Saving the Baptists with Baptism

Long time. Been busy. The usual.

Still there are a few interesting things to report.

First my work schedule may be changing soon. If it does, it'll allow me to have Sundays off. That's crucial because the FSSP parish through which I was confirmed does not have evening Mass available. So to fulfill my Sunday obligation, as I've said in previous entries, I've had to go to a Novus Ordo parish after I get off from work.

Now, I'm not disrespecting the Novus Ordo Mass. Some people feel at liberty to do that. But I don't. If there's something manifestly wrong with the Novus Ordo, it will be worked out in time. It's been around for 46 years, which is only a speck of dirt on the canvas of the Church's history. That's nothing in Church time. People wiser and more discerning than me will decide the Novus Ordo's fate.

That having been said, I really do like the traditional Latin Mass better. Again, it's not that one is valid and the other is invalid; it's strictly a matter of preference. The TLM just seems more solemn and holy to me. That's all.

And so it'd be a pleasure to be able to attend Latin Mass every week. And the only way I'll be able to do that for right now is if I have Sunday mornings off. My parish will eventually have a parish building unto itself and will be able to have evening Mass on Sunday but that's several months away at the very least. So if I want my Latin Mass, Sunday morning is my only real option.

Fingers crossed!

As to other things, I've been thinking a lot about baptism lately. I was baptized in some form or another when I was 16. I asked my parents to be baptized and my grandfather, ordained for such a thing, drove into town to do the job. And he did.

But here's the catch. I truly don't remember what he said as he baptized me. He might've used the proper phrasing as I was immersed. But maybe not. Because of that I asked for a conditional baptism when I was welcomed into the Catholic Church. I didn't want to leave anything to chance. If something was wrong with my baptism from when I was 16, it seemed wise to fix it since I was going to be welcomed into the Church anyway.

But this runs counter to what I was always taught as a child and during my Southern Baptist days as an adult. I was always taught (and, God forgive me, I taught others that) baptism was a strictly symbolic thing. The act conferred no special grace or salvation. So the most obvious question to ask is whether or not that's actually true.

To introduce the subject of baptism, the Catechism says:

Article 1

THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM

1213 Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua), and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word."

So that seems pretty clear to me. Baptism is ordinarily a necessity for salvation. But that's not what I was taught when I was an evangelical Christian. On the contrary, the position that I'd heard repeated again and again was that baptism is a symbol. It's an outward sign of obedience signifying an inward transformation.

In other words, baptism by itself accomplishes nothing. It does not save you, as such. It simply demonstrates that you have already been saved by placing your faith in Our Lord. The very most you can say is that we're following Our Lord's example in being baptized.

But is that really true? It's a big question to get wrong, especially for a movement espousing Sola Scriptura. So perhaps it would be helpful to see what the Bible has to say about salvation.

"He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."
- St. Mark 16:16

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.
- 1 St. Peter 3:21-22

"And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name."
- Acts 22:16

[B]y the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.
- Titus 3:5-7

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" And Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him." And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
- Acts 2:37-41

This all raises the question of just what more can be said in sacred Scripture to emphasize the necessity of baptism for salvation. If God wanted to clearly and plainly articulate the importance of baptism, what other words could He possibly use to make the point?

To go back to the Catechism for a moment: 1214 This sacrament is called Baptism, after the central rite by which it is carried out: to baptize (Greek baptizein) means to "plunge" or "immerse"; the "plunge" into the water symbolizes the catechumen's burial into Christ's death, from which he rises up by resurrection with him, as "a new creature."

1215 This sacrament is also called "the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit," for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one "can enter the kingdom of God."

Once again we find the Catholic Church's interpretation to be absolutely spot-on and consistent with sacred Scripture, not to mention her own tradition and teachings on this subject through the centuries.

Meanwhile many evangelical Protestants, despite their professed belief in sacred Scripture alone as the only infallible authority which guides men in the faith, have missed the mark.

Now, I should say that there are clearly instances where someone believes but, for whatever reason, is not or cannot be baptized in a canonically acceptable way. What of them? Are they simply doomed to hell?

Well, that's not mine to say. The Church teaches that there are possibilities for such people to go to heaven. Those are extraordinary circumstances. But in ordinary circumstances, sacred Scripture and the Church's teachings are both clear:

He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

An Evangelical Responds

One thing I've noticed over the course of my life is that I don't get to make any decision for free. What I mean by that is if I were to decide to double-knot my shoelaces, somebody would come along and demand an explanation as to why I dare have the temerity to not single-knot like everybody else does.

It extends to everything. My career choices, my romantic life, my hobbies, everything.

Coming from a Protestant background as I do, there's no reason to think religious issues should be any different.

I recently shared an article about Sola Scriptura on Facebook. I've made similar arguments myself, both on this blog and in other venues. Simply put, I find Sola Sciptura to be a logical dead end. If the Bible is one's sole source of religious authority... who put the Bible together and what gives them the authority to decide what is and is not canon?

Shouldn't the Sola Scriptura approach be to decide one's personal canon for oneself - or do Protestants already do that?

I wasn't necessarily expecting an outpouring of support, you understand. I just thought it was food for thought and left it at that. But that wasn't good enough for one Facebook friend.

I should pause here and say he and I aren't really "friends" at all. We have mutual friends from my old days at Southern Baptist Church #2 but we have no real relationship between one another.

The only reason he friended me on Facebook is because of the aforementioned mutual friends. He sent me a PM to ask why I never attend any SBC Church #2 functions or attend services there in spite of the fact that I remain a member of their Facebook group. I answered him as well as I could. "The answer I don't attend church there is because Catholic."

In reply I received a sort of invasive series of questions from this guy regarding my faith and Church membership. It wasn't exactly rude but it did seem a little nosy. Our brief correspondence wrapped up with an invitation back to SB Church #2 for some "ecumenical dialogue".

Now, I might've been born at night. But it wasn't last night. I'm next door to positive that if I were foolish enough to show my face at SB Church #2 again, quite apart from seeing a lot of faces from SB Church #1 (my original cause for leaving SB Church #2), I'd be immediately set upon by well-intentioned dunderheads demanding an explanation to some list of Questions to Ask Catholics someone Googled. I have no idea how this blog comes off but, trust me, I'm not apologist. This is a setup.

No thanks.

Besides, SB Church #2 only has services on Sunday morning. If my Sunday morning wasn't occupied by work, I'd attend Latin Mass at my FSSP parish. So no matter what, I'm not going back to SB Church #2. I love the people there but the Catholic faith is where I was always meant to be.

To get back on task though, this guy posted a series of comments to the Sola Scriptura article I shared. It ended up becoming a bit of a back and forth discussion between the two of us. Near the end (or is it merely a pause?) he shifted the subject from Sola Scriptura to Sola Fide.

In essence, he jumped from "the sole source of religious authority" to "the sole source of salvation". Which may be an interesting discussion to have some time. But that isn't the discussion at hand.

All of which is a very long way of saying this objector is the latest in a long line of opposition I've encountered. What makes this situation somewhat unique is that it comes from a complete stranger. Which I found to rather amusing in an aggravating sort of way.

Formal Prayer and How It's Done

In my history as a Christian (which, by my reckoning, only began in November 2004) my prayer life has always been pretty weak. I'm sure somebody out there had a worse prayer life than I did. But that doesn't somehow make my lackluster commitment to prayer somehow better.

As with a lot of other things, I blame this on evangelicalism. The reason for that is because evangelicalism places so much emphasis on extemporaneous prayer (nonsensical babbling, in most cases) and an abject lack of training on how to pray combined with a rejection of traditions (*cough* Catholic Church *cough*) which emphasize formal prayers. So it's maybe no wonder that my prayers were so pathetic and so infrequent.

This is another snowflake in a blizzard of practices and norms suggested by the Catholic Church which the Church then empowers you to do.

In my case, I'm still working on my Marian devotions. It's just not as good as it might be. But my prayers in general are a lot stronger now thanks to the Church-provided prayers to believers. I've got an app on my phone and iPad which contains basically every formal prayer the Church has authorized. Of those, I've bookmarked ten:

Glory Be

Our Father

Act of Contrition

Hail Mary

Alma Redemptoris Mater

Morning Prayer

Golden Arrow

Morning Offering

Magnificat

Nicene Creed

What I've noticed is that praying formal prayers first puts me into a prayerful rhythm where I can then pray extemporaneously (which evangelicals put so much emphasis on) and pray to God, Our Lady or the saints.

And hey, the fact is that you don't always have some pressing need to request or some aggravating sin to confess or some dire emergency going on. Sometimes you can just kneel and pray the formal prayers; worship God or thank Our Lord for His sacrifice or praise Our Lady for her obedience. You don't always have to request something and THAT'S OKAY. It's perfectly acceptable to just praise God's holiness and perfection without asking for something in return. And if you're doing okay right now, fine. Worship and adore, and then be on your way.

But when you need more, you've now got a basic foundation to build on to put your will in line with God, to focus your spirit on the Sacred Heart, to immerse your soul in the Spirit.

As a result, I pray the above prayers each morning before work and it really does alter the trajectory of the day. Whatever was going to happen... well, maybe it'll still happen, maybe it won't. But either way, I'm now in a better spiritual headspace to cope with it.

I don't want this blog to became an anti-evangelical rant but sometimes it's hard to not feel just a little torqued off about how misled I was all those years.

Jennifer Fulwiler and Other Influences

Back in my old Southern Baptist days, I was never really one to have "heroes" or "influences". Not really. I mean, we've all seen people on Facebook share links to this blog or that podcast or some news article by a layman of note. It just wasn't my thing. My attitude was that I could read the Bible just fine for myself, thankyouverymuch. It didn't feel like I needed someone else to write devotionals or other BS.

I was and remain fascinated by the tendency, don't get me wrong. Donald Miller, Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans and the like. Especially the emerging Christian Left. It's just something I didn't relate to on a personal level back then.

Since becoming Anglican, though, that changed. I picked out a couple of people that I thought had interesting insights. Not many and the process taught me just how fragmented and divided Anglicanism in general is. The problem with having such a big tent approach is that it eliminates any possibility of real unity. That was bothersome at the time but, oddly enough, it wasn't fatal to my budding Anglo-Catholicism.

That tendency, by comparison, has gone into overdrive though since becoming Catholic. Quite a few writers and bloggers are in my bookmarks and I check regularly for new updates and the like.

Jennifer Fulwiler is different for me though inasmuch as she comes at life from the same place I do. First, obviously she's a convert. So right there she and I have a lot in common. But second, she comes at pretty much everything from a very rational, very intellectual reference point.

And that, I think, is one reason why her blog is so fascinating to me. She touches on the regular life stuff we all put up with. But she also writes quite a bit about matters related to Catholicism. And generally she has this incredibly raw insight into the faith that eludes a lot of her peers. And it's all predicated on an intellectual conversion to the faith similar to my own.

I didn't convert to Catholicism because of some touchy-feely, warm fuzzy spiritual experience. I did it because I pride myself on being an intellectually honest person and the Catholic Church has the most intellectually honest argument for being THE Church.

That same type of intellectual conviction underlies Jennifer Fulwiler's journey to and ongoing practice of the faith.

Anyway, she's awesome. That's the point.

Afterthoughts
My list of must-read blogs would probably include Elizabeth Scalia, except those Patheos blogs all have aggravating video ads that play stupid commercials and crash my browser. Elizabeth's got a lot of cool things to say, don't get me wrong. NOBODY says the stuff she's saying. I just simply refuse to play ball with the Patheos policy of overloading their viewers with aggravating commercials.

Yes, I realize that hosting a blog network like theirs requires a very high bill to be paid every month. But, simply put, nothing is worth the amount of frustration that I have to put up with to read any Patheos blog. So I don't bother.

Why am I suddenly influenced by other Catholics when no other evangelicals and only certain Anglicans ever captivated my interest? I think the answer to that is how the Church stresses unity and acceptance. My conversion to Catholicism was started on an intellectual basis. But other people have different perspectives. Some were cradle Catholics and don't know anything else. Some are the more fuzzy-wuzzy experrrrrrrrrience stuff that I've never placed much value on. So on and so forth.

And the reality is that they're all just as Catholic as I am. Their particulars and their backstories may be different... but in the case of Catholicism, those differences are ultimately a good thing. The Church is big enough to accommodate everybody without compromising itself. They're not all the same as me. But we all members of the same Church, we're given the same sacraments and we obey the same Pope.

THAT is unity with diversity. And it is a beautiful miracle.

Easter Vigil

So. Easter Vigil. I realize that what happened on Easter Vigil is arguably more pertinent for me to write about than was the sacrament of marriage. But that was a late addition to My Catholic Year, which, as much as anything, was supposed to be a time for absorbing as much of what the Church has to offer as possible. And so it felt wrong somehow to not mention that before getting into Easter Vigil.

As I've said before, I joined the Catholic Church by way of a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter parish. So although I thought I knew what the process of being welcomed into the Church would be like, I was very mistaken.

First, there was the small matter of my baptism to get straightened out. I was baptized back when I was 16 by my grandfather. He was an elder at his local Church of Christ church. But there are some difficulties there. For starters, that was half a lifetime ago for me. I truly have no idea if he baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It stands to reason that he would have. But I couldn't swear to it.

Second, even if he had and even if I remembered it, I don't have a certificate of baptism. For one thing, that's not really a Church of Christ thing to do. But even if it was, it still wouldn't matter because I was baptized at a church but not by that church. My grandfather baptized me at the church I attended at the time. It was my church; not his. Someone from the church came down, unlocked the building for us and my grandfather baptized me. But it wasn't done by the church proper.

Third, that church technically no longer exists anymore. Or if it does, not in the form it was in back when I was 16. And certainly not at the same building.

The combination of all these things made me a very good candidate for a conditional baptism. If that's an unfamiliar term, a conditional baptism should be self-explanatory. But if it isn't, it's basically the priest offering words to the effect of "If you weren't baptized already, you are baptized now". It doesn't "rebaptize" you as such because that's impossible. You can only baptized once. But in cases where one's baptism is up for grabs, a conditional baptism is a good way to settle the matter once and for all.

However, since that potentially leaves half a lifetime of unconfessed sins on the table, there's really no way to do it during the proper Easter Vigil because the priest can't very well stop the Mass to hear confessions from people who may have already been licitly baptized before. So that part had to be done earlier in the day on Saturday.

And I must say that confessing my sins to Father was a pretty unusual experience. I expect it'll get easier in the future but it was hard to think of very many major sins I've committed. But some very important mortal sins I've committed came to mind and needed to get straightened out. It'd be stupid to mention them here but by any standard this is definitely stuff to mention in confession.

What I discovered though was simply talking about them and getting them off my chest helped a bunch. I'm really sorry for some of the things I've done in life. I did them with my eyes wide open, in spite of everything my own conscience, Sacred Scripture and probably even the Spirit could say to dissuade me. But I did them and then I confessed. Father absolved me and prescribed my penance.

Earlier today I took care of my penance. And you know what? Danged if I don't feel like a burden I was never even aware of has been lifted.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I've never been one of those fuzzy-wuzzy spiritual feeeeeeeeeeeelings types. It's just not my thing. Subjective experience is fine in its place but there is such a thing as an objective reality and experiential nonsense usually isn't what motivates me. But at the same time, I can't pretend something important didn't change, first, by confessing and, second, by doing my penance.

Once the baptismal rite and then confession had ended, it was off to get dinner just before Easter Vigil started.

Now, I come from a decidedly Protestant family. My friends are either Protestant or not religious. Because of that, I wasn't expecting much of anything in terms of recognition from anyone for joining the Church. So imagine my surprise when my girlfriend presented with me rosary beads, a Catholic Bible, 'Heretics' by GK Chesterton and a few other things!

After that, it was back to church for Easter Vigil. Now, I knew this was going to be a major lu-lu. I'd heard that this was the single longest Mass the Catholic Church has to offer. Apparently it's second to none in terms of length. And I found that to be quite true.

Even so, the sights, sounds, prayers and chanting, incense and everything else... I mean, THIS is how you worship God. So I didn't mind the length of the Mass.

This is probably a typical experience for a lot of people but I was not expecting total strangers to want to take pictures of and with me just because I was joining. But that's what happened. My fellow candidates and I were almost treated like celebrities or something with everybody, of whom not least was the parish's photographer, wanting to take pictures of us standing with our sponsors in front of the altar, standing with Father in front of the altar, standing otherwise alone as a group in front of the altar, standing as individuals in front of the altar, etc. It was nuts!

But then they just saw all of us get welcomed into the Church. As converts. Whatever our lives would've become before we joined the Church, that's all changed now. We have a new destiny. A better destiny. And they witnessed us take our first clumsy steps in that right direction. And as adults in such a traditionalist church, you can well figure that we're probably doing it for all the right reasons. And so perhaps that is what those people wanted to commemorate.

Either way, it was hard to not get a little emotional about the whole thing. I've been trying to join the Catholic Church ever since October 2013. My fellow candidates only started in July 2014. If, shall we say, "time served" is a factor, I don't think the experience meant as much to them as it did to me. This took a long time to finally get sorted out. It was worth the wait, to be sure, but joining the Church has been uppermost in my mind for a very long time now.

And now that I'm officially a member, I don't quite know what the next step is. But I'll figure something out.

Considering A Sacrament- You're Not As Prolife As You Think

It's funny that I've struggled so much lately over challenges I've had lately with my new faith considering how much investigation and research I did about Catholicism long before even joining RCIA. But problems I've had lately relate to two of the Church's more controversial positions, which go hand-in-hand with each other: Sanctity of life and prohibition of contraception.

I say these are struggles for me because I agreed with the Church's teachings about them and because of that, I thought I understood them. But I'm coming to learn that I don't. Which isn't to say I disagree with the Church. It only means that I didn't completely understand where they were coming from.

Take abortion, for example. To me it was human life. Simple as that. And since we don't know exactly when "life begins", the cautionary principle we should proceed from is that life begins at the moment of conception.

And while I suspect the Church agrees with that sentiment, it doesn't go far enough in describing the fullness of the person or the problem. My problem, though, was that I didn't feel any great intellectual compulsion to proceed from there. And that's why the reasons for the Church's teachings have caught me so off-guard.

From the Catechism:

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.

From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.

Pretty straight forward, right?

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.

This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.

Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

...

Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

So in a nutshell, that tells us what the Church teaches concerning abortion. But it doesn't tell us the fullness of why things are the way they are. This is more or less where I'd always stopped with the formation of my pro-life views. "It's murder". Pure and simple. And, again, it is. But there are other factors at work in this far beyond even that. My problem was that I thought the above was enough by itself. And as Anglican (as I used to be), it might've been. But the Church always has two or three reasons (at least) for believing what they do. So what are the other reasons in play here?

It relates to the life and purpose of the sacrament of marriage. A man and a woman, once married, are to bond in the marital union. Their love for each other and this sacrament given from above are powerful. So powerful, in fact, that (in ordinary circumstances) the end result can be new life.

The purpose of marriage isn't to do whatever you want, if you catch my drift, with your spouse. Your wife is not a sex object. She's your wife. She has the full dignity of being made in God's image. As a man, you're to cherish her, protect her and love her as Christ loves the Church.

From the Catechism...

2249 The conjugal community is established upon the covenant and consent of the spouses. Marriage and family are ordered to the good of the spouses, to the procreation and the education of children.

Again, the purpose of marriage is in the majority of cases the creation of new life, which carries with it the inherent responsibility of educating the children in the faith. Push comes to shove, this is what the two of you are here to do.

1653 The fruitfulness of conjugal love extends to the fruits of the moral, spiritual, and supernatural life that parents hand on to their children by education. Parents are the principal and first educators of their children. In this sense the fundamental task of marriage and family is to be at the service of life.

And let's be realistic, that may not always fit into your game plan. If the two of you already have your hands full with a little one who's still in diapers and want to space the next child out, there's nothing wrong with consummating only during non-fertile times. You're both open to procreation but your preference is to wait at least a while.

Here's the thing. You will most assuredly feel the desire for each other during fertile times. But you can't act upon it. That's a sacrifice the two of you have to make. Again, your spouse is not a sex object. The minute you don't respect how powerful the marital union is, you may end up with an unexpected pregnancy.

1652 "By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory."

Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. God himself said: "It is not good that man should be alone," and "from the beginning (he) made them male and female"; wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: "Be fruitful and multiply." Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.

Now, this policy has been treated as an authoritarian power play by the secularists. "They only want women to be wombs with feet!" Well, let's be realistic for just a moment. Which worldview objectifies women? The Catholic viewpoint that says both husband and wife should respect each other's souls and bodies at all times and never treat one another like a piece of meat because their union is so powerful it can create new life? Or the secularist view that says you can do whatever you want with whoever you want as often as you want with absolutely no commitment whatsoever as long as you remember to take your Pill?

You cannot use contraception without in some way or another cheapening what the sacrament of marriage is supposed to be. Consequently, there may well be times when you have to sacrifice the pleasure of your physical union with your spouse. But that's a sacrifice you must be willing to make.

Besides, if the Church truly wanted to reduce women to "baby factories", they would not forbid in vitro fertilization. But they do. Infertile couples don't miss out on the fullness of the marital union simply because they don't have children. But they're still called to sacrifice by not having children.

1654 Spouses to whom God has not granted children can nevertheless have a conjugal life full of meaning, in both human and Christian terms. Their marriage can radiate a fruitfulness of charity, of hospitality, and of sacrifice.

But you never hear that argument in anti-Catholic rants in the media. All anybody seems to remember is the Church's prohibition against using contraception. But if the Church truly viewed women as baby outlets, they would not forbid artificial fertilization procedures.

So much for women's rights!

Ultimately it comes down to the dignity of marriage, which is inextricably linked to the dignity of the human being which is itself inextricably linked to the value of human life. And that leads us right back to abortion.

Considering the reverence the Church manifestly has for marriage as a sacrament for procreation, is it any wonder then that the Church views abortion the way it does? If one's view of marriage is as high-minded as the Catholic Church's, the only logical conclusion must be that abortion is a wicked practice of barbaric moral evil.

I thought I was prolife, pro-marriage and anti-contraception before but it took the Church to show me understand just how right and yet how far away I was.

The Future of the Church

I've written about my time among the Anglicans before. So I won't retread too much of it here. But it is interesting how and in what ways liberals want the Catholic Church to change.

The main reason I never joined up with the Episcopal church is because, first and foremost, the liberals had made a wreck of the place. At the time you couldn't readily identify a liberal wackadoo parish from a more traditional one. At least not by looking at it. That was the main reason I ultimately fell in with the Southern Baptists for all those years as I say. By and large, a church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention could be assumed to be faithful and orthodox (by SBC standards, at least). The Episcopal church, meanwhile, was a lot more of a gamble.

As I type that, I'm remembering the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which, as discussed here, I and others interpret as the beginning of the SBC doing an about-face on LGBT issues. So in the future, you can generally be certain of most Episcopal parishes you come across while the future is very likely to be shaky and uncertain for the SBC. No, the irony of all this is not lost on me.

But I digress. The one thing that's clear is that the Episcopal Church has been completely remade in the liberal's image. This, we're told, is the gateway to Christianity's future. And, as the prevailing liberal sentiment goes, until the Catholic Church embraces these things, "young people" will continue abandoning her in droves.

But like anything else, the numbers tell a different story. Current polling figures are either unavailable or else are colored by ideologues from both sides. But as a preliminary, the Church appears to be stable in the United States even though news media are constantly presenting anecdotal data indicating people are leaving. Thus the stability could be from disaffected Protestants crossing the Tiber, an influx of immigrants (whether here legally or not) or other factors. But the currently numbers are either holding fast, and are possibly increasing.

I recently had occasion to meet with my priest and discuss the final details of my being welcomed into the Church. During our conversation, we veered off topic and he ended up mentioning that the pastors of most Catholic parishes are insanely outnumbered by their parishioners.

Father didn't mention specific numbers but he said that the Novus Ordo parish at which his FSSP parish is temporarily headquartered has something like 50,000 people attending. He said that a priest is supposed to be like a father to his parishioners (thus the title "Father"). But the situation a lot of priests are facing now is more akin to being the mayor of a small town. This, he says, is why most Catholic parishes have several priests on duty. There's simply too much to do for any one priest to hope to keep up.

This isn't a problem that erecting new parishes will necessarily solve either as there is a priest shortage right now. Demand far outstrips supply.

Meanwhile, if current social issues are anything to judge by, the Episcopal church is apparently the zeitgeist of American Christianity right now. It embraces everything the liberal naysayers argue the Church should. Less hierarchical authority, ordination of gay, female and married "clergy", acceptance of non-heterosexual unions, abortion on demand, birth control, divorce and all the other liberal sacraments.

With a formula like that, you'd think the Episcopal church must have nigh uncontainable growth. But the truth is it lost over 30% of its parishioners between 2001 and 2008. Fully one million people left the church during that time. And all signs so far indicate that it has lost even more in recent years as the old guard continues dying out.

During that same period, the Catholic Church posted growth of 7 million new members. In other words, they not only made up for what the Episcopal church lost, they had an additional 6 million new members as well.

Are the Catholic Church's numbers stable? Will they hold? We'll have to wait for newer and more objective polling data. But what's virtually certain at this point is that the Episcopal church (and Anglicanism in general) is in its death throes in the United States. In ten years, I think it's very unlikely that the Episcopal church as we know it will even exist anymore. Their "clergy" are still relatively young though so there's every possibility that the "too many chiefs, not enough Indians" problem the Episcopal church is currently facing will only get even more lopsided as time goes by.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder how long it will be before Catholic priests feel like the mayor less of a small town and more of a major metropolitan area.

Holy Week (or "More Evangelical Goofiness")

I've written before about how evangelicalism really is a stripped down, unglued, incoherent photocopy of the Catholic Church but it feels like it's about time to revisit the topic.

It's come to my attention that Southern Baptist Church #2 for the first time in their entire history is offering a service on Good Friday.

I attended this and other Southern Baptist churches for several years and am here to say that basically anything related to Holy Week is pretty foreign to the evangelical model. But here once again we see evangelicalism swiping from the Catholic faith. It's almost as if they're beginning to understand that the faithful need time for sober remembrance of Our Lord's final words, scourging, crucifixion, death and burial prior to celebrating His resurrection. Also, it's not like SBC Church #2 is new to pilfering from the liturgical calendar.

But, why, that's crazy talk! Those are man-made traditions rather than God's Word!

The Coming Evangelical Collapse (Six Years Later)

"We're all Catholics now."
Mike Huckabee

The Coming Evangelical Collapse

You know, I've never been much of one to read the tea leaves. Generally speaking, I'm often the last one to get the memo about pretty much anything. I generally tend to believe in my own point of view until that awkward moment when reality rudely wakes me up.

But my record isn't all bad. Or even mostly bad. When I was teaching a small group at Southern Baptist Church #1, I saw first hand that modern Christianity was up against a lot of problems.

For one thing, it blew my mind how many of my supposed peers were absolutely ignorant of even the fundamentals of the faith. In the evangelical world, you are free to believe whatever you like about raptures and End Times and things like that but what's non-negotiable are big ticket doctrines such as the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and other things. I wasn't asking the group members to know the order in which David, Moses, Elijah and Abraham lived (although it wouldn't hurt). I merely sought to give them the core essentials of the faith.

The Catholic Church would say I was trying to catechize them.

However, my efforts were largely for naught. Many of them were incapable of explaining even the basics of what they believe or, heaven help them, why they believe it. The point came where I stopped wondering why they were even bothering to come to church at all and started wondering how long my (then) beloved evangelical Christianity could survive in the face of such alarming ignorance and apathy.

I needn't have worried, of course, because in short order it stopped being my problem. Getting fired publicly has that effect. People so ignorant of their faith and so eager to embrace (rather than engage) the culture couldn't long be counted upon to stand up for evangelicalism. Thus it would be fair to say that by the start of 2010, I was very scared of what evangelicalism might look in ten years' time.

Oddly enough, I ended up helping fulfill that myself what with my journey to the Catholic Church, but I digress.

Apart from not reading the tea leaves, I've also never been one to get swept away with hyperbole and doom-saying. Any fool can predict catastrophe because havoc and mayhem are the natural states of the world. Indeed, the market is strong for predicting future calamities.

Still, when the source article I linked to up top first caused a stir, it was completely off my radar. But I tripped over it not long after I joined the RCIA program about a year ago. And even though the late author freely admits to being no prophet, he outlines an oddly prophetic vision of the problems that have engulfed evangelicalism. It's easy to buy into because I glommed onto it relatively late in the game. Comparing this man's predictions to what has already come to pass, indeed, it is chilling how accurate his vision has been. At least up to now.

To wit: Twenty and thirty years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention pretty much ran the board on all or most social issues. Politicians crossed prominent evangelical pastors and leaders at their own peril. It would be fair to say that evangelicalism enjoyed a cultural and political hegemony that the first century Church could only dream of. And the SBC was not ignorant of this. On the contrary, they rather enjoyed their positions of influence.

Today though, your average sub-35 year old evangelical can easily explain the supposed merits and importance of gay marriage but fails miserably when the subject turns even to simple, no-brainer questions like the names of the four gospel writers found in sacred Scripture. I could end up being proved wrong but I suspect that's no recipe for building a future.

My point is that my generation was raised on dc Talk and told to vote Republican; our parents hoped that just about covered it. Meanwhile, secular (and I daresay more hostile) sources have used mass media to propagandize the youth on the entire liberal agenda and, in so doing, explained WHY those causes are to be protected, justified and legalized.

A good example of what I mean is Rachel Held Evans. She's part of the breed of hipster Christians ("I'm a Christian but not the George W. Bush kind of Christian,") who abandoned evangelicalism in favor of greener, more LGBT-friendly pastures. And what she ended up finding is the Episcopal church, naturally.

As aggravating and Christian-chic as Evans might be, she's hardly unique. Her parents' generation worried about winning that next midterm election while little Rachel and everyone else her age tuned in to the Daily Show. And now that her generation has grown up, what did anybody expect was going to happen?

Now, I confess that I still carry a certain amount of anger and resentment toward evangelicalism because of my negative experiences from 2010. To deny that would be a transparent lie. And in just a few weeks, I'd become obligated to confess that lie. So I'll instead freely admit that part of me can't help feeling (A) partially vindicated for all the fears and concerns I had for the movement's future back in 2009 and 2010 and (B) a little happy that so many of these puffed-up evangelicals are being humbled.

They fell in love with the world. This is what they deserve.

What might that mean for the Catholic Church though? Honestly, I have no idea because, frankly, I've always found it a bit hard to believe that the young people really enjoy liturgy and more traditional expressions of Christianity. Or if they do, it's primarily a superficial fad. What will they do and where will they go when the novelty fades?

Well, the deceased blogger speculated that evangelicalism's inevitable collapse has at least short term benefits for the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. And he may even be right; I wouldn't know. But I could sooner envision the Liberal True-Believers dropping out of Christianity entirely rather than attending churches who have staked their credibility on the sinfulness of homosexual relations, the impossibility of female ordination and other liberal hot buttons.

No matter the outcome, all that's really happening in my view is that Christianity isn't "shrinking" as such so much as the Nominals and In-Name-Only's are abandoning a religion they never truly believed in anyway.

Assuming that process completely or mostly wipes evangelicalism out, the only real player on the table will be two choices- Catholicism and, to whatever degree of viability, Eastern Orthodoxy.

I must admit that it's quite possible that there'd some penitent evangelicals who might come home to the Mother Church in Rome. However, that process would involve a lot of thoughtful consideration and no small amount of pride-swallowing.

Since both of those things are abjectly foreign to most evangelicals, I suspect the immediate beneficiary could be Orthodoxy. And part of me would be okay with that. I don't know what the Church's official position regarding Eastern Orthodoxy is but the Orthodox seem to have valid Orders and valid Sacraments. Is Orthodoxy the full expression of Christian truth? Perhaps not. But it's a lot closer to the mark than the Southern Baptist Convention was on their best day.

Assuming evangelicalism truly does collapse and that it happens in the relatively near future (and, at risk of saying "me too", that appears to be something of an inevitability), I see it as a good thing, ultimately. Christianity in the United States is shrinking, as I said, but what we're losing are those who were never truly invested in the faith to begin with. And they're leaving behind a more obedient and committed Body. And this would likely be a body more unified in faith, purpose and Sacrament than any time in America's history.

Whatever growing (or more aptly shrinking) pains could lie in store, in the end, isn't that a basically positive thing?

Altar Rails

One of the things I came to adore when I spent that year slumming it with the Anglicans is the altar rail.

To be honest, it took a little time for this recovering Calvinist to grasp the concept of what an altar rail is and the purpose it's supposed to serve. I was still viewing the world through Southern Baptist-colored glasses and the idea of some sort of "barrier" in the place of worship... it just bothered me.

What eventually soaked through my thick evangelical skull, though, is the sanctuary itself is a symbol of heaven. Contrary to everything Luther argued, the assurance we have of salvation comes from obedience to the Church. Heavenly citizenship is a hard-fought prize. It is guaranteed to nobody.

The altar rail beautifully symbolizes the divinely-guided and inspired Church feeding the flock. There IS a barrier between us and heaven. At least for right now. And the Church is the intermediary showing us the way.

Of course, the obvious flaw with all that is how seldom you see altar rails in a lot of Catholic parishes. Many of the New Mass parishes simply never had them. And a lot of old parishes actually had theirs removed.

However, the Anglo-Catholic moderately-High Church ACNA parish I attended that year had an altar rail and the realization of all this is why I can halfway see the argument that the Anglicans are (selectively and inconsistently) "more Catholic than the Catholic Church" on certain minor issues.

No, I don't buy that theory. At all. But I don't want to belittle it or the people who subscribe to it.

But at the same time, I do see merit to the idea that certain practices and symbols (however minor) are better preserved through (admittedly heretical) traditions than in today's Catholic Church. And there's nothing wrong with cultivating an appreciation for those things.

For me, the best example I can think of is the altar rail. Yes, it's a small detail. But sometimes little things can speak volumes, and rather eloquently at that.