Joe Scheidler Tribute

Note: This is a cross-post from Called to Communion. We’ve discussed contraception at great length here, so I don’t expect anything here to be earth shattering. But I’d love to hear your thoughts nonetheless. Btw, the comments on the post at Called to Communion have been great, so I’d encourage you to check those out and comment interact there as well.

The Catholic Church has stood, since its inception, firmly against the use of any artificial methods of contraception. In fact, it is the only Christian institution that, as a whole, has held this teaching consistently for all of Christian history.

Within years of the 1930 Lambeth Conference, where Anglicans became the first Christian group to officially approve the use of contraceptives, contraception came to be viewed as an unquestionable human right even by many conservative Protestants. And it’s understandable from a pragmatic point of view. It can be a difficult issue for pastors to dictate what ought and ought not happen in the bedroom affairs of their parishoners. But lately, I’ve seen a few Reformed pastors thinking about the issue out loud and coming to some negative conclusions about the practice of artificial birth control.

Tim Baly took on the topic in conjunction with RU486 “medical” abortions last year, and more recently Doug Wilson chimed in with a video explaining his thoughts on the subject. Tim Challies has also weighed in with a two-part post on contraception here and here.

What Do Today’s Reformed Pastors Say?

All three come down pretty hard on the birth-control pill because of its abortifacient potential, though Wilson doesn’t mention the pill by name, he does refer to the command against destroying life as prohibiting the use of birth-control methods that work by abortifacient means. For those unfamiliar with the issue, the pill works by making the womb inhospitable to a pregnancy. If conception does take place, it becomes very difficult for the brand new baby to attach to the walls of the uterus and begin its gestation. In essence, the baby, only a few cells big, would starve to death.

There is no solid medical evidence that this does actually happen, but the manufacturers of the pill acknowledge it as a possibility in the instructions that come with the drugs. But even if the chance is remote, Christians have no place putting the lives of their children in jeopardy and I applaud these Reformed pastors for taking a stand against it for that reason.

Though Baly doesn’t weigh in on barrier methods of contraception, like condoms, both Wilson and Challies seem to find such methods acceptable provided the reasons are within the range they consider reasonable. Their criteria tend to center around Scripture’s repeated insistence that children are a blessing and a gift of God, that they are to be desired and treasured, not avoided for personal gain or ease.

Thus, Wilson states that a newly married couple avoiding children so they can make more money are in a problematic situation, while the couple with seven kids who are using contraception to postpone a pregnancy for a short time are doing just fine.

This seems to be a pretty common line in Reformed Christianity. The pill is perhaps to be avoided, but contraception in and of itself is not morally wrong, largely because Scripture does not say it is. Wilson’s video cites a fear of putting undue, Pharisaical burdens on people and Jim Jordan cites the same concern elsewhere.

If contraception other than the pill is considered wrong by modern Reformed theologians, it is not because of the nature of the act itself, but rather the motivations behind it.

What Does the Scripture Say?

Scripture is, of course, notoriously silent on contraception, at least in explicit terms. The go-to passage is the sin of Onan in Genesis 38—the only passage that explicitly mentions contraception. But I, along with many scholars on both sides of the Tiber, find this passage insufficient for building a case against contraception by itself.

Onan’s brother died and he married his brother’s wife according to the law in order to provide her with heirs. But instead of doing that, Onan practiced coitus interruptus and spilled his seed on the ground, thus affording him sexual pleasure and releasing him from the obligation to take care of any children the union might produce. For this, Onan was struck dead by the Lord.

Many argue that Onan’s sin was not spilling his semen per se, but rather the avoidance of his vowed duty to produce heirs for his sister-in-law. This does seem to be the case and for that reason I think the passage is not capable, on its own, of providing Christians with an air-tight ban on contraception. But, fortunately, the passage is not on its own. But more about Onan in a moment.

What Did the Reformers Say?

It should be noted that the Reformers stood united with the rest of the Christian tradition in opposing all forms of contraception. Indeed, as noted above, no Christian group of any kind approved of contraception till the early 20th century.

It is interesting to note that both Calvin and Luther did see enough evidence in Onan’s sin to condemn contraception outright, but I believe that is because both were steeped in the Catholic understanding of natural law.

Calvin had this to say in his commentary on Genesis:

It is a horrible thing to pour out seed besides the intercourse of man and woman. Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is double horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. This wickedness is now as severely as is possible condemned by the Spirit, through Moses, that Onan, as it were, through a violent and untimely birth, tore away the seed of his brother out the womb, and as cruel as shamefully has thrown on the earth. Moreover he thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race. When a woman in some way drives away the seed out the womb, through aids, then this is rightly seen as an unforgivable crime. Onan was guilty of a similar crime. (Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis, vol. 2, part 16)

And Luther had this to say in his commentary on Genesis:

“[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her—that is, he lies with her and copulates—and, when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime. . . . Consequently, he deserved to be killed by God. He committed an evil deed. Therefore, God punished him” (Luther’s Commentary on Genesis)

Why the Disconnect?

I believe the disconnect we see between the Reformers and their theological descendants stems from the implications of sola Scriptura that the Reformers didn’t see.

The ecclesial chaos caused by every man being his own arbiter of spiritual truth led, slowly, to the 1930 Lambeth Conference allowing for married couples to use contraception in extreme circumstances. Thus, the ancient teaching of the Church on this subject was breeched by a small exception. As is nearly always the case with such breeches, a small exception was soon opened into the wide corridor we now see where no institution as a whole will decry contraception as an objective evil except the Catholic Church.

The reason the Catholic Church is able to take such a stand is because of its view of Sacred Tradition as another sure source of knowledge of the things of God. If the sin of Onan leaves us unsure on whether or not contraception is forbidden by God, we need not despair or decide that forbidding contraception would be a Pharisaical burden, like Wilson and Jordan. The opening paragraph of the 4th Session of the Council of Trent put it this way:

The sacred and holy, ecumenical, and general Synod of Trent,–lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the Same three legates of the Apostolic Sec presiding therein,–keeping this always in view, that, errors being removed, the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Church; which (Gospel), before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand; (the Synod) following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament—seeing that one God is the author of both—as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated, either by Christ’s own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.

In Sacred Tradition we have a sure guide because the Tradition has its roots in Christ Himself and its protection from error from the promises of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit through the Apostolic Succession of bishops in union with the Roman Pontiff. So when we have an issue like contraception, which the Tradition of the Church has taught us is a moral evil from the time of the Apostles, we can know that this tradition is a reliable guide and not the mere opinion of men.

If we follow the model of sola Scriptura, where every man is his own interpreter and Scripture is the only available means of sure knowledge of morality, it’s only a matter of time until someone decides that it’s easier to give up the fight on contraception. The same thing has happened with a number of the Church’s teachings, such as those on divorce and remarriage, female clergy and homosexuality. Without the sure defense of the Spirit-guided Magesterium of the Catholic Church, compromise is inevitable.

So What’s the Big Deal About Contraception Anyway?

In an era where nearly every other Christian group has approved at least some method of contraception, why does the Catholic Church continue to oppose it so strenuously? The reason is simple: God created the sexual act with the three-fold purposes of procreation, the unifying of the couple and pleasure. To remove any one of these elements from the sexual act is to pervert it into something other than what God intended it to be. To remove the life-giving potential of the sexual act is to change its nature.

What makes a sexual act licit or illicit is whether or not it is performed in accordance with God’s design for sexual activity. Homosexual acts are illicit because God designed sex to be between a man and a woman. Adultery and fornication between a man and a woman are illicit because God intended sex to be between a married man and woman. Rape is illicit because God designed sexual union to be entered into willingly. Contraceptive sex acts are illicit because God designed sex to produce children.

When the procreative aspect of the sexual act is removed, the act takes on a different nature than it had when procreation was a possibility. As Pope John Paul II pointed out in his Theology of the Body talks, the couple engaging in contraceptive sex is lying with their bodies. The body is saying, “I am giving you the gift of my whole self,” but one of the most incredible gifts spouses can give to each other, their reproductive capacity, is being withheld. The act becomes primarily about pleasure and thus becomes inherently selfish. The act that is supposed to reflect the life-giving union of Christ and the Church becomes an act that seeks only its own temporal satisfaction, not the self-sacrifice and self-donation that comes with the possibility of the creation of new life.

This pleasure-centered version of sex is contrary to the nature of the Triune life which, as the Divine Liturgy reminds us, is fundamentally life-giving. If marriage is to be a picture of the life of the Trinity and the relationship of Christ and the Church, we can never say “no” to life and sacrifice, which is precisely what contraceptive sex does.

I’m encouraged by the attention being given to the question of contraception in Reformed circles and I hope the conversation continues. But I say that with the fervent hope that Reformed ministers will heed the words of the Reformers, as well as the voice of the Church throughout history, rather than relying on their own interpretations of Scripture. There is much more to be said on the topic, delving more deeply into Pope John Paul II’s teaching and even the many pragmatic problems with contraception, but I hope this post will serve to start some discussion on why this ancient teaching is so crucial to our Christian life today.

Additional Resources

• Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II’s “Gospel of the Body”—Christopher West’s excellent compendium of John Paul II’s groundbreaking series of addresses on the topic of human sexuality
• Tabor Life Institute—A ministry dedicated to spreading a Catholic understanding of sexuality
• CD Set of the “Contraception is Not the Answer” Conference—A conference sponsored by the Pro-Life Action League on the problem of contraception

In this entrancing, semi-autobiographical number Nilsson writes about how his father left when he was a little boy and the disastrous and cyclical consequences the failure of a father has on the children of broken homes. Check it out:

Gay people can’t get married because, ontologically, marriage is a sacrament that can only happen with the proper matter: a man and a woman. If the words of the sacrament are spoken over two men, they’re not married. They’re two men who have gone through a ceremony that signifies their commitment to each other but does not enter them into any kind of spiritual union.

This has no bearing on whether or not gay people can get a marriage license from the state. They certainly can. It’s happened. Society has not fallen apart. What’s the big deal if we let them have their piece of paper?

What’s more, I don’t think this is what the gay community intends in their quest for state approval of gay “marriage.” I think they want to be socially equal with straight people, but that’s another question entirely.

I’ve since been persuaded by other arguments that are really tangential to the question of the spiritual meaning of the sacrament of marriage. Our culture is extremely confused on sexuality right now. There are kids going to public school who have absolutely no idea about true sexual morality and are deeply harmed by this confusion.

How much worse will it be for these children if the state recognizes gay “marriage”? They have no way of parsing the theological nature of a sacrament and what marriage really means. Their information on what is acceptable sexually comes largely from cultural influences. So if gay “marriage” is approved by the state, it will add exponentially to the existing confusion. This will be bad for individual people, which I find a much more compelling argument than the impending destruction of society predicted by the Focus on the Family crowd.

Domestic Partnerships

After hearing a news story this afternoon, I got to thinking about the idea of domestic partnerships, which already exist, and can be entered into in many places by heterosexual or homosexual couples. They’re basically agreements about property rights and what have you. They’re civil contracts, no different than a contract between two businesses. People enter into these all the time with no regard to sexuality.

It is, of course, the obligation of the state to protect contracts and sexuality has no place in these contracts. We shouldn’t ask about someone’s sexuality when they’re getting a loan or starting a business. Why should it ask when two people want to forge an agreement about property to govern and protect their interests in a relationship where they happen to live together? For the record, I’m very open to objections.

Why Involve the State at All?

So my question is, why should the state be involved in anything involving the word marriage at all? What would it harm Christians, society, the Church or the American family if the government were to get out of the marriage business entirely?

Because, really, the state doesn’t have anything to do with marriage. If there were no civil state to approve marriages, as has often been the case in history, Christians could still engage in the sacrament of marriage. The state recognizing the marriage is really just the state issuing a domestic partnership contract to people who happen to have engaged in the sacrament of marriage.

The state has no power over whether or not the marriage exist. They only have power over property disputes. The state is hijacking a Christian sacrament when they claim to be issuing “marriage” licenses. By the power vested in my by the state of Illinois, goes the line, but the state of Illinois has no power to approve, disapprove, create or dissolve a marriage. They’re grasping at power they don’t really have.

So why not give up the battle altogether. Why are we not advocating for the government to get out of marriage altogether? That seems to me like the most Christian option.

If we could all be happy with anyone being able to enter into a property contract with anyone else of age, and considering it a social norm that married people would generally enter into this sort of contract, for the good of themselves, the state and the family, what objection could there be to the state dropping all pretensions when it comes to marriage?

I’m really open to persuasion since I don’t claim to have a firm grasp on the issue, but this seems like a win win win arrangement to me. What do you all think?

The proper matter for the sacrament of holy orders is baptized men. A woman does not become a priest when words of consecration are said over her even if a valid bishop is using the right formula. Just like saying the words of consecration over pizza and beer will not make them the body and blood of Christ even if you’re a priest who has the proper authority to celebrate the mystery. Wrong matter = no sacrament. John Paul II, may his memory be eternal, put it quite well:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

Which is essentially to say that the Church can’t ordain women for the same reason it can’t draw you a square circle. And there is a certain freedom in that. Women being ordained isn’t a threat because it’s actually not happening. It’s unfortunate that there are women seeking and playing at ordination, but it’s not a serious threat to the Church.

And that leads to a question: since the very concept of ordination is, by necessity, much looser in protestantism, are women “priests” or “ministers” actually “priests” or “ministers”? When they perform the Lord’s Supper is the same thing happening as when an ordained protestant male minister performs the same actions? Do they have real authority from God? What principled reason would there be for saying that their ministry is invalid? Certainly Scripture states that women shouldn’t be ordained, or at least maleness is assumed in many of the qualifications, but so is virtue. If a man is ordained and then found to be a lecher, does he stop being an elder?

These and a host of other questions all surround the divide on the concept of ordination between Protestants and Catholics. I think it’s a vitally important question because it’s at the root of why the Reformation was a schism and not a branch. Nobody sent the reformers. But it is impossible to take God’s authority outside of the boundaries God has put upon it. You can’t steal the altar of the Lord and do as you please with it. If you do, it ceases to be the altar of the Lord.

Unlike the Reformers, however, the Womenpriests at least tracked down a validly ordained bishop to start the ball rolling in their movement. The reformers didn’t even give the Church enough deference to track down a rogue bishop to give them street cred as ministers. Their authority came from themselves pure and simple and that is the root cause of the ecclesiastical chaos that dominates the protestant landscape.

For the definitive treatment of the problems here, I’d refer you to St. Francis De Sales’ The Catholic Controversy, particularly the section on mission.

A new video from the fine folks at Crackerfarm Studios of the Avett Brothers singing their tune “Tear Down the House.” Features some nice harmony and fancy banjo pickin’ from Scott that aren’t in the original version. Love it when these guys switch things up!

This is a video I put together of a protest we held in Cedar Rapids Iowa when Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Cecile Richards came to speak at Planned Parenthood of East Central Iowa’s 30th anniversary celebration.

Activism is what got me into the pro-life movement and continues to be the part of the job that excites me the most. I thought I’d share a bit about it, especially about the parts of my job that rub a lot of people the wrong way.

I started going to Church with Eric Scheidler, the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and now my boss, when Erin and I became Catholic. I remember the first time I asked him what he did for a living and he said he was a pro-life activist.

People Do That?

I was unaware that that was a job choice. Nobody ever mentioned it in any of the career-path conversations one inevitably has in high school. I was impressed and intrigued. It really excited me that there were people actually doing something about abortion, something I abhorred but never gave much thought to actually fighting.

I told Eric at the time that I’d love to get involved in some activism activities and he dropped a few opportunities here and there that I wasn’t able to take advantage of.

Nearly a year later, he offered me the opportunity to come on for the League’s 10 day summer “Face the Truth” Tour, a public education initiative where volunteers hold 3′ x 5′ pictures of aborted babies along busy streets to remind the public of the reality of abortion.

It was brash, daring, controversial and pretty much everything I hoped would be involved when I first heard about the job of pro-life activist. Fortunately, the construction work I was doing at the time was a little slow so I was able to take the time off to do it.

A Picture Worth 10,000 Words

I was changed from the first day. Though I’d always been pro-life in theory, I’d never really done anything about it. I don’t think I’d ever seen the pictures of aborted babies. The reaction when we pulled the first placards out of the truck was visceral. I was particularly moved by the picture of a baby aborted in a late-term abortion. Erin had just given birth to Ambrose, our first baby, and I was blown away by how much this baby looked like him when he came out of his mother. The gut-wrenching turn is that this picture is of a baby’s head severed from his jaw held up by forceps.

It was work to force back tears and continue with the job, but I did. I was equally impressed over the course of the tour with how incredibly effective these pictures are. They elicit visceral reactions from everyone who sees them. Some are angry, often because of prior involvement with abortion. Some are concerned about their children seeing the pictures. But many are brought to stunned silence by the reality they’re presented with and often come away with a totally new perspective on abortion.

Putting the Lie to the “Clump of Cells” Myth

Planned Parenthood and the rest of their cohorts are zealous to portray abortion as doing away with a useless and obnoxious clump of cells—like removing a tumor or clipping a fingernail. They have to be. Because when people see what’s actually happening in an abortion—a doctor tearing a human being limb from limb—nobody can argue that it’s some benign choice.

Let’s Face It: People Don’t Like Me

There are, of course, many objections to Face the Truth efforts and God knows I’ve heard them all. People frequently pull over their cars to yell at us or just honk angrily and give the finger when we’re using the graphic images. We’ve even put together a document answering the most common of these objections. But when it comes down to it, I’ve come to believe that nobody has a right to not see these pictures.

This is the collective choice our society has made: to allow the destruction of human life in the one place that God designed especially to nurture and protect it. Nobody gets to live in blissful ignorance. As long this is happening and our society is condoning it, we will continue to expose it.

And the solid fact remains that Face the Truth campaigns work. There have been many instances, some I’ve been privileged to witness, when women look at the pictures and come tell us that they have an abortion scheduled but they can’t go through with it. We’ve even had people stop and introduce us to their children who got to live instead of being aborting because they saw these images on the roadside.

Don’t Like It? Go Tell Ethan.

Just last year a man stopped and told me, between tears, of how 8 years previous he and his wife had gone to an abortion clinic to kill their child. But some faithful pro-lifers were outside the clinic with these pictures. They went into the clinic but, just as her name was called to go have the abortion, they got up and left because of the seed the pictures had planted. He told me his son Ethan was the light of his life and he couldn’t imagine living without him.

If just one baby was saved, it would be worth it. But countless hearts and minds have been changed by activism like this and human beings made in God’s image have been given life because of the work of pro-life activists showing the truth about abortion. As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t like it, you can go tell Ethan.

Your Invitation

I’m reminded of my dear friend Sandy who, when she got involved in pro-life activism a few years ago, told me how grieved she was that she hadn’t gotten involved earlier. I was in the same position and I’ve met many people who felt the same way.

My boss Eric likes to tell people like that that God calls people when they’re ready. Don’t be sorry about what didn’t happen, be glad that God’s awakened your heart now and act on it. There are so many people who would get involved if only someone would give them an opportunity.

Well, if you’re not involved in some way in fighting the greatest evil taking place in our society right now, here’s your invitation. There are numerous ways of getting involved.

You can check out the Clinic Witness Map on the Pro-Life Action League’s website where we’ve cataloged all the groups we’re aware of that are involved in praying and sidewalk counseling across the country and find a group to get involved with. You can volunteer at a Pregnancy Resource Center or maternity home in your area. You can get involved with 40 Days for Life, a group that organizes prayer vigils outside abortion clinics. You can help people you know in difficult situations with unplanned pregnancies. You can donate to the Pro-Life Action League or other pro-life groups to help them fight abortion. But whatever you do, don’t be complacent.

Since I’m making an attempt at reinvigorating the old blog, here’s a thought I had during Lent that seems particularly appropriate since we’re currently in another season of fasting for the Eastern Churches, the Apostles’ Fast which runs from the second Monday after Pentecost till the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul.

I was happy to observe that this Lent, many Reformed pastors with blogs took up the subject of the Church’s foremost penitential season. But most of their thoughts were filled with trepidation about the practice of fasting.

Posts like Steve Wilkins’ here and Doug Wilson’s here and here are more open than usual to the idea of observing Lent and Advent, but the idea of their communities actually setting those seasons aside for actual physical fasting from food seems to fill them with fear.

Reformed Objections to Fasting

They cite many potential pitfalls to the practice. Wilkins says that fasting like the Catholics, by which he means giving up a particular thing a person is attached to like a food or drinking, isn’t really fasting at all since, according to him, biblical fasting is going without any food at all.

This is a bit unfair since that practice is more of a modern American Catholic piety than the sort of fasting the Church has encouraged in ages past and still does in may places.

In the East, the Lenten fast consists of giving up meat, eggs, dairy and, for those with a vocation to marriage, often sex as well, for the entire period of Great Lent, which actually runs more like 55 days by our calendar. And even in the Roman rite, fasting has typically been more rigorous than simply giving up chocolate or suchlike.

Wilson fears that if we fast for an entire season we will be doing more fasting than Israel did in the Old Covenant. Why, he reasons, would we fast more after the resurrection than before?

Both seem to fear that physical fasting will somehow detract from spiritual penitence. Don’t fast from food, many in this camp say. Repent from your sins instead.

They both give nods to the idea that fasting might be something that Christians ought to do sometimes, maybe for a day or so, but only for a specific purpose and only for a short time.

The Devil’s Greatest Triumph Since Luther

Why this avoidance of fasting when the practice has been fundamental to the spiritual life of the Church since the earliest times? My take—it’s the best trick the devil has pulled on Reformed folks since they broke ranks with their bishops.

Jesus fasted for 40 days before the beginning of his public ministry. St. Paul buffeted his body to make it his slave for ministry. Christ told his apostles that even the strongest demons are made weak in the presence of the fasting faithful. The writings of the Fathers of the Church are filled with exhortations to deny the body. And of course, the liturgical life of the Church has long revolved around periods of fasting.

Why would the devil want Christians to cease fasting collectively? Why would he want Christian ministers to teach their flocks to avoid extended periods of fasting? Because Christians who have trained their bodies to resist temptation are among the greatest threats to his dominion that could ever exist.

Reformed Christians are closer to the fullness of the Catholic faith than most Protestant groups. What better way for the devil to cripple their effectiveness than to convince them that fasting together profits them nothing?

It’s particularly strange that the CREC, of all denominations, would be leading the charge against corporate fasting. The Christians in the CREC are keenly attuned to the importance of corporate, liturgical acts. They’re no strangers to the idea that what God’s people do together, in the liturgical context, moves mountains in the world.

The CREC is also a denomination that has worked hard to recover traditions of the Church that many other Protestants have jettisoned. Of course, they still reject any traditions they perceive to be “unbiblical,” but what could be more biblical than corporate self-denial?

So What About Those Objections?

Let me take Wilson’s objections to Lent one by one.

First, if we were to adopt this practice, we would be in worse shape than our Old Covenant brethren, who had to afflict their souls only one day out of the year. Why would the time of anticipation of salvation be so liturgically celebratory, while the times of fulfilled salvation be so liturgically glum? Instead of establishing a sense of longing, it will tend to do the reverse.

This perspective fails to understand that everything gets more intense after Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection. It’s not just the joy that grows in intensity, the fight against evil does as well.

Israel only fasted one day every year. Why? Because they couldn’t handle it any more than they could handle the Christian teaching on divorce. Moses allowed for divorce because of Israel’s hardness of heart. But Christ forbids it because now we have the Spirit. We have the strength to do things Israel never dreamed of.

His examples also fail to take into account the many accounts in Scripture of spontaneous collective penance, like the people of Nineveh when they heard of God’s impending judgement.

Granted, it wasn’t a liturgical celebration of God’s people, but it does clearly show the value of a community coming together to perform works that express their contrition for their sin and their desire for repentance. This is exactly what the Church’s penitential seasons seek to instill in us.

Second, each penitential season keeps getting interrupted with our weekly Easters. Many who relate exciting movies they have seen to others are careful to avoid “spoilers.” Well, these feasts we have, according to God’s ordinace every seven days, spoil the penitential mood.

They do indeed. And each Eucharistic celebration is indeed a breaking of the fast in a certain sense. And we couldn’t get through Lent if it weren’t for the joy we find in the weekly Eucharist.

But Father Alexander Schmemann in his book Great Lent: Journey to Pascha relates the idea that the breaking of the Eucharistic fast does not necessitate the breaking of the fast from food.

In fact, continuing the fast, even on Sundays, is necessary for the kind of sustained effort that the penitential seasons are trying to produce in us. It is through this sustained fasting that we realize that our life is not sustained by food, but by God himself.

Schmemann points out that the first sin was that of eating, of Adam and Eve thinking they could sustain their own life through food. This is the common assumption we all labor under—until we go without food.

When we undertake the kind of sustained fast the Church requires of us several times a year, we get to the end of our ability to sustain our life. At the most intense points of the fast, it starts to feel like we’re losing control of our life, like we’re coming apart at the seams.

And that’s exactly the point. We learn what we are really capable of through the power of the Holy Spirit when we stop trying to sustain our lives on our own steam. We learn that God is capable of sustaining our lives even when we don’t succumb to our belly-gods. And when we learn this lesson, heights of holiness we never imagined can be opened to us. It should be no surprise that the greatest saints in Church history are usually great fasters. (I should add that I lay no claim to having reached these vistas of holiness, only that I believe they exist and have caught glimpses of them during seasons of fasting.)

And last, what gospel is implicitly preached by the practice of drawing out the process of repentance and forgiveness? It is a false gospel. Now I am not saying that fellow Christians who observe their church year in this way are preaching a false gospel, but I am saying that lex orandi lex credendi—the law of prayer is the law of faith, and over time, this liturgical practice will speak very loudly to our descendants. If we have the opportunity to speak to our descendants, and we do, then I want to tell them that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

As do I. And I also want to tell them that if they resist the devil, and he will flee. But without sustained resistance, his attacks will come apace, as they always do. It is only through the long effort of learning to control our passions that we can finally accomplish that work of resistance.

Finally, Wilkins alludes to the idea that we shouldn’t do some petty fast from some food, but rather seek to cultivate true repentance for sins.

But this misses the point. We are not abstaining from certain foods as an end in itself. We are abstaining from certain foods to cultivate the habit of repentance, of turning from the desires of our sinful flesh to the selfless service of Our Lord.

Give it a Try

My recommendation: if you’ve never fasted seriously for an extended period of time, why not try it? WWJD, after all. Want it to be more effective? Do it with as many of God’s people as you can gather. Your whole Church if you can pull it off. During Lent or Advent? All the better, since God’s people all over the globe are doing it to varying degrees during these seasons.

Never separate fasting from prayer, almsgiving and repentance. These are considered the “pillars” of the penitential seasons of the Church and without them, fasting is nothing.

The Reformed objections to sustained, collective, liturgical fasting are strawmen, because true fasting is not opposed to joy, true repentance or a firm knowledge of the post-resurrection era in which we live. Rather, fasting is a strong support of all these things. Without it, we can never attain the heights of spiritual joy that Christ intends for us. Who would oppose such a thing except Old Scratch himself?

Well, today, someone asked me if I’d ever written anything about my conversion to Catholicism. So I came back here to check. Turns out I’d never written a “conversion story” so to speak, but I did write a lot of stuff and it was really fun reading through some of it.

It was especially fun to read back on all the old discussion we had about Catholicism, contraception, Church history and all that fun stuff.

Then writing became less of a hobby and more of something I did every day as part of my job. So writing a blog became less of a release and more of the same thing I’d been doing for the last eight hours.

But, re-energized by the fond memories I have of hashing it out with Remy and Josh Gibbs and Matt Petersen and even Jason Schiebe, bless his heart, I’ve decided to give it another go.

So let’s tear it up like we used to. Let’s get the band back together. Whaddya say?

Future BFF's in Heaven? Let's hope so!

I’m sure much of our readership is aware of the recent lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Marcelle Lefebvre under the auspices of the Society of St. Pius the Tenth (SSPX). For those totally unfamiliar, I believe the Pope’s letter on the subject explains the situation quite adequately.

These bishops were ordained in the SSPX to serve the Traditional Latin Mass at a time when it seemed that rite might be dying out after the Second Vatican Council.

The problem was that they were ordained without the approval of Rome, which incurred on Archbishop Lefebvre and the Bishops he was ordaining a latae sententiae excommunication. The SSPX remained Catholic and believes all Catholic dogma, but they were operating illicitly without Rome’s permission and thus had no official authority or standing in the Church.

But now, in a move toward reconciliation with the hundreds of thousands of Catholics in this awkward position, the Church has decided to lift the excommunications from these bishops. This does not regularize the SSPX, nor does it give these bishops any jurisdiction within the Church.

It merely makes them able to come to communion with the rest of the Church and opens the door to receiving the SSPX into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Of course, there was also the wrinkle of Bishop Williamson, one of the four bishops who only weeks before the Pope’s announcement was filmed making comments questioning the accepted number of methods by which Jews were killed by Hitler during WWII.

This led a number of liberal Catholics, Jews and other groups to criticize the Pope’s action. In their opinion the Pope’s act of reaching out to what they perceive to be right-wing nut jobs was an insult to them. I believe there is more to it than that, and we’ll get into why below.

With that in mind, there are four issues I think are pertinent to the discussion between Reformed Protestants and Catholics that are made apparent by this move on Rome’s part.

The Church Has a Passionate Heart for Reunion

The Catholic Church loves all her separated children, just like any parent cares for their children who stray. As Pope John Paul II, may his memory be eternal, put it, the Church is “irrevocably committed” to the union of all Christians.

In like manner, Pope Benedict has chosen to go find the lost sheep of the SSPX even at the expense of losing favor in the minds of liberal Catholics, Jews and the secular world.

His highest priority is the unification of the Church and he doesn’t care if he looks as crazy as a man scouring the wilderness trying to find a lost sheep. He must find his children and bring them back, and God help him, he will.

This hits home with our protestant brothers because this is a unique feature of the Catholic Church. As the history of the Presbyterian communions in America plainly attests, dividing is almost part of the essence of protestantism.

The Orthodox Presbyterians is not seeking to reunite with the Presbyterian Church of America, nor is there a reunion afoot between the Presbyterian Church of America and the Presbyterian Church USA. These divisions are almost a comfortable part of their identities.

But the Catholic Church cannot remain divided. It is a critical part of her mission to foster unity between all Christians. Reaching out to the SSPX is just one example of how the Church is unwilling that any Christians should remain separated, even if those Christians were in the wrong when they separated.

Similar efforts can be seen in the communication between Rome and the Orthodox in recent years, which has been very fruitful. Our last two Pope’s have also made great progress in understanding and entering into dialog with protestants. I know of no reformed denomination that is actively seeking to reunite with Rome in any serious fashion.

The Church Pursues a Practical and Humble Path to Reunion

The Catholic Church realizes that she must pursue the nearest and most expedient paths to reunion before attempting to bridge gaps that will take centuries to heal.

It is a very practical concern to heal divisions within the Catholic Church before we go trying to bring Christians who repudiate Rome’s authority into communion.

I believe the Pope chose to work for reunion with the SSPX because they are a low-lying fruit. They love the Catholic Church, it’s history and liturgy, it’s structure and it’s source.

They want to be Catholic, so it’s naturally easier to reconcile them than it is to reconcile groups that believe the Catholic Church to be heretical.

The fact that the Pope was willing to make this gesture even in light of the SSPX’s continued and recent criticisms of the post Vatican II Church and recent Popes reveals a striking degree of humility.

The SSPX was in the wrong from the beginning and is still wrong on some issues, but the Pope realizes that the way to reunion is not the proud posturing of being “in the right”, but rather the spirit of humble fatherly love that will bring them back into full communion.

The Church has a Fundamental Concern for the Reformation of the Liturgy

The purpose of the SSPX from the beginning was the preservation of a reverent liturgy. It is no mistake that this Pope, who has such a love for true reverence and propriety in the Liturgy has held out the olive branch to a group whose whole existence rests in respect for these very issues.

In fact, one of the significant barriers to full communion was removed when Pope Benedict removed all restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass a few years ago.

Pope Benedict is seeking to bring the excesses committed in the name of the Second Vatican Council into balance. He has restored the practices of kneeling for Holy Communion and receiving on the tongue in his own liturgies and is making an example of what a reverent liturgy looks like in the way he celebrates Mass.

The pursuit of the SSPX clearly displays that this Pope is very concerned with restoring such reverent worship to the high place of honor where it belongs.

Again, this is of particular interest to our reformed brothers who do hold proper, reverent worship in very high regard.

I have spoken with many reformed folk who feel that, based on their experience of Catholic liturgy in the <i>Novus Ordo Missae</i>, their own community worships God more reverently and beautifully, so what interest would they have in becoming Catholic?

This is unfortunately often an apt criticism, but the state of liturgy in the Catholic Church in America is not historically how it has been, nor it seems will it remain as it is now.

I hope our reformed brothers are compelled by the Pope’s concern for right worship and his efforts to promote it in the Catholic Church.

It is the fervent hope of all Catholics, and especially former protestants like the authors of Called to Communion, that one day we will be fully reunited with our protestant brothers. I pray that this small example of the Catholic Church’s heart for reconciliation among Christians will be the impetus for further growth in the unity of the Body of Christ.