My Catholic Year Update

Man, has it really been over two months since I've updated this thing? Why, yes it has.

Not to worry though, I've got a few things to talk about this time around. You know, rather than the usual "things are going along as normal".

First off, things with RCIA are going along as normal. Father and the rest of us in our tiny little group have been working our way through a book called This is the Faith. Apart from being very instructive as an introduction to Catholicism, it's also sort of a commentary on what evangelicals call "the peculiarities of Catholic faith"... which would probably seem less "peculiar" if they just read the stuff. But I guess that's not happening.

I expect we'll be going on hiatus for stuff related to Advent and Christmas. My guess is Father is going to become really busy really soon. In fact, the Friday, 12.12.2014 meeting may be our last for a while. But I have no idea.

To move on to other things, part of my mission for My Catholic Year has been to take in different Catholic liturgies. At best I've had mixed success with that. Sure, there's the regular Novus Ordo Mass. And I've gone on the record saying I'm not a big fan of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those who question the validity of it. I mean, is that really my concern? But at the same time I'm not a huge fan of it either.

I've also written about the Latin Mass. And I LOVE the Latin Mass! It's hard to really get the Latin Mass until you actually attend one. And once you do, odds are you'll see what the fuss is all about.

But that was about it for quite a while there. There simply aren't very many licit liturgies available in my area besides those two... except for an Anglican Use parish near my work.

Now, I've tried to avoid getting too personal in this Blogspot because I don't want to get too personal in this Blogspot. But this time it's a little unavoidable. Basically my work schedule uses up my time from 7am to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday. I'm off every Thursday and Friday (which made time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year totally a piece of cake). But the down side is that it's an incredible pain in the neck to come home from work, change clothes (because I work in a very come as you are casual work place), turn right back around and go to Mass. Something about coming home from work usually requires me to stay home for a while.

Except that doesn't work so well with my weekend obligation, now does it?

But I realized that my work place is right by an Anglican Use parish! Why, I bet I could go there directly after work! And this past Saturday, that's exactly what I did. And man, talk about high church! Bells, smells and everything else I always loved about Anglicanism. It looked and sounded to me like they were working off Rite I. It was beautiful, majestic and moving.

The other thing though was that it showed me just how much I've come to miss Anglican liturgy. I spent all of 2013 in the Anglican church. And I'd be there still but I came to realize that separation from Canterbury bothers me less than separation from Rome. But, man, I really MISSED that beautiful Anglican liturgy and worship style.

Because of all that, it was really comforting to go to the Anglican Use parish, secure in my communion with Rome while still enjoying everything I'd come to love and adore about Anglicanism. Best of both worlds!

Sooner or later, my work schedule's going to change again and I'll have to figure out something else. Hopefully I'll have weekends off again and can resume attending the Latin Mass. But if I don't, it's comforting to know the Anglican Use parish is so near my work that I can go there on the way home.

I would like to find some other liturgies and Rites in my local area before the end of the year but that may be impossible, especially at this point.

To move on to more other things, another part of my mission for My Catholic Year has been to pray very Catholic prayers and be diligent about it. And this has been more successful than finding other rites. I started off simply enough. I printed a couple of Catholic prayers off Wikipedia and just prayed those.

Then I realized having a printout of them is kind of stupid so I created a PDF file of them and put it on the ol' iPad. And I've largely stuck with that for a while now.

But then I purchased an iPhone 6 a while back and realized I can probably find at least a few apps to use for my daily prayers. And boy oh boy did I find some really good ones! Some of them even have little commentaries and stuff about the prayer, how far back it dates to and other trivia.

Another app will walk you through the Liturgy of the Hours. Rather than having to carry a zillion books with you, you just pop the app open and it'll show you the appropriate prayer based on the date and time.

The other app will walk you through a Rosary, which I've never done by myself before because I don't really know how to do it by myself. So this app will come to my rescue!

Anyway, this stuff was only today though so I haven't had a chance to do much with any of the apps yet. But at the same time, it's nice to know that I've now got my choice of different prayers and don't necessarily have to stick to the same ones every day. That'll be a nice change of pace, mmmkay?

Looking back on it, I originally designed My Catholic Year to begin immersing myself in the Catholic Church's teachings, prayers and worship. The idea was that when I was welcomed into the Church, I'd have at least a starting point for my disciplines, I'd have some kind of perspective on the various Rites out there and I'd be pretty much ready to go.

Very bluntly, we can argue how well most of that stuff has turned out. As I say, the prayer stuff seems like it's under control but I haven't tried all that hard to soak in other Rites. Crap, I've been pretty lackadaisical about attending Mass like I should. So there's definitely room to improve here.

But then I remember that I haven't been officially welcomed into the Church yet. Technically I'm not expected to have all this stuff mastered by now. And even when I am a member of the Church, should I goof on any of this stuff, there are ways of fixing it. It's not the end of the world.

I guess my point in all this is that I've made some pretty dumb decisions in life. It's not hard to think up a few really good examples. But joining up with the Mother Church... this could be the best decision I've ever made.

What does that mean for the future of this Blogspot? Don't really know. Technically it was only supposed to last for 2014. I'd expected to be welcomed into the Church by now. But I think we all know how that turned out.

So I guess I'll keep updating (however sporadically) until I am welcomed into the Church. After that... well, who knows?

Crossing the Tiber by Steve Ray

I was hanging around the waiting room at an adjunct building the other week waiting for RCIA to start when I happened across the parish's book rack. Well, I say "book" rack; there were books, sure, but there were also pamphlets, CD's and some other stuff there too. But since we're talking about a book, calling the thing a "book rack" seems like the most relevant label.

Anyway, so I happened across the parish's book rack. Among other selections, Steve Ray's Crossing the Tiber stood out. I'd heard a lot about it thanks to the Catholic Answers podcast, where Ray is a frequent guest. The back of the trading card summary is that Ray started out as an evangelical Christian but slowly drifted away once he began, y'know, ACTUALLY READING WHAT THE CHURCH FATHERS WROTE. The drift eventually took him into the Mother Church's embrace, where he's been happily ensconced ever since.

The book, thus, is about how he made that transition. And as he goes through the matter, he makes it clear how often his evangelical friends looked at him askance when they discovered he was joining the Catholic Church.

There are other items I could mention but the major point is that it's a little eerie how his journey somewhat parallels my own. True, he left the evangelical world by choice whereas I was pretty much shown the door. He was a self-styled "Lone Ranger" Christian for what seems like several years while, in my case, that phase lasted only a few weeks (if that). But otherwise his study and reactions to his findings are a pretty close mirror to my own.

Understand, I'd been listening to the Catholic Answers podcast for a few weeks by the time I heard a Steve Ray episode. I thought of it as a nice little rounding out of my Anglican beliefs. My view was that the Catholics were only mistaken about maybe a handful of beliefs. And even there, it was a matter of degree more so than substance. So I could listen to Catholic Answers and filter out the Catholicisms of it as I went along.

Well, Ray made several comments that challenged me. So of course I checked out his sources... all of which were easily verified and, surprisingly, easily proven to be true!

Eventually I came to the same conclusion that Ray originally did. The Catholic Church is either the real deal, the Church founded by Our Lord and perpetuated through a succession of bishops or else the Church simply does not exist in this world. Considering the impossibility of the latter, that left only the former.

Thus I am enrolled in RCIA.

So in a matter of simple intellectual honesty, I must acknowledge Steve Ray as my unwitting entry point into the Catholic Church. And considering his own Protestant background, reading Crossing the Tiber was an immensely intriguing idea. And I must say that the actual book certainly doesn't disappoint.

So think of this as a recommendation. Protestants leave Protestantism sometimes. Or they think about it anyway. And it helps to know (A) other people have been through the same thing and (B) there are justifiable and intellectually honest reasons for doing so.

Of course, the edition of Crossing the Tiber I bought is abridged because it only cost $6 or $7. So I guess you get what you pay for in life. Still a good book though.

Considering Anglican Use

RCIA with the priest from the FSSP parish has been going along nicely. Still, he raised a few good points on Friday night that I've tried to ignore.

The fact is my Mass attendance sucks. There's no nice way to say it so there it is. I've been to the low Mass in Latin a few times but basically my attendance has really dropped off, especially in the past several weeks.

Now, to be fair I DO work on weekends. And that makes it kind of challenging to go to Mass and fulfill my obligation. Difficult. But not impossible. If I'd really wanted to go, I could've.

But there is no Mass in Latin at a realistic time and location to make going on Saturday or Sunday feasible. And obviously I'd rather not go to the Novus Ordo Mass.

Now, that's not to be taken as anti-Novus Ordo or anything. I'm just saying I prefer Mass in Latin, and, apparently, would rather not go if it's not in Latin.

A conundrum.

But then I had a realization a few days ago. As far as I could remember, my office HAS to be fairly close to this one Anglican Use parish I know about so I decided to check it out. And sure enough, it's ridiculously close to my office. So I could go there after work on Saturdays and fulfill my obligation. And it wouldn't even be all that hard to get there either.

Now, as I've said, I did indeed leave the Anglican church. And the reason for that is because it's not the church Our Lord founded. It's not that I don't like it. Quite the opposite! I love it. I believe that Anglican liturgy is one of the finest around. But you're either in communion with the Pope or you're not. And if you're not, why should I bother?

That's what makes the Anglican Use parish so cool. Best of both worlds! So my plan is to get an idea of their dress code. See, my office has one of the most lax dress codes you've ever heard of. The thing is that after a while, "casual" becomes the dress code. So if you show up to work dressed like you're about to go to church... well, that's not a good thing, now is it?

So what I'll probably have to do is bring a change of clothes with me to work so that I can fit in at both places. People have to make sacrifices greater than that to go to church all the time so I shouldn't complain.

I'm actually really excited about this. I've always believed the Anglicans have a lot to contribute to Catholicism. My only regret is that I can't attend an Anglican Use parish nearer to my home. But at least I've got the FSSP parish nearby.

It's hard not to feel really blessed right now.

Top Five Things You Must Believe In Order To Be Catholic

Top Five Things You Must Believe In Order To Be Catholic
Qualifiers- You can't not believe these things and call yourself Catholic;
Sequence- unranked;

* Real Presence- This one's kind of a slam dunk. It's been on the books for millennia. The denial of this doctrine is a pretty recent development in the big scheme of things.

* Immaculate Conception of Our Lady- This one's better attested than its official definition might suggest. The tradition of these goes back to antiquity. It only became official dogma in 1854 but this was borderline consensus for all or most of the Church's history. Not bad for a "latecomer"...

* Magisterium- Again, history speaks so clearly to this that it scarcely needs defending except to people who refuse to read what the Church Father's believed and taught. Apart from that, vast swaths of the New Testament make no sense unless the Church has authority over her members.

* Papacy- This one should be obvious but here it is anyway. Still, I distinguish the value of the papacy quite apart from the Magisterium because the Magisterium by itself isn't exclusively Catholic. At least not anymore. The Eastern Orthodox, for example, won't hesitate to proclaim the legitimacy of obeying [insert bishop here]'s authority.

But the papacy as an office exists apart from that. One of the Church's central dogmas is that the Holy Father is the Vicar of Christ. You either believe that or you don't. And if you don't, you're not Catholic.

* Sacraments- This almost didn't make the list but I decided that even though the Protestants believe in the value of marriage, baptism, communion and other things, their understanding of those things is so flawed and incomplete that they arguably have missed the entire point.

To tie it back to the Real Presence, if it is not the Body and Blood we consume in the Eucharist, how then is John 6 to be interpreted? Our Lord appears to be speaking in quite literal terms there. But the "literalists" seem only too eager to allegorize this and many other passages from sacred Scripture.

I truly don't understand the value of a strictly commemorative observance of communion. I didn't understand it even when I was a Southern Baptist and I understand it even less now.

As I say, you can believe these things and NOT call yourself Catholic. That'd put you in the company of a lot of Anglicans, actually. More than you might think. But you can't NOT believe these things and call yourself Catholic.

And yes, yes, yes, there are several other doctrines I could've included. But I didn't. Because this is MY list. If those items being excluded bothers you that much, make your own list.

Oh, something else. I thought about posting something similar for evangelicals but their lack of unity about anything and everything makes that pretty tricky. You can find evangelicals who disagree on fundamentals as obvious as the divine inspiration of the Bible so attempting to unravel the "evangelical position" on any number of doctrines considered the amount of diversity of belief tolerated in the evangelical world is an exercise in impossibility. So I shall not bother.

The Catholicism of the Southern Baptist Convention

As My Catholic Year is still somewhat on pause because of goings on with my priest and responsibilities he's had to attend to, now's probably a good time to talk about some other things.

I was a fire-breathing Southern Baptist for a lot of years there. The SBC appealed to me specifically because I've always been a little too independent for my own good. The doctrines of justification by faith, Sola Scriptura and others appealed to me because I prided myself on my ability to parse words and divine the intent of Scripture on my own, unfettered by "meaningless tradition".

The fact that my prayer life rarely lined up with that which I professed is neither here nor there, of course.

In particular, I never had much use for the Catholic notion of apostolic succession. What value is that when the Bible says what it means and means what it says?

Yes, I've learned better since then. Not the point. The point is that I understand the value of apostolic succession now in ways I didn't before.

One thing that always stuck in my craw though came when I began researching the chaos and mayhem the SBC went through back in the 1980's. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the fundamentalists (and I use the word with reverence and affection even now) essentially depended upon their own skewed version of succession to ensure doctrinal fidelity.

Several higher-ups in the Convention arranged the election of a series of conservatives (by their standards) as President of the SBC over the opposition for a period of ten years so as to fumigate the Convention of liberalism. Taking a page from the great Ronald Reagan's playbook, somebody high up the conservative movement's leadership evidently decided "personnel is policy", and voted accordingly. Then they did it again. And again. And again. And the rest is history.

The thinking went that electing several conservative Convention Presidents in a row would ultimately lead to changes in personnel, policy and, ultimately, doctrine that EVERYTHING would ultimately be able to be tied back to that first conservative President (Adrian Rogers).

Still, explicitly or implicitly, the SBC is now governed by its own standard of succession. And like so much else with Protestantism, it's a malformed, incomplete, imperfect and completely dishonest version of what the Catholic Church has been doing for millennia. It isn't apostolic and it's not divinely appointed but it all can ultimately be tied back to one man.

The SBC's order of succession rests it's doctrinal fidelity (as they define it anyway) on fallen, sinful, imperfect man while the Church looks directly back at an unbroken chain leading directly to Our Lord Himself, ultimately.

You tell me which is more trustworthy.

Summer Break

Not much to say about My Catholic Year right now. But I've got other stuff on my mind.

You know what I don't get? There's a group of people out there who regularly get burned in effigy for taking a summer recess each year. It'd be accurate, I think, to say they're lazy, unproductive and utterly unremarkable. And this is not to mention their various and sundry sex scandals.

Yes, the United States Congress is a truly worthless bunch in most cases. And they're often criticized for it.

But there's another group of people who get nothing but sympathy and encouragement for taking a summer recess each year. It'd be accurate, I think, to say they're lazy, unproductive and utterly unremarkable. And this is not to mention their various and sundry sex scandals.

Yes, school teachers are a truly worthless bunch in most cases. But, in spite of the fact that most of them are even worse than Congressmen, they're almost never criticized for it.

They both regularly fail to perform to even the most minimal standards of their job, basic morality or even common decency. They both have amazing retirement packages way out of proportion to their personal ethics or professional success.

And yet, only Congress regularly gets lambasted by everybody. School teachers, in spite of having every bit as dismal a success rate with their job performance, are all but sainted by society even though they absolutely suck at their jobs and can't even teach children how to write so much as a corporate memo.

I mean, what's up with that?

Second Thoughts About the Church?

Back when I was attending RCIA, I was confronted approached by one of the other Inquirers about Anglicanism. When RCIA first began, we all gave a quick summary of our spiritual lives and what had drawn us to the Catholic Church. I mentioned making a pit stop in Anglicanism after leaving the evangelical world before deciding to make the full transition to the Mother Church.

I surmise my comments drew his attention because he approached me later on and asked if I ever had second thoughts about leaving Anglicanism.

I told him that I was positive I was doing the right thing from a religious standpoint. But I must say that it's a question that I've always had a difficult time articulating an answer for because there are several considerations at work.

For one thing, I really enjoy the liturgy of the ACNA parish I attended for most of 2013. It felt sober and reverential. It was a relatively broad church Anglo-Catholic parish. So we got the bells every service, the smells of incense occasionally and a very Catholic view of the Real Presence.

What I ultimately had to understand was that I would rather be an Anglo-Catholic in the Catholic Church than a papist in the Anglican Church. In spite of my new (and recent) fondness for the Traditional Latin Mass, it must be said that a lot of that comes from my distaste for the Novus Ordo... and that comes from my affection for the Rite I Anglican liturgy, with its beauty and eloquence.

Had I gone straight from Southern Baptist Church #2 straight to a Novus Ordo Catholic parish, I might not care as much about the specifics of liturgy. But that year in the ACNA parish said that liturgy is good; eloquent and beautiful liturgy is better.

But that isn't what happened, now is it? I did spend that year in the ACNA parish, I was exposed to a lot of Anglo-Catholic theology and language does matter to me.

That's what attracts me to Anglicanism on the superficial level. But it's also the same thing that repulses me about it on the spiritual level. Anglicanism isn't just from England; it is of England. You cannot separate Anglicanism from some sense of British nationalism.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with people from other countries being patriotic. Or even nationalistic, for that matter. Go right ahead.

Where I have to draw the line though is comingling national sovereignty with religious expression. It's well and good to be proud of your country. But the fact is that Anglicanism classically is the mix of Englishness on the one hand and Christianity in the other hand combined in the center in prayer. So closely associating my faith with my earthly citizenship just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

But come to that, Anglicanism is defined by England every bit as much as Lutheranism is by Germany, Presbyterianism is by Scotland and the SBC is by America. None of these are truly universal in the way the Church is intended to be. The Church is supposed to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Anglicanism at large fails the "one" part with its myriad splinter groups. The decidedly English flavor trips up the "catholic" attributes of the Church. It's fidelity to the "apostolic" element is debated to this day by people a lot smarter than me. And surely you don't need me to tell you how far out of whack several components of Anglicanism are when it comes to the "holy" part of the equation.

The Catholic Church has none of those problems. Pope Francis is the vicar of Christ and is the leader around whom the rest of the Church can unite. The Church suffers slings and arrows specifically because of her holiness. It is catholic in that all people in all places feel at home in the Church; so much so that there's probably a Mass going at all times somewhere in the World. And Pope Francis is the latest in a succession of bishops who can be traced in an unbroken line all the way back to St. Peter.

She is therefore one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

So whatever affection I may have for aspects or elements of Anglicanism to this day, no, I don't have second thoughts about my decision to come home to the Mother Church.

Hatred

Been thinking.

Obviously gay marriage is making a lot of inroads right now. And it doesn't matter what I think about that. It doesn't matter that it's completely artificial. It doesn't matter that what little "momentum" it has comes from a Presidential election where a major part of the electorate was repressed and kept away from polls.

What matters is that it's coming. And this genie isn't easily put back in the bottle, however illegitimate its origins.

This same group is basically openly at war with any semblance of organized religion. They've been less successful here, thanks primarily to a Supreme Court obsessed with freedom of speech. Under other circumstances, nobody's qualified to say what might be happening to America right now.

This is all mostly pushed by people who only love liberty and democracy when it suits their purposes. Otherwise, both are obstacles to their agenda. Obstacles to be eradicated.

And I'll be bluntly honest that it's hard to obey Our Lord's command to love those who hate me and do good to those who persecute me. My natural inclination is to be an absolute gadfly. If I have a chance to ruin a liberal's day, all too often I'm guilty of taking it. Even if it's something as petty as cutting somebody off in traffic with an Obama/Biden 2012 bumper sticker on their car. As long as it doesn't violate the law or result in physical injury, odds are it'll be a pleasure to completely screw some liberal over.

But Our Lord doesn't say to do that. He says to love those who hate me and do good to those who persecute me. This is what the Church did back in the first century when the Romans were using Christians as tiki torches in Caesar's garden. This is the approach that ultimately transformed Rome from barbaric paganism to enlightened Christianity.

This is the approach that changed the entire world.

But hate. Hate comes so easily, doesn't it? I see liberals everywhere destroying everything that makes this country great. And not only are they destroying it, they're reveling in their victories and successes. And I hate them for it. I regularly refuse to give them any measure of forgiveness, patience, kindness or, worst of all, Our Lord's love. I declared them enemies and never even attempted to reach them.

And my hate isn't restricted to liberals either. A fair amount of it is directed to evangelical Christians, obsessed with their little imaginary apocalypses; the ones who stayed home in 2012 and gave control over this country to a tyrant because they didn't like Mitt Romney out of some idiotic "principled stand".

This same principle didn't keep them from voting for President Bush back in 2004, mind you; it's only when Obamacare is set to destroy what's left of freedom in America that these fools decided to be conservative purists.

I say all of this to my shame. Because for as resentful, angry and downright hateful as I've been to those people, they're ultimately just PEOPLE who need Our Lord's love and sacrifice in order to be forgiven. And I've made absolutely no effort to be the light that shines the way.

Understand, in most respects I consider myself a sexual libertarian. I don't care who does what with whom as long as all parties consent to it. My opposition to same-sex "marriage" comes exclusively from the certainty that part of "marriage equality" necessarily entails putting the Church under liberalism's boot.

NOBODY can guarantee when gay marriage is the law of the land, priests, pastors and other religious leaders won't get sued into oblivion for refusing to perform "same-sex marriage" ceremonies.

That is where my opposition to same-sex unions begins and ends. Otherwise I couldn't care less about it and am amazed that things have gone as far as they have.

But that hasn't stopped me from anything. I originally didn't care about "same-sex marriage" supporters or their kooky cause. But now that they're in spitting distance of their goal, I not only hate them but the people they're advocating for.

And again, that's the complete opposite of what Our Lord intended.

Through this entire mess, I've come to realize that there's a better than average chance that this could result in a serious persecution, possibly up to and including martyrdom. And through it all, I've steadfastly refused to count the evangelicals as allies. By definition they've already rebelled against the Church's authority.

Why would they be counted upon to stand up for REAL truth when they've already rejected so much of it already by separating themselves from Rome?

But Our Lord said we should make peace with our brothers. I've never even attempted to do this. I've just assumed they're pompous, ignorant, proud and unreliable pretenders to the REAL faith.

There's a lot here that I've failed to handle properly. I've returned the favor (with interest) when liberals treat me like enemies. I've smugly dismissed any legitimacy of conviction (if not purity of doctrine) among the evangelicals and categorized them as misled sheep; simpletons and fools too stupid to crack open and read the writings of the early Church fathers to understand their supposed faith's TRUE origins.

I will do all in my power to repent. The hour is late. Probably too late to reverse any of this. But that's no excuse for not recognizing my error and working to repent and correct these problems.

Married Priests

Pope promises 'solutions' to priestly celibacy

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis promised "solutions" to the issue of priestly celibacy in an interview on Sunday that raised the possibility the Catholic Church could eventually lift the interdiction on married priests.

Speaking to Italy's La Repubblica daily, Francis also condemned child sex abuse as a "leprosy" in the Church and cited his aides as saying that "the level of paedophilia in the Church is at two percent".

"That two percent includes priests and even bishops and cardinals," he said.

Asked whether priests might one day be allowed to marry, Francis pointed out that celibacy was instituted "900 years after Our Lord's death" and that clerics can marry in some Eastern Churches under Vatican tutelage.

"There definitely is a problem but it is not a major one. This needs time but there are solutions and I will find them," Francis said, without giving further details.

The interview was the third in a series with the 90-year-old founder of the La Repubblica daily, Eugenio Scalfari, a famous journalist and known atheist.

This is one of the most awkward news pieces I've ever seen from any major news source. From a strictly journalistic standpoint, it changes subjects too often. It sets the context of the Holy Father discussing priestly celibacy, switches gears to talk about the pedophile issues, returns to celibacy and then mentions with whom the interview was conducted.

I've studied journalism enough to understand the inverted pyramid. You introduce your main subject in the first paragraph, you then begin resolving it and work your way down to more granular issues as you go and you conclude the piece with utterly irrelevant matters such as, in this case, the name of whoever conducted the original interview.

Therefore I'm not sure what to think of this piece interjecting the pedophile scandal where it doesn't belong. One way to look at it is that this sloppy, unprofessional writing. And certainly that's not to be underestimated.

A different, nastier way of looking at it (and people have certainly picked up on this) is that Francis is linking pedophilia with unmarried priests when he might not be. I've long believed the new media's love affair with Francis not only can't last forever but is likely to end. It'll end badly and it'll end SOON. So maybe this is the opening salvo?

Another way of looking at it is that the writer is determined to associate pedophilia with unwed priests. I have no way of knowing if that's what he's trying to do. I also have no way of knowing if there even IS a link there. My gut instinct is to doubt it because married people molest children too.

But apart from all those things, I remain skeptical that permitting priests to marry will solve anything. Pope Francis has been expected (by leftwing media) to fundamentally transform the Catholic Church. He was (supposedly) going to "change" the Church's teachings about abortion, gay marriage and other Democrat Party sacraments.

Obviously he's done none of that so far. But permitting priests to marry would probably be the biggest shake-up the Church has experienced in decades, possibly centuries. And I'm not convinced it'd be a positive development.

Sure, the media would finally believe themselves vindicated for viewing Francis as The Great Reformer. But would allowing priests to marry really improve anything? I just don't think so.

For one thing, by definition it couldn't be retroactive. Anybody expecting to see their priest hanging out at the singles' bar is probably in for some major disappointment because that priest MADE A VOW to not take a wife. The Church changing their policy on the matter wouldn't absolve him of his promise.

The other thing though is that right now, Catholic priests can make a decent living because the Church provides for so many of their needs. But I just don't think the Church has the resources to financially support globe-trotting priests and their families.

As an example...

Catholic Priests & Their Wives

These five Fathers are husbands and fathers. Huh?

Father Jim McGhee won't hear his wife's confession. That would just be... awkward. Other than that, Ann McGhee is a parishioner like any other at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Keller, Texas, where her husband says three or four masses a week. Who sanctioned this scenario? Pope John Paul II. Back in the late seventies, an Episcopal priest from South Carolina named James Parker decided he'd had it with the leftward drift of his church, which ordained its first female priest in 1977. So Parker sought full communion with the Catholic Church, and the Church embraced him. In 1980, the pope issued a special dispensation allowing Episcopal priests who were theologically simpatico with Rome to "come home" -- i.e., convert to Catholicism -- and bring their families with them. Today there are seventy-nine such priests in America and at least a score more who've converted from other Christian denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, et cetera). Here are five of these men with their wives, children, and grandchildren.

Jim and Ann McGhee, Keller, Texas

Father McGhee, 66, and Ann, 68, were both raised Methodist: he in Kennett, Missouri, and she in Jumpertown, Mississippi. They met in 1956, just before Jim joined the Air Force, and married the next year. Their son, Robert, and daughters, Mary (center) and Renée, are pictured here with all seven of Ann and Jim's grandchildren. From left: Courtney, Jameson (upside down), Jeremiah, Ashley's feet, Bryant, Matthew, and Emily.

Twelve years ago, when Ann McGhee would tell people that her husband was planning to enter the Catholic priesthood, people would say," 'Well, what's he gonna do with you?'" she recalls. "And I would say, 'Well, he's going to keep me!'" The McGhees' conversion to Catholicism was the latest turn in a meandering spiritual journey that goes back almost 50 years. Father Jim became a licensed Methodist preacher in 1962, an Episcopal priest in 1972, and a Catholic priest in 1995. "I had become convinced in my own head and my own heart that Jesus had established a church, not churches," he says. "And when I looked at the evidence of history, it was so clear to me that it was Canterbury that had left Rome. Rome did not leave Canterbury."

Steve and Cindy Anderson, Grand Blanc, Michigan

High school sweethearts from the town of White Lake, Michigan, the Andersons met when he was 16, she was 15, and they were both Presbyterian. Thirty-two years and two Christian denominations later, Father Steve, 47, and Cindy, 46, have three sons. From left: Steven, 11; Austin, 20; and Christian, 7.

"A lot of people become Catholic because they don't like what's going on in their denomination," says Father Steve Anderson, the associate pastor of Church of the Holy Family in Grand Blanc, Michigan. "That wasn't my story." In 1999, Anderson was the pastor of a Charismatic Episcopal parish that mixed High Episcopalian elements like incense and vestments with a Pentecostal flavor. "At our church, you might get a prayer book, and you might get a tambourine." He loved that experience, but the more he read the "early church fathers," the stronger he felt the tug of Rome. So on April 3, 1999 -- Holy Saturday -- he and Cindy converted. "People were delighted," says Cindy of their reception at Holy Family. "The best part is, they can connect with me. They're so excited to have a priest and his wife, and I come with loving arms back to them. God's just planted me here, and I fit."

Bob and Ginger McElwee, Frontenac, Kansas

Two important things happened to Bob McElwee when he was a high school kid in Wichita, Kansas: 1) He met Ginger, and 2) he rode his first motorcycle. More than four decades later, the McElwees, both 58, have six children. They were photographed at the 65th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.

Father McElwee doesn't think Catholic priests should be married. He didn't think so before he became one; he doesn't think so now. The Lord, however, had other ideas. Two days after resigning as an Episcopal priest in 1980, McElwee was in his car, "talking out loud to Jesus, asking what I'm supposed to do next," when he heard a report announcing the pope's provision for married Episcopal converts. "And I still didn't want to do it," he said. "It was my wife who said, 'Well, God opened this door. Give it a try.'" That was 22 years ago, 19 of which have been spent in southeast Kansas. Recalls Ginger, "The bishop told us, 'You'll only have to explain yourselves once. The gossip will take six months to move around the area, and then you'll be done with it forever.' And that's exactly what happened."

John and Burgess Ellis, St. Cloud, Florida

John Ellis was a 24-year-old sales manager working for the J.C. Penney Company in DeLand, Florida, when he met Burgess, an undergraduate at Stetson University, in 1961. They married the following September and had a son, Thomas, in December '63. Father Ellis, 68, and Burgess, 65, are pictured here with their daughter, Ruth, and her five-year-old twins, Jordan (left) and Zachary (right).

"The official doctrine is that celibacy is not going to be changed," Father Ellis says. "But I think most of the clergy are looking at us as pioneers, the big experiment." The Ellis's experiment began in 1989 when John, after 20 years in the Episcopal priesthood, was ready to leave his church and join the Catholic laity. Then he heard about the Vatican's loophole for married converts. "There have been married clergy in the Catholic Church longer than there have been celibate clergy," he points out. "Celibacy wasn't mandated until the Middle Ages. Even our first pope was married." So should celibacy be optional today? "Well, there are places for celibacy. Religious orders, for instance. But there is no reason why a diocesan priest shouldn't be married. Being married or being single has nothing to do with being a priest."

Allan and José Hawkins, Arlington, Texas

Allan and José (pronounced Josay) Hawkins met in 1963 at St. George Anglican Church in Stevenage, England, where Allan was a priest, and married in 1964. They moved to Texas in 1980. Father Hawkins, 71, and José, 63, are pictured here with their two children, Sarah and Giles.

Father Allan Hawkins didn't bring just his family into the Catholic Church when he was ordained in 1994; he brought his entire flock. "The decision to seek unity with Rome was pretty well unanimous here," he says -- "here" being St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church in Arlington, Texas, which used to be St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church. "It was the same building, the same people, transferred in toto, so all that you might say changed was the sign on the street." This made the transition a nonissue for José; unlike the other wives on these pages, the other parishioners already knew her as the priest's wife. "As long as Anglicanism was moving toward -- however slowly -- some kind of rapprochement with Rome, we could just wait it out," Father Hawkins says. "But once that became impossible, we had to act for ourselves."

I realize this is a cutesy story filled with cutesy anecdotes but the fact is that they ALL hint at the difficulties of having married priests in the modern era. The Catholic Church is an inventive institution gifted with wise, talented men who can invent ways of coping with the problems married clergy would bring. But isn't the simpler, cheaper and lower risk way to continue not permitting them to get married? Once the decision is made to allow them to marry, it's not easily unmade. And it was first made for a reason.

Far be it from me to criticize the Holy Father on this, especially when I have absolutely no skin in the game, but I just don't think this is a wise idea.

Female "Clergy" and the "Church" of England

The Church of England votes to allow women as bishops

LONDON – The Church of England ended one of its longest and most divisive disputes Monday with an overwhelming vote in favor of allowing women to become bishops.

The church's national assembly, known as the General Synod, voted for the historic measure, reaching the required two-thirds majority in each of its three different houses. In total, 351 members of the three houses approved of the move. Only 72 voted against and 10 abstained.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the long-awaited change marks the completion of a process that started more than 20 years ago with the ordination of women as priests. He called for tolerance and love for those traditionalists who disagree with the decision.

"As delighted as I am for the outcome of this vote I am also mindful of whose within the church for whom the result will be difficult and a cause of sorrow," he said in a statement.

Stupidity like this isn't the main reason I walked away from Anglicanism. But it was a consideration. The fact is that being an orthodox, traditionalist Anglican increasingly puts you at odds with what's left of Anglicanism worldwide.

When all's said and done, this decision accomplishes three things. First, it codifies what's long been unofficial practice in the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church USA "ordained" a female presiding archbishop back in 2006 or so. And they did it with absolute impunity because they knew that the Archbishop of Canterbury wouldn't lift a finger to stop them.

Speaking of the Archbishop, you really have to admire the strength of his convictions. Only after YEARS of conservatives abandoning the "church" in droves while the liberals shriek ever louder for female "clergy" does he express support for their cause. He should be a politician.

Secondly, it further alienates whatever traditionalists are still left in their "communion". I'd predict that the worldwide Anglican Communion might rupture over this, except they already ruptured over homosexuals being "ordained" as priests and bishops back in 2009.

But third, it might give those same traditionalists the final push they need to leave their pathetic excuse of a communion behind and come home to Rome. The infrastructure for doing so has existed for years now. So maybe there's some Anglo-Catholic parish or maybe even an entire diocese that's got nowhere left to go except Rome.

Speaking of which, I truly hope I never hear some Episcopalian wingnut wish for reunification with Rome.

Once again, the Catholic Church will absorb the faithful while the Anglican Communion loses more of the few people actually willing to actually tithe and do yucky stuff like feed the homeless and whatnot.

If this was a war, Rome would win by attrition.

My Catholic Year- The Traditional Latin Mass, The Ancient Way

How about a REAL update on My Catholic Year?

I said in my last post that I'm not terribly interested in bickering over liturgy. What I'm convinced of is that evangelical liturgy (and yes, they DO have a liturgy; their refusal to put it in writing doesn't change the facts) is weak sauce and often hypocritical. Beyond that, your liturgy of preference is between you and your God.

That having been said, I went to the Traditional Latin Mass this morning at that FSSP parish this morning and HOLY CRAP!!!

When I was slumming it with the Anglicans, I REALLY enjoyed the High Church services they did. It wasn't as High as it might've been but I figured it was still pretty good. But if you've ever been to the TLM before, you know that it blows the doors off the Anglican liturgy, duct tapes them back on and blows the doors off again.

Anglicanism ruined me for evangelical Christian worship. The Traditional Latin Mass has ruined me for every other liturgy. THIS is what I want from my worship. It all feels so ancient and reverential and, most of all, AUTHENTIC.

With all due respect to Pope Paul VI, I have no idea how or why the Church could ever go from the TLM to the Novus Ordo. Having now been to both, I can understand why people are so partisan about it these days. I don't think it's worth the grief and bloodletting it's caused over the years, you understand; I'm just saying I understand why people can get so fired about it.

From the standpoint of communion, part of why the TLM works for me is because it's primarily in a dead language. Yes, the homily and related matters are in whatever language they're in. But by and large, the Mass is in Latin. Apart from the mystery aspect of it, there is (or would be) solidarity in knowing that basically all of us are having basically the exact same Mass in basically the exact same way. It'd be as mysterious to me as it is everywhere else in the world.

Obviously that isn't how things are right now. I'm just saying it'd be nice.

I've never questioned my decision to join the Church. But at the same time, I've also never been more positive of where I'm supposed to be.

Apart from that, I made plans with Father Charles to meet later this week. My work schedule has changed so I probably won't be able to make it to Mass on Sunday for a long while (which I'm not happy about, especially now, but it's the hand I've been dealt) but he said he's willing to meet with me one-on-one and go through the Catechism with me so that I can pick up basically where I left off in RCIA.

Besides all that, I have every Thursday and Friday off from work now so I can still go to Mass on those days. Being as Father Charles is hopefully going to be my mentor through this whole process, I'm thinking my lack of attendance on Sunday won't be a major problem for him. My guess is that it'll be a fairly Low Mass on those days (although I'd love to be wrong!).

Just heard a major rumble of thunder outside so I guess I'd better call it a night.

Another Thing About Liturgy

By the by, feels like I should mention that I'm not militantly opposed to the Novus Ordo Mass. You might get that impression, especially judging from my last post. But it's simply not true.

What is true though is that I've talked at length about liturgy. And the reason for that is because I've been working through how lied to and betrayed I feel by my evangelical upbringing. In that world, they have a "liturgy" of sorts but they refuse to put it in writing. So there is a sense of ritual about evangelical worship. But at the same time, there's a strange, neurotic compulsion to deny that a liturgy exists.

On top of that, style takes a backseat to substance. It doesn't matter how or when you worship. What matters is that, by golly, your HEART is in it.

And honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with that line of thinking if it had any basis in fact. But it just doesn't. The early Church clearly believed that liturgy matters. Yes, your heart's conviction is important. It's not to be underestimated. But if the Lord has appointed a manner He finds acceptable to be worshiped, isn't it dangerously stupid to worship Him in any other way?

Also, evangelicals have this aggravating tendency to create a false dichotomy between liturgy and meaningful worship. When it comes to the Almighty, I've always had a reverential sense of soberness. He isn't my co-pilot, my best drinking buddy, my n***a or any of that stupidity. He's the sovereign God Almighty and there is none like Him.

Because of that, I was morally offended at times by how chummy a lot of evangelicals tend to be with Him. And whatever, He'll judge or not judge that for Himself. But this is a crucial part of evangelical worship and it took being painfully separated from all that for me to realize just how repugnant I find most of that stuff.

But anyway, my point here is that a lot of my discussion about liturgy is coming from the angle of a disgruntled evangelical who's forcibly woken up and smelled the coffee. Liturgy is a big subject for me because it's only been pretty recently that I've developed an awareness of and appreciation for it.

But among Catholics, it can be a contentious subject. This is illicit and that is not. I refuse to get involved with that. At least for right now. When I criticized the Novus Ordo, I did so on the basis that I don't think the sixth grade-level English of that Mass stacks up against the best of what the Anglicans have to offer. But I'm certainly not criticizing that Mass insofar as legitimacy is concerned. The Anglicans may have a more eloquent liturgy but what's it worth if half (or more) of their priests aren't validly ordained?

Because I want sober, reverential worship of the Lord, the only logical place for me to go is the Latin Mass. If the Solemn Masses I've seen on YouTube are indicative of what the Latin Mass is all about, this is about as High a Mass as the Catholic Church can offer (maybe the Orthodox have a Higher service but that takes you right back to the validity of their ordination in some cases).

But if others prefer the Novus Ordo, what difference does it make to me?

My Catholic Year Update

Man, been a long time since I updated this thing. As usual, there's not been much to say so I didn't bother updating. Until recently, that is, when a few interesting things came down the pipeline. So now's not a bad time to talk about some of that stuff.

For one thing, as I've said again and again, I haven't been able to attend RCIA at the Catholic parish I've mentioned a few times because of my work schedule. But we recently did a shift bid at my office and so my schedule has changed. My Thursday nights are now free. It's my Sunday mornings that are unavailable now.

No, it's not an ideal situation since RCIA requires Thursday nights AND Sunday mornings to be free. But it changes the equation at least a little.

Another thing is that I decided to wash my hands of the Catholic parish I'd been attending. I love the Church and I submit to her authority, don't get me wrong, but it really felt like they weren't even TRYING to meet me halfway on this. They have a model and they're sticking to it no matter what.

My decision to find a different parish coincides with moving to a slightly different part of town. There are two different parishes nearby. One is part of the FSSP. The FSSP's big claim to fame is their preference for the Latin Mass. I've written about the Latin Mass before but I've never really been to one before. But I really like what I know and what seen of it.

I must be honest though, there's an incredibly High Church Anglo-Catholic parish near my new apartment and it was VERY tempting to start going there. I rationalized that I really tried to join up with the REAL Church but they didn't seem interested in having me.

In the end though, that seemed like an excuse. I like Anglican liturgy more than the language and liturgy currently employed in most Catholic Masses, it's true, but that's not a good justification for turning my back on the Church. Ultimately, communion with the Church founded by Our Lord is more important than liturgy. Besides, I figured I could find an FSSP parish and try my luck with them.

So that's what I did today. I called the pastor of that FSSP parish, explained my problem and the impression I got from him is that he's surprised that this tiny problem has gotten as big as it has (and he's not alone on that either). But no matter what, he said he'd be open to meeting with me and working through the Catechism of the Catholic Church with me in lieu of a standard RCIA arrangement.

Just like that! He said that to a total stranger like me! How awesome is that? The guy couldn't pick me out of a police lineup if his life depended on it but he agreed to help anyway.

I'm still in the process of getting things sorted out in terms of moving from my old place into my new apartment so all my nice clothes aren't in my closet yet. So there's probably no way to manage going to the Latin Mass tomorrow. But I can definitely work it out next week.

There have been some hiccups along the way. This whole process turned out to be a lot bumpier than I was originally expecting. But I'm making progress here and that's ultimately what counts the most.

Work Training, RCIA and The Kids Today

As I said before, I've started training for a new job. Also as I said before, that's eaten up most of my free time lately. When I get home from work, all I feel like doing is eating and then going to bed. This won't last forever but it's how things are right now.

Still, there have been a few interesting developments lately.

First off, in my last post, I mentioned I'm not sure what my future is with RCIA because it will conflict with my work schedule once training ends. Unfortunately, I don't know any more now than I did when I first posted it because the outreach director at my local parish has been kind of incommunicado lately. No idea what will happen here.

Frankly, it irritates me because how hard can this possibly be to deal with? Surely they have issues like this pop up all the time. You'd think I'd have more to show for myself after an entire week of waiting for answers. But you'd be wrong.

Every once in a while, articles like this one pop up that make it sounds like The Kids Today are starting to embrace liturgical worship, this is the way of the future, evangelicalism is dead, etc.

Now, more and more it's hard for me to take evangelicalism as a form of church worship seriously. I can't deny that. At the same time though, you can't really underplay evangelicalism as a cultural force. I don't dispute that either.

What bothers me about articles like this is (A) the superficiality of them and (B) the abject lack of distinction between short term trends and long term cultural transformation.

Yeah, sure, The Kids Today might find liturgy interesting... today. But that doesn't say anything about what they've preferred over the past several years or where they're likely to stay in the years to come. It's simply right now that they dig going to Catholic Churches or high Lutheran places.

As interesting as that may be, it says nothing about what's happened in the past, what's likely to occur in the future and possible causes for this sea change in worship style.

It's just kind of there. And that's about it.

More to follow.

RCIA- Inquiry Phase

Haven't posted too much this week. The main reason for that is because I've been crazygonuts busy every single day this week. Start training for a new job on Monday and goings on with that has occupied most of my time and attention lately.

Not sure how this will affect RCIA though. Guess I'd better ask my Catechist about it but basically my new work schedule will require me to work during the normally appointed time for RCIA. Of course, by then the Inquiry phase will be over so it may not make a difference at all. We may not even meet on Thursday nights anymore.

But maybe we will. And if we do... I honestly don't know what the next step from there might be. I may ask the pastor for a dispensation on the grounds that in some ways I'm just spinning my wheels in RCIA anyway since I already believe what the Church teaches so in a sense RCIA isn't really necessary for me anyway.

But that's the last resort. There may be other options on the table.

More to follow.

Pope Francis and the Media

Crazy times. That's partly the reason for the lack of updates.

The other thing though is there hasn't been a whole lot to say lately. But there have been a few interesting developments. A couple.

For one thing, my firm belief is the American leftwing media had no real choice but to show admiration for Pope John Paul II. He reigned for nearly thirty years, he was instrumental in the undoing of a major American enemy and he oversaw the implementations of major parts of Vatican II.

I won't discuss Vatican II, you understand. That's above my paygrade as an Inquirer. I'm just talking about Blessed John Paul II's legacy here and why the leftie media had some sympathies for him.

So they HAD to show admiration for him, especially on the occasion of his death. Even the leftie media aren't (or weren't) of such poor taste that they'd bash too much on him after his passing. Their rank and file sure did (check archives of their blogs and news article comments; it was the most ugly viciousness you can imagine) but the media themselves didn't.

And among liberals, some of the grief may well have even been sincere. I saw a picture of former-President Bill Clinton standing next to then current President George W. Bush. President Bush looked serious and solemn while Clinton looked completely overcome. Put another way, you could tell that Clinton had pretty much lost it over Pope John Paul's death. So if he was upset about it, I'll allow others might've been as well.

Pope Benedict XVI was an easier target for their abuse and vitriol. He was more of a traditionalist in some of his views, he was clearly not going to somehow change the Church's more aggravating policies (aggravating to liberals, that is) and all around I think the only reason he didn't have an even worse time is because President Bush was a much more interesting target. But under other circumstances, I shudder to think how the media might've treated Pope Benedict.

Pope Francis is different. Or different to liberals anyway. They fell in love with him because of the perception that he was friendly to liberal pet cause, even though he CAN'T change the Church's teachings regarding female clergy, abortions, same-sex unions and other things.

Everything is politics to the media. Add to that a fondness for deifying human beings as well as a complete ignorance of how the Catholic Church operates and you've got a recipe for them to believe that Pope Francis would be the answers to their prayers if they believed in prayer. They believe that, why, the right Pope at the right time could drag this old fuddy-duddy institution into the modern day, ordain female clergy, bless same-sex unions, permit abortions and other liberal sacraments.

This delusion comes in spite of the evidence, not because of it.

But now the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place. Pope Francis has said time and again that he cannot and will not "change" the Church's teachings about whatever the liberals are going nuts about this week.

On top of that, top Vatican officials are echoing the Holy Father's remarks.

"[President Obama] appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies. Such policies would have been unimaginable in the United States even 40 years ago. It is true that many faithful Catholics, with strong and clear leadership from their bishops and priests, are reacting against the ever-growing religious persecution in the U.S."
-- Vatican Chief Justice Cardinal Raymond Burke
(Source- http://washingtonexaminer.com/cardinal-burke-criticizes-obamas-anti-life-and-anti-family-policies-ahead-of-vatican-visit/article/2546191

Maybe the leftie media will be content to continue living in Liberal La-La Land about this. Maybe they'll take possibly the most scathing criticism the Vatican has ever made against an American President's policies in my lifetime lying down. I admit it could totally happen.

I just doubt it will.

No, I think this will be the beginning of the end of the American liberal media's love affair with Pope Francis. Sooner or later (sooner, I always thought), they'd realize that Pope Francis hasn't "changed" anything, the Church's policies remain as they always were, Pope Francis is unapologetically maintaining the faith as it has been handed down for millennia and he's not the superhero/reformer he was first thought to be by the American media. The above quote from Burke may be their wake up call.

After that, my hunch is that the only thing that might save Pope Francis from being totally pilloried in the media will be his ethnicity. They may be slightly reluctant to bash too much on the first South American Pope in history. But maybe even that won't be enough.

Now, to address a little conspiracy that's made the rounds, a lot of people think the media have simply adopted Pope Francis as a posterboy specifically to create chaos and disunity in the Church. If the media love Francis, surely that'll tick off the conservatives and traditionalists in the Church, which is precisely what the media want. That may irreparably harm Pope Francis and his pontificate. If that happens, if the conservatives turn on a Pope perceived by the media to be more friendly to liberal wackadoo causes, mission accomplished!

Personally, I don't buy that. That would require the leftwing media to realize how most people view them, and that's something they're fundamentally unwilling to do. They have to believe not only that they're the smartest people in the room but that everyone else believes that too. So this theory that they're intentionally causing problems doesn't work for me because it would require the liberal media to acknowledge things about themselves they've historically been unwilling to acknowledge.

No, being as they tend to view the Catholic Church as just another political organization that can change direction if enough pressure is applied, they've genuinely taken Pope Francis to heart... which is why hell will have no fury greater than theirs when they realize Pope Francis is just another Pope who can't and won't "change" the Church's teachings about anything.

THAT is when the claws will come out and I suspect we aren't too far away from that happening.

More to follow.

Non-Denominational Stupidity

The older I get, the more I hold groups like the Southern Baptists, Lutherans and others in absolute disdain. I consider the best of them schismatic and the worst heretical. But I can at least must some intellectual respect for them for having a Statement of Faith (because calling it a "Catechism" would be bad). They have doctrines and theology. Occasionally goofy and incoherent theology, yes, but they have it. And that's worth something.

What I CAN'T respect is the non-denominational crowd. To use an analogy, everybody has gotten themselves sucked into a political discussion at work or a group of casual acquaintances or whoever. And without exception there's always some hipster dillhole in the group who wants to position himself as a free-thinking maverick and so he announces that he's an "independent", both main parties suck and he's the ONLY one in the room with all the answers.

That's who non-denominationalists are. They're religious independents.

Now, say whatever you want about the Southern Baptists (I've said quite a lot about them, much of which isn't very flattering) but they at least have the stones to put their core beliefs on paper. There's some amount of conviction to that. It takes courage and intellectual candor to do that. So at least on that basis, I can admire them. I can't admire them about much else but at least they're not too chicken to tell you what they believe.

By definition non-denominationalists can't do that because they're almost as bad as the Disciples of Christ when it comes to theological disunity. Their parishioners are at the mercy of whoever the lead pastor of their local church is. Whatever he believes, implicitly they believe too. But when they find a new pastor with maybe different views, I assume the parishioners will change their views too.

So by definition you can't ever say what the non-denominationalists believe because they're anything but monolithic. And because of that, they never have to take the risks of unchangeably putting their beliefs on the record. That means they're perfectly free to criticize what everybody else does but can escape criticism (or even curious inquiry).

Compare that to the Catholic Church, where, love us or hate us, EVERYBODY knows what we teach about a lot of things and nothing ever gets magically reinvented just because we have a new Pope. The Church's core teachings, beliefs, doctrines and creeds are evident (explicitly or implicitly) starting with the early church going right on through 2,000 years later to today. Meanwhile, I seriously doubt that new non-denominational Independent Fellowship of Faith will be here even fifty years from now, much less 2,000.

To all you non-denominationalists and "independents" out there: Grow a sack and pick a side already.

For everybody else: I thought I'd lived through my share of weird experiences in life but I, a Catholic, was once called "divisive" by a non-denominationalist. Just let that sink in for a minute.

More to follow.

The Universe Has A Starting Point

There's been a lot of bizarre triumphalism about discoveries regarding the big bang theory lately. The following examples were all copied from Facebook:

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and there goes adam and eve, and the best selling fiction novel in history "the bible." Science dont lie but people do, and over the years humans have evolved to become amazing bullshiters guess martin luther made bulls***ing a career since he was not smart enough to be a scientist nor nothing more than a peasant..its like obama taking advice from people off skid row
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Some day one of the last remaining bibles will sit in a Museum of history somewhere and people will marvel at how their ancestors worshipped it's fictional stories the way we do the ancient greeks and egyptians.
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I love science. Big bang theory ftw. Its ok religion you can take a rest now. Let the big kids handle this!
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Sorry creationists, but scientists just found the "smoking gun" that shows how the Big Bang happened.
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There are other examples I could cite but I doubt any of them are any more qualified to follow every single detail of recent discoveries than the above knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, anti-religious zealots are.

I'm not saying I follow every single nuance of recent big bang discoveries myself, you understand. Far from it. The difference though is (A) I admit it and (B) I'm calling other people out for pretending to have an expertise I suspect is sadly lacking if their rambling, semi-conscious Facebook posts are anything to judge by. Why, you might say I'm observing and interpreting evidence to formulate my conclusion. But enough of this heavy "science" stuff I know will only confuse them.

Now, you might doubt me on the above. If you do, ask ANY of the sudden big bang cheerleaders to explain cosmic microwave background light and the role that played in this recent discovery with emphasis on inflation.

Yeah, let me know how that goes.

Anyway, ultimately the principle of the big bang theory is this: the universe had a beginning. Really, that's it. It's that simple. Yes, there are nuanced and intricate analyses to be made, many of which are kind of interesting to some people. But ultimately that's what the big bang theory tells us. The universe had some kind of starting point.

Since it's been singled out, I feel I should say that Christianity has acknowledged that much from the get-go. It should be noted that it was "mainstream science" that was uncomfortable with the universe having a solid starting point rather than perpetual existence favored by most of the scientific community precisely because of what might be implied about Who exactly lit the fuse of the big bang. Religious people who understand the simple principle of the big bang theory (ie, the universe didn't exist one moment but then did the next moment) weren't and aren't uncomfortable with the proposition. It was "mainstream science" that took a lot of convincing on the matter.

And eventually (at gunpoint, against their will, as a last resort and only when all other options failed) mainstream science ultimately did acquiesce and accept simple fact.

So all the non-believers and anti-religious bigots doing end zone dances right now? They're the same ones a century ago who would've been horrified at the very discoveries and theories they're now shouting with glee from the rooftops.

Even so, I'm prepared to be the bigger man in this case. And so I'd like to thank the science-denying, non-believing, anti-religious whackjobs for putting aside their pride (not to mention over a century of resistance to progress) and agreeing with my God, my prophets, my holy text and me in our shared belief that the universe had a firm starting point. Better late than never, guys!

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
-- Dr. Robert Jastrow, founding director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Considering the Disciples of Christ

There was a point back in 2003 and 2004 when I was constantly being invited to go to church with my family. I usually resisted because I was, shall we say, estranged from the Lord at the time. The reasons for that are too long to get into here but, to put it in evangelical terms, I was "out of fellowship".

Now and then though, I would attend their church. The main reason for that was to get them off my crank about it. When I was back in fellowship though, I knew I had to go to church somewhere. And their church seemed as good as anything so I visited a few times. And it didn't last.

I was extremely raw in and new to the faith at the time so I couldn't have put it into words then but I can now. Specifically I thought the entire thing was an incoherent mess theologically and intellectually.

It was a Disciples of Christ church.

Now, I was raised Church of Christ. I'm very familiar with a lot of their core beliefs and that's why it was so shocking to discover that the Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ were originally one and the same. And, in typical Church of Christ fashion, they split apart over instrumentation.

Right about the time of the split back in the late 1960's, the Disciples of Christ threw in with the liberal wing of Protestantism and pretty much joined up with the No Creed But Christ crowd. Basically all you need to do is affirm Christ as your Lord and Savior. Everything else, and I DO mean everything else, is on the table to believe or not believe as you see fit.

If you want to believe that Christ had a human father or that He never performed miracles or that He never rose from the dead or that He's one of millions of options to go to Heaven or whatever else, you totally can. They have no statement of faith, no catechism and they don't subscribe to any of the historic creeds. You need only confess Christ as Lord and Savior.

I wouldn't have been able to put it into words at the time but THAT was what turned me off even though I barely knew anything about what I believed after I started believing. But, then as now, I see it as a very big problem. If a group has no doctrinal unity, they're "united" in name only. Irrespective of which other Christian tradition someone may come from, they generally recognize (or be convinced about) the importance of a coherent catechism or statement of faith or SOMETHING to ensure that all members are more or less on the same page with one another.

This fosters REAL unity. And the Disciples of Christ denomination wants nothing to do with it. To them, I assume that a cookie-cutter Calvinist is welcome to sit next to a disciple of Jack Spong in harmonious "unity".

It's not surprising they can barely scrape together more than half a million members. With so much theological dissonance, I'd expect most of their parishioners can barely tolerate one another's presence. I mean, say whatever you want about the Emerging Church, at least they worked out a means to attract young people (for now). The Disciples of Christ can barely keep their membership numbers intact. But not to worry! They're not divisive! Their only creed is Christ!

Yeah, how's that working out for you?

More to follow.

End Timey Stuff (and Why I Don't Talk Much About It)

Apart from critiquing someone else's wack beliefs, I've not commented much on End Times stuff. There's a good reason for that too. Very frankly, End Time study never much interested me even when I was a fire-breathing evangelical. I've always been far more interested in history than sketchy predictions about the future drawn mostly from out-of-context Scriptural passages.

Still, even I recognize the need to have a firm opinion on the subject. That's because I believe God's Word should be studied in full rather than reading only the Psalms and Gospels one likes best. And, yes, that includes the apocalyptic stuff like the relevant sections of Daniel and a good bit of Revelation.

On top of that, back when I taught a small group at Southern Baptist Church #1, I had to teach End Times stuff on two and a half occasions so it behooved me to study the various viewpoints out there and formulate my opinion.

Before I get into that though, I want to be clear in saying I generally don't view a strong interest in End Timey subjects as a negative. If I learned nothing else as a small group teacher, it's that different things motivate different peoples' faith.

For some, the birth of Our Lord, His self-identification with lowly, fallen man is the foundation of their belief. For others, maybe His suffering and death on the cross, the promise of mercy and forgiveness no matter how they've sinned, is what underlies their faith. For some others, it could be that the study of history and discovering the TRUTH of Christianity is what persuades them, as in my case. For still others, it's probable that the guarantee of judgment and the threat of hell is how they came to faith. And, I suppose related to that, there is the crowd who study the Scriptures to ferret out details about how everything is brought to a conclusion.

My point is that one group isn't somehow "wrong" for being motivated by different things than someone else. There's room for everybody!

That all said, I do think some people go WAY too far with it. If somebody were to need me to quantify this to them and explain why that is, odds are they're one of them and nothing I can say will change their mind.

So like I said, everybody has their religious preference. Mine is no better or worse than someone else's. So no matter which side you come down on, don't take this as me bashing on the End Time crowd.

Okay, so that should be enough CYA for me. My basic view is fairly traditional partial Preterism. Again, history guy, remember? It's easier for me to convince myself that the majority of the predictions Our Lord made have already come to pass than I can believe that somehow all world political power, religious influence, economics and everything else will somehow return to Rome. That's not to say that all those things can't or won't happen. Preterism explicitly permits things to have some type of future duplicated fulfillment. For all I know (and am willing to put on the record), they very well may happen "again" in the future. But as I see it, events in history already satisfy most of the requirements made in those prophecies. Not much more needs to be added.

Now, the main reason I bring all this up is because I've been asked about End Time stuff on many occasions. Generally when people found out that I taught the Bible at SB Church #1, sooner or later End Time stuff, Marks of Beasts, Raptures and other stuff would become a topic of conversation. I guess I was supposed to have access to special information that nobody else has or something.

Generally I was greeted by looks of borderline disappointment when I informed the inquirer that the orthodox view for most of Christianity's history has been Preterism, that's the viewpoint I tend to favor so I don't see much point in keeping an eye out for False Prophets or what have you in our lifetimes. Again, for all I know, it COULD happen "again"; I simply don't think it NEEDS to.

What, then, are we to do? How are we to live? Obey the Church's teachings, partake of the Sacraments, study ALL of Scripture (including the "scary" parts), pray and let God work His plan on His schedule.

It's all you can do.

More to follow.

Lent & Other Musings

I gave up soft drinks for Lent. My Catechist said that as my fellow Inquirers and I aren't members of the Church, we actually don't even have to participate in Lent. But if we already believe, there's no reason not to participate.

So here I am.

And as I say, I gave up soft drinks for Lent. I mainline caffeinated beverages: Coca Cola, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and other things. I have two major vices in life: caffeine and nicotine. And, thankfully, they're both legal. So giving one of them up for Lent was a pretty courageous thing, if I do say so myself.

Of course, cutting off the soft drinks means pretty much cutting off my main source of caffeine. In case it's not obvious where this is going, I had a pretty roaring headache for a couple of days. Took forever to subside.

I tend to plan ahead. Not always but usually. As such, I had items in the hopper waiting to be posted so I went ahead and posted them. The reason for that is because the idea of posting new material with THIS kind of headache struck me as pure insanity.

Since my headache has subsided though, I think I've settled into Lent pretty well. The fasting aspect hasn't been too difficult. And as I've said before, I've been improving my prayer life. And let's face it, Lent isn't a bad time to do that sort of thing. I've heard of people going to Reconciliation/Confession more often during Lent but as an Inquirer, I don't think I'm permitted to do that just yet. But the concept does interest me.

In other news, today Barry the Teleprompter Messiah delayed Obamacare's individual mandate for a period of two years. As a total coincidence, the Democrats lost the special election yesterday for a House of Representatives race yesterday. I'm sure these two things are completely unrelated to each other though.

sigh

I can't help it. I don't want to run an overtly political blog but things like this are why I don't believe in universal suffrage. Not just anybody should be able to vote.

The Evolution of Belief and Theology

I've not talked a whole lot about the evolution of my beliefs over the years. Now, that's not to say I haven't blabbered on at length about my path to the Church. Because I have. At great length.

When I started getting serious about faith at the tender age of 24, I knew the most important thing obviously was theology. If you don't know the how and the why, it's hard to accept the way and then believe in the Whom. Makes sense.

So in short order I started off on the basis that the Catholic Church is full of wackadoo teachings that aren't worth listening to, they're off the reservation about basically everything and I should just move on.

As I've written before (again, here), I'd long been interested in Anglicanism. It's kind of like Catholicism, but less so; all the ritual, half the guilt, none of the Popes. What's not to like?

The issue there is that the Episcopal Church USA was a mess. Now, to be fair, there's never been a moment in my life when TEC wasn't facing some crisis or another. I was born only a couple of years after the Anglican Communion decided, oops, you know what? Women can serve in the priesthood after all! It really has been downhill for them ever since.

By 2006, when I began casting about for a denomination to call home, I was faced with the choice of entrusting my soul to a group of weirdo Episcopalians who didn't even seem to have a basic understanding of the clear teachings of Scripture. Female presiding archbishops, gay priests, transgendered bishops; what a mess!

So, with regrets, I ventured into Southern Baptist Land and didn't come up for air until about five or six years later. Still, I had a spark of interest in liturgy and formal worship. A liturgy that's been refined over the centuries just seemed more trustworthy to me than some dude who graduated from "Bible college" up there extemporizing.

Besides, on a practical level, I never appreciated the emotional and/or responsive manipulation of a lot of Southern Baptist worship. A good example of what I mean is Jonathan Stockstill's song "Let the Church Rise". The lights go down, the "worship team" (can't call them a choir, no no, that'd be BAD!) begin the song softly and right as they build to a rousing crescendo with the chorus, the lights come back up, which is your cue to rise (heh, get it?) to your feet.

And whatever, there are people out there who get off on manipulative nonsense like that. Far be it from me to judge. I'm just saying I found it shallow and almost offensive.

But, and here's the odd part, Southern Baptists are not at all averse to more atmospheric things like darkened rooms and candles. They simply always remember to plug in their electric guitars. So it felt, at once, kinda sorta formalized but with just enough informality to appeal to... actually, I'm not sure who's supposed to be interested in that neurotic presentation. But their churches are packed every Sunday so what do I know?

All I can say is that I tolerated that stuff because I had responsibilities at SB Church #1 by that point. Originally it was editing, mixing and then uploading the podcast of the pastor's sermon each week. Then it was taking attendance for my small group of 20 and 30-something singles. And ultimately it was teaching that small group.

So as I say, the worship "praise section" didn't interest me much but I didn't feel right about turning my back on people who needed me.

Oh, if I knew then what I know...

But I didn't, that's the point. Anyway, but becoming a small group teacher requires you to learn and study a lot, which is how I became more deeply entrenched in "reformed" theology. And as I did so, I reached the conclusion that there was no unity here. None.

Now, in today's post-evangelical world, that word needs some definition. What I mean is that no two Protestants agree on the meaning of any given verse in the Bible. The joke I always heard (and never found funny) was that if you get five Southern Baptist pastors into one room, there'll be nine opinions. Apparently we're supposed to find the lack of unity amusing.

It may seem like a small thing but think about it for just a minute. To a man, they all believe in Sola Scriptura. Which is to say that the Bible is the first, last and only infallible source of authority man has access to. I've poked holes in that before so need to do it again. But teaching this small group was my first real look at how little Protestants have in common even with each other.

I think it can fairly be said that there's no single doctrine or interpretation of Scripture that all Protestants would agree about, up to and including the Messiah's identity and relationship to the Father.

That alone suggests that there's something very severely wrong with the Sola Scriptura doctrine as the Bible is made up of God's Word, God's Word is made up of individual testaments, those individual testaments are made up of individual books, those individual books are made up of words and words have meaning. "X" cannot be "X" and "the opposite of X" at the same time and in the same context. Words have meaning because the Author wants to convey an idea. It's crazy to think that He'd long tolerate such wasteful disarray among His own (supposed) followers.

That bothered me but I never made a big deal out of it because, like I said, I had responsibilities at SB Church #1. People were depending on me, after all. But eventually I was pretty much shown the door at SB Church #1 and my reputation was smithereens as a result.

The issue here is that it was easy for my enemies at SB Church #1 to take me out because I'm not ordained. Moreover, I barely knew any of the higher-ups at SB Church #1. I was teaching a group in their Singles Ministry but I'd never even met the lead pastor of SB Church #1 face to face. None of them knew me. There was no relationship there. But my enemies had friends in very high places. At least one or two were deacons, in fact.

And like I said, things didn't work out so well at SB Church #2 because some familiar faces from #1 started showing up there since our former group was such a mess.

So by the time I started casting about for a new denomination, I'd learned some hard lessons. Some of them were:

Sola Scriptura is a weak, illogical, self-refuting doctrine

Women need a warm glass of STFU when it comes to church leadership

Laity have no business teaching or holding positions of authority unless they're closely monitored by someone with a true, genuine calling

So when I began searching for a new home, I not only knew that the Southern Baptist Convention was out of the question, but whether I liked it or not, I had doctrinal issues to work out. I made this decision in 2012, by which time the Anglican Church in North America had come into an existence as an alternative to TEC.

It felt like this was the continuation of something I'd started back in 2006 but had to abandon because TEC was such a mess. Now, Anglicanism's roots in Catholicism mean it isn't a Sola Scriptura denomination. They relied upon other authorities, not least of which is tradition.

Tradition plays a major role in their beliefs, practices, liturgy and theology. Makes sense. History is (or should be) a guide both in terms of what to do and what not to do. So by way of demonstration, the Anglicans helped knock down my belief in Sola Scriptura. Not that there was much belief left in it by that point.

The transition to Anglicanism was easier than I first thought. Sure, making the Sign of the Cross was a new idea for me. But you adjust. I eventually veered over to Anglo-Catholicism, which required a bit more effort because... well, it's in the name. Catholic.

Eucharistic theology is a good example of what I'm talking about. I'd been raised to view the Lord's Supper as a strictly commemorative act. I think I was 26 or so before I even realized there were differing opinions on the matter. But the ACNA parish I attended was decidedly Anglo-Catholic and about as high church as they could be given the parameters in which they had to work. And they made it clear that they believe in the Real Presence.

I rationalized it at the time. "Well, just because they think of the Eucharist as the Lord's body and blood doesn't mean I have to. It can be a strictly symbolic memorial for me." But I soon stumbled across the letter written by St. Ignatius to the Smyrneans wherein St. Ignatius identified as a heretic anybody believed the Eucharist wasn't the Body and the Blood. Historians differ on whether Ignatius was taught by St. Peter, St. Paul or St. John, but what seems sure is that he was trained by at least one of the apostles.

Considering how far back in history that was, wouldn't St. Ignatius know what he was talking about?

His view of the Eucharist as the Body and the Blood of Our Lord was a game-changer. It was also the first time I'd given Catholic theology real consideration. No "reformed" nonsense, no Anglican middle step, pure, straight-up Catholic doctrine. And for the first time I realized Catholic teachings held up to scrutiny.

Most people have common objections to Catholic theology. My objections were no different. And what I found was the Catholics had a good justification for everything, no matter how small. Take a crucifix, for example. I had the usual evangelical reservations about them, and found easy answers for why Catholics tend toward crucifixes rather than empty crosses.

My point is that they had a logical, coherent answer for everything. Everything! Now, yes, it offended the anti-Catholic sensibilities in which I'd been raised. No doubt about it. But do you turn your back on the truth because people won't like the fact that you found it?

Another thing was that creeds are only divisive when heretics listen to them. The entire point of a creed is to identify the key elements of our faith and distill them down to a quick summary. If you can't recite a creed in good conscience, you don't belong. Simple as that.

Ditto formalized prayers. They're only as robotic and lifeless as the person praying lets them be. If one's heart isn't in it, it's their fault; not the formalized prayer's.

Similar things can be said of other uniquely Catholic practices. My point, however, is that the Church can defend and justify all her beliefs and practices when someone with an open mind gives her the chance.

And ultimately that was probably the greatest revelation of all.

More to follow.

Considering Messianic Jews and Authentic Teaching

My church is doing missions stuff (likely in conjunction with Spring Break for several schools in the area) so there won't be RCIA this week. That doesn't mean there isn't stuff to talk about though.

For the past few years, I've followed a certain Messianic Jew's blog. We shall call her "Hannah". Now, "Hannah" started out in evangelicaldom like I did. And also like I did, she eventually got fed up with how they do things so she left in favor of a more ritualized form of religion.

That's about as much as our respective faith journeys have in common though.

Obviously I ended up in the Catholic Church. Or I will be in the Catholic Church by the end of April of this year. Same difference. "Hannah", though, ended up in Messianic Judaism. And, man, what a ride!

Now, I should pause here to say that I long ago learned that a small amount of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. That's not new information for me. But even with that truism in mind, the blog "Hannah" maintains really is in a class all by itself.

There are many points I could make and many examples I could cite. However, I ultimately decided to leave "Hannah" safely anonymous and instead deal with just a few issues that concern me.

First off, there's Messianic Judaism itself. I have a high regard for their commitment to studying God's Word. For whatever else I could say about the MJ movement, they don't mess around when it comes to study. That's the good news. The bad news though is they have reached all the wrong conclusions.

The entire thrust of the MJ movement is their selective adherence to the Mosaic Law. I suppose the Council of Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 15 wasn't specific enough for them vis a vis a Christian's religious requirements, be he Jew or Gentile.

The other issue though is that Messianic Judaism is ultimately designed to appeal to Jewish converts who expect (depend on?) a fairly strict code of religious obligation. As such, legitimate teaching authorities such as the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council tend to view Gentile converts as not only unnecessary but likely unbiblical.

Being a Gentile herself, that poses a pretty serious problem for "Hannah". When your own teachers and leaders think you shouldn't be there, you have to go through some pretty interesting logical contortions to justify your continued attendance.

In the case of "Hannah", she resolves this, first, by bad-mouthing the rabbis who teach on these matters and, second, by claiming that the early Church abided by Torah. But then the wicked Constantine came along and he ruined the whole thing, you see.

Apart from the fact that the historical record doesn't support her in any way whatsoever (and what's with Constantine being the Grand Central Station for blame for all the early Church's problems anyway?), it makes you wonder if Our Lord was only kidding when He said He would be with us always, even unto the end of the age. So, what, right around 330 AD, He went on vacation for a bunch of a centuries and only took an active interest in His Church again during the 1970's in America?

Now don't get me wrong, Protestants have to overcome similar hurdles. They have an easier time though because they can at least claim the Catholic Church operated properly for millennia but eventually fell into error. Luckily though, it was right around then that Martin Luther showed up to lead his rebellion revolution "reformation". The Protestants would say that the church never went away; it simply needed to be reformed.

Messianic Jews obviously can't claim even that much. As a result, many of them don't even try. Except obviously for "Hannah", that is.

"Hannah" recently closed down comments on her blog. She claimed that she was being inundated by annoying, pious, holier-than-thou-art wannabe Christians and rather than endlessly moderate the virtual deluge of vitriol and negativity, she's ended comment privileges altogether.

Now, it's impossible to know for sure what those other comments said. Or if they even exist. Because none of them were ever posted. The only comments "Hannah" approved tended to be flattery of her "expert" scholarship. On top of all that, and because of all that, the only vitriol and negativity visible on her blog was written by "Hannah" herself. Whether it was merely a different opinion or, for that matter, an innocent human error, "Hannah" shows no mercy when anybody dares say something she disagrees with.

For my part, I tried on two occasions to gently correct her misunderstandings of history. My opinion then and now was that a careful, honest review of history shows the Catholic Church to be on the right side. So rather than endlessly debate doctrines and Scriptural interpretations, I tried to stick with objectively true or objectively not true facts of history that anybody can verify for himself. The tone I went out of my way to take was polite and conversational. "Say, I don't know if what you wrote up there is true because there are records aplenty of early Church Fathers saying almost the total opposite of what you claim," or "Believe it or not, there is no record of ANY kind of holiday being celebrated on December 25 prior to Christianity. Claims to the contrary are sourced exclusively from Protestants with an axe to grind" and the like.

And shortly thereafter, "Hannah" began disallowing comments. It's hard not to see it at least in part as a reaction to the two comments I submitted.

Apart from a sketchy view of history, "Hannah" appears to hold to a rather bizarre view of Sola Scriptura (which is to say Scripture alone is the only infallible source to guide men's faith and religion). I say it's "bizarre" because the MJ movement is predicated on forms of tradition, which, by definition, cannot be found anywhere in Scripture. How does "Hannah" square the (seemingly selective) Sola Scriptura viewpoint with a movement so heavily founded on oral tradition? It's impossible to know because "Hannah" never spells it out.

Last of all, however, is the view "Hannah" has of End Time prophecy. This is perhaps where her roots in evangelicdom are strongest, as she believes we are IN the End Times. Now, many evangelicals believe we're "near" the End Times. Be it Hal Lindsey, Chuck Missler, Tim LaHaye or any hundreds of others, it's simply not difficult to find people who teach these things. To a man, they would all say we're "near" the End Times.

Where "Hannah" sets herself apart from the pack. She doesn't believe we're "near" the End Times. She believes that we are IN the End Times. For as extreme as the teachers and writers that I mentioned may appear to be, NONE of them (I've checked) have ever said that we are "in" the End Times.

Not. One.

Now, the purpose of this isn't to criticize "Hannah". In fact, it's not even to criticize Messianic Judaism. I mention this to say, ultimately, that this is how badly things can go wrong without a Magisterium to lead and teach the flock. Our Lord built His Church, promised He would never leave it and that the gates of Hell won't prevail against it. He must have been telling the truth or else he wouldn't be Our Lord. If you can't accept that fundamental premise, I question whether you even have the right to say you belong to Him.

More to follow.