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I think that there were some nice statements in the address to the United Nations on Friday, but nothing that right now stands out in my mind. Or, to be most frank, I find the whole United Nations thing so disgusting, and all the more so because it’s mired in corruption and so very far from actually being to able to do anyone any good, you know, in the way of stopping genocide in Africa, etc. But it’s the corruption that bothers me most of all; I’m thinking in particular of the racket with the Oil-for-Food program.
At any rate, the Pope certainly said some interesting things at his address to the ecumenical gathering at St. Joseph’s Church. I had already singled these passages out to send to some of my non-Catholic family members, and I’ll put them up here, too.
Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called “prophetic actions” that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition. Communities consequently give up the attempt to act as a unified body, choosing instead to function according to the idea of “local options”. Somewhere in this process the need for diachronic koinonia - communion with the Church in every age - is lost, just at the time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel (cf. Rom 1:18-23)….
“Yet we must ask ourselves whether its full force has not been attenuated by a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine similar to that found in secular ideologies, which, in alleging that science alone is “objective”, relegate religion entirely to the subjective sphere of individual feeling. Scientific discoveries, and their application through human ingenuity, undoubtedly offer new possibilities for the betterment of humankind. This does not mean, however, that the “knowable” is limited to the empirically verifiable, nor religion restricted to the shifting realm of “personal experience”.“For Christians to accept this faulty line of reasoning would lead to the notion that there is little need to emphasize objective truth in the presentation of the Christian faith, for one need but follow his or her own conscience and choose a community that best suits his or her individual tastes. The result is seen in the continual proliferation of communities which often eschew institutional structures and minimize the importance of doctrinal content for Christian living.
Yeah, like one new community, on average, every day since Luther posted the 95 theses. (That’s what I’ve heard, anyway, and it seems extremely plausible; but does someone know of a more serious source for such a description of the proliferation of protestant communities?)
And how many protestants accept the “datum of Scripture and Tradition”? I mean, they’re insane not to: tradition and some later date developments, practices, or whatever always come into the picture, but at least in theory, I would have thought that many would still maintain the not-to-be-found-in-Scripture doctrine of sola Scriptura.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Amy Welborn has been doing some good work in studying contemporary American Protestantism, particularly the “emergent church” movement, pan-denominational (rather than non-denominational) communities, and other peculiarly American strains of religiosity that don’t accord with the more visible and clearly defined camps of main-line Protestants and evangelicals. Her work has mostly been descriptive, but the insights are valuable nonetheless. Sympathetic to the aims these movements have, and occasional reference to the deficiencies that they can only expose and exacerbate. Again, it’s really good work, far better than the dismissive treatment most of the press typically gives new Christian movements that can’t easily be stereotyped.
I should have gone on to say: the proliferation of these postmodern efforts at evangelization provides good insight into the deterioration of Protestant efforts at cohesion. Beginning with a breakdown in authority structures into smaller, hyper-authoritarian factions (e.g. Calvin’s Geneva, the American Puritans, Tudor England), whatever energy and zeal these branches initially enjoyed in the post-reformatory decades has come down to us, in 21st Century America, as the logical conclusion of such factionalizing: hyper-individualization. I think this speaks more acutely, not to the typical expression of Protestant emphases upon conscience, but to a radical attempt by Christianity, as a whole, to adapt to changing times, times which perhaps are in a far more radical state of flux than previously. It makes for far more interesting sociology and anthropology, therefore, than theology, as the whole notion of “emerging” Christianity is its wholly decentralized and nearly accidental appearance and growth (just as no one person ever “planned” the blogosphere; millions of people, presented with certain conditions, adapted to the changing shape of the web at nearly the same time and began to effectuate even more radical changes of their own to the environment).