I'm pleased to add God's Politics to Minor Wisdom's blogroll. It's written by "Jim Wallis and friends." One of his friends, apparently, is Ralph Reed, who is as far right as Jim is far left. This week, Jim and Ralph are writing a point-counterpoint dialogue on how faith affects politics.
We all run dry of original thoughts from time to time. The good thing about blogging is that, when you're creative well runs dry, you can always serve your audience by tapping into someone else's spring. And sometimes, something is just too good not to link to. Like, say, this item in the Onion, about the pope's reconsidering his choice of a name. The story quotes the pontiff:
Benedict is serviceable enough, but I did not consider the ease of it being shortened to 'Ben' by impudent dignitaries such as Bono, nor did I foresee the difficulties it would pose whenever I ordered eggs.
From an editorial by the Wall Street Journal:
As the debate continues over what to rebuild in New Orleans, the fate of the city's black Catholic community may be one of the more poignant tales of loss and uncertainty in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It is also one that points to a challenge for the wider Catholic Church in America. New Orleans, along with Baltimore and New York, is one of the precious few strongholds of black Catholics in the United States, a venerable old community facing challenges beyond the storm's toll.
Katrina dispersed much of New Orleans's Catholic population, including many African-Americans. Even now, seven months later, only half of the 350 families from the Church of St. Augustine, a parish near the French Quarter founded in 1841 by slaves and freedmen, have returned. The local archbishop wants the congregants to merge with another church.
More about St. Augustine's fight for survival here. For reasons described in the WSJ editorial, recovery of communities like St. Augustine is important not only for New Orleans, but for the Church in America.
(Hat tip to Mirror of Justice.)
This is from an essay by Søren Kierkegaard:
In so-called Christianity we have made Christmas into a great festival. This is quite false, and it was not at all so in the Early Church. We mistake childishness for Christianity – what with all our sickly sentimentality, our candy canes, and our manger scenes. Instead of remaining conscious of being in conflict that marks a life of true faith, we Christians have made ourselves a home and settled down in a comfortable and cozy existence. No wonder Christmas has become little more than a beautiful holiday.
Ah yes, our manger scenes: sentimental misrepresentations of Jesus's birth. If we take the Gospels of Matthew and Luke literally, then Jesus was conceived out of wedlock; Mary's pregnancy was a scandal. According to Luke, Joseph couldn't get himself and Mary into the inn—"no room," they told him, not even for a woman in labor. Maybe Joseph and Mary were too poor, or maybe the folks who ran the inn didn't have room for the likes of them, or maybe both. So Jesus was born in a barn, and his first crib was a feeding trough for livestock. Thirty-some-odd years later, he died the most ignominious death that the authorities could devise, one reserved for the lowest of the low.
That is what Christmas is all about. That's what we Christians call the "Good News."
Here's an interesting article testing the historical accuracy of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. It's by Alan F. Segal, a professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. The test is the "criterion of dissimilarity," also called the "criterion of embarrassment."
Lawyers can liken the criterion to an admission against interest, an exception to the hearsay rule (see FRE 804(b)(3)). Here's how it works: If an event recorded in a Gospel runs counter to the agenda of the early church, whose members wrote the Gospels, then the record of that event is probably historically accurate, because the church would have had no other reason to record it. Put another way, if the church found a particular event embarrassing, yet recorded it anyway, then the record of that event is probably historically accurate. If the record of an event does not meet this criterion, that doesn't mean the event didn't happen; it simply means that we can't rely on the Gospel as historical proof that it did happen.
Many of the events recorded in the gospels, including the Nativity stories, do not meet this criterion. But more importantly, the handful of events that do meet the criterion are near the core of Christian belief:
For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion demonstrates that Jesus existed. Here are some facts in the Gospels that embarrassed the early church: Jesus was baptized by John (a great theological problem). He preached the end of the world (which did not come). He opposed the Temple in some way (and this opposition led directly to his death). He was crucified (a disreputable way to die). The inscription on the cross was "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (the church never preached this title for Jesus and shortly lost interest in converting Jews). No one actually saw him arise (though evidently his disciples almost immediately felt that he had). Ironically, it's the embarrassing nature of these facts that assures us of their authenticity.
Update: Professors Larry Hurtado and John Kloppenborg have tacked on responses to Prof. Segal's essay. They don't really disagree with Prof. Segal, but they remind us that there are different kinds and levels of truth, and that the deeper truths aren't subject to being proven or disproven.
Vatican observers expect the imminent release of a document on homosexuality and the priesthood. See, e.g., this item from the Chicago Sun Times and this LA Times commentary. Some fear a ban on anyone with homosexual orientation or tendencies—even if the candidate leads a chaste, celibate life.
As a man in the pews, I think such a ban would go too far. I agree with the two anonymous gay priests who wrote on this subject for The Tablet and Commonweal. In addition to their well stated reasons, I can't for the life of me understand why mere temptation—unaccompanied by giving in to the temptation—is a valid reason to prohibit a person from being ordained. I used to be a seminarian myself; I'm sure that some of my fellow seminarians were gay. But I can't think of a single one who, for that reason, was less holy or less capable of pastoring the faithful.
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Update (10/7/05): According to this report, the Vatican document will allow a gay to be ordained if he has live celibately for at least three years.
If you like iconoclasts, then you'll like this essay by Søren Kierkegaard, in which distinguishes between Christianity (what I'd call spirituality) and Christendom (what I'd call religion).
This item comes courtesy of Mirror of Justice: John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter reports some disturbing news:
Sources indicate that the long-awaited Vatican document on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries is now in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI. The document, which has been condensed from earlier versions, reasserts the response given by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2002, in response to a dubium submitted by a bishop on whether a homosexual could be ordained: "A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency, is not fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders."
...[T]he document will reject a solution that some seminaries, religious communities and bishops have tended to adopt in recent years -- that it doesn't matter if a candidate is gay, as long as he's capable of remaining celibate.
"I suspect some people, in good will, have gravitated to this idea," one bishop said. "But that's not what the church is saying, and this document will make that clear."
Andrew Sullivan calls this a "turn to bigotry." I'd call it a turn to self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and spiritual pride. Do these mitered pinheads1 think that they're worthy of Holy Orders? Or more worthy than those they would exclude?
p.s. 7/19/05: Let's take a closer look at that dubious dubium: "A ... person ... with a homosexual tendency, is not fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders." And according to the quoted bishop, it doesn't matter whether he lives chastely; the "homosexual tendency" is enough to disqualify him.
Pardon me, but I learned in grade-school catechism that every human being suffers from temptation. It's a consequence of original sin, which we all inherited from Adam and Eve. Even St. Paul suffered from "a thorn in the flesh—an angel of Satan to beat me and keep me from getting proud." Despite that, and despite having persecuted the church, he became an apostle. Why then does a mere "homosexual tendency" disqualify a virtuous, chaste man from becoming a priest?
If someone out there thinks that this dubium is actually a good idea, please leave a comment and tell me what I'm missing.
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1Andrew Greeley deserves credit for coining the phrase "mitered pinheads."
Remember the scene in Chariots of Fire, when Lord Cadogan says, "In my day, it was king first, God second"? Well, it seems that Real Live Preacher found some folks who, substituting "nation" for "king," would apparently agree with Cadogan's sentiment—covering the front of their church with a humongous American flag. He comments:
[W]hatever happened to the first commandment—Thou shalt have no other gods before Me? Covering your church with a flag creates a very frightening symbol. When the state and the church become enmeshed, it is bad for both of them.
To which I say "Amen!"
Philospher Peter Ludlow has written "95 Theses on the Religious Right," available on Leiter Reports in Word and Rich Text Format. Rick Garnett at Mirror of Justice takes issue with some theses, but recommends reading them. So does Brian Leiter, who says, "Practicing Christians, and all those interested in the relationship between theology and politics, ought to read all 95."
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