The Eskimos And The Missionary

The Eskimo said to the Missionary: “So, if I died without ever knowing about Jesus, I’d go to Heaven?” “Yes,” said the Missionary. “So why did you tell me about him?” asked the Eskimo.

This is a statement made in a comment box that somebody named Zack claims he gets a lot of different responses to.  I believe him. There is a lot of confusion among Catholics on this point. Even protestant converts, who are normally very orthodox, often fudge this. They typically have a lot of protestant friends and family members who are unlikely to convert. They want to manufacture some certainty about their salvation. In the process they create this kind of problem.

The answer the missionary gives is wrong. The best he can say is, "I don't know." Vatican II said people living in ignorance of Christ and His Church are not automatically damned. That they might be save through Christ and His Church through some invisible means. Somehow people have translated that to mean they are all saved or at least the vast majority of them. How do they get there? Just through some hand-waving appeal to the love of God.

The trouble is that such an leap of logic does not take into account why hell exists in the first place. It is because of sin. We sin. Eskimos sin. That problem of sin needs to be dealt with. We can't deal with it ourselves. We need grace. That is why Jesus came to earth and died. That is why He established His church. That is why He commanded the church to send missionaries. The problem of sin has a solution and God's desire is that as many people as possible have that solution made available to them.

That is the story of salvation. Christians are to preach the good news to the world so they can be saved. They don't find the world already saved. They find the world on the path that leads to hell. Look at the book of Romans. Paul is preaching a message of grace. Where does he begin? He starts with human sin and God's wrath. Not many preachers do these days.

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.  Rom 1:16-20

The first couple of verses about grace are quoted a lot. It struck me how Paul moves so quickly to talking about God's wrath. We just are not that comfortable talking about God's grace and God's wrath in the same breath. But God cannot be divided into component parts. He is what the philosophers call simple. So it follows that God's grace and God's wrath are not two things. They are one thing. They are the same thing as God's love, God's wisdom and God's justice. To separate them is to distort them.

Anyway, Vatican II was not ditching this concept of man as a sinner in need of salvation. We still need grace. It was merely allowing us to speculate that God might have some other way of applying His grace to human lives beyond what has been revealed. We know God works through his word and sacraments. Can someone who is ignorant of them receive God's grace another way? We can hope that happens. How common is it? We don't know. But St Paul does not seem to give us a lot of reason for optimism. Here is how he describes first century Romans:

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.   Rom 1:28-32

Does he say 100% of Romans are going to hell? No. Still he does not seem to think they are all headed for heaven either.  He sees the need for the gospel as very grave. That is the way we need to see the world. People don't want to hear that their sin is hugely offensive to God. We live in a culture that worships self esteem. That message will get a lot of resistance. That is why the doctrine of hell gets so much resistance. If sin is no big deal then hell is just a ghastly doctrine.It seems like God is responding in a way that is completely out of proportion. I am a nice enough guy. Why can't God just accept me?

Drug Dealer Turned Monk

Rocco tweeted this story about Fr Taras Kraychuck. It is interesting to me because I was at this conference and heard his story live. I have heard a lot of conversion stories but I was still quite surprised when he told us about his biker days. He just seems so not the biker type. Amazing grace.

The Argument From Authority

How do you turn faith into reason? You use an argument that goes like this:

1. The Christian faith is true
2. Doctrine X is part of the Christian faith
3. Therefore Doctrine X must be true

This is what St Thomas Aquinas called the argument from authority.  He referred to it as the weakest form of argument. Not that he didn't feel it was acceptable. He did. But he didn't think you should be satisfied with it. You should always look for arguments from scripture or from nature and try to convince yourself in another way that doctrine X is true. First of all, because we are rational beings and just accepting thinks blindly is not something we do well with. Secondly, because we will understand Doctrine X a lot better if we find out why Christendom teaches it as truth.

In the meantime, we need to live on faith. That is we need to live as though Doctrine X is true even though we don't understand it yet. Sin darkens the intellect so knowing how to avoid sin in the area we are still trying to understand is a big help. We can think clearly and experience the benefits the knowledge without really knowing what we are doing.

What often happens is that we eventually find some very important and very beautiful reasons why Doctrine X is true. This ends up strengthening our faith. At a minimum we see wisdom in the faith. That Christian tradition knows more about what it means to be human than the modern culture does. But often we see more than that. We can see Love. We can see a Father God and a Mother Church raising us up in the faith.

For example, when I was a teenager there was the issue of premarital sex. The culture told us it was OK and the church told us it was not. With my teenage mind I really didn't see a big issue. I was firmly protestant at the time so contraception was OK. Really it was purely a matter of "Thou shalt not." So I didn't.

After a few years I did see why that was a good choice. I saw others commit this sin and bad things happened. It actually made their dating life less joyful. Their relationships remained shallow, It led them into bad marriages. It, also, destroyed their relationship with God. This took years but but eventually I became convinced based on evidence that this was just a bad life choice. Those who chose to follow the culture never arrived at that conclusion. They were just to deep in to have any perspective.

I can tell you that grew my faith. Everyone was saying that the church was crazy on this issue. They are still saying it. But I know better and I only know it through the grace of God. So I trust that crazy church because it saved me.

BTW, this is not something that changed at all when I became Catholic. Catholics and protestants differ on how we evaluate point #2. That is how do you know what is part of the Christian faith. But once you become sure of that then this all works exactly the same.

Reason and Humility

We talk a lot about faith and reason. How do the two interact? But one of the key problems in arriving at religious truth through reason is those truths hit very close to home. Where is our self esteem rooted? Even the most logical among us will have their thinking skewed when dealing with such matters. But that is exactly what we are talking about when it comes to religion. That is accepting truths about God and about yourself that are very hard. Our reason tends to fail us at that moment. Rational people become rationalizers.

Christianity asks us to accept two truths about ourselves. Almost everyone will have a huge emotional barrier to one of them. The first truth is we are sinners. Not that we have a few flaws. It is that we are deeply inclined towards every kind of evil. It is a huge problem. We cannot solve it. It will destroy us unless we get help.

Denial of our sinfulness is actually one of the features of sin. Our sin is rooted in pride and our pride does not allow us to look directly and honestly at our sin. Can we be rational about it? We can see when other people can't be. How many people do you know that can't see their own faults when they are plain as day to other people? We get that. Their reason is failing them. Still we have trouble seeing it happen in our own minds. We have even more trouble realizing the significance of it. We can't trust out own thinking in these matters. We need to trust something beyond our reason. It is humiliating.

The other hard truth Christianity gives us is that we are children of God. That we are made in His image and He loves us. Typically those who have an easy time accepting they are sinners will struggle with the idea that they have great dignity and God loves them dearly. Often they are people who have had their self esteem destroyed in some way. The good news is God's love for us is an even deeper truth than our sinfulness. That is our essence. Sin corrupts that essence but does not destroy it. We continue to be beautiful creatures of a loving God.

But when people just can't believe that God loves them and forgives them, is logic going to solve that problem? Typically not. Even when the rational mind accepts it there is something in their psyche or their spirit that just does not buy it. Again reason alone becomes inadequate.

So what is the solution? It is not a better argument. It is to look at the cross. Pray with a crucifix. Watch The Passion of the Christ. Read the crucifixion accounts in scripture. Spend some time contemplating the death of Jesus. His death is the ultimate statement of the seriousness of my sin and at the same time the assurance that God's love for me is stronger and has conquered that sin. Those of us who are thinkers rather than feelers have a hard time doing that. Are you not just checking your brains at the door? Yes and No. You are rationally coming to the conclusion your reason is inadequate due to your pride. That you need the grace that comes from the cross even beyond what your intellect can process.

Agreeing To Disagree

Looking at the last part of Michael Griener's series on why he is not Catholic. It is more than a little disappointing. He details how his opinion or the teaching of his protestant tradition is different from the Catholic church's teaching on many points. Then he just assumes his opinion is obviously right. Often protestants will provide some biblical argument explaining why they think their opinion is right. He does not even go there. He just does not seem to get his mind around the fact that not everyone thinks like him. That other churches, including the Catholic church, use the same New Testament he does and arrive at very different doctrines. It shows how far we have to go in raising the authority issue that someone who is reasonably highly thought of as a protestant pastor can address the question of Catholicism at some length and totally miss the authority issue. Not just getting the wrong answer but not even coming close to the right question. Just treating his own opinion or his own tradition as infallible and thinking that is going to be convincing. Either he does not get out much or the Catholics who have been talking about this need to get out even more.

He did raise one point that is worth a comment. He tells the story of his daughter trying to date a Catholic.

He was a nice young man, polite, kind, and a fellow student at her little Christian high school. He was also a Catholic from a devout Catholic family. As the non-dating stage of their relationship went on, it became apparent that he was “really” a Catholic, even though he attended a non-Catholic Christian school. My daughter assured me that his faith was genuine and that their religious difference would mean little. I told her I did not question his relationship with Jesus, but I suggested she was underestimating the differences in the faiths.

Look at what is happening here. He is saying that this boy is a Christian yet there is a difference in the faiths. That is not biblical. St Paul says in Eph 4:5 that all Christians have one faith. What we have together in Jesus is supposed to bring us together. People that you would not expect to get along should become friends because they are both Christians. But the opposite is happening here. A young couple that seems like they like each other has to split up because of their religion.

In John 17:23 Jesus prays,"May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." Here we have the opposite. Not only is complete unity not happening supernaturally but even the natural human bonds are being broken. Our unity is supposed to let the world know Jesus is really from God and that God does love them. Those are pretty important truths. So what happens when we do the exact opposite of what Jesus prays for? When we let religion divide Christian from Christian? The world might still see something of God but there is a lot that is not of God obscuring it, a lot of pride and a lot of judging.


It has become politically correct to say Catholics are not evil and many Catholics have a good relationship with Jesus. But that only makes sense up to a point. Having their child contemplate marrying a Catholic is too much for most protestants. It makes sense. Realistically the new family is going to end up choosing to be Catholic or protestant. Both sides dislike that idea. Catholics can articulate why. They believe valid sacraments are important and the protestant church does not have them. Protestants have more trouble saying why their child becoming Catholic is worse than their child moving to another protestant denomination. They say the Catholic church is a Christian church but not really. 

The truth is the differences go quite deep. Protestants can't really process that. They want to believe that anyone who accepts Jesus as their savior and accepts the bible as the word of God is part of the family of God and all the differences will be minor. It just is not true. There are different doctrinal frames of reference that are a hugely important. If the protestant admits they exist he has a problem. He has to address the question of which one is the right one. That is precisely the question being ducked in this article. 

When you ask that question, which tradition, which philosophical framework, which paradigm is the correct one? Supposing you try and answer it objectively and not assume something from your tradition. Then Catholicism wins from almost any angle you look at it. It is more logical. It is more biblical. It is more historical. It is more workable. It is more beautiful. It is more global. It has produced more saints and a greater variety of saints. It has inspired more great art. It's claims are more testable and have been tested for a longer time. 

This is why this question never really gets faced. It does require a bit more abstract thinking but not all that much. Most are capable of doing that analysis. But when the thinking leads to unpleasant conclusions then they just think about something else. That is what struck me about the article. Even with this incident with his daughter and even choosing to write about Catholicism it is so easy to duck the central question. I was there once. Twenty years ago I would have done exactly the same thing. So I shall pray for Pastor Michael and his daughter Michal because these are important questions. Not just important for their spiritual walk but for the witness that Christians give to the world.

Six Ways People Convert

When people make a major life decisions, like becoming Christian or converting to Catholicism or getting married or becoming a priest or whatever, they tend to follow some interesting paths in arriving at these choices. I was thinking of a few major kinds.

1. Zapped by God. The classic example here is St Paul on the road to Damascus. He get gets a big bright light and the voice of Jesus. We often think God should do that more both with us and with our loved ones who seem like they are on the road to destruction. The fact is it is rare. It is also overrated. No matter how amazing the event we do have the capacity to question it. Paul talks about being faithful to the vision he was given. Like he had his moments where he asked whether he could have imagined it. We have an amazing capacity for skepticism. 
2. Logical Proof. This one is also very rare. Many people say they need logical proof but few people claim they arrived at an absolute logical proof. I came close with my conversion to Catholicism. I think of Lee Strobel's conversion story. Many people have found the arguments to be logically quite strong but very few would say it amounted to an undeniable proof. In fact, a reasonably simple, absolute proof would would mean the matter was not one of faith. 
3. Leap of Faith. This is much more common. You follow the logic to the point of due diligence You contemplate the evidence. You take your time to get emotionally ready. Then you just choose it. Certainly most people do this for getting married or having a child or for changing careers. Becoming a Christian is often like that. Both scary and exciting at the same time.  Often people need a push to make the final leap. 
4. Drifting. This is typical of people who were raised in a faith without much opposition. They end up embracing it but they don't really understand how they got there. I was that way with the reformed faith. I got it from my family, my church, my school and most of my family's social circle. It was just everywhere. There are a lot of Catholics there too. Often people converted this way have a problem with spiritual sloth. They lack an energy and enthusiasm that someone who has chosen a faith against their culture would have.
5. You Just Know. You hear this a lot too. A bit like #1 but there is no supernatural event involved. God is talking to your heart. We like this because we want to be certain. The trouble is this method is pretty error prone. The Mormons have mastered the technique of generating this burning in you bosom feeling. They use it to prevent people from doing a logical sanity check of the Mormon faith. They know they will fail it because Mormonism is an historical religion that runs counter to the historical data. 
6. Denial. This is when a person declares that unless I get zapped or unless I see logical proof I won't believe it. Except they do believe. They just don't want to act on their belief. Then they realize the game they are playing. Often there is an emotional prejudice against believing that gets broken down somehow. 

Humans are strange creatures. Rational and yet emotional. Freely choosing yet drawn by God.I love these stories after they happen. They can be quite maddening when you or someone you are talking to is in the middle of it. The stakes are so high. There is no simple formula.

Consecrated Life

I went to a conference this weekend and some of the Dominican Nuns were there. One sister talked a bit about Pope John Paul II's apostolic exhortation on consecrated life.

The first duty of the consecrated life is to make visible the marvels wrought by God in the frail humanity of those who are called. They bear witness to these marvels not so much in words as by the eloquent language of a transfigured life, capable of amazing the world. To people's astonishment they respond by proclaiming the wonders of grace accomplished by the Lord in those whom he loves. To the degree that consecrated persons let themselves be guided by the Spirit to the heights of perfection they can exclaim: "I see the beauty of your grace, I contemplate its radiance, I reflect its light; I am caught up in its ineffable splendour; I am taken outside myself as I think of myself; I see how I was and what I have become. O wonder! I am vigilant, I am full of respect for myself, of reverence and of fear, as I would be were I before you; I do not know what to do, I am seized by fear, I do not know where to sit, where to go, where to put these members which are yours; in what deeds, in what works shall I use them, these amazing divine marvels!"The consecrated life thus becomes one of the tangible seals which the Trinity impresses upon history, so that people can sense with longing the attraction of divine beauty.

These are amazing words to contemplate.  John Paul expects the world to be blown away by consecrated men and women. They are something tangible that points to the Trinity. That is they make an argument against atheism. They exist in the material world but cannot be explained except by the presence of God. That encountering such people will create a longing for divine beauty.

This fits in very well with the last thought on celibacy from my previous post. That is that celibacy needs to be seen as a holy state. That when we don't give any physical expression to our sexual desires, when we take seriously the call the purity, then our sex drive will actual propel us to love God and neighbor in a very beautiful way. That is the very opposite of what Freud said. His theory was that sexual repression was the root of many problems. That we need to express out sexual desires. That we should never discourage sexual experimentation. It is a lie. How do you prove it? You look at people who live celibacy. Do they experience greater love, joy, and peace in their lives?

What this does is it changes the baseline when we talk about sex. When we ask whether committed gay relationships are good what are we comparing that to? It is compared to a same-sex attracted person living a chaste life. When we ask whether contraception in marriage is good what are we comparing that to? Is is compared to a couple abstaining for a time. So the way we think about these questions is hugely effected by the way we think of a human person who is not having any form of physical sexual activity. Is such a person inherently pathetic or is he or she inherently holy?

It also changes how we consider the single life. Are we trying to control ourselves until we find a spouse or are we reaping the benefits of celibacy as long as our single state lasts? If we buy into the first theory we can try too hard to find a spouse. Often we also cheat and indulge in some sort of impurity to tie us over until we get married. We live in the future.

If the single person can embrace his or her current celibate state they can let God gift them with a spouse in His time (or perhaps God will give them a religious vocation instead). It is a question of moving from glory to glory and not from frustrated to fulfilled. Ironically focusing on sex as a call to love God rather than a call to marriage actually prepares you better for marriage. Your spouse is a blessing. They are not expected to fill a need.