About the Hidden Exodus

I really have mixed feelings about this: "The Hidden Exodus". On the one hand, I can sympathize in that my own personal experience of parish life over these last 10 years has been lacking in the sense of family/deep connectedness that I felt both as an evangelical and Episcopalian.

I also understand the tension between adapting church services to be more appealing by contemporary popular standards and our duty to preserve authentic Christian liturgy.

But Fr. Reese of course takes the opportunity to take potshots at the new translation and the Vatican. I also wonder if the survey was framed in such a way as to tend towards those results.

I personally am of the bent that our faith should be challenging us. If it is not, there is something wrong. It is a call to live holier lives, and that's never been easy, certainly not in our culture today.

As a former evangelical Protestant, I can say that I do miss the evangelical bent--tis partly why I have become a lay member of the Order of Preachers, which is evangelical ("apostolic") to the core.

I also agree with the observation that encouraging a love of Scripture is important--we naturally crave the Word of God. Oddly enough, you'll hear more Scripture in the typical mass than you do in a typical evangelical service, but it's instilling a love for personal time with the Word that seems to be missing.

Another point where I think Fr. Reese diverges from the data for his own agenda is claiming that it's not that things are too liberal that draws people away. That probably comes from not having been evangelical Protestant himself--they are basically all conservative and take living the Faith and receiving it for what it is (not manipulating it to suit the zeitgeist) as a key motivating factor in their lives. The 46% who say the Church doesn't take the Bible literally enough--seems to me this is what they're getting at.

I reflect back on the sermons I heard growing up and those I've heard since becoming Catholic, and I can say pretty confidently that a key part of the sermon *every week* was a challenge to ongoing conversion and to go out and LIVE THE GOSPEL. On average in a Catholic homily, my experience has been that few challenge you, few stir that burning in your heart, few have any lasting impact at all. I have heard some, but on average, there is a great difference in this respect between evangelical Protestant and Catholic preaching. I think it's primarily this calling to conversion, holiness, and living the Faith without compromise that people find attractive when comparing these two, and it sounds like the data reflect that, even if framed in different words.

Well, then there are those who do want us to be more in practice like the rest of the world--the "liberal" and "mainline" denominations. I just don't get that approach to Christianity. It doesn't make sense to me at all. Well, I think I understand why people feel the desire to retain vestiges of a religion they feel attached to somehow, but as far as I'm concerned, if I didn't believe what a religion teaches, I just wouldn't join/stay in that religion. It's the only integral thing to do. I don't believe in Buddhism or Islam's creeds; ergo, I am not a Buddhist or Muslim. I don't just pick the things I like that fit with popular culture and say I am.

But as the data reveal--people don't make religious choices based on reason alone (or sometimes at all). I get that. But I digress..

So really, what I wanted to say was that I'm not sure what the right way forward is. A certain amount of adaptation makes sense and has always been the way Christianity has thrived--avoiding syncretism, most of the time. At the same time, Christianity is an historical faith; it is based in real history--a real Person, a real Truth, a real Church that has preserved and handed on what it has received. We can't just reinvent it or whitewash it so much that it looses its true character.

It does seem we maybe erred too much in the Catholic Church these last 40 odd years in the direction of adaptation, so I tend to think that a certain amount of readjustment and alignment, even if a bit awkward, is the right next step. Will the new translation magically make people return to the Faith in droves? Of course not, but that doesn't make it irrelevant or wrong. It is one piece of a big puzzle.

The data are there--we know people feel their needs are not being met. The solution isn't to totally change who we are or adapt the Faith so much that it is indecipherable from modern secularism and popular culture. It seems to me the only right way forward is indeed to recapture and preach the Gospel in its entirety and to practice it as such, in as much as we are able. Sometimes it will align with popular culture, sometimes not, but as long as it maintains its integrity, it will be clear about its value and people will be drawn to it.

Of Theologians and Bishops

I just wrote this up as a comment on this article in which Fr. Thomas Weinandy tears theologians a new one, mostly in response to the unfortunate commenters on the post. I think it's worth repeating here.

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There have always been theologians who stray away from the Faith. There's nothing new about it. And yes, sometimes they do get vindicated later on (I'm thinking of Fr. Congar, for example). Even St. Thomas Aquinas was attacked by contemporaries.  Sts. Jerome and Ambrose weren't the best of friends. Theologians don't always agree with each other, nor with the bishops of their time. The bishops are duty bound to be conservative, and theologians tend to push the boundaries.

On the other hand, I have to agree with Fr. Weinandy (and the Holy Father, and many, many saints, including the Church's greatest theologians) in that theology should indeed start from the foundation of faith seeking understanding. What the deposit of the faith is is not so hard to find out as some comments [there] suggest (or I suppose as some theologians try to pretend in the name of "academic freedom").

The study of theology is not like other academic disciplines. In fact, it is fundamentally different; it is the queen of all the sciences because its subject is the Infinite, and because the subject of this field's study is de facto an object of faith, it makes no sense to start from anything but faith.

Further, the saints are unanimous in that there is a certain congruity between a life of prayer and sanctity and a true knowledge of God. To suggest otherwise is to fall outside of Catholic Tradition. You may be okay with doing that, but trying to maintain you are a Catholic theologian while living outside of Catholic Tradition is oxymoronic.

Lastly, all the folks who make this another "let's piss on the bishops en mass due to the sex scandal" need to grow up. This is not about power, or old boys' club, or anything like that. Read the letters of St. Paul. Read the early fathers. Read Ignatius of Antioch. Read Bl. John Henry Newman. The bishops are supposed to secure and pass on the deposit of the faith; it's the job description, not a power grab. If you don't know this basic fact about the Catholic Faith, you really don't have any room to be commenting on or judging them, much less commenting about the nature of theology and theologians. Address Weinandy's points if you take issue and stop with the laughable ad hominems..

P.S. I tend to think the real problem is that the average Catholic today thinks that the group they should listen to are the theologians rather than the bishops. It's fine and normal for theologians to be wandering around and testing boundaries, even inadvertently falling into error (as is their wont). They can duke it out with the bishops--that should be between them and their bishop. If they hold a teaching office, the bishops have a duty to make it known when they stray from the Faith.

But for the Catholic "faithful" to follow errant theologians rather than their bishop is, again, outside of Catholic Tradition and really makes it hard to call them "the faithful." Your bishop is your pastor--your shepherd; you follow him, not your whims or the opinions of even the most qualified theologian.  This is a norm of faith; there can be exceptions--individual bishops have no guarantee to be free from error, but the exceptions do not change the norm.

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I should add, read I John 2:3-6, for a Scriptural foundation of the tie between holiness and knowledge of God.