The Poet Who Dug in Bogs: A Tribute to Seamus Heaney

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Beowulf, Bog, Christianity, death, Heaney, Ireland, Malcolm Guite, Old English, Poetry, Prince Albert National Park, Seamus Heaney, St. John of the Cross, Tribute

Conflict makes for good writing – or so goes the theory – and so our assignment in the intro to writing course I took to get into university (because I was homeschooled and the process was less than clear at that time) was to write about something we were conflicted about. I, being a little new to the production (though not the thought processes) of papers submitted a paper called, “You, My Friend, Need Bogs.” I have, I hope, since learned to write better titles. But the feedback I got was not on the title, but on the content. I had to do a rewrite because there was not enough conflict. My problem was that I chose the topic expecting there to be a struggle – between everything I love about bogs, and the feeling that I ought not to because being fascinated by a place where dead things don’t decay and the plants kill things does not jar well with a precious moments conception of Christianity. But I could not help myself. I really did love bogs.

The bog I loved in particular was a bog in Northern Saskatchewan called, plainly enough, Boundary Bog, being as it is on the boundary of Prince Albert National Park. I have visited this bog almost yearly, when we go up to the park for our family holiday; I have even hiked around it (off the boardwalk) in the very rare dry season when the sphagnum was dry enough that we did not sink. What I liked (and still like) about the bog is its indifference to progress – and I mean this as the highest of compliments. Stupid people could go around doing their stupid politics and saying stupid things about God, and many people could react and make big deals about things etc., and the bog didn’t care. What was preserved there didn’t change; it had been there long before, and would be there long after our own little dramas that we either took seriously or became too cynical to take seriously, as the case might be. The bog was for me a somewhat morbid version of the justly famous passage from The Lord of the Rings in which Sam sees the eternal light of a star and it reminds him that there is a world beyond Mordor.

Why all this about bogs? Because in this post I want to honor a poet whose chief accomplishment was digging in bogs. I am admittedly a latecomer to Seamus Heaney’s poetry, having as I do a general aversion to modern poets. But when I found him, I realized that here was someone who could explain the tension: why the conflict I thought I was writing about in my essay – the alleged conflict between Christian hope and a love of bogs – was in fact not a conflict.

My purpose here is not to analyze in detail all of Heaney’s bog poetry; that has been done elsewhere. What I do want to suggest, though, is that where most modern poets spend their time focusing on the present moment – either praising or lamenting an inescapable societal “progress” – Heaney dug; the place his poetry starts is always the piece of ground he stands on. What he does is different from a merely sentimental or escapist desire to go back to “the good old days.” Rather, he forces us to look at the bodies in the ground we have built and sold on. He himself sometimes seems as much at a loss about what to do with these bodies as we are – whether these bodies be literal bog sacrifices, or the metaphorical body of Ireland he wrote so much about. But he insists we must look at them. Try as we might to cover them with the tarp of modern progress, the bog, like death, will get us in the end – and its bodies will ever be our companions.

This I knew, or at least there was a part of me that felt it intuitively in my love for bogs. What Heaney does, however, is articulate through poetry the Catholic theological vision that lies behind this love. There are two particular ways I see this working out in his poetry. The first is in his interest in Old English poetry, for, in many ways, the Old English poetic tradition is grubby and earthy and bog-like. Try as we might to overwrite its foundations with all manner of Norman, scholastic, and imperial inventions, it remains a space of quiet darkness touching earth. I do not say this to be entirely pejorative; indeed, I have a deep appreciation for the scholastics. But when I am looking for a poetry and a theology that is equal to the raggedness and darkness of life, it is not to Arthurian legend that I turn, nor even (magnificent though he is) to Dante – it is to Old English poetry. Old English poetry, we might say, is the boggy morass over which the rest of English literary tradition is built – and the exploration of this boggy morass is chalk full of theology. Heaney, I think, saw this, that Old English tradition was a way of facing the darkness head on without succumbing to nihilism, and it could do this just to the degree that it tempered Northern pessimism with Christian hope. I can put it no better than Heaney himself in the prophetic lines from his poem, “North”:

“Lie down

in the word-hoard, burrow

the coil and gleam

of your furrowed brain.

 

Compose in darkness.

Expect aurora borealis

in the long foray

but no cascade of light.

 

Keep your eye clear

as the bleb of the icicle,

trust the feel of what nubbed treasure

your hands have known.”

Here we find Heaney, grubbing about in the boggy darkness of Old English poetry, refracted as it necessarily is through the Christian culture that preserved it – boglike, if you will. Such digging – in the Christian bog of Old English poetry – seems to me to run through his ongoing interest in Old English poetry, including his justly praised translation of Beowulf.

Of course, one might ask how I know this is not simply a reversion to a kind of pre-Christian darkness; after all, though the evocation of Old English poetry with words like wordhoard is inescapable, there is nothing immediately here about monks or Christians. But though it is not here in the immediate text, it is, I think, implied when read against the backdrop of Heaney’s poetic corpus; this is nowhere more clear than in Poem 11 of Heaney’s Station Island. The idea that this part of the poem is a central text in the spiritual development of Heaney’s canon is hardly my own – I borrow it from Malcolm Guite, who has a wonderful chapter on Heaney in his book, Faith, Hope, and Poetry. What I want to particularly focus on though is the way this section gives us something that we might call a theology of the bog body, a justification for the exploration of everything opposite to easy light, triumphalistic faith, and simplistic hope. In this section of the poem is a translation of a poem by St. John of the Cross; throughout, the poem weaves together imagery of faith and darkness, with a set of concluding lines that particularly bring home this theme:

This eternal fountain hides and splashes

Within the living bread that is life to us

Although it is the night.

 

Hear it calling out to every creature.

And they drink these waters, although it is dark here

Because it is the night.

 

I am repining for this living fountain.

Within this bread of life I see it plain

Although it is the night.

Here, then, Heaney works into his own poem St. John of the Cross’s understanding of theology in the dark, perhaps most famously know through his concept of the “dark night of the soul”. As Malcolm Guite notes,

“St. John titled this poem ‘Cantuar Del Alma que se huelga de consocer a Dios por Fe’, ‘The Song of the Soul Which Delights to Know God by Faith’; the significance is in the phrase about ‘knowing God by faith’. St. Paul contrasts faith and sight: ‘we walk by faith and not by sight’; to know God ‘by faith’ is to acknowledge the present darkness and yet to see beyond it, to see paradoxically what cannot be seen, for ‘faith is the evidence of things not seen’. To know God by faith is both to acknowledge his palpable absence from the world of the visible and yet at the same time to dare to see him ‘through a glass, darkly’. This paradox of finding that the visible may also be alive with ‘what’s invisible’ is at the heart of Heaney’s vocation as a poet.”

So, what does all this mean? It means that for Heaney, via St. John of the Cross, the poetic act of digging about in the dark murkiness of bogs is rendered a profoundly theological act, whether these bogs be literal or the more metaphorical kinds, Old English literature or Irish history. And it means for me that the conflict that so tied me in knots when I entered university – the problem of faith and bogs – is beautifully resolved in the poetry of Seamus Heaney. One of the last Old English poems Heaney translated was Deor, and there are few more fitting lines with which to end this tribute than the refrain of this poem: þæs ofereode, swa þisses mæg, or, in Heaney’s words, “That passed over, this can too.” Heaney wrote as one who knew the deep secret of this phrase: that the passing and death of worldly things does not underscore a despairing nihilism, as one might initially expect, but is rather a type of that other transient thing that Christian eschatology insists can and will eventually pass away: death itself.

‘Sing yourself to where the singing comes from’: Remembering Seamus Heaney

 

This is very much worth reading; here, Malcolm Guite reflects on the significant impact of Seamus Heaney on his life and vocation. We need more poets like this.

‘Sing yourself to where the singing comes from’: Remembering Seamus Heaney.

Humans in the Academy Face Drastic Cuts

Recent funding cuts have taken their toll, and universities across the country are beginning to scale back the number of humans on campus as they question traditional reasons that have justified them in the past. Where it was once commonly taken for granted that humans were a benefit to society, proponents now face increasing criticism by those who say there is in fact no guarantee of this. “Yes, humans can be very beneficial to society, but they can also be quite destructive,” said one professor who wished to remain anonymous, “and we need to think about that when we let humans on the university campus. It is expensive to keep them there, and a positive outcome is not always guaranteed.” Another noted, “With technology increasing the way it is, we just can’t keep doing things the way we used to in the past. We have to adapt and be flexible, and find innovative ways to make humans interesting again. In the meantime, it is unfair to let such a large number of humans go through the system when there is nothing in it for them at the other end. The competition for those seeking success is fierce, and for every one that achieves that goal, ten fail. We just have to be more realistic and quit living in the past.” But some are upset by such cuts, and suggest that administrators don’t quite know what they are doing. “Humanity is a tradition going at least as far back as Shakespeare,” said one student. “It would be a shame to sacrifice this tradition in order to pay more administrators.” When asked about the matter, university president Dr. Isaac Bickerstaff denied reports that the university would be affected in any detrimental way by what he described as modest and reasonable cuts: “When funding is tight, we all have to make sacrifices, but the university administrators continue to strongly support the concept of humanity. After all,” he concluded, “some of us administrators began our careers as humans.”

The Heart Has Its Reasons

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Catholic, Catholic Church, Christ, Christian, Christian Church, Christianity, Invisible church, J. R. R. Tolkien, Obsessive–compulsive disorder, Protestant

For the next while, I will be stepping away from the Catholic/Protestant question, at least in the public forum of this blog. I will finish my post series on Giussani, and will still undoubtedly speak out of the broadly catholic tradition that so shapes my faith. But for the moment I would like to set aside the back-and-forth debate that I, admissibly, am responsible for – not because bad things have come out of this (far from it), or because my fellow interlocutors have been unfair or graceless, but simply because it exhausts me emotionally, and seems not to be what I am in need of right now spiritually. If you are thinking to yourself right now that this is very escapist of me, you are thinking exactly what I feel – I hate setting aside any question, and moreso because I have OCD, which insists that I should deal with such questions 24/7, if possible to the detriment of all other duties and responsibilities. So, yes, I too feel like it is escapist, but, as J. R. R. Tolkien wisely pointed out, sometimes those most concerned about escapism are the jailers.

I started this set of posts for two reasons. The first is that I feel like decisions like this neither can nor should be made in a dark corner. I appreciate Christ’s response when he is arrested, that he does not have some deep, dark secret conspiracy – if anyone had wanted to know his “secret” plans, they had only to listen to him when he taught publically. I have a deep respect for this kind of openness. Hiding in such cases may indeed mean one is hiding as much from oneself as from everyone else. And a decision made wisely should be able to stand up to external criticism.

But perhaps it is my second reason that has got me into trouble. This is that, having just moved to a new city, being painfully introverted, and in any case having a theological and spiritual past that makes Christian community difficult for me (I usually end up either saying nothing or rocking the boat), I figured I would spare those around me by blogging rather than making others talk about these things with me. In some ways this was necessary because it has constantly been hard to know who to talk to and how. But in others ways it has made things worse because the alchemy that occurs in writing – the transformation of thoughts and impulses into polished and sensible prose – leaves behind the raw emotion and pain that is behind much of this crisis. To be very, very clear, I do not in the least fault anyone for responding reasonably to my reasonably put arguments and musings – it is not fair to expect people to read the emotions behind arguments. But for my own sake – for the sake of a heart that seems inextricably woven into my brain – I need to step back. I cannot pretend to be arguing with disinterest, that the things I am saying are not in some way the lowings of a brazen bull.

Of course, I don’t know how well I will be able to maintain this stepping back process, because the particular difficulty is that for me everything is connected. My impulse is to say that I will on this blog turn my attention to more pastoral matters – such as, for instance, the Christian response to mental illness – but I feel that even this, like the most practical and simple good, cannot be talked about apart from doctrine. My response, I think, must differ, depending on what we think Christians are, and how we think about the visible and invisible church. My mind is a quaking bog – unsettle one bit and the whole body trembles.

This, of course, does not mean I am going to stop pursuing the questions I have been pursuing, or thinking about the Catholic church – I will. The difference, though, I hope, will be that I am more honest, and find communities in which to practice such honesty, and avoid the pretense that this is something that I can engage with anything less than my entire person. And so – as I did when I shared on Facebook my first post on this subject – I request prayer – I know not for what – I can only pray that the Spirit intercedes for me with groans, and that I somehow survive.

When the Riddles of God Are More Satisfying Than the Solutions of Man: Toward a (Hopefully) Irenic Response to Captain Thin

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Bible, Catholic, Catholic Church, Christ, Christian, Christianity, God, Israel, Too Dame Catholic

I have been mulling over Captain Thin’s response to my posts – very deeply in fact – and I finally think I may be able to respond. Let me preface this by saying that, in “real” life (as on this blog), Captain Thin has been a very supportive friend as I have been going through my sundry crises. This, of course, makes it all the harder to disagree with him, not only because I know how deep the ecumenical bonds between us are (and it pains me to focus primarily on the disagreement), but also because these matters cut to the very heart of us. For all the civilized tone that I hope we have been able to maintain here – in Christian charity – disagreement is still deeply painful, since the very fact of Christianity compels us to see the people we are arguing with as people rather than mere arguments; and even moreso when the people we are arguing with are some of our closest friends. All that being said, I would not for a moment expect a friend to agree with me simply for my sake, nor would I find it easy to be friends with someone who expected this of me – all that to say that, far from a distraction from our friendship, the theological debates and discusssions that Captain Thin and I have are part of the cement of our friendship; we have been known to get together to watch Dr. Who and end up being distracted from it by wonderful theological conversations; certain parties have also beaten us over the head with pool noodles on account of us continuing at length a good theological discussion when everyone else was ready to go out for coffee. All this to say that the disagreement I put forward here is a very painful thing and a very important part of our friendship all at the same time.

But let me proceed. From what I can tell, Captain Thin’s primary problem with the Roman Church is its close association of the church with an institution. This, in his argument, ignores the invisible church that exists both inside and outside institutional churches; moreover, it condemns many faithful believers to a set of anathemata announced at Trent. Quoting Donne, he notes that, since Trent, faith is become pricey and costs more, that is, things that people used to be able to get away with believing in an older, pre-tridentine church have now been codified and condemned. Quoting Luther, he situates the Church in her people, and not in her wood and stone.

On the anathema question, I am grateful to Louis Thomas, who posted a helpful link under Captain Thin’s post. Basically, this post clarifies that the anathemata put forward at Trent are not automatically put into effect; that is, the statement does not categorically apply to people, but only does so when matters have been investigated regarding the person charged, and when the church has formally charged them. Moroever, the state of anathema more or less is a description of excommunication (not necessarily saying anything about eternal salvation, but rather referring to one’s relation to the earthly Catholic church), and it would seem redundant to tell Protestants that they are not part of the Catholic church – one would imagine they already know as much, and that that by definition is what makes them Protestant.

Furthermore, as the Catechism makes clear (see sections 817-19), the Tridentine condemnation of Protestants it seems would not usually apply (except indirectly) to Christians who hold contrary beliefs in the present, insofar as their Protestantism is inherited rather than borne of open and deliberate rebellion against the church; indeed, such Christians are part of ecclesial communities and are recognized as fellow Christians by the Catholic church. Of course, what Captain Thin charges is that, while this is what the church might put forward in the present, its assertion is inconsistent with its beliefs about the deposit of truth in tradition; indeed, in his assessment, such a statement is not really a clarification of doctrine, but rather a clever manipulation that pretends that Catholics have always been saying the same thing when they really have not.

Frankly, I don’t feel I have quite enough knowledge and experience at the moment to be able to gauge on my own the degree to which the Catholic treatment of this matter is clarification and the degree to which it is manipulation – I feel that dealing with things like this is a very complex matter – but conversely, I’m not sure Captain Thin has given quite enough evidence to convince us of the contradictions with which he charges the church. The reason I say this is that I have encountered very similar arguments concerning the Bible. Skeptics will find little bits here and there and pit them against each other and make big deals of them etc., and the charge is usually that, since the Bible is internally inconsistent, it cannot be the word of God. In fact, it seems that the Bible itself even perhaps dares us to think about this, giving us as it does four different versions of Christ’s life (surely it would be easier for an authoritative holy text to only have one). But I have come to be glad of these alleged “contradictions,” precisely because the thing I trust least in the world is straightforward answers, because they fail to capture the complexity of the world. It would be much safer and simpler if, say, God had given us the four spiritual laws rather than a Bible. But it would not be a full response to the complexity of the human condition – a complexity in part created by God, and in part due to sin. This means that the conclusion to which I have come regarding life is not that I should seek the least contradictory and most internally consistent answers, but rather that I must seek the answers where the truth that I see of them is enough to convince me to trust the bits I don’t get, and where the complexity of the answer correlates to complexities we find in actual life.

Of course, all these things are value laden, and really all I can say about Cathoic tradition is that, what looks to Captain Thin like a clever dodge, looks to me like an attempt to reckon with a complexity that must be reckoned with by any Christian. I mean, as Christians, we do in fact believe we have a revelation from God – which one might simplistically equate with direct and unmediated access to the truth, not buffeted by the permutations of history. And yet somehow also the church very much is buffeted by history and is not simply given a truth that can pretend to be extra-historical. This, by the way, seems to me very much in keeping with the manner of a God who reveals himself through Israel (rather than directly through extra-historical illumination), and through the Christ who takes on flesh in history. In fact, in all these things, there are problems. When is Israel being (as it is) the chosen people, and when is it behaving in terms of its historical context (that is, should we recreate an Old Testament Judaism or not)? What bits of Christ’s life are pointers to direct Christian behavior, and what historically contextual (for instance, should we make a ritual of spitting and putting mud in the eyes of the blind to heal them in the same way we might promote the ethics of the sermon on the mount?)? These are complicated things, and one might dismiss them as internal inconsistencies in the Christian story (surely truth must be simpler than that?), except that we find our own lives reflecting the need for an answer this complex. Even the task of understanding what our selves are and how we might reconcile that with times when we seem to behave or think in different ways (cf. Romans 7) suggests that some version of such a complicated synthesis is working in us (whether we know it or not) as soon as we get up in the morning; If I had to respond to someone who charges that Christian faith is too complicated and casuist, I would not have him or her examine Christian doctrine, but rather examine him or her self, and then gauge whether the complexity of Christianity answers the complexity he or she sees in him or herself. This, I think, is what made classical philosophy such a wonderful prep school for Christianity, with the Delphic motto, “Know thyself.”

But to return to the question of the church: from my perspective – from what I have seen in church history, of the modern church etc. – the clarificatory aspect of tradition is not simply a clever dodge but an attempt to deal with the same complexities dealt with in Israel’s history and the life of Christ; what might it mean to communicate the eternal truth of God through finite forms, as God seems so bent on doing? Again, it would take far too long to outline what makes me see this in Catholic history, but that is okay; it has become clear to me that, whereas in Protestant circles one can maintain the illusion of a complete apologetic – a watertight proof – the Catholic church, by virtue of her largeness, catholicity, and bounty, cannot ever be singly defended. She is a large country with many borders, and one finds oneself able perhaps to defend the border by which one enters (if that), but also finds that one must trust by faith that the rest of the realm is in God’s care and is being defended as necessary.

Such, then is my response: the function of tradition in the Catholic church only looks like a dodge when one holds it up to an unrealistic expectation of “consistency” that neither reflects the complexity of Judeo-Christian history, the Bible, or life itself. I had meant also to write about some problems with giving the invisible church precedence over the visible – and why wood and stone, though perhaps not the defining materials of the church, are still an integral part of her. However, this post being too long already, I will leave that task for another time.

Is Christianity Without Tradition Another Way of Being Spiritual But Not Religious?

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Christian, Christianity, church, God, Lillian Daniels, Religion and Spirituality, Spiritual but not religious

Much buzz has gone on over the past few years regarding Lillian Daniel’s critique of people who are spiritual but not religious. Basically, her argument boils down to the suggestion that the spiritual but not religious label is in most cases a thinly veiled narcissism; the problems that so vex us in organized religion are not in fact the problems of such organizations per se, but rather problems common to humanity – in going off into our own private, self-pleasuring spiritualities, we are in fact refusing to love our neighbors. As Daniels puts it:

“Any idiot can find God alone in the sunset. It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you who not only voted for the wrong political party but has a baby who is crying while you’re trying to listen to the sermon. Community is where the religious rubber meets the road. People challenge us, ask hard questions, disagree, need things from us, require our forgiveness. It’s where we get to practice all the things we preach.”

While I would suggest that  things are perhaps much worse than this – many of us are too cynical even to see God in a sunset – I think the overall point is apt.  What I mean to do here is suggest that it is also applicable to another group of people, whom I will acronymize as CBNT – Christian But Not Traditional.

If you have frequented Evangelical/Protestant churches for a while, you will know what kind of people I mean.  Basically, such people recognize the history of the church – or a certain part of this history – as particularly embarrassing.  Yet instead of condemning the perpetrators as bad Christians – which I think is the Christian response – they assert that these perpetrators are or were not Christians at all.  Much as the sunset-seeker conveniently leaves behind the the complex humanity of his pew-neighbor for the much less “tainted” vision of the sunset, so such a Christian abandons the complex humanity of Christian sinners past.  Not only does this set up the illusion that one has found the “pure” church in the present, free from a benighted past, but the abandonment of past Christians makes it much easier to abandon other Christians in the present.  It also sets us up for a hard fall, for when we discover ours is not in fact the “pure” church – and that its corruptions are identical to the ones we thought we jettisoned with tradition – we will become disillusioned, and will cause others to become disillusioned.  In the worst cases, we cause people to walk away from the church (and therefore God) entirely, because we have catechised them such that they have learned that walking away is the only way of dealing with corruption. To further this irony, those espousing such an ecclesiology are very often the same people lamenting cultures of divorce and the lack of commitment in younger generations. You can rant and roar all you like about the evils of secular humanism, the Enlightenment etc., but bear in mind that these favorite bogeys may in fact be the bastards of our own illegitimate ecclesiologies, the scandals we have walked away from lest they should taint us.

“All generations shall call me blessed.” Even the Protestants

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assumption, assumption of mary, August 15, dormition, dormition of mary, dormition of the theotokos, Lutheran, Mary, mother of God, theotokos

The Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem—the site where tradition states St. Mary “fell asleep” into death.

August 15 is the traditional day Christians celebrate the Dormition (or “falling asleep”) of St. Mary. On this day, we thank God for her faithful witness to Christ throughout her life, up to and including the point of her death.

Protestants sometimes have an almost allergic reaction to words celebrating Mary. This comes, no doubt, from a desire to not be seen as deifying the Mother of Jesus—the kind of thing (some) Protestants are likely to accuse (some) Catholics of. I am not interested here in debating the role Mary may or may not play as an intercessor for Christians today, but I do wish to reflect on why she deserves more honour and respect than many Protestants pay her.

Rightly is Mary called the Theotokos—the Mother of God. This term is sometimes misunderstood. “How can Mary be called the Mother of God?” some ask. “Surely this implies that she is more important than God—that she precedes Him!” This, of course, is not what the word means. It means nothing more than what it says: Mary bore God. When God became flesh, He did so through Mary. God was born a Man in the person of Jesus Christ; and Mary was the Mother who bore Him.

Rightly is Mary called the Mother of God. God was born a Man in the person of Jesus Christ; and Mary was the Mother who bore Him.

Indeed, it is in the conception of Jesus Christ that we see most clearly the humble greatness which makes Mary so worthy of our respect, admiration, and imitation. Hear how the angel Gabriel greets her at the Annunciation:

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28).

We can well imagine why Mary was “troubled” at his words, and “cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be” (1:29). Consider it again. Mary is greeted by a messenger of God Himself. And he greets her as God’s “highly favoured” one—indeed, as the woman most blessed among all women. To still her confusions and fears at this greeting, Gabriel repeats himself: she “hast found favour with God” (1:30).

We should stop right here and stand in awe. The Scriptures tell us that Mary is blessed among woman. She has found favour with God. Indeed, she is highly favoured. Would that these things should be said of us! Because of the high honour God grants to Mary, He chooses her to conceive the “Son of the Highest,” the inheritor of the “throne of his father David,” the One who shall “reign over the house of Jacob for ever,” and of Whose kingdom “there shall be no end” (1:32-33).

This young virgin, living in the village of Nazareth is to be the recipient of God’s greatest blessing—to be the bearer of Himself, the God-with-us, the Saviour of all the earth. The God who created Mary will enter into her womb and become flesh. Her Creator will become her child. She will deliver the Son who will deliver her and all humanity from sin.

From a painting in the Shepherd’s Field’s chapel in Bethlehem.

What a glorious, impossible thing it is that God seeks to do through Mary. And she asks the question, as any person might ask, how this thing is to be, since she is a virgin. She is answered with the promise of God’s power to do even the impossible. And so it is that the Holy Spirit overshadows a young woman and she conceives the Son of God.

But I’ve yet to state the most striking thing of all, and that is Mary’s response to the angel’s proclamation. She does not, as Moses did, attempt to exempt herself from God’s call. She does not ask Him to choose someone else. No, she accepts His Word. This Woman blessed above all other women reacts in humble obedience: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (1:38).

The blessing Mary receives here is not an easy one. She is no doubt aware of the reaction others will have to her pregnancy, seeing that she is not yet married. Indeed, but for an angel’s intervention, Joseph would have divorced her, suspecting infidelity. But hers is the highest fidelity!

This pious woman must also know how the recipients of God’s Word have fared throughout Israel’s history. As Jesus will later lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you!” (Luke 13:34). And yet, despite the fear Mary must have felt at Gabriel’s words, she accepts. Willingly. Without a fight. What great faith!

She would have need of such strong faith throughout her life; for being the Mother of God would not be a calling free of suffering. Simeon said it well in prophesying of her grief: “A sword shall pierce thy own soul also.” Indeed, Mary witnessed the Crucifixion of Christ in a way no other human being will ever truly understand. For Mary was, as John Donne says, “God’s partner here, and furnished thus half of that sacrifice which ransomed us.” She did not watch Christ’s Passion the way we do. We see the Crucifixion as external observers; but Mary sees it as the death of her Son. Mary’s sorrow at the Crucifixion can be second only to God the Father’s, for they alone see the Cross as the place where their holy, innocent, beloved Son dies.

We see the Crucifixion as external observers; but Mary sees it as the death of her Son.

Mary weeps at the death of Jesus. From the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

So too her joy at the Resurrection must be greater than ours. For she receives back not only her Saviour, but also her Son. Indeed, her faith for the rest of her life must be a remarkable thing. For the God to whom she prays is also the Child she cradled in her arms. The God who provides her daily needs is the Child she nursed. The God in whom she places hope for eternal life is the Child whose death she mourned at the Cross.

What a mystery it is to consider Mary’s faith in her Son! It speaks of a familial love for God that all are called to embrace and imitate; but none this side of heaven must ever truly see God as family so nearly as did she. Well can we imagine her recounting the words of her own prayer again and again: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden; for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name” (Luke 1:46-49).

An icon of the “Falling Asleep of the God-Bearer” (which is what the Greek reads) in the Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem. As the Church looks upon her body, Christ receives her soul.

Amen. So it is that we reflect upon Mary this day, the remembrance of her falling asleep. And as we do so, we must, with the generations before us and the generations to come, indeed call her blessed. For she was blessed to be the bearer of Christ. Because of this, she understands the personal intimacy that is God’s love for His people in a way the rest of us can only wonder at—as a Son to His mother. We too know that we are children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ. Yes, we know we are part of the family of God; but Mary experienced it in a way we cannot this side of heaven. Still, her example of deep, familial love with God is one we must strive for, even though we know the perfect realization of it must wait until we follow Mary to the Father’s mansions.

We remember Mary this day, and we thank God for her—for her faithful surrender to the will of God, for bringing into this world the Saviour of us all, and for the familial love she teaches us God has with His people. And so we honour her his day, the commemoration of her passing into sleep. We can only imagine what it must have been like: Christ welcoming His beloved mother home!

———————

We are the blind

Tags

Mathew Block, Music, poem, song, We are the blind

Churl has occasionally shared his poetry here on A Christian Thing (though much of it now appears on his subsidiary blog Sing Me Hwæthugu), so I hope the following won’t feel too out of place here. It’s a song of mine. Obviously it’s a work in progress, but please listen in and let me know what you think.

We are the Blind

1. We are the blind
You the Sight-Giver
Look on Your people we pray
Open our eyes
Banish the darkness
Morning Star, bring on the day

Light of the World
Flame of the Father
Break through the night of our sin
Shine in our hearts
Burn the dross from us
Great Light illumine the Way

2. We are the false
You the Truth-Speaker
We are the children of lies
Yet You call us Your own
Sisters and brothers
And attend to our prayers and our cries

Truth of the World
Word of the Father
Over our noise speaking through
Write in the dust
When sin condemns us
Let us read mercy in You

3. We are the dead
You the Life-Maker
Breathe on our desert-dry bones
Call us by name
Make the earth tremble
As we come forth from our tombs

Hope of the World
Son of the Father
Rise in the hearts of all men
Take us by the hand
Lift us toward You
As by Your love we ascend

——————–

The Fire Next Time

Tags

African American, Asian American, Chinese church, James Baldwin, model minority, Noah's Ark, race, The Fire Next Time

When I was sixteen, I read a book titled The Fire Next Time. I figured that since it’s James Baldwin’s birthday today, I should put something up on the Thing in commemoration of this event. In fact, since I promised in a previous post on the George Zimmerman verdict that I would write about the immense impact that Baldwin’s work has had on my thinking, consider this a promise fulfilled.

When I was in high school, I did not know that the ‘model minority’ stereotype was the archetypal concept against which Asian American studies was positioned. The ‘model minority,’ for those who aren’t in the know, was a concept developed in the 1960s by white sociologists and journalists who observed that–in their view–Asian people responded to racism differently from black people. While black people were hitting the streets in civil rights protests and arming themselves with the Black Panthers, this stereotype considered Asian Americans to be a ‘model’ minority who focused on the integrity of their private spheres–their strict family life, their hard work in the private sector (usually mom-and-pop shops), their emphasis on education–to overcome racial barriers in America. While Asian American studies was formed through Asian Americans joining in solidarity with African American strikers on university campuses soon after ‘model minority’ articles hit issues in U.S. and World Report and Newsweek, the model minority stereotype was also embraced by a good many other Asian Americans, not least S.I. Hayakawa, the Japanese American university president against whom the black and Asian students were striking on the San Francisco State College campus. By the 1980s, Asian American scholars noted that an increasing number of their students were using the ‘model minority’ to construct their own identities, and many complained about the internal psychological contradictions, the apathy for poor Asian Americans, and the disdain for Chicana/o and African American populations that were the concrete consequences of buying into this stereotype. Indeed, one could say that the use of the ‘model minority’ ideological stereotype in the 1960s had succeeded in positioning Asian Americans as a wedge between white America and peoples of colour who were not Asian, often with devastating consequences for Asian Americans in late 1980s and 1990s urban race riots.

Not knowing any better at the time, though, I considered myself part of the model minority. I lived in California at the time, and if you know anything about the University of California system, what you know is that there are things called ‘UC credits’ that the university uses to evaluate whether certain high school courses can be said to prepare one for admission to the UC system. Intent as I was on getting into a UC school–for the record, I was admitted into four of them, but chose to move out of state, and indeed, out of country, for my university education–I decided to drop home economics. ‘Home ec,’ you see, was not a UC-credited course. But Twentieth-Century Literature was. So I replaced ‘home ec’ with ’20th-century lit,’ and ended up taking two English courses during that term, one an honours English course in which we studied American literature, the other this 20th-century lit course. Needless to say, I was very sleep-deprived during that semester.

I did not know that I would actually get much of what I mull over now out of 20th Century Lit. After all, if it weren’t for that course, I would never have read Thomas Mann, Nadine Gordimer, Dorothy Parker, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Salman Rushdie, or Flannery O’Connor. As we explored the 1920s, the teacher handed out photocopies of Alain Locke’s The New Negro, and we spent a month combing through the work produced during the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes became a household name. (I didn’t realize this until now, but during that same time, I was taking another course called ‘the Bible as literature,’ and we read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple there.)

It’s in that context that the teacher put a book on our desks quite late into the semester. It was James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.

I remember reading it and having no idea what Baldwin was talking about. In the first part of the book, Baldwin writes a letter to his nephew, telling him that generations of black self-hatred should not be blamed on African Americans but on a system of segregation in America in which white America systemically induced a sort of African American subservience that, if undermined, would cause a radical shift in the nation’s constitution itself. As a ‘model minority’ Chinese American, I connected with none of that. After all, we Asian Americans weren’t victims of racism, I thought. We were doing quite well economically. And if we could do it, couldn’t everyone else?

It was to my dismay that the teacher announced soon after this book was assigned that we had to write a poem in response to this book. How was I supposed to write a book about a poem with which I had no connection? I mean, by this point, my father had already been ordained by the African American Progressive Baptist denomination. Unlike other Asian American families, ours was in contact with African Americans working for racial justice in Oakland. I had African American friends in high school who spoke out incessantly against racism in all of its visceral forms, and I actually listened to black gospel music. But I was not black. I was an Asian American, and a damn good model minority one too (I had a 4.39 GPA in high school, if you can wrap your head around that). My African American friends should be the ones writing the poem, I thought, not me.

It was then that I re-read the second part of the book. I must have really fallen asleep on my first time through; either that, or I was just really confused. Baldwin writes his autobiography in the second part, tracing his time as a teenage preacher in an African American Pentecostal church and then his being introduced to Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X in the Nation of Islam. The first time through, I must have been bewildered–given my encounters with black Christianity–that African Americans could be Muslim. I was probably so weirded out that I completely missed what Baldwin was saying.

The poetry assignment forced me to re-read part 2. Of course, I re-read part 1 too, but that was short–like 10ish pages. Part 2 is this monster of like 100 pages.

And then, just as Baldwin titles the first part, ‘my dungeon shook.’

Re-reading part 2, I began to see parallels to the Chinese churches in which I had grown up in both Baldwin’s account of his Pentecostal preaching and in his ambivalent relationship with the Nation of Islam. Writing of his preaching, Baldwin pretty much says that he was giving his congregation a Marxian ‘opiate of the masses,’ encouraging them as black people to embrace their subservient conditions while looking forward to life in the world to come, to not care about their material conditions and focus on the ephemerally spiritual. In the second part of the book, though, Baldwin issues a different warning about Elijah Muhammad. Baldwin writes of how he admires that the Nation of Islam wants to construct a sort of black nationalism that views ‘black as beautiful.’ However, this comes at one expense: Elijah Muhammad just keeps on throwing out epithets about ‘white devils,’ demonizing white people as the other just as they demonized black people. Baldwin says that that kind of thing insidiously reinforces segregation–keeping the white and black parts of America hating each other and thus dwelling in separate communities–and he says that if those forces of mutual hatred are not dealt with, there will be a racial apocalypse, a judgment on America in which the races will try to kill each other. That judgment, as he quotes the spiritual, evokes a visceral biblical image: ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time.’

In many ways, this paralleled my experience of Chinese churches. In private circles not too unlike Baldwin’s dinner meeting with Elijah Muhammad, anyone who was not Chinese was called a ‘ghost’ and a ‘barbarian,’ be they white, Chicana/o, or black. In fact, I heard some even speak of non-Chinese Asians as somehow inferior to the Chinese, be it the Japanese (for the events of the Second World War) or the Filipina/os (for their otherness to Chinese, probably starting with skin colour and then descending into all manners of stereotypes that I cannot bear to repeat on this blog). Hell, even the Chinese from the People’s Republic of China were demonized for being Communists. And yet, unlike the Nation of Islam’s focus on material conditions, our Chinese churches focused on becoming ‘truly spiritual,’ casting off worldliness for the life of the spirit. This had an ironic effect, of course, for our affluent congregations. In church, the focus was on being spiritual, but in the world, we had to get ahead: we had to have 4.5 GPA (mine was considered low, compared to some of my peers), we had to get a 1600 on the SAT I (in those days, there were only verbal and math scores), and we had to aim for economic success in practical careers. I found out later that there was theological justification for this sacred-secular divide: the longtime pastor at our Chinese church regularly declared from the pulpit, ‘Where Christianity is, there is prosperity!’ Focus on God and being spiritual, the ideology went, and you would become economically prosperous with God’s blessing. Opiate of the masses?

As I saw these parallels, I wrote a poem called ‘A Chinese Church’ that eventually became the first thing I ever published (I put it in the literary magazine I founded at the high school; yes, I founded it). I imagined that in the midst of all of this, I might be dating a white girl, and I called her ‘Abbey.’ I even posited that she was a missionary’s kid who spoke Chinese; I never imagined that I’d actually meet white women who could speak Chinese better than I (e.g. Not a Dinner Party), and for the record, I am happily married now to a Chinese woman who is a free-church evangelical. But anyway, for the sake of responding to The Fire Next Time, I imagined bringing Abbey to a Chinese church. She would get all kinds of strange glances as a ‘ghost,’ weird stares as a ‘barbarian,’ and a stream of people telling her, ‘This is a Chinese church; how can I help you?’ I ended the poem with a zinger: having left the church, gotten married, and gotten Abbey pregnant with a half-white, half-Chinese child, the speaker (well, that is, me) declared, ‘They were a Chinese church; could they help us?’

The poem was a hit. As I said, I got it published in the literary magazine (well, I was the founding editor, so it had to go in there, but it got some good responses). It was also awarded 100% as its grade, which helped my 20th Century Lit overall score and my 4.39 GPA.

But I never imagined that ten years later working on a PhD on Chinese Christians, I’d still be mulling over The Fire Next Time or that my poem, which was written with fairly instrumentalist motivations, would still be lingering in the back of my head. Of course, a lot has happened since then, my thinking on the Chinese church has (hopefully) matured, and I (thankfully) did not end up marrying a white missionary girl named Abbey.

But on this commemoration of James Baldwin’s birthday, I want to thank James Baldwin for shaking my ‘model minority’ dungeon.

Indeed, shortly after writing this poem, we were assigned in AP US History to do a project on a topic of interest to us. Having done some research and discovered a film by Justin Lin called Better Luck Tomorrow, I decided to research the ‘model minority,’ and that was the first time that Asian American academic names like Ronald Takaki, Sucheng Chan, and Roger Daniels came onto my radar screen. But I don’t think I actually got it until my doctoral work when I embarked into a sustained reflection on Asian American studies and its protest of orientalizing racialization throughout American history.

It was then that I discovered that the way that most people who criticize Chinese churches often misses the mark. Critiqued as bulwarks against racial integration and strongholds of conservative patriarchal ideologies, it has simply never occurred to most people that Baldwin’s analysis of both the black church and the Nation of Islam might have any application to Chinese Christianity. It does.

And here’s the application.

It is that ‘Asianness’–and ‘Chineseness’ in particular–has to be continually constructed within Chinese churches to preserve their place as the model minority within a black-white racial hierarchy. ‘Asianness’ and ‘Chineseness’ don’t imprison Chinese churches; Chinese Christians themselves actively construct a unitary ideology of what these things are in order to hang on to their wedge position as the ‘model minority.’ This is not just confined to America. A recent example of this is the attempt in Hong Kong by some Chinese Christians uninterested in making these constructs to hold others who are interested in these power dynamics accountable for their claims about trying to find Noah’s Ark in Turkey. For those who aren’t in the know, an organization in Hong Kong has solicited funds from Chinese churches over a decade in an effort to find Noah’s Ark as a silver bullet for convincing the world of the inerrancy of Scripture, which they claim will result in a major proselytizing harvest. In the process, dubious actions have been committed, especially the exaggeration of results from their Turkey expeditions (on which no credible archaeologists went). While my friends like Sam Tsang have been pressing for truth in this matter, the response tends to be that the dissenters calling for accountability will shatter the construct of a universal Chinese Christianity that needs to speak with one voice for evangelistic effectiveness. In other words, there’s too much riding on some Chinese Christians wielding the power to construct ‘Asianness’ and ‘Chineseness,’ so much that dissent is suppressed. Allow the dissent, and shatter the community.

Baldwin warns us precisely of this kind of thing. He reminds those of us Asian Americans who buy into the ‘model minority’ stereotype that, by corollary, this construct that from its very inception was meant to situate Asian Americans as a wedge between black and white America is designed to feed segregation and hatred, whether those of us who used it for our identity construction know it or not. In other words, buying into ‘model minority’ constructs may not be accompanied by known malicious intentions, but the structural social consequences of buying into it result in hateful polarization. The horror is not simple theological and organizational breakdown within Chinese churches and among Chinese Christian networks. It’s that they will feed the racializing processes that keep the races segregated from each other in mutual fear and hatred, a problem that, as we saw in the Trayvon Martin case, is just as insidious today as it was when Baldwin was writing. It’s those constructs that must be the target of any prophetic critique. Those of us making this critique love the Chinese church. We grew up in it. We were spiritual formed by it. Our closest friends and family are part of it. But we criticize not because we either hate the church and not because we are simply trying to save a structure that we, and no one else, care about. We speak because we pray that Chinese Christians would be shaken from our complicity with racial segregation and realize that the ‘Christian’ thing calls us to contribute our very selves to the church catholic’s ministry of reconciliation.

Indeed, as Baldwin concludes The Fire Next Time, reconciliation can only happen when the demonization stops and the power of love conquers the consolidation of segregated communities. To posit a heterodox reading of The Fire Next Time via a radically orthodox Christian lens, the fire next time can only be avoided by the Cursillo prayer: ‘Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people and kindle in them the fire of your love.’ James Baldwin has spoken to us, and his words are prophetic. We are called to repentance; we are summoned to examine our contribution to the impending racial apocalypse; we are beckoned to follow the way of love over against structures that feed hatred and division. Though James Baldwin left the pulpit early on in his ministry and thought that he left the Body of Christ, Baldwin calls us to follow the way of Christ, a way that shattered my dungeon and has moved me in a vocational direction that I never imagined I would take when I was sixteen. All I can say is that I am grateful to Baldwin for writing his book, and I hope that my work does his legacy justice.

Too Damn Catholic

Tags

Anglican, Book of Concord, confessional lutheran, Confessions, Council of Trent, First Vatican Council, Lutheran, roman catholic, Second Vatican Council, Tradition, Vatican I, Vatican II

Some time ago my friend Churl began a series of posts here on A Christian Thing discussing his frustration at the Evangelical tradition in which he was raised and his attraction to Roman Catholicism. Of course, Churl has always recognized these are not the only options: there is Orthodoxy, of course; and on the Protestant side, there are options like Anglicanism and Lutheranism. Alongside Churl’s posts, Chinglican has been chiming in with his defence of Anglicanism, but the Lutheran on this blog has been remarkably silent. That’s not to say I haven’t any opinions on the subject. I do. In fact, Churl and I have discussed the topic on a number of occasions outside of the blog (you know, in real life). But while I have many opinions, I have much less time in which to write them down.

Part of what has delayed an online response from me has also been the recognition that it would necessarily mean examining Catholic doctrine in detail. Indeed, talking about joining any church must, by definition, include a very real hashing out of doctrine, because it is doctrine that distinguishes one church from another. Such discussions can be very confusing to many people. They also, by definition, tend to make people angry, because if you say you believe X, you must also say you reject Y.

But I have told Churl I would write a response for the blog. So I will. And this is my response: I’m too damn Catholic to be Catholic.

That might sound flippant or even nonsensical. It isn’t intended to be. “But what does it even mean?” you ask. I’ll explain, but before I do, let me explain what I do not mean: I do not mean to say that I think Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism are similar enough that I can simply “act” Catholic while remaining Lutheran.

To be sure, Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism share many things in common. I would even argue that, of all Protestants, Lutherans have the most in common theologically with Roman Catholics. We both confess the efficacy of God’s grace poured out in the Sacraments. We both believe Baptism is for infants (that cuts out most Evangelicals). We both believe in the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion (that cuts out everyone else). Sure, some “high church” Anglicans believe in Transubstantiation, but it’s hardly representative of the church at large; in Anglicanism you can also find lowest of the “low church” symbolists, and consubstantiationists, and subscribers to Calvin’s “mystery” language (with its mysterious “spiritual (but not physical) real presence”). It’s notoriously difficult to talk about what Anglicans believe because there seems to be no authoritative voice in the church. Who speaks for Anglicans? No one and everyone. Is it Thomas Cranmer? Shelby Spong? J.I. Packer? Or perhaps it is Katharine Jefferts Schori or Justin Welby?

This kind of anything-goes theology doesn’t jive with Catholic or Lutheran sensibilities; we instead assert that there are authoritative voices who determine what doctrinal teachings are and are not allowed (by now it should be clear that by “Lutheran,” I mean “confessional Lutheran”). Lutherans and Catholics both accept that the Scriptures are God’s very Word and are therefore authoritative for faith and practice. Likewise, Lutherans and Roman Catholics both recognize the witness of the Church historic as normative for the interpretation of these Scriptures: we each assert, for example, the primacy of the three ancient creeds (The Apostle’s, the Nicene, and the Athanasian). If you deny these texts, you can be neither Catholic nor Lutheran.

Indeed, the first Lutherans saw no disagreement between their faith and the faith of the Catholic Church down through the ages. They write, “This is about the Sum of our Doctrine, in which, as can be seen, there is nothing that varies from the Scriptures, or from the Church Catholic, or from the Church of Rome as known from its writers” (AC 21:5). They believed themselves to be faithful to the historic Church’s teachings even as they rejected theologically errant innovation that had arisen in their own time. “Our churches dissent in no article of the faith from the Church Catholic,” they write, “but only omit some abuses which are new, and which have been erroneously accepted by the corruption of the times, contrary to the intent of the Canons” (AC 21:10).

To be sure, Catholics and Lutherans still disagree which of them truly remained faithful to the historic Church’s witness. But we both agree that this historic witness (whatever it is) is normative for the Church up to and including the present day.[1] From the Lutheran perspective, The Book of Concord represents an attempt at codifying a normative, indeed, authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures and the Christian faith, based on biblical exegesis and informed by appeals to the Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils. Roman Catholics, for their part, define a much larger authoritative tradition, including not only the seven ancient councils but also fourteen others in later times, as well as a number of other assorted works like the Catechism and ex-cathedra pronouncements such as Munificentissimus Deus (which, in 1950, made the Assumption of Mary binding dogma for all Catholics).

Let me refer to just one of these authorities: The Council of Trent. To be Roman Catholic means to accept these extraordinary dogmata (ie, doctrines declared necessary by the church to be believed by all); failure to accept even one such dogma places one outside the Church (for such is the Magisterium of Roman Catholicism). To Trent then:

“If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified… let him be anathema” (Session 6: Canon 9). And again: “If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins… let him be anathema” (Session 6: Canon 11). And once more: “If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake… let him be anathema” (Session 6: Canon 12).

These anathemata apply to me, for I believe that “men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4” (AC 6). Indeed, it seems doubtful that one could read these passages as anything but a deliberate condemnation of Lutherans.

And this is a key point: it is the people they condemn. “Let him be anathema.” In the Lutheran Confessions, we condemn errant teachings frequently enough; for example, “We condemn quite a number of other errors of the Anabaptists [ie, other errors in addition to errant views on baptism]” (AP 9:51). But we do not focus our condemnations on the errant. We draw our doctrines narrow in accordance with the Scriptures; but, equally in accordance with the Scriptures we draw our theology of the Church, the Body of Christ, wide. The visible church on earth is a manifestation of the Body of Christ; but it is not synonymous with the Church Catholic. I repeat, no church body stands in a one-to-one correlation with the invisible Body of Christ.

For, as Roman Catholics and Lutherans both teach, the visible church is made up of Christians as well as “evil men” who do not truly believe. If the visible church were, then, synonymous with the Body of Christ, we would have to say that both the believers and the unbelievers in this earthly fellowship were members of Christ’s Body. As a Lutheran, this seems to me obvious error. Only believers are truly members of the Body of Christ; only believers constitute Christ’s Bride, the Church.

And that goes for all believers, regardless of denominational affiliation. Lutherans do not believe one need hold membership in a Lutheran church in order to be a member of the Body of Christ. That doesn’t mean we diminish Lutheran distinctives; we believe our Lutheran doctrine to be true and that, consequently, the doctrine of others is wrong. But one such doctrine we uphold is the idea of the Universal Church—the belief that the Christ’s Bride is the invisible fellowship of all believers in Christ. “The Church is not only the fellowship of outward objects and rites,” we confess, “but it is originally a fellowship of faith and of the Holy ghost in hearts” (AP 7:4).

By contrast, Roman Catholics threaten non-catholics with damnation over topics like the primacy of the Pope’s authority [“This is the teaching of catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation” (Vatican I, Session 4 Chapter 3:4)]. There are too many things in Catholicism declared necessary unto salvation, too many things upon which membership in Christ’s Body has been made contingent. John Donne lamented this piling on of dogmata well: “All things are growen deare in our times,” he wrote, “for they have made Salvation deare; Threescore yeares agoe, he might have been saved for beleeving the Apostles Creed; now it will cost him the Trent Creed too” (Sermons Vol. 6, No. 12).

Roman Catholics have long been committed to affirming St. Cyprian of Carthage’s words in a very narrow way: extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—“outside the Church there is no salvation.” And by “Church” they have historically meant the visible Roman church. Indeed, as late as the 20^th century, Pope Pius XI could write his in encyclical Mortalium Animos: “The Catholic Church alone is keeping the true worship. This is the font of truth, this is the house of faith, this is the temple of God; if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation.”[2]

It is in this sense that I say I am too damn Catholic to be Catholic. I believe too strongly in the invisible Church, the “Universal”—which is what “Catholic” means—Church to believe Roman claims that their church is the only true Church. I cannot believe that lack of membership in any particular visible church body makes one “a stranger to the hope of life and salvation,” as Pius XI wrote. No, it is not our membership in visible churches that is necessary for salvation, but rather our membership in the invisible Church—in Christ’s Body, the fellowship of all believers. This is something Lutherans believe, teach, and confess; I cannot say Roman Catholics teach the same—or at least they didn’t until very recently (more on that in a second).

It will not do to simply suggest we reinterpret these condemnations, or to say that our understanding of the Councils’ words have evolved over time. Indeed, Vatican I strictly condemns such reinterpretation of accepted doctrine: “The meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church and there must never be abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding” (Vatican 1, Session 3 Chapter 4:14). Saying we understand better (ie, have a “more profound understanding” of) the dogma than its framers is thus forbidden. And more forcefully: “If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has understood and understands, let him be anathema” (Vatican I, Session 3 Canon 4:3).

That does not mean the Roman Catholic Church has not, in fact, attempted at times to “clarify” (or, more honestly, reinterpret) some of these older doctrines. Indeed, Vatican II provided a very welcome new understanding of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Roman Catholics no longer condemn Christians outside the Roman church; instead, they declare that all the baptized have the “right to be called Christian” (though those outside Rome miss some of the benefits given solely to Christ’s Church, which is still defined as the Roman Catholic Church).[3] So too Roman Catholics have in recent years softened their anathemata against the Lutheran understanding of justification by faith.[4] While these things are to be applauded, there nevertheless appears to be a disconnect (to my mind, at least) between the original intent of The Council of Trent—and other texts which drew the definition of Church so narrowly—and Vatican II’s more recent pronouncements. Indeed, this reinterpretation of authoritative texts seems to directly ignore Vatican I’s warning about assigning to established dogma “a sense… different from that which the church has understood.”

And therein lies the problem: either the Roman Catholic Church was right when it narrowly restricted assurance of salvation to being a member of the visible church and accepting all Catholic doctrine (including the primacy/infallibility of the Pope, the assumption of Mary, the condemnation of Protestants at Trent, etc.); or it is right now when it grants the possibility of true Christians existing outside the visible church. If one attempts to fix the problem by saying our understanding of the dogmata in question has simply evolved—that we understand them better now than their own formulators did—we come up against Vatican I’s condemnation: none are to interpret accepted dogma in a way contrary to the Church’s historic understanding. So if we say we can, through new methods of interpretation, make Trent and Vatican II speak with one voice, then we must still reject Vatican I’s condemnation of such reinterpretation. The Tradition to which the Roman Catholic Church attaches authority, then, contradict itself; and if this Tradition—this Magisterium—is the grounds which support the Roman church’s declaration to be the one true Church on earth, I for one therefore find the foundation less than firm.

I agree that one must seek the Church in order to find Christ. She is His Mother, and through her we are brought into communion with Him. But do I believe the Church is to be equated with the visible Roman Catholic Church? No. Instead, I must agree with Martin Luther:

“Therefore he who would find Christ must first find the Church. How should we know where Christ and his faith were, if we did not know where his believers are? And he who would know anything of Christ must not trust himself nor build a bridge to heaven by his own reason; but he must go to the Church, attend and ask her. Now the Church is not wood and stone, but the company of believing people; one must hold to them, and see how they believe, live and teach; they surely have Christ in their midst. For outside of the Christian church there is no truth, no Christ, no salvation” (LW 52:39-40).

This is the Catholic Church. This is the Universal Church—the company of believers. I will not abide any visible church drawing the broad boundaries of the invisible Church more tightly than does God. The dogmata of the Roman Church do just that, and so I reject them; I’m too damn Catholic to be Catholic.

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I apologize if anyone found the above reading difficult or insulting. I do not mean to hurt feelings, nor do I question the sincerity of my Christian brothers and sisters’ faiths. But there can be no honest ecumenical agreement where there is not also honest recognition of disagreement.

Do I think I am in the right, theologically speaking? Yes. And I therefore necessarily think that others’ opinions are wrong. But I will forever count upon the mercy of Christ as the means of salvation, not my intellectual capabilities nor anyone else’s (whether used rightly or wrongly). “It does not depend therefore on man’s desire or effort [or, we might add, man’s denominational affiliation], but upon God who has mercy” (Romans 9:16). I count Roman Catholics and Anglicans and Baptists and all manner of other Christians fellow members with me in the Body of Christ. Wherever the Good News of Christ is preached and believed, wherever the Holy Spirit enters into the hearts of the faithful, there the Catholic Church is. There my sisters and brothers are.

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[1]    The early Lutherans, while asserting the primacy of Scripture, never suggested that we may approach Scripture in a vacuum, apart from the witness of the Church throughout history. Indeed, as John R. Stephenson writes, the “authors of the Formula of Concord sharply forbid any unbridled exegesis of the inspired text;” Christians are bound by the ancient Church’s witness. For more on this, see Stephenson’s article “Some Thoughts on Why and How Creeds and Confessions Exercise Authority over Lutheran Christendom” (originally delivered at LCC/LCMS/ACNA dialogues, recently published in Lutheran Theological Review 25 (2013):60-73 here).

[2]    To be sure, encyclicals do not have the same authoritative status as some other texts in Roman Catholicism. But Pius XI’s words demonstrate a long-standing Roman interpretation of what St. Cyprian’s ancient words mean.

[3]    “All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ’s body, and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church. Moreover, some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church… Nevertheless, our separated brethren, whether considered as individuals or as communities and Churches, are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those to whom He has given new birth into one body… For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained” (Unitatis Redintegratio 3).

[4]    The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification affirms that Lutherans and Catholics have a much closer “consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification” now than in the past, and that “the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations” (5).