“Actually, my skepticism started with a rather simple question: Where would I have attended church during the first 1,500 years of church history? This question, posed by Jargon, has haunted me every day since. Given my Calvinist distinctives, which church would have claimed me as one of their own? Which church father would identify with my protestant doctrines?”
http://www.xanga.com/Paleocrat_etc/565237564/rome-sweet-home.html
Which church father would identify with the views of Karl Rahner or Bernard Lonergan? This question is equally anachronistic whether you put it on the lips of a Catholic or a Protestant.
Does he think that high mass at St. Peter’s is the same thing as a worship service at 1C house-church in Rome?
“Why do I feel spiritually disconnected from the first 1,500 years of the church?”
i) I don’t know why he feels disconnected. And how does he think that connecting with the Church of Rome reconnects him with the first 1500 years of the church?
The unspoken assumption here is that the Church of Rome is a self-identical entity for the past 2000 years. But even Roman Catholics since the days of Cardinal Newman have given up on that historical fantasy. There’s too much historical discontinuity.
The Paleocrat reminds me of liberals who personify the Federal gov’t, and then accuse the gov’t of hypocrisy if the foreign policy of George Bush differs from the foreign policy of Dwight Eisenhower.
It also reminds me of malcontents who demand reparations from a modern company that happens to have the same name as a company that existed 200 years ago, despite 200 years of continuous turnover.
What we call the Catholic church is not an ageless, timeless, suprapersonal being who was born 2000 years ago, and has been of one mind ever since.
What we call the Catholic church is just a bunch of somewhat like-minded people. Some of them lives at the same time. Others live at other times. What makes one generation somewhat like-minded varies from one generation to the next.
Too many Christians are captive to metaphors. They begin to reify metaphors, as if Mother church really were our mother.
ii) Other issues aside, why does he think that joining the Catholic church reconnects him with the Church of the first 1500 years?
Why not join the Greek Orthodox church, or Coptic church, or Armenian church?
iii) Ironically, it’s the Calvinist who has a far stronger sense of historical continuity with the people of God. With the elect of all ages.
We don’t begin with the NT covenant community. We identify with the people of God during the Intertestamental era, postexilic era, exilic era, preexilic era, theocratic monarchy, era of the Judges, patriarchal period, and prediluvian era, all the way back to Enosh (Gen 4:26) and Abel (Heb 11:4).
We identify with the pilgrim church of Acts 7 and Hebrews 11. With a portable tabernacle rather than a stony temple.
iv) There are two different ways to connect. You can connect with one another at a horizontal level.
Or you can connect at a vertical level. If you’re connected to God, then you are connected to all of God’s people. From the peak of the pyramid to the base.
Connecting to the head automatically connects you to the body. But connecting with various members of the visible church doesn’t automatically connect you to God. Some church bodies are decapitated.
I am praying for him
ReplyDelete> "modern company that happens to have the same name as a company that existed 200 years ago"
ReplyDeleteI agree with the rest, but this line sticks out.
It's not just the name that makes a modern-day company liable (as if someone could sue you because a Stephen Hayes in 1743 Plymouth Bay did steale theirre sheepe), but the legal devices of limited liability and coporate perpetual succession, which turns companies into immortal cyborgs from the law's point of view. "Immortal" in the Tolkien Elves sense, that is, they can be killed, but they don't die of old age. Corporations, their directors and shareholders want the benefits of corporate immortality; therefore (given a proper plaintiff and a meritorious case) their corporation should also inherit their predecessors' debts and liabilities.
A better analogy might be to assume that everything Disney/ Touchstone produces today is the same in spirit as what it produced during the 1950s...
I think Steve's analogy works for what it intended to convey.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, though, do the coptic and armenian churches stretch back as far as the eastern orthodox? do they predate the east-west schism?
Somewhat ironically, most of the Catholics of the type that you are responding to don't realize how significant of a definitional impact the Reformation has had on the doctrine of the “Catholicism” that they personally subscribe to.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, “Counter-Reform Catholicism of the Early Modern Era” is probably the nomenclature best suited to describe this particular type of Western Catholicism (and this label is suitable even for contemporary adherents such as the more militant lay e-pologists).
It is simply amazing how substantial of an impact the Reformation has had on the doctrinal fabric of this brand of Western Catholicism (if you’re interested in a stimulating study, calculate the percentage of time spent discussing Reformation topics compared to the theology of any other era at a Catholic e-pologetics board). Perhaps even more amazing is how much the spirit of these beliefs from a bygone age stand in stark contrast to the spirit of Vatican II.
For the record,
ReplyDeleteThe only distinguishing points between Greek, Coptic and Armenian churches are music, language, a few rubrics, and hierarchical personnel.
Signed,
An Orthodox catechumen.
I should qualify that statement.
ReplyDeleteThere is a small matter of Monophysitism that separated the Coptic church from the rest of the Eastern communion for a few hundred years - but this matter has been revisited and it was discovered through careful dialogue that Coptic Christology is in fact sound, and the bishops were speaking past each other at the time of the split. So, we are on the verge of recommunion.
Also, Greeks tend to be more liberal than the Armenians and Copts; less of them tend to keep the fasts, and are much more rigid about ethnic distinctions than keeping the faith itself.
Ironically, it’s the Calvinist who has a far stronger sense of historical continuity with the people of God. With the elect of all ages.
ReplyDeleteWe don’t begin with the NT covenant community. We identify with the people of God during the Intertestamental era, postexilic era, exilic era, preexilic era, theocratic monarchy, era of the Judges, patriarchal period, and prediluvian era, all the way back to Enosh (Gen 4:26) and Abel (Heb 11:4).
We identify with the pilgrim church of Acts 7 and Hebrews 11. With a portable tabernacle rather than a stony temple.
The Church is both portable and stationed in space. God dwells both in the human heart and the human city. The Father sends His word into fleshly human existence NOT to prove that the temple is really an invisible building, but that He is making His dwelling among the people of the city once and for all.
In other words, the goal of the Cross was not to make the Temple disappear, but to make Him more visible in His people. And, real people build real communities, and so the city of God begins. That city is the Church.