Lex Anteinternet: Ecclesia militans. On the use of the word "Christian".

Lex Anteinternet: Ecclesia militans. On the use of the word "Christ...: Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὰ μέρη Καισαρείας τῆς Φιλίππου ἠρώτα τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ λέγων· Τίνα λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;  οἱ δὲ εἶπ...

Ecclesia militans. On the use of the word "Christian".

Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὰ μέρη Καισαρείας τῆς Φιλίππου ἠρώτα τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ λέγων· Τίνα λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου; 

οἱ δὲ εἶπαν· Οἱ μὲν Ἰωάννην τὸν βαπτιστήν, ἄλλοι δὲ Ἠλίαν, ἕτεροι δὲ Ἱερεμίαν ἢ ἕνα τῶν προφητῶν. 

λέγει αὐτοῖς· Ὑμεῖς δὲ τίνα με λέγετε εἶναι; 

ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ Σίμων Πέτρος εἶπεν· Σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ζῶντος. 

ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψεν σοὶ ἀλλ' ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. 

κἀγὼ δὲ σοὶ λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς. 

δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. 

τότε διεστείλατο τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ εἴπωσιν ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ Χριστός.

_____________________________________________ 

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and

he asked his disciples,

"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" 

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,

still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" 

Simon Peter said in reply,

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 

Jesus said to him in reply,

"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. 

For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. 

And so I say to you, you are Peter,

and upon this rock I will build my church,

and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. 

I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. 

Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;

and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

Then he strictly ordered his disciples

to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Matthew 16:13-20

The other day I saw an item on Blue Sky posted by Atticus Finch of Georgia which linked in an article on "post truth Christianity".  It brought into focus something that's really been increasingly bothering me in recent years. . .well more specifically the Trump era.

Then, as an example of synchronicity, I was speaking with a close relative of mine who absolutely exploded on the same topic.  I didn't bring it up.  That person did.

Then, this past Sunday, Matthew 16:13-20 was the Gospel reading.

Yesterday there was a post on Twitter in which an Orthodox Christian reacted the same way I am here.

So here's what that topic is.

When the term "Christian" is used recently, it tends to refer to "Christian" support of Donald Trump.  And, hence the error.

While you can find individuals of any stripe of Christianity and religion supporting Trump, in reality, the Christians that support Trump are, for the most part, and most significantly, Evangelical Christians.  Yes, you can find a Catholic or Orthodox cleric here and there that does.¹ And, in fairness, you can find Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, and any number of other sets of beliefs with individuals who support Trump.²  But the real core of the "Christian" support of Trump comes from a slice of the Evangelical world, and just a slice at that.

The "post truth" comment is what really got my attention.  

American Catholics generally try to make nice with other Christian denominations, although less so in the post 1960 world than we used to, but lots of Protestants don't try to make nice with us.  So we have tended, post 1960, to keep some of our weltanschauung to ourselves.³ So much so, in fact, that we've allowed the Protestantization of lots of Catholics, who now think like Protestants.  While there are exceptions, when you find a real pro Trump Catholic, they probably have a Protestant world outlook and don't realize it.

So, to post truth.

Protestants have been "post truth" for about five hundred years.  Protestants outside the mainline Protestant churches are very post truth.

We've known that all along.

Starting with science, Catholics are in favor of science, not against it.  The entire Big Bang Theory is our deal.  We're not opposed to the theory of evolution.  People evolved from earlier primates.  The world is not 5,000 years old.  It's billions of years old.

We know that. We not only accept that (most of us) but we rejoice in it.  We don't feel that God has to fit within our limited human imagination.

Our basic view is that God gave us the intellect to explore his creation.  So far, we haven't found one darned thing that causes us to question our faith.  Moreover, if you belong to a religion that requires you do deny science, something about it is deeply wrong, even false.

So, yeah, there's a lot of "post truth" Christians out there, and they're coming from the Evangelical end of the pool.  If you find a Catholic holding those views, they've likely dipped their toes in it.  Some are swimming really deep in it.

And here's another thing, which my relative was exploding on.

Catholics have taken a beating for decades simply for being Catholic.  It's okay, Christ told us that we would.  In the US we get, from Evangelicals, the question of "are you Christian?", with the reply from them often being that if we're Catholic, we're not Christian.

Well, I guess when people had access only to their friends and neighbors and a pastor who had been miseducated on these topics, that was not only to be expected but semi tolerable, but it isn't any more.

We are the original Christians.

Πάντες τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ ἀκολουθεῖτε, ὡς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς τῷ πατρί, καὶ τῷ πρεσβυτερίῳ ὡς τοῖς ἀποστόλοις. τοὺς δὲ διακόνους ἐντρέπεσθε ὡς θεοῦ ἐντολήν. μηδεὶς χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου τι πρασσέτω τῶν ἀνηκόντων εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. ἐκείνη βεβαία εὐχαριστία ἡγείσθω, ἡ ὑπὸ ἐπίσκοπον οὖσα ἢ ᾧ ἄν αὐτὸς ἐπιτρέψῃ.

ὅπου ἄν φανῇ ὁ ἐπίσκοπος, ἐκεῖ τὸ πλῆθος ἤτω, ὥσπερ ὅπου ἄν ᾖ Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ἐκεῖ ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία. οὐκ ἐξόν ἐστιν χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου οὔτε βαπτίζειν οὔτε ἀγάπην ποιεῖν· ἀλλ' ὃ ἄν ἐκεῖνος δοκιμάσῃ, τοῦτο καὶ τῷ θεῷ εὐάρεστον, ἵνα ἀσφαλὲς ᾖ καὶ βέβαιον πᾶν ὃ πράσσετε.

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.

 The Epistle of Ignatius, 33 to 108, to the Smyrnaeans, written in 107.

Nobody with any religious education of a serious nature denies this whatsoever.  John Calvin and Martin Luther didn't deny that.  The only religion that can raise a hand on it are the Orthodox Churches, and they don't deny that we're first, they just take they position that they are also first, and that actually makes some sense.  There's a schism between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church, but we all go back to day one.  That's not to make light of the schism, but it's significant in that we all know that our churches go directly back to the moment Christ founded the church.

No Protestant Church can claim that and maintain the claim, although some try to.  Those that do have to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is first, and try to argue that they're related closely enough to it in order to make the same claim.  That is the claim of the Methodist and Anglican Churches, for example.

All of which brings up the next point.  Any Protestant Church that claims to be authentically Christian that doesn't have a good explanation for this is in real trouble.  Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.  You can't be a Protestant Christian and just claim you are like the original Christian communities.  Take a look at what St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote in 107.  St. John the Apostle had only been dead for about seven years when he wrote that.  You aren't like the original Christians if you don't look like the Catholic Church, with Bishops, priests, and deacons.  You can't claim there was a great falling away, a Great Apostasy, early on.  There wasn't. We have all the books and we know that there wasn't.  Ignorance, on this topic, is your only defense (and now that you've read that, you don't have that).

Indeed, if you aren't Catholic, you need to have a really good explanation for it, and there really isn't one.

So, here's the thing, now that Trump is in office and flaming out we're hearing from the same group of people who said that we're not Christians that we need to throw in with them and support Trump.

We do not.

Trump is not a religious man himself, and there's very little evidence that he has any deeply held religious beliefs, if any religious believes at all.  Personally, he's a study on certain of the Seven Deadly Sins.  He's a warning on the love of money.  He's a serial polygamist.  He's a liar.

He's an evil man.

Throwing in with evil is never justified save for the principle of Double Effect.  I.e., my tipping the pizza delivery guy may have just funded the purchase of illegal drugs, but that was not the intended effect.  My working for the post office may mean that I'm delivering pornography (well, I guess that probably doesn't happen anymore in the age of the Internet, but you get the point), but that is incidental to the occupation, not its purpose.

But this obviously crosses over a line, somewhere.  If, for example, I were a German and this was 1940, a hatred of Bolshevism would not justify joining the SS.

And that's sort of where we are at now, in a way.

Some thinking Catholics supported Trump either openly or quietly with their vote, earlier, as they were opposed to abortion and the weirdness of social trends in sex and gender in general.  Well, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade and the transgenderism thing is jumping the shark, if it hasn't already jumped it.  Indeed, in Europe, where it first appeared, it's in major retreat.  Obergefell hasn't been reversed, but there's been no case that presented an opportunity for htat to occur, probably because conservatives fear to advance one.

Irish born immigrant  Patrick J. Sullivan.  He became wealthy raising sheep in Carbon County and relocated to Casper in 1892, when he went into other enterprises.  He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1894 to 1896 and from 1898 to 1900, Mayor of Casper from 1897 until 1899, Senator from Wyoming from 1929 to 1930, appointed to fill the seat left by the death of Francis E. Warren.  While he was a practicing Catholic, he tended to deemphasize it at the time as it was damaging to his public standing, something that was the case up until Kennedy ran for President.

Now, mind you, I'm not telling you who to vote for, what I'm suggesting is whom you do not support, or to put it another way, what you should not get wrapped up in.

The MAGA movement isn't justifiable from a Christian perspective at this point, if it ever was.  It's weirdly nationalistic and in many instances engaged in idol worship in the form of fanatic adoration of Donald Trump, even somewhat crediting him with supernatural powers in "always being right".   The administration has committed the military to actions which are outright murderous in the Caribbean and South American Pacific.  It's waging an unjust and illegal war.  It creeps right up on being racist and some of its members hold beliefs that are deeply antithetical to Apostolic Christianity.  Some of the people in it are deeply evil, and all of them are deeply compromised.

Vote for those who you will, and in keeping with your conscience.  But some things to remember.  

Trump is not any kind of real Christian.  Attaching Christianity to this administration is going to have a massive negative impact as it falls.  It is in fact already doing so.  There are people in the secular world who truly believe that its the "Christians" who are supporting Trump, and that people like Mike Johnson and Mike Lee are posters for Christians. They are not.⁴  The fact that they're being made posters for Christianity means that they, and Trump, are driving thinking people away from the Church.  When Trump falls, he's going to take a lot of Evangelical Christianity down with him, just as the fall of the Confederacy during the Civil War heavily damaged the Episcopal Church in the South.

Catholics, we don't want to be part of that, and there's no reason that we should be.

Ecclesia militans.⁵

Footnotes

1.  A prominent example of that is Bishop Barron.  Bishop Barron shows up on occasion at Trump related religious gatherings and he servers on President Trump’s Presidential Religious Liberty Commission.

I'm not here to criticize a Bishop and I don't really understand what the Bishop is doing, or what the Commission does.  Nor have I followed it.  I'm just noting this.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is well liked, also serves on it.  Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and Bishop Salvatore Cordileone are advisory members.

2.  Stephen Miller, who just the other day accused the Protestant seminary student who is competing for a Senate seat from Texas of not being Christian, is Jewish.

3.  We can trace this to the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, as we have before, who basically promised to only be Catholic on Sundays.

Kennedy was a horrible example of a Catholic to start with.  But his election was such a thrill to American Catholics that a large number of them followed him into the same easy belief, which has been a disaster for a generation of American Catholics that we're only now just really beginning to recover from.

4.  Johnson is a Southern Baptist, which is presently the largest Protestant denomination in the US, having about 12.3M members.  In contrast the number of Catholics in the US is around 70M.  A person needs to keep in mind that not all Catholics are observant, but then neither are all Baptists.  Anyhow, Johnson also seems to adhere to the New Apostolic Reformation and sincerely believe that he's been licensed to lie in order to bring about a Protestant state.  Lee is a Mormon and therefore not a Christian at all.

5.  This huge icon is a Russian Orthodox icon.

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, I...:

The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

I started this post right at the start of Lent and then didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.

The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.

One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat fish on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have.  It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).

Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays.  It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose.  This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound. 

It only applies to members of individual Churches.  I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches.  Moral laws bind everyone.  Church laws bind the members of the church.

Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now.  It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches.  In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week.  So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.

That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world.  If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night.  The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable.  And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one.  Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.

For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds.  Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere.  But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much.  If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow.  There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority.  Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches).  They can't be expected to know Canon Law.

When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious.  "Here's your entrée". . will come the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries.

Oh, well.

That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp.  "You can skip it this time".  No, you can't.  Violation of the rule is a mortal sin.  That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexually and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants.  If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time.  Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different.  They both involve appetites and excuses. 

This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe.  In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more.  And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world.  It sets us apart, and it should.  Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.

This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."

Eh?

Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family.  My side of the family is all Catholic.  LSS's is all non-Catholic.

I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow.  And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.

Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal.  We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.

Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me.  As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow.  I never eat big breakfasts or lunch.  I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be.  Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective.  "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".  

You can't really do that.

Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can.  He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world.  Another reason that they've had to hide his head.

Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do.  I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks".  The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.

That would be weird.

Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments.  Most law offices are closed on Good Friday.  But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founds in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture.  Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day.  And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.

I'm going to have to handle this today.  In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed".  But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".

I'll let the Puritans ponder it.