Christianity, Culture, Vocation
Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic hierarchy are reportedly re-considering the practice of denying Communion to Catholics who have divorced and remarried.
Details after the jump. Notice in the church debates over the issue how we can see Rome’s teaching that the Sacrament is for those who are holy, rather than for those who need the forgiveness of sins. We also see Rome’s opposition to divorce, while still allowing divorce-like annulments. [Read more...]
In our continuing effort to try to figure out the new Pope of Rome–is he a liberal? a traditionalist? a traditionalist acting liberal?–another possibility has presented itself: Is he evangelical? (Not “an evangelical,” but evangelical in the sense of stressing the Gospel–grace, Christ, the Word of God–more than the typical Roman Catholic pontiff?) [Read more...]
Conservative Catholics, by definition, venerate and obey the Pope. So what do they do when the Pope is more liberal than they are? [Read more...]
Pope Francis has said that he is against “proselytizing.” But he is also speaking on what his predecessor started, the “new evangelization.” After the jump, some of his remarks on the subject. He is advocating “dialogue with those who do not share our beliefs,” which he has been doing, and projecting “God’s mercy and tenderness.” He’s been doing that too. He is talking about “witnessing,” which we often think of as a Protestant term, depending on what is meant by that.
I’m curious if there is a difference between “evangelization” and “evangelism.” And how a Roman Catholic, in particular, for whom church membership is critical, carries out “evangelizing” without “proselytizing.” Can Christians who are not Roman Catholics join in these efforts as he describes them? Also, is the “evangel”–the good news of Christ’s forgiveness won on the Cross–always clear, either in Catholic “evangelization” or Protestant “evangelism”? [Read more...]
When we think of Roman Catholicism, many of us think of Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas, an edifice of doctrine and moral teaching, an all-encompassing church grounded in history and a sumptuous liturgy. We non-Catholics may not agree with its theology and practice, but even so the institution demands a measure of respect. But many people who become Catholics, looking for that church of what they have read about in books, do not find it in the typical parish of modern American Catholicism. Christian writer Rod Dreher tells about how he converted to Catholicsm and why he left it for Eastern Orthodoxy–not because it was so conservative but because it was so much like liberal Protestantism. [Read more...]
Pope Francis has done another interview:
Pope Francis cranked up his charm offensive on the world outside the Vatican on Tuesday, saying in the second widely shared media interview in two weeks that each person “must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them” and calling efforts to convert people to Christianity “solemn nonsense.” [Read more...]
More evidence of Luther’s point about Roman Catholics and Protestant “enthusiasts” being basically the same in thinking God speaks to them directly and experientially, apart from His Word:
“God told me to do it,” the 86-year-old former pontiff told a friend, six months after his decision to step down shocked the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. [Read more...]
Consider this quote from Timothy George, in our recent Christianity without the Atonement post:
The problem comes when we use an anthropopathic term like “wrath” and apply it univocally to the God of eternity. Before long, we have constructed “a god who looks like me,” to use the title of a recent book of feminist theology. Then caricatures of divine wrath proliferate: God having a temper tantrum or acting like a big bully who needs to be “appeased” before he can forgive or, as is often alleged with reference to the atonement, practicing cosmic child abuse.
Note the word “univocally.” This alludes to a historically important theological issue having to do with ontology, or the nature of being, as it applies to God. The “univocal” position is that God is a being in the same way we are beings. The “analogy of being” position is that only God has being in its fullness, while we and the whole creation exist in a related but qualitatively lesser way than He does.
Now this may seem like an arcane issue, but–as I will try to explain,with some help, after the jump–it is extraordinarily important, having to do with the Catholic critique of Protestantism, the nature of the Sacraments, the relationship between Christianity and science, the rise of secularism, and the very way we think about God. [Read more...]
According to some circles, in order to be a consistent conservative, you really need to be a Roman Catholic. Darryl Hart challenges that notion. [Read more...]
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