Dr. Kenneth Howell, former Presbyterian, offered this fine Catholic explanation of the process of salvation when discussing, amongst other things, the Feast of All Souls with Marcus Grodi on EWTN’s The Journey Home.

The best treatise on Purgatory that I have ever read was by Catherine of Genoa. It’s a small treatise. She is from the 15th century. Catherine of Genoa says in her treatise on Purgatory that the pain of Purgatory is that you see the light of God’s face in the beatific vision and you’re not quite there yet, and the pain is that you long for it so much. The Feast of All Souls, of course, is for us as Christians on earth to pray for the beloved departed, and to pray for them because we have a holy obligation for our ancestors that they might reach the joy of heaven. But you know Marcus, for me as a former Protestant, the thing that makes these days very special, is that it makes me realize what salvation is. I used to think that salvation was accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, praying a prayer, and then everything would be secure. Well then I should live out a Christian life, but nevertheless, it was that decision to follow Christ that I made for him. But in fact, what salvation is…is a transformation process. From the day of my baptism when I was a baby, to the day of my death, I will always be in the process of transformation, as long as I, and we all cooperate with the love of God, which is given to us in the form of grace. That grace is the merits of Christ on the Cross, given to us because of our faith and good works. And as we give our lives to him, we are transformed, as Paul says, from glory to glory. And as we are transformed, more and more, we come close (to God). Now my goal is that before I die, my Purgatory will be done, so that I can go right into the presence of God.

I have just established another blog called Catholic Links, as a companion blog to Journey to Rome. Of course, all are free to comment there, but if you have a (free) WordPress account, then you can also post your own original material to this new blog. The only requirements for posting to Catholic Links are that the post be suitable for anyone to read, and that the post be relevant to the Catholic Church and her mission to the world and dialogue with other Christian groups.

The blog is based on a newly revised WordPress theme that is designed for a free flow of information and easy “community” interaction…think Facebook Catholic, on a much smaller scale, of course. If you have news items, observations, links to share, or even if you would simply like to point to a post at your own blog, or just tell other Catholic readers what is on your mind, please feel free to use Catholic Links.

If you don’t already have a free WordPress account, then you can sign up for one easily and quickly, and once you have your WordPress account you will have the ability to post to Catholic Links.

“He sees angels in the architecture” – Paul Simon

Today the Catholic Church celebrates Saints Peter and Paul basilicas.

St. Peter€™s basilica, the Vatican Church is the second patriarchal church at Rome. The body of St Peter was buried on the Vatican hill immediately after his martyrdom in the place where his basilica stands today. St Paul€™s remains were deposited on the Ostian Way, where his church now stands.

Pilgrims with extraordinary devotion visited their tombs from the beginning. In 210 Caius, priest of Rome, speaking with Proclus said:

“I can show you the trophies of the apostles. For, whether you go to the Vatican hill, or to the Ostian road, you will meet with the monuments of them who by their preaching and miracles founded this church.”

Constantine the Great, after he founded the mother church of all Catholics, he built the church of St. Peter on the Vatican hill, honoring the place were the prince of the apostles suffered martyrdom and of St. Paul, at his tomb on the Ostian road.

The churches are dedicated only to God, although often have a patron saint so that all faithful may implore the intercession of that saint.

We do not build churches or appoint priesthoods, sacred rites and sacrifices to the martyrs, because, not the martyrs, but the God of the martyrs, is our God. Who among the faithful ever heard a priest, standing at the altar set up over the body of a martyr to the honour and worship of God, say in praying: We offer up sacrifices to thee, Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian? When at their memories (or titular altars) it is offered to God, who made them both men and martyrs, and has associated them to his angels in heavenly honour. We do not build churches to martyrs as to gods, but as memorials to men departed this life, whose souls live with God. Nor do we make altars to sacrifice on them to the martyrs, but to their God and our God. – Saint Augustine

Source – The Catholic Encyclopedia

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.
Suffer me not to be separated from thee.
From the malignant enemy defend me.
In the hour of my death call me.
And bid me come unto Thee,
That with all Thy saints,
I may praise thee
Forever and ever.
Amen.

“God’s name is Mercy”

From a Los Angeles millionaire, to drug addicted street person, to a Catholic Priest…Father John Corapi’s story is simply amazing. This is a simplified ten minute version of Fr. Corapi’s Conversion Story (otherwise known as his Personal Testimony). The statement of this 10 minute video is simple…”God’s Name is Mercy!”

Steve Jobs should not be worshiped. Venerated maybe, but not worshiped.

Having vowed not to buy into the iPhone craze and get tied down again with a cell phone contract, I am now confessing that I did recently, in fact, get an iPhone, and of course that also involved a new contract with AT&T. Lately, having finished up a contract with Sprint, I had been delighted to find the most affordable unlimited voice/data/text plan on the planet with Boost Mobile. No contract, $50 per month, and unlimited “everything”…that is, except for coverage, which left alot to be desired, especially for someone like me who works in about half a dozen parishes here in NE Louisiana.

Did I have enough reasons prior to jumping over to AT&T/iPhone to justify giving up my cheap “unlimited” (and no commitment) voice/data/text plan with Boost Mobile. Probably not, truth be told. Although my oldest son has been singing the praises of the iPhone for a year or so, I still considered the iPhone to be more fun/cool than utilitarian/necessary.

Having had a couple of weeks to put the iPhone to use, and customize it to my business and life interests, and my business and life interests to it, I will now say….WOW! Why did I wait so long to get my hands on the ultimate “Swiss Army Knife” for business  and entertainment…just life in general.

Oh, it is as fun/cool as I thought, but the productivity benefits that the iPhone and the myriad of apps provided me was unexpected. For instance, the iPhone has allowed me to finally make the transition to a paperless office, and that is just the beginning of the business benefits I have realized.

In addition to the business productivity benefits, there are an awful lot of great resources for Catholics in the App Store. Most iPhone apps range in price from $0 (free) to $3 or $4 dollars, and there are quite a few useful Catholic apps in that range (including free ones). I did spring bigtime though ($24 I believe) for Universalis’ Liturgy of the Hours, but I promise that it is worth every penny. I have given up, for now, trying to figure out the Liturgy of the Hours in book form, because it is so easy and convenient to use the iPhone version by Universalis. If you have an iPhone and are Catholic, or even if you aren’t Catholic, I highly recommend the Universalis Liturgy of the Hours app. Absolutely! Spend the $24. It’s cheaper than buying even the single volume in book form, and unless you will be praying the Liturgy of the Hours with others,  you will probably find the iPhone version preferable, at least in the beginning and while learning the prayers.

Another app that I heartily recommend is Dropbox. This is actually a backup service that you can install for free on your Desktop (2 gigs free storage, 50 gigs available for $10/month). Dropbox will keep your important files backed up (off site on Dropbox servers) behind the scenes while you work. Once you install the companion Dropbox app on your iPhone, then you will be able to access your Dropbox computer files from your iPhone no matter where you happen to be, even if your computer at home or work is not turned on. This was the final element that allowed me to go to a paperless office system. It is a huge benefit to be able to pull up all my important files when I am out in the “field” working. As long as I keep them stored, and backed up, in my Dropbox folder on my computer, then they are within reach of my iPhone.

Finally, another neat app that I don’t have installed on my iPhone yet, because it is still probably a week or two from being approved by Apple, is the app developed by Lala.com. If you have an iPod, or iPhone, and use  iTunes to manage your music library, get over to Lala.com and sign up for a free account to use on your desktop. Once your are set up with a Lala account, find and download the Lala Music Mover program onto your computer where you keep your iTunes library. Music Mover will then sync all your iTunes music with the Lala.com servers, essentially reproducing your entire music library online in your Lala.com account, thereby allowing you to access and play your entire iTunes library from any computer through a web browser. You can share your playlists with others if you wish, as I have here on the Journey to Rome sidebar. But here’s the greatest benefit to getting a Lala.com account: you can legally purchase songs for only 10 cents each to keep in your online music library and play through a web browser. Once the Lala iPhone app is released (hopefully later this month), Lala users will be able to play their entire online music library through their iPhone by way of a wireless or AT&T data stream (or iPod Touch by wireless connection). You can still keep your tunes on your iPhone if you want, or you might want to delete all but your favorite tunes to free up significant space on your iPhone, while still having access to your complete music library through your Lala.com account. And by the way, if you want you can upgrade your 10 cent web song purchase to an MP3 download version for an extra 79 cents, which is less than iTunes charges for a song on average.

You just know a guy with a hat like that has to be smart

The five part series of Michael Spencer’s interview of Bryan Cross at Internet Monk is highly recommended.

Catholic Philosopher and Blogger Bryan Cross Interview (Part 1)

Unity, Reformation and Tensions in Catholicism (Part 2)

Anglicans, Evangelicals, Convert Apologetics and Books (Part 3)

What Should Protestants Know About Vatican II? (Part 4)

Mary, Purgatory and the Eucharist (Part 5)

These were posted over the course of several days recently, and although I heard about them last week, only today have I had the opportunity to read through them. This is a very edifying interview, and should be read by any and all who have a heart for ecumenism.

Here is an excerpt from the third interview in the series Anglicans, Evangelicals, Convert Apologetics and Books:

Imagine that a large evangelical church brought you in to speak to the entire church on Protestant-Catholic relations/unity. What would be the main points you would cover?

I would first talk about the importance of unity as a constitutive element of the gospel itself, as I did to your earlier question. Then I would talk about the tragedy of the separation of Protestants and Catholics at the Reformation, and why love for Christ requires that Protestants and Catholics should be striving with all our effort to be reconciled in true unity and unity in the truth. Then I would talk about what I see as the fundamental reasons for the present division, first by laying out the two paradigms with respect to ecclesiology, ecclesial authority, ecclesial unity, and soteriology. These things cannot rightly be compared piecemeal; they have to be compared within their respective paradigms, and especially in view of the writings of the early Church Fathers. That’s why I think Protestants and Catholics need to understand both paradigms, in order effectively to reason together about them.

Here’s an example. In the Catholic paradigm, apostolic succession is a crucial component, because it is the basis for ecclesial authority, and thus for determining how other questions should be answered. Protestants do not accept apostolic succession, primarily because they do not find it in Scripture. So when Protestants find apostolic succession in the early Church Fathers, Protestants tend to view that as an accretion of some sort, not as an essential part of the deposit of faith. But from the Catholic point of view, the very stance of the Protestant who requires that something be clearly taught in Scripture in order to believe it, is already a departure from what has been the Church’s belief and practice since the beginning, that is, the practice of understanding Scripture as informed by those shepherds having apostolic succession. For this reason we can see that each side appears, from the point of view of the other side, to be begging the question, i.e. assuming precisely what is in question. In that sort of situation, cannot simply throw verses at each other; we have to step back and compare paradigms. I recently did something similar to that regarding the subject of justification, in my reply to “All the Romery People.”

Thank you to Michael Spencer at Internet Monk for providing the forum and developing the line of questions for Bryan. Thank you to Bryan for being, as always, a calm and sane voice in the maelstrom that is 21st century Christianity.

By the way, Bryan Cross has a personal blog at Principium Unitatis, and he is also one of the contributors at Called to Communion. Both are among my favorite sites and are also highly recommended.

Nobody likes a party pooper.

I am probably the last Catholic blogger today to post the following sermon delivered by Stanley Hauerwas on Reformation Sunday in 1995. I noticed that Bryan Cross had posted this sermon at Called to Communion earlier today, and since this morning I have seen it reposted on several other Catholic sites. So if you happen to drop in here after having already read all the other Catholic blogs in the blogosphere today, well, here it is…again.

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. He makes some good points in the sermon reprinted here (there, and everywhere). Hauerwas comes out of the gate admitting that he doesn’t like the fact that the Protestant celebration of the Reformation is a perpetual event, because it is a celebration of failure on a cosmic scale. I’m not endorsing Hauerwas as a theologian, but I do believe he honestly, and bravely, steps out from the crowd in this sermon and boldly goes where not many Protestants are willing, or able, to go.

These are not his words, but it occurs to me that celebrating the Reformation annually (and I used to do so in a big way) is like celebrating the day you divorced your wife each year when the date rolls around. And no matter how lousy you might believe your wife was, wouldn’t it be twisted to annually whoop it up and celebrate the tragic event! Very strange. What was I thinking as a Protestant when I annually celebrated schism in the Body of Christ? Sometimes we have the opportunity to look back at ourselves and just shake our heads at our thoughtlessness. Thank you Lord!

What is so gloriously wonderful about division in the body of Christ? Really! Oh yeah, now I remember: Doctrinal purity (according to your own interpretation or that of your pet theologian) trumps Christian unity. Sorry, I forgot.

Stanley Hauerwas

Sermon originally delivered on October 29, 1995

References: Joel 2:23-32 – 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 – Luke 18:9-14

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgement of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of-or perhaps better, because of-the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.

The magisterial office-we Protestants often forget-is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshipping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend opon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.

Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are – and will know themselves to be -mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”

In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.

Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgement on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.

At least it becomes the sin of Rome when Italian Catholics think they can kill Irish Catholics in the name of being Italian. Such divisions distort the unity of the Gospel found in the Eucharist and, thus, become judgements against the church of Rome. Of course, the Papacy has often been unfaithful and corrupt, but at least Catholics preserved an office God can use to remind us that we have been and may yet prove unfaithful. In contrast, Protestants don’t even know we’re being judged for our disunity.

I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther – at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constitued by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?

We know, after all, that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled. The portents of heaven, the blood and fire, the darkness of the sun, the bloody moon have come to pass in the cross of our Savior Jesus Christ. Now all who call on that name will be saved. We believe that we who stand in the Reformation churches are survivors. But to survive we need to recover the unity that God has given us as survivors. So on this Reformation Sunday long for, pray for, our ability to remember the Reformation – not as a celebratory moment, not as a blow for freedom, but as the sin of the church. Pray for God to heal our disunity, not the disunity simply between Protestant and Catholic, but the disunity in our midst between classes, between races, between nations. Pray that on Reformation Sunday we may as tax collectors confess our sin and ask God to make us a new people joined together in one might prayer that the world may be saved from its divisions.

“The history of human existence is the story of dour combat with the forces of evil. Don’t fail in the mission at this point. You better pray like your children’s lives are at stake.”

A few short months after Pope Paul VI promulgated his encyclical “Humanae Vitae – On the Regulation of Birth” in July 1968, the Canadian Bishops came forth with the Winnipeg Statement. Theirs was an attempt to quell the firestorm of parishioners, especially in the West, who were incensed that the Pope, in Human Vitae, had clearly condemned all forms of artificial contraception. By pleading the case of the freedom of conscience of the individual believer, the Canadian Bishops essentially gave Catholics who could not in good conscience accept the Church’s teaching a “pass” as regards artificial contraception.

The most gracious assessment of the Catholic Bishops’ actions in issuing the Winnipeg Statement is that they were seeking to save the Catholic Church from an inevitable crisis of abandonment by her weakest members.  On the other hand, the harshest critics of the Catholic Bishops would say that they actually caused a crisis of de facto abandonment of the weakest members of the Catholic Church, for though they were able to remain in communion while ignoring the Church’s teaching on contraception, in truth, they were only under an illusion of communion.

The ramifications of  Humanae Vitae, and the resulting Winnipeg Statement, extended beyond the Catholic Church, to all of society. Forty years later, we have a clearer vision than ever of those ramifications.

Fr. John Corapi’s video interview which follows is fascinating, and thought provoking. Fr. John maintains that the dissolution of civilization in the West, and in particular as demonstrated in the increasing culture of death, is a direct result of the selective obedience (i.e. disobedience) to the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception…a disobedience that was endorsed, or at the very least enabled, by the Catholic Bishops’ Winnipeg Statement.

In the face of this culture of death, hell on earth, Fr. Corapi calls for action and prayer on the part of Catholics, now! His message is this: Don’t wait for the Bishops to mandate action. Organize now, act now. Stand up and fight now. Fight like it is a life and death struggle, because it truly is. Embrace suffering. Offer it up. Pray. Do penance.

Assume your “unique, precious, unrepeatable place in the battle line.”

Thanks to Jeff Steel at de cura animarum for posting this excellent brief video of Fr. Robert Barron commenting on Alistar McGrath’s book titled Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. Fr. Barron gives a fair but critical assessment of McGrath’s work, centering his thoughts on the great breakdown of Protestantism, which is the vacuum of any legitimate authority. Barron makes some good points about the need for a reasonable and measured authority in the Church, one that allows for free discussion and advancement of doctrine, but is also legitimately authorized to “referee” the dialogue of the church when it dissolves into bickering, or worse. More on Fr. Robert Barron’s work may be found at Word on Fire.