Check it out!

Anyone who thinks this will have a simple and tidy conclusion are kidding themselves. The Legion is intimately linked to its fraudulent, devilish founder and purging them completely of his influence while keeping the value of the group will be a long and difficult process (unless, of course, Pope Benedict decides to just abolish the Legion, in which case its members will need to find new spiritual homes).

Of course the trouble within the Legion is just one in a whole host of such problems facing the Church today. The various crises related to sexual misconduct which have rocked the Church over the past few years – in the U.S., the Legion, Ireland, and now all of Europe – are a result in so many ways of unfaithfulness and fornication with the world. In the Old Testament, whenever Israel faced troubles, whether from inside or outside their nation, the prophets told them that the root of their problems was their unfaithfulness to God and His covenant. This unfaithfulness was inevitably likened to adultery (see: Hosea). Do we really think that things are different for us?

As Catholics, we too have been unfaithful to God’s covenant, and the covenant we have with God is much greater than the Old Covenant. We have the sacraments as the means in which to stay within that covenant, and we can even receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ! Yet we have continually fornicated with the world, accepting its values instead of the values of God. And the most important word in the previous sentence is “we” – do not think that the problems of the Church are someone else’s problems. If you are a Catholic, then they are our problems, helped along by our sins.

The solution to these problems is not some new program or even some institutional change. It is repentance. If we beg God to forgive our sins, then perhaps He will be merciful to us.

I think it does not bode well for supporters of Medjugorje that it is being investigated now. Usually the Church waits until an apparition event has completed before moving to make any statement in favor or opposition. This is simply because if the Church approves the apparition and later statements by the visionaries conflict with Catholic teaching, then the Church would have to revise its statement (and would have egg on its face). The fact that they are moving before the apparitions have ended suggests that they have already heard enough to make a definitive judgement, and that the judgement is not going to be supportive of the apparitions.

But time will tell, and I hope and pray that all Catholics – both those supportive and opposed to Medjugorje – will submit to the authority of the Church in this matter.

Saint Francis Standing in Ecstasy - Zurbarán

Ecce Homo - Fernández

(The sculpture above was particularly powerful in person, as Christ’s back shows in graphic detail the results of his scourging).

Christ on the Cross - Montañés

Christ on the Cross - Zurbarán

More images can be found at the National Gallery of Art website.

If you are anywhere near DC in the next two months, make every effort to attend this powerful exhibit.

In reaction, many conservatives have created a Jesus in their own image: he was a prophet who advocated a strict morality and did not make any attempt to overthrow the existing government structures.

Depending on whether you think Jesus was a liberal or a conservative will influence which parts of the Gospels you will emphasize.

So, was Jesus a liberal or a conservative?

The answer is neither. And both. Fundamentally, Jesus was a radical. By “radical” I do not mean the common usage of the term which associates it with 1960’s radical politics like the Weathermen. I mean it primarily as an adjective: Jesus was a radical liberal as well as a radical conservative. He was radically liberal when it came to overthrowing the calcified human traditions that had grown around Judaism, and he was radically conservative in preserving the core teachings of the Israeli religion.Whether he was conservative or liberal depended on the specific issue (Divorce laws -> conservative; Sabbath laws -> liberal), but he was always radical.

For what does it mean to be radical? The word comes from the Latin for “root”. A radical, in other words, gets to the root of a matter. And this is exactly what Jesus did. For example, when it came to divorce laws, he went to the root of the issue: what exactly is marriage? This led him all the way to the beginning and Adam and Eve. By going to the root of marriage, he taught that divorce is always wrong, and that the allowances for divorce under the Mosaic law were actually liberalizing deformations of the original meaning of marriage.

Likewise, when it came to Sabbath laws. What is the purpose of Sabbath restrictions? They are to help the individual to draw closer to God and to the people and world around him. All the additional rules added later in order to “conserve” the sacredness of the Sabbath needed to be thrown away in order to get to this root meaning of the Sabbath.

The radicals in the 1960’s would sometimes even resort to planting bombs in an attempt to undermine structures they opposed. Jesus also planted “bombs” within Judea and Galilee by his radical teachings and his radical death and resurrection. These actions lead to the most subversive organization that the world has ever seen: his Church. And this Church is called to be a destabilizing force in all generations, upending existing structures that reject God and His laws, and calling people to the roots of our human experience, which always leads to repentance, conversion, and a return to our original vocation as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus was a radical. Are you?

The crux of the issue is this: we do not possess any of the original manuscripts of the Old or New Testaments (just like we don’t possess the original manuscripts of almost any ancient document). What we possess are copies of those texts. In the case of the New Testament, some of the copies we possess date all the way back to the 2nd century, but many others are from centuries later. In some cases, these manuscripts disagree – one will have a verse another does not, and some will even have entire passages that others do not (such as the story of the woman caught in adultery). Sometimes, if you are observant, you will notice that a Bible might “skip” a verse; this means that the editors of that Bible decided that the verse in question was not in the most reliable manuscripts and therefore was most likely not in the original.

So how big of deal is this? Evangelical Greek scholar Bill Mounce has a recent blog post where he addresses this issue (read his whole post for more details about textual criticism), and in it, he notes the following:

About 5% of the Greek text is in question

No major doctrine is brought into question by 5%.

Ehrman, in other words, is barking up the wrong tree.

Furthermore, as Catholics, we can trust the Bible because the Church which Christ founded has declared which books are in the canon, and our tradition (which is guided by the Holy Spirit) has included passages such as the woman caught in adultery in those books. Even if this story was added later, we can trust that it was under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that this beautiful story (John 8:1-11) was included in the Gospel of John.

At the local health food store lunch buffet, they offer stir fried tempeh.

I never get it. Not because I don’t like it, but because there are always so many other things on the buffet that I prefer.

That’s why I don’t watch TV. At all. There are so many other things I’d rather do in that moment.

Broadcast TV was a great choice when a> there weren’t a lot of other options and b> when everyone else was watching the same thing, so you needed to see it to be educated.

Now, though, you could:

• Run a little store on eBay
• Write a daily blog
• Write a novel
• Start an online community about your favorite passion
• Go to meetups in your town
• Volunteer to tutor a kid, in person or online
• Learn a new language, verbal or programming
• Write hand written thank you notes each evening to people who helped you out or did a good job
• Produce small films and publish them online
• Listen to the one thousand most important operas
• Read a book or two every evening
• Play a game a Scrabble with your family

None of them are perfect. Each of them are better than TV.

And of course, as Catholics, we could add many more to this list:

• Go to Adoration
• Pray the Rosary
• Help in a soup kitchen
• Visit your neighbor

And the list could go on and on…

The first thing to keep in mind is that…he must look upon [Protestants] with great charity and love them in truth. And he must close his mind to all thoughts that would tend to lesson his affection for them. The second thing to be remembered is the need of gaining their goodwill so that they in turn shall love and think kindly of us. This can be accomplished by dealing with them in a friendly way on those subjects about which we are in agreement and by avoiding those disputed points in which one side might give the impression of lording it over the other. Rapprochement should be established with them in those areas in which there is concord between us rather than in those which tend to point up our mutual differences.

Who was the Jesuit who said this? Perhaps some 1970’s hipster who drank too much of the ecumenical Koolaid?

No, it is the words of Blessed Peter Faber, the first companion of St. Ignatius and cofounder of the Jesuits.