Evangelicals Love the Catholic Church

Man, am I nailing multiple updates this week or what?

Anyway, so something that's captured my interest ever since I first started the process of joining the Catholic Church is the concept of Protestants making the switch. I think this is rather natural inasmuch as I was a Protestant. And I was making the switch.

Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of the term "convert" because I'm not switching from one brand name to another. In my mind, I've embraced the fullness of the Christian faith as expressed in and revealed through the Catholic Church. I'm filling in gaps that were always present in my religious acumen. Such an act isn't a "conversion"; it's a "completion".

What I've noticed though is a tendency to assume that "young people" joining the Church do so for the liturgy. I have no particular expertise on that subject. First, these are the same "young people" who support same-sex marriage in numbers approaching the ridiculous. So clearly they can't be too overly concerned with the Church's teachings. Second, I can't quite shake the suspicion of their fixation for liturgy as strictly novelty.

To wit: to whatever extent they're churched, they're predominantly familiar with worship services that are similar to U2 concerts. Any type of liturgy might be interesting to them because of the novelty factor. That doesn't necessarily make for an enduring conversion

In any case though, I came across an article less about the all-important Millennials and more about joining the Church point blank, particularly as it concerns older people in leadership positions within evangelicalism.

We dare not underplay the importance of that.

Do clergy leave the Church? Sure. Happens fairly regularly, I'm sure. But what's interesting to me is the concept of married evangelical pastors switching to Catholicism. In most cases, Catholic priests cannot be married. It's already costly for an evangelical to "convert" to Catholicism because implicit in that is the acknowledge that his previous affiliation was in error.

But the deeper issue is that many evangelical leaders and pastors and teachers who convert do so in the full knowledge that they'll have to find a new career, different ways to service in the Church and very probably live in a higher level of poverty than they might be accustomed to as relatively well to do evangelical ministers.

The importance of this is not to be underestimated. True, it may not be as flashy and impressive as refusing to recant the faith on pain of martyrdom. But I think we should bear in mind the prospects of a loss professional prestige, reduced income, unemployment and possible harassment when we consider what some evangelical leaders face in joining with the Church.

The other thing the article makes a special point of mentioning though is the intellectual reasons many converts to the faith have. I'd be the last one to deplore liturgy since I've written about it on many occasions. But at the end of the day, my reasons for joining the Church are because of history, reason and logic.

This is the Church founded by Christ. You can trace today's bishops in an unbroken line back to Our Lord Himself. The Church Fathers were CLEARLY Catholic. Catholicism offers the only intellectually coherent and logical case for salvation. Numerous other reasons too.

However, the same is not true in the inverse. Sure, evangelicals may join the Church for intellectual reasons. But Catholics leave the Church for evangelicalism for emotional reasons. It has nothing to do with the Protestants making a better case or presenting a stronger argument. In fact, you could reasonably guess that perhaps Protestantism itself isn't even the issue. Many Catholics leaving has more to do with the Church itself than it does evangelicalism.

So, to put it another way, evangelicals join the Catholic Church because of the Catholic Church. Catholics leave the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church.

I find this very fascinating.

More to follow.

Sola Scriptura? Sola Fide?

"If you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours; but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failings either."
- Matthew 6:14-15

"Then the master sent for the man and said to him, "You wicked servant, I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me. Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow-servant just as I had pity on you?" And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart.'"
- Matthew 18:32-35

By faith alone, huh?

Let's see what those who profess Sola Scriptura had to say.

"God forgives freely and without condition, out of pure grace."
- Martin Luther

"The forgiveness, which we ask that God would give us, does not depend on the forgiveness which we grant to others."
- John Calvin

The Bible is the only authority, huh?

Some reformation...

Reconsidering Novus Ordo

As I near the end of my journey through RCIA and begin to ramp up toward Easter, I've tried harder to make it to Mass at least Sunday (or Saturday). Soon this will be a requirement for me. So I'm trying to make it more of a priority now.

In pursuit of that goal, I went to Mass at a Novus Ordo parish near my apartment. Up to now, I've somewhat looked down my nose at the Novus Order because I wasn't overly impressed with it at a different parish at which I attempted RCIA.

Not to question the validity of Novus Ordo, you understand, but I didn't think the language of it was as poetic as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer Rite I or as beautiful as the Latin Mass. And to a degree, that remains the case now.

However, the Low Masses I attended at the other Novus Ordo parish were blown out of the water by tonight's High Mass Novus Ordo. What I've come to understand is that I can overlook the mediocre English of Novus Ordo so long as the Mass itself is sufficiently High.

In the case of this past Sunday, the Celebrant chanted parts and the incense spread through the entire sanctuary. The only thing missing was a ringing bell, really.

Now, my inner evangelical (what's left of him) is cringing at all of this because it's supposed to be ALL ABOUT YOUR HEART. The specifics of worship don't (or at least shouldn't) make a difference.

Fact is though they do. It's only natural. We're sensory-based creatures. We see, smell, touch, taste and hear. It's how we as people engage the world. So to me it's appropriate then that Mass should encompass all those things. And the issue is that Low Mass doesn't. In my opinion, it just lacks the more solemn atmosphere of High Mass. It's not a matter of substance; it's completely style.

I guess the point is that I don't think that's a shallow difference anymore.

This is a break with how I used to think though in that when I was an evangelical, I generally held people who church-hopped over matters related to music styles or the like in almost open contempt. And in my defense, from Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide standpoints, those ARE vapid reasons for switching churches.

But in a more holistic faith like Catholicism, I think people should attend whatever style of Mass lines up best with their sensibilities.

I just don't have much use for Low Mass Novus Ordo, that's all.

Of Commissions and Synods

The end of RCIA draws ever nearer. I've only got just a bit more to work through with Father, not least of which is a one-on-one meeting to, I assume, work out the finer details of my baptism. True, I've been baptized before but (A) I can't prove that as I don't have a certificate and (B) I truly can't remember if it was done in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So a conditional baptism it is!

There have been a few teachable moments in recent months though. I haven't had much chance to write about it but it's interesting to me to compare the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission conference on the LGBT movement over and against the Church's Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

In the case of the SBC, many people have interpreted comments made by a lot of their high muckety-mucks as a new direction in SBC policy. Change comes from the top and comes slowly but, so the expectation goes, in ten years, we might be looking at a very different SBC. This is based on remarks such as these by Dr. Albert Mohler:

"Early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation I repent of that."

And why not, the SBC is losing tens of thousands of members every year. These are predominantly those under the age of 35, for whom "LGBT rights" border on a sacrament. Push comes to shove, they're perfectly willing to turn their backs on Christianity in solidarity with their LGBT friends.

Compare this to the Church's Synod, where some bishops might've wanted to open the door a bit more for the LGBT community but the Church's Magisterium asserted itself and, in the end, the most you could say is that the Church repeated the existing policy of treating LGBT's with dignity and respect but not even coming close to "accepting" them in the ways that Protestant denominations have.

To be sure, this approach isn't necessarily winning the Catholic Church admirers in that same under-35 demographic either. But the difference is that the Church won't change their policy to fit the climate of the times. Homosexuality is a sin and, rise or fall, the Church will stand by her historic teachings in this regard. Nothing has changed. Indeed, nothing can change.

Think of this as another in a long list of things that Protestants have compromised to keep the lights on. For as big a deal as they make over it, it seems that scriptural authority is capable of being overruled by popular demand.

Who knew?

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?