You can’t stop them, but you can take measures to keep your people safe. By dinner yesterday I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. Yesterday afternoon another manager and I started calling our response “Operation: Elvis Lives.” Why Elvis? Because the more we worked on it the crazier it seemed...like we were in a conspiracy theorists dreamland. (We’ve decided that our next one will be called “Operation: Lone Gunmen”.) As the media began to cover the story, we began to feel a bit better. Surely the bad guys wouldn’t do something big when there was so little chance of a surprise.

Such is the modern world we live in, I guess. Well, the sun is coming up. Time to get moving on regular work. Since I'm here first today, I get to make coffee.

The past week has been very weird. As we might say in Texas, “so far, ain’t nothin’ blowd up yet.” I can’t tell you how happy I am to have been wrong.

I said on the reading list that Frank Sheed is my apologetic hero. That’s true, and writing that post reminded me of a Sheed book that I’d heard of but never found (at a cost I could afford and in a condition that was worthwhile...it’s been out of print for some time). The book is Catholic Evidence Training Outlines. It’s a training guide for new members of Sheed’s Catholic Evidence Guild, written in the 1930’s.

The Catholic Evidence Guild was an organization founded by Sheed to spread the message of Catholicism. They would put a soapbox up in Hyde Park and begin a discourse on whatever subject struck their fancy that day, and people would crowd around and listen, heckle, learn, whatever. It’s really not much different from what happens on a blog, only I don’t get rained on (and I can delete hecklers comments heeheehee).

I got the book from Amazon yesterday. In typical Frank Sheed style, I was struck between the eyes by a verbal 2 x 4, and it only took him four pages to do it...

This sort of thing guides me in my discussions with people of other religions. Given the nature of the web, I think this sort of story is more important today than in bygone years when information didn’t travel at the speed of light.

I received an e-mail over the weekend decrying how complex Catholicism is when compared to evangelical Protestantism. In essence, it questions how the simplicity of the Gospel message can be turned into such doctrinally complex issues as the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility, much less the Sacramental life of the average Catholic. It’s actually a very interesting question, and one that I had not really thought about until it came up on Saturday.

There are two points to make on this. First, given the complexity of other systems in God’s creation, theological complexity shouldn’t be seen as an impediment to the simple Gospel message. In fact, if you think about it, it makes a certain amount of sense. Second, I do not consider Catholicism to be complex. Most Catholics don’t either. It is a complete system and of great philosophical depth. I suspect it’s this depth that gives the impression of complexity.

I started this list in three different groupings: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. As I thought about it, I decided that this didn’t really work well. Instead, I’ve decided to list these in reading order – at least the reading order that I would suggest. Start with the top and work your way down.

This is not intended to be comprehensive. There are loads of other books out there, and many of them are fine works indeed. Instead, these selections give a solid introduction to the Catholic faith, are easy to read, and don’t represent a huge investment in either time or money. It would take many lifetimes to read everything, and it would be pointless to have someone start with the likes of Summa Theologica.

This is not to be considered a finished list either. As time wears on, I’ll add a few others, I’m sure. When that happens, I’ll note it on the blog. I've created a section on the sidebar to hold this post and any changes that come along with it.

When I started this post, I really thought I could get the basics down in one long, grand unification post, that brought everything together in one place. Ah, what folly! Notice the roman numeral in the title.

To properly examine this doctrine, I suspect I'll need countless entries. But at a bear minimum, the number four suggests itself. This one, the first, will look at the linguistic issues. The next one will get into Scriptural matters. The third will get into Tradition. The fourth to look at the history. So, here goes nothin'...

Well, yesterday was interesting. My day job (“Mild mannered apologist by night, Super Office Manager by day!”) has a great deal to do with the transportation sector. Needless to say, yesterday was…um…busy. I’m trying to catch up. I have a couple of posts nearly done.

UPDATE: Things are back under control now, or will be later this afternoon. I don't generally post on the weekends, but since I've been out of touch I'm going to do so tomorrow. I'll put up the oft delayed Immaculate Conception post, and probably the beginnings of a reading list as well.

There has been a lot of confusion and misinterpretation of the Catholic view of Justification. In fact, there has been a Battle Royale at a Protestant blog about this recently. [I’m not going to link this blog just now for a variety of reasons. I may do that later.] I am VERY reluctant to bring that battle here. This is, in essence, a blog of Catholic apologetics, but it is not a battleground.

However, given that I just called this a blog of Catholic apologetics, even if it has a very narrow aim, I think this subject will be of interest to both prospective converts and practicing Catholics.

[One editorial note: From here on I will be defining the words “Protestant" and “Protestantism" in very broad terms. I know many Protestant denominations do not agree with the more Fundamentalist definitions used here, but the word “Fundamentalist" doesn’t seem adequate either.]

This is going to be a tremendous oversimplification, but here’s the gist of it: The Protestant idea of justification revolves around Sola Fide – Latin for “by faith alone". They believe that by their faith - and their faith alone - they are granted access to heaven. We Catholics are condemned (as often as not, it comes in language such as this...or far stronger) because we believe that good works add to your chances of getting into heaven. It is one of the most divisive issues that stand between Catholics and Protestants, one in which misunderstandings exist on both sides.

So the question arises, how do we get into heaven?

Let’s do a little thought experiment to get things started. Let’s say that my 13 year old daughter (“Dad, I’m almost 14!" “Not for three months yet, what’s your hurry? And no, you can’t have a cell phone.") gets roped into volunteering at a soup kitchen with some members of a parish youth group. They tell her they are going to do good works to help them get into heaven. She had other plans that day, but reluctantly agrees. She goes, she feeds the hungry, she talks to people to make them feel better about things, life, whatever. She then comes home, listens to some music, says her prayers, and goes to bed. We will assume that she is fine in all other areas: she believes that Christ is the savior and that he died for our sins, she’s been baptized, she participates in the sacraments, etc.

Based on the Catholic Doctrine of Justification and the idea of good works, do these actions at the soup kitchen help her get into heaven?

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve been up for a promotion for a while, and I’m gearing up for a new job. There’s some training to be done - starting in the next couple of weeks - that will take several months to complete. All very exciting stuff. I found out on Friday – that’s why I was distracted for the past day or two and haven’t put up any posts.

The bad news is that it’s going to affect the blog. Churning out posts is going to be much more difficult. I don’t think – as of today – that I’m going to be able to keep up the daily post schedule. I may try three days a week. If that works, it will likely be Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. If not, I'll have to figure out Plan B on the fly.

I am not going away. Last Friday I had serious thoughts of giving up the blog again. But oddly enough, as the weekend progressed, several things happened that convinced me to stay. Definitely Spirit driven, and no coincidence that it happened on Transfiguration Sunday (the homily of which, I suspect and with only a hint of paranoia, was aimed directly at me).

I'm not going to get the Immaculate Conception post up today. Just a wee bit overwhelmed. I'll get it on Monday. Sorry for the delay.

Since absolutely nobody ever tags ME for these things, I decided to follow MamaT’s light-fingered approach of swiping this meme. And if anyone ever wants to tag me, I REALLY WILL NOT MIND!

When I went through RCIA, one guy had a really tough time with Papal Infallibility. It took several months for him to articulate what the problem was, but as he went through the program he understood enough to put his concerns into words. I’m going to over-simplify this, but here’s the gist of it: He thought that Catholics would be obligated to believe as a matter of faith if the pope said the sky was green.

Um, no…

This is not an urban legend. It’s from the father of a young lady that was killed at Columbine. Even though it’s seven years old, it bears repeating. I’m going to get out of the way and let the original speak for itself.

I’m working on an Immaculate Conception post. At best, it will be late tomorrow before I get it done. When it comes, it’s going to be in two parts. The more I look at it, the more I think a simultaneous post on papal/magisterial infallibility is necessary.

Ok, we've been at this for a few weeks now. There are a couple of posts up, we've gotten some comments, and even an e-mail or two.

The next question is, what's next? I'd like to see what would be of use to people interested in joining the Church. If anyone has a problem that they'd like addressed, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment here. I'm going to try to get into the post-Reformation Marian dogmas, but that sort of thing is going to take some time to write. Are there any other topics that anyone would specifically like addressed?

Have a look at Hallowed Ground here and here. Jeff has some good comments about modern war and the cost in human life.

I may have some comments on this tomorrow. I'm trying to decide how far to push the envelope on this, or whether or not I even want to push at all.