Optimism

Christians are supposed to be optimistic people. They believe Jesus wins in the end. But there is a lot to be concerned about for Christians. Society seems like it is leaving faith behind. We have embraced pornography and promiscuity almost without question. Same with divorce and contraception. Church attendance is dropping. In some places it is already in single digits. There does not seem to be much good happening.

The first thing we need to consider is that the 1950's were not as great as we sometimes think. We compare to that time a lot. People went to church. People were chaste. Seminaries and convents were full. Religion was respected. Life was good.

But how good was it? A lot of the religious fervor in the 1950's was a reaction to WWII. Modernism was proceeding and religion was being attacked before WWII. Read GK Chesterton and you will find many of the same attacks on the church that we find today. So we have a progression towards modernism that was interrupted by the war and then resumed after a couple of decades. Hitler scared people back into the churches. It just didn't last.

The second thing to note is that many Christians were not really free Christians. By that I mean they were not given a real choice between being Christian and the various other world views. They were processed into the faith but not always evangelized fully. That is they believed because what they heard at home, church and school was consistent and never really challenged.

You might say that still does not sound very optimistic. We can understand why things are bad but they still seem bad. Yes and No. Yes, the church is struggling. But that should not be reason for pessimism. We are here to struggle. Christianity being the religion of the majority should be hard for us to understand. That does not mean everyone is Christian. It means people feel social pressure to act Christian. That makes life confusing. One reason for optimism is an increase in honesty. If people really think Christianity is a bunch of horse pucky they are much more likely to say so today than in the past.

But what about mass media? Isn't that killing us? Yes and No. Lots of people are using the mass media to attack the faith. Perversions that were once barely thought of are presented as mainstream. But choosing the right thing because you are ignorant of the other choices is not a virtue. Choosing to do good in the face of temptation is much more impressive. Boy do we ever get a lot of chances to do that! Temptation is everywhere.

Where sin abounds there grace abounds all the more. Our faith is attacked everywhere we go but we have great arguments that if we bother to learn them will make us more confident than ever of the truth of Catholicism. Sexual temptation is everywhere but that should just push us to greater prayer and penance. We get ridiculed but that just means we are counter-cultural.

The greatest benefit of being Catholic today is having so much power and choosing Christ anyway. There have never been as many choices as there is today. Communication and transportation technology allow us to join almost any sect of any faith we want. So when we choose to belong to the church Jesus founded we that becomes huge. When contraception is easy then the choice to refrain from contraception becomes a source of great joy. Same with pornography and abortion and divorce.

There is a lot of reason to be concerned about society. We are making bad choices and we will pay a price. It looks like it will get a lot worse before it gets better. But we know that nothing we build in this world will last. That includes nations and wealth. So we should not be surprised when things crash and burn. We just need to learn not to be attached to such things.

There is a lot of reason to be concerned about souls. There always is. People get preoccupied with the question of whether anyone goes to hell. Stupid question. What we should ask is if we can do anything that might save someone. The answer is Yes. That is a reason to feel pretty good about life.

That is all we hope for from life. We can make sure we persevere to the end and we can help others do the same. The rest is God's problem. But we can marvel at what God is doing. We can see how humans are being allowed to understand so much more of what God put in place and even to manipulate it. Yet He calls us to remain humble and faithful even as creation becomes less mysterious. He calls us to remain obedient and respect the sacredness of life and sex even as we gain amazing capabilities in those areas.

What we can marvel at is that some will respond with faith and obedience. Not all but some. What is more those that do will have a beauty that defies explanation. They will be saints. That is the core reason to be optimistic. Some of us are becoming saints. The impact of one saint is infinite and eternal. How do we become saints. We have to want to. That is it. God does the rest. But our desire to be close to God has to overpower all our other desires. Still that road is open to each one of us. Knowing that how pessimistic can we be?

Miracles

Do miracles happen in your life? God's grace making you holy is a miracle. I know we think of that in a different category. Why do we do that? Partly we want some credit. We don't want to think of ourselves as serious sinners that were only saved by a major outpouring of God's grace. That is what our faith says we are but we don't really buy it. I know I tend to use very ordinary language when talking about the changes God has made in my life. Not the language or miracles but the language of continuous improvement. It is a bit of a pride thing. It is hard to talk about how hopeless I was and how amazed I was at God's salvation of my soul. But it is important not to forget. It is important not just so we know God exists. It also gives us the assurance that we are saved. The old song says, "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart." But the evidence it is really Him and not your imagination is that Jesus makes real changes to your life that you could not do on your own. At a very personal level your thoughts and feelings are more virtuous. We like to think we are just wonderful people. We don't like to think of ourselves as miracles of God.

In some ways we are materialists even at that level. We think that we just matured and learned. There is nothing remarkable happening. God's word contains much wisdom. The church community has provided love and support. The gospel is great for self esteem. But has God's grace made a difference beyond that? We flatter ourselves. We acknowledge the visible help but outside of that we think it is pretty much us.

This is where you run into the false choice of being saved by grace or saved by works. At some level we really don't buy that it is all God's grace. We think our works are ours. So saying they are salvific is to say we are saving ourselves. Protestants try and solve this by saying works play no part in salvation. But that is not the solution. The truth is to say they really aren't our works. They are ours in the sense that grace is personal and grace requires our cooperation. God does not save by a divine decree but by working lovingly in the depths of each saved soul. But it is His work. He is preparing you to enter heaven by making you holy. That is the essence of salvation.

If we see our lives as a story of supernatural intervention then we are less likely to have trouble with stories of miracles. Why wouldn't there be miraculous physical healings when my own life transformation is miraculous? Why wouldn't people see visions and dream dreams? You think about the quote from Rahner, "I don't believe in miracles. I rely on them." Many saints seemed to be like that. But there is something about that we don't like. Often when people share stories of supernatural events that happened to them they will almost apologize for it. They know people react by mentally writing them off. They know it because they have done it with others. Why do we do that? Even when we confess that God is real we have trouble accepting these stories. Do we believe a form of deism? That God created the world and gives us salvation but there are some things he won't do.

In becoming Catholic I had some of those barriers. There were some things God would not do. Like transforming bread and wine into His body and blood. Like protecting the pope from error. I do feel my exposure to the charismatic movement made it easier for me to accept those ideas. I learned that just because in my experience God has not been known to do something that does not means He doesn't.It does not even mean it is not for me. Learning that has opened the door to so much grace.

Pessimism

Can a Christian be a pessimist? Not in an absolute sense. We can never really despair because Jesus has won the victory. But we can see a bleak future based on spiritual insights. Many of the prophets predicted disaster for Israel yet every one also wrote words of great hope. Sometimes our insights can be wrong. Elijah, even after Mt Carmel, saw no hope and God said you are wrong. I have quietly kept many men from the sins it seemed everyone was doing.

So what about today? Should we be predicting disaster? I have to say I have concerns. I don't have faith in technology. I don't have faith in the strength of the human spirit. I have faith in God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. So when societies move away from that then you can expect that things are going to come undone. I have been pessimistic about Europe for a long time. I saw some enclaves that I thought would hold out against the onslaught of secularism like Ireland and Poland. But in general there was very little faith in Europe, very few going to church, very few children, very little respect for Christian morality. You add to that huge Muslim immigration and you can easily see Western society quietly fading away.

Many don't see that as a bad thing. They think all the western values like human rights and democracy will remain intact. I don't. I see them as having Christian roots. If Europe ceases to be Christian then why would they respect that? I even wonder about values like science and education. Would they just fall apart as well? They would take longer but when the foundation falls then nothing is safe.

Look at the trouble people are having getting democracy and education established in Muslim countries. How long have we basically had total control of Afghanistan? Even 10 years ago I thought if we persisted eventually people would see the benefit and buy in. Now I see the problem as deeper. It is a religious issue. Even the Bush administration, who understand the importance of religion better than most Western governments, was not able to directly address religion.

I did once think the bible belt would save the US from the same fate. It may still. I am just less sure about that. After 8 years of Bush didn't bring very many positives I am wondering. It is not that the Christian cause had temporary gains that were wiped out when Obama was elected. That would have been disappointing. But we went backwards over those 8 years even on social issues. That is when gay marriage gained momentum.

Beyond that, I tend to be less optimistic on environmental issues. More concerned about addictions. Less impressed with the overall quality of political leadership. More concerned with some signs of real moral cracks in the evangelical movement. There are just a lot of reasons to be concerned that the foundations of western society are not going to hold.

The one area of real optimism has been the Catholic church. Even in the few years since I became Catholic it has grown much more orthodox. There are a lot of bishops and a lot of lay leaders who really seem to get this. Pope Benedict has been amazing both in his teachings and in the appointments he has made. It is like the Catholic church hit its low point and is already on the road to recovery. Everyone else is still on the way down.

Of course that is the west. The west is not the whole world. Christianity has long been associated with Europe but it really isn't true anymore. Western countries have much less than half the Christians and Western Christians tend to be more wishy-washy. There are a lot of good things happening in Africa and Asia.

Apparitions and Atheists

Baggini over at the Gardian reacts to a Vatican document on apparitions.

The latest publication of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the body once known as the Inquisition) seems designed to provide cheap entertainment for atheists. "Norms Regarding the Manner of Proceeding in the Discernment of Presumed Apparitions or Revelations" contains guidelines for deciding whether to validate "apparitions and the revelations often connected with them". While the infidels giggle, those among the theological intelligentsia who insist on the unimportance of superstition for religion and the primacy of practice over doctrines can only despair.

Those two reactions to apparitions are common. One is "giggles." That is not because there is anything to laugh at. It is because they are terrified people won't laugh. It is like a murderer giggling when an eye witness explains that he saw who committed the crime. It is a desperate attempt to discredit someone just because you don't like what they say.

Then there are the anti-supernatural Christians who don't feel comfortable with miracles. They might accept miracles in the bible but they have bought into materialist assumptions. These things just don't happen. Mostly the don't. But when they do they can strengthen our faith. In a society that suffers from a crisis of faith we should not feel we are somehow above these things.

There's little point in rehearsing the reasons why many laugh this off as evidently absurd. In this case, many of the criteria applied to apparitions are perfectly sensible, in so far as the whole enterprise can be seen as sensible. You have to check whether the witnesses display "honesty", "sincerity" and "rectitude of moral life"; that they are free from "psychological disorder or psychopathic tendencies"; that there is no "evidence of a search for profit or gain"; and that the sighting is inspiring "healthy devotion and abundant and constant spiritual fruit".

So why is there no point in saying why you don't take apparitions seriously? The church is saying all the things that atheists might say. The people might be lying. They might be untrustworthy. They might be after money. They might be crazy. If there is evidence that is the case then don't pay much attention. But if there is no evidence of any of those things then what is the reason they can "laugh this off as evidently absurd." The reason is their dogma. They believe this can't be real not based on evidence but based on their personal faith in an atheist world and life view. But they don't want to admit that is their source of knowledge. That would be quite awkward. So laughing is in order.

What's more interesting are the subtler paradoxes of faith that are found in those key tests which maintain the authority of the church to determine truth and doctrine, paradoxes thoughtful believers are well aware of. Sound witnesses are those who show "habitual docility towards ecclesiastical authority". Any revelations offered by apparitions must be of "true theological and spiritual doctrine and immune from error". It is negative evidence against a sighting if any revelations offered in it contain "doctrinal errors attributed to God himself, or to the blessed virgin Mary, or to some saint in their manifestations".

Not all apparitions are real. Some might be someone's pious imagination. One way we can know something is not real is of it makes God seem to contradict Himself. God does not do that. This goes back to Deuteronomy 13 and 18 about false and true prophets. 

Herein contains what we might call the paradox of revelation, which is confronted by any organised religion that is based on revelation, in whole or part. As its meaning makes clear, you can't have a "revelation" that tells everyone what they already know. The supposed revelations of God to humanity through Christ, or the word of God to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel, had the power they did because they indicated new truths, new directions for followers.

This is a false choice. Either a revelation repeats what we already know or it contradicts what we already know. But most things are not known with certainty. Our Lady of Fatima telling us to pray for Russia is a good example. They would not have known the spiritual significance of what was going on in Russia at that time without her telling them. But it did not contradict anything the church taught.

The appearance of Gabriel to Mohammed is a good example the other way. Mohammed claims Gabriel told him Christianity was all wrong. For example, that Jesus was never crucified. So the church would reject that. Either you believe Mohammed or you believe the church. They both can't be right.

However, having established a religion on those revelations, the teachings revealed through them become non-negotiable, and the ecclesiastical authorities become the arbiters of their interpretation. And so that means no further revelation is admissible if it contradicts what is already believed. Revelation of radical new truths, if accepted as real, thus makes future revelation of radical new truths impossible. To put it another way, what was absolutely valid for the establishing of a religion becomes by necessity invalid once it already exists.

This depends on whether you are looking for a new religion or a radically altered religion. This document is not being addressed to people like that. It is addressed to Catholics. Catholics expect God to work through His church and consistent with the way He has worked in the past. So when we process new revelation we interpret it in that way. That is true of new scientific discoveries, new theological ideas, and new supernatural revelations. It is not going to change the faith as it has already been revealed by Jesus through the church. Jesus is God so nothing and no one can correct Him on anything.

This isn't trivial. Although the Catholic church exists to further God's will on earth, the criteria set out by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith make it impossible for the church to accept God's will as being anything other than what they already believe. So while in theory entirely subservient to God's will, God's will actually turns out to be subservient to that of the church.

But you are assuming Catholicism is false. We don't. Jesus is God and is, in a way, bound by what He has said so far. He claims to never lie and never be mistaken. But these are things that describe God more than bind God. God is not love because He said so once and now He can't get out of it. That is just His nature and He revealed it to us. That means we reject any doctrine that contradicts that.

The Sacred Congregation comes so close to seeing what is wrong with this. It says that we must, in assessing the veracity of an apparition, take into account "the possibility that the subject might have added, even unconsciously, purely human elements or some error of the natural order to an authentic supernatural revelation". All it needs to do is take into the account that the church might indeed be such a subject and it would realise it is too fallible to judge the truth of revelation by comparison with what it already believes.

The church is fallible except when she isn't. I don't see any contradiction between believing  there are valid apparitions and believing the doctrine of infallibility. If you believe in the law of non-contradiction, which almost everyone does, then you would reject revelations that are self-contradictory. But you could still be open to revelations that are not. There is nothing about apparitions as a mode of revelation that contradicts it. But the content might or might not. If it does you have a choice. Reject the apparition or reject your previously held belief in the law of non-contradiction or Catholicism or whatever.

A religion that has a place for revelation therefore must not be dogmatic, sure that it knows God's will. Organised religion, however, is not very good at achieving this required level of open-mindedness, perhaps because it requires a severe restriction of ecclesiastical authority. This runs counter to the baroque institutional hierarchy of the church, which in this case gives different levels of authority to ordinaries, the regional or national Conference of Bishops, the Apostolic See and the universal jurisdiction of the supreme pontiff can intervene. Divine revelation has become the property of a very human collection of committees and experts. The irony is that if God agrees, the rules humans have made for validating his revelations mean that he would not be believed even if he told us.

This is startling inability to grasp the facts. He is the one who has a dogma against apparitions. The Catholic church is open-minded. It isn't open minded about all things but about the possibility that God might and has worked in this way it is very open minded. It is not surprising because the evidence that true apparitions have occurred is so strong. The surprising thing is that atheists can ignore what evidence and reason tells us and still proclaim themselves to be the rational ones.

Gay Marriage And The End Of Religious Liberty

CD Host made a longer comment about secularism, Catholicism and homosexuality. We started out about adoption by gay couples. How many gay couples actually want to adopt children? Almost zero. So why has the liberal establishment become consumed with sympathy for this almost non-existent group of people? I think it shows their hatred of conservative Christianity more than it shows any compassion for anyone. That is the problem with sentimentalism. Hate is a sentiment too. It assumes our sentiments are always trustworthy. That just isn't so.

In the case of gay adoption sentimentalism would get the right answer if you went by what would feel right for the child rather than what would feel right for the prospective parents. Why should adoption be focused on affirming the parents and ignore the welfare of the child? Because Christians think it is wrong so it must be right. 

You are shifting the subject here. The original question is, "is the church actively engaging in activities designed to use state pressure to make the lives of gay people worse." You were previously denying that they were engaging in these activities, you are now arguing they were engaging in these activities but they are justified in doing so due to their beliefs that they are advancing child welfare. Why they are doing it, is mostly irrelevant to whether they are doing it.

It all depends on the definition of "worse." You last comment indicates it does not depend on intention but on doing bad in some absolute sense. Definition that is different from what Catholics would call bad in an absolute sense. So if you want to make that clear I agree with you. That Catholics are doing what they consider good but the government is declaring it to be bad. You are saying that the government can punish Catholics in that case and not be violating freedom of religion. I would disagree.

I don't think I've ever discussed with you what I think the law should be. My fantasy world is that the church flips on this teaching like the Protestant churches did on miscegenation. And 100 years from now Catholic conservatives are arguing that the church was always approving of gay rights, sure there were some theologians in times past that disagreed but it was never a teaching of the magisterium and no the church didn't actually order the burning of gays in the 16th century....

The flip is a fantasy. The Catholic church can't flip teaching like Protestant churches can. What I see as possible100 years from now. Guys like you will look at the late 20th century and find "proof" that the Catholic church was pro-sodomy and pedophilia. With all the reaction to the scandals it should not be too hard to find quotes to support this. Then the point will be made that the Catholic opposition to homosexuality was a novel idea invented in the late 20th century for some unknown reason. That the real Catholic tradition was pro-gay and pro-pedophilia and these backward Catholic bishops should just admit they are wrong.

Another possibility that I'd be very happy with is that this teaching becomes so widely disputed by so many agencies in society that it is just ignored by the Catholic population. Masturbation is still technically a mortal sin, but the societal approval for masturbation has grown so strong that churches are unable to make headway against the societal trend on these issues.

I think this has already happened. The rest of the story is that the church maintains its opposition and society eventually either repents or collapses. The problem comes when society tells the church it may not teach that something is wrong. Then he American experiment in human rights ends in failure. Religious persecution comes back in the west and things get really ugly. 

The situation you are describing where the Catholic church and other churches still preach actively against homosexuals and their teachings are widely followed by religious society, while secular society is left having to defend homosexuals via. the law is not my fantasy world at all. That's very close to the situation we've been living through with abortion for the last two generations. Or the situation we've been living with with regard to alcohol since the 1750s.

Again these are not good parallels. Teaching that abortion is wrong is not illegal. It is getting there. The denial of government funding to Catholic relief agencies because they oppose abortion is a very large and very stupid move in that direction by Obama. For someone with an expertise in constitutional law Obama is amazingly clueless about religious freedom. Harvard Law really should give him his money back. He just does not get it.

That being said even if this were the situation, there is no insurmountable conflict between gay rights and freedom of religion. There is nothing unique about a church wanting to engage in activities that are disapproved of or criminal and there is an already existing body of law that covers this. The same laws that made it possible for Catholic churches to get communion wine during prohibition would cover them with regard to the gay rights situation.

You are assuming the courts have not gotten dumber. They have. The courts are more interested in inventing new rights than in defending what is actually in the text of the constitution. They are very caught up in the trend towards ditching traditional thinking. When you do that you don't become a free thinker. You become a fashionable thinker. Being pro-gay is fashionable. Being pro-religion is not. The courts in all western countries have done very little to protect religious freedom.

Assume that homosexuality became a protected class under civil rights law, in precisely the same way race or religion are; which is actually a bit stronger than most homosexuals are even asking for BTW. At that point discrimination solely on the basis of sexual orientation would be illegal for commercial for profit private entities it would still be perfectly legal for churches and religious institutions. So Our Sister of Mercy Orphanage (from here on OSMO) can continue to only give children to heterosexual couples with full protection of law. The state has no ability what-so-ever to challenge the teachings of OSMO . For the state to require OSMO to change their practices or shut down the state would have to have a compelling interest in having every adoption agency provide children to homosexual couples which is a bar they are unlikely to meet. So no, there isn't going to be any persecution.

This has already happened in Illinois and I believe Massachusetts as well. Catholic adoption agencies have been closed down over this issue. So I am confused as to why you still think this could never happen. The one constant is that assurances like you are giving here almost never hold true.

Not being awarded a municipal contract is failure to get an award it is not religious persecution. In other areas like hospitals this sort of thing is happening more as churches are appealing to narrowing segments of the population and alienating others they are losing their positions of privilege given to them as institutions that are seen as benefitting the common good. 

Normally that would be true but in some businesses that is the way almost all the contracts are awarded. Governments control things and to be black listed by a government amounts to being locked out of that line of work. So certain career choices would be unavailable to Catholics. That list would grow over time as everyone who hires Catholics would be labeled a homophobe, a bully, or whatever else they invent.

They would in effect being demoted to the role of niche public interest institutions like PETA. No question that would be bad, which is why people like Sister Keehan who actually understand the law work to prevent that sort of thing from happening; while people like Cardinal Dolan in effect does his best to make sure it happens. This is a choice for the Catholic church does it want the freedom to do whatever it wants that comes with being a niche institution, or the power and privileges of being an institution that works in the broad public interest. Right now the church is divided essentially arguing it should have the autonomy of a niche and the privileges of a broad institution; and denying that is not denying freedom of religion in any sense.

They just want the freedom to be Catholic. What good are power and privilege when you can't use them to do what you know is right? You can only use them to do what society lets you do. That is you may only have this position if you accept a secular definition of right and wrong. Cardinal Dolan understands that this means giving up the very essence of Catholicism.The world is full of people who gained power by making so many compromises that in the end they fail to make a difference. Our society has produced so many of those they are confused by people who actually believe something.

Finally there is "firing" issue you mentioned. Catholic workers at a secular institution being fired for refusing to place gay adoptions. Right now the effective law in the US in non governmental jobs is "right to work", employees can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. I've been fired for refusing to engage in a conspiracy to defraud vendors (i.e. refusing to commit a felony). Religion is however a protected class. The employer would have to show that they couldn't get around the employee's objections that placing gay adoptions that it couldn't be accommodated. Again, likely a fairly high bar. So, no what you are describing wouldn't happen. This is a situation where not only is there loss of religious freedom but it would be fully extended to Catholic workers.

Again, this is already happening. People who have been issuing marriage licenses for years suddenly lose their job because they can't in good conscience process gay marriages. It is not huge yet but in principle it could grow huge. Can a doctor get fired for refusing to perform abortions? Can a pharmacist be fired for refusing to fill birth control prescriptions? Obama has shown a willingness to abuse his power. Narrowing the definition of a religious institution. Targeting the Catholic church. He is scary. He is the first president with the power to execute US citizens without due process. If the worst that happens is Catholics lose their job that would be very good news. I expect it to get a lot uglier than that.

Why Talk About Heaven And Hell?

I was listening to some excerpts from the Light of the World from Pope Benedict. He talked a bit about being concerned that there was much less eschatological preaching than there used to be. That is preaching about heaven and hell. We preach about how Jesus is important for our personal lives, for our families, for our society, etc. Somehow the importance of Jesus for our eternal salvation is much less emphasized.

The same came across when I was reading The Fulfillment of All Desire. Ralph Martin goes through some of the wisdom from important mystical saints on how to have a close relationship with God. The first point he made was the foundation of what he called a biblical worldview. Just really internalizing the central truths of the faith. Heaven and hell were right at the top of the list. All these doctors of the church thought this was an essential foundation that needed to be in place before we could build any kind of intimacy with God.

Think about Peter's reaction in John 6. They are having trouble with Jesus' teaching on the Eucharist. Many have already left. Jesus asks if they will leave too. What does Peter say? "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life(Jn 6:68)." He does not say you are my key to self improvement. He does not say you are going to teach us how to build a better society.   Jesus is those things for sure but you might imagine other answers to those questions. When talking about temporal matters the Christian answer is always going to be one answer among many. When it comes to the question of eternal life things are different. Where else do we go?

When we focus on temporal matters we have a danger of thinking we have learned all we can learn from the faith. We move on to thinkers that seem to have fresher ideas. After a while mass seems boring as the teaching gets repetitive. Often people raised with this kind of teaching end up thinking like a Catholic in many respects but not regularly celebrating Eucharist and Confession. 

This struck me when listening to a Matthew Kelly CD. He is a great speaker. His favorite line is "becoming the best version of yourself." Very much a self-help spirituality. He makes great claims about the genius of Catholicism. They are true. But he says we have to find ways to make more people realize how brilliant Catholicism is. You will always struggle with that. You make the church one more self-help plan among many. It is the best one but it is also the worst one. Why? That pesky cross. When somebody is thinking self-help they are not going to embrace the idea of taking up your cross and following Jesus. Sure there is resurrection and victory on the other side. You just have to have faith. 

When you are talking about finite benefits it is hard to sell the fact that you can't put any limits on what it might cost you. When you talk about eternity in heaven versus eternity in hell then it makes sense to make your commitment to Jesus and His church absolute and unconditional. That is what we have to get to. Sure you can sweet talk people into taking one small step towards God and it can lead to more steps. There are stories like that. But if Catholicism is true then the only response that makes sense is a total and unconditional Yes. So why not preach that truth and ask for that Yes? 

Thoughts on Tradition

Our discussion is now moving towards tradition and authority. Doesn't it always? Where do we get truth and how do we know when we have it? Those are always big. My words are in bold. CD host is the indented and not bolded.

Catholicism is a religion. It is not a political party.

I agree. The proper political analogy to Catholicism would be something like "Western Democracies", a political ideology not a political party.

Actually the best comparison to any political entity is by an anti-type. That is Catholicism can be understood as being what political entities can never be. Protestant churches act as political institutions. It is when I understood that that I realized that they could never give me what I was trying to get from them -transcendent truth. Catholicism is about grace building on nature. Politics is about the clash of human ideas.

On the other hand the Conservative Bishops like Cardinal Dolan in the United States are a political faction within the church. His battles Carol Keehan about who speaks authoritatively on the matter of Catholic healthcare is a political battle for control.

A political faction is precisely what bishops like Cardinal Dolan are not. Bishops teaching in unity with the pope are a gift of God. Carol Keehan is not a bishop and she is not really in unity with the pope in her teachings. Equating the two is losing track of the truth and just looking at the issue as a political debate. We can't do that. God gives us leaders. We need to follow them.

So we don't find something that will please the largest number of people. We pursue the truth of God as revealed by Jesus and clarified by His church.

The people we are discussing are the vatican authorities and the Bishops. They are the ones doing the "clarifying". They have to make the choices between alternatives. They have to resolve "apparent conflicts" between one aspect of the deposit of faith and another. They are the ones that recently had to decide after centuries that Jesus didn't really reveal the doctrine creation and instead was actually preaching traducianism.

You seem to see some problem here. We look to them for leadership and they give it. Did the bishops actually say  traducianism is a part of the deposit of faith or are you putting words in their mouth? You have to be careful there. But yes, they would be the ones to clarify such matters. I have a suspicion that you are trying to impose and either/or on them and they are not accepting that.

We don't persecute anyone. We believe sex is ordered towards procreation and that sodomy is a distortion of sex. the question is whether or not that is true.

No its not. By and large that it is not the question at all, no one cares much what the Catholic church believes is the order of sexuality. The question is the church actively engaging in activities designed to use state pressure to make the lives of gay people worse. Support for expulsion from the military, bans on adoption, bans on teaching, bans on receiving partnership benefits, no protection against employment discrimination, etc... If it were not for churches using state power to coerce people to their religious views, this whole argument would be far far less heated.

 Actually it is about truth. The state can and does ignore the church. In fact, the state is abusing its power to try and force the Catholic bishops to change their teachings. It is doing that precisely because the Catholic church is right. If it was wrong nobody would care what it teaches. But the truth of what she says is confirmed by people's consciences. They know it. So they want to stop it with force. All the coercion is by the state against the church.There has been no coercion the other way at all. So you are living in a fantasy world.

Tradition is actually on the side of a truth first, evangelism second approach. Catholics were just not following their own tradition for a time.

That's an arbitrary definition of tradition. It turns tradition into whatever you want it to be. I'm going to use an objective definition: whatever Catholics were doing is the Catholic tradition.

I think you are misunderstanding here. I was not defining tradition here. I was saying that what the protestants were doing in  the 70's is very much in keeping with the totality of Catholic tradition. So when the Catholics started doing it more recently they were becoming more Catholic. Sure they were looking more like evangelicals too. That is not that important.

The definition "whatever Catholics were doing is the Catholic tradition" is a bit problematic. Catholics can fall into sin. That does not make that sin part of Catholic tradition. There is often a distinction made between tradition and Tradition. I don't like that because capitalization does not really work for me to make a word different. But there is sacred tradition. That is historical Catholic teaching weighted by authority. The teaching of the council get greatest weight. Then authoritative pronouncements by popes. then doctors, saints, bishops, etc. But then individual teachings are weighed by how long and how strong the church has believed them. Something that has been reiterated by many popes over many generations would be stronger than something taught by one pope in a less authoritative manner and not really brought up again. We do have the notion of infallibility but that is really just the highest peak of this hierarchy.

So saying "whatever Catholics were doing is the Catholic tradition" ends up putting Hans Kung in the same category as Cardinal Ratzinger. Both did what they did as Catholics. Both were celebrated by some Catholics and ridiculed by others. But one was endorsed by the magisterium and one was criticized by the magisterium. So even though both strands of thought were part of Catholicism one is part of Catholic tradition and one is not. It becomes even clearer as time goes on. Who get canonized? Who gets quoted in official church documents? These are all important clues as to which ideas are being embraced by the church and which ones are being left behind.

For example on the Church's relations with the Jews. Antisemitism was a very old error. Just being old does not make it part of sacred tradition

Anti-Semitism the belief that Jews are genetically defective so that baptism is not fully effectual in making them part of European civilization, I'd say was mostly opposed by the Western Rite Catholic church. Yes there were Catholics who believed in the Aryan Christ, but it I wouldn't consider this part of mainstream Catholicism. Particularly if you consider the personal anti-Semitism of Pius IX and Pius XII, the fact that they didn't really do very much I think indicates how inhospitable Catholicism was to a racial religion. 

So you get the example. That is great. The cheap shot at Popes Pius IX and Pius XII is unfortunate. Pope Pius XII has been attacked more recently so I have done some reading and I know the accusations of anti-Semitism against him are horse-pucky. My guess is the same is true for Pope Pius IX.

If you replace "antisemitism" with being "anti-judaic" then I'd say of course it was part of the tradition. And this is a good example to work because we are both opposed to it so there isn't any disagreement about the actual policy. The bible itself screams anti-judaic theology:
Hebrews: Judaism is the burned out dead husk of a formerly valid religion
John: Jews are used as the symbol for those who knowingly reject the wisdom of God / light.
Paul: Judaism as an ethnic covenant has passed and via. rebirth in Jesus gentiles are entitled to the promises of Old Testament.

The New Testament says Judaism is to be rejected in favor of Christianity. No surprise there. 

Replacement theology was part of Catholic theology precisely because it was a consistent teaching of the church. Pius IX felt justified in using state power in Italy to persecute his Jewish population because of tradition not in spite of it. After WWII the Catholic complicity in the Holocaust was a major source of embarrassment. So the teaching changed a little but the emphasis changed a lot. The tradition was, and still is, anti-Judaic.  

I am surprised you seem to swallow every anti-Catholic legend out there. You can think critically about the Catholic church but you can't think critically about this. Seems a little slanted to me.

http://catholicinsight.com/online/christianjewish/article_264.shtml
http://www.catholic.com/documents/how-pius-xii-protected-jews

I think it was pretty much a disaster for Nancy Pelosi.
http://old.usccb.org/comm/archives/2008/08-120.shtml

I don't see that as being a disaster for Nancy Pelosi, why because the church hierarchy disagrees with her? She acknowledged this disagreement in the original statement. 

If I declare that the earth is flat and acknowledge that NASA disagrees with me does it follow that I didn't make a fool of myself? But it is worse than that. If she said the NY Times believes something and the NY Times editorial board disagreed with her then nobody would say that is OK because she knew they would disagree. That would make it worse. Somehow she feels she can disagree with the church hierarchy about church teaching and not get that she is rejecting the Catholic faith. She should just admit that the Catholic faith is pro-life and she rejects the Catholic faith. That is honest.

The USCCB are to put it bluntly, lying. The definition of abortion changed. Their implication that the definition of abortion was consistent with the one in the middle ages is simply false, and provably false. One just has to read the very passages she points to in speeches on this topic. As for "uninformed" I have yet to hear any matter of factual knowledge we possess today that was not present in the middle ages that substantially changes the theories of that time.

The definition of abortion changed. But what is called an abortion now was called contraception then. But both abortion and contraception are immoral. So what the USCCB says is true. Pelosi is confused. I thinks she wants to be confused. She wants to be able to throw up her hands and declare the issue to be so complex. It is not. The Catechism clarifies matters quite nicely. Again, we have a living magisterium. Catholics are not supposed to just declare their interpretation of scripture and tradition to be right. They are supposed to take leadership from their bishops and pope.