Christianity
ARRANGED MARRIAGES MAKING A COMEBACK
29/06/07 11:07 Permalink
“Today is the era of the arranged couple who fall into love around the birth of the first child," said Marian Salzman, co-author of "Next Now: Trends for the Future."
"It sounds traditional, but in some ways so much of the future is back to the past, turbo-charged,” she said.
Arranged marriages have been part of many cultures for thousands of years, primarily born out of the desire and/or need for a financial, political or property-based partnership. As America expanded multi-culturally, this custom filtered through as certain ethnic groups sought to preserve cultural and class traditions.
But, contrary to the "old" arranged marriage, in which children are forbidden from choosing their own partners, the modern arranged marriage is not about being forced into federation.
It’s about relying on the matchmaking mastery of Mom and Dad.“This is about picking a marriage partner — not about falling into bed for a world-class romance," said Salzman, whose trend forecasts are based on pattern recognition and what stylemakers are talking about.
“There is a newfound interest in letting someone else solve the love dilemma,” she explained. “We’re on option overload, and we’re maxed out in terms of time, and we’d all love a partner. So it makes sense to enlist those who know us best to forge a proper and satisfying match.”
But are parents really the best people to hook up their children? They can be, says Sloane Veshinski, a Hollywood-based marriage and family therapist.
“Your parents usually know you best of all and are aware of an adult child’s likes and dislikes, habits, peculiarities, turn-ons and turn-offs and other factors that would determine a suitable and acceptable mate,” she said.
According to Salzman, the first stage in the modern-day arranged marriage involves meeting the partner put forward by the family for a limited time in a controlled environment.
If these initial meetings go well, the next meetings are designed to elevate interest.
“In the best case there is a seamless and joyful transformation of two extended families as the romance and energy of planning a wedding heats up,” said Salzman. “The bonds between son and parents and daughter and parents are often very much strengthened through this type of involved courtship.”
Excerpted from Fox
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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIGIOUS FEELING AND FAITH
29/05/07 19:54 Permalink
"Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord': shall
enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will
of my Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of
heaven. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord
did we not prophesy in thy name, and work many
miracles in thy name?' And then I will declare unto
them, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers
of iniquity!'
Matthew 7:21-23
How can a
person who lacks the true faith, or for that matter
lacks essential truths, appear zealous and dutiful in
the practice of their religion? From the muslim who
kills in the name of allah, to the thrice divorced
born again, or the contracepting Catholic--how can
they appear to be religious while failing to follow
God's commands? I recently stumbled upon an excellent
explanation for this in a book called
Letters To A Mother
by Father
Emmanuel Marie Andre.
"A
religious feeling is...of the natural
order.
A religious feeling is the natural consequence of
being creatures, just as respect for parents is
natural to the child."
"The religious feeling, being natural to man, is
found in all men, faithful and infidels; for all of
them have these remains of respect for God which is
sometimes manifested by a religious act founded upon
truth---as for Christians, sometimes for a religious
act full of errors---as for the infidels and the idol
worshippers, etc."
"There are nations among which the religious feeling
is naturally very deep--among the Arabs, for example.
An Arab will never fail to say his morning prayer,
his noon prayer, and his evening prayer. From the
height of his minaret he hears the muezzin cry the
sacred formula: "La Allah...",etc...Here is religious
feeling in all its power."
"But
remember ...our nature is fallen in Adam. From a
fallen nature can only come a religious feeling
deprived also of vitality. Nature cannot rise again
from itself, and the purely natural religious feeling
definitely cannot bring man back to God nor take him
away from sin. So with all his natural religiousness,
one can keep all the vices that are unfortunatley
natural to him, too. One can be vain, a liar, a
thief.
Thus these are the
characteristics of religious feeling:
"It
sees nothing, wants nothing, can do nothing against
sin....It adapts itself to everything, it comes to
term with everything, it falls in with everything, it
devotes itself to nothing.
On the
other hand faith is supernatural
...[f]aith is the adhesion of our spirit to the truth
revealed by God. It is a good that does not derive
from our nature but which is given to it from above
in order to heal it. Faith is essentially
purifying... It enlightens the spirit, cleanses it of
errors. It straightens the fallen man, places him
again in the way of God."
"The emotional revivalist often produces valuable
effects, but all revivalist movements are subject to
the law of diminishing returns. It is impossible for
men to live forever on the heights. A religion which
equates the emotional state with salvation is a
broken reed when the temperature drops. Much misery
has been caused by the evangelical doctrine that
Christianity is worthless unless it is the product of
a conversion which is always represented as a vivid
religious experience." Arnold
Lunn:
Now I See.
HOLINESS & HANDGUNS--THE PATRON SAINT OF
HANDGUNNERS & MARKSMANSHIP
15/05/07 13:53 Permalink
“Guide our aim to strike at the center. Protect
us from the enemies of love, justice and liberty.”
Despite liberals wimpy view of Christ and
Christianity, we are called to be soldiers for Christ
and defend the innocent against evil. St Gabriel
Possenti shows us that holiness is not opposed to
bravery, manhood, and even handguns. He came to the
defense of a young girl who was being attacked and
drove a gang of mercenaries out of town at gunpoint.
To honor his deeds the St. Gabriel Possenti
Society, Inc. was established and each
year a person is chosen who lives according to the
principles which St Gabriel Possenti exemplified.
This year Charl van Wyk of Cape Town, South Africa
was chosen for his bravery in fighting off
Marxist-Lenninists who attacked a
church:
From News Release
Wire:
"In July 1993, Charl, relying on his faith and a
.38 caliber special revolver, caused a gang of
terrorists to flee a church in Cape Town in what
became known as the St. James Massacre. The
terrorists were part of the Azanian People’s
Liberation Army, the military wing of the Pan
African Congress, a Marxist-Leninist group.
The terrorists, armed with grenades and AK-47’s,
murdered 11 parishioners and wounded an additional 58
individuals. Charl, the only armed member of the
congregation, fired five rounds with his handgun. He
wounded one of the terrorists and the gang fled. His
action apparently prevented the murder or injury of
many more people.
The incident led Charl to become an even more ardent
defender of the right to self-defense and of the
right to keep and bear arms than he already had been.
He recounted his experiences in his popular book,
Shooting Back – The Right and Duty of Self-Defense,
and founded Gun Owners of South Africa."
PRESIDENT OF EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY REVERTS
TO CATHOLICISM
06/05/07 15:16 Permalink
From Spero: Dr. Francis Beckwith, the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, tendered his resignation yesterday as a result of his coming back into communion with the Catholic Church. The potential for a backlash within the Society led him to his decision to resign from his post as president.
According to Beckwith’s blog, “I no longer think that it is possible for ETS to conduct its business and its meetings in a fashion that advances the Gospel of Christ as long as I remain as its president.” “For this reason, effective May 5, 2007, I resign as both President of the Evangelical Theological Society and a member of its executive committee.”
Dr. Beckwith’s journey back to the Church (Beckwith was raised Catholic) was sparked by his reading of some the bishops and theologians of the early Church. “In January, at the suggestion of a dear friend, I began reading the Early Church Fathers as well as some of the more sophisticated works on justification by Catholic authors. I became convinced that the Early Church is more Catholic than Protestant and that the Catholic view of justification, correctly understood, is biblically and historically defensible.”
Originally, the professor intended to come back into the Church when his term as president ended in November of this coming year. However, because his sixteen year old nephew asked him to be his sponsor for his Confirmation in the Church on May 13th, he reconsidered his earlier resolution.
Beckwith said, “I could not say “no” to my dear nephew, who has credited his renewal of his faith in Christ to our conversations and correspondence. But in order for me to do this I would have to be in full communion with the Church. So, on Saturday, April 28, 2007, I received the sacrament of Confession.”
Beckwith hopes that his departure will allow the society to enter into a study of the tradition of the Church in a way that would not be possible with him as president.
“There is a conversation in ETS that must take place, a conversation about the relationship between Evangelicalism and what is called the “Great Tradition,” a tradition from which all Christians can trace their spiritual and ecclesiastical paternity. It is a conversation that I welcome, and it is one in which I hope to be a participant. But my presence as ETS president, I have concluded, diminishes the chances of this conversation occurring. It would merely exacerbate the disunity among Christians that needs to be remedied.”
The former president also emphasized his gratefulness for ETS and its mission. “ETS’s tenacious defense and practice of Christian orthodoxy is what has sustained and nourished so many of us who have found our way back to the Church of our youth.”
EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS SEEK FORGIVENESS OF SINS
ONLINE
03/05/07 08:08 Permalink
How tragic it is to lack the fullness of faith and to seek deliverance and release from sin, to no avail. How many of our modern day psychological ailments are due to unconfessed and unforgiven sin? So many in the emotional hype of being "born again", presume upon the mercy of God, without the assurance of forgiveness of sin that can only come from Christ through His Church. Sacramental confession is no mere human tradition or invention, as is online confession, rather it is the merciful creation of Christ which cleanses the sinner and absolves the conscience. Anything less is a cruel abuse of a sincere desire to be loosed from sin.
"The Catholic religion does not compel indiscriminate confession of sins; it allows us to remain hidden from the sight of all other men, save one to whom she bids us reveal the depths of our heart, and show ourselves as we are. There is only this one man in the world, whom she bids us undeceive, and him she binds to inviolable secrecy, so that this knowledge remains with him as if it were not. Can anything be imagined more charitable, more tender. Pascal: Pensees.
From Indian Catholic:
MIAMI (CNA): Evangelical Christians seem to be finding the value of confession. But they’re not lining up for the confessional or for a minister — they’ve headed online.
Confession websites are not new — they’ve been around for at least a few years — but they continue to increase in number and popularity.
People post anything from abortion, lust, pornography, theft, lying and alcohol abuse — the list goes on.
One site, launched by the nondenominational Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City this Easter, is ivescrewedup.com. The 6,500-member church created the site as part of a 10-week series on the ways people make mistakes — in marriage, parenting, finances — and can learn from them.
"I think it helps people understand . . . that we're not here to point out people's screw-ups, that we're here to help them," Pastor Troy Gramling told The Miami Herald. "The church is made of skin and flesh and people that have made mistakes."
A 23-year-old man who posted on the site told The Herald in a telephone interview that posting his sin "was very cathartic." The anonymity of the site is key to its appeal, he said.
Janet Sternberg, associate chairwoman of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York, told the newspaper that online confessionals are a natural outgrowth of Internet chat rooms ''where people have this habit of telling secrets to strangers,'' as well as blogs and MySpace pages.
But, so far, more people are reading confessions than posting them.
The Flamingo Road Church gets about 1,000 hits a day, with about 200 online admissions.
The evangelical LifeChurch.tv’s confession website has had more than 6,000 people post confessions but millions more have logged on to read the stories, said pastor Bobby Gruenewald.
The pastor told The Herald that the church has received some criticism from people who think that "we're trying to encourage people to confess to a computer instead of God."
"We just believe it is a catalyst to have people open up to family and friends and God. I think sometimes it can be misunderstood," he was quoted as saying. A recent redesign of the website gives readers the possibility to post prayers or responses to confessions.
Greg Fox, who created the site dailyconfession.com in 2000, says the websites, with their voyeuristic appeal, may fulfill people's need to feel better about their own behavior or moral values. His site averages about 1.3 million hits a day.
"What makes it so popular is not so much the people confessing but people going to read all these things, saying, ‘My life's not so bad,’" he told The Herald.
People have written on the site about abusive relationships and contemplating suicide. Fox said he has tried to direct these people to get help. Others have threatened the president, prompting Fox to call the U.S. Secret Service.
He reviews all of the submissions before posting them, and has a backlog of about 4,000. Fox said the confessions are completely anonymous and that he has no way of tracing them.
The Catholic Church rejects the idea of online confessions. Confession is ''the opportunity to confess sins to someone ordained as a priest who is a representative of Christ," Mary Ross Agosta of the Miami Archdiocese told the newspaper.
ARE CHILDREN WITH RELIGIOUS PARENTS BETTER BEHAVED
AND ADJUSTED?
27/04/07 18:42 Permalink
This is such a wonderful study. I think I will cite to it next time I hear the oft repeated objection that homeschooled children are not socialized.
"Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of religion on young child development."
"The conflict that arises when parents regularly argue over their faith at home, however, has the opposite effect.
"John Bartkowski, a Mississippi State University sociologist and his colleagues asked the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 kids, most of them first-graders, to rate how much self control they believed the kids had, how often they exhibited poor or unhappy behavior and how well they respected and worked with their peers.
"The researchers compared these scores to how frequently the children’s parents said they attended worship services, talked about religion with their child and argued abut religion in the home.
"The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services—especially when both parents did so frequently—and talked with their kids about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents.
"But when parents argued frequently about religion, the children were more likely to have problems. “Religion can hurt if faith is a source of conflict or tension in the family,” Bartkowski noted.
"Why so good?
"Bartkowski thinks religion can be good for kids for three reasons. First, religious networks provide social support to parents, he said, and this can improve their parenting skills. Children who are brought into such networks and hear parental messages reinforced by other adults may also “take more to heart the messages that they get in the home,” he said.
"Secondly, the types of values and norms that circulate in religious congregations tend to be self-sacrificing and pro-family, Bartkowski told LiveScience. These “could be very, very important in shaping how parents relate to their kids, and then how children develop in response,” he said.
"Finally, religious organizations imbue parenting with sacred meaning and significance, he said.
"University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, who was not involved in the study, agrees. At least for the most religious parents, “getting their kids into heaven is more important than getting their kids into Harvard,” Wilcox said."
GO FORTH--EMBOLDENED TO SHARE THE TRUTH WITH ALL!
15/04/07 21:50 Permalink
We are all
guilty, at one time or another, of failing to reveal
God's truths to a fellow human being who needed to
hear it. But here are some words of wisdom to
encourage our faint-heartedness:
"If we do not tell others the truth, it is perhaps because we feel they are not disposed to accept it, but also it is often through cowardice, through self-centeredness, because we have not the courage to face up to their displeasure. Because we fear to offend them we do not dare to love them truly and to the bitter end. For loving others means seeking what is for their good, even in spite of themselves. Loving others means helping them to bring about within themselves the triumph of truth over their paltry day-to-day "reality". Loving means helping every man to learn God's plan for him. Indisputably, charity of this kind forbids us to allow others what we know is not for their own good. The true lover is he who faithfully, patiently, realistically and in silence...strives to help others to bring to fruition what is best within them.
In today's world millions of souls are deprived of the living bread of truth, and this is a situation which we have no right to tolerate. The fact is that we tolerate it all too easily. To compromise with this situation is to fail to love. It is not a question here of fighting, but of saving. Too widely it is thought there is no middle ground between conflict and complicity. There is, and that is love, love which does not resign itself to seeing men outside what it knows to be the true life and which seeks to help them all realize that life, love which goes forth boldly among all men.
But if the highest form of charity is to hand on the truth, yet that truth must be handed on with charity. There is a manner of serving truth , which precisely because it is not sufficiently accomplished in charity, is in the end harmful to truth.
We are all too fully aware that there can be something far less than perfect in the way in which we serve truth. Truth becomes our affair, its triumph our triumph. The moment we begin to think that way it is no longer truth we are serving, but ourselves. And we are pleased with ourselves for possessing the truth while others do not; our attitude towards others becomes proprietary and superior.
The attitude we should adopt is very different. I should say to myself, "I am as poor as the next man, Of myself I have absolutely nothing. The truth is not my truth. It is something that has been given to me, and I should be aware how ill I have received it; so I should simply bear witness to it, conscious of my unworthiness of it. Far from telling others, "Do as I do," I must say, "Imitate Jesus Christ; He is the true life. I am only an imperfect witness who has followed Him. What I testify to has been given to me and is infinitely greater than I, and is the common good of all men." In that way I can serve truth in humility without humiliating truth."
Another deformation in the matter of presenting the truth would be to seek rapid and visible results. "Charitas patiens est," says St Paul, but patience does not mean resignation. Patience is an eminently active virtue. Without trying to rush God's plan, one must enter into its long waiting, its delays. This involves an attitude of respect towards persons, a middle way between an aggressive proselytism and a psuedo-tolerance which would put out beliefs on the same level."
And so we see that charity and truth are intimately bound up one with the other."
Fr Jean Danielou
"If we do not tell others the truth, it is perhaps because we feel they are not disposed to accept it, but also it is often through cowardice, through self-centeredness, because we have not the courage to face up to their displeasure. Because we fear to offend them we do not dare to love them truly and to the bitter end. For loving others means seeking what is for their good, even in spite of themselves. Loving others means helping them to bring about within themselves the triumph of truth over their paltry day-to-day "reality". Loving means helping every man to learn God's plan for him. Indisputably, charity of this kind forbids us to allow others what we know is not for their own good. The true lover is he who faithfully, patiently, realistically and in silence...strives to help others to bring to fruition what is best within them.
In today's world millions of souls are deprived of the living bread of truth, and this is a situation which we have no right to tolerate. The fact is that we tolerate it all too easily. To compromise with this situation is to fail to love. It is not a question here of fighting, but of saving. Too widely it is thought there is no middle ground between conflict and complicity. There is, and that is love, love which does not resign itself to seeing men outside what it knows to be the true life and which seeks to help them all realize that life, love which goes forth boldly among all men.
But if the highest form of charity is to hand on the truth, yet that truth must be handed on with charity. There is a manner of serving truth , which precisely because it is not sufficiently accomplished in charity, is in the end harmful to truth.
We are all too fully aware that there can be something far less than perfect in the way in which we serve truth. Truth becomes our affair, its triumph our triumph. The moment we begin to think that way it is no longer truth we are serving, but ourselves. And we are pleased with ourselves for possessing the truth while others do not; our attitude towards others becomes proprietary and superior.
The attitude we should adopt is very different. I should say to myself, "I am as poor as the next man, Of myself I have absolutely nothing. The truth is not my truth. It is something that has been given to me, and I should be aware how ill I have received it; so I should simply bear witness to it, conscious of my unworthiness of it. Far from telling others, "Do as I do," I must say, "Imitate Jesus Christ; He is the true life. I am only an imperfect witness who has followed Him. What I testify to has been given to me and is infinitely greater than I, and is the common good of all men." In that way I can serve truth in humility without humiliating truth."
Another deformation in the matter of presenting the truth would be to seek rapid and visible results. "Charitas patiens est," says St Paul, but patience does not mean resignation. Patience is an eminently active virtue. Without trying to rush God's plan, one must enter into its long waiting, its delays. This involves an attitude of respect towards persons, a middle way between an aggressive proselytism and a psuedo-tolerance which would put out beliefs on the same level."
And so we see that charity and truth are intimately bound up one with the other."
Fr Jean Danielou
GLUTTONY AND ITS REMEDIES
30/03/07 07:57 Permalink
The so called
wisdom of the world erroneously concludes that the
cause of our obesity epidemic is food--trans fats,
fast food and soft drinks. However, Godly wisdom
reveals it is our own inordinate love of eating and
drinking aka, old fashioned gluttony.
Thomas Aquinas argued that gluttony could include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods. Aquinas set forth five ways to commit gluttony:
• Praepropere - eating too soon
• Laute - eating too expensively
• Nimis - eating too much
• Ardenter - eating too eagerly
• Studiose - eating too daintily
As we approach Holy Week it seems an opportune time to look at some remedies of gluttony:
"Call to mind that it was a sin of gluttony which brought death into the world, and that it is the first and most important passion to be conquered, for upon the subjection of this vice depends your victory over all others. We cannot successfully battle with enemies abroad when the forces within us are in a state of rebellion. Thus we see that the devil first tempted our Savior to gluttony, wishing to make himself master of the avenue through which all other vices find an easy entrance."
"That you may not be deceived by the snares of this vice disguised by necessities, govern your appetite by reason not by inclination. Remember that your soul can never rule the flesh, if it be not itself submissive to God. This submission will be the rule and foundation of its empire. Let God command our reason, let reason direct the soul, and the soul will be able to govern the body. By observing this wise order decreed by the Creator, the whole man will be reformed. But when the soul rebels against reason, and reason against God, the body will soon rebel against the soul."
If tempted by gluttony, remember that you have already tasted its pleasures and that they endured but a moment. They passed like a dream, except that while the light of day dispels the images of the night, the remorse for gluttony remains long after its pleasure has departed....'If you find difficulty in the performance of a virtuous action, the trouble is soon past and the virtue remains; but if you take pleasure in committing a base action, its pleasure disappears, but its shame continues with you.' (Aul Gel., Noct. Attic, 8,15) "
"Consider also Our Savior's extraordinary fast in the desert and the many rigorous mortifications which He imposed upon His Sacred Body, not only to expiate our excesses, but to give us a salutory example. How then can you call yourself a follower of Christ, if, when He fasts you abandon yourself to the gross pleasures of the table? He refuses no labor, no suffering, to redeem you, and you will do nothing for your own salvation!"
For this miserable body you neglect your soul, which will appear before the tribunal of God as poor in virtues as its earthly companion is rich in sensual pleasures. Nor will the body escape the punishment to which the soul will be condemned. Having been created for the soul it will share its sufferings. Thus by neglecting the nobler part of your being to devote yourself to the inferior, you lose both and become your own executioner."
(From The Sinner's Guide, Venerable Louis of Granada)
Thomas Aquinas argued that gluttony could include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods. Aquinas set forth five ways to commit gluttony:
• Praepropere - eating too soon
• Laute - eating too expensively
• Nimis - eating too much
• Ardenter - eating too eagerly
• Studiose - eating too daintily
As we approach Holy Week it seems an opportune time to look at some remedies of gluttony:
"Call to mind that it was a sin of gluttony which brought death into the world, and that it is the first and most important passion to be conquered, for upon the subjection of this vice depends your victory over all others. We cannot successfully battle with enemies abroad when the forces within us are in a state of rebellion. Thus we see that the devil first tempted our Savior to gluttony, wishing to make himself master of the avenue through which all other vices find an easy entrance."
"That you may not be deceived by the snares of this vice disguised by necessities, govern your appetite by reason not by inclination. Remember that your soul can never rule the flesh, if it be not itself submissive to God. This submission will be the rule and foundation of its empire. Let God command our reason, let reason direct the soul, and the soul will be able to govern the body. By observing this wise order decreed by the Creator, the whole man will be reformed. But when the soul rebels against reason, and reason against God, the body will soon rebel against the soul."
If tempted by gluttony, remember that you have already tasted its pleasures and that they endured but a moment. They passed like a dream, except that while the light of day dispels the images of the night, the remorse for gluttony remains long after its pleasure has departed....'If you find difficulty in the performance of a virtuous action, the trouble is soon past and the virtue remains; but if you take pleasure in committing a base action, its pleasure disappears, but its shame continues with you.' (Aul Gel., Noct. Attic, 8,15) "
"Consider also Our Savior's extraordinary fast in the desert and the many rigorous mortifications which He imposed upon His Sacred Body, not only to expiate our excesses, but to give us a salutory example. How then can you call yourself a follower of Christ, if, when He fasts you abandon yourself to the gross pleasures of the table? He refuses no labor, no suffering, to redeem you, and you will do nothing for your own salvation!"
For this miserable body you neglect your soul, which will appear before the tribunal of God as poor in virtues as its earthly companion is rich in sensual pleasures. Nor will the body escape the punishment to which the soul will be condemned. Having been created for the soul it will share its sufferings. Thus by neglecting the nobler part of your being to devote yourself to the inferior, you lose both and become your own executioner."
(From The Sinner's Guide, Venerable Louis of Granada)
EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
27/03/07 16:58 Permalink
"The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church." Card. Newman
Here is an article from Zenit, Pope's Study of Church Fathers Not Just for Catholics, An Interview With Theologian David Warner. Warner was a former Evangelical Pastor. In the interview he discusses how reading Church Fathers led to his return to the Catholic Church and offers some reflections on the Pope's teachings.
Also here is a Podcast from "THE JOURNEY HOME" on the Early Church Fathers.
GOD'S CONTINENT: CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM, AND EUROPE'S
RELIGIOUS CRISIS
22/03/07 14:24 Permalink
Here is an excerpt of a recent interview with Phillip Jenkins, a professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, about his new book, God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis, that appeared at Virtue. His book is about the religious future of Europe. Portions of the interview follow:
Explain the "rule of ten."
Jenkins: If you're trying to track the decline of institutional Christianity in Europe, you can take a point in 1960 or 1965 and compare that to today. Whether you are looking at vocations or number of seminarians, we are now at one tenth of where we were, across the continent. People are not going to seminaries. They're not choosing vocations in anything like the number they used to.
How effective was the Soviet Union at stomping out religious belief, in Russia and in its satellite countries?
Jenkins: They were very effective in transforming it. What they did was almost a Darwinian process. In some areas, they drove away a lot of the more lukewarm believers and created a very fiery hard core. The great example of that would be in the Caucasus with the Chechens. Middle-of-the-road tolerant people got purged and that just left the very hardcore Sufi-run resistance. Sometimes the scale of the destruction was so total they did uproot the whole apparatus. The Buddhists in Central Asia were basically utterly destroyed-it was a very bad century for Buddhism. But they couldn't be as effective in Eastern Europe, in Poland, where they did a wonderful job of making the Catholic Church the symbol of anti-Communist resistance. They just made going to mass a way of ticking off the Soviets.
Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark has argued that post-Vatican II relaxation of distinctive cultural markers-such as the prohibition against eating meat on Friday-led many Catholics to identify less strongly with their religion. In your opinion, was that a major cause of lowered religious observance?
Jenkins: I think it contributed in a big way. In fact it's interesting to think of an alternate world where Vatican II never happened. A lot of the spiritual upsurge in the 1960s and 1970s would probably have done what it had done in the past-would find its way into the Catholic Church-as opposed to going off in some of the New Agey directions. It contributed [to decline] but I don't think it was enough on its own. I think there were demographic trends already in progress which were contributing. Vatican II just came at the worst possible time because it aligned the Church with a kind of modernity that was already looking dated. Stark is right to say it's important, certainly. But I think the single biggest factor of decline in the 1970s and 1980s was the decline of children.
How does the rate of Christian observance in the U.S. compare to Europe if we count only mainline, well-established denominations?
Jenkins: Well, until you added the last clause, I had a great answer. In terms of church attendance, it's probably about three terms larger. In terms of how people identify and how they assume that religion is part of the landscape, it's even higher. There are obviously regional peculiarities. Much of the West Coast, such as Seattle and San Francisco, tend to look more like Europe. Agnosticism is an option. Generally, American churches are doing better. However, some of the churches which are among the best and oldest established are in steepest decline. One of the strengths of American churches is that they're always falling and always rising at the same time. It's a very dynamic religious landscape.
Why are the rates of religious observance so much higher in America?
Jenkins: There are all sorts of possible answers. Two things I pay attention to. One is the constant history of migration in this country. You continually have new waves of people coming in. They are looking for community. They find it in churches, synagogues, religious institutions. Europe, traditionally, was a much more static society. Linked to that, America is a vastly larger country. It's best to think of it as a subcontinent by European standards. When people move around within the United States, they look for community, they look for somewhere they can send the kids. The obvious place for that is a religious institution. Historically, Europe, a much smaller society, much more compact, much less mobile, has not had those kinds of forces. Belgium is about the same size as Maryland. If you move from one side of Belgium to another, you haven't actually gone all that far. If you move within the United States, then you are cutting yourself off from your older, established community and roots.
Between 1986 and 2000, average births per woman in Iran have fallen from 6 to 2, which is slightly lower than the replacement rate of 2.1. Indeed, birthrates almost everywhere are plummeting. Why is that?
Jenkins: That's right, across the Middle East. The Middle East in the last 15 years is going through the great demographic transition and that is one of the great facts in world politics. What it should mean is that in about 15 years these countries should be vastly more stable. The next 15 years could be a very rocky ride, but the long-term trend is to underpopulation. These countries will have to figure out how do deal with all those old people. Sometimes-and I'm not speaking about Steyn particularly here-when people talk about these astronomical birthrates, they're using pretty dated figures.
You write that the U.S. has managed to "resist the trend of sharply falling fertility" nearly everywhere. What explains that?
Jenkins: Partly, it's very very high immigration rates. People who migrate tend to be the young and the fertile and the ambitious and that creates a particular kind of population profile. Also, you still have this strong religious commitment which is usually reflected in larger families. Increasingly, the U.S. looks like a very weird society on the global stage. On religious affiliation, it's half way between Europe and Africa and in some ways it looks like that in demography too. It's not a European society, it's not a Third World society, it's something very distinctive. So there I am back to American exceptionalism.
After detailing the current state of Christian observance in Europe, you say that "there are intriguing signs of growth within that secular framework." What are some of those signs?
Jenkins: In all the major churches, including the state churches, there are smaller hardcore activist minority movements, like the evangelical congregations within the Church of England, some Lutheran movements, but above all all these new religious movements, new religious orders within the Roman Catholic Church. Opus Dei is probably the most sensational but there are also a lot of different ones. Though they don't include a huge number of members, they do command a lot of influence.
Pope Benedict XVI many years ago was talking about the future of the church and he seems to have this idea in mind.
Jenkins: Right. [Thus] the "new evangelization." He's very frank about that. He uses the example of the city of Magdeburg and he says, "If eight percent of the population claim to be Christian, in what sense can you be living in a Christian society?" So you have to go back to square one and try again. The analogy I use is the Counter-Reformation. What the Catholics are trying to do is very similar to the Counter-Reformation. If you look at where Benedict comes from in Germany, in that area of Bavaria, I think that's his model.
A substantial subset of recent immigrants to Europe is not Muslim but Christian. What effects are these immigrants having on religious life in Europe?
Jenkins: There is a huge network of immigrant churches, in Britain certainly, but also in basically every country there are some very large congregations. When people look at immigrant areas in France, they tend just to see Muslims, but a lot of the folks are actually black Christians-there are networks of Congolese churches-and they really provide a whole alternative religious structure across Europe. In London on an average Sunday, somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of people in church are nonwhite, and a lot of those are very recent immigrants. The best known congregation is probably that one in Kiev in the Ukraine which claims to be the largest congregation in Europe these days, with 30,000 members. It's Nigerian.
THOSE WHO ARE MOST TEMPTED & THOSE WHO ARE
FRIENDS OF THE DEVIL
10/03/07 12:49 Permalink
The folllowing is excerpted from a sermon by the Cure d' Ars, St. John Vianney.
"[T]emptation is necessary for us, because it teaches us to know ourselves.
“Now what does God do to bring us to a knowledge of ourselves, to make us conscious of our unworthiness? He allows the devil to approach us....O my brethren, how little are we, and how wrong it is for us to rely upon our fine resolutions!”
“[T]emptation is necessary to convince our mind of our unworthiness, and to prevent pride from becoming master over us. Now, you may think that the people who are the most tempted, are the drunkards, the slanderers, the unchaste, who wallow in the mire of their shame, or perhaps the misers. No my brethren, these are not the people who are tempted the most. On the contrary, the devil may even try to restrain them, for fear that they may not live long enough to do evil and help cast souls into hell by their bad example. St Augustine teaches us that the devil does not tempt such people particularly: he rather despises and neglects them.
“But, you will say, who is it that is most tempted? I will tell you and please give me your whole attention. It is those who are willing, with the grace of God, to sacrifice everything for their poor soul, who are willing to renounce all those things which are generally striven for with great eagerness in this world.
“The first temptation, my brethren, which the devil prepares for those who have begun to be more zealous in the service of God is the fear of man. They are afraid to show themselves. They shun those persons whose society they formerly frequented. If they are told that they have changed very much, they are ashamed! The question “What will be said of me?” haunts them so, that they have no more courage to do good before the world.
“If the devil is unable to win them over through fear of man, he excites in them extraordinary scruples. They are afraid that their confessions were not good; that their confessor does not understand them; that they are working in vain; that they will be lost anyhow; that they will gain just as much if they did not take any trouble.”
“Why...is a person not tempted as long as he lives in sin and never thinks of his soul’s salvation, while, on the other hand, as soon as he changes his life...hell is let loose upon him? Listen to St Augustine: This is the behavior of the devil toward a sinner: He acts like a jailer who has several prisoners shut up in his prison. He leaves them quietly alone, because he has the key in his pocket, and he is convinced that they cannot break out. He does not trouble himself to tempt them.
“[H]e lets them live in peace, if one in mortal sin can have any peace. He hides their condition from them...But a person who has decided to change his way of living, and to give himself to God that is quite another matter.”
“While St Augustine lived in a state of sin, he hardly knew what it was to be tempted. He thought he was in peace, as he relates of himself; but, from the moment that he wanted to turn his back on the devil, he had to struggle with the devil until he nearly lost his breath.... ‘I struggled with him in my imprisonment. At one moment I thought I was victorious; the next day I was defeated. This cruel and stubborn fight lasted five years . Then God gave me the grace to triumph over my enemy.’
“These are the struggles which God permits his saints to undergo....how much are we to be pitied when we are not violently tempted by the devil! According to all appearances, we are friends of the devil. He lets us live in a false peace. He lets us slumber under the pretense that we have accomplished so much good, that we have given alms, and that we have practiced less wickedness than others. ....This is the worst of all temptations: Not to be tempted; that is the state of the soul which the devil has prepared for hell.
“[A]n old sinner who has...been wallowing in sin ...will tell you he is not tempted. Well, ...so much the worse for you! That fact alone ought to make you pause, that you do not know what it is to be tempted; for to say that you are not tempted is as good as to say there is no longer a devil, or he has lost his power over Christians.
Nihilism and Faith
02/03/07 12:40 Permalink
The following is an excerpt from Salt Of The Earth, an interview with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Pope.
“[I]t seems generally easier not to believe than to believe. It is paradoxical: on the one hand faith is present in principle, man is a religious being; on the other hand he has to struggle with it constantly.
The ease of unbelief is nonetheless relative. It exists in the sense that it is easy to throw off the bonds of faith and to say, I am not going to exert myself; this is burdensome; I’m leaving that aside. This first stage is what you call the easy part of unbelief. But to live with this is not at all so easy. To live without faith means, then, to find oneself first in some nihilistic state and then, nonetheless. to search for reference points. Living a life of unbelief has its complications. If you examine the philosophy of unbelief in Sartre, Camus, and so forth, you see that readily.
The act of faith as a new start and acceptance, may be complicated, although at that moment when faith really hits me - “you may rejoice”- it has in turn its great interim ease. So we mustn’t unilaterally emphasize the toil. The ease of unbelief and the difficulty of belief lie on different planes. Unbelief too is a heavy burden, and in my opinion even more so than faith is. Faith also makes man light....we can fly because we no longer weigh so heavy in our own estimation. To become a believer means to become light, to escape our own gravity, which drags us down, and thus to enter the weightlessness of faith.”