How loudly can you shout?

Interesting article from the Michael Spencer and the Christian Science Monitor predicting the not-too-distant downfall of mainline Evangelical Christianity, from which the Catholic and Orthodox communities stand to benefit.

For my money, this was the most important quote in the whole piece:

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith. ... [T]he billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community.

This sums up what I found to be the main point of the piece: The big Evangelical mistake was to focus on political activism without understanding its underlying theological and philosophical principles. When these Christians got in bed with the Republican Party without being able to explain what they were doing, they inextricably tied themselves to the G.O.P.'s electoral fortunes. The rest, as they say, is history: Republican political policy fell out of favor and was seen as hindering social progress, and Evangelical Christianity went with it because, as Mr. Spencer says, it was more strongly associated with a political cause than a coherent faith.

I must confess that I wonder if Catholics aren't intrinsically better off than Evangelicals when it comes to basing politics on theology. It seems to me that trying to do serious theology in an Evangelical church is a recipe for a fractured community. What happens when someone disagrees with one of the leaders? My understanding--which, I admit, could well be wrong--is that their options are either to pipe down or to leave and start their own church. Such divisions are dangerous if you have a political goal, particularly in American society, where influence is often a question of how loudly you can shout. Scripture tells us that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Lk 11:17); I wonder what theological sacrifices were made to prevent the Evangelical house from dividing.

Granted, the Catholic Church has its own problems in this area. Some people profess Catholicism despite clearly disagreeing with teachings to which Catholics must assent. Yet the Church's reaction to these people is different: It is to shepherd, to guide, to lead people back to the truth, above all recognizing that while their denial is sinful, the Church is herself a hospital for sinners. Notice that those upon whom it comes down hardest are those most in a position to cause scandal. The recent events with the 9-year-old in Brazil are an example, as are the bishops' comments about Nancy Pelosi: When all eyes are on you, you must be even more forceful about doing right than when no one is looking.

I think the biggest lesson we, as Catholics, can learn from this article is that we, too, tend to defend our arguments weakly. Too often we choose a rhetorical style that alienates our listeners or causes them not to take us seriously. Similarly, we often forget that it takes two to fail to communicate: Perhaps the other person misunderstands you--but perhaps you also failed to make your point!

There are all kinds of examples of what I mean on Catholic forums all over the Internet. Read any thread about abortion. You will eventually come across all manner of shouting: "Abortion is murder!" we will cry. Someone will take up the strain and continue, "What is moral about shredding babies to pieces before they are born?" A third person will recite the chorus with a first-person narrative from an unborn child who is clearly alive, but who is painfully aborted at the end of the second trimester. Are these depictions of abortion false? Hardly. But are they effective? No, not in the least.

For a long time I was the sort of Catholic who thought that while abortion was wrong, it was equally true that it was not the government's place to determine what people could and could not do in this arena. (I have come around considerably since then, but that's for another post.) When I saw this sort of rhetoric, I immediately tuned out, assuming that the speaker, unable to support his points, was using vividness as a substitute for logical argument. This problem is still present today, but now it is far worse, for two reasons: First, the secular movement that disagrees with this view prides itself on a "logical" approach to these matters; and second, because vividness is all we've had for so long, it, too, has become associated with the sort of politics with which many people already disagree.

Gay marriage is another excellent example of how vividness and hollow activism have won us more ridicule than success. It often seems that the main argument Christians have against gay marriage is purely theological: The Bible says homosexual actions are wrong, and it says that marriage (especially sacramental marriage) is between one man and one woman. This argument suffers from the same two problems that the abortion argument does: The secular community isn't going to listen to an argument that begins with "The Bible says that," and using this argument makes us look like the sort of Bible-toting literalist fundie who long ago exhausted his political currency.

We can do much better. Why don't we? Catholic moral theology is not only 2,000 years old, it is based on natural principles that everyone can observe and that everyone has written on their hearts (see Rom 2:14-16). Which stance is more likely to gain ground: acting like Westboro Baptist Church, or arguing from the observable design of human sexuality through the relationship between civil law and human behavior to restrictions on who can be married? The latter case is at least marginally attractive to the secular world because it has empirically observable premises and deduces a conclusion from those premises, thus giving the whole argument the sweet smell of logic; the former is just another attempt to shout louder than everyone else--and those attempts do us no good when no one is listening.

In no way do I mean to imply that we should take Catholic social and moral teaching less seriously. On the contrary, those who profess Catholicism should take it all the more seriously, for there are many people in our midst who profess our faith without understanding it. Our job is to reprove and correct gently and with reverence (1 Pt 3:15)--that means that we should not run around declaring who is and is not Catholic!--and to do so by understanding why our teaching is what it is, rather than seeing how loudly we can shout. Otherwise, we risk being viewed as mere political stooges and superstitious fools rather than people of well-conceived, sound faith, and it is at exactly that point that we lose whatever limited clout we have.

We can no longer overcome this rapidly secularizing world by the strength of our convictions or the volume of our voices. We must engage this world on its terms, which means we must use our indoor voices and be prepared to present a full defense of our faith and its teachings. We cannot succumb to following causes without reason; we cannot make the Evangelical mistake of ignoring theology in order to make the faith more accessible. But we are not alone: Christ is with us even today in the authority of the Church; we can rely on 2,000 years of Catholic intellectual and mystical development; and we have Christ physically present with us even now in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us move forward focusing on these things and remembering that our works, our convictions, our faith, and our salvation are not our own, but are the gift of God (Eph 2:8-10).

We have been given a ministry to fill and good works to walk in. May God grant us the grace to recognize how our times have changed and to fulfill his last command: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, until the very end of the age."

Washington state politics update

The guy running under the "G.O.P. No Taxes Party" who wanted to keep the Mexicans out of Washington State does not appear on the ballot for the 37th state congressional district.

Sins of Italian cooking

I just cooked garlic and onions in the same pan.

It was not to make an Italian dish -- just a way to use some bacon drippings -- but I have just lost a significant amount, if not all, of my Italian cooking cred.

It will take a lot of fettuccine to get it back.

POT STICKERS

Just as promised: I made pot stickers, and only one of them looked like it needed a mercy killing. WHAT NOW?

I did a few things differently this time that made a difference:

• Knead the dough more. The cookbook I used suggests just kneading until the dough is smooth. Fine, you can do that, but what you need is for the dough to stretch over the filling without breaking, and for that you need gluten, and for that you need kneading. This batch of dough passed the windowpane test, while the last one did not. That makes it easier to stretch and gives you a lighter dumpling.
• Grind your own pork. I had some shoulder left in there that was begging to be used. Grinding that up in the food processor got me a finer grind than the ground pork I bought at Safeway. That made it a little easier to break off small pieces for filling.
• Bias the dough in favor of water. The flour/water ratio in the book produces a dry dough that isn't very resilient. It's easier to work with when it's a little tackier. (Sticky dough would be a pain, but I didn't get to that point -- it was kind of like French bread dough, minus the yeast and most of the salt.)
• Make more dough. I doubled the dough this time and still didn't have enough for the 1/3 lb. of ground pork.

Now I have eleven extra pot stickers that I can eat for lunch tomorrow. Tomorrow night's dinner will probably be pasta so that I'll have leftovers for the rest of the week.

I also made a curried peanut "bisque" (I agree with Ruhlman -- it's not a bisque because it doesn't have seafood, but it is a heavier, creamier kind of soup that isn't chunky enough to be a stew) out of my new Southern cookbook. It was decent, but it needed to pack a little more heat (this, after doubling the cayenne!) and be a little smoother (though I guess it's my own fault for using chunky peanut butter and then refusing to use a mesh strainer). Next time I'll play with the spices a little bit more.

Hooray for the Cuisinart, which did a lot of work today -- grinding pork, kneading dough, and pureeing soup. That food processor is my life. Now I just need a pink stand mixer from Bed, Bath, and Beyond to go with it.

The joy of being Catholic

A reflection for non-Catholic Christians

(but first, an explanatory note: this is not exclusively a Catholic blog; when I finally succeed at making pot stickers, I'll post about that instead)

After eight months of serious apologetics, of badgering, of asking questions, of praying and praying and praying, of nearly giving up hope quite a few times, I succeeded not only in finding the joy of Catholicism for myself, but of giving it to someone else. Since that time I've meant to write this reflection on the greatness of the Catholic faith. I hold that the distinctives of the Catholic faith, the parts of Catholic belief, behavior, and worship that make our tradition different from other Christian traditions, are not to be held in contempt or fear: rather, as adopted sons and daughters of God, we should hope that the Church's teaching and worship are true, because they offer a great deal of promise that's difficult to find anywhere else.

My primary goal in this piece is to share the joy that can be found in what appears to be a restrictive, ritualistic system of worship. That doesn't mean this system is right for everyone. The Church has always held that God is able to work with people to bring them to salvation even without physical communion with the Catholic Church. But that physical communion is able to bring us to what I believe is an unmatched relationship with God: If what the Church teaches is true, then it makes God present and available to us in ways that cannot be found elsewhere.

So what's the reason for the hope that I have?

Authority

I've had some big discussions about authority before -- specifically, whether it's restricted to the Bible. It makes sense. Catholics have all these rules. The Code of Canon Law is ridiculously thick. The Church explicitly forbids all forms of artificial contraception, and it also forbids divorce in all circumstances (or at least those where a marriage was validly contracted -- but annulments are a topic for another post). Private judgment, by contrast, leads to a simpler, more refined message, one that's not weighed down by a thick rulebook and a thicker catechism. We can know God's will without a bunch of old white men in Rome telling us what to do.

Can't we?

It seems pretty clear that God would want to invest authority in someone. If God didn't actively prevent us from getting things wrong, then Satan would certainly use our fallen natures against us to make sure we screwed them up. We're not perfect enough or smart enough to be able to know what God's trying to tell us without God's help. The joy of having a Pope and having bishops is knowing that God's authority rests in them -- and knowing this with a far greater degree of certainty than I know it about myself and my own capacity to interpret the Bible.

I place little confidence in myself, for two reasons. One is that I sin and screw up all the time. I'm not all that bright. It's certainly within God's power to ensure that I never think, do, or say anything wrong with respect to my Christianity, but he doesn't do that: We all make mistakes, whether in our conduct or our interpretation of Scripture. If the Holy Spirit were with us always, we would never make theological mistakes. We would never have to flip-flop on what we believe. Leave aside, for a moment, the issue of other Christian traditions with different beliefs (a favorite point of Catholic apologists); can you honestly say that you have never once thought X and subsequently thought Not X? If not, then I ask you two questions: Where was the Holy Spirit when you believed X? And, more importantly, how can you be so sure the Spirit is with you now?

The other reason I have little confidence in my own interpretive skills is the classic issue of the number of Christian traditions holding contradictory beliefs. Is there a Pope, or not? What is the correct teaching about Holy Communion? Is baptism regenerative or not? There are many groups that differ on these and other questions. The Catholic Church is one of them. Yet we all -- Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, whatever -- equally claim the Holy Spirit. How will we ever sort out who's right?

What I love about Catholic doctrine is that I can be sure, to a far greater degree of certainty, that there is a mouthpiece for the authentic interpretation of God's Word and its application to my life. That mouthpiece is the Church. Why am I so certain about the Church? Because its bishops can trace their lineage all the way back to the Apostles, to the men to whom Our Lord said, "Whoever hears you, hears Me" (Luke 10), to the men who were both able to lead the earliest Christians (Acts 15) and install new ones to fill the offices that old ones departed (Acts 1). The bishops form a group that can trace itself back to Christ and his delegation of authority in a way that I cannot.

And when you think of it that way, Catholic "legalism," Catholic rules -- they don't seem so bad, do they? The restriction on birth control isn't meant to oppress me. It's there to tell me how to please God. I want an authority that knows how to please God! And I sure as heck don't want it to be me, because I haven't been around that long, and I make mistakes all the time. I would much prefer authority that can legitimately say, "We are powered by God." I do not want to be left to err on my own. Much better to leave interpretation to the professionals, to the ones who are backed by 2,000 years of Church teaching, a number against which my nearly 22 years of life on this earth fades into the night.

Sacraments

Catholic worship is full of physical signs and rituals. I've been to a handful of services at Savoy First Baptist in Savoy, IL, and I estimate I've been to about 1,000 Catholic Masses in my life. The people at SFB are clearly welcoming, friendly, and holy. You can tell that they love the Lord. But when I went to their services, something was missing: It was the physical participation, the sensible, tangible signs of God's presence and God's grace that I feel I can find only in the sacraments.

God gave us both bodies and souls. One of the best things about Catholic worship is that it allows God to use our bodies, to use the senses and intellects that he gave us, to confer grace on us with a degree of certainty not present when we just sort of think at him with our minds.

The Eucharist and the doctrine of the Real Presence are at the center of the Catholic faith, and for good reason: If the Church teaches truth, then Christ is really, physically, actually present before us in every single Catholic church throughout the world. Jesus is no longer a historical figure; he is no longer the man in the sky who we trust withour eternal destiny; he is really present, and we can go pray before him and even enter into physical union with him in a way that Just Isn't Possible outside of the sacraments. (See John 6 and carefully read Ephesians 5 to see why physical union is important.) Now, to be fair, not all non-Catholic traditions lack a belief in the Real Presence; if you share this belief, then I salute you, encourage you to think of how great a belief it is, and gently refer you to the previous section on authority ;-)

Reconciliation is another example. Without the sacraments, what do I have to do to be saved? Well, I have to constantly repent and hope that my repentance is "real" or "saving" so that it will actually count when I die and God judges me. If my faith isn't sufficiently strong, I could lose it, and then where would I be? The salvation economy exists in that scenario, but it's completely cloaked in mystery and uncertainty. There are no physical signs. You make your conversion and you trust that it'll "work," and that's all you can do.

But with Reconciliation, we have something else in our corner: We have a man ordained by God who is able to tell us, backed by divine authority, that we are actually absolved of our sins. I'd like it very much if God came down from on high to do this himself, but he doesn't seem to do that very often. God gave me ears to hear and eyes to see, and now he's given me a way to know, to be empirically certain, that I am freed from my sins. Empirical evidence is the most powerful evidence of all: We can be certain of what we've seen and heard, but we can't always be certain that we've made the right inferences or drawn the right conclusions. Not just these, but all seven sacraments give us that certainty, that empirical evidence.

As with authority, I hold that all Christians should want this to be true. We should want an economy of salvation in which God dispenses grace using those things that we hold most certain and closest to reality. The sacraments keep God from being a distant figure in the sky who dispenses with invisible pixie dust: They make God actually present and physically able to do his work in our lives.

The Communion of Saints

Our God is a God not of the dead, but of the living. The Church's teaching about the Communion of Saints promises us powerful advocates in heaven, able to intercede for us in a way that we cannot because they are holy and righteous in a way we are not (Jas 5:16) and because they see God face-to-face (1 Cor 13:12). You already ask your friends and families to pray for you. Why would you want to avoid the promise of a legion of angels and saints who are equally willing to pray for you and have just as much (if not more) clout with the Lord?

Devotion to saints must be done carefully. It must be done in the context of intercession: We venerate St. Mary, St. Augustine, St. Paul, St. Monica, St. James, and the rest, not simply because of their holiness, but out of praise and thanksgiving to a God who deigned to make them holy. Marian devotion is the greatest recognition of Christ's divinity: God loved us so much that he sent his only Son, who didn't merely fall out of the sky, but was actually born of a human being. The saints deserve our admiration because their holiness glorifies God. They are shining examples of the way God wants us to live, too, and this is because God graced them in ways that allowed them to be those examples.

Why would we want to avoid a Church with this legion of holy people, of good examples, of souls that radiate God's glory?

Justification

Total depravity depresses me.

It is a doctrine for those low on self-esteem. I'll never amount to anything. I'll always be sinful. I'm always going to screw things up. I'm just lucky that if God chooses me to accept Christ, then I can eventually be declared righteous in spite of all of my previous screwups. There's not much I can do in this life; I just hope God chooses me.

What a downer.

And being declared righteous isn't much fun, either. If God has to fictitiously declare you righteous, well, you know the truth, and he knows the truth, but you're both pretending that's not really the truth. Ever tried to do that before? I have! Just this week, in fact! And boy, does it eat away at you after a while! (And what's more, if God really knows the truth, do you really think God can just pretend that it's not really true?)

I actually think there are relatively few differences in the main points of Catholic and Protestant theories of justification. In both traditions, salvation is predicated on a faith that transcends intellectual faith and becomes heart-faith, "faith working through charity" (Gal 5:6). The only real question is whether the works of charity that result from such a faith are actually responsible, in a technical sense, for our justification. To my mind, this is an interesting discussion point, but not one that affects our salvation: We're saved if we have faith that leads to good works; we aren't saved if we don't; how exactly we are saved is a separate question. It's like putting gas in a car. If there's gas in the car, it will go; if there isn't, it won't; how the gas actually propels the car is a separate question entirely.

This is one place where, as a selfish human being, I would actually prefer to have complete assurance of my salvation. I don't believe it's possible to have that, so I don't; I can only look from afar and say that it sure would be nice. On the other hand, I have a lot going for me. I know God is making me actually righteous when I do good works and continue in piety to the Lord. I know I'm actually becoming more like Christ, which gives me hope for the future; I'm not just some depraved human being who'll be lucky to be let off the hook -- no, I actually get to be holy, to be gentle and poor in spirit and merciful and pure of heart and a peacemaker! We should want God to make us those things, because if we are, blessed are we!

Infused righteousness means no one has to lie. It means I've actually earned my reward. That doesn't mean I earned it by myself (that would be Pelagianism) or even that God just made it a little easier (that would be semi-Pelagianism). God, by his grace, enables me to actually be righteous. That feels a lot better than the alternative. Shouldn't we want this to be true, too? Shouldn't we want God to make us like Christ instead of just saying we're like Christ?

Conclusion

If you're a Catholic and you're reading this, think about these things. This is an amazing faith. It makes incredible promises, and if you are Catholic, you are in a position to allow God to follow through on those promises in the greatest of ways.

If you're not a Catholic, but you're Christian, consider what I've said. Many of the non-Catholic Christians I know treat Catholicism as something evil and false. It may well be false. But what I'm suggesting here is that you shouldn't seek to vilify it and reject it so quickly. I'm trying to say that it would be a shame if God didn't operate in this way. These are great promises. We should all hope that God has made them and not some smaller, simpler set of promises.

If you're not Christian at all, you probably think most of the rest of this post was written by a lunatic. Sorry. I'm not a very good non-Christian apologist (yet!). But if you're sympathetic to what I've said here, consider what the Church is trying to tell you: God wants to lift you up and make you holy; he wants to do it without making you do it all by yourself; and he wants to do it in a tangible way, so that you have empirical evidence of what's happening to you. Yes, you will have to reject some of the pleasures of this world. Yes, you will be persecuted by those who walk a different path. No one ever said it would ever be easy. But if you do decide to consider Catholicism, then rejoice and be glad -- for your reward in heaven is great.

Where did all the posts go?

At a few moments in my undistinguished blogging career ("This guy is really emo. Maybe the next blog will have something witty to say"), I've gotten busy or bored and stopped writing. Sometimes, as was the case for this blog, this means something along the lines of half a dozen posts in two years. When you come back after that long, you have to deal with the temptation to wipe the slate clean, because you aren't nearly as depressed as you let on 2006. Maybe, you say, I can just start a new blog and hide the old one in my Blogger profile settings.

I thought about that. But that was a lot of work, and people (two or three of them, I think) would have to update their bookmarks.

The 49 posts on this blog that weren't drafts have thus been relegated to draft status. (The three posts that were drafts have been deleted.) It probably took longer to do that than it would have to start a new blog, but I wasn't going to get any work done during that time anyway, what with having a glacially slow test machine and all.

Said test machine, however, is working again, so I guess I'll have to wait until lunch to do an actual update. Too bad! Check back later.