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  • Health Care Reform and the Christmas Candy

    One of my many activities over the years has been working for the Laity Ministries Department of the Church of God.  For the last thirteen years (the last four of which as Ministries Coordinator, an Administrative Ministries Council level position) it’s been a rare opportunity for a layman–and one not raised either in the Church of God or even an Evangelical church–to work at the international level of a denomination.

    I’ve also been blessed to work with first-rate people, too, most of whom have given up far more remunerative positions in the secular world to work for the church.  But this story is an illustration of both their humanity and of why we are seeing what looks to be, on the surface, one of the strangest political efforts in the history of the Republic–Barack Obama’s health care initiative.

    My wife is very frugal, so for her the Christmas shopping season doesn’t start until after Christmas and the sales.  One item whose price tanks quickly after the holiday is Christmas candy, cookies and other food.  So I’ve made it a habit of buying this stuff up at ~75% off, bringing it to the office and putting it out for everyone.  When I first started doing this, there were puzzled looks.  Christmas is over, isn’t it?  But then they found out the obvious: the stuff tastes as good in early January as it does in the middle of December, and if they ate it fast enough spoilage wasn’t an issue.

    Now, around every candy-bearing holiday (including Halloween) in the U.S. (and there are many) the office expects candy and other food to appear in its wake.  Last year I made the mistake of overlooking Valentine’s Day, and the office expressed its disappointment that there was no Valentine’s candy out.  So, Lord willing, with the re-opening of the International Offices of the Church of God, there will be Christmas candy for those who help the laity to do God’s work.

    Today we have a strange spectacle in our country.  Polls show that most Americans don’t want the health care reform that is being hashed out in Congress by the Democrats.  Yet same Democrats plod onward, making any compromise necessary and buying off any Senator or Representative (to say nothing of the insurance companies or big Pharma) they have to in order to get the thing through.  The result is a massive Rube Goldberg that, to put it bluntly, makes a single-payer system look good.

    But the Democrats are relying on the same phenomenon that I experienced with the Christmas candy: once people get over the shock of something new, they’ll not only get accustomed to it, but expect it.  And they’ll be far more insistent about it when it doesn’t appear than the good Christian people I have the privilege to work with.  This expectation will bond the people more tightly to their government, which is the whole end-game of the Democrat Party (which hopes to be the political beneficiary of this bonding.)

    Experience with human nature tells us that the strategy should, in the long run, work, which explains why the Republicans are fighting it so hard.  But there are two “bumps in the road” that could throw the whole thing into a ditch.

    The first are the short term, transitional effects.  Front-loading the expense of the expansion of health care produces deferred gratification, something Americans notoriously despise.  Coupled with the simple pain of change, the Republicans will make gains in November 2010.  Whether these will produce majorities in either or both houses is a matter of debate.  The senior Democrats (except perhaps Harry Reid,) those in the safe seats, aren’t worried for themselves.  They figure they’ll be there when people riot over any attempt to take away universal coverage, taking the rioters applause.  For them, once this is passed victory will become a waiting game.

    But that waiting game will depend upon resolving the second problem: the general ability of our country to afford this social welfare system.  The core problem with health care as a right is that its delivery depends upon the general prosperity of the society, and that prosperity depends in turn upon the society’s productive capacity.  If that productive capacity is impeded by the enormous debt service we’ll be facing, increasing taxation and regulation and the disincentive to work created by guaranteed incomes and benefits, we’ll face a) a servile state where people are forced to work (as Hillare Belloc predicted,) b) the financial collapse of the country or c) (a) followed by (b).

    For an initiative whose objective is security for the people, it’s a risky strategy.  But that’s the kind of thinking that we have going in our upper reaches.  They, like most Americans, have never known a country which couldn’t afford anything.  But they, like the rest of us, are about to find out differently.

  • Mercy Chefs Video

    This is a great organisation whose roots are “on the bayou,” check it out.  More information is here.

  • Jim Wallis Stands in Front of His Biggest Problem

    “Evangelical” (sort of) Jim Wallis stands in front of his biggest problem and doesn’t know it:

    One cold morning the week before Christmas, I found myself huddled with a group of homeowners and religious leaders on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the shadow of the White House and the Treasury building. The homeowners, who had all worked hard to buy their first homes, and most of whom had put enough money down to qualify for fixed-rate mortgages only to be persuaded into more exotic mortgages, were facing imminent foreclosure. We had come to stand with them…

    Clearly, the financial crisis is a structural meltdown that calls for increased government regulation of banks and other financial players. Members of faith communities, such as those who joined me in front of the Treasury building, are helping to push for this sort of reform.

    He goes on to detail some “direct action” kinds of things, some of which are not bad.  This is refreshing; growing up in TEC, I always got the impression that the ultimate objective of social liberals in the church was to get the government to do the work they advocated.

    What he and others haven’t quite connected the dots on is the meaning of this: the core problem in our economic system is that it has become too centralised, and that the government is the key bad actor in this drama.

    The biggest weakness in capitalism is that, over time, the survival of the “fittest” turns the system into a oligarchy/monopoly.  Marx noted this phenomenon and used it against the system.  American conservatives today won’t discuss that because, IMHO, they are shamed by the fact that they aren’t at the top, and because breaking up the centralisation, in their view, is a roadblock to their own upward social mobility.

    But amongst non-socialist people in the U.S. it was not always so.  Theodore Roosevelt’s response to the same phenomenon in the Gilded Age was to break up the “trusts,” the largest of which was Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust.  Breaking up the trusts created competition.  We saw the same thing with the breakup of AT&T in the 1980’s.

    Regulating the system in and of itself isn’t enough.  This is especially true in view of the fact that a) our government is virtually bought by the larger financial institutions and b) our elitist snobs rely on central control–any kind of central control–to perpetuate their own dominance.  Asking our government to regulate the financial system in the current climate is asking the fox to guard the chicken coop, and the opposition doesn’t have a viable Plan B just yet (or won’t use the one they had in the past.)  His call to make the big banks smaller will fall on deaf ears on both sides of the aisle.

    One more thing he said deserves comment:

    And Islam prohibits the practice of usury. (Muslim-owned financial institutions that charge fees for service rather than interest have done amazingly well during this crisis; their practices offer some interesting models.)

    Does he know what’s going on in Dubai these days?  The central problem with Islamic banking in its homeland, the Middle East, is the lack of transparency, coupled with the usual money favouring/tribal politics that Islam only reinforces.

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  • Virginia Drills for Oil

    Buried in the Wall Street Journal’s article on Virginia Governor-Elect Bob McDonnell is the following:

    Mr. McDonnell also scored politically with his proposal to allow oil drilling in the state’s coastal waters. His proposal builds on a policy set in motion a year ago when a federal ban on drilling off the Atlantic Coast was allowed to expire.

    “We are set to be the first state in the country in 2011 to drill [for oil] offshore, off the Atlantic Coast,” he says, downplaying the environmental lobby’s intense efforts to reimpose the ban. “Unfortunately, the administration is dragging its feet. So I am going to do everything I can to push federal regulators to keep us on track.”

    This is a good move, especially for Virginia.

    There are three reasons why environmentalists work to block offshore oil drilling, and three answers:

    Objection Response
    Expanding domestic energy production will lower the cost of fossil fuels, thus perpetuate their use and increase global warming. Leaving the whole issue of global warming aside, we import so much oil now (and fund our enemies in the process) that we would be better off taxing imports, encouraging domestic production in the short term and setting a really science and technology based program to develop new energy sources (rather than the luddite “back to the Stone Age” thinking that dominates the 60’s radicals in our government.)
    Offshore oil platforms leak oil. What they leak is crude oil, which is a natural product and more easily handled by the environment than, say, distilled products such as gasoline and diesel fuel.  They have always been equipped with blowout preventers and other devices to prevent the oil (the source of revenue for the operator) from escaping.  Moreover offshore oil deposits have been leaking for a long time without drilling, perceptibly in progressive, upscale places such as Norway and Southern California.
    The onshore infrastructure for offshore oil development is polluting. We’ve come a long way from the practices that fouled the bayou in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  We had to put up with a lot of griping and complaining from the old oil field hands, but offshore oil development is a highly regulated business with many environmental controls.  One thing that was initially missing from the oil fields in the Gulf was an existing infrastructure of shipyards, ports and industrial support, and Virginia is blessed with all of this in the Tidewater’s port system.

    More on this subject is here.

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  • Why I Don't Like the Manhattan Declaration

    It’s a new year, and in this case a new decade.  It’s hard to find anyone who is satisfied with the results of the last decade, all of the advances in science and technology notwithstanding (or perhaps because of these advances.)    Perhaps the next one will be better; I’m not holding my breath.

    It’s also become a time (not consistently) for me to critique some of these declarations that religious organisations put out.  Two years ago it was the Muslims’ Common Word.  This time it’s closer to home: the Manhattan Declaration, which has received much press in the conservative Christian world.  In spite of the fact that the Declaration is well intentioned and contains good stuff, I have sadly concluded that actualising it will result in the repeating of many mistakes which both recent and not so recent history should have cured us of.

    Readers of this blog will realise that one major issue is civil marriage.  I’ll get to that, but before I do I need to start with the simple observation that the Declaration is based on a false premise.

    The False Premise

    The declaration is divided into three parts, which affirm:

    1. the sanctity of human life
    2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
    3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

    The mere order of these is significant.

    There is a sizeable body of Christian believers who believe that the defence of life is the central purpose of Christianity on the earth.  It is this idea that has fuelled much of the whole pro-life movement over the last forty years.  At one time this was primarily a Roman Catholic emphasis, but it has spilled over into the Evangelical community as well.

    Such an emphasis needs to be informed by the simple fact that it is eternal life that matters the most.  Ultimately our objective as Christians is primarily to proclaim the second birth, not merely to defend the first.  Knowing that the latter is a necessary prerequisite to the former, it is counter-productive for the church to constantly “fight for life” only to allow the fruits of that struggle to slip away into the second death, either by our own indolence or the state blocking the proclamation of the Gospel.

    Nowhere in the Declaration is the freedom to evangelise either mentioned or defended.  Our right to live our faith and to express it are certainly mentioned, but real evangelisation?  It isn’t there.  That’s an important distinction, because in a society where people let all kinds of things “hang out,” it’s easy to express something as long as there’s no real conviction behind it, or if that proclamation doesn’t carry with it the invitation for transformation.

    And that leads to what I feel is the Declaration’s false premise: that living out Christianity is primarily a social and political act.  We’ve been there before, on both sides of the divide.  Liberals did it leading up to World War I, and their “hastening of the Second Coming” died in the trenches.  They tried it again from the 1960’s onward, and their declining churches speak louder than anything else.  Not to be outdone, conservatives have been working on “bringing America back to God” since the 1970’s, and the current state of affairs in Washington is in part the result of the failure of this effort, irrespective of its merits.

    Christianity differs from Islam in that the amelioration of society–civil, political and individual–is a by-product of the Christian life rather than its objective.  That starts with the transformation of the human heart.  That’s the message Our Lord tried to get through to the Pharisees.  In many ways he is no more successful with us than he was with them.  When hearts are transformed then nations can be changed, not the other way around.

    The Civil Disobedience Business

    Much has been made of the Declaration’s call for civil disobedience:

    Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

    Ever since Gandhi and Martin Luther King made non-violent protests the reference standard of civil disobedience, that method has been held up to generations of potential activists.  When the declaration invokes such a memory, it is a call to action.  But will the action work?

    Non-violent protests depend upon two things for success: a media willing to sympathetically (and consistently) cover them, and a public with enough conscience to be moved by them.  Gandhi may have found the Christianity he saw in the West dissatisfying, but it was enough to make people take a serious look at what he had to say.

    Ever since Watergate, Americans have been pummelled with scandal after scandal in the hope that these legal lapses would produce moral outrage and change.  The result is that Americans’ moral sense about these things has been dulled.  It is much harder today than it was in King’s day to move the conscience of the nation because that conscience has been seared by endless, mind-numbing appeals to shock.  Today we are more like Lu Xun’s China: rather than being outraged at the way people are treated, we just come and see the show.

    As far as the sympathetic media is concerned, they’re more likely to cover protests they don’t like as the acts of “bad elements” and dismiss them.  The corporatist nature of our society, with its inchoate fear of “unplanned” change, only underscores that.

    Personal Sacrifice

    In the FAQ’s, the Declaration website says the following re civil disobedience:

    So, for example, if a law imposes on pharmacists a duty to dispense abortifacient drugs, and if a pro-life pharmacist believes that his or her compliance with the legal duty would itself constitute a grave injustice towards victim—the developing human being whose death the drugs would be used to cause—then he or she must not comply, even if this means suffering the penalty of being legally disabled from continuing his or her career as a pharmacist.

    That’s not my idea of civil disobedience, not at least in the sense that King meant it.  What they’re describing is an act of personal sacrifice, and the gospel certainly calls for that.  We have for so long been drilled in the idea that doing what we want to do in the way of work is a right that we forget that there are things we can do for a living that Christians just don’t have any business doing, and that isn’t restricted to the obvious ones.  Our actualising that part of the Christian life isn’t an act of civil disobedience; it’s part of the personal sacrifice that Our Lord promised to be an integral part of our walk with him.  The fact that the world is simply making that list longer only makes the challenge greater; it doesn’t change the basic nature of the act.

    Unfortunately this simple reality exposes a signal weakness in the Evangelical wing of American Christianity.  Evangelicals have “sold themselves” and their way of life in part on the basis that it will induce upward social mobility.  “Redemption and lift” has been a promise of Evangelical churches for a long time.  In the case of those coming off of destructive lifestyles, the immediate benefits are fairly straightforward, even in times when Christianity is unpopular.  For those wanting to move up but are blocked by an implicit or explicit anti-Christian bias, or moral conflicts like the one the FAQ’s describe, decision time comes.  Appealing to “anti-discrimination” sentiments or laws may be limited in their effectiveness if those in seats of authority have collectively decided that the discrimination is “beautiful and good.”

    This puts Evangelicals in a world of hurts.  Fortunately, as Late Roman Christianity found out, such sacrifice is easier to deal with when the civilisation is collapsing.  Christians have droned on and on about the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of our society, but how about its financial bankruptcy?  How to liberals plan to finance their patronage schemes (such as health care reform) when dollar hegemony is receding, small and medium sized business withers in the face of inadequate credit and snowballing regulation, and the public debt mounts?  Why do we keep wanting to hold up this society when our enemies in the drivers’ seat keep running it into the ground, taking their agenda with it?  These are questions that deserve better answers than the platitudes that American Christians so thoughtlessly throw at them.

    What Really Needs to be Done

    Having said all of this, what really needs to be done is the following:

    1. Christians need to accept the fact that following Jesus Christ will be costly, at least in the short term.  They need get used to the idea that their commitment to Christ may result in universities passed up, jobs missed, and other opportunitites foregone.
    2. Christians also need to embrace the idea that what our society holds up as successful living may in fact not be very successful.  The way of life commended today has many destructive aspects that get in the way to true achievement, advancement and wealth generation, including the expense of serial monogamy, substance abuse, uncontrolled sexual activity and the enormous amount of debt that people incur.
    3. Christians need to see that upward social mobility has changed in nature from acheivement through working one’s way up in business to a credentialled affair based on education and the connections that come with it.  Although we preach in our society that anyone can be anything they want to be, the reality is much more limited than that.  This in turn limits the downside of (1).
    4. Christians must get away from this neo-caesaro-papism (understandable of Roman Catholics, inexcusable in Evangelicals) that they have gotten themselves into.  They must challenge the assumption, prevalent since Bill Gothard enunciated it, that the disaster of the 1960’s was a breakdown in authority, and that the restoration of authority is the only way to reverse it.  They must face facts in the face and understand that what was initiated in those days–times that still haunt the Boomer leadership of Christianity–was in fact a transfer in authority from one group to another.
    5. Christians need to become more libertarian in their ideas and expectations of the state.  They need to grasp the limitations of politics in its ability to accomplish a moral and spiritual agenda.  They need to remember that the genius of the American relationship with the church started when religious dissenters, in league with others, challenged the state church paradigm that was brought over from the “old country.”  Freedom needs to be leitmotif of Christian political involvement, not authority.  The latter will lead to the domination of the church by the state.
    6. Christians must remember that, rather than simply buttressing Roman power and authority, the reason why the Church became dominant during Rome’s collapse was that it was able to transcend the Roman state and become a force of its own in society.
    7. Christians need to spend more time in strengthening the church rather than trying to save society.  Although Evangelicalism’s drive for outreach is excellent, it’s too often done without regard for either the individual discipleship level of the members or their group cohesion.
    8. Christians need to be what they are, the only true internationalists in the game.  They need to realise that the centre of Christianity and the world’s industrial and economic centre are becoming one in the same, namely Asia.  They also need to grasp the import that other parts of the world which are described as economically “emerging” are also becoming centres of Christianity, such as Africa.  “Western” Christians need to understand that their faith is now a Third World religion.  They must learn to celebrate that fact and facilitate the transition rather than desperately holding onto power.

    The Manhattan Declaration contains many fine sentiments.  Unfortunately one gets the feeling that it will lead to the leadership of American Christianity making the same mistakes they have in the past, and at this point we have neither the time nor the luxury to indulge ourselves in doing the same things over again we’ve done before.

    Sidebar Issue: Evangelicals and Catholics in the Manhattan Declaration

    One thing I’ve discovered with the Declaration is that some Evangelicals have back away from it because of its implicitly Roman Catholic view of Christianity and society.  Objectors (such as John McArthur) will couch that in doctrinal terms.  Although much of what I’ve written above reflects an Evangelical view of how people become Christians, because of my complex theological development I’ve probably taken the scenic route to get where I’m at.

    As was the case in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, I don’t have a problem with the two groups working together for common political objectives.  And it’s true that Roman Catholics have a more developed view of the church’s role in society and the state than Evangelicals do (and that’s not saying much.)  The problem is that, in order to perfect the Roman Catholic view of Christianity’s role in the state, you really need to revert to the paradigm that was reality in places such as the ancien régime in France.  As much of a Bossuet fan as I am, at this stage I don’t think that this is either desirable or possible.

    While on the subject of the scenic route, I found interesting the reasoning for signing given by my fellow Chattanoogan, Dr. Niel Nielson, President of Covenant College.

    Sidebar Issue: Civil Marriage

    Most regular readers of this blog know that I believe that civil marriage should be abolished.  I won’t belabour this point, but would like to observe the following:

    1. There’s no Biblical reason why Christians should believe that civil marriage is necessary.  God didn’t need the state to solemnise Adam and Eve’s union, did he?  Why should we?  Even the declaration admits that marriage precedes all other institutions in society, and that includes the state.
    2. The Declarations statement that “Marriage is an objective reality…that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good” is a statement of hope against experience, for reasons I detail here.  The law simply hasn’t done this, and, although there are a few who have called for the reversal of much of what has taken place in marriage law, I doubt this will take place.
    3. It’s interesting to note that, in spite of the active participation in efforts such as California’s Proposition 8 by the RC and LDS churches, neither of these institutions need civil marriage in order to make it function amongst their members.  They have the central authority, record keeping system and judicial capabilities to make it work.
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  • Revolution in Iran is Easier Said Than Done

    There’s a persistent liberal drumbeat out there that, somehow, the current regime in Iran is about to be overthrown.

    Iran’s current power holders are taking no chances:

    Police chief Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam made a harsh threat to protesters to stay off the streets.

    “In dealing with previous protests, police showed leniency. But given that these opponents are seeking to topple (the ruling system), there will be no mercy,” Moghaddam said, according to IRNA. “We will take severe action. The era of tolerance is over. Anyone attending such rallies will be crushed.”

    And recent history is on their side.  Consider what happened in the wake of the 1979 revolution, as documented in David Pryce-Jones’ The Closed Circle:

    Uninhibited by Western education, unfamiliar with Western concepts of human rights, Ayatollah Khomeini quite correctly perceived himself challenged, as once he had been the challenger; and he was determined not to be brought down as the Shah had but to respond in a manner so exemplary that there could be no mistaking his will.  Capturing the state, he had no intention of then allowing it to disintegrate…

    The process whereby Khomeini had his position first challenged and then confirmed was very close indeed to civil war, as described by the historian Walter Laqueur:

    In 1981 Ayatollah Khomeini’s former allies from the left, the mujahedeen [fighters] and some other groups, turned against the new rulers of Iran.  They were many and experienced; within three months they succeeded in killing the prime minister, many chiefs of police, half the government and the executive committee of the ruling party, not to mention dozens of members of parliament.  Perhaps never before had a terrorist onslaught been so massive and so successful.  Yet within another three months, the terrorists either were dead or had escaped abroad.  The government acted with great brutality; it killed without discrimination; it extracted information by means of torture; it refused as a matter of principle to extend medical help to injured terrorists…

    Towards the end of 1983, it became clear that internal groups with a potential for challenging Shia supremacy on ethic or secular or tribal grounds had been smashed, and their leaders were all dead or in exile, their peoples truly cowed.

    There’s no doubt that this victory is firmly implanted in the minds of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in the government, which explains the ruthless method they are going about crushing the current dissent.  For the dissidents to achieve victory will require substantive foreign assistance, and there’s no sign that’s forthcoming.

  • Jesus Christ is Enthroned as King. In Lithuania.

    Communism teaches hard lessons:

    Jesus Christ is “king” of a municipality in Lithuania.

    The aldermen of a small city in Lithuania, a country with strong Catholic majorities, have “enthroned Jesus Christ as King” to their community, hoping to boost the morale of the population in this time of economic crisis.

    “Enthrone Jesus Christ as King of our municipality, solemnly declare that he is our sovereign and protector,” said Mayor Zdzislav Palevic of Šalčininkai (southeast), as quoted by Baltic news agency BNS .

    “During this difficult period for the country when crisis affects the world, the role of Christ becomes important not only in the personal lives of people, but also in political and cultural life,” proclaims the act of induction, which was adopted unanimously.

    “This decision couldn’t hurt. The area is very Catholic, and if it can encourage people to respect the Ten Commandments, then why not?” Leonard Stancikiene, one of 25 city council members, told Agence France-Presse by telephone.

    This town of about 7,000 people, mostly ethnic Poles, is located about fifty kilometres south of Vilnius,  the first Lithuanian city to have entrusted its fate to Jesus Christ. In an act approved last 12 June, the Vilnius region was placed under the protection of Christ “to avoid painful mistakes, dangers and threats”.

    Lithuania, a former Soviet republic which became independent in 1990 and a member of the EU in 2004, is a secular state, but the Catholic religion remains a vital component of the country.

    Before the swearing in of new President Dalia Grybauskaite, the bishop of Vilnius, Archbishop Audrys Backis, delivered a speech to parliament. Solemn masses are usually celebrated at major national holidays.

    HT to the Salon Beige.

  • Merry Christmas: When the Scripture Readings Don’t Quite Cut It

    With this, I wish all of my readers a very Merry Christmas.

    Beyond that, anyone whose is or was in a liturgical church knows that part of the liturgy is to read appropriate scriptures (like this one for this time of year.)  The idea is that the scriptures be really appropriate.  However, when the liturgy isn’t followed, this breaks down, as a friend on Facebook found out when reading these scriptures to his children:

    So I start reading for our Advent readings: “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree…” After I said “Augustus,” E. starts moaning and by the end of the sentence she is weeping. I stopped and asked her what was wrong. D. explained that whenever one of E.’s fish died, she would have a burial ceremony and when she asked J. to read from Scripture, this was always the passage he chose.

    That is the best reason why I posted the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

  • The Discipline and Reform of the Church

    Fr. Greg’s response to my diatribes has been there for a while, but with current exigencies here and some technical issues to resolve re this blog (when you’re self-hosted, you have to deal with these things) has delayed a response.

    Some of the items he brings up–especially concerning the authority and nature of the church–we’ve actually discussed before, as you can see here.  There are two specific issues that I’d like to address, and those are the discipline and the reform of the church.  Much of the dialogue has centred around people who have been out of sorts with either Roman Catholicism or Russian Orthodoxy, and that represents my concerns, which have haunted me since I took my leave from the former.

    Let me start with this:

    Church discipline is exercised in order to bring someone to repentance and thereby, to eternal life, never to deprive anyone of eternal life. Remember that if the Eucharist is received unworthily, such reception, far from bringing the receiver closer to God, does just the opposite, subjects the one who so receives to Divine Judgement, and endangers their participation in eternal life (I Cor. 11:27-32). Also, in all the Apostolic Churches, all Church discipline ends at the time of death; the person in question is released into the hands of the ultimate judge, Jesus Christ himself. As further evidence of this, all priests are duty bound, in the case of danger of death, to administer the last sacraments to anyone, regardless of standing with the Church, at the least sign of repentance (construed in the most general of terms): all disciplinary bets are off (or, if the person is unconscious, the priest is to presume repentance and so to administer anointing and absolution). Further, the question of infallibility doesn’t real enter into questions of discipline per se. Thus, your numbered points are at best a caricature.

    All other things being equal, this is true.  But they aren’t.  There are two reasons in particular why history shows that this isn’t always followed the way it should be.

    The first is state involvement.  If the state decides that it has an interest in the suppression of heresy, pastoral considerations such as you outline above can go out the window.  That was all too evident with both the Old Believers and the Jansenists, to say nothing of the Christological controversies (now I know you’re in league with Peter the Fuller!)  That’s something that we don’t see as much of as we used to, but it still happens.

    Of more interest in our own time is when the church decides to “keep up with the Joneses,” i.e. follow modern trends.  That was certainly the case with the Old Believers, and the Jansenists too.  The Jesuits wanted to present a faith that they felt was acceptable to the people of their time, and austere Jansenism was in the way of that.  So Port-Royal was razed.

    I think it’s also worth noting that, with Roman Catholicism, its solicitousness to bring people back to orthodoxy can easily turn into an endurance match with the heretics, grinding them down rather than bringing them up.  That’s a legacy of the Inquisition, and Dostoevsky was right in attacking it.

    One other thing: the issue of infallibility certainly does come up if the issue involves one of the doctrines which is claimed to be so promulgated.

    In our time the worst practitioners of this kind of thing are those who Kendall Harmon refers to as the “reappraisers.”  We’ve seen this kind of thing in the “scorched earth” policies of the TEC.  Those on the left can be very brutal when dispatching their opponents, even if they do it in the name of preserving the “integrity” (double-entendre intended) of the church.

    But that leads to my next point.  Let’s look at the following:

    Further, while the Churches are always in need of practical reformation (not dogmatic reformation) to one extent or another, our primary task, as individual Christians, is not to reform the Churches, but to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, through the ministry of the Church, in the transformation of each of us as persons so that we conform to the image and likeness of Christ. The fundamental rule of thumb here is Matthew 23: “do what they say but not what they do.” The Christian path has long been laid down: it is simple, but no, it is not easy. So many would seek an easier softer way, and it is so much easier, and more gratifying to remove the speck from your eye than to remove the plank from my own. (Yes, I’m aware of the irony here.)

    There are actually two issues here, related but not identical.

    The first is the reform of the church.  Tied to that, however, is the mission of the church.  Each and every Christian is obligated by Jesus Christ to be a part of the mission of the church.   The successful implementation of that depends in large part on the opportunity level of the church which the individual believer faces.  If that church is relatively inert, if that inertia is buttressed by institutionalism, if that institutionalism encourages a low level of participation, then the believer isn’t going to be what God intended for him or her to be.  My main experience here is with Roman Catholicism, but it isn’t restricted to that church.  The whole Wesleyan secession could have been avoided if the Church of England, lead by its Governor, had properly released the enthusiasm which Wesley and his friends had exhibited.  Institutionalism isn’t restricted to a church which considers itself a formal mediator between man and God, but a church which has that high a view of itself is more prone to justify itself on institutional grounds than one that doesn’t.  Many moves towards reform are tied to people who wish to see the fulfilment of their own divine purpose on earth, and don’t see the opportunities to do so at hand.

    It’s certainly possible for one to live a good and holy life without reaching out and working to reform the church around them.  That’s one reason why I caution Evangelicals about being so quick to judge people in Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches not having a proper relationship with God.  But it isn’t the “whole deal” either.

    There’s one more minor point I’d like to make, about this:

    Don, what you have written concerning the end of sacrifice assumes that the foundational purpose of sacrifice is dealing with sin.

    The forgiveness of sin is a necessary part of sacrifice, but it certainly is not the entire purpose.  Part of the problem with discussing anything with me is that my theology can be composite.  I’ve made it clear that I do not think that salvation solely consists of having one’s name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  It also consists of the indwelling of Jesus Christ in us.  That’s an inheritance from my years as a Roman Catholic.

    ,

  • The Sexual Abuse Chickens Come Home to Roost: Bishop Moriarty Resigns

    Ireland’s long running sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church reaches a turning point:

    Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Dr Jim Moriarty has offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI.

    The announcement was made in the last few minutes following a meeting between the Bishop and Diocesan priests and staff in Portarlington, Co Laois.

    Bishop Moriarty was an auxiliary Bishop of Dublin during some of the years in which the Murphy Commission found that the Archdiocese had covered up cases of clerical child sexual abuse.

    Bishop Moriarty has said that there were no grounds for his resignation in what was said about him in the Murphy Report.

    The Murphy Commission said that Bishop Moriarty could have asked Archbishop Connell to research the files on Fr Edmondus after complaints about the priest had been received by the Diocese.

    Although this has been going on for a long time, it’s taken longer to come to a head in the Republic of Ireland than in the U.S.

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