Thoughts on the Papacy by Richard Rohr, OFM

Thoughts on the Papacy

"Institutional Christianity, and the Papacy in particular, will give you intellectual arguments, enchanting rituals, grand historical sweep, a fine belonging system, and a clear morality to give you pleasing ego boundaries. This will hold you together quite well. It works at deep and good levels. It can create the real beginnings of spiritual desire, as it did for me. But just remember, it can also give you just enough of God to quite effectively inoculate you from any need or search for the real thing. This is the normal pattern, in my experience. “I have no need for inner experience. I have outer assurances”."

Prayers Like Rhymes - The Act of Contrition

This is the Act of Contrition I remember from my childhood Missalette, the one that mentions the near occasion of sin. I was sorely puzzled when I started researching this prayer, because no lesser authorities than About.com, Catholic TV and bizarre schism website TrueCatholic.org offer a different Act, one which doesn't mention the NOOS.

Home shot, faithful reader O.: I never did use an Act of Contrition before coming to college, or much since. I don't remember ever learning such prayers. I knew from reading my Missalette and Imitation of Mary (talk about your pre-Vatican II spirituality) that such prayers existed: Act of Faith, Act of Hope, Act of Love. I don't remember learning the Our Father. I do remember my dear elderly babysitter teaching me the Hail Mary. I remember when I was about seven, I realized that I knew all the Mass responses, including the Creed, and I was proud. Now, after a period of interest in the Medjugorje apparitions and attendant spirituality, I can say the Hail Holy Queen - sometimes. And I know the Twenty-third Psalm. And several table graces. (My liberal, diversity-conscious high school had somehow retained the tradition of Grace on festal occasions, and would begin it "O Divine and Omnipresent One . . . ")

But I never did learn those Acts, or most other prayers than the minimum. I learned a lot of important things in Catholic middle school - a lot about the Bible and the Holy Land and what it means to live a good life. After I stopped going to Catholic school and went back to CCD, I'd have to say that the goodness and commitment of the teachers didn't find proportional reward in us learning anything useful or influential. I'd guess most students would be taught prayers like that in elementary school, the better to train the habit of their use. For whatever reason, we didn't do that in my childhood religious ed.

And when do you use them? I've heard of the Act of Contrition and other Acts being given for penance after Reconciliation. I think most of the priests I've encountered judge that this can make prayer seem like punishment. One of the few times I remember being asked to say any specific prayer, ever, was when there was some holdup getting out of the chapel and my sixth-grade teacher had us say 10 Hail Marys to keep us quiet. Let me back away from setting myself up as the classic oppressed Catholic-school girl; I loved my time there. I have very few stories in my head of a time in my life when a specific prayer was called for, and unfortunately, none of them are too inspiring.

And what's the good of using pre-existing prayers, instead of praying in your own words? Well, I can think of one - that prayers in our own words, for those without an extremely poetic or contemplative nature, can quickly minimize into a litany of requests. If you know the words for declaring your love for God, your hope of forgiveness, or your faith in the Trinity, you might remember how important it is to express those truths, too, when you pray.

Readers - did you learn lots of prayers in your childhood? How do you think that's affected the development of your prayer life?

And for blog-surfer bonus brownie points - where's the quote in my title from? No Googling, now.

VIrtue in temptation?

Remember this quote from the St. John of the Cross reading?
"For if a soul is not tempted, tried, and proved through temptations and trials, its senses will not be strengthened in preparation for wisdom. It is said therefore in Ecclesiasticus: He who is not tempted, what does he know? And he who is not tried, what are the things he knows? [Ecclus. 34:9-10]."

I immediately thought, as I'm sure you did, wait, there's a book called Ecclesiaticus? Ha ha! Silly internautes! Obviously they mean Ecclesiastes! Well, the more fool us, as I quickly discovered that there is no Ecclesiastes 34. Ecclesiasticusis the Vulgate title of the book of Sirach, which is used in the Catholic Bible but not in the Hebrew Scriptures or the Protestant Bible. Catholicism: Protestantism plus!

(To my dear Protestant readers: of course I jest. Since you're always going around ordaining women and other such marvels, we Catholics need to get our own in somewhere.)

However, the super-academic New Revised Standard Version that I use translates that passage : "An educated person knows many things, and one with much experience knows what he is talking about. An inexperienced person knows few things, but he that has traveled acquires much cleverness." Too much craziness. First, the NRSV just used a gendered pronoun. Whaaaat?! Secondly, the valence of words changes greatly depending on the translation, but I fail to see how you get from "temptation" to "experience". I mean, in language, not in life.

The New American Bible, the official text of the U.S. Bishops' Conference, gives us: "A man with training gains wide knowledge; a man of experience speaks sense. One never put to the proof knows little, whereas with travel a man adds to his resourcefulness."

All this is making me dizzy. Of course, the main thing that piqued my interest in that quote, aside from the Biblical intrigue, is the fact that St. John of the Cross seems to be praising temptation as a means to strengthening faith. It occurred to me that, outside the Lord's Prayer, I haven't heard anything about temptation in a good while. Catholics my age just aren't raised with the notion of sin as a list of things you're better off avoiding as widely as possible; I was in college before I'd ever heard of "the near occasion of sin". I think I've been taught to guard against apathy, to monitor my soul for caring about and serving others - but not to avoid the urges to do the seven deadly. Why don't we talk about this, and why don't we talk about the temptation to willful ignorance, to spiritual laziness, to falling out of love with God - which John of the Cross worries about much more than he worries about lust or blasphemy?

I'm starting a multi-part series on temptation for us. To begin with, some quotes from secular authorities.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

And accordingly:
The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once. - Francis H. Bradley
(Wise from a behavioral psychology standpoint, not so wise if you're, for example, kicking an addiction.)

Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you. - Joey Lauren Adams
(She's the collaborator and sometime muse of Kevin Smith, who did Dogma - clearly a mini-enclave of performing artists thinking about the big moral questions.)

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object. - Colette

You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd. - Anthony Hope
(Love that.)

Do you really think that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. - Oscar Wilde

And famously:
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

Responding to your comments: faith vs. will, collegiality

Two readers commented on a post from a while ago where I wrote:

"To me, a person who acts faithfully despite disbelief is a better Christian than one who believes: that is faith as an act of will, rather than as a sort of innate tendency, and a praiseworthy homage to God."

One agreed and tied the idea to the goodness we admire in non-Christians. Another disagreed and said that this seems to make "genuine, living faith a secondary thing." Thank you both for your thoughtful comments and challenges. I certainly didn't mean to devalue the great gift of "genuine, living faith," but I do think that faith that perseveres despite "dryness", or lack of spiritual surety, should have a special place of honor among believers, and might have a special place in God's heart as well. Remember how the shepherd left all the docile sheep to find the one who strayed? I've sometimes felt that there was something unfair about the idea that God does special things to reach out to the lost, as if those who aren't lost get nothing above the "standard." If I wanted to, I could probably find some way to prove that God loves lost and found equally, but I think that would be missing the point. Even the "standard" version of God's love, if there could be such a thing, would be greater and more perfect and more mysterious than we could ever understand or access in an entire life of faith. The Prodigal Son's older brother never would have known how much his father loved him if he hadn't confronted his father over what he saw as his preference for the Prodigal (Luke 15:11-32). When God is talking, how dare we not be content with "My child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours?"

By the way, you may know that the parable of the sheperd with the lost sheep is followed by the story of the woman who lights and sweeps her entire house to find one lost coin (Luke 15:1-10). I am leading the charge to refer to Jesus also as the Good Housekeeper. Please join me.

Another reader caught me in a misuse of the word "collegiality", which means the collaboration of the Pope with the bishops on church governance (Redemptor Hominis, 1979). I meant to hope that Archbishop Levada would support agency by individual dioceses and regions, honoring the principle of subsidiarity - not that more collegiality in the coming Church wouldn't be exciting as well. Thanks for keeping me accurate!

Benedict once committed to reason, tolerance, consistency, columnist says

Suzanne Fields: The new Pope, a good egg, Benedict

Benedict's "belief was based on reason as well as faith. Fascism and Communism were "un-reasonable" and deprived men and women of freedom. Catholicism, by contrast, offered freedom from within the Judeo-Christian tradition that has been tested for thousands of years. It offers tolerance for supporting the use of reason as it is bequeathed through historical faith. It offers tolerance for the march of human progress to make the world a better place for those enslaved by dictators and who are less fortunate in their daily lives."

But his notion of reason when it comes to gender roles - or at least the notion he espoused as CDF Prelate - makes me sad.

St. John of the Cross on Spiritual Paralysis

If that title sounds boring, it shouldn't. Read what the saint wrote about the paralysis that occurs when you can't make up your mind about what to believe - do you ever feel that way? His portrayal of doubts and "demons" as part of God's plan to strengthen our relationship with God is intensely comforting.

"Sometimes another loathsome spirit, which Isaiah calls spiritus vertiginis [Is. 19:14], is sent to these souls, not for their downfall but to try them. This spirit so darkens the senses that such souls are filled with a thousand scruples and perplexities, so intricate that such persons can never be content with anything, nor can their judgment receive the support of any counsel or idea. This is one of the most burdensome goads and horrors of this night - very similar to what occurs in the spiritual night.

God generally sends these storms and trials in this sensory night and purgation to those whom he will afterward put in the other night - although not all pass on to it - so that thus chastised and buffeted, the senses and faculties may gradually be exercised, prepared, and inured for the union with wisdom that will be granted there. For if a soul is not tempted, tried, and proved through temptations and trials, its senses will not be strengthened in preparation for wisdom. It is said therefore in Ecclesiasticus: He who is not tempted, what does he know? And he who is not tried, what are the things he knows? [Ecclus. 34:9-10]. Jeremiah gives good testimony of this truth: You have chastised me, Lord, and I was instructed [Jer. 31:18]. . . .

In the measure of the degree of love to which God wishes to raise a soul, he humbles it with greater or less intensity, or for a longer or shorter period of time.

Those who have more considerable capacity and strength for suffering, God purges more intensely and quickly.

But those who are very weak he keeps in this night for a long time. Their purgation is less intense and their temptations abated, and he frequently refreshes their senses to keep them from backsliding. They arrive at the purity of perfection late in life. And some of them never reach it entirely, for they are never wholly in the night or wholly out of it. Although they do not advance, God exercises them for short periods and on certain days in those temptations and aridities to preserve them in humility and self-knowledge; and at other times and seasons he comes to their aid with consolation, lest through loss of courage they return to their search for worldly consolation.

God acts with other weaker souls as though he were showing himself and then hiding; he does this to exercise them in his love, for without these withdrawals they would not learn to reach him.

Yet, as is evident through experience, souls who will pass on to so happy and lofty a state as is the union of love must usually remain in these aridities and temptations for a long while no matter how quickly God leads them."

(read more)

In case you're wondering how I happened onto this insightful meditation, I was, like an active and intelligent religion blogger, doing research on Temptation. There's a lot out there, but not a lot from a "liberal" Christian perspective. Perhaps next week will be Temptation Week. Set your bookmarks!

Archbishop Levada: A Theological Hard-Liner With a Moderate Streak - New York Times

A Theological Hard-Liner With a Moderate Streak - New York Times

It sounds from this like the new Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, while conservative in important and sometimes unnecessary ways (inclusive language? come on!) might practice collegiality, the principle of allowing local matters to be dealt with at the local level instead of dictated from above. Or perhaps he'd be willing to require all Catholic charities to provide same-sex partner benefits. Hee hee.

Living Chastely as a Catholic Gay Man

The things you find surfing the Net. I started out with infallibility, and ended up here.

Learning to Live Chastely with Same-Sex Attractions

People who sift through the Catholic teaching on homosexuality find that the Church now acknowledges that there are gay people and that a combination of biology and environment probably causes homosexuality (a position not shared by the man this article's about, but hey.) Recognizing that some people are gay, the Church now teaches that gay people, like unmarried straight people, should live chastely and seek out friendships. Give the Church props for taking a more balanced position than the right-wing activists who try to insist that gay people turn straight - as if heterosexual sex were in some way salvific. Snort.

Of course, this teaching leaves gay Catholics excluded from the sacrament of marriage and feeling alienated from the Church. I always wondered how many gay Catholics tried to live out that teaching instead of seeking ways to be partnered and remain in the Church. This article tells the story of one such man. It does say he was in a long-term relationship when he began to think about living chastely; it doesn't say what happened to the partner. How does that fit into Catholic valuation of marriage andlong-term bonds? It reminds me of what a canon lawyer once told me about annulments: the absolutely easiest way to get one is if the man in the marriage is a former priest who wishes to return.

Reuters reports Bush elected Pope

Circulating the Net. Granted, this is more political than religious, but hey . . .

Bush Wins Papal Vote
(Reuters) 23 April 2005 0953 GMT

VATICAN CITY - In a turn of events that stunned Vatican officials, U. S. President George W. Bush
has been named to succeed John Paul II as the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church. For the
first time in history -and unknown to the fawning media-- the College of Cardinals employed
electronic voting machines to select the next Supreme Pontiff. Bush won by a margin of 2,528
votes, despite the fact that only 115 Cardinals took part in the process.

The machines, which were last used in Ohio for the 2004 presidential election, also registered
27 votes for Democratic candidate John Kerry.

"It's a miracle!" cried Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State, gubernatorial candidate and
unofficial spokesperson for voting machine manufacturer Diebold Corporation. "This result
vindicates our use of Diebold machines last November. They work just as they are supposed to
every time. They delivered the desired vote in Ohio and now they've done so in the Vatican. God
has spoken."

Supporters of Panzerkardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, whom initial reports had leading by a comfortable
margin in the voting, demanded a recount. But Blackwell said the voting machines, which had
been modified to emit a plume of white smoke when a plurality was reached, are unable to produce a
paper audit trail, rendering a recount impossible. "Herr Ratzinger should return the ring. Mr. Bush is the duly elected pope!"

When informed of his victory, President Bush expressed surprise. "I was not aware I was running for the popecy," he said. "I wish people would tell me these things." However, he added "I am impregnated with humblidity, and would be honored and privileged to serve as Supreme Pontoon for the rest of my natural life, or until I die, whichever comes first."

"This dual role for Mr. Bush can only help the GOP," intoned House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "Having a president who is infallible will make it impossible for our Democratic opponents to deny that God approves of our antediluvian agenda."

The president/pope is expected to adopt an appropriate name for his reign on the throne of
St. Peter. Unnamed sources close to Bush say even money in White House circles is on the name, Pope
Clement XVIII, in honor of Clement V, the 14th century pope who gave away the Church's wealth to
his relatives, leaving a bare treasury.

John Paul II has a baseball card?

I was at a party where this guy had a bottle opener with the Pope on it. He was the coolest kid on the block that night.

SportsIllustrated.com - MLB - Late Pope's baseball card hits eBay
"A one-of-a-kind card featuring the pontiff's autograph was released earlier this year by Topps, the best known maker of baseball cards. When the pope died last month, collectors wondered whether anyone had found the card and what it might fetch in a marketplace suddenly sizzling for all things John Paul."

Pastor who kicked Democrats out resigns

Chicago Tribune | Pastor Accused of Running Out Dems Quits

Democrats Voted Out of Baptist Church

Democrats Voted Out of Baptist Church

Aside from the absolute idolatry demonstrated by the pastor behind this, it's instructive to imagine yourself in that parish. Would you leave your church because of politics? Your party because of religion? The Boy Scouts because of your gay friend?

Maybe we should mandate that all organizations must stand for one, and only one, issue. Then if you're pro-woman, pro-choice, pro-gay and a fiscal conservative you could just attend four separate meetings a week, saving the other pro-choice folks the pain of having to face your views on homosexuality and money. Wouldn't that be a great way to let ethics and mutual learning flourish in the world? I'm being sarcastic.

Vatican forces Jesuit America editor to resign

From National Catholic Reporter

"Over the course of a five-year exchange between the doctrinal congregation and the Jesuits, the Vatican congregation had raised objections to various editorial choices at America under Reese's leadership, including:
An essay exploring moral arguments for the approval of condoms in the context of HIV/AIDS;
Several critical analyses of the doctrinal congregation's September 2000 document Dominus Iesus, on religious pluralism;
An editorial criticizing what America called a lack of due process in the congregation's procedures for the investigation of theologians;
An essay about homosexual priests;
A guest essay from U.S. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, challenging suggestions that the church should refuse Communion to Catholic politicians who do not vote as a number of bishops believe they should vote.

In every instance, however, the pieces represented just a portion of coverage of the subject in America, which always published opposing points of view."

I remember reading many of the articles mentioned and always admired America for bravely and unflinchingly addressing issues the institutional church would rather have silenced. Their analysis on both sides of controversial questions is always thoughtful and pastoral, never declining into simple dogmatism of magisterial parroting or knee-jerk liberalism. Father Reese is being unfairly targeted, but I know this fear-inspired attack will not scare America away from the educated Church questioning thinking Catholics need so much.

Devil Pope and fear of Good

Now, this is going to seem like immature fare for a religion blog, but please bear with me:

devilpope
Originally uploaded by theologienne.

The Pope has devil horns! This is an unedited pic floating around on the Internet.

Okay, that's funny, especially to those who are suspicious of Benedict's promise (and who tend to be more skeptical of signs, like the recent appearance of Mary in a water stain). Incidentally, I like the Chicago archdiocese's reaction to the fervor over the underpass Mary - their spokesman said the image's importance "depends on the individual who sees it. To them, it's real. To them, it reaffirms their faith." Like so many things about faith, such apparitions should be valued based on what the individual believes and what she may need from that belief.

But this photo of the Pope made me muse on another holy-for-diabolical swap and on what such humor means about our perception of the Divine. In Columbus, Ohio, a church near a major expressway arranged an image of Jesus with a light shining on it so that Jesus' image in shadow is cast as high as the church roof. The looming, faceless image, arms outstretched, strikes many people as scary rather than welcoming or holy. Once some pranksters attached little horns to the structure that casts the shadow, so that the frightening image became one more usually associated with fear - a giant shadow of the devil. (Here's a pic of the back of the figure - I couldn't find one of the entire spectacle.)

jesus_of_columbus
Originally uploaded by theologienne.

Part of what makes these two gags so funny is the notion of portraying these paragons of holiness, Jesus and the Pope, as inherently evil. I think there's more to it than that, though. Absolute power - the power that God has, or that people believe the Pope wields over the church - scares people. It's impossible to understand a being who knows the future, knows everything you've done and loves you anyway. When we see a giant Jesus figure with devil horns, we might laugh because we're not entirely comfortable with the notion of absolute divine power - something about it seems a little sinister, untrustworthy.

Maybe this is why people who don't believe in God can have much more negative and threatening images of God than people who do. Absolute power, when you haven't learned to trust in the goodness of that absolute and in its interest in your own life, is a pretty scary thing. A conservative pope with inadvertent devil horns is a good joke for some Catholics, but at the same time, it ought to expose some of the worst anti-Benedict rhetoric. Think about it: we laugh at that picture because we believe he's good. If we trusted in his goodness not at all, there would be nothing funny about the picture above.

Toward real nuclear disarmament | csmonitor.com

Toward real nuclear disarmament | csmonitor.com

"The nuclear club now has eight members, with North Korea and Iran pounding on the door. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is pressing Congress to fund nuclear "bunker busters" - which could kill up to a million city dwellers, depending on the yield - and new nuclear warheads, even as it insists other countries should just say no to nuclear arms."

My class on ethics in the use of force was fantastic, co-taught by an expert in Christian just war theory and a renowned professor of international policy. But a nagging feeling was growing in my soul throughout the semester: an opinion I had long held was being slowly unseated. One day, it burst forth in clarity: The UN is useless!

This might not astound some of you who follow international affairs more closely than I had. How could I have missed that it's too good to be true: representatives of warring nations in the same room, hammering out documents that show they care about the rights of the child and ethical war practices. Everybody wins? Ha.

So I'm skeptical about the potential success of the new summit on nonproliferation, but happy that it's inspiring the media to question US nuclear holdings and to look seriously at how we could change our ways to make the world safer.

Why Catholic women cling to their church

"The very first word Jesus says after his resurrection is our name. And perhaps that explains why Catholic women who have been so poorly served by our church refuse to leave. The members of the hierarchy do not engage us in conversation, but their founder did. "
Anna Quindlen in the Buffalo News

Dominus Iesus: my thoughts on one of Benedict XVI's most controversial works

I promised to give you a critique of some of Cardinal Ratzinger's work with the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, some of the stuff that earned him his "God's rottweiler" image. Let's start with Dominus Iesus, a document meant to reassert the primacy of the Christian faith and to explain the purpose of interfaith dialogue. I think one post is too little to unpick this document without drowning you in words, so I'm going to take the paragraph describing the problems in faith and in the world Dominus Iesus was meant to address, and throw out comments.

"It is held that certain truths have been superseded . . . The roots of these problems are to be found in certain presuppositions of both a philosophical and theological nature, which hinder the understanding and acceptance of the revealed truth. Some of these can be mentioned:

- the conviction of the elusiveness and inexpressibility of divine truth, even by Christian revelation;"
I think this is largely a semantic worry, but it's good for the CDF to hold folks accountable here. There are plenty of people who go around saying "We can never truly know (or rightly express) God's will", but the way they act tends to indicate that they think they know God's will pretty well. Lots of folks who share my views, and I, fall into this group. Anyone who works toward a relationship with God is fairly sure to develop an opinion about God's will sooner or later: if we truly believed God's will were unknowable, why bother? At the same time, accountability needs to be enforced on the other side: those who think that God's will is, in fact, perfectly knowable and expressible, and isn't it wonderful how it correlates with their own belief and words?

" - relativistic attitudes toward truth itself, according to which what is true for some would not be true for others;"
I'm with the authors here. Why is it not threatening to believe that your spouse, for example, or way of relating to your family and friends, or your political views, are the closest to ideal of anything you know, but when you state the same for your faith it's called intolerance? If I didn't believe Catholicism was the best faith I know, representing the closest thing to the truth about God and about how to live life, I could save myself some theological cognitive dissonance and even some sleep on Sunday mornings. I think often you'd be insulting people of another faith, anyway, by presuming to state that your beliefs were equally true, because they might believe their own to be better. If we all believed that everyone's faith had an equal amount of truth or potential for truth in it, we could all degenerate into one giant theological mishmash, and then we'd have no source for contrast, none of the self-inquiry that interfaith dialogue can generate, tons of self-satisfaction and no desire to learn more about our own traditions. Clearly, very few people profess and probably fewer actually do feel that way, and it's good that that's the case.

"- the radical opposition posited between the logical mentality of the West and the symbolic mentality of the East;"
Unless you're a college student, in which case the stereotype is East=math and West=humanities. Yes, we should celebrate and learn about both the rational and the symbolic elements of our own faiths; I still don't think this concern is causing the Church any major grief.

" - the subjectivism which, by regarding reason as the only source of knowledge, becomes incapable of raising its “gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being”;"
Slippery slope here, CDF. The Magisterium itself refers to reason often, and with good, um, reason. For convincing people you have a choice between teaching their reason and touching their hearts. Both unruly organs can lead people to believe foolish things you don't want them to (as I read the Bible, there's no obstacle to women priests; I love my mom, and she'd make a great priest.) So you tell people they can't rely only on reason and you tell them their sensibilities have been clouded by the relativistic world they live in; you leave them only the printed documents of the Magisterium to turn to; and you'd gradually choke off every spark of genuine curiosity and trust and faith in the people of God; except that, unruly, fallible sheep as they are, and with the brilliant Spirit teasing at their minds and warming their hearts, they will not obey you.

"- the difficulty in understanding and accepting the presence of definitive and eschatological events in history;
- the metaphysical emptying of the historical incarnation of the Eternal Logos, reduced to a mere appearing of God in history;
- the eclecticism of those who, in theological research, uncritically absorb ideas from a variety of philosophical and theological contexts without regard for consistency, systematic connection, or compatibility with Christian truth;"
I grouped these three together as describing Christians who don't fully buy some basic Christian beliefs, with a personal jab at theologians. Jesus' life, God-ness and death were unique and special in history; the Christian faith, because of its special relationship to Jesus, is unique in important ways; I and many others would regard these statements as fairly basic categorizations of Christian beliefs. But there are lots of people who value their Christianity and don't agree. What then?

Maybe these people are being asked to subscribe to beliefs which aren't being logically explained to them. Faith is a combination of reason and heart, but they go hand in hand. People might have an easier time putting their heart behind something they intellectually understand, just as knowing something is true in your heart can help you dispense with the need for complete head-understanding.

Or maybe folks do understand the arguments for Jesus' unique divinity and just aren't convinced. Their heads and hearts, for whatever reason, aren't there yet. What, should we eradicate them from our communities until they magically believe? To me, a person who acts faithfully despite disbelief is a better Christian than one who believes: that is faith as an act of will, rather than as a sort of innate tendency, and a praiseworthy homage to God.

Or if doubts about these fundamental theological precepts lead people to turn away from the Church? That's a problem, but that can happen for so many reasons: doubts about the goodness of the Church organization, anger at God after painful things happen, disagreement with Church positions that are relatively speaking much more minor than those about the nature of Jesus and the Church. The answer to any such doubts is not to reiterate, reiterate, reiterate the current position, but to look for ways to make the truth more relevant, more refined, more in line with God's will (since we believe it's possible to know it), more true.

- "finally, the tendency to read and to interpret Sacred Scripture outside the Tradition and Magisterium of the Church."
Again: insisting that theological inquiry take place only with what's already been known about God is asking it to dwindle inward, becoming ever more picayune, less revolutionary (as God is), and less important to people's lives. What, is all God has revealed in the Scriptures already known to us? It's May 2, 2005, 11 p.m. Alert the media!

More later on this controversial and important document.

Warm blessings to you!