I Was Wrong

 A fair while back, I did my best to reassure any rad-trad readers and others who love the Traditional Latin Mass that there was no reason to fear Pope Francis was going to be hostile to the liturgy they loved.

Clearly, I was wrong. See here.  I apologize.  Traditionis Custondes is surprisingly contrary to subsidiarity, further limiting the liberty of priests, and expanding the authority of bishops.  But I still say we should pray, hope, and don't worry, and that we should be open to how the Spirit will use Pope Francis.

And yes, I am going over my blog today.

Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry

Things are getting weird and bad in Holy Mother Church.  People are fretting all over St. Blog's.  Anxiety is higher than I can ever recall.  I would be lying if I said it has not touched me, for it has.  But I say to all you who fret (including myself), "Pray, hope, and don't worry.  Worry is useless.  God is merciful and hears your prayer."

I've seen the posts, here and there.  They say things like, "This crisis is new and unprecedented!  Never before has Holy Mother Church taken such a blow!"

That may be so.  Some of this stuff may have never happened before.  That doesn't mean it has taken God by surprise.  If you have faith in Him, then you know it hasn't.  He knows what is going on, He has a plan, and He has people picked out who will be able, with His grace, to step up and fix whatever problem is besetting your thoughts.  God likes making His power evident by using weak people who can do nothing apart from Him.  That could include you, or me.  So be ready, and be of good courage.  If God is for us, who can be against us?  Isn't His grace sufficient for us?

So, pray, hope, and don't worry.  Worry is useless.  God is merciful, and hears your prayer.

Also, remember that Holy Mother Church belongs to our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Contrary to various Protestant histories, she wasn't stolen by Constantine (or anyone else) in the ancient world, and she hasn't been stolen from Him now.  He is ready, willing, and able to protect His own.  She remains the pillar and foundation of truth.  And the Gates of Hell will not stand against her.  If the situation seems beyond hope, remember that we have a saint for that, who is patron (among other things) of this blog, and my life.

So, pray, hope, and don't worry.  Worry is useless.  God is merciful, and hears your prayer.

And don't neglect the small stuff, like Eucharistic Adoration and church maintenance.  The volunteers who polish the brass on the altar, or repair Father's vestments, or mow the grass, or prune the bushes, do far more material good for Holy Mother Church than all the bloviation in the blogosphere, especially mine.

So, pray, hope, and don't worry.  Worry is useless.  God is merciful, and hears your prayer.

Popes of Christian Unity

There's a video that's been making the rounds; I came across it via the Anchoress.

Fr. Z has been calling Papa Ben "the Pope of Christian Unity" for many years, because of his initiatives to bring back into the Church every Orthodox, Anglican, and SSPX member, both lay and clergy. I have been tremendously excited by it all. As these people return, they will help make all things liturgical new, something the Church desperately needs, and I ask God that those initiatives continue and bear much fruit.

But this video demonstrates that Papa Francis, too, is a Pope of Christian Unity. And though it is not my intention to disparage any of the more mainline Protestant denominations, I think that Papa Francis is reaching out through the Charismatic Catholic Renewal (and between Rev. Know-It-All (who wrote a 15 part series on it) and Oswald Sobrino, I'm convinced the CCR is God's work) to invite back into the Church the most dynamic and energetic of our separated bretheren. This is really exciting to me. While I have no doubt that we need a renewal of the liturgy, we also need a renewal of evangelical zeal. After all, "both/and" is the typical Catholic way to go /|;^)

One final thing. The only people who would deny that great evil has been abroad in the world for many years -- since Pope Leo XIII penned his famous Prayer to St. Michael in 1886 -- are fools and collaborators. But where evil abounds, grace does also. God is sending us the grace we need, particularly through our popes. Be not afraid. Or if you prefer, "Pray, hope, and don't worry."

Science! versus God

Science, history, and logic (of which math is a subset — logic applied to numbers) are all tools for discovering truth. They complement each other. The scientific method depends on logic and often also on math, both of which precede it, and neither of which it can prove. Using the scientific method to prove logic or math is is to pretend that a structure supports its foundation, rather than the other way around.

There is not one scientific (or historical) theory which cannot be disproven with sufficient contradictory evidence. In fact, disprovability is one of the prerequisites of a scientific theory or hypothesis. Contradictory evidence has proven huge heaps of scientific theories wrong. I fully expect many more to be proven wrong in the future. Current scientific theory is always only our best understanding of the natural universe, based on the logical examination of the evidence we’ve collected. The same cannot be said of logic or math.

Science cannot prove history. It can only support historical evidence, by demonstrating that it has the properties of an artifact of a given time, or impeach it, by demonstrating that it does not. The primary forms of historical evidence are and will always be documents and testimony. The methods used to measure the reliability of conflicting testimonies and documents are not, strictly speaking, scientific.

I have no problem with the idea that science can’t explain &/or prove everything. In fact, I have no problem with science depending on unproven axioms, e.g., the law of non-contradiction. The scientific method is meant to discern the laws governing the physical, natural universe. It was originally an outgrowth of theology. The thinking was, “We have a reasonable and logical god. The universe is the work of his mind, and so it, too, should be reasonable and logical. By exploring how it functions, we can hope to better understand the mind which created it.”

Then Roger Bacon came along and declared that if science couldn’t make us immortal, it was worthless. He is the one who changed science from a field of pure inquiry into one where you looked for things you could engineer into wealth and power.

I don’t believe in a god of the gaps. I believe in one God who is three persons, one of which became an entirely human man and entered the world he’d created as such while retaining his full divinity, and then submitted to death at our hands, to pay for our crimes against him which separated us from him, so that we could experience, share, and return his love for eternity. I believe in a God that is Love and Truth and Beauty, whose essence, powers, abilities, methods, and means are beyond the ability of limited human minds to ever fully imagine, let alone understand.

Scientific inquiry will never affect the doctrines or dogmas of the Catholic Church. The scientific method is as useful in theological inquiries as a freight scale is in measuring distance. If you want logical evidence for the existence of God, I refer you to St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theologica. If you're looking for historical proof, I refer you to C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. If you want personal, experiential proof, do as atheist John C. Wright did. But don't ask for scientific proof. Science is as useful in exploring the existence of God as a Harley Davidson is in exploring the Marianas Trench.

Science is only a tool, created by men and like all our creations, prone to failure. It is not a god. Do not let it become one for you.

Another PRISM post

Mozilla has launched an anti-PRISM campaign at StopWatching.Us. I signed their open letter with my real name. And I know that by admitting that, I'm giving the government a double-check means of determining my real identity. But I've always assumed that anything I say here can be traced back to me, given sufficiemt resources.

Claire Wolfe said at the close of the last century that it was too late to reform the US government, but too early to start shooting the bastards. I wonder if she's changed her mind about that latter part, yet.

I've long been critical of the US government, but I've never been seditious or proposed violence. Long before the government could cross any line past which I could have felt justified at opening fire on any of them, I became Catholic, and learned that martyrdom was the better response, both in its morality and in its effectiveness. If you shoot the bastards, they use that as an excuse for escalating their tyranny. If they martyr you, they cannot -- at least, not to themselves.

Blogrollin' #109 (I checked)

I found Charming Disarray's traditionalist post on Papa Francis through Pentimento. The great bit is at the end:

But I will say that if we have a pope who will demonstrate through example that appearance matters less than internal disposition, then it stikes me that that is exactly what our current image-obsessed culture needs. And people think God doesn't know what He's doing.

I'm not a traddie myself. I have sympathy for them, and I think they're doing good things for the Church -- the liturgy IS important. I also think that while the Extraordinary Form probably isn't important to Papa Francis the way it is to Papa Ben, he has no history of hostility towards it, and I don't see any reason why he'd approve of any either. I offer the concerned traditionalists some advice from St. Padre Pio: "Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer." And from myself: be open to how the Spirit will use Papa Francis.

Blogrollin'

Salute to Fr. George David Byers, of Holy Souls Hermitage. I wept, and choked up with emotion. Watch it through to the end.



Additionally: Read John C. Wright's excellent time-travel story. It too delighted and moved me so, so deeply.

To Aid Pornchai Maximillian Moontri

If you do not read These Stone Walls, you should. Fr. Gordon Macrae is a very compelling writer.

This week, Fr. Gordon has a guest poster -- his cellmate, Pornchai Maximillian Moontri, a recent convert to Holy Mother Church. He may be released shortly from prison. When this happens, he will be immediately deported to Thailand, the land of his birth. He knows nobody there. Those who have said before that they would help him when he arrives there have not communicated recently.

I ask any of my readers who have any contact within Thailand to make use of them. See if you can find any help for Pornchai where he has to go. If you do, contact Fr. Gordon. Even if you can't, please spread this message. Somebody somewhere knows somebody who can extend to Pornchai the Christian charity he needs.

A Splendid Course!

First, go and read The Screwtape Letters and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The article introduces a course that contrasts Screwtape's recommendations to Wormwood with relevant sections of the Catechism.

Buy the Catechism

or browse it online.

buy The Screwtape Letters

or browse it online.

Download Curriculum PDF

EUREKA!!

One of my heroes is Dr. Stanley Williams, PhD. When his series, "Trying to Fly With One Wing" was posted at Catholic Exchange, I was enthralled. I sought it eagerly, as it seemed one of the finest bits of apologetics I had ever encountered. Eventually it disappeared from CE, and then from the entire web, as far as I could tell.

But now I have found it again! First at CatholicLane, where they are up to part 4, and then after some googling, on a blog devoted entirely to the series. I am thrilled to find it available once again, and I'm making sure it's in my sidebars.

Testing for God

Jennifer F. has been taking part in a series of interviews on The Cynical Christian. In the second interview, she laments the lack of logical proofs used to evangelize atheists, but also says that she doesn't think that there is much anyone can say to convince an atheist. In this post she speaks more about effective witness, and how it is more important to live a life of charity than to marshal effective arguments.

I would say, rather, that no argument from reason will be convincing if not made with love. But if your heart and life are conformed to Christ, you might suggest one of the Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To, in this case, "God, Prove to me that you exist."

Here is how I think it ought to be set up: "You're a person of reason, right? So among other things, you have to admit that you don't know everything and could be wrong, and you want to know the truth, no matter what it is, right? You've asked me to prove God's existence to you, and you're right, that I can't. But God can.

"Well, let's presume that the God that the Catholic Church proclaims is real. That is, He loves us all without limit or exception, knows everything, can do whatever He wants, and made us to know Him as well as we are able, and love Him as much as we can. Now, if all of those things are true, you can test for His existence.

"Silently, within the vaults of your mind, say to Him, 'God, I've heard the claims that the Catholic Church has made about you, and I don't believe it. It's utterly ridiculous. Prove to me that I am wrong.'

"Now, if He does not do this for an honest seeker of the truth, it means one or more of the following things:

• He doesn't care.
• He doesn't know.
• He can't prove it.
• He doesn't exist.
• Or, the seeker doesn't really want Him to prove His existence to you.

"If you have been proclaiming with complete certainty God's non-existence for years, my money would be on the last one. See, to be sincere in such a request, you would have to overcome years of certainty of non-existance and approach the test with the expectation that you could be wrong. And if He loves you without limit, that means He would not compel you to believe without your consent. Further, if He is omniscient and omnipotent, there's no reason to think that He would provide you with a proof to convince everyone, but rather only you. It's not like doing so would be a strain on His resources, and He ought to provide you with a proof that cannot be used to compel belief in others."

If this test would be convincing, it would be from God's work, and not my own.

God's Plan

The Spirit works through Catholic Exchange. Perhaps not 100% of the time for 100% of people, but often enough for me to thank God for leading me to this community.

Today, God helped put a couple of articles on the front page. First, this one, from Thomas Wenski, Bishop of Orlando's first appearance on CE:

In the prologue to John's Gospel (John 1:1-18),read at Mass during Christmas Day, the complete fullness of God's plan of salvation is spread out before us. The One who was with God at the beginning before the whole word and who, as God, created, brought into life and enlightened everything in the world, has entered into the world - and he does so not in a grand style that would intimidate us, but in humility. He comes in the poverty of Bethlehem, born of a woman. He comes to us small and weak, so that we can draw near to him without fear, so that we can embrace him without hesitation.

On to Chuck Colson, with this article on Catholic Exchange. Here's the cool bits:

It is through the Incarnation God sets His grand plan in motion. He invades planet earth, establishing His reign through Christ's earthly ministry. And then Christ leaves behind an occupying force, His Church, which is to carry on the work of redemption until His return and the kingdom's final triumph.

It just struck me as so cool, to be part of God's occupying forces, an army waging war for salvation through love! Truly is the wisdom of God folly to the wise!

And if the Protestants ever stop using the term, "Salvation Army," I hope we pick it up.

Blogrollin'

Salute to Amy Welborn at Historical Christian for tipping me to Jogger Mom. In this post, she reflects on doctrinal infallibility and how it helped lead her to cross the Tiber. The crux of the argument she makes for infallibility is here:

Papal infallibility is the machinery that puts truth into place within the Church. Catholics believe in apostolic succession- that is, Peter was the first head of the Church, given this authority by Jesus, and his authority has been passed down to each successive head, who we call popes today. The other piece of this is that bishops, when in union with the pope, also have authority and infallibility, like modern-day apostles. This authority comes from Jesus, not any special power of their own. Jesus clearly granted Peter authority in Matt. 16:14-19...

Here Peter is singled out among the disciples - he alone is shown a truth by God the Father (that Jesus is the Christ), and is given the 'keys of the kingdom of heaven' and some pretty hefty authority.

Blogrollin'

Ma Beck is not on my blogroll, but part of being a member of St. Blog's Parish is that one often gets connected to stuff by other members. In this case, the salute goes to The Orthometer. Unlike him, I have nothing to add to Ma Beck's Obligatory Hallowe'en Post.

Regarding Doctrine

It amazes me that people gripe about the arrogance of Catholics and our infallible doctrine. They often claim it's a form of intolerance. But it's a necessary teaching of Christianity; it follows inevitably from a number of other doctrines that few mainline Christian denominations will do without. Here they are:

1. God loves us all.
2. God gave us free will.
3. We are separated from God by sin.
4. God devised ONE means by which that separation could be repaired (His plan of salvation), which includes the things we must believe and how we must live.
5. God desires that all of us be saved.
6. God can do all things.

From 2 and 3, we can conclude that God expected some of us to corrupt the One plan of salvation mentioned in 4. But from 1, 5, and 6, we can conclude that God would also ensure that His plan of Salvation in 4 would be preserved from corruption, and furthermore, that it would be widely available and widely recognized. In other words, God would ensure there was an authority on earth that would preserve and promote His one plan of salvation.

Incidentally, that describes the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on doctrine regarding faith and morals, the ones that describe what we must believe and how we must live if we are to be saved: that they are protected from human error or tampering by grace, also known as the power of the Holy Spirit. The technical term for this is infallibility.

To be infalliable, doctrine must be catholic, that is, universal. Both the teaching authority and the application must be universal. Thus, the marks of infallible doctrine are any of these:

1. The Pope, as successor to Peter, teaching the whole world, provides infallible doctrine.

2. Pontifical councils likewise teach infallible doctrine.

3. When all the bishops in Apostolic Succession who are in communion with the Holy See of Rome teach a doctrine, it is infallible.

Also, infallible doctrine always is teaching about salvation, which is why it is always only teaching about faith and morals. Nothing else is important enough for this sort of intervention.

If you look around for Catholic apologetics, you'll find all sorts of Biblical justification explaining how Christ gave authority over the Church here on Earth to Peter, and by extension, his legitimate successors. But if I'm going to post that here, it's going to be later.

edit: I want to thank Shakespeare's Cobbler for his expansion and clarifications.

The Dawkins Delusion

I found this comment on an article on Catholic Exchange that I liked so much that I am quoting it in its entirety.

I think we are being bamboozled by the Dawkins Delusion. I have never seen Mr. Dawkins, all I know about him is from a particularly inane book that has his name on the cover. How do we even know he is a real person, not some media creation like Milli Vanilli? No one has proved his existence to my satisfaction. I will not accept eye witness accounts of people who claim to know him or to have seen and heard him, nor will I judge him by the book associated with his name, because I have no proof it was issued on his authority. If I don't believe he exists obviously I don't have to believe anything the book says. The credentials claimed by this "author" include claims of associations with prestigious universities and top names in science. It is entirely absurd to suppose that anyone with those credentials could have propounded such an illogically framed and eratically defended thesis. No, I refuse to be deluded. There is no Richard Dawkins. He is a figment of your imagination.
Submitted by asquared on Sat, 10/13/2007 - 2:13am.