Reflections from a Protestant Library the Fourth

or Muting History

Protestants have an interesting relation with history. They know it has happened and they see its effect on the past world, yet the often pretend it does not matter in the present life, that everything they do is static and is done the way it always was.

Within the aforementioned library, there were two varieties of history books. The first were biographies, generally about 'great reformers' such as Martin Luther. As history, these are lacking, sense they attempt to great the person as a hero when they often were not and are regularly concerned with presenting them as people who moved the clock backwards, an historic impossibility.

The second category of historical works were those on the early Church, generally collections of documents written prior to five hundred. These seem to exist in a sort of statis, being important documents to any claim of historical Christianity but impossible to reconcile with most distinctly Protestant beliefs.

Within Protestant churches, particularly those over a hundred years old, people constantly work to protect the 'way things were,' the history of the individual church. Things are done in a certain way because "that is how they are done," which is, of course, quite different than tradition. Protestants desire the nobility of age withou actually claiming to be old.

The only two important points in history to most Protestants (especially Evangelicals) are the present and the Apostolic Church of the first century. Everything in between was simply the passing of time with no change to the Church. True worship is identical to that of the first century except in every way its changed.

There are only to ways to understand the link between the first and twenty-first century Church: either they should be completely identical, for Christ founded a Church that could not change, or the latter should have evolved in a holy and productive way, becoming closer to true Christian worship.

Trust me, we won't have power-point in heaven.

Being the Third Part of Reflections from a Protestant Library

or The Two Christianities

Very often people, particularly 'intellectuals' in the United States and Northern Europe forget that Christianity is not currently united and that there are two distinct camps of Christian thought. I see this most often when discussions of the intellectual nature of Christianity come up. Most 'intellectuals' deride Christians as 'dogmatic' and 'unthinking.' They accuse Christians of simple doing whatever the Book tells them to do.

This is, in many ways, Protestantism. In the aforementioned library, every other book seemed to be entitled something along the lines of The Real Meaning of the Old Testament or More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament, etc. Everything was centered around using the Bible (or the history that surrounded the writing of the Bible) to talk about the Bible. The works are, in many ways, self-reflexive and unable to draw any true conclusions for they refuse to acknowledge that not all Truth is in the Bible.

The Catholic position, of course, accepts that there is Truth outside the Bible, namely in the Magistarium. More than that, however, Catholics understand that Truth can be understood beyond simply that which is related to the Church. That is to say, logic and reasoning both are valids ways of examing Truth. The idea that the Enlightenment was a rebirth of reason is completely absurd. Reason was one of the foundations of Catholic thought, especially present in the person of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Likewise, the Catholic Church is in now way anti-science. For a thousand years the greatest discoveries were made by Catholic Scientists and still today many important things are learned by orthodox Catholics. The 'fight' of science and religion (espicially in the realm of creationism/evolution) is not being fought by Catholics, but by Protestants, but anti-Religion polemics fail to even consider a distinction.

The world has failed to grasp what Catholic means and this is simply another occasion when Catholics get lumped together with other groups to their own detriement.

Further Reflections from a Protestant Library

or Veritas est non Tacitas

As I walked around the aforementioned library, I began to dwell on the relation of Protestant and Catholic thought, primarily in the realm of what makes the Church. To Protestants, any group who believes in the trinity and has the Bible as their rule of faith is part of the church, while Catholics hold the Church must remain in communion with itself; that is, for a individual church to be part of the Church it must agree on all important issues with every other church and be aligned vertically with them beneath Christ.

Therefore, it is easy to see why Catholics do not consider Protestants as being in full communion with the Church. How Protestants see Catholics is a more complicated matter and the one which occupied my thought.

Some Protestants find reason to believe that Catholics cannot be Christians for they have added too much to the Bible (everyone ads something to the Bible. The Apostles did not drive cars to church, much less even have an independent church building). These, however, are not our concern at the moment. We are much more interested in the Protestants who believe Catholics are Christians.

In growing numbers Protestants are realizing that not only are Catholics Christians, they are often among the most holy of Christians. In 1973 almost no Protestants even noticed Roe v. Wade, but the Catholic Pro-Life groups (which were, and are, also concerned with contraception) were immediately in opposition. Still today some of the most adament Pro-Lifers are Catholic and many Protestants get their first exposure to true Catholicism through them.

The growing concensus is that Catholicism is a perfectly valid understanding of Christianity. This, however, cannot be the end of those thoughts. If Catholicism is a valid Christian thought, then it must be the only valid Christian thought, for it claims Christ himself appears in every Mass. If he doesn't, then Catholicism is false, but many have already learned it to be true enough, in which case it must all be true, and Christ truly is present in the Eucharist.

What is happening is that Protestants come to understand the Catholic Church as being truly Christian. They then come to realize that they cannot accept Catholicism as a possible truth without accepting it as the revealed truth of God and they make the step to Rome.

We do not need to disprove all the differences between Catholics and Protestants, rather we simple need to break down the walls that say Catholics are not Christian. Once here, wisdom and knowledge will do the rest. We may still need to take up certain issues, but we do not need to conquer an entire system. Truth is on our side, and it is not silent.

Reflections While Walking in a Protestant Library

or Protestant Intellectual Dishonesty

This Sunday morning I found myself wandering alone through the Library at my families Evangelical Church. I first entered there as it was the one place I could go to pray the Rosary undisturbed (as the rest of the people in the church would probably frown on me doing that there). After finishing my rosary I began to look through the books on the shelves and two caught my eye.

The first was entitled "Heroes of Christianity," listing a variety of famous Christians from St. Paul to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What I found interesting was that St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, and others of that time were mixed with the so-called proto-reformers. The entry on St. Thomas (not that this book ever referred to them as saints except when calling Justin Martyr just that -- Martyr) went so far as to say that he was a genius but much of what he wrote clashed with later beliefs, essentially saying the reformes picked through the Summa and took what they liked. And, like with most Protestants, their entry suggested Bonhoeffer was the only Christian to suffer in the Nazi's Camp, conveniently ignoring people such as St. Maximiliun Kolbe.

The second book was far more interesting. Foxe's Book of Martyrs was written by a man rather unhappy with the Catholic Church. He went to great lengths to prove the Church spent a thousand years persecuting all the real Christians until Martin Luther nailed his wonderful 95 thesis on the Cathedral door and was miraculously saved (by a bunch of rebellios princes who didn't want to be obsequious to the Holy Roman Emporer).

One entry was particularly sad and revealed a lot about the Intellectual Dishonesty that has characterized a lot of Protestantism. The work was chronological, with seventy plus percent dealing with post refromation. Prior to then, he listed the general persecutions but also had a couple of really weird entries. The most absurd was his listing as the Albigenisians as 'reformed Christians' who just wanted to live the pure life Rome was denying to everyone. He spends half a sentence on the Dominicans and Franciscans, then jumps into the Albigenisian
Crusade.

The largest problem? The Albigenisians were Dualist, believing in a good and bad god. Thus they held all matter as evil and believed the primary goal of life was to end it. Thus the enforced suicide, turning it into murder. Men and woman would take the cult's one sacrament, the consolamentum, then their friends would make sure they commited suicide so as not to fall back into sin. This usually involved them keeping the person away from food, even if they wanted it. Of course, they sometimes smothered them with a pillow, just to be quick.

If they were the proto-reformers, that would be a great reason to flee the reformed Church. As it is, they were nothing alike and simply serve those who are intelectually dishonest and offer another example of evil papist persecution. Sadly, this book is still in print and has, in fact, gone under recent revisions adding to it, but not changing any anti-Catholic tripe.

Catholic for the Holidays

Christmas is an interesting season, much like a full moon, for when Christmas comes about, one sees many were-Catholics.

Protestants, particularly Evangelicals, become very Catholic during the season of Advent. The following is a partial list of their 'Catholicy' traits:

Having an actual season, Advent;
Using candles, particularly on Advent Wreaths;
Putting up statues of Saints, especially Sts. Mary and Joseph;
Singing in Latin (Gloria in excelsis);
Singing to Mary (Mary Did you Know);
Attending church on a non-Sunday;

There are more I haven't listed. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and have yet to come up with a reason for it being Christmas. It is apparent even Evangelical Bible-Onlys cannot live without the sacramental nature of the Church, but why it breaks free so fully only durinig Christmas is beyond me. As far as I know, only the liturgical Prostestant churches do anything for Good Friday, one of the top three most important days of Christianity (probably third after Easter and Christmas - contrary to popular opinion, Easter is more important than Christmas).

Somehow Christmas still lends itself naturally to a long liturgical season. Now to convince them to do it for the other eleven months . . .

Charitas

Lately I've been thinking about the idea of love (more in the range of agape than eros) and how it applies to our everday existence. We are to practice Charity at all times and be people of love, loving even those who are unlovable.

In the same way, we must also those who are lovable. The Church, both locally and universally, must be founded on love. If we gather together every Sunday and the love of God is not visible among us both before and afterwards, then something is wrong.

This reminds me of an ancient Latin hymn: "Ubi Charitas, et amore; Ubi Charitas, Deus Ibi est." Where is charity and love, there God is.

Love is the presence of God among us. When we show love to one another we live our Christian vocation. God is revealed more fully to others through the selfless love we exhibit. To claim a the auspices of Christianity without partaking in Love is absurd. It is little more than saying "I think God should be around but I will not work toward that end."

Deus Charitas Est.

To Weaken the Church

How could we (if we were aimed at such a goal) harm the Catholic Church? What would be the most effective way to damage her?

I ask this question because it offers a unique glimpse into the workings of the Church and her strength. If we know the way to destroy something, we know that something's strength (You truly harm something by taking away that which is its strength, rather than hitting at any weaknesses).

The simplest and probably most effective way one could actually harm the Church would be to destroy all the books. This seems a bit counterintuitive, at least by the world's perception of the Church, yet it strikes at the power of the Catholic Church.

The one subject which has spawned more written works than any other is Christ and his Church. For a thousand years all great works were Chritological, from Augustine to Dante. A great fatih has been laid into the very foundations of our culture and the only way one could truly weaken it would be to remove that foundation.

Society today is very much trying to do this, driving man away from books and toward film, TV, and the internet. Because these mediums have not grown under Catholic auspices, they are foundations of another culture, the culture of death, essentially. If we wish to strengthen the Church here, we have two options: either draw people back to the written word or infuse the visual culture with a Catholic world view.

We can recreate this world. We just need to put some effort into it.

Dual Post

Head on over to just another day of Catholic pondering for the 97th Catholic Carnival and you might see a familiar face (not that many of you have seen my face, nor that my face is actually in any way connected with the post, just that it seemed like a nice turn of phrase, or phrase, or something).

Many of you know K. For those of you who don't, she's a fellow blogger who is having a tough time in life. Let's just say if things keep going as they are she's only going to need a layover in purgatory.

She recently put up a post about yet more problems and one of the lines caught my attention. She talked about people who truly listen when we have problems, not just sitting by and tuning out while we rant.

It seems to me that would be a good definition of a friend. I would hold a conversation with most anyone about The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien but if we started discussing, say, glacial moraines (I did almost have that conversation) I would begin to tune out a lot of people. Some I would pay attention to still because there is a certain degree of friendship which makes their conversation interesting and engaging even though I can say maybe three things about moraines.

My prime example of this was J. When ever you talked with him he would always engage you and be interested in what you had to say. He would not simply appear interested, but there would be an honest connection and he would remember what you discussed. He was (probably still is, but he's know many miles away) always willing to talk and made a great listener.

So my goal is to someday emmulate him, though it's a long road. If any of you want to help, feel free to chat with me about moraines. And make me listen.

The Church and the Fantastic

As many of you may or may not know (I'm pretty sure the preceeding sentence means nothing), I am both a writer, and studier, of Fantastic Literature with a particular emphasis on J.R.R. Tolkien (in the area of study. I can't write Tolkien, as I am not Tolkien).

I have recently noticed something very interesting about the creation of Christian Fantasy. The good works of Christian Fantastic Literature are those that are Fantasy that happens to be Christian and not Christian Fantasy.

Tolkien said "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so, at first, but consciously in the revision" (Letters 216-17). When discussing the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis said "[e]very thing began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnicent lion" and not with an allegory in mind (Of Other Worlds 36).

My own writing has worked much in the same way. Recently I was working on an intentionally pagan mythology with which to stand against a 'Christian' history when I began to notice distinct Christian themes, particularly in the divine figure of Peritaduhr, who protects man and is their advocate. The mythology is still clearly pagan (four levels of gods, the value of cunning, etc.) but it has a Christocentric feel to it.

On the flip side, some of the worst works of Fantasy I have ever read have been Christian Allegory written with the Allegory as the soul purpose of existence. In the collection of essays mentioned before Lewis discusses how all stories should both entertain and teach and a lot of Christian Fantasies I have seen fail on the first count because they are trying so hard for the second. If no one enjoys reading a work, they will not do it.

To answer the first part of my unasked question: these works are Christian because an honostly Christian author (one who desires to be a Christian) can write nothing else. One exalts what one believes and a Christian will present a Christian world view in his writing. The degree to which it is effective depends on his skill as a writer and formation as a Christian, but it will always end up being Christian. If they heroes are all admiriably pagan then the author truly does not believe Christianity to be a better way, for no admiriable true pagan can be born of a truly Christian mind.

The second half of the question is answered thus: good Christian Fictions are good because Christianity is the ends and not the means. What I mean is that the Christian thought occupies the story, not the other way around. If I want to write something in which Christianity is the means, I can do so, but I ought to call it a devotional or theology. One should not try and confuse a story into a collection of Christian thought and call it fiction. Rather, Christian thought fleshes out and fulfills an older ready viable story.

Middle-Earth is Christian because Tolkien was. The Christian must tell a Christian story.

Not so far

This morning my distinctly Protestant sister was reading the list of Church's Christmas Schedules released by the local paper, she made a comment to my cousin when she was on the Reformed Churches. There are four Reformed Churches in the valley and she read off the names of the pastors. All the names were Dutch.

She asked, essentially, "If this was the real church, wouldn't they diversify more?" She then qualified it with the statement that "it wasn't wrong, but . . ."

Even essentially anti-Catholics find that the national character of churches is wrong, but they remain part of those national churches.

Where has this been hiding?

Gregorian chant and sacred choral music. Both eastern and western. On the internet. And Free.

I am now addicted.

Enjoy.

The Two Views

Last night I went to a movie with a couple of friends, neither of whom are even remotely Christian, yet I found both to be more entertaining and more pure than many of the Christians I have previously associated with. Reflecting on this, I have come to the Two Views of the Pagan (I just wanted to use that word. I simply mean those who do not consider themselves Christian).

The non-Christian is either hedonistic or noble. The hedonistic pagan is the one who has no qualms about how much he lives in the world. Curse words mean nothing to him and he would sleep with anything that moves.

The Noble pagan, on the other hand, had a Christian intellect if not a Christian belief. He understands the sacred nature of words and sex, and abuses neither. While he does not necessarily follow Christian morality, he understands the basic principles and his life works around them. With the existence of birth-control, most of the visible moral problems of premarital-sex go away, so even that can fit validly into the noble's pagan moral scheme. It may not seem to be Christian, but it is more Christian than many Christians.

These designations are of course crude and sterotypical, but by defining the two ends one definres the fullness of the spectrum as well. These can also apply to Christians, though generally the dichotomy is less severe.

Why do I get the feeling that G.K. Chesterton probably already worked all of this out and I just haven't read about it yet?

Irony

The on-campus group dedicated to preventing sexual abuse is putting on a production of "The Vagina Monologues."

Somehow I doubt that a show which degrades the sacredness and value of sex is likely to diminish the cases of sexual violence. Most cases of sexual abuse, from what I've seen, descend from a misunderstanding of sex, where it becomes something innocent and natural. Once that degredation is complete, there is nothing to keep someone form using sex for their own aims. The line between 'fun' and abuse is thingly drawn and sometimes annihilated all together.

As G.K. Chesterton said, "the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing become soaked and sodden with sex." Remove the holiness from the sex act and everybody is doing it. Once everybody is doing it, it becomes common property. Common property cannot be regulated, thus making sexual abuse one of many ways to get pleasure, nothing particularly wrong, at least in the eyes of the perpetrator.

If we truly wish to take back the night, we must first take back sex. To take back sex we must take back love. To take back love, we must take back marriage. To take back marriage we must come back to the Church.