I’ve been watching The Young Pope, an intriguing TV series on HBO about, well, a young Pope. He’s a suave and dashing figure, entirely unlikeable, serious parental issues, hovering somewhere between closet atheist and bonafide saint.

When I first started watching the series I thought it was anti-Catholic porn. The ultimate progressive fantasy, imagine a Pope who was an atheist and tries to bring the whole thing crashing down. But then it admixes real deep spiritual, ethical, and ecclesiastical textures, I liked it by the end.

My favourite scene is from episode five where Pope Pius XIII addresses the cardinals in the Sistine chapel and it can only be described as the Benedict Option meets a Vatican I.

Here are the words:

Brother cardinals, from this day forward, we’re not in, no matter who’s knocking on our door.

We’re in, but only for God. From this day forward, everything that was wide open is gonna be closed.

Evangelization. We’ve already done it.

Ecumenicalism. Been there, done that.

Tolerance doesn’t live here anymore. It’s been evicted. It vacated the house for the new tenant, who has diametrically opposite tastes in decorating.

We’ve been reaching out to others for years now. It’s time to stop! We are not going anywhere. We are here. Because, what are we? We are cement. And cement doesn’t move. We are cement without windows. So, we don’t look to the outside world. “Only the Church possesses the charisma of truth”, said St. Ignatius of Antioch. And he was right.

We have no reason to look out. Instead, look over there. What do you see? That’s the door.The only way in. Small and extremely uncomfortable. And anyone who wants to know us has to find out how to get through that door.   

Brother cardinals, we need to go back to being prohibited, inaccessible and mysterious. That’s the only way we can once again become desirable. That is the only way great loves stories are born. And I don’t want any more part-time believers. I want great love stories. I want fanatics for God. Because fanaticism is love. Everything else is strictly a surrogate, and it stays outside the church. 

With the attitudes of the last Papacy, the church won for itself great expressions of fondness from the masses. It became popular. Isn’t that wonderful, you might be thinking! We received plenty of esteem and lots of friendship. I have no idea what to do with the friendship of the whole wide world. What I want is absolute love and total devotion to God.  

Could that mean a Church only for the few? That’s a hypothesis, and a hypothesis isn’t the same as reality. But even this hypothesis isn’t so scandalous. I say: better to have a few that are reliable than to have a great many that are distractible and indifferent. The public squares have been jam-packed, but the hearts have been emptied of God. You can’t measure love with numbers, you can only measure it in terms of intensity. In terms of blind loyalty to the imperative. Fix that word firmly in your souls: Imperative.  

From this day forth, that’s what the Pope wants, that’s what the Church wants, that’s what God wants. And so the liturgy will no longer be a social engagement, it will become hard work. And sin will no longer be forgiven at will. I don’t expect any applause from you. There will be no expressions of thanks in this chapel. None from me and none from you. Courtesy and good manners are not the business of men of God.  

What I do expect is that you will do what I have told you to do. There is nothing outside your obedience to Pius XIII. Nothing except Hell. A Hell you may know nothing about but I do. Because I’ve built it, right behind that door: Hell. These past few days, I’ve had to build Hell for you, that’s why I’ve come to you belatedly. I know you will obey because you’ve already figured out that this pope isn’t afraid to lose the faithful if they’re been even slightly unfaithful, and that means this Pope does not negotiate. On anything or with anyone.

And this Pope cannot be blackmailed! From this day forth, the word “compromise”, has been banished from the vocabulary. I’ve just deleted it. When Jesus willingly mounted the cross, he was not making compromises. And neither am I. Amen.

Photo from HBO.

Given the clergy sexual abuse scandal that is currently rocking the Catholic Church about what Pope Francis knew about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, I thought I’d post this quote from St. Basil.

A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing or in any other impure situations is to be publicly flogged and lose his tonsure. When his hair has been shorn, his face is to be foully besmeated with spit and he is to be bound in iron chains. For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement and on three days of each week shall fast on barely bread in the evening. After this he will spend another six months under the custodial care of a spiritual elder, remaining in a segregated cell, giving himself to manual work and prayer, subject to vigils and prayers. He may go for walks but always under the custodial care of two spiritual brethren, and he shall never again associate with youths in private conversation or in counselling them.

Twitter tells me the source is: St. Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus #38 (quoting Burchard’s Decretals quoting St. Basil).

I have it on Google Books.

The Saint Hilarious Herald: Southern Seminary Students Build Shrine to Tom Schreiner
Students at the Southern Seminary Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky have begun building shrines and icons to one of their most beloved teachers, Professor Thomas R. Schreiner, the renowned biblical scholar and pastor.

Thomas R. Schreiner is James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Associate Dean of the School of Theology. Schreiner, a specialist in the study of the Apostle Paul, is the author or editor of several books including, Romans, in the Baker Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament; Interpreting the Pauline Epistles; The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law; The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance; Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives of Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace; Paul, and especially his well-known volume Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology. Schreiner is  not only a first-class scholar, he is also one of the most popular professors on campus, and even finds time to preach regularly at Kenwood Baptist Church.

There is nothing strange about professors being popular with students, but Schreiner’s popularity went from stratrospheric heights to positively heavenly. A group of students, led by Billy-Joe Wachowski III of Lexington, have started venerating Professor Schreiner as a living Baptist saint. Billy-Joe and his friends are convinced that Schreiner’s textbooks not only contain biblical doctrines, but impart supernatural wisdom to students, and even emit divine healing powers. The Saint Hilarius Herald’s NASCAR and religion correspondent Michel Vogel went to Louisville to find out what all the fuss was about. He spoke to Billy-Joe in Southern Seminary’s on-campus BBQ house.

Billy-Joe chewed down a family size portion of pork ribs and a gallon of ice tea, and then related his story to Vogel: “One day right before an exam for my Romans class I went totally cray cray, I lost the plot, I couldn’t remember a thing. I couldn’t remember how many chapters were in Romans, who wrote Romans, or anything about Romans. My mind went blank and I panicked. So there in the hallway I prayed, and after a few seconds, nothing happened, brain still empty, zip, nada. I was so nervous and anxious, I was sweating like a Duke grad at a feminist convention, folks were asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t speak. So I just picked up my of copy of Tom Schreiner’s Romans commentary and gently tapped it against my head as I prayed, ‘Lord help me remember.’ And then, all of sudden, with each tap, memories came flooding back, I could see the entire Greek text of Romans in front me like it was an open book, sentence diagrams flashed before my eyes, and bibliographies were downloaded into my head. With each tap of Prof Schreiner’s book on my head, I got smarter and smarter, until I was knocking that thing on my forehead like I was headbutting  an overly amorous moose. And it worked, I calmed down, I took the exam, and got an A triple plus. I normally gets C’s, so this was a miracle. Then I told everyone my story, and word got out.”

Word indeed got out, soon hundreds of Southern Seminary students were banging Schreiner’s books against their heads or just touching his lecture notes in hope of securing a blessing before exams. As a result, the average GPA of Southern students in New Testament studies jumped to a whopping 4.0 up from a previously modest 2.9. Sale of Schreiner’s books soared as everyone on campus purchased every book they could get their hands on. Student were not only carrying the books around in their bags, they even began attaching them to chains and wearing them around their necks as jewelry. One young man nearly had his ear torn off when he tried attaching Schreiner’s New Testament Theology to his earing. Soon there was only standing room  in Schreiner’s lectures,  students cued up for hours asking to be anointed with oil by him, and a riot broke out at a nearby Lifeway store over the last copy of his recent book on Hebrews.

It was then that Billy-Joe, with the permission of the SBTS administration, built a small shrine to Tom Schreiner in an unused office on the south side of the campus. It is a place where students could come to receive the shrine of Schreiner blessing to help them with their studies. Students  light candles, thank Jesus for Professor Schreiner, touch his books, and can be anointed with holy oil by one of Professor Schreiner’s teaching assistants. “We believe Professor Schreiner is a living saint,” Billy-Joe said from the small and crowded room, “God is blessing us students with grades and achievements through Professor Schreiner that are just not humanly possible. That’s fact.” Which is why Billy-Joe and a number of his friends launched a campaign to have Tom Schreiner canonized as a Baptist saint and to have his iconic image erected in Southern Seminary’s beautiful chapel.

Billy-Joe and his wife Xanthe at Southern Seminary’s Tom Schreiner Shrine of Exegetical Remembrance.

Professor Brian Vickers, Southern Seminary’s Vice President for Baptist Saints, Relics, and Iconography said that we should not be surprised at what is happening at Southern. “There is a long tradition of Baptist saint veneration. From John the Baptist, to Lottie Moon, to Johnny Cash, to Mike Huckabee, we’ve always believed that certain Baptist believers were given special spiritual gifts, that our communion with them is more powerful than death, and that God still guides us through their example and the relics they leave behind. For instance, I keep an autographed Johnny Cash guitar in my office which I use as a prayer aid, and Southern Seminary’s President, Al Mohler, never preaches without a cigar case full of Billy Graham’s toenail clippings in his pocket, not for luck, for divine empowerment.” When asked if this was controversial Prof Vickers acknowledged that it was, “Yes, some folks accuse us of popery and worshipping men, but Southern Seminary has two theological distinctives, Reformed theology and iconodore liturgy. And we’re proud of of them, very proud!”

Kenwood Baptist Church is in the process of changing it’s name to Saint Thomas the Exegete in honor of Professor Schreiner. Billy-Joe will be leading a delegation to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual conference to campaign for the election of Prof. Schreiner as a living Baptist saint. Already former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush have co-authored a letter sent to both the Roman Pontiff and the Patriarch of Constantinople to secure their recognition of Schreiner’s canonization, and initial reports suggest that both the Catholic and Orthodox churches are warmly disposed to recognizing Schreiner as a Baptist saint. The decision of course rests with the SBC, but if the students at Southern Seminary have anything to say about, Saint Thomas the Exegete could prove to be the most popular Baptist saint in SBC history.

Professor “Saint” Tom “The Exegete” Schreiner will also be visiting Australia in May-June of 2016, and delivering the prestigious Leon Morris Lecture at Ridley College on Wed 1 June, see the website for details (FYI, this bit is true!)

Credits

Bishop photo from Phillipmartin.info

Matt and Erin Browne for posing in the make-shift Schreiner shrine.

Icon by Aaron Long of SEBTS.

Thomas R. Schreiner photo from Southern Seminary

Over at The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch, has a piece on The Great Secession about the apparent exodus of religious conservatives from mainstream culture and even every day life. Its a good piece to read and gives good pause for thought in the culture wars going on the west between the gay and god-fearing.

Rauch declares his main point:

I am someone who believes that religious liberty is the country’s founding freedom, the idea that made America possible. I am also a homosexual atheist, so religious conservatives may not want my advice. I’ll give it to them anyway. Culturally conservative Christians are taking a pronounced turn toward social secession: asserting both the right and the intent to sequester themselves from secular culture and norms, including the norm of nondiscrimination. This is not a good idea. When religion isolates itself from secular society, both sides lose, but religion loses more.

At one level I feel like Rauch has discovered that the Pope is Catholic. A huge chunk of conservative American Protestants have always had a “separatist” mentality, one that peaked in the 1920s-60s, and is proven by the number of private Christian schools and private Christian colleges. Christians love setting up their own little enclaves as it were (anyone been to Grand Rapids folks?) Yet I would point out, that the so-called secession is partly due to a secular push to get religion and churches out of the public square: out of education, out of government, out of media, and even out of charities that receive government funding. While some might be running out, others are being pushed out.

But he gets one thing quite right, the fear factor:

One is the fear that traditional religious views, especially about marriage, will soon be condemned as no better than racism, and that religious dissenters will be driven from respectable society, denied government contracts, and passed over for jobs—a fear heightened by well-publicized stories like the recent one about the resignation of Mozilla’s CEO, who had donated to the campaign against gay marriage in California. After a talk I gave recently in Philadelphia on free speech, a woman approached me claiming that the school system where she works harasses and fires anyone who questions gay marriage. I wanted to point out that in most states it’s perfectly legal to fire people just for being gay, whereas Christians enjoy robust federal and state antidiscrimination protections, but the look in her eyes was too fearful for convincing. Perhaps it is natural for worried people to daydream about some kind of escape. One Christian acquaintance told me, “I say half jokingly to my wife, ‘Where do we move?’ ”

He rightly points out the difference is perception and that is much of the problem:

I must sadly acknowledge that there is an absolutist streak among some secular civil-rights advocates. They think, justifiably, that discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated, but they are too quick to overlook the unique role religion plays in American life and the unique protections it enjoys under the First Amendment. As a matter of both political wisdom and constitutional doctrine, the faithful have every right to seek reasonable accommodations for religious conscience. The problem is that what the social secessionists are asking for does not seem all that reasonable, especially to young Americans. When Christian businesses boycott gay weddings and pride celebrations, and when they lobby and sue for the right to do so, they may think they are sending the message “Just leave us alone.” But the message that mainstream Americans, especially young Americans, receive is very different. They hear: “What we, the faithful, really want is to discriminate. Against gays. Maybe against you or people you hold dear. Heck, against your dog.”

That probably sums it up and is the heart of the debate. How do you balance religious freedom with anti-discrimination laws, both of which are good things!

I actually agree with Rauch’s solution:

There is, of course, a very different Christian tradition: a missionary tradition of engagement and education, of resolutely and even cheerfully going out into an often uncomprehending world, rather than staying home with the shutters closed. In this alternative tradition, a Christian photographer might see a same-sex wedding as an opportunity to engage and interact: a chance, perhaps, to explain why the service will be provided, but with a moral caveat or a prayer. Not every gay customer would welcome such a conversation, but it sure beats having the door slammed in your face.

In fact, the missional reason to stay and work in the secular gay-friendly post/anti-Christian world is THE reason. Let me throw us out, feed us to the lions, but don’t walk away.

The last Australian Census (2011) has some interesting statistics. Note the following (HT: Australia Incognita)

• Same sex couples: 33, 714 (so 67, 428 people);
• Jedi Knights, 65,000.

So there are roughly the same number of gay and lesbians as there are jedi knights in Australia. Two implications:

(1) Perhaps we should provide state sponsored ceremonies to affirm and validate the jedi order and to give them the same rights and privileges as non-Jedi people – it’s time for justice for jedis.

(2) What if the two groups, of roughly the same number, actually refer to the same people. What if they are co-terminus? Yes, what if Australia is inhabited by  around 65, 000 gay and lesbian jedi knights? Think about it, it does make sense. Two male and supposedly “celibate” jedi knights cruising around lonely parts of the universe together. Best friend is a gold effeminate robot prone to panic attacks. Seem to have an unusual interest in long sword shaped neon lights. Known to be involved in using “probes.” Dress like hermit hipsters. Have a recurrent interest in recruiting young boys to join their club. It all makes sense now. The jedi order is more gay than Oxford Street in February. But let’s think this through. What if these gay jedi start using their jedi powers to force us to recognize their religion and to give them jedi marriage licenses. This could be bad.

So I say we turn to the one group who can save us from the Gay Jedi, who is that you ask, Catholic Sith Lords.

We need more than Defence of Marriage Act, we need a Death Star to guard us from these gay Jedi.

(Disclaimer: I actually like Benedict XVI, I’ve enjoyed his “back to the basics” approach, but please, my Catholic friends, next time you chose a Pope, try not to get one who looks like a super villain from a big movie franchise).