I went to the Confirmation Mass tonight. I went to see some of my kids confirmed; kids in the flock that I've had the good fortune to be able to share my faith with for the past two years. The following reading was given by one of the confirmandi, Katherine Janoski. I know Katherine, not very well, but, well enough to be assured that the passing on of our faith is in good hands.
The first reading, though, is one that has always imbued me with a profound sense of family. Of being part of a family lead by someone who loves me and wants me, someone who is willing to look past my transgressions and in spite of them hugs me and pulls me to his bosom.
From Ezekiel Chapter 36,
24 For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. 28 You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
He has made us his own. Does not that invoke in you that feeling of safety and comfort you felt as a child when pulled into your mother's bosom, all insecurities vanished, the pain went away, and all fears receded to nothingness. What an awesome God we have. How greatly he elevates us despite our unworthiness.
What a great message for our confirmandi! Perhaps, as those who have been born into a loving family, as those who have always been approached as having an innate sense of self-worth, the message of Ezekiel does not hold much impact. But, for those of us who have accumulated experiences that show how alone we can be and how much our own destructive inclinations can pull us away from God, we can see and feel in these words a deeper meaning and a great comfort.
What an awesome God we have! I see it in his mercy and I see it in our children.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
To "act" is to live!
One purpose of a retreat is to awaken us to the truth that the truth is to be lived, acted out, not only thought. Unless I live the truth I think, my truth is not incarnated. But thinking is needed too because our emotions and passions must be informed and trained by reason. And reason tells me that parts must be understood together with their wholes in order to be really understood, so they can really be lived.
In order to see a whole one must see "ends." An end is that for which a thing exists. As an example, the end of the art of medicine is the restoration and maintenance of the condition called health. I can have many "purposes" in practicing medicine -- to gain wealth, for prestige, to help people -- but unless I conform my art of medicine to its "end" -- securing health -- I am not respecting the nature of medicine, its true end, in my actions. The morality of our actions is determined by the ends of the material of our actions, not by our purposes. As Aristotle said in the Poetics, "all human happiness or misery takes the form of action." (Poetics 5.1450a17-19). In other words, our actions will make us miserable or happy, depending on whether we respect the ends inherent in our actions.
Another topical example of ends is sex. A "part" of sex, of course, is pleasure, but its "end" is the unity open to procreation (the birthing and rearing of children). To restrict our focus to pleasure, to use technology to eliminate the end, in effect, to make the part the whole, is to misunderstand the nature of the sexual, its proper end, and to warp it, by human purpose, away from what it is by nature. That is living a fiction, a similitude, a "sin."
Francis Slade* mentions the films of Quentin Tarentino (Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers) as depicting a world in which there are only the purposes of human beings, a "world without ends." Such a world is a world of purposes and cross purposes, a world of violence, "the definition of fiasco." "A world of fiasco is a world in which guilt is impossible, because guilt requires responsibility for actions, and there are actions only if purposes are measured by ends." In a world without proper actions, the world degenerates into a despairing meaninglessness. Another term is nihilism.
To restate, living requires reasoned actions, which in turn require an understanding of the "whole" of things, including things' proper "ends." Our calling is to act, to incarnate our "holistic" reason into action, respecting things' ends. That is to live!
*Francis Slade, "On the Ontological Priority of Ends And Its Relevance to the Narrative Arts."
In order to see a whole one must see "ends." An end is that for which a thing exists. As an example, the end of the art of medicine is the restoration and maintenance of the condition called health. I can have many "purposes" in practicing medicine -- to gain wealth, for prestige, to help people -- but unless I conform my art of medicine to its "end" -- securing health -- I am not respecting the nature of medicine, its true end, in my actions. The morality of our actions is determined by the ends of the material of our actions, not by our purposes. As Aristotle said in the Poetics, "all human happiness or misery takes the form of action." (Poetics 5.1450a17-19). In other words, our actions will make us miserable or happy, depending on whether we respect the ends inherent in our actions.
Another topical example of ends is sex. A "part" of sex, of course, is pleasure, but its "end" is the unity open to procreation (the birthing and rearing of children). To restrict our focus to pleasure, to use technology to eliminate the end, in effect, to make the part the whole, is to misunderstand the nature of the sexual, its proper end, and to warp it, by human purpose, away from what it is by nature. That is living a fiction, a similitude, a "sin."
Francis Slade* mentions the films of Quentin Tarentino (Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers) as depicting a world in which there are only the purposes of human beings, a "world without ends." Such a world is a world of purposes and cross purposes, a world of violence, "the definition of fiasco." "A world of fiasco is a world in which guilt is impossible, because guilt requires responsibility for actions, and there are actions only if purposes are measured by ends." In a world without proper actions, the world degenerates into a despairing meaninglessness. Another term is nihilism.
To restate, living requires reasoned actions, which in turn require an understanding of the "whole" of things, including things' proper "ends." Our calling is to act, to incarnate our "holistic" reason into action, respecting things' ends. That is to live!
*Francis Slade, "On the Ontological Priority of Ends And Its Relevance to the Narrative Arts."
Friday, April 17, 2009
This week's meeting
Bob's out of town, so I've been put in charge of the meeting for the week (Oh, boy!).
We'll try to finish up Screwtape this Saturday, so read to the end if you can. I'll try to remember to grab some donuts and coffee on the way.
Thanks!
Matthew Popkes
We'll try to finish up Screwtape this Saturday, so read to the end if you can. I'll try to remember to grab some donuts and coffee on the way.
Thanks!
Matthew Popkes
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Recognizing Mystery
Gabriel Marcel in his The Mystery of Being is investigating into "the essence of spiritual reality" (p.1) -- including in the human person -- in a world of science and technique in which the human recedes into anonymity (p.6), and power, efficiency, technique, and bureaucracy assert their dominance. Marcel wrote in 1949, 1950 against the background of World War II, but the situation he describes is certainly recognizable today, I think.
In such a world where are mystery and presence to be found? Marcel offers as an example, a sleeping child:
"From the point of view of physical activity. . . the possible grasping of things, the sleeping child is completely unprotected and appears to be utterly in our power; from that point of view, it is permissible for us to do what we like with the child. But from the point of view of mystery, we might say that it is just because this being is completely unprotected, that it is utterly at our mercy, that it is also invulnerable or sacred. And there can be no doubt at all that the strongest and most irrefutable mark of sheer barbarism that we could imagine would consist in the refusal to recognize this mysterious invulnerability. This sacredness of the unprotected lies also at the roots of what we call a metaphysics of hospitality. In all civilizations of a certain type (not, of course, by any means merely in Christian civilizations), the guest has been regarded as all the more sacred, the more feeble and defenceless he is. In civilizations of a certain type, I say: not, I might have added, of the type dominated by the ideas of efficiency and output. The more, it might be said, the ideas of efficiency and output assert their supreme authority, the more this attitude of reverence towards the guest, towards the wounded, towards the sick, will appear at first incomprehensible, and later absurd; and in fact, in the world around us, we know that this assertion of the absurdity of forbearance and generosity is taking very practical shapes." pp.216-217.
What was true in 1949 is even truer today, don't you think?
Can't we conclude that it is precisely the vulnerable, and our care for the vulnerable, that keeps us human? When we euthanize the unfit and unwanted, be they born or unborn, haven't we turned ourselves into barbarians precisely because we can no longer sense the mystery inherent in the human being herself, living on this fragile earth, vulnerable and unprotected?
In such a world where are mystery and presence to be found? Marcel offers as an example, a sleeping child:
"From the point of view of physical activity. . . the possible grasping of things, the sleeping child is completely unprotected and appears to be utterly in our power; from that point of view, it is permissible for us to do what we like with the child. But from the point of view of mystery, we might say that it is just because this being is completely unprotected, that it is utterly at our mercy, that it is also invulnerable or sacred. And there can be no doubt at all that the strongest and most irrefutable mark of sheer barbarism that we could imagine would consist in the refusal to recognize this mysterious invulnerability. This sacredness of the unprotected lies also at the roots of what we call a metaphysics of hospitality. In all civilizations of a certain type (not, of course, by any means merely in Christian civilizations), the guest has been regarded as all the more sacred, the more feeble and defenceless he is. In civilizations of a certain type, I say: not, I might have added, of the type dominated by the ideas of efficiency and output. The more, it might be said, the ideas of efficiency and output assert their supreme authority, the more this attitude of reverence towards the guest, towards the wounded, towards the sick, will appear at first incomprehensible, and later absurd; and in fact, in the world around us, we know that this assertion of the absurdity of forbearance and generosity is taking very practical shapes." pp.216-217.
What was true in 1949 is even truer today, don't you think?
Can't we conclude that it is precisely the vulnerable, and our care for the vulnerable, that keeps us human? When we euthanize the unfit and unwanted, be they born or unborn, haven't we turned ourselves into barbarians precisely because we can no longer sense the mystery inherent in the human being herself, living on this fragile earth, vulnerable and unprotected?
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Agony and the Ecstacy
Maybe it is not completely unreasonable to compare the suffering brought about by the economic recession with Christ's passion? To say in genuine anguish on a cross of sacrifice, "I have lost all," (and I do not mean simply my investments!) is to participate in some fashion in Christ's experience, is it not? Of course, the original denouement was not agony but the ecstacy of renewed life. And in Christ we hope for the same.
I was reading in Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of Being, ch. 10 "Presence As A Mystery," that when the "important" is lost, the "essential" is revealed:
"At first glance, it seems that when I decide that something or other is important I am relating it to a certain purpose of mine or perhaps, more generally, to a way in which I organize my life. If I centre my life upon some predominant interest, say, for instance, the search for pleasure, power, or money, everything that seems likely to subserve this interest will strike me as having positive importance. Experience, however, shows us, and its lessons cannot be rejected or ignored, that our special ways of organizing our lives are always liable to collapse like houses of cards under our very eyes; leaving something else in their place, something which the original structures of lust, ambition or greed had merely masked from us. This something else, which we are not yet in a position to define, and of which we have not perhaps even a direct apprehension, is not the important, but the essential, the "one thing needful." It is obvious that the believer has a name for this 'something else': he will say that the one thing needful is salvation . . ."
So, we should remain hopeful that our experience of "being on the cross," though probably not ludicrous only in our own eyes, can lead to our discovery of the essential, the 'one thing needful,' and thereby be saved.
I was reading in Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of Being, ch. 10 "Presence As A Mystery," that when the "important" is lost, the "essential" is revealed:
"At first glance, it seems that when I decide that something or other is important I am relating it to a certain purpose of mine or perhaps, more generally, to a way in which I organize my life. If I centre my life upon some predominant interest, say, for instance, the search for pleasure, power, or money, everything that seems likely to subserve this interest will strike me as having positive importance. Experience, however, shows us, and its lessons cannot be rejected or ignored, that our special ways of organizing our lives are always liable to collapse like houses of cards under our very eyes; leaving something else in their place, something which the original structures of lust, ambition or greed had merely masked from us. This something else, which we are not yet in a position to define, and of which we have not perhaps even a direct apprehension, is not the important, but the essential, the "one thing needful." It is obvious that the believer has a name for this 'something else': he will say that the one thing needful is salvation . . ."
So, we should remain hopeful that our experience of "being on the cross," though probably not ludicrous only in our own eyes, can lead to our discovery of the essential, the 'one thing needful,' and thereby be saved.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Screwtape - Eat Your Heart Out
At our last meeting, I attempted to explain why I felt that Screwtape's approach to human nature was not appealing to me. I have to apologize for my inability to express the ideas I was attempting to explain. So, back to my books I went. What follows are much more eloquent expressions of the ideas I was attempting to convey.
From the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World"
"In deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary... There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."
Commenting on this passage, Pope John Paul II wrote:
"Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person, where we are alone with God. In the depths of our conscience, we detect a moral law, which does not impose itself on us, but which holds us to a higher obedience. This law is not an external human law, but the voice of God, calling us to free ourselves from the grip of the evil desires and sin, and stimulating us to seek what is good and true in life."
Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his book entitled "Prayer" complements these ideas.
"Man was created to be a hearer of the word, and it is in responding to the word that he attains his true dignity. His innermost constitution has been designed for dialogue. His reason is equipped with as much light of its own as it needs to apprehend the God speaking to it. His will is just that much superior to instinct and open to all that is good, that he is able without compulsion to follow the attraction of the most blessed good. Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself. He is built like a tabernacle around the most sacred mystery. When God's Word desires to live in him, man does not need first of all to take deliberate action to open up his innermost self. It is already there, its very nature is readiness, receptivity, the will to surrender to what is greater, to acknowledge the deeper truth, to cease hostilities in the face of the more constant love."
What more can I say?
From the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World"
"In deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary... There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."
Commenting on this passage, Pope John Paul II wrote:
"Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person, where we are alone with God. In the depths of our conscience, we detect a moral law, which does not impose itself on us, but which holds us to a higher obedience. This law is not an external human law, but the voice of God, calling us to free ourselves from the grip of the evil desires and sin, and stimulating us to seek what is good and true in life."
Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his book entitled "Prayer" complements these ideas.
"Man was created to be a hearer of the word, and it is in responding to the word that he attains his true dignity. His innermost constitution has been designed for dialogue. His reason is equipped with as much light of its own as it needs to apprehend the God speaking to it. His will is just that much superior to instinct and open to all that is good, that he is able without compulsion to follow the attraction of the most blessed good. Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself. He is built like a tabernacle around the most sacred mystery. When God's Word desires to live in him, man does not need first of all to take deliberate action to open up his innermost self. It is already there, its very nature is readiness, receptivity, the will to surrender to what is greater, to acknowledge the deeper truth, to cease hostilities in the face of the more constant love."
What more can I say?
Culture: Oppressive or Rich?
We had some discussion about church singing and music at our last meeting, with the consensus of some that songs often were either insipid (uninspiring) or downright heretical. I happened across the following that is somewhat material to the discussion:
Glenn Hughes, in Transcendence and History, discusses our modern reluctance to embrace and explore transcendence (meaning the Mystery that enfolds the present, day to day existence we all lead), and concludes that maybe things aren't so dire in that "We enjoy a vast historical legacy of symbols, myths, rituals, and visions that protect the truths of transcendence and encourage dedication to universal human dignity, a legacy that is increasingly accessible in its global variety." (p. 217) He calls for a "realistic and humble openness toward the historical past" that "may foster appreciation of our wealth of historical symbols that testify to a loving readiness to follow unrestricted questioning as far as the inward revelation of transcendent truth -- the revelation in the light of which we can recognize our essential solidarity with every participant in the drama of universal humanity."
Hughes then offers a quote from a letter expressing this "choice of attitude," written by the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov to his friend, the historian M. O. Gershenzon, in 1920 (with the Russion revolution in its early stages):
"The state of mind that now torments you, your exasperated intolerance of the cultural heritage you feel weighing upon you, stems essentially from the fact that you experience culture, not as a living repertory of gifts, but as a subtle mechanism of multiple compulsions. And this is not surprising, culture having indeed sought to become a system of compulsions. For my part I see it as a ladder of Eros, a hierarchy of acts of veneration. So many are the things and persons I am moved to venerate, beginning with man and his tools and his labors and his insulted dignity and ending with the lowliest bit of mineral, that I find it sweet to go down in this sea -- naufragar mi e dolce in questo mare --, to drown in God." (from V.I. Inanov and M.O. Gerzhenzon, Correspondence across a Room, 7.
My point is that our position is a question of attitude, and that we can "see the good" even though we see limitations too. We just profile the good, and leave the limitations (perhaps temporarily) in the background. I heard a talk by a physical therapist recently. She said that she saw in her practice so many different types of "bodies" -- ugly and hairy and fat and bony -- that she became depressed and had to change her way of looking in order to continue her work with ardor: She had to start seeing the beauty in the middle of the hairiness, fatness, boneiness, etc. When she started practicing this -- essentially changing her "attitude" -- she opened herself for joy to enter again into her practice.
I suggest that we need to do this with liturgy as well, indeed with all things (and persons) in this world "in between" the God who made us and the mud of the world he made.
Glenn Hughes, in Transcendence and History, discusses our modern reluctance to embrace and explore transcendence (meaning the Mystery that enfolds the present, day to day existence we all lead), and concludes that maybe things aren't so dire in that "We enjoy a vast historical legacy of symbols, myths, rituals, and visions that protect the truths of transcendence and encourage dedication to universal human dignity, a legacy that is increasingly accessible in its global variety." (p. 217) He calls for a "realistic and humble openness toward the historical past" that "may foster appreciation of our wealth of historical symbols that testify to a loving readiness to follow unrestricted questioning as far as the inward revelation of transcendent truth -- the revelation in the light of which we can recognize our essential solidarity with every participant in the drama of universal humanity."
Hughes then offers a quote from a letter expressing this "choice of attitude," written by the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov to his friend, the historian M. O. Gershenzon, in 1920 (with the Russion revolution in its early stages):
"The state of mind that now torments you, your exasperated intolerance of the cultural heritage you feel weighing upon you, stems essentially from the fact that you experience culture, not as a living repertory of gifts, but as a subtle mechanism of multiple compulsions. And this is not surprising, culture having indeed sought to become a system of compulsions. For my part I see it as a ladder of Eros, a hierarchy of acts of veneration. So many are the things and persons I am moved to venerate, beginning with man and his tools and his labors and his insulted dignity and ending with the lowliest bit of mineral, that I find it sweet to go down in this sea -- naufragar mi e dolce in questo mare --, to drown in God." (from V.I. Inanov and M.O. Gerzhenzon, Correspondence across a Room, 7.
My point is that our position is a question of attitude, and that we can "see the good" even though we see limitations too. We just profile the good, and leave the limitations (perhaps temporarily) in the background. I heard a talk by a physical therapist recently. She said that she saw in her practice so many different types of "bodies" -- ugly and hairy and fat and bony -- that she became depressed and had to change her way of looking in order to continue her work with ardor: She had to start seeing the beauty in the middle of the hairiness, fatness, boneiness, etc. When she started practicing this -- essentially changing her "attitude" -- she opened herself for joy to enter again into her practice.
I suggest that we need to do this with liturgy as well, indeed with all things (and persons) in this world "in between" the God who made us and the mud of the world he made.
The Cross
Arbol, donde el cielo quiso
Dar el fruto verdadero
Contra el bocado primero,
Flor del nuevo paraiso,
Arco de luz, cuyo aviso
En pielago mas profundo
La paz publico del mundo,
Planta hermos, fertil vid,
Harpa del nuevo David,
Tabla del Moises segundo:
Pecador soy, tus favores
Pido por justicia yo:
Pues Dios en ti padecio
Solo por los pecadors.
A mi me deves tus loores;
Que por mi solo muriera
Dios, si mas mundo no hubiera.
Tree, which heaven has willed to dower
With that true fruit whence we live,
As that other, death did give;
Of new Eden loveliest flower;
Bow of light, that in worst hour
Of the worst flood signal true
O'er the world, of mercy threw;
Fair plant, yielding sweetest wine;
Of our David harp divine;
Of our Moses tables new;
Sinner am I, therefore I
Claim upon they mercies make,
Since alone for sinners' sake
God on thee endured to die;
And for me would God have died
Had there been no world beside.
From Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681)
Translated by Richard Chenevix Trench
Dar el fruto verdadero
Contra el bocado primero,
Flor del nuevo paraiso,
Arco de luz, cuyo aviso
En pielago mas profundo
La paz publico del mundo,
Planta hermos, fertil vid,
Harpa del nuevo David,
Tabla del Moises segundo:
Pecador soy, tus favores
Pido por justicia yo:
Pues Dios en ti padecio
Solo por los pecadors.
A mi me deves tus loores;
Que por mi solo muriera
Dios, si mas mundo no hubiera.
Tree, which heaven has willed to dower
With that true fruit whence we live,
As that other, death did give;
Of new Eden loveliest flower;
Bow of light, that in worst hour
Of the worst flood signal true
O'er the world, of mercy threw;
Fair plant, yielding sweetest wine;
Of our David harp divine;
Of our Moses tables new;
Sinner am I, therefore I
Claim upon they mercies make,
Since alone for sinners' sake
God on thee endured to die;
And for me would God have died
Had there been no world beside.
From Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681)
Translated by Richard Chenevix Trench
Monday, April 6, 2009
HIV Testing Anyone?
I was surprised by Pastor Melody Eastman's statement in her parish mission homily (on St. Paul) last Sunday night that she and her congregation were planning to do a mass HIV testing. She said that HIV trends show a problem among older people, and her congregation's effort is to encourage people to get tested for HIV. This is an act of Christian charity, she said.
Now, it doesn't seem that you need to get tested for HIV if you are monogamous and faithful, and have been for a long time. It DOES make sense to be tested if you are engaging in extra-marital sex. However, the appropriate Christian response is PRIMARILY, it would seem, to remind on the morality of sexuality, that is, the moral rules against sexual license. I didn't hear this point from Pastor Eastman. That doesn't mean she wouldn't agree with it.
I saw this point made by the Bishops of Kenya (quoted in the article I cited a few days ago): "Even if HIV did not make pre-marital sex, fornication, adultery, abuse of minors and rape so terribly dangerous, they would still be wrong and always have been. It is not the risk of HIV or the sufferings of AIDS, which make sexual license immoral; these are violations of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments which are sinful, and today in Kenya surely the worst of their many destructive consequences is HIV and AIDS. The Church does not preach a different sexual morality, when or where AIDS poses no danger. But this teaching is not easy for 'the world' including the media to understand, much less to accept."
I would have felt less queasy with Pastor Eastman's remarks if I had heard something like this. But again, I don't have any reason to assume she would not agree with the above Bishop's statement.
But, hearing about other trends among non-Catholic Christian denominations makes me somewhat cautious. Here is what the United Church of Christ is doing:
Pastor Eastman's views on this subject would be telling on whether she is going down a different path from the Catholic Church.
Now, it doesn't seem that you need to get tested for HIV if you are monogamous and faithful, and have been for a long time. It DOES make sense to be tested if you are engaging in extra-marital sex. However, the appropriate Christian response is PRIMARILY, it would seem, to remind on the morality of sexuality, that is, the moral rules against sexual license. I didn't hear this point from Pastor Eastman. That doesn't mean she wouldn't agree with it.
I saw this point made by the Bishops of Kenya (quoted in the article I cited a few days ago): "Even if HIV did not make pre-marital sex, fornication, adultery, abuse of minors and rape so terribly dangerous, they would still be wrong and always have been. It is not the risk of HIV or the sufferings of AIDS, which make sexual license immoral; these are violations of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments which are sinful, and today in Kenya surely the worst of their many destructive consequences is HIV and AIDS. The Church does not preach a different sexual morality, when or where AIDS poses no danger. But this teaching is not easy for 'the world' including the media to understand, much less to accept."
I would have felt less queasy with Pastor Eastman's remarks if I had heard something like this. But again, I don't have any reason to assume she would not agree with the above Bishop's statement.
But, hearing about other trends among non-Catholic Christian denominations makes me somewhat cautious. Here is what the United Church of Christ is doing:
"Recently, the HIV and AIDS Network of the United Church of Christ (UCC) said condoms should be handed out at places of worship. The statement was issued during a presentation to the denomination's Wider Church Ministries Board and also advocated making condoms available at faith-based educational settings.
"A UCC executive said that condom distribution is a matter of life and death and that condoms should be made available to save the lives of young people.
"Calling it the denomination's "moral responsibility" to make condoms available, the UCC's executive for health and wellness advocacy said "people of faith make condoms available because we have chosen life so that we and our children may live.""
Pastor Eastman's views on this subject would be telling on whether she is going down a different path from the Catholic Church.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Death on a Friday Afternoon - more
More from Chapter 2.
As the letter to the Hebrews puts it, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
"Assurance" means conviction, confidence, trust. Assurance is not cognitive certitude; it is not the certain knowledge that it is impossible that what I am confident will happen will not happen. If I had such certitude, we would not be instructed to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Faith as hope is confidence in God's faithfulness. We do not presumptuously stride up to the judgment throne confident of being handed the Good Servant Award. Rather, we throw ourselves upon the mercy of God and plead his promises in Christ. It is not like getting a diploma at graduation exercises, the deserved and expected reward for being the good Christians that we are. Least of all it is the expected reward for being the kind of good Christians who are indifferent to the reward.
The last point is pertinent to those Christians who make so much of being saved, or justified, by faith alone. What should one say in response? I can only give my testimony. When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed the blood of Jesus Christ. I will not lead to any work that I have done, although I will thank God that he has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ, knowing that the merits of Mary and the Saints are all from him; and for their company, their example, and their prayers throughout my earthly life I will give everlasting thanks. I will not plead that I had faith, for some times I was unsure of my faith, and in any event that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own. I will not plead that I held the correct understanding of "justification by faith alone," although I will thank God that he led me to know ever more fully the great truth that much misunderstood the formulation was intended to protect. Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced, whatever strength I have received from the company of the Saints, whatever understanding I have attained of God and his ways -- these and all other gifts received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry into that heavenly kingdom, I will, with Dysmas, look to Christ and Christ alone.
Then I hope to hear him say, "Today you will be with me in paradise," as I hope with all my being... he will say to all.
As the letter to the Hebrews puts it, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
"Assurance" means conviction, confidence, trust. Assurance is not cognitive certitude; it is not the certain knowledge that it is impossible that what I am confident will happen will not happen. If I had such certitude, we would not be instructed to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Faith as hope is confidence in God's faithfulness. We do not presumptuously stride up to the judgment throne confident of being handed the Good Servant Award. Rather, we throw ourselves upon the mercy of God and plead his promises in Christ. It is not like getting a diploma at graduation exercises, the deserved and expected reward for being the good Christians that we are. Least of all it is the expected reward for being the kind of good Christians who are indifferent to the reward.
The last point is pertinent to those Christians who make so much of being saved, or justified, by faith alone. What should one say in response? I can only give my testimony. When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed the blood of Jesus Christ. I will not lead to any work that I have done, although I will thank God that he has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ, knowing that the merits of Mary and the Saints are all from him; and for their company, their example, and their prayers throughout my earthly life I will give everlasting thanks. I will not plead that I had faith, for some times I was unsure of my faith, and in any event that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own. I will not plead that I held the correct understanding of "justification by faith alone," although I will thank God that he led me to know ever more fully the great truth that much misunderstood the formulation was intended to protect. Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced, whatever strength I have received from the company of the Saints, whatever understanding I have attained of God and his ways -- these and all other gifts received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry into that heavenly kingdom, I will, with Dysmas, look to Christ and Christ alone.
Then I hope to hear him say, "Today you will be with me in paradise," as I hope with all my being... he will say to all.
The Pope's AIDS comments in Africa
I read the Pope's comments on AIDS in his news conference while he was on the airplane travelling to Africa, and was rather surprised that they elicited such publicity worldwide. I'm not really surprised, but this article does a good job of explaining the Catholic Church's position on AIDS and what grounds those who criticize it have (and don't have) concerning it. Michael Czerny, SJ article.
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