Some reading

Mormons are not permitted access to Roman Catholic baptismal records. For obvious reasons.

In case you suffered religious abuse this weekend, and were subjected to a sermon about mothers rather than the Feast of Pentecost, go read Alan's reflection on the day. For penance and healing and such.

(Once again, say it with me - I am a Church calendar fundamentalist. Very good.)

Mothers are wonderful things, and my own mother is quite wonderful. It would just be a much better idea to honor them on a liturgically appropriate day, like one of the several commemorations for Our Lady. Why, we could even pass out bumper stickers in the parish hall that say, "Respect Your Mother," and kill two birds with one stone. Um, as it were.

Recovering the lost language of lament: Michael Spencer asks, "Can a Christian Sing the Blues?" Make sure you follow this link to Michael Card's lectures on the topic at Southern Seminary.

And if you're following the discussion on why the whole question of contemporary/traditional worship is bad (mmkay?), Bryan reflects on a line in the Mass. Okay, I think that's what the topic is about. Not everybody else. But just to be fair, here's a word from a friend who does believe that creativity has a place in the liturgy.

To Live and Die in the Catholic Faith

Cardinal Kasper recently challenged Anglicans to ask themselves whether they belong to the ancient Churches of the first millennium, or the Protestant churches of the 16th century. The Dean of Nashotah House, Robert S. Munday, responds with a short post on the nature of Catholicity (think Vincentian Canon) and the nature of Anglican protesting.

Earrings

When I don't have time to write, I just tell you to visit Michael Spencer? What's that about? But it's an occasion for a little rant and I wonder what the rest of you might think about it.

At the end of his Internet Monk Radio Podcast #66, Spencer starts criticising the propensity of many folks to fail to see that the Bible is about Jesus. He's recently spoken with someone who was bemoaning the fact that a couple of "great Christian young men" in his family had gotten their ears pierced. the iMonk says,

How long do you have to be around the Bible and church and sermons and prayer meetings before it finally gets through to you that Jesus isn't concerned with that kind of rule keeping? ...

There's no way you can read the gospels and [see] Jesus nagging people about getting tattoos and getting piercings and playing cards and going to the movies, you just don't see that... That whole trip, of the Bible as a set of rules, a set of principles and it's really important that we conform our lives to all these principles, and Christ isn't at the center, that's a dead end.

Which leads us to my rant.

Even coming from northeastern Kentucky, I am continually shocked to learn about how much religious people care about the way other folks dress. Is it possible for me to say with charity, that anyone who's going to be interested in my ears cannot possibly have anything interesting to say about Christ?

My thought is that if someone has been formed as the kind of person for whom wearing earrings or not is a key gospel or lifestyle choice, they really cannot have a good grip on what a gospel lifestyle is.

And of course, I have four earrings. I'm not sure if anybody I know under the age of 50 ever notices, but I know it seems to infuriate anybody over 60. And frankly, I enjoy that, but it's certainly not why I wear them...

Do Bishops Really Matter?

Brad Drell unravels Episcopalian double-speak.

Update: Captain Sacrament translates for Brad Drell.

Orthodox/traditionalist/reasserting believers within the Episcopal Church (TEC) have been complaining that the majority of TEC's leadership has been creating bishops that do things that bishops ought not do, such as engage marital-type unions with same-sex partners, perform the rites of Christian marriage for same-sex partners, or deny the divinity or sinlessness of Jesus the Christ. When they do complain, the liberals/heterodox/reappraisers respond that the office of bishop doesn't really matter - the bishop is nothing more than the local leader of a local church, and it's no one else's business who is elected to someone else's diocese.

When conservatives respond that, no, really, the office of bishop is a symbol of unity in the wider church, and that bishops themselves have a responsibility to exemplify core Christian ethical commitments, this assertion is simply denied by the other side. The office of bishop isn't really meant to be all that.

The rest of the bishops of the Anglican Communion has called upon the House of Bishops of TEC to make some Difficult and Important Decisions. The liberals complain that under "our polity" (a fancy word for "according to our interpretation of the rules we done wrote") bishops are simply not that important, and that the EPISCOPAL CHURCH is not actually governed by bishops, and so the HOUSE OF BISHOPS is not constitutionally authorized to make decisions for the entire EPISCOPAL Church.

You were supposed to laugh at that, it's really funny.

The joke, you see, is that the word EPISCOPAL means "governed by bishops." Everyone go look it up. I'll wait.

The argument is that, like the Southern Baptist Convention, the Episcopal Church is not a true and complete decision making body until one week in the summer when everybody gets together to vote.

That wasn't a joke, but it's surely very funny.

As far as liberals in TEC are concerned, bishops govern the Church like the Queen rules England. Just for fun, just for show, and only to justify pretty gowns.

Until... somebody violates the authority that a liberal bishops wants to assert. When another bishop sends a missionary priest without diocesan permission, or a parallel Anglican jurisdiction is set up to replace that of an apostatized diocese, then the offended bishop rails about the ancient, venerable EPISCOPAL polity of the Anglican Communion and "of this Church," blah, blah, blah. Or when they can brag about having the first partnered gay bishop or the first girl Archbishop, and so on. Then the episcopal office seems to really matter.

The point: when somebody says, "it's not in our polity," that's a cop-out.

ConsumerChurch

Michael Spencer has made some comments about a subject we tackled a few weeks ago:

If our great need is to be delivered from the wrath of God, then Jesus is our mediator. But what if our big problem is losing ten pounds? Finding a bigger house? Paying for college? Getting out of debt? What if the guilt that concerns us is the guilt of not having a pool like our neighbor? What if the center of our prayers is the moral life of our kids or our physical health? Do we actually need a crucified Jesus for any of these things?

A few weeks ago I was at a gathering of people from all over America, many from various ethnic communities. The preacher of the day was a Southern White evangelical. As he preached, I noted when the audience responded with “amens,” etc. It was universally on any statement that referred to material blessings, or the idea of prosperity. On statements referring to Jesus as atoning savior, there was almost no reaction.

The prosperity gospel isn’t on the fringe any more. As Willimon says, churches now advertise that they “have what you are looking for.” What is the average American looking for? A bloody savior to deliver from the wrath of God? Or success in life?

Read the entire post here, and make sure you read this short article (pdf) by William Willimon, "It's Hard to be Seeker-Sensitive when You Work for Jesus" (thanks, iMonk!).

And if you missed my essay the first time around, the point was that I accused a local church plant of being the ecclesial equivalent of internet p**n (that was to avoid comment spam).

Oh, and will someone please go deal with Noakes?

Around the Web

Eastertide

Antony offers some Kurt Vonnegut clips.

An Easter hymn by Kim Fabricus.

Telling the story, from Selva Oscura.

Sherwood says no to the Christian Disneyland, and God bless him for it.

Ben Myers reminds us of Rowan Willliams' Easter sermon. It'll take you five minutes, and it's a wonderful point.

"So: if we can accept the unwelcome picture of us and our world that Good Friday offers, we are, in the strangest way, set free to hear what Easter says. Give up the struggle to be innocent and the hope that God will proclaim that you were right and everyone else wrong. Simply ask for whatever healing it is that you need, whatever grace and hope you need to be free, then step towards your neighbour; Easter reveals a God who is ready to give you that grace and to walk with you. In St Paul’s bold words in his Letter to the Romans (11.32), ‘In making all mankind prisoners to disobedience, God’s purpose was to show mercy to all mankind.’"

Amen, amen.

Thursday Links

Eastertide

From Fr. David Baumann:

The battle today is not so much between truth and falsehood. It is much deeper than that. It is between joy and cruelty.

Oh, and depending on what you're looking for ... maybe we're not the kind of folks you'd want to find? Just sayin'... (HT: StretchyChurch)

Jon reminisces about his Trappist retreat: "Monica Lewinsky and the Monastery." Oh, and this is terrible, but you were warned: "The Great Hamster Disaster of '69"...

Michael Lee offers a thought-provoking meditation on Eucharistic celebration at Addison Road: "The Words of Institution"

Baptists and Communion

Lent

Thoughts on Weekly Communion from the Internet Monk.

I had no idea that he would say what he says...

"To come to the Lord’s table is to return to that night when Jesus gave the supper to his disciples. It is to be reinvited to believe, to be reinvited into the community of Jesus’ followers. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are literal moments from the ministry of Jesus, re-lived and re-joined with all the power of that moment."

Read the whole thing.

Monday Links

Advent
John of Damascus

I heart Georgetown College:

Georgetown College is making a promise to five Leestown Middle School students:

Participate in a Baptist church's academic excellence program, get good grades, attend school faithfully and there will be a $40,000 scholarship waiting for each of you when you graduate from high school.

The historically white Baptist school is partnering with a predominantly black Lexington congregation, agreeing to award the scholarships to five top graduates of the First Baptist Church Bracktown's tutoring and mentoring program.

College President William Crouch will officially unveil the scholarships at Sunday morning's worship service.

Read the rest at the Herald-Leader.

Katie on criticism: "Obvious."

Richard Collins offered a great illustration of the importance of the Christian sacraments a while back.

Rowan Williams had a nice interview with the Church Times just before his visit with Pope Benedict XVI. Some highlights:

... if the Pope asked you why you persisted in remaining an Anglican, what would you say to him?

I’d say that I don’t believe the essential theological structure of the Church is pyramidal: that it has one absolute touchstone embodied in a single office. I’m certainly prepared to believe that there’s a role for the Petrine ministry of conciliation, interpretation, and mediation in the Church. I don’t see that as an executive centre; so I’d start from what would historically be called a conciliarist position.

And the thing that always held me back from becoming a Roman Catholic at the points when I thought about it is that I can’t quite swallow papal infallibility. I have visions of saying to Pope Benedict: “I don’t believe you’re infallible” — I hope it doesn’t come to that. [Laughs]

That’s how I’d answer, I think: that I’m wary of loading too much on to an individual office.

That’s why you’re not a Roman Catholic. Why are you an Anglican?

I’m an Anglican because this is — it’s what I learnt in Sunday school, really — this is the Church Catholic in this place, gathered around the word and the sacrament, exercising a canonically continuous, recognisable form of the threefold ministry, structurally slotting in with how Catholic Christianity works.

If you were starting from scratch, do you think the Anglican model works better than the Roman one?

Pwff! — by what imaginable standards would you answer that, I wonder? I don’t know, but the argument I’d give, I think, is not unrelated to what Vincent Donovan says in his book Christianity Rediscovered, responding to mission in East Africa, where he says, in a sense, you’ve got to let Churches grow out of their local setting, discover the need for recognisability, and build outwards from that. He describes the process by which some of his converts in East Africa almost invented the idea of Catholic ministry for themselves, the idea that if this is the kind of community that we are, if this is what the eucharist means, then we need that to be recognisable, and we need to know that, when we travel, it’s the same Church that we belong to, gradually accumulating like that. I think that’s a bit more Anglican than someone saying, “We’ll decide from the centre what the shape will be.”

And on the Eucharist (of course)...

I went a few months ago to give at talk at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Southwark, just down the road. And, interestingly, I was asked what I believed about the eucharist. I think my questioner was a bit surprised when I said: “Of course I believe in the real presence. I believe that Christ is active in the sacrament, and that it’s not something we do, as an act of mental remembrance. And I think he rather had the impression that that was all Anglicans ever believed. I suspect a number of Roman Catholics do think that.

... What the celebrant thinks is neither here nor there, in one way. What’s done is done. And I’m tempted sometimes to say, however much a celebrant might want to keep the real presence out, it’s still capable of coming in.

Ha! That's something Hauerwas says, too...

Ken Collins teaches us to make and use an Advent wreath.

Phil the CatholicGeek offers us some words from Chrysostom.

Technorati Tags:georgetown college, lexington, georgetown, rowan williams, benedict xvi, sacraments, eucharist, anglicanism, advent, patristics

Just Things

Ordinary Time

The CatholicGeek has some thoughts on silence today.

Ditto.

I'm working at LTS today until about three in the afternoon, if any of you BSK critters want to say hello.

My dad doesn't like to wear his glasses. As a result, he can't tell the difference between chapstick, a sharpie pen, and a highlighter. Think on that for a moment.

My family Thanksgiving was fun.

You might have seen the recent article in the Louisville Courier-Journal about the city's evangelical megachurches. Something I wish they'd discussed more was the emerging practice of creating megachurch franchises out of existing smaller churches. A friend told me a few months ago of how his parents' former church (they now attended the megachurch) had been given an "offer they couldn't refuse" - they didn't have enough money to keep full time pastors, so the megachurch was willing to buy out their property and give them a full-time minister, so long as they dissolved their governing board, let their deacons go, didn't baptize anyone. All baptisms would take place at the megachurch's main campus.

It's franchising. Seriously.

And don't get me started on Witherington's "cult of personality" comment. He's dead on.

Update 1. Oh, and check out this glowing review of Tom Wright's Simply Christian and The Last Word in the Christian Century.

Update 2. It gets better. You want to read this interview with Barbara R. Rossing, author of The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation.

What should Christians be saying about eschatology and what should ministers be teaching?

There is a sense of an end in the New Testament. I don't think the New Testament affirms a world without end. To the extent that that notion has crept into our hymnody it's a mistake. Nonetheless, our job is to care for the world and to believe that this physical earth is not about to be destroyed.

What is it that is coming to an end? That's the question. In Revelation what is described as coming to an end is primarily the oikoumene, which I translate as "imperial world," the world under Roman rule. Rome laid claim to the whole oikoumene—the lands and the seas, world without end. It's the word that's used in the Gospel of Luke's Christmas story, for example, in which Caesar Augustus decrees that the whole world should be enrolled in a census. Revelation proclaims that this imperial world must come to an end.

If we translate oikoumene as "imperial world" in a verse such as Revelation 3:10, then the "hour of trial that is coming upon the whole oikoumene" is not at all what rapture proponents claim—a general end-times tribulation that God will inflict during the earth's final seven years—but rather a courtroom scene in which God puts the empire on trial.

Two other Greek words, for earth (ge) and world (kosmos), are used more positively in the New Testament. A key verse is Revelation 11:18 in which God says, "I'm going to destroy the destroyers of the earth," not "I'm going to destroy the earth." The word for earth there is ge, which is used some 80 times in Revelation, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. God created the earth and still loves it, even though it also falls under judgment. The passages that refer to oikoumene in the New Testament are all negative. That is not case with ge or kosmos.

What do my Greek-reading readers think?

Technorati Tags: louisville, christianity, megachurches, baptists, thanksgiving, spirituality

Monday Links

William Temple

Antony's Attic: Imperial History of the Middle East

Ben Myers: African Creed

Richard at Sub Ratione Dei checks out Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacificism from Unexpected Quarters, and reviews Faith and Politics After Christendom: The Church as Movement for Anarchy.

The Internet Monk, Michael Spencer, has recommended Olsen's Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities.

Also, Sven realizes that "the biblical way to defeat evil and violence is by...er...violence." Way to go, Wayne Grudem.

The Internet Monk offers wise words regarding the Haggard controversy here and especially here:

Many of today’s pastors are entrepreneurs, not spiritual men at all. The are running organizations, living in front of an audience, talking about style and technology. They are shallow, ambitious and over-worked. Their families are on the stage. They are supposed to fill a dozen major roles. They are celebrities and motivational speakers. Peterson rightly points out that God is merciful to show us this is not what a pastor is to be or what a church is to do. Lord, deliver us from what we want, and show us true shepherds and sheep of Christ.

There’s a reason for all the ministerial moral failure: they are burned out middle aged men who don’t know what is happening to them. ...

I don't think that a married Catholic priesthood would lessen the incidences of abused children or ministerial affairs, though Witherington is trying to defend that notion this week (HT: Ben). If he could have had a woman, he wouldn't have had a kid? No. However, he does make some good points about the need to reverse a church culture that sees sexuality generally as bad:

Its time for the whole church to stop sending mixed messages like "Sex is dirty and unholy, save it for the one you really love and marry". The message needs to be "sex is a beautiful and precious gift of God. There is nothing remotely unholy about it. Indeed it is such a precious gift that it should indeed be saved for the context of unconditional love and an unlimited life time commitment." Unfortunately, however this great truth about human intimacy is one even much of the church and even too much of the clergy can't handle as things now stand. So what shall we do about this malaise? Inquiring minds want to know.

I maintain that there's a lot of house cleaning along those lines to be done in evangelical churches before we start fixing up Rome.

Can we say also that Haggard's problem is that his church has held him to an unrealistic standard of monogamy in a stiflingly heteronormative culture? No, I didn't think so.

Technorati Tags: ted haggard, calvinism, arminianism, catholic priests, christian pacifism

The Black Death... and some links

Ordinary Time

I'm still in Colorado this morning, suffering from a bit of a cold. It's been a good time, though. I slept and watched Shaun of the Dead yesterday afternoon while my family visited the local aquarium, but managed to get myself off the couch for buffalo burgers. It was pretty sweet. I think we're visiting the US Mint this morning, and I think my sister wants to work in a Celestial Seasonings factory tour before dropping us at the airport around lunchtime.

I've been reading John Kelly's The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. I enjoy how HarperCollins thought it necessary to put that little explanation in the book's subtitle. It's pretty interesting. General mortality during Europe's plague outbreaks was about a quarter to a third, but in some places could reach 40 or 50%. That's incomprehensible to me. It made me quite a bit more grateful for the life that I live; I mean, I just have a cold, and that's that. When I go back home, my roommates will likely be alive, and none of them turned into zombies.

And that's just the way I like it.

The Legal Alien at Gladly Suffering Fools has posted cute photos of his "filthy beggar" children.

Josh Williams discusses his journey "From Guilt to Grace."

According to the American Family Association of Kentucky, you should vote entirely based upon superstition, rather than ethical reflection. Frank Lockwood: "Did Clinton Save America from God's Wrath?" I've told you guys why Baptists hate Clinton, right? 'Cause he got away with things that they don't even get to think about. It's envy, not righteous indignation. Tee hee!

Oh, and here we go... Gladly Suffering Fools: "Homophilia."

Speaking of which, Geoff at Sparkgrass is Not Happy about about early reports of the new guidelines for ministering to gay and lesbian Catholics. I've not read them yet, but if you want to get a jump on me, get to it.

Technorati Tags: bill clinton, kentucky, colorado, buffalo, black death, gay catholics, halloween, baptists

Disconnected Rants and Links

Ordinary Time

CNN: Teen Battles State Over Cancer Treatment. Jesse put this one across my desk over the weekend; apparently, a 16 year old in Virginia could be forced by the government to go through a second round of chemotherapy after the first failed. Starchild Abraham Cherrix (huh?) has Hodgkins Disease, and while the normal survival rate is 80%, it's far less - between 33 and 50% over 5 years - when the initial round of chemotherapy is unsuccessful. He wants to try some herbalist treatment or another and take his chances rather than go through another, stronger round of chemo that doctors can't even say would probably work. Arthur "Caplan, [a] University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, said it seems likely the judge will order Abraham back to the hospital for chemotherapy and radiation, but said "the reality-check question" is whether a tall 16-year-old can be made to cooperate. "Are they going to shackle him? There is a physical reality that has to be grappled with here."

I've never been a cancer patient, but I've been hospitalized before, and had to consider "long term prospects." I'd have to side with the kid in this: even if it's a matter of "giving up" (and it's not quite that), should he be allowed to do so? Will they take him into custody at a juvenile facility? Will they administer chemotherapy in the medical ward there? What would it look like to force a young adult to take cancer treatment?

Any other perspectives? The family's back in court on this today...

Josh is getting snarky about church signs.


And at Ben Myer's Faith and Theology blog, we have "Theology for Beginners":
1. Faith
2. Theology
3. Gospel

Mike Aquilina recommends "8 Books on Ancient Christian Art" and an online tour of the Egyptian Coptic Church.

J. Patrick Briscoe suggests how we might help the terrorists win.

Rob the Cuban's talking about the historical Jesus, so of course I'm all over that.

Make sure you scroll down and read Katie's essay.

Okay, time's up, gotta get work done.

Technorati Tags: theology, terrorism, historical jesus, church signs, egypt, civil rights, cherrix, medical ethics, cancer treatment

Mission 101 (and some links)

Ordinary Time

Mission 101

Given the tenor of some of my theological background, the word "syncretism" is still something that gets me a little excited. While I don't really believe that there is some "pure," non-incarnate form of the good news about Jesus (since it hinges on the fact of the Incarnation itself!), we could all do with a lot more suspicion regarding how we understand truth. The good news about Jesus had an original "host culture," and if we want to talk about "truth," we need to figure it out in some kind of dialogue with the other cultures that have received the message. So in kind of simplistic terms, say that some folks in Africa, Asia, and America recieve the Christian message. Each of these groups start working out what faithful apprenticeship to Jesus and witness to his saving work looks like in their particular setting. Each of these little groups will have some different emphases, concerns, and even diverse theories of knowledge as they talk about knowing God. If you want to get at what a "core" truth might be, those groups need to get together and see what kind of common language they can come up with.

There's a little saying about catholicity that tries to encapsulate what it ultimately means: "only the whole Church knows the whole Truth." "Always, everywhere, by all." The second bit is called the "Vincentian Canon," and you can read my limited reflection on it here.

What brought this on? Well, oddly enough, I think folks are far more sensitive to other peoples' "syncretism" than their own. Ryan reminded me of this after I asked him to reflect a little on that word and the transmission of the Christian faith into the Lakota culture. Check out his recent post on a wake, and resulting reflections on syncretism:

Lakota Funerals
Syncretism and [T](p?)EC(usa??)
Wakantanka and Christian Syncretism

Studying Theology

Meanwhile, Steven Harris has written a thoughtful reflection on his time at theological college. It's a particularly helpful read for those of you who might be studying theology, and who have also come from particularly... excitable... ecclesial settings. It's a little long, but certainly worthwhile!

Josh takes a very different tack:

"Don't let anybody fool you: Divinity School does not prepare you for a Post-Apocalyptic wasteland."

Well, crap.

Peter White is on an archeological dig at Tel Dan, Israel, and is posting some interesting reflections.

Bishops Behaving Badly Self-Importantly Responsibly

I've promoted Noakes again. With the LDS folks turning up the heat on their "Mormons are Christians too" campaign, I think it's important to pull out all the stops. Noakes shall be the Primate of All Idaho and Metropolitan of the entire Pacific Northwest, with a special Apostolate to the Other Religion headquartered in neighboring Utah.

He may now copy the haughty dfmsT(p)EC[usa] practice of signing his name with two (+) signs.

Oh, and check out David Brandt's blog. He writes a lot about things that evangelicals like (such as Mark Driscoll, blech!) and seems to be a Baptist. This might round out some of you critters. I recommend him because he seems moderate, intelligent, and well-spoken (written?). And he has the good taste to link to me. In addition, his blog design is very attractive, so it's worth it just to wander over and be impressed.

Technorati Tags: mormons, idaho, missionaries, catholicity, vincentian canon, anglicanism

Corpus Christi Link-stravaganza

Ordinary Time

We recently celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi. Links!

To the Quiet offers us Augustine's witness: "The Body and Blood of Christ."

Alan reminds us of the words of St. Thomas:

"Since it was the will of God's only begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine."

I found an icon and offered a bit from Thomas' Tantum Ergo here.

Mike Aquilina offers a history of the festival.

From Andrew Blume's Corpus Christi sermon at the (Anglo-Catholic) Church of the Advent in Boston (HT: Amy Welborn and Jim Tucker):

In the Sacrament we are offered no less than the love of God who is, as St. John always reminds us, Love’s very self. It is no less than the love that looked down at us from the Cross, looked down at us at our worst moment and still said, “I love you and offer you my love.” It is the love that overcomes death and finds, in the midst of the greatest tragedy, hope and resurrection life. And we are free to accept or refuse. In fact, this truly radical freedom to respond to the love God offers us is one of the signs that we are created in God’s image, that we share with God in the capacity for real love, freely given.

Love is that fundamental quality of God that can not be forced upon us. We can not be coerced into loving and we know this from our own experiences of human love. So much more then, God can not force us to love him. God can not force us to love each other. God can persuade us. God can and does continually offer us opportunities to respond to the love we are offered and for us to act in love. But for the love of God to be real, for it to operate in us, it must be accepted freely. This is the love - freely and continually offered - that is pulsing in the very Body of Christ, in the bread and in the wine that, being brought forward and placed upon the altar, is transformed by the Eucharistic actions of thanking, remembering offering, and invoking the Holy Spirit into God’s self-giving love present with us, and then made available for us.

It is our decision whether or not to carry in ourselves, make a part of our physical being, and bring into the world the love and very presence of God. And in deciding to come forward, using the freedom God has given us in Creation, we know that the Eucharist is not merely something that we take, something to which we are entitled, but rather that it is a gift we are given. As we come forward and decide to accept this love, this new life, into our own bodies, we open ourselves to the possibility of being transformed by it and changed into that which we have received: the very Body of Christ alive in the world. In this way we pass along the gift God has given us in the Sacrament to the world through the actions of our transformed lives. This decision and the action of reception are our acts of faith. It is a faith that is not an intellectual ascent to a doctrine or idea, but the true, corporeal response to the love of God offers us. Our faith is something we Catholic Christians do.

Bye bye.

Technorati Tags: corpus christi, eucharist, communion, lord's supper, mass, sacraments

More Links: Religious Bits

Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
1 Lent
8 Hilary

It's time for some links. You must read this piece from To the Quiet, "Thoughts on the Eucharist." It's a good starting point for conversation on what the Eucharist is and does.

Aly Hawkins at Addison Road has written a wonderful reflection on her experience at the Imposition of the Ashes.

In short, the Body of Christ was there yesterday morning, bright and early to receive the gift of the ashes…and She was breathtaking. Sure, the service was music-free and the priest was one screwdriver short of a toolbox and the squirrelly kids were pretty much out of control. But we were all there because we all needed a little Grace. And Grace was there to be gotten, to be eaten, gobbled up with relish and reverence and humility and whatever awe we could muster up before returning to our workaday lives of computers and construction and customer service…reminding us that from dust we came and to dust we shall return.

And reminding us that dust is not the end. We have a Hope, and He is alive and kickin’ in the bodies and minds and hearts of all those who roused themselves before 8 AM, drawn like little magnets to the pole of Our Lady of the Assumption, and in all who share in the Communion of the Saints. It is a beautiful thing, sharing in a Communion big enough to contain all the strange folk I saw (and didn’t see) on Wednesday morning. A beautiful, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Long may She bask in the Grace of Our Lord, and long may She share that Grace with all who long for its nourishing bread.

You might also want to check out Chris Erdman: "True Community May Appear in Surprising Places."

In my experience, qualities like availability and vulnerability, accountability and mutuality are necessary for true community—that sense of welcome and belonging, of openness and integration into a common way of life, gently and sometimes subtly bound together by a shared sense of identity and mission. But these are not guarantees that I’ll experience that indescribable quality I know as true when I feel it.

Community is a fallen “power”—a structure of creation. And is experienced in all the brokenness of human life lived on this side of what is called “the Fall” in theological shorthand. But it is also in the process of being transformed by God’s new creation. And there are signs of grace in this world—often in surprising places. And maybe that’s the elusive quality of true community—it simply cannot be controlled, engineered, packaged. It appears as Christ does, incognito. And we recognize it (and miss it) in the same way we recognize and miss Christ among us.

(HT: One House)

The past week has seen commemoration days for some interesting saints. If you'd like to read some nice, short pieces on them, check out these entries:

To the Quiet: Saint John of God (March 8)
Monastic Mumblings: Gregory of Nyssa (March 9)
Monastic Mumblings: The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (March 10)

There is good news in California: "Inmate Who Became Priest Paroled by Governor," from the LA Times (HT: TitusOneNine). Also check out the earlier background piece, "Serving God - And Time," as well as GetReligion's coverage of that story.

These links are a little old, but they're worth a look:

It seems Annie Lamott has gotten a little illiberal in regard to the rights of the unborn. Amy Welborn provides the story, and a little commentary:

"Oh, so sorry, Annie. Sorry that the Catholics were cool to your Gospel of Choice."

Father at Canterbury Tales has given us all what we really wanted:

"The POD Guide to Rome"

Okay folks. I know you well enough. Let's just be honest. You don't want to hear about great food or what a great time I had with my wife. You want relics, churches, POD sightings, cassocks, shrines, Roman intrigue, fiddlebacks, Latin Masses, and other provocative subjects.

and also "Roman Liturgical Items"

POD, by the way, is an acronymn for "Pious and Overly Devotional."

Like this. (HT: All Too Common)

On that note, this is certainly worth another look: "I Can Only Imagine."

Inclusion? Exclusion? It's all a word game, and the Inclusivists are a very exclusive group of people. Check out Dean Paul Zahl's "Doublethink and the Church." HT: TitusOneNine.

...Recently, someone at a conference was regaling his listeners about a recent episcopal consecration in the Pacific Northwest, and saying how wonderful it was to see every ethnicity and every gender possibility and every “identity” represented so extravagantly at the service. I raised my hand and asked, “How many theological traditionalists were present?” The speaker paused, and then said – before he had time to suppress it – “Well, uh… none.”

That's all I've got for now.

Technorati Tags: theology, Episcopal Church, Catholic Church, Eucharist, Ash Wednesday

Evangelicals, Papists and Tom Wright (Not Related)

7 Epiphany
6 Hilary

Saturday morning I put together a list of interesting links with brilliant commentary. And then Blogger lost the post. I'm not really pleased about that. So here are a few of them. A little less commentary, a little less brilliant. Sigh.

I’ll never forget hearing how my best friend’s little sister frowned upon seeing their uncle arrive at a function in his chosen get-up of women’s clothing. “It’s not that you’re wearing a dress,” she said. “It’s the dress you’re wearing.” That pretty much sums up my feelings about Contemporary Christian Music.

- from "Supply and Demand," at GetReligion

And from the American Papist (HT: Amy Welborn):

Here's another gem of a quote - this time from the liberal Catholics:

"The real role of the church is not to tell people what to do but give them a map, and conscience is the compass."

Wow. This is hilarious. Luckily the Church will always send a St. Bernard your way whenever you get lost in the frozen Alps of pride.

Meanwhile, I'm going to London on Wednesday and Thursday to hear N.T. Wright talk about the Bible. Details here (.pdf). Anybody else interested?

Technorati Tags: theology, christianity

More Sex. More Politics. And Just a Little Bit of Good News.

Timothy and Titus
3 Epiphany
2 Hilary

Speaking of Brokeback Mountain, I found this bit from Stan Hauerwas to be particularly provocative...

Discrimination against gays grows from the moral incoherence of our lives; people who are secure in their convictions and practices are not so easily threatened by the prospects of a marginal group acquiring legitimacy...

Gay men and lesbians are being made to pay the price of our society's moral incoherence not only about sex, but about most of our moral convictions. As a society we have no general agreement about what constitutes marriage and/or what goods marriage ought to serve. We allegedly live in a monogamous culture, but in fact we are at best serially polygamous. We are confused about sex, why and with whom we have it, and about our reasons for having chidren.

This moral confusion leads to a need for the illusion of certainty. If nothing is wrong wth homosexuality then it seems everything is up for grabs. Of course, everything is already up for grabs, but the condemnation of gays hides that fact from our lives. So the moral "no" to gays beomes the necessary symbolic commitment to show that we really do believe in something.

- Stanley Hauwerwas, "Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)," 1993 in The Hauerwas Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 519-20. [Emphasis mine.]

And while we're at it, here's a big hat tip to Brother Maynard at Subversive Influence for the next couple of links: "The Church, The Activists, and the Homosexual Question." Brian McLaren shares on the need for a "pastoral response" at Leadership Journal's blog, "Out of Ur."

Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we'll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they'll be admittedly provisional. We'll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we'll speak; if not, we'll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratorium would help us resist the "winds of doctrine" blowing furiously from the left and right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the Spirit to set our course.

...

Welcome to our world. Being "right" isn't enough. We also need to be wise. And loving. And patient. Perhaps nothing short of that should "seem good to the Holy Spirit and us."

And the Internet Monk discusses the recent controversy over a (shock and dismay!) homosexual actor portraying a missionary in the new film, End of the Spear: "It Ought to be a Parable. It's That Good."

I’m starting to believe that there is absolutely no way to say that the current crop of culture warriors is anywhere close to being as committed to the Gospel as they are to doing battle with homosexual activists. Listening to the culture warriors explain their latest bout of shock and outrage is quite revealing. I don’t know how they feel about Jesus most of the time, but I sure know how they feel about homosexual activists and other political sinners.

Technorati Tags: theology, homosexuality, gay rights, Stanley Hauerwas, Brian McLaren, End of the Spear, brokeback mountain