Catholicism

During the Blogathon, MoltenThinker Karen earned a post each from Teflon and myself. Tef's already done his part, so I am obliged to tow my line as well.

The Catholic Church -- First Impressions

All Christians are catholic. Didn't know that, did you?

Cath·o·lic (kth-lk, kthlk) adj. Of broad or liberal scope; comprehensive: "The 100-odd pages of formulas and constants are surely the most catholic to be found" (Scientific American). Including or concerning all humankind; universal: "what was of catholic rather than national interest" (J.A. Froude).

That's why in the Apostle's Creed, we say we believe in the holy catholic church -- not because we fear a flock of deranged cardinals will burst into our worship service and beat us to death with censers should we not give the Catholic Church its props.

I've been to hundreds (if not thousands) of catholic services, but to only one Catholic service. As a child, one of my friends was Catholic -- exotic for my small town. I was excited to get to participate, envisioning the huge cathedrals and gold statuary I had seen in the movies. But while I was mentally selecting a veil to cover my hair and wondering how many candles I would get to light, my girlfriend was railing on the church.

She considered it a sham; too strict, hypocritical, arcane, ineffective -- the list goes on. She rolled her eyes at having to learn the catechism in her confirmation class and stuck up her nose at the quaint sacrifice of fish sticks on Fridays. She swore her first act as an independent woman would be to leave the church. I don't know if her thinking was instigated by one of her parents or if she was merely a precocious child. Nevertheless, we went. She instructed me when to sit, stand and kneel. I felt a reverent strangeness, as if I were participating in something more connected to holiness than the church I grew up in. Her eye-rolling and heavy-sighing distracted me from remembering much else. But I was a little disappointed that there were no priests in scarlet and gold robes, no candelabras, no kissing of icons. It seemed a little, well... boring.

Doctrinal Concerns: An Overview

The cult, er, church of which I was a member for five years preached anti-Catholic rhetoric more Sundays than not. It went so far as to consider the Catholic faith pagan due to its tendency to pray to anyone other than God the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. It told us that Catholics were not Christians. They were merely people steeped in delusion, dead worship, reliance on ritual works for salvation, and doctrinal error. It thought that the Catholic Church had mixed the old Roman aspects of pluralism with Christian tradition. It also had a habit of pulling money from charities even affiliated with the Catholic Church.(If you wonder how I feel about all this, let's just say I left about two years ago.)

Three examples in their arguments against the Catholic Church readily spring to mind: the infallibility of the Pope, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. While these points aren't held by all Catholics, they are certainly a proving ground for the differences between the Catholic Faith and the catholic faith... Arguments I don't disagree with on the face of them.

Point 1, regarding the Pope:

No man is perfect or infallible as long as he inhabits a mortal body.

Romans 3:10-12 --
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

That doesn't mean that we aren't all redeemed and made perfect in the eyes of the Father by the blood sacrifice of His Son, Christ Jesus. But it does mean that we must struggle with sin until that day when we will be made perfect in each and every aspect of our being, in the present, perfect tense. When you proclaim someone perfect, you are elevating them to the status of God Himself, and that was where Satan went wrong.

That's not to say that there may be some room for interpretation on this argument. It's possible that some Catholics see the infallibility of the Pope to be inclusive of error which falls in line with Romans 8:28; "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." Maybe they think even if the Pope goes wrong, it was all for God's purposes.

Point 2: Mary obviously had other children. Jesus had several brothers and sisters.

Whether these were from Joseph's previous marriage is not known. Still, I can hardly imagine a man (even as patient and faithful as Joseph) being willing to agree to have a wife without "benefits". It would be unheard of. No doubt Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived -- that is a major pillar of the catholic (small "c") Christian faith and one that makes His sacrifice pleasing to God. He was born fully human and fully God. This would not be possible had He been conceived by two human parents with no divine intermingling. Jesus' others siblings however, had no such distinction. For example, though James went on to be a founder of the early church, nowhere was he thought to be born of miraculous parentage.

The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic doctrine asserting that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was preserved from the effects of Original Sin from the first moment of her conception. The doctrine was defined as a dogma binding on Catholics by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus (1854). The doctrine as defined was debated by theologians during the Middle Ages and was rejected by Saint Thomas Aquinas. It is based on the biblical idea of Mary's holiness (Luke 1:28), early church teachings on Mary as the "new Eve," and the belief that Mary is the mother of God (Theotokos, or "God-bearer"), articulated at the Council of Ephesus (431).

Further, there is no mention in Scripture (that I know of) where either Mary is worshipped or where we, as followers of Christ, are instructed to worship her. There is also no mention of her "immaculate conception". She is certainly mentioned as being chosen specially to bring Christ into the world and to be His mother. No small task. But nowhere in the New Testament is she mentioned as anything more than a human being who was chosen for a special and incredibly difficult job. Much like John the Baptist, the "second coming" of the prophet Elijah, she was chosen to take part in the coming of the Kingdom, not as a deity within that Kingdom.

I don't mean to trample on anyone's beliefs. I really and truly don't. C.S. Lewis, in "Mere Christianity", likened the passion of this issue to a man defending the honor of his mother, daughter, wife or sister. It's a touchy subject. But the study I have done regarding the way Christ's life and sacrifice were laid out by God means that Christ's sacrifice would have meant nothing if He were not fully God and also fully human. A man born to a sinless woman by the fertilization of God Himself would not be eligible to resist temptation and die for my sins. There would be no temptation to resist. No humanity would be present in Him to tempt Him to sin.

Point 3: Transubstantiation

This is a hot topic, I realize. I'm not damning anyone or saying that I am precisely right, thereby making another party precisely wrong. Again, just laying out my own observations from study and prayer. The Catholic perspective on holy communion is reviewed in an excellent article at North Western Winds; namely that holy communion is the literal body and blood of Christ, referencing the following passage [emphasis mine]:

Corinthians 11:23-26 --

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Obviously, the phrase that sticks out here for me is "as often as you", etc.. Bread and wine were an everyday part of life in Biblical times. What I think Christ was saying was that He should be our bread and wine. We should feast on Him as our sustenance. We should not rely on the things that traditionally nourish, but imbibe Him as our nutrition. And we should do this every day, lest our bodies and souls fall away from His instruction.

The ingredients of simple bread and wine were grown locally. Men and women had their minds on the "bread and wine" while planting, growing, harvesting and processing the wheat and grapes. Taken in this context, the "bread and wine" then becomes not something a priest must bless and make holy, but things that are holy ingredients of everyday existence, making possible existence through their nourishment. Christ must be like that. The Kingdom of God must be like that.

The way Christ so unswervingly and characteristically shunned the ritualism of the Pharisees; the way He created an unaffiliated "Temple" from His body (destroyed and raised again in three days); the way He taught with simple, profound and rustic parables, leads me to the conclusion that He didn't want us to engage in any worship that was exclusive, difficult or complicated. He wanted all to have access to Him, in the simplest and most beautifully freeing way possible. He came to remove fetters and stumbling blocks to the laity and to take power away from the elite who abused the former. When His children are denied Communion or their Communion is deemed unworthy because it does not meet certain qualifications, I think that is a perversion of what Christ set out to create.

This in no way negates the power and the intimacy of the Communion. It still is a very magnificently meaningful thing. As such, it should be taken with reverence and respect as a sign of love to Christ and His church. But I have found that it can be taken at table with family as easily as it can be taken at a place of worship.

Catholicism: Modern Impressions

I'm not going to go into the bloody history of the Catholic Church. We all know it. We all know how nasty things got in the Reformation and during many an ugly and dark time in the history of the Church. I'm not even going to get much of a foot into the Catholic priest abuse scandals, and the disgraceful way the actions of a few were covered up and excused by the leadership. Why? You musn't ever excuse the actions of evil, but you must forgive them -- specifically as we were instructed to do by our Lord.

When one refuses to forgive the Catholic church, he also refuses to forgive the catholic church. And throughout such scandals as the Salem Witch Trials; the rise and fall of PTL; the modern fixation of some churches on the material world over the spiritual; the installment of gay and lesbian ministers; and on and on, to point a finger at one entity, making it the scapegoat of all the Body's ills, would be shortsighted and hypocritical at best.

The Church is the bride of Christ and therefore His body. It exists in that form by the gift of Grace. There are members who go astray. The rest of the members must put right those who err and watch themselves that they do not follow. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater is to undertake a work that Christ proscribed.

In the past couple of years (mainly since I left my former hate-mongering church) I have learned more than a few things about Catholicism. Mel Gibson, an outspoken Catholic, made an incredible movie about Christ. Along the way, he discussed his views in the press and with people of other denominations. When Pope John Paul II was on his deathbed and the eye of the entire world was fixed on Rome, I got a huge education on how the Vatican works, how popular the Church is around the world, how beautiful their worship is, and what an outstanding leader the former Pope was. I also watched and cheered (with tears in my eyes) as the current Pope was announced and installed. Catholics again came to the forefront as Terri Sciavo lay dying and priests and laypeople tried desperately to come to her aid.

What I have gathered in my observations of devoted Catholics:

• a dogged loyalty to the Church and its members
• a sincere and passionate force for the protection life and the dignity of all people
• a willingness to sacrifice (fishsticks and all) in many areas other denominations would do well to imitate (i.e. reproductive practices, celibacy, abortion, fasting, Lent)
• a reverent, holy and teachable spirit
• wise teaching for the next generation (I have only recently been introduced to the teachings of Aquinas and Augustine, volumes that changed my entire conception of Catholicism.)
• incredible faith

Which brings me to the girl from my childhood (you know, the one who balked and whined at having to attend her Catholic Church). She did leave it as an adult, just as she said she would. I saw her in the grocery store the other day, as a matter of fact. She had her first child right out of high school and never married the father, nor any other man for that matter. She presumably hops from man to man, dragging her daughter with her. And not only is she not part of the Catholic Church any longer, she is also not a part of the catholic church. And what good it did her, eh?