Return to Rome

Return to Rome has moved to Patheos.com

2010-10-11T00:01:00.006-04:00

Beginning today, October 11, 2010, this blog, Return to Rome, has permanently moved to Patheos.com. You can find it here. You can also access it directly via one of two urls, returntorome.com or returntorome.org.

Can We Be Good Without God? Natural Law and the New Atheism

2010-10-08T15:30:00.001-04:00

That's the title of the talk I am giving tomorrow, October 9, at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Sugar Land, Texas. It's scheduled for 11 am. For more info, go here.

Christianity Today's strange story on Al Mohler

2010-10-08T00:01:00.031-04:00

This story is the buzz on the Evangelical blogs, the most important of which is Justin Taylor's at the Gospel Coalition. (He has the whole skinny here). As a Catholic, I have no dog in this fight, but it seems to me that the article's author, Molly Worthen, a PhD candidate at Yale, pens a few cheap shots that should cause any well-known religious figure with theologically traditional sensibilities to think twice about agreeing to an interview with her. There are two passages that stand out as particularly outrageous. Here is the first:

Mohler has gone to great lengths to counteract this assumption, to nurture a polished, well-read breed of fundamentalism that is a far cry from H. L. Mencken's caricature of the literalist bumpkin. "He knows he's carrying the mantle of Southern Seminary, which has been, at its best, patrician in its appreciation of culture and learning," says J. Ligon Duncan, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, and a friend of Mohler. Students at Southern are not sawdust-trail Baptists but the smartly dressed sort who can make small talk about literature and art.

Imagine it was not 2010, but 1910, and it was H. L. Mencken writing about American blacks attending college for the first time: "Students at Howard are not ordinary sharecropper Negroes but the smartly dressed sort who can make small talk about literature and art." The bigotry would be obvious (as, no doubt, Mencken, with no temptation to court subtlety, would have wanted it).

Another passage, describing Dr. Mohler's immense and impressive personal library (which I had the pleasure to visit almost 12 years ago):

A self-conscious air pervades the library, in the jumble of cultural artifacts intended to convey worldliness; in the shelves lined with a conspicuous number of Great Books, Harvard Classics, and other pre-packaged sets that seem the fruit of a single-minded mission to conquer a body of knowledge, or at least to give that impression.

Apparently, if we follow Ms. Worthen's narrative carefully we are forced to conclude that just like his impeccably wardrobed seminarians who can parrot sophistication, Dr. Mohler probably just has an interior decorator who knows how to create the proper literary ambiance by lining his shelves with "pre-packaged sets" that "give that impression."

I carry no brief for Dr. Mohler's tenure at the helm of Southern Seminary or even the political machinations that were instrumental in helping him and a host of others to shift the historical trajectory of the Southern Baptist Convention in a more conservative direction. I am neither a Baptist, nor a Calvinist, nor a young-earth creationist. I am a Catholic, a Thomist, and a theistic evolutionist. And as a professor at Baylor University, I am pleased that in the late 1980s and early 1990s the board was able to change its bylaws in order to thwart a fundamentalist takeover. Again, I have no dog in this fight. Nevertheless, I know smugness and condescension when I see them (and I am told that I may have practiced them myself once or twice).

Dr. David Anders on relics and intercession of the saints

2010-10-07T08:13:00.003-04:00

(HT: Called to Communion) On Marcus Grodi's radio program, Deep in Scripture, Dr. David Anders offers a biblical and historical account of the theology of relics and the intercession of the saints. Listen here at Called to Communion..

Return to Rome is moving to Patheos.com on October 11, 2010

2010-10-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

Starting on October 11, 2010, this blog, Return to Rome, will move permanently to Patheos.com. You can find it here. You can also access it directly via one of two urls, returntorome.com or returntorome.org. For the next couple of days I will be blogging on both platforms.

Ralph Wood's Providence convocation address: "From the Bible Belt South to the Deep Catholic North: A Four-Act Drama"

2010-10-06T00:01:00.002-04:00

On September 15, 2010, my Baylor colleague, Ralph C. Wood, gave the academic convocation address at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. Ralph is spending the 2010-2011 year on the Providence faculty as the Rev. Robert J. Randall Distinguished Professor of Christian Culture. A couple of nights ago he emailed to me a copy of his September 15 address. While I sat reading Ralph's talk in the Starbucks at the Barnes & Noble in Waco, I found myself emotionally gripped by Ralph's powerful words. Although I am neither a Baptist nor from the South, I seemed to know the roads he traveled and the characters he encountered, though for me they had different faces and names and reside in different places. Here are some excerpts:

The second most crucial religious event beyond my baptism also occurred during my undergraduate years. Prospective Baptist preachers who were serious about their vocation wanted to be educated at Baylor University. I was one of them, and I yearned for "Jerusalem on the Brazos," there in the heart of Texas, at the school that was the veritable buckle on the Bible Belt. Yet in 1959, the total cost for a year's education at Baylor was $2,000. My schoolteacher parents were earning $300 per month. And while this not a negligible income in the late 50s, it was clear that my matriculation at Baylor would work a financial hardship on them. While they didn't forbid me to enroll there, I elected not to do so. Instead, I enrolled at the former East Texas State College in the town of Commerce 60 miles east of Dallas on the blackland prairie. Little did I know the difference this decision would make.

At that time, Baylor (like most other Baptist schools) had no Catholics on its faculty. They would have not been hired even if they had been foolish enough to apply. I certainly had no reason to find fault with this policy. Nor is there any doubt that I would have received a superior academic formation at Baylor, except for this one glaring omission: I would never have been taught by a Catholic. In 1959 I had never even met a Catholic. There was no Catholic church in my hometown, none in my home county. Eastern Texas was as Baptist as Providence is Catholic. Suddenly and drastically, this religious vacuum would be filled. It would be filled by Paul Wells Barrus. He was the only Roman Catholic on the entire faculty. Yet I could dismiss him no more than I could deny my Baptist upbringing. He was not only the most learned member the faculty, the best teacher by far, a scholar gifted with the largest mastery of languages and cultures: he was also the deepest Christian, a man who (without wearing his convert Catholicism on his sleeve) exhibited sanctity. He was palpably, undeniably holy....

This fourth turning became theologically decisive because, at Baylor, I discovered the work of theologians who had been but names to me: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Joseph Ratzinger. In them, I found a theology that goes well beyond Barth while preserving his best insights. These nouvelle theologians maintain the scandalous angularity of my Baptist faith together with a Catholic vision of the Church. It is the singular Community into which God is determined to incorporate the whole of humanity within his own triune life. In sum: a radical Christian particularism integrated with an equally radical Christian universalism.

I call myself a Bapto-Catholic. I believe that I have been called to bring the immense artistic and theological richness of the Catholic tradition to bear on the lives of my largely Protestant student audience at Baylor. I also traipse the lecture-circuit twice monthly to speak mainly, though not entirely, in Protestant colleges and churches. There, to my delight, they receive my Catholic-formed teaching with eagerness. In turn, I seek to convey the evangelistic quality of my Baptistic and Bible Belt formation to my Catholic audiences, emphasizing the primacy of the gathered local congregation in making communal witness through personally converted belief.

Now at last the whole pattern has begun to fall into place, though ever so ironically. As St. Augustine teaches, our lives seem like a maze of barnyard chicken tracks during the living of them. Only in retrospect can we begin to place our own little narratives within the divine Story. And so I have come full circle, back home to the Baptist university that I wanted to attend as an undergraduate. Thus far the drama of my life has had four acts, the last of them still being played out, here at a Providence College in Rhode Island.

Read the whole thing here.

Baptist version of via negativa

2010-10-05T16:12:00.001-04:00

My Baylor colleague, Roger Olson, writes in a blog entry entitled, "Me and Al Mohler":

Just for the record (in case anyone cares), as an unapologetic, unashamed and determined evangelical I wish to state for the record that Al Mohler (cover story subject, Christianity Today, October, 2010 and picture story at AOL’s Welcome Page, October 4, 2010) does not speak for me. Thank you very much.

Bob Dylan & America: The Augustinian Artist

2010-10-04T13:07:00.002-04:00

That is the title of a conversation that appears in the most recent issue of The City, a publication of Houston Baptist University. I am honored to be one of the discussants, along with Paul Cella III, Sean Curnyn, Benjamin Kerstein, and Benjamin Domenech. However, my contribution is dwarfed by those of my fellow discussants, who offer a lot more insight than I can possibly muster. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Domenech's opening comments:

Today we’ve gathered a group of five friends and colleagues—includinga Catholic, an Evangelical, an Anglican, an Orthodox Christian and an Atheist Jew—to discuss Bob Dylan, perhaps the most influential musician alive today, and particularly his fascinating approach to the spiritual realm, and how he writes about faith and God.

Forgive me if I start with a memory, which seems less wrong if only because the subject we have in Bob Dylan is the king of reminiscing, mostly about what never was and what never will be again.The first time I heard Dylan—reallyheard him—was a decade ago, my freshman year in college, when the top ten single list included songs from R. Kelly, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Ricky Martin, Christina Aguilera, and Destiny’s Child. Standing out from a sea of cliche-ridden Pulp Fiction posters and ludicrously over-sexed pinups, there was one guy on the hall, a short guy dressed in black who had put up just one poster: a vast picture of Johnny Cash. He had moved in ahead of us all, and was listening to an album that I would only later come to adore, Dyl-an’s Time Out of Mind. I, still stuck in the shallow rut of teen angst songs, listening in the pre-iPod age to a mash of eighties guitar rock, hippie reboots, and hip hop, mocked it like the young foolI was. “Hey, it’s The Frosh in Black,”I said to the guy. He did his part to reinforce the image by wearing a lot of black—and eventually the whole hall called him that.

You can read the whole thing here.

Why Everything Sucks by Craig Ferguson

2010-10-01T15:00:00.003-04:00

(HT: Southern Appeal)

The Perils of Intra-Christian Apologetics

2010-10-01T07:05:00.001-04:00

That is the title of an essay of mine that was published today on The Catholic Thing, an online periodical for which I am a regular columnist. Here's how the essay begins:

"St. Paul in Athens," a window in Baylor's Robbins Chapel

In March 2006 one of my graduate assistants, a Baylor doctoral student, visited my office to discuss with me his personal journey in the direction of Catholicism. An alumnus of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an ordained Baptist minister, this student, I’ll call him Joseph, told me that he and his wife were on the brink of choosing to seek full communion with the Catholic Church. He wanted to know from me, President-Elect of the Evangelical Theological Society, if I could give them any reasons why they should not make the move. Much to Joseph’s surprise, I said “no.”

Although I was a year away from my own Catholic moment, I had reached a point in my Christian journey where I began to see more peril than promise in intra-Christian apologetics. This is not to say that I did not believe, or do not continue to believe, that when one is asked about one’s faith that one should not offer reasons for why one is Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. I do not doubt that one has a responsibility, in the words of St. Peter, “to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15a). Thus, if Joseph had asked me to explain why I was a Protestant, I would have done so. But he did not ask me that. He asked me to give him reasons why he should not become Catholic.

There is a question here that many Catholics eager to evangelize other Christian brothers and sisters may not appreciate. As someone who now has been on both sides of the Tiber, I need to explain precisely what I mean. I could not in good conscience provide what Joseph requested. For I did not know whether, at that time in his journey, Catholicism was becoming to him the only Christian tradition that he thought plausible to believe. Because he was a follower of Jesus and cared deeply about his walk with Christ, I had to treat Joseph’s inquiry with a certain delicacy, making sure that I did not place in his path a stumbling block. Months after meeting with me, he and has wife were received into the Catholic Church, and I soon followed.

Continue Reading > > >

Great new website: churchfathers.org

2010-09-30T00:01:00.002-04:00

My own return to the Catholic Church would have not been possible if not for the overwhelming evidence that the Church Fathers embraced without reservation—and in fact, often assumed as uncontroversial—those doctrines that presently divide Catholics from Protestants. This website—churchfathers.org—is a wonderful resource for Catholics, Protestants, as well as Orthodox believers. Whether you are Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, your spiritual paternity is older than either the 16th, 13th, or 11th century. We have, as they say, a common ancestry. This website will help you to better understand the ancient roots of your faith and what our predecessors—those that formed our theology at Nicaea, Chalcedon, and Orange—believed about a variety of practices and doctrines over which we are divided today

Speaking at University of South Carolina School of Law, September 29

2010-09-28T04:00:00.005-04:00

On Wednesday, September 29, I will be speaking at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Sponsored by the Federalist Society, I will be giving a talk on "What's Wrong with Roe v. Wade." It is scheduled for 12:40 in Room 135.

Religion class from hell (assuming there is such a place)

2010-09-27T20:14:00.002-04:00

(HT: Ralph C. Wood)

ETS program now online

2010-09-26T19:20:00.000-04:00

The program for the 62nd annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society is now online. You can find it here. As I noted in a previous blog post, I will be delivering two papers at the conference, which will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on November 17-19, 2010. I will also be participating in a lay conference sponsored by the Evangelical Philosophical Society on November 18-20, 2010 at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia. You can find about that here.

A Protestant Seeks to Educate a Catholic on Justification

2010-09-23T21:11:00.000-04:00

I don't know the person who made this video, but it's a nice and fair-minded exchange between a Catholic and a Protestant on the doctrine of justification:

Hall of Mirrors of Justice

2010-09-22T17:04:00.001-04:00

Over at Mirror of Justice, Rob Vischer asks a question: "Should Catholics support 'Don't ask, Don't tell'?" But he doesn't leave his combox open. Apparently, it was only a rhetorical question.

Update: The combox is now open!

Pope Benedict's speech to former prime ministers, religious leaders and lawmakers at Westminster Hall

2010-09-20T00:15:00.003-04:00

(HT: Martin Cothran at Vital Remnants). From the website "Rome Reports," here's the entire text:

Mr Speaker,

Thank you for your words of welcome on behalf of this distinguished gathering. As I address you, I am conscious of the privilege afforded me to speak to the British people and their representatives in Westminster Hall, a building of unique significance in the civil and political history of the people of these islands. Allow me also to express my esteem for the Parliament which has existed on this site for centuries and which has had such a profound influence on the development of participative government among the nations, especially in the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world at large. Your common law tradition serves as the basis of legal systems in many parts of the world, and your particular vision of the respective rights and duties of the state and the individual, and of the separation of powers, remains an inspiration to many across the globe.

As I speak to you in this historic setting, I think of the countless men and women down the centuries who have played their part in the momentous events that have taken place within these walls and have shaped the lives of many generations of Britons, and others besides. In particular, I recall the figure of Saint Thomas More, the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose "good servant" he was, because he chose to serve God first. The dilemma which faced More in those difficult times, the perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God, allows me the opportunity to reflect with you briefly on the proper place of religious belief within the political process.

This country’s Parliamentary tradition owes much to the national instinct for moderation, to the desire to achieve a genuine balance between the legitimate claims of government and the rights of those subject to it. While decisive steps have been taken at several points in your history to place limits on the exercise of power, the nation’s political institutions have been able to evolve with a remarkable degree of stability. In the process, Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.

And yet the fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy.

The inadequacy of pragmatic, short-term solutions to complex social and ethical problems has been illustrated all too clearly by the recent global financial crisis. There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world. Just as "every economic decision has a moral consequence" (Caritas in Veritate, 37), so too in the political field, the ethical dimension of policy has far-reaching consequences that no government can afford to ignore. A positive illustration of this is found in one of the British Parliament’s particularly notable achievements – the abolition of the slave trade. The campaign that led to this landmark legislation was built upon firm ethical principles, rooted in the natural law, and it has made a contribution to civilization of which this nation may be justly proud.

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This "corrective" role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation. In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience. These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square. I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

Your readiness to do so is already implied in the unprecedented invitation extended to me today. And it finds expression in the fields of concern in which your Government has been engaged with the Holy See. In the area of peace, there have been exchanges regarding the elaboration of an international arms trade treaty; regarding human rights, the Holy See and the United Kingdom have welcomed the spread of democracy, especially in the last sixty-five years; in the field of development, there has been collaboration on debt relief, fair trade and financing for development, particularly through the International Finance Facility, the International Immunization Bond, and the Advanced Market Commitment. The Holy See also looks forward to exploring with the United Kingdom new ways to promote environmental responsibility, to the benefit of all.

I also note that the present Government has committed the United Kingdom to devoting 0.7% of national income to development aid by 2013. In recent years it has been encouraging to witness the positive signs of a worldwide growth in solidarity towards the poor. But to turn this solidarity into effective action calls for fresh thinking that will improve life conditions in many important areas, such as food production, clean water, job creation, education, support to families, especially migrants, and basic healthcare. Where human lives are concerned, time is always short: yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed "too big to fail". Surely the integral human development of the world’s peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world’s attention, that is truly "too big to fail".

This overview of recent cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Holy See illustrates well how much progress has been made, in the years that have passed since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, in promoting throughout the world the many core values that we share. I hope and pray that this relationship will continue to bear fruit, and that it will be mirrored in a growing acceptance of the need for dialogue and respect at every level of society between the world of reason and the world of faith. I am convinced that, within this country too, there are many areas in which the Church and the public authorities can work together for the good of citizens, in harmony with Britain’s long-standing tradition. For such cooperation to be possible, religious bodies – including institutions linked to the Catholic Church – need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church. In this way, such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association are guaranteed. The angels looking down on us from the magnificent ceiling of this ancient Hall remind us of the long tradition from which British Parliamentary democracy has evolved. They remind us that God is constantly watching over us to guide and protect us. And they summon us to acknowledge the vital contribution that religious belief has made and can continue to make to the life of the nation.

Mr Speaker, I thank you once again for this opportunity briefly to address this distinguished audience. Let me assure you and the Lord Speaker of my continued good wishes and prayers for you and for the fruitful work of both Houses of this ancient Parliament. Thank you and God bless you all!

Off topic: President's one-liner gives critics rhetorical ammo. (Who was the genius who thought of this one?)

2010-09-19T10:57:00.001-04:00

According to Reuters: "President Barack Obama, seeking to fire up an important part of his support base ahead of November's elections, told black leaders on Saturday he wanted their support to "guard the change" he was delivering."

The president's speech writer, by writing that line, provided his critics with the perfect comeback:

He wants to "guard the change" but the American people want to change the guard.

Open-mindedness: the new closed-mindedness -- my debut on The Catholic Thing

2010-09-17T10:00:00.007-04:00

Several weeks ago I accepted an invitation by Robert Royal to be a regular contributor to The Catholic Thing. Today is my debut. Entitled, "Open-mindedness: the new closed-mindedness," here is how my essay begins:

Years ago when my sister was a senior in high school and I was on the philosophy faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, her religion teacher, a feminist nun, began the semester with the instruction that because no one had the truth about morality or religion, we should be open-minded to everyone’s point of view. After consulting with her philosopher-brother, my sister raised this question the next day in class, “If no one has the truth about morality or religion, isn’t that a good reason not to listen to others? After all, if no one has the truth on such crucial questions, why should I waste my time listening to people who can’t teach me anything?”

My sister was suggesting that open-mindedness is only a virtue if there is something that the mind may acquire that would make it a better mind, just as improving his jump shot would make Kobe Bryant a better basketball player. Assuming that the mind’s proper function is to know the truth, then it would seem that a mind that acquires truth is better than one that does not, just as an improved jumper by Mr. Bryant would contribute to his flourishing as a basketball player. So for the teacher to say that a prerequisite for open-mindedness on theological and moral questions is that one believe there are no true answers to those questions is like telling Mr. Bryant to practice his jumper but that it will do neither him nor the L.A. Lakers any good in the final score.

Read the rest here.

The Kennedy Mistake - 50 Years Later

2010-09-15T00:01:00.008-04:00

September 12, 2010 was the 50th anniversary of Senator John F. Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. I write about it in my most recent book, Politics for Christians: Statecraft as Soulcraft (InterVarsity Press, 2010), and call the posture taken by the late president, The Kennedy Mistake (notes omitted):

In 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, was the Democratic Party’s candidate for the U.S. Presidency. He was to become the first Catholic president in a country whose citizenry had been predominantly Protestant, and pugnaciously anti-Catholic, since its infancy. Many Protestant Christians were concerned that Kennedy’s commitment as a Catholic Christian to the teaching of the church’s Magisterium on a variety of social, moral and political issues would serve as his guide for U.S. domestic and foreign policy. In order to assuage Protestant fears, on September 12, 1960, Senator Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association and assured the attendees that nothing of his Catholic faith would play any role in his judgments as occupant of the White House:

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters—and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President—on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject—I will make my decision in accordance with these views [i.e., religious liberty and church-state separation], in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

From the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, Senator Kennedy’s speech reads like a complete acquiescence to American mainline Protestant notions of privatized faith and anti-clericalism as well as its stereotypical, outdated and uncharitable ideas about the Catholic hierarchy and the teachings of the Catholic Church. Senator Kennedy could have argued that his Catholicism informs him of certain theological and moral doctrines that will make him a thoughtful and principled president. He could have consulted and mined from the works of Catholic scholars such as Jacques Maritain or John Courtney Murray, both of whom were able defenders of liberal democracy and the natural law that grounds it. In fact, Senator Kennedy’s speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, according to an article in The Catholic World Report, “said that he had vetted the Houston speech with . . . Murray, . . . chief architect of the Second Vatican Council’s landmark affirmation of religious freedom. But most historians agree that Murray disapproved of the strident separationism that Kennedy championed.” Senator Kennedy’s speech was a terrible concession. It played to his audience’s anti-Catholic prejudices while saying that his religious beliefs were so trivial that he would govern exactly the same if they were absent.

The Journey Home - September 14, 2009

2010-09-14T15:21:00.024-04:00

A year ago today I was on the EWTN program, The Journey Home. Here it is in its entirety.

My Return to the Catholic Church -from Right Reason (5 May 2007)

2010-09-13T22:11:00.002-04:00

No longer available online except by searching with internet archive, I am reproducing here my Right Reason entry that was published on May 5, 2007:

My Return to the Catholic Church

During the last week of March 2007, after much prayer, counsel and consideration, my wife and I decided to seek full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. My wife, a baptized Presbyterian, is going through the process of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA). This will culminate with her receiving the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation. For me, because I had received the sacraments of Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation all before the age of 14, I need only go to confession, request forgiveness for my sins, ask to be received back into the Church, and receive absolution.

Given my status as president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), I decided several weeks ago--after consultation with trusted friends--to not seek absolution until my term as ETS president ended in November and then to request that the ETS nominations committee not place my name on the executive committee ballot as an at-large member. I wanted to make sure that my return to the Church brought as little attention to ETS as possible. To complicate matters, I received conflicting advice from wise friends on when and how to address the ETS executive committee on this delicate matter. Some suggested that the ETS executive committee would rather not know about my reception into the Church until after the national meeting in November. These friends recommended I lay low, give a presidential address that is irenic and does not address Protestant-Catholic issues (which I had planned on doing all along), and then quietly ask not to be nominated to the executive committee for the four-year at-large term. Other friends, equally as wise, gave conflicting advice. They opined that my withholding from the executive committee my plans to return to the Church would play to prejudices that some Protestants have about “secretive Jesuit conspiracies” and the like. They were concerned that my planned move would be inadvertently disclosed by friends before the November meeting and that the news that I had withheld information concerning my return to the Church could be perceived by many as a bad witness for the Gospel.

I did not know exactly what to do. So, I prayed and asked the Lord to provide to me clear direction. I believe I received this direction on April 20. On that Friday morning, my 16-year-old nephew, Dean Beckwith, called me and asked if I would be his sponsor when he receives the sacrament of Confirmation on May 13. 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. The next day I was publicly received back into the Catholic Church at 11 am Mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Waco, Texas. My wife, standing beside me, was accepted as a catechumen. (A Baylor student, who I do not know, was present at the Mass and provides an account of it on her blog).

Because I can in good conscience, as a Catholic, affirm the ETS doctrinal statement, I do not intend to resign as a member of ETS. However, because I am sensitive to the fact that my status as ETS president changes the dynamic of my return to the Church, I had originally thought that it was wise for me not to step down as ETS president before my term expires in November. For, I thought that my resignation would draw needless attention to ETS. On the other hand, because I had no doubt that word of my return to the Church would disseminate quickly through private conversation and correspondence over the next six months, I suggested to the ETS executive committee that it appoint someone else on the committee to preside over the remaining meetings in both August and November. I offered to attend those meetings and contribute to them in ways to advance the good of ETS. But I also told the committee that if it did not think it was appropriate for me to attend, I would not. On the other hand, if it thought I should conduct the meetings, I would do so. Regardless, I deferred to their collective judgment on this matter. However, I also told them that I intended to remain as ETS president until my term expires in November, but not to accept a nomination for a four-year at-large appointment to the executive committee after the end of my term.

But, as many of you now realize, word of my reception into the Church was delivered, without my knowledge, to several bloggers. A tiny percentage of these bloggers have engaged in much speculation about my motives, the timing of my move, as well as my status as ETS president. Unfortunately, some of these speculations had pockets of uncharity, for they were not advanced under the assumption that I have a true love for my Evangelical brothers and that I may have had undisclosed reasons, perhaps personal and theologically delicate ones, that time and circumstance prevented me from fully conveying in one full swoop. Fortunately, the uncharitable aspects of these postings have had no impact on people of good will and devout faith, both Protestant and Catholic, who have offered their prayers, advice, and even critical comments to me in the form of private messages adorned by a love of Christ and a sincere desire to honor and respect both me and my wife. Many of these messages, especially the critical ones, have been extremely important in helping me to reassess my decision to remain as ETS president. As I have already stated, my decision was based on a cluster of goods that I thought would be best protected by my completing my tenure and then permanently moving off the executive committee. However, given the immense public attention and commentary that my reception into the Church has provoked, 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. I now believe that my continued presence as president of ETS will serve the very harms that I had originally thought that my retention would avoid. For this reason, effective May 5, 2007, I resign as both President of the Evangelical Theological Society and a member of its executive committee.

In order to dispel any other rumors, I want to make it clear that no one on the ETS executive committee asked for me to resign. They received my letter concerning this matter during the week of April 30, and I have no doubt that they have since then discussed that epistle among themselves. As stewards of this important academic society, these men not only have the right to do this, they have the obligation. And I would have willingly and graciously resigned if they had asked me to, even if I thought that I could serve out my term with little controversy. But knowing these wonderful gentlemen, and the measured and serious way they take their responsibility, I knew they did not want to be rushed into assessing such a delicate matter. I have no doubt they have been thinking, deliberating, and praying about what to do. But given the fact that it is unlikely that I would have been elevated to the presidency of ETS by its membership if my reception into the Catholic Church had occurred prior to the time of my candidacy, I think it would have been more than reasonable for these gentlemen to ask me to step down. But they had not done so yet. Nevertheless, I am stepping down, in order to relieve them of the burden of that judgment as well as to avoid bringing scandal to either ETS or the Church.

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 past four months have moved quickly for me and my wife. As you probably know, my work in philosophy, ethics, and theology has always been Catholic friendly, but I would have never predicted that I would return to the Church, for there seemed to me too many theological and ecclesiastical issues that appeared insurmountable. However, 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. Even though I also believe that the Reformed view is biblically and historically defensible, I think the Catholic view has more explanatory power to account for both all the biblical texts on justification as well as the church’s historical understanding of salvation prior to the Reformation all the way back to the ancient church of the first few centuries. Moreover, much of what I have taken for granted as a Protestant—e.g., the catholic creeds, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the Christian understanding of man, and the canon of Scripture—is the result of a Church that made judgments about these matters and on which non-Catholics, including Evangelicals, have declared and grounded their Christian orthodoxy in a world hostile to it. Given these considerations, I thought it wise for me to err on the side of the Church with historical and theological continuity with the first generations of Christians that followed Christ’s Apostles.

I have tremendous respect for both what ETS stands for as well as for each and every one of the members of the ETS executive committee. If not for them, their predecessors, and so many of their (and our) mentors and teachers in the Protestant Evangelical movement, my present faith would be diminished. 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.

[Note: I did resign my ETS membership two days later. You can read about it here. I still, however, remain a member of the Evangelical Philosophical Society]

The Stained Glass Curtain: Crossing the Evangelical-Catholic Divide to Find Our Common Heritage

2010-09-11T01:23:00.001-04:00

That's the title of a new book by Fr. Dimitri Sala, OFM. I highly recommend it. Here is my endorsement, published in the first few pages of the book:

“One of the great impediments to Christian unity is our failure to realize how our vocabularies shape and misshape our understandings of each other. So, when the Protestant tells the Catholic, `Faith alone,’ the Catholic hears, `Believe and do as you please,’ and when the the Catholic says to the Protestant, `grace allows us to cooperate with God in our justification,’ the Protestant hears, `works righteousness.’ In both cases, each hears but does not listen. Fr. Sala’s book is an invitation to really listen, to understand that each tradition, properly understood, may not be as far apart as we think. This is a wonderful work that should be in the hands of every Catholic and Protestant pastor.”

--Francis J. Beckwith
Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies, Baylor University
Author, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic

Pastorbation and Jhiad Joe

2010-09-10T12:20:00.002-04:00

"Pastorbation" is my name for the activities of the showmen clergy who would rather pull stunts that provoke others rather than offer a public example of how to conduct one's life as a Christian. Pastorbation is just disguised narcissism pretending an act of love.

The Rev. Terry Jones is such a "pastor." His "church's" "burn the Koran day" does not lift up Christ. This, of course, does not justify any retaliation against the "church" by those who are offended by Jones' pastorbation, and neither does it relieve the offended from making irresponsible threats and fomenting violence. Pastorbation is bad, but it does not excuse the acts of Jhiad Joe.

Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J. and Professor William Lane Craig on Stephen Hawking's recent comments

2010-09-08T16:05:00.000-04:00

(HT: Edward Chern)