Although the situation in Boston is unusually bad, it is not unique. All around us, the same sad trends are in evidence. Parish closings and wholesale diocesan retrenchment programs have become familiar. How should we respond?
Here are two possible responses:
A) “This is a disaster! Stop everything. Drop what you’re doing. “Business as usual” makes no sense; this is a pastoral emergency. We don’t just need another “renewal” program, offered by the same people who have led us into this debacle. We need to figure out what has gone wrong. More than that. We know that the Gospel has the power to bring people to Christ; therefore it follows that we have failed to proclaim the Gospel. The fault lies with us. We should begin with repentance for our failures.”
.. the Evangelical right hates the Benedict Option book because it calls out the failure of the Religious Right. The Evangelical left hates it because they are ready to compromise (quietly) with the culture on moral theology. And most of the people who actually read the book but disagree with it don’t really think the situation on religious liberty and the rest is as bad as Rod Dreher does.
.. I am not talking about left-of-center Christians whose leftism is found in their economic views. I am talking about those who compromise on moral teaching, especially on sex and sexuality, and on the nature of religious authority.
.. The observer adds that many Evangelicals view conversion not as a lifelong process of steady repentance and dying to self, but rather as a singular moment in time. The kind of thing I discuss in The Benedict Option — the necessity of incorporating the Gospel into a holistic and disciplined way of life — doesn’t make intuitive sense to people who believe the summit of Christian activity in the world is preaching the Word and leading people to accept Jesus as their Savior.
.. The point is, evangelism is largely pointless without discipleship: the sustained and continuous formation of the individual Christian into the disciplines of the Christian life.
.. Evangelical professors keep telling me that the typical student at their Christian college is one who is filled with strong emotions about Jesus, but with little or no formation in the habits of Christian thought and living. Their faith is built on sand, which is why it is not likely to survive the rising floodwaters of liquid modernity.
.. This is a point that cannot be emphasized strongly enough. After one accepts Christ, then what? That is not the end of the journey, but rather the beginning. Very few of us will be called to be Benedictine monks, of course, but all of us are called to lives of discipleship.
.. The great historian Robert Conquest said that this is his Second Law of Politics: “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.” Adapted to Christianity, this might say, “Any Christian individual, church, or organization that does not understand itself as orthodox and live accordingly will sooner or later become heterodox.”
.. And it’s important to emphasize that, though the faculty deserve some blame, this trend is largely driven by students, who care only about advancing their self interests while engaging in various virtue signaling rituals to demonstrate the depth of their devotion to the anti-culture.
.. Law school is a seminary of modern progressivism. First principles are rarely worthy of discussion. Only relevance matters. The mysterious science of the law is described as neither mysterious nor science but simply prejudice wrapped in the cloak of an undeserved constitution. And it’s important to emphasize that, though the faculty deserve some blame, this trend is largely driven by students, who care only about advancing their self interests while engaging in various virtue signaling rituals to demonstrate the depth of their devotion to the anti-culture.
.. You really think the coming generation of lawyers and judges will care about defending religious liberty when they see it as nothing more than a cloak for bigotry? Are you willing to stake your future on that?
.. Note that a very strong majority of Catholics do not even support the religious liberty position of their own church on mandatory birth control. A majority of Evangelicals do, and generally hold the line for religious liberty, but they’re the only ones.
Christianity is not about a personal relationship with Jesus
Christianity is not about a personal relationship with Jesus. The phrase is never found in the Bible. And the whole biblical witness runs contrary to it.
Our life with Christ is communal, not personal or private or individual. When the Scriptures speak of believers, they are part of a community, a fellowship of other believers.
Christianity is about a church relationship with Jesus.
.. the norm of the Christian faith is not isolated believers, little islands of spirituality, but a continent of Christians banded together by the Spirit.
.. Even when we pray, we pray communally. Indeed, the only prayer Jesus taught us to pray begins, “Our Father,” not “My Father.” No one ever prays alone.
.. We read, often unconsciously, with the voices of preachers, teachers, and parents from over the years guiding our knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs.
.. Heaven forbid that I should have a personal relationship with Jesus. For I know what would happen: I would end up, in my mind, reshaping my personal Jesus into a strikingly familiar image: the image of me.
What Fans of The Handmaid’s Tale Prefer to Ignore
To picture a near-future United States that is a Christian theocracy with open, systematic, and brutal oppression of women, you have to picture some unbelievable changes occurring very quickly: repealing women’s right to vote; a re-acceptance of slavery; widespread Christian acceptance of government-mandated extramarital sexual intercourse; total repeal of the First Amendment; total bans on any other religious beliefs (there are references to “Baptist rebels”). Perhaps most absurdly, almost all men have accepted a regime where the only sexual outlet of any kind is government-monitored breeding with the fertile “handmaids,” reserved for the most powerful
Do you picture lots of American men signing on for asystem that denies them the freedom to have sex with women? You really have to have your “all men have fascist impulses just under their skin” blinders on tohear that and nod, “Oh, yeah, that could totally happen.”
But Margaret Atwood could have set her tale in other places and made it practically a modern-day documentary: say, Saudi Arabia. Or any corner ofTaliban-controlled Afghanistan.
.. Married women may not obtain a passport or travel outside the country without the written permission of their husbands.
.. Iran
.. The UN Children’s Rights Committee reported in March that the age of marriage for girls is 13, that sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years was not criminalized, and that judges had discretion torelease some perpetrators of so-called honor killings without any punishment. Child marriage—though not the norm—continues, as the law allows girls to marry at 13 and boys at age 15, as well as at younger ages if authorized by a judge. Authorities continue to prevent girls and women from attending certain sporting events, including men’s soccer and volleyball matches.
.. The world has plenty of awful places that can be fairly compared to Atwood’s fictional dystopian regime of Gilead. They’re just mostly Muslim.
Does This Administration Know What It Doesn’t Know?
.. Take a look at President Trump’s inner circle: Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Senior Counselor Steve Bannon, First Daughter Ivanka, First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, and Counselor Kellyanne Conway…
Only Pence has spent any significant time dealing with the federal government from the inside as aCongressman. Most of those figures have been around politics, but haven’t necessarily been around government. And obviously, Trump himself has never worked in government.
.. That’s my best explanation about how the administration could spend weeks trying to figure out how to fund and pass a massive infrastructure bill, while at the same time, at least $20 billion worth of big energy-infrastructure projects — 15 of them in 14 states, all 100 percent privately funded and all holding the potential to create thousands of new construction jobs — are sitting in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, awaiting approval. FERC can’t give approval until it has a quorum, which it has lacked since the beginning of February.
The blame can’t be put on the Senate for taking too long with the nominees; the administration hasn’t nominated anyone yet.
.. The administration has a big, public promise — rebuild America’s infrastructure! — and an easy way to get toit, by staffing up FERC and getting those projects approved. But they’re simply not getting around to it because… they’re just not on top of things.
.. So Trump said his assessment of NATO’s obsolescence was based on not knowing much about it, and now he knows more and feels NATO is improving.
The Profound Connection Between Easter and Passover
It’s not just that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder. Both holidays are about the dead rising to new life
.. Christianity’s most important day recapitulates Passover. Both holidays face head-on the daunting power of death—and both announce God’s greater power of life... The Hebrew word for Passover is Pesach. In French, Easter is Paques... They celebrated Easter on the first Sunday after Passover, as we do as well.. all agreed on the central point: The lunar cycle that sets the date for Passover also determines Easter... Passover emphasizes the blood of the Passover lamb, which Moses commands the Israelites to put on their door frames so that the Angel of Death, sent to kill the firstborn of Egypt, will “pass over” them. This image—the lamb whose blood saves—is taken up in the New Testament.. Jesus himself is the Passover lamb, offered as a sacrifice for the whole world... John 1:29 emblazoned: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”.. During the time of Christ, Jews came from the surrounding provinces to bring lambs to the Temple in Jerusalem for the Passover sacrifice... “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord, our God, took us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.”.. The Passover Seder recalls and celebrates the resurrection of the people of Israel... Most religions regard death as profane and keep it far from their sacred sanctuaries. Christians, by contrast, allow death to come into their churches.