Is the search for “The True Church” a valid one?

The comment string on my post below linking to Pastor Weedon’s blog (An entertaining comment string on Weedon’s Blog) drew an old and familiar voice back into the discussion. Terry Maher (aka Past Elder) ended that discussion by saying he was “bowing out”, which is why, rather than reply to his comment there expecting an answer from him, I choose to post this as a separate question here throwing it open to all of you.

The comment string ended with this comment from Terry:

Your question is circular: which church is the true church as the Catholic church says the true church is. There will only be one answer, ever — the Catholic Church. The problem is not in the answer but in the loaded question designed to produce the answer. The RCC may offer these days more variations on the question, but the answer is always the only thing the RC faith is about — the RC church.

The difficulty with that proposition is twofold:

1) Personal: Years ago I thought to myself that the Catholic Church of the Creed was simply an article of faith – the “true Church” does not have a corporate visible existence here on earth. I came to that conclusion to enable myself to be faithful to what I thought was “Catholic” while yet remaining a Lutheran (this was way back in 1986 already). Yet the issue of the ordination of women threw all this into confusion. If some visible corporate Christian communions (perhaps even the one to which I belonged) were ordaining women what did this mean for my ecclesiology. At first, I ran with the idea that each decision was valid for the communion which made that decision so long as it followed the lines of authority recognised by that tradition. Two good Lutheran clergy friends (one now a Catholic the other not) put paid to that idea by pointing out that something was either true or not true: either it was a valid act to ordian a woman to the holy ministry or it wasn’t. That meant that some Christian communities got it wrong – they were not all equally valid expressions of the Church Catholic. So which communions could claim to be valid expressions of the Church Christ established? Could my own communion make such a choice? In effect, I was asking the question: Which of all the possible Churches to which I could belong are “true Churches”? I asked this question not as a Roman Catholic, but as a Lutheran. Lutheran ecclesiology could not answer my question. Eventually – as a Lutheran – I found that I could no longer maintain the ecclesiology I had developed. Eventually eventually I found the only ecclesiology that seemed to ring true was that of the Church which calls herself Catholic. So I wasn’t asking a “loaded question” proposed by the Catholic Church. I was embarking on a search as a Lutheran and found the answer as a Catholic.

2) Historical: From the word go, it appears that there was some debate about which was and which was not the true Church. St Paul rejected the “church” of the “Judaisers”. St Ignatius and St Ireneaus rejected the “church” of the Gnostics. Laterthe “churches” of the Montanists and Donatists were also rejected (although they were recognised to have true sacraments). The entire history of Christianity seems to have been built upon the idea of searching for “the true Church”. This was seen as a matter of eternal salvation. Was this whole history wrong-headed? Was the question wrong-headed from the beginning? In this day and age, when the variety of Christianities is as great as any other, are we to seek only the “true Christianity” and not the “true Church” which teaches it?

In short: is the search for “the True Church” a valid one, or not?

Invoke History, but first consult it!

There is an excellent, short and well referenced article on the wartime record of Pius XII at Times Online by an Inside the Vatican writer, William Donio Jnr: “Pius XII did help the Jews”. The author ends with this statement:

Invoke history to assess Pius XII by all means, but first consult it, before passing judgment.

Celebrating the Epiphany on January 6th

On “The Anglo-Catholic” blog comes this short discussion on Celebrating the Epiphany on January 6th. The question there is whether the new Anglican Ordinariates will be allowed to continue to celebrate Epiphany on January 6th or will they be required (in those countries where the Bishops Conference has so determined, such as Australia) to move the feast to the nearest Sunday.

Apart from that question, which really doesn’t concern me, the question of how to celebrate the Epiphany in our homes is, I think, an important one apart from the question of when the feast is officially celebrated in the region to which we belong. This came up yesterday and the day before in our home devotions when we marked the last day of Christmas (Twelfth Night) and the Epiphany on their traditional days.

I have always tried to instill in the girls an understanding that Christmas is a full 12 day festival, only ending with the coming of the wise men at the Epiphany. Only now do we bring down the Christmas tree and other decorations. This rhythm is very important, I think. I can understand why the Church has shifted the feast to the Sunday – as a day of obligation, you would really have Buckley’s of getting anyone to turn up on a weeknight in the middle of the January summer holidays in Australia. Even the Lutheran Church generally takes the option of shifting the feast to Sunday so that the full story gets told to the whole people of God. But I don’t think this should stop us from celebrating January 6th as it is supposed to be celebrated, any more than we should stop the English celebrating St George’s day just because it isn’t on the Calendar any more.

A minor note is that in these days the Orthodox have their annual blessing of the waters – which fits right in with the Summer Holidays down under. The competition is for strapping young Greeks to dive into the ocean to retrieve the cross that the priest throws off the jetty at the blessing. A popular event that always gets a picture in the paper.

Catholic Heritage and CHRISTVS REGNAT journal

A commentator (another from Ireland) has asked me to promote their blog Catholic Heritage and their journal CHRISTVS REGNAT. Worth a look.

Death of Mgr Graham Leonard, former Anglican Bishop of London

This news just in from Damian Thompson at the Telegraph:

I’ve just heard that Mgr Graham Leonard, the former Bishop of London who became a Catholic and was made a (married) Monsignor by Pope John Paul II, has died.

Mgr Leonard, 88, was a formidable and dignified champion of the Anglo-Catholic cause in the Church of England; when he converted to Catholicism after the vote to ordain women priests, he was ordained priest conditionally, having persuaded the Vatican that he might already possess valid orders by virtue of an Old Catholic apostolic succession.

Mgr Leonard had originally hoped that he could bring with him Anglican priests and faithful who could worship together after their reception; as it turned out, the time was not yet ripe. But it is now. The Ordinariate scheme, currently taking shape, will be a fitting memorial to this inspiring priest.

Personally, I had always hoped that the good Monsignor would have been made a Cardinal. I liked the thought of the Leonards being announced upon their arrival at an official function as: “His Eminence, Graham Cardinal and Mrs Leonard”. May he rest in peace.

“It’s all about US!”: of Pastoral Plans and Eucharistic songs

Cardinal Pole has an interesting post on his blog analysing Bishop Ingham’s announcement of The Diocese of Wollongong’s Pastoral Planning process.

I am pretty “ho-hum” about these measures. “Pastoral Planning”, and all the energy that goes into it, often seems like a diversion from the real work of actually pastoral ministry. Whenever I hear someone say that “we need to pause, take stock and consider our journey ahead”, I wonder: Who’s got the time to pause? There’s too much work to be done! When you are in the business of evangelisation, you don’t have the luxury of being able to shut the shop doors for a stock-take.

That being said, the other thing that bugs me about “pastoral plans” is that they always seem to be full of pious waffle describing more or less what we are already doing – and thus they become moments of self-affirmation rather than a kairos of repentance and purification. This is, of course, where Cardinal Pole comes into the picture with this excellent comment:

• Centred on the Eucharist

Where all should be welcomed, where our pain is acknowledged, where our brokenness is healed, where we are nourished by Word and Sacrament, and where our mission is renewed.

[http://www.dow.org.au/pastoralplanning/key-documents/dow-pastoral-planning/pp-theological-principles]

One might see “Centred on the Eucharist” and think ‘ah, good—centred on the Eucharist means centred on God, which is as it should be’. But notice how, as they say, ‘it’s all about us’—about “our pain”, “our brokenness” (whatever that means; more on this shortly), “where we are nourished”? How Holy Mass is considered not as a Sacrifice of adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation and impetration and therefore directed to and focused on God, but as a sort of group therapy whither we can all go for ‘affirmation’ (especially evident where it says “where our pain is acknowledged, where our brokenness is healed”, so that we indulge ourselves in our own imagined victimhood, distracting us from the true Victim on Whom our entire attention should be focused at Mass)? So ‘Centred on the Eucharist’ is, bizarrely, nothing of the sort—it is centred on us.

Here’s a thought, your Eminence: How much of this sort of rhetoric around the Eucharist do you think might be a direct result of the songs that are so often sung at the Eucharist in our Catholic parishes? Just as dropping “men” from the Creed has led some to think that Jesus became incarnate only for us Christians, so constantly singing about “all being welcome”, about “healing our hurts”, about “acknowledging our pain” etc. has affected our Eucharistic theology.

So a quick glance at Gather Australia gives us:

No. 192 “For the bread and wine and blessing, for the friend around this table, for the peace and for the healing… When your love breaks through our darkness, when the broken come to wholeness…”
No. 200 “We come as your people, wecoe as your own, united with each other, love finds a home. We are called to heal the broken, to be hope for the poor,…”
No. 201 “Take this bread, come as you will.”
No. 202 “Take up your burden now, walk till you find just what the journey means; walk while there’s time” (That one gets my award for the most meanlingless drivel ever put to music)

It isn’t hard to see where this is all coming from…

An entertaining comment string on Weedon’s Blog

Dr Tighe sent me the link to this post on Weedon’s Blog: A Few Gems from Ratzinger on Liturgy. The Ratzinger quotes are indeed “gems”, but the real entertainment is in the comments string, starting right off with this comment from a WELS pastor:

I appreciate much of what you share on your blog, Fr. Weedon, but this one gives me great pause.

The demons were “bang on right” when they confessed that Jesus was the Son of God, too. But Jesus shut them up because he didn’t want that kind of publicity.

Do you really want to be quoting Antichrist as the author of “gems”?

What follows is simply hilarious. Or sad. Or both.

I am, however, in total agreement with Pastor Weedon that his selection of Ratzinger quotes on the liturgy are “gems”. They are precisely the sort of “gems” that led me into the Catholic Church. I was reflecting on what first prompted my transition the other day (due to the fact that this month is the 10th anniversary of the beginnings of my twinges of conscience regarding the Catholic Church) and realised that it was as much a question of the liturgy as anything that started me down that path. This time 10 years ago, I was travelling a little bit, and was dismayed to find that it was difficult to find a Lutheran Church that had the Lord’s Supper every Sunday and even more difficult to find one that did the Lutheran liturgy faithfully. The 1990’s were a decade of liturgical experimentation in the LCA, and, I guess, in Lutheranism in the States too, especially with the rise of Church Growth ideology and methodology. It was this frustration that led me to reflect on the Augsburg Confession’s definition of the “true Church”, namely the one where the Gospel is rightly preached an the sacraments rightly administered. I came to question what that would mean if the church I belonged to did not actually administer the sacrament every Lord’s day. It was only a start, but it got me thinking.

Travelling around a bit again this Christmas, and attending several Lutheran services, I am also amazed to find that a practice has crept into the local Australian Lutheran Church to the Eucharistic Liturgy even in the most conservative Lutheran congregations. I generally find that the Eucharistic liturgy looks like this:

1) Preface
2) Sanctus/Benedictus
3) Lord’s Prayer (SAID BY THE WHOLE CONGREGATION)
4) Words of Institution
5) Pax Domini (ending with “Amen” rather than “And also with you”)

Now, there is nothing really odd about this from a Lutheran point of view EXCEPT that point 3 “said by the whole Congregation”. Luther justified his cutting out of the Eucharistic Canon by saying that the Lord himself had given a better prayer for consecration, namely the “Our Father”, which he then used instead of the Canon. (There are examples in other early Lutheran service orders that have the “Our Father” after the Verba). But the “Our Father” was always said by the pastor, as it was understood to be a prayer of consecration. I seriously wonder what having the Lord’s Prayer said at this point by all the congregation means. I usually like to join in with the Lord’s Prayer with the rest of my family, but I do have some qualms of conscience at this point about praying what is effectively a prayer of “lay consecration”!

“The Joyful Papist”: A thoughtful blog from across the Tasman

Thanks to a comment left on this blog a few days ago, I was led to this rather thoughtful Catholic blog from a New Zealander – the author seems to be concerned with many of the same issues that we are on SCE. You might want to check it out:

The Joyful Papist

The Duhem Society

Recently a comment was left on the blog by one “Jakian Thomist”, and that led me to his blog “The Duhem Society”, the purpose of which is “to study the writing of Pierre Duhem and Stanley L. Jaki, two great Catholic historians of science.”

I think you will benefit from a bit of a look, especially if you have an interest in Newman, who was a (very large) side interest of Fr Jaki. I have had a copy of Jaki’s biography of Newman sitting next to my bed for the last two years or so. Unfortunately, it is rather at the bottom of a stack that has become quite high (N.T. Wright is currently dominating the pile). Perhaps it is time to promote it…

Ratzinger’s Mustard Seed?

In a comment towards the end of the string on my previous post Catholic means “Here comes Everybody!”, I quoted Pope Benedict as saying in August 2008:

When I was younger I was rather severe. I said: the sacraments are sacraments of faith, and where faith does not exist, where the practice of faith does not exist, the Sacrament cannot be conferred either. And then I always used to talk to my parish priests when I was Archbishop of Munich: here too there were two factions, one severe and one broad-minded. Then I too, with time, came to realize that we must follow, rather, the example of the Lord, who was very open even with people on the margins of Israel of that time. He was a Lord of mercy, too open – according to many official authorities – with sinners, welcoming them or letting them invite him to their dinners, drawing them to him in his communion.

Christine replied:

David, and yet, may I gently point out, this pope is now speaking of a “smaller” church, a faithful remnant, if you will. Even John Paul II lamented that there are still so many unevangelized Catholics. Catholicism is much like Judaism. Even when the faith is no longer there some hang on for cultural reasons. That happens less to Protestants, who generally leave the church when they lose their faith.

Yes, the Lord was most merciful with all He encountered, He never refused the sinner who came to Him. But He never left them in the same state, either.

The letters to the churches in the Revelation are addressed not to the “world” but to the baptized, those who are admitted to the Holy Supper, and they are quite solemn in addressing those who had lost their “first love” and compromised sound apostolic teaching.

There has been an interesting development in rhetoric of the so-called Ratzingerian “mustard seed”. The original statement comes from page 16 of Peter Seewald’s interview-book with Cardinal Ratzinger in 1996 (published in English as “Salt of the Earth” in 1997) where he said:

Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that let God in.

At the time of the Holy Father’s election (in fact, even before it in this remarkable reading of the cards by Spengler) many speculated that this would become a key theme of his pontificate. In fact, this has not been so. Perhaps, as with so many other of Cardinal Ratzinger’s well known ideas, the idea has become transmuted with his changing role in the Church, for since his election, Pope Benedict has not returned to this theme – at least not in exactly this same guise. He has mentioned the “mustard seed” parable a couple of times
(eg. here, here, here, here, here, here and here) but not with quite the same application. Except for the last example above (which is addressed to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and is in reference to the dwindling size of the Christian population in the Holy Land), since his election as Supreme Pontiff he seems to use the image more as an encouragement for Christian witness and evangelisation – with the implication that the little things we do will bear great fruit.

So despite Spengler’s great rhetoric on the subject (“I have a mustard seed and I’m not afraid to use it”), it seems that Pope Benedict has not followed Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1996 “smaller and leaner” application of the parable. Rather he has followed the evangelistic application of the parable, more in line with the way he spoke of it in 2001 at a conference on the new evangelisation:

The Kingdom of God always starts anew under this sign. New evangelization cannot mean: immediately attracting the large masses that have distanced themselves from the Church by using new and more refined methods. No — this is not what new evangelization promises.

New evangelization means: never being satisfied with the fact that from the grain of mustard seed, the great tree of the Universal Church grew; never thinking that the fact that different birds may find place among its branches can suffice — rather, it means to dare, once again and with the humility of the small grain, to leave up to God the when and how it will grow (Mark 4:26-29).

He also significantly modified the 1996 image with this statement which he made to the clergy of Aosta soon after his election in July 2005:

I am thinking of the Lord’s Parable of the Mustard Seed which was so small and then became a tree so great that the birds of the sky build their nests in it. And I should say that these birds could be the people who are not yet converted but who at least perch on the tree of the Church.

So, all that being said, what are we to say of the fact that, as Christine put it so well, many of the 1 billion Catholics living on earth today appear to be “practically unevangelized pagans”?

1. The Catholic Church does not have the luxury of demanding of all its adherents an advanced level of catechisation. This is often because the labourers are few in comparison to the harvest. It is also because we do not have anywhere else to send them. As the universal Catholic Church, we have responsibility to evangelise everybody (think about that for a bit!). We can’t say “Someone else will look after you if we don’t.”

2. So we can understand a tendency to accept a “lowest common denominator” arising from a desire to give “perching space” to as many people as possible on the tree that grows from the mustard seed. This is not necessarily bad – in fact it can be seen as a “good thing” if it is the beginning of evangelisation

3. Evangelisation and conversion can begin and proceed in at least two major ways with a whole range of possibilities in between. It can begin with the hearing of the gospel, with catechisation, and be followed with the Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist). Or it can begin with the Sacraments of Initiation, and be accompanied by catechisation. We are very familiar with the last methodology – both Catholics and Protestants have been following this method for centuries. The real methodology usually is somewhere in between – the process of evangelisation and conversion are accompanied by sacramental initiation and catechisation as an ongoing and parallel process..

4. I think we can agree on this, that evangelisation and conversion must not be separated from sacramental initiation and catechisation. But then we come up against the reality of the world: sacramental initiation is the easy bit, whereas catechisation relies on two things: the input of the catechist and the receptivity of the catechumen. The first is a labour intensive role, even though it may be deployed among both clergy and laity alike (and chiefly is the role of the family). The second is a difficulty on two grounds: not all are minds are as teachable as others, and not all hearts are as open to conversion as others. This is where pastoral skill and sensitivity comes in.

5. So we work with responsibilities and limitations on both fronts. The Church (both clergy and lay) is duty bound to provide as much catechisation as it possibly can (with as much quality as it can) to all whom it initiates into the Church and who belong to the Church. On the other hand, we need to make pastoral allowances for the limitations of those we seek to catechise. By setting “the bar” to high in this latter regard, we may be excluding the “little ones” to whom Jesus said the Kingdom belongs. Of course, it may also mean that some “tares” come in among the “wheat”. But we trust that Our Lord will take responsibility for that. In the mean time, we follow his other parable, the parable of the sower, and continue to scatter the seed far and wide, even if the bulk of it does fall on “barely catechised pagans”.