The Courage of Faith from AOP

Receive the Holy Spirit from AOP

Catholic Seminaries and Evangelization: A Commentary by Fr. Barron

His Sovereignty

Douthat's "Bad Religion" Part II

Ross Douthat's take on the state of religion, and particularly of Christianity, in America has not been without it's critics. Even though his targets run across the theological and political spectrum, the greatest criticism comes from the left side of the aisle.  Michael Sean Winters in the New Republic writes that Douthat makes factual errors in his book, but what is most troubling is the oversimplified picture he gives of a robust, orthodox Christianity that went to hell in a hand basket during the 60's.  But I don't think you have to give Bad Religion a terribly close read to understand that Douthat isn't simply using the "60's as a Scapegoat" argument so common from those on the right.  He sets the scene of a powerful and influential orthodoxy (broadly defined) in the 50's, true, but also states that there are no true Golden Ages, so it would be wrong to over idealize that period.  Beyond that, he is careful to trace the long history of the varying heresies he identifies and shows that they all predate the 1960's, and in many cases were alive and well during the 1950's.  His point, I think, is not that one era was good and the other bad, as much as in previous generations, when the established Protestant Mainline and Catholic Church were strong, they were able to serve as a counter balance to these other, less orthodox, impulses in American Christianity. 

But what gets the left leaning critics upset, I'm guessing, is Douthat's critique of the establishment's response to the theological upheaval of the 60's.  Rather than taking the new trends as a challenge to be engaged on the battlefield of ideas, the Mainline, and in a more subtle way the Catholic Church, surrendered to these "modernizing" trends without a shot.  They accommodated, believing that the Church needed to adapt to the new trends or face irrelevance.   The Mainline proceeded to include women in the ranks of their clergy (later extending the invitation to openly gay candidates), softened the moral teachings on sexuality and adapted a more explicitly political agenda in the tradition of the 19th century Social Gospel, with a helping of Marx on the side.  The Catholic Church did not make these moves, at least not officially, but many of her theologians and clergy did become more politically minded, and internally the Church was roiled by controversies over many of these issues, especially over the role of women and sexual morality.  While the Church's political consciousness was raised the once faithful disciples in the wider culture either yawned or fled.  Irrelevance came came in spite of the accommodation.

Douthat criticizes the liberals who politicize Jesus, placing orthodoxy on the back burner, reducing Jesus to a wise man, ethical teacher or social revolutionary at the expense of his divinity.  But he also points his jabs at the purveyors of the Prosperity Gospel like Joel Osteen or those like Glen Beck who identify discipleship in Christ with American nationalism.  He stresses the central place of chastity in the Christian tradition while pointing out that greed and gluttony are also deadly sins that should be preached on.  The problem with heresy, as the author points out, is that it takes one aspect of the truth and makes it the whole.  True Christianity is riddled with paradoxes and apparent contradictions.  The heretic tries to circle these squares, but always at the expense of the truth, robbing Jesus and His message of their power.  Our faith is constantly seeking understanding, so when we give in to the pat explanation we trade a far reaching, mysterious journey for the mirage of certainty.

Does Douthat hit some obvious targets?  Yeah.  Can he belabor a point to death?  Yeah.  He could make his points more economically. But the charge that he's overly simplistic or partisan in his "attacks" are unfair.  He may ask simple questions, but they are ones that few seem to have the courage to ask, let alone try to answer.

Reflection on the Mexican Martyrs from AOP

Religious Liberty: A Commentary by Fr. Barron

Book Review: "Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics" - Part One

In the last fifty odd years there has been a marked decline in traditional religious practice in the United States.  While waning church attendance among Roman Catholics usually makes the news, what was once known as the Protestant Mainline (Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians) has seen even sharper drops in the active participation, and even self identification, of a large segment of the public.  This trend, along with the rise of the "New Atheism" over the last decade, have convinced many that the United States is succumbing to the same secularization as Europe.  Not only is religion and it's influence dead among the people, God is as well, or so the conventional wisdom goes.

Taking a contrarian view on this is Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist and Catholic convert.  In his new book "Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics," Douthat contests that while orthodox faith has indeed lost its influence over the general public, it has not been replaced by secularism, but instead by a Christianity that would have been identified in the past as heresy.  While a conservative, he avoids polemics and identifies culprits on both sides of the ideological and theological aisle for the present state of religion in America. 

The first part of the book traces the religious social history of the U.S. since World War II.  In brief, Douthat contends that there has always been a tension between orthodox belief (using the term to encompass not just traditional Catholic doctrine, but that to which the Mainline had held to since the Reformation) and the more radical tendencies of the various "Great Awakenings" and revival movements that took hold from time to time.  The difference between then and now is that back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a strong orthodox establishment was able to reign in the wilder flights of theological and spiritual fancy while simultaneously being reinvigorated themselves by the new movements.  Now that orthodoxy is on the retreat there is nothing to put a limit on the contemporary trend to create Jesus in our own image and mold a theology to fit out personal tastes.    

The immediate Post War period is presented as the Golden Age of American Orthodoxy.  Fundamentalism had been in retreat since the Scopes Trial and figures like Bishop Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham were at once true to the tenants of their respective Christian creeds while forging a new vision of what it meant to be a disciple of Christ and a citizen of the United States.  Catholic schools, seminaries and convents were popping up everywhere and the National Council of Churches built a nineteen story headquarters in Manhattan (billed as the Protestant Vatican), dedicated by President Eisenhower, no less. These were heady times, and the high point, on the Catholic side anyway, was the Second Vatican Council.  It was here that American theologians like John Courtney Murray influenced the Universal Church on the issues of religious liberty and the compatibility between democracy and faith.

But almost as quickly as the established religions seemed secure the bottom fell out.  From 1965, when the Council ended, seminaries and convents emptied, with priests and religious sisters leaving their vocations in droves.  Church attendance began to fall all around and the once authoritative voices of mainstream Christianity lost their credibility with many.  Douthat identifies five basic reasons for this.  First off was political polarization caused by the Vietnam War.  Christians were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, but no such consensus coalesced around the U.S. involvement in South East Asia, with people of faith lining up on both sides of the issue.  This began a dividing of religion along liberal and conservative lines that endures to today, with both groups somehow contorting the Democratic or Republican platforms into pure reflections of Gospel values.  The Sexual Revolution, which we've talked about extensively here, led to a questioning of the "old morality" and still continues with our contemporary debates over gay marriage.  A new global perspective brought into focus the religions of the world, not resulting so much in conversions to Buddhism, for instance, as much as a mixing of the various faiths into a relativistic spiritual stew.  Along with the new experimentation came uncertainty over Christianity's claim of being the singular road to salvation and guilt over the sins of the past.  There was a jettisoning of concern over doctrine in favor of ethical living and with it an abandonment of Christianity as a cultural force, with an intellectual tradition worth preserving.  America's ever-growing wealth turned people off to a religion that not only wanted to help the poor, but also advocated voluntary poverty for it's adherence.  Douthat claims that the call to a vow of poverty may have been just as unattractive to potential priests as the call to celibacy.  And finally, and related directly to the last two points, religion had become declasse: something an affluent, educated, sophisticated, man about town would have nothing to do with.  Spirituality fine, but religion; how bousuasie.   

Next time: How Catholics and the Mainline tried to fight back, and failed.

St. Isidore the Farmer from AOP

The Year in Review | Columbia Catholic Review

Mother of the Redeemer from AOP

The Pietà | Columbia Catholic Ministry

Update on Fr. Jose Carlos Contreras

Last December I reported on Fr. Jose Carlos Contreras, a Salesian of the Guadalajara, Mexico Province was was falsely accused and convicted of murder.  Here is an update from the archdiocesan paper in Mexico City, by way of the Salesian News Agency (ANS)

In Mexico - Awaiting Justice

(ANS – San Luis Potosí) – On April 15, Desde la fe, a weekly paper issued by the archdiocese of Mexico City, published an interview with Fr. José Carlos Contreras, the Salesian falsely accused of the rape and murder of the youth Itzachel Shantal. The text of the interview is as follows.

Fr. José Carlos Contreras is sitting on a plastic chair in the State Room of Human Rights in La Pila prison in San Luis Potosí. Leaning his arms on an old desk, he cannot stop thinking of the “illegal” sentence passed on him for the murder of the youth Itzachel Shantal, which occurred in October 2007 – 33 years imprisonment. The sentence was passed on November 22, 2011.  “I was certain that we had done more than was necessary to prove my innocence.”

   The priest knows perfectly well, however, that his trial was full of irregularities, and so he was not surprised that the judge, Juana Maria Castillo, dismissed a priori the proofs which confirmed his innocence, and still less that the Supreme Court of Justice of the state rejected his appeal and approved the verdict.

   The sentence means that he will spend the rest of his days behind bars. That he is well aware of, but refuses to accept it, because he knows that he is the victim of an outrage and so he is not willing to give up the fight for his freedom.

   “It is a debt owed to the truth,” asserts the religious, whom many take to be only a scapegoat, while others regard him as a political prisoner. “But there is one thing that I haven’t the slightest doubt about: I am a victim of the Mexican judiciary system.”

The Salesian knows that his case will now be brought before the federal court, “far from the collusion between the executive and judiciary authorities of San Luis Potosí,” and he is confident that sooner or later he will regain his liberty.

“This is what we have been fighting for, and we will not give up. No one is hiding anything, and society is looking for justice, even though it has not yet been done. We are all confident that the federal authorities will carefully examine the evidence and do justice, not just for me, but also for Itzachel Shantal.”

   “After what you have lived through, do you still believe in Mexican justice?”  He catches on to the question and answers. “I have no choice if I want to get out of here some day,” says the priest, with his unfailing, characteristic cheerfulness and that strength which God is giving him, he assures us, to endure this “calumny.”

Faith and Reason : A Commentary by Fr. Barron

Mary, Guide of Missionaries from AOP

The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker | Columbia Catholic Ministry